Forbes Flays College Falsehoods

Forbes has a great piece about the scam that is higher education. I'm glad to see some of the same arguments I have used (correlation is not causation, etc.) in their article.

The ROI of college

At one time I had developed a fairly sophisticated spreadsheet to analyze the net present value of college. Alas, it was lost when a hard drive failed. Thankfully, other people have done a similar analysis. Thanks to April Norhanian for pointing to it. The article does a good job of pointing out that wages lost while going to college and debt servicing are often left out when college promoters quote their statistics.

Is College worth the cost?

One theme I hope to explore here is the value of a college education. I have concluded that college, like crime, doesn't pay. I know that in stating such a thing I am certainly placing myself in a very small minority. In The Two Income Trap by Elizabeth Warren and her daughter Amelia Warren Tyagi the authors point out that 6% of the population believes the moon landing was faked while 3% believe college is not worth the time and cost.

Despite the heresy of my opinion, I believe I can back it up with reason and evidence. Specifically, the net present value of tuition, fees, books, lost income, etc. needs to be considered. Also, the causality/correlation problem of education attainment and intelligence plays a big factor and should be addressed. A critical look at the data from which the champions of higher ed. derive their propaganda would be a good thing as well. Finally, miscellaneous things such as lifestyle choice after graduation, career demands, the increasing cost of college, and the lack of correlation between education and wealth should be examined.

Of course such discussions take time, and considering how often I post to this blog, it will probably takes years.