Inside Higher Ed: College Isn’t Worth a Million Dollars

[StitchInTime]

<p>[College</a> Isn’t Worth a Million Dollars](<a href=“http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/04/07/miller]College”>http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/04/07/miller):</p>

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…But what if the college premium doesn’t exist, or is greatly exaggerated? If a college degree isn’t worth as much as the conventional wisdom assumes, is it possible that the money the country keeps pouring into the current financial aid system isn’t wise? That taxpayer acceptance of the ever-rising price of higher education, patience that already wearing thin, would evaporate? And that that combination of factors would finally force college leaders and policy makers and others to get serious about confronting the problems?</p>

<p>That is the roughly scenario that Miller laid out last week in [a</a> scathing letter](<a href=“http://insidehighered.com/index.php/content/download/221349/2806671/version/1/file/college%20board%20letter.doc]a”>http://insidehighered.com/index.php/content/download/221349/2806671/version/1/file/college%20board%20letter.doc) to Gaston Caperton, president of the College Board, in which he accuses the board, through its choice of financial assumptions and presentation of data, of misleading the public in [its</a> “Education Pays”](<a href=“College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools”>College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools) report, which aims to lay out the benefits to individuals and to society of a strong higher education system and of equitable access to it for Americans from all backgrounds.</p>

<p>A different analysis, “using assumptions more in line with current realities, might reach the shocking conclusions that American higher education today has gotten too expensive for what it produces; that it has become too costly for the typical student … that education (a college degree) does not pay!” Miller wrote…

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<p>It would not surprise me if that were the case. While the ancillary benefits of a college education are large in terms of human capital and so forth, there are any number of jobs where the minimum used to be high school graduation and is now a bachelor’s degree. Often, this reflects not so much a need for any particular skills but a sort of change in the equilibrium of the “qualifications currency” in the job market - and this kind of change is an expensive one for people (and given that university education is taxpayer-subsidized, for the country in general).</p>