It used to be widely assumed that anyone who earned a college degree — any college degree — had made a good human-capital investment that would pay off handsomely. Even weak and disengaged high school students were encouraged to prepare for college, then go. The expense? Never mind — college grads got a huge earnings boost.
That was never true. Many of those students back in the ’80s and ’90s wound up being “underemployed,” which is to say working at jobs that were mainly done by people with high-school educations or less. But hardly any writers looked at them. Over the last ten years or so, things have changed and a lot of attention is now being focused on people who poured time and money into college, only to discover that their earnings prospects are bleak.
In today’s Martin Center article, I ask “Will Your College Degree be a Good Investment?”
Spoiler: the answer is “maybe not.”
There are now data resources that will help people avoid college programs that on average cost more than they’re worth. Even one of the dependable cheerleaders for “higher educational attainment” now admits that more than trivial numbers of students are better off going into the labor market after high school.
Students will be much more circumspect about enrolling in college than in the past, and that portends a serious shakeup in the world of higher education. The fat years of the college-for-everyone mindset are over.