College Is Still a Waste of Time and Money

Citing the same stats that always get cited with this kind of thing, HuffPo argues that: "A bachelor's degree is worth $2.8 million over one's lifetime[!]" which is "far more than the $220,000 price tag of a Harvard degree. College graduates earn 84 percent more over their lifetimes than people without college degrees."

And: "The average college graduate of the class of 2011 is earning $41,701 per year: 58 percent more than the average median U.S. salary of $26,364."

Hm. This is all interesting stuff, but that still doesn't make college worthwhile.

First, there's the issue of debt -- and that can't just be dismissed with talk of overall lifetime earnings. In the U.S., student lending debt has swelled past $1 trillion. Yeah, this is less than some estimates of dropouts' impact on the economy (said to hover around $4.75 trillion), but we should probably wonder whether such a debt-dependent financial model is sustainable in the long run. And, fact is that there are still many, many students who graduate with tens of thousands of dollars in debt -- with nebulous job prospects.

There's also the issue of psychic pay. Remember Caroline Bird's 1975 essay "College Is a Waste of time and Money"? Bird brings up an important idea: a lot of students attend college in the hopes of doing something they enjoy -- like social work or education -- even though the salaries for these fields might be less than, say, being a highly skilled auto mechanic. What these stats don't show: whether today's grads can achieve the psychic payout that would make worthwhile four expensive years of (largely bullshit) coursework.

Follow Victoria Bekiempis @vicbekiempis.