Is college worth the money?

It's easy to find numbers showing much higher lifetime earnings for college graduates, but there are nuances in the data.

For example: “A conservative estimate of the net present value of the lifetime average marginal return from a Bachelor’s degree over a high school diploma is $1 million.” George Leef notes, however, that, "For someone earning $30,000 per year with educational loans to pay off, that’s light years from being true."

For the group earning between $20,000 and $35,000 per year—5 percent have a master’s or higher, 15 percent have a bachelor’s, and 11 percent have an associate’s degree. That’s a large number of people with college education under their belt who are earning below-average incomes. Considering the large numbers of college-educated people now working in low-paying jobs, it appears that for many Americans, going to college is not financially worthwhile.

David French has another take on that $1 million dividend: "Since the typical path for disciplined, diligent kids takes them through college, it’s tough to tell how much of that $1.1 million in additional value is added by college or is just inherent in their disciplined approach to life. In other words, if you take an equally diligent and disciplined young man and teach him to be a commercial electrician, will he earn more or less than he would earn starting as an insurance adjuster at Allstate?"

Of course, this approach ignores a vital aspect of college life — the incalculable value of knowledge for its own sake.  Thankfully, there will always be a market for people who want to read Shakespeare, to reflect with Burke on the revolution in France, or to deconstruct fast-food commercials for evidence of patriarchy and hegemony (every culture needs its thinkers and critics), but this market by itself could never sustain our vast higher-education infrastructure.  That infrastructure sustains itself largely by promising to be a gateway to a better economic life.  Yet I’m not convinced that the bachelor’s degree, by itself, has much marginal value compared to the underlying work habits and character of the individual.

Perhaps the rule of thumb ought to be like the one regarding housing: don't buy a house as an investment; buy a house as shelter. And ... get an education to get an education, then think about the work you will do. Perhaps being a cubicle drone for 40 years isn't worth $1 million.

Right now I don't care if you can recite Shakespeare. What I want to know is, can you fix the electrical outlet on my patio?