May 24, 2011
Is college too expensive?
"I can see someone borrowing perhaps $10,000 a year if they're majoring in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, computer science or nursing," says Kantrowitz. "But I can't see borrowing that amount of money for a degree in art, or humanities, or sociology, because the jobs just don't pay as well for those fields of study."
The problem with this line of thinking is that there aren't many liberal arts professions that you could even get an interview for without having gone to college. Not sure how that's not clear to this guy, but it's true.
via NY Mag
Also, it might be worth considering that there’s some intrinsic value to learning, or that college is about more than setting yourself up to make more money.
The problem these days is that students coming out of college with gigantic student loan debt loads are now having to make crazy life decisions about: who to marry (do they also have a lot of debt? can we afford to be married to each other?), whether they can ever afford to have kids (meaning, whether to have them at all… not to mention saving for their kids’ education), if they can ever afford to purchase a home of their own… all based on the fact that the fields they are entering do not pay enough to be able to afford the loan balances associated with college education today. It is true: there is more to college than setting yourself up to make more money, but at some point, it has to be about not setting yourself up to suffocate under the cost of the experience.
While it may be true that there are many liberal arts jobs for which a college degree — and by implication debt — is required, its not the case that this makes the degree “worth it.” The argument is that the degree is not worth the cost. Obtaining the job is already factored into the equation as the payoff; the argument is, therefore, that the job itself is not worth the cost.
It might be worth it, to a select few, to willingly go into debt for life in order to become a librarian. I think that sort of qualitative utility is rather beyond the scope of the article though.