The Ratio of College Debt to Degree Payoff Is Rising. For Those Who Don't Graduate (Over 50%), It's a Disaster.

Gary North

April 1, 2010

Here is an April fool's joke on millions of college students. The payoff for a standard liberal arts degree is falling. The cost of earning one is rising. That's why I have told students not to pay over $15,000, total, for an accredited B.A. There is no need to pay more in the era of the Internet.

This report from Forbes provides some real horror stories from students who believed the propaganda: from their high school counselors, from their parents, from their peers, and from the media. They will pay the price for their ignorance for a long time.

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. To cite the extreme and obvious example: Bill Gates is rich because he knows how to run a business, not because he matriculated at Harvard. Finishing his degree wouldn't have increased his income.

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.

The smart student pays about $15,000 and gets his degree in three years, while working part-time to fund college.

I am working with a 17-year-old who will finish his B.A. in August. He will be in the collage-graduate job market before the year is out.

You tell me: Which student is really smart?

"There are a lot of aspects of selling education that are tinged with consumer fraud," Sander says. "There is a definite conspiracy to lead students down a primrose path."

This is only part of the story. Half of students who enter college do not graduate. Their lifetime salaries are no higher than high school graduates. But high school graduates get into the labor market early. They have no student debt.

Among the half of entering students fortunate enough to get through college, millions go into debt for two-year associate degrees. These alumni outearn high school grads by only $8,400 a year. (Community colleges currently enroll 11.5 million.)

Want more facts? Read the entire article.

Then read this: //www.garynorth.com/public/729.cfm