A Major Financial Publication Publishes an Article Saying What I have Been Saying: College Is a High-Risk Crap-Shoot.
Feb. 17, 2009
The mainstream media occasionally run articles on how big a rip-off college is. But they do not provide answers. Here is an example.
As steadily as ivy creeps up the walls of its well-groomed campuses, the education industrial complex has cultivated the image of college as a sure-fire path to a life of social and economic privilege. . . .[A horror story]
College graduates will earn $1 million more than those with only a high school diploma, brags Mercy College radio ads running in the New York area. The $1 million shibboleth is a favorite of college barkers. . . .
But anybody who has gotten a passing grade in statistics knows what's wrong with this line of argument. A correlation between B.A.s and incomes is not proof of cause and effect. It may reflect nothing more than the fact that the economy rewards smart people and smart people are likely to go to college. . . .
All the while students have been lulled into thinking of the extra $1 million that will be theirs, they have been forced to disgorge an ever larger fraction of it in pursuit of the degree. While the premium that college grads earn over high schoolers has remained relatively constant over the past five years, the cost of acquiring a degree has risen at twice the rate of inflation, dramatically undermining any value a sheepskin adds. . . .
"I call it the million-dollar misunderstanding," says Mark Schneider, vice president of the American Institutes for Research, of the prevailing propaganda. . . .
Warped as the numbers are, they don't begin to account for the hidden cost of higher education: financing it. Borrowing has doubled over the past decade, to roughly $85 billion in new student loans in the 2007--08 academic year, bringing total student debt owed to well over half a trillion dollars. The average borrower went $19,200 into debt for a diploma in 2004, a 58% increase after inflation since 1993, according to the Project on Student Debt.
Articles like this are accurate, but they change no one's behavior. College is a rite of passage: from students into debt and parents into even greater debt.
You can get a B.A. from an accredited college for under $3500 a year, but hardly anyone does. //www.garynorth.com/public/729.cfm
Start with one Advanced Placement (AP) exam. Buy a used college-level textbook for $10 on Amazon. It can be an older edition. Spend one hour a day reading it. Mark it up. Maybe you can finish one chapter. Maybe only half a chapter.
Spend 5 hours reveiewing it when you finish.
Do this for three courses. Schedule your exams.
In the week before the exam, review the courses for 3 hours a night, for six nights.
If you get a 3 or higher on any exam, go on to the next AP courses. Just keep taking exams until you have your lower division work finished.
Total cost of AP exams and textbooks: under $1,000.