“College pays!” the College Board keeps saying, blowing more air into the higher-ed bubble. It raises your earnings, makes you healthier, and makes you a better citizen, according to its latest report. Read about it in the New York Times.
Economist Sandy Baum, who is a part of the College Board team, says, “For reasons that are not entirely clear, more people are questioning whether it’s necessary to go to college.”
If she had been paying any attention, she would know that the reasons are very clear. Many of the young people drawn into college are academically weak and disengaged; they learn little or nothing in their college years; they accumulate loads of debt; they end up working in jobs that almost any high-school student could easily learn to do. Furthermore, as we increase the percentage of people in the labor force who have college credentials, that ratchets up credential inflation, making it harder for those who don’t have college credentials to find good employment.