July 23, 2008
This is an important article. It was posted on the Wall Street Journal site.
It shows that the rate economic return on a college education is falling.
This is why anyone going to college has to cut his front-end expenses. He should not pay more than $15,000 total. He should do it in three years. He can do it in two years is he begins in his junior year in high school.
I cover this in my manual. //www.garynorth.com/products/item7.cfm
The return is falling because the supply of people with useless degrees is rising.
The degree is a way to avoid social stigma. It is a consumer good. It is subsidized by the state. So, students keep going despite the falling rate of return.
Young men should master a trade and attend college at night, and then quiz out of their final two years. But very few will do this. They want a salary, not own a business. But they are now competing against women in large numbers. Over half of all college graduates are women. For every male who earns a degree, 1.35 women do. In 1960, it was 1.6 men for every woman. "College graduate's career" now means "women's work." Wages no longer rise at the older rate.
Unless a student is majoring in engineering or a marketable natural science, he had better get through in three years -- preferably two -- and pay no more than $15,000. Do it fast, and do it cheap. No more boola-boola. It takes too much moola-moola -- especially the cost of delayed entry into the job market.
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