Straight Story: A college education
Some pundits have questioned whether a college education is still worth the cost and time. Chris Farrell says yes, but you need to look closely at what's right for you.
Economics editor Chris Farrell (American Public Media)
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From Lincoln, NE, 11/16/2008
Why is Market place focusing only on young people when it comes to education? How about a story about older laid off worker or online students and what happens to them after they graduate and paid all this money for their education? What is their return on learning? To begin with, so much is advertised in interviews and comments in the media about the benefits of education. We all want our children to go to college so that they can have a better life. Have the benefits really happened? How many of the unemployed who cannot find work have a university degree? How many of the managers who are still working do not have a university degree? How much does it matter to a hiring manager that a person has a university degree? Will my learned ability to solve problems even be considered when looking at the university degree during the hiring process (honestly - do they realy think about that when looking at education on the resume)?
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From Rochester Hills, MI, 09/09/2008
The truth is in the details: Cost of a higher education is worth it if you know how to use the degree. Example: Ever ask an MBA student how they use their degrees? I have. I rule out an MBA student as intelligent as soon as they say they used the MBA to get the promotion or the investment banking job, becase they missed the point of the MBA degree. The same thing can be said for a higher education. If someone says they got the degree to get a job, then they kind of missed the point of getting the degree. The point of a higher education degree is to expand one's knowledge and ability to solve the complex problems of the real world. Many get their expensive degrees, but don't know how to use it.
It also kind of concerns me when many fellow students can't tell me their APR or what APR stands for.
From San Francisco, CA, 09/08/2008
I smell a bigger story here. I think this statistic asks for unpacking. The statistic itself: how is it constructed? Bill Gates never finished Harvard. Does his wealth and that of some other some other extremely wealthy people who were entrepreneurs skew the statistic? How do women who do not work their entire lives, say, to stay home with their children, figure into this? Does it represent a trend that has showed up in just recent years? Does it represent, then, a flattening of the middle class? And what would that imply? And when speaking of income, income from a single job, or from the several jobs necessary to keep things going? What happens in our society to the 'average person' (and I mean not just a statistical mean) who has just a high school degree, if that? Are people who 'didn't make it' included in the statistic at all -- like they aren't in some employment statistics? Since ours is said to be increasingly a 'knowledge society' what are the implications of this statistic for the future? Where does the knowledge for American workers come from then? If college is not the place to get what is essential for the knowledge society, does this have implications for the high school curriculum? This seems to be a statistic that could open up just whole a lot of perspective on our lives today. And for what we may expect in the future.
From VA, 09/06/2008
This story fails to emphasize that not all educational institutions cost 40-50 thousand per year. Attending my alma mater, Oklahoma State University, as an out of state student will cost $9,000/year + room and board, which is cheap in OK. I earned an engineering degree for a good price and it has opened many doors for me.
From Sugar Valley, GA, 09/06/2008
Perhaps I'm naive, but my experience suggests that completing a college education enables one to choose a career that they enjoy. Although I may not become wealthy working as a public school teacher, I have looked forward to going to work every morning in the past 8+ years I've done this. As I worked at many various jobs in the 10 years after I graduated high school before starting college, I assure you that I know the value of an education; that value for me is not measured in dollars.
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