Friday’s Washington Post has an article by Sarah Kaufman that questions the conventional thinking that going to college is a good idea for almost everyone. She documents the proposition that college is not necessary for success by showing that a good many highly successful people didn’t even come close to earning enough credits to graduate. Now they run large companies. I wish Kaufman had made the point that there are probably many jobs in those companies where a college degree is now obligatory for applicants, even though the jobs don’t call for nearly the aptitude of their non-college CEO.

She also knocks down the idea that college education is sufficient for success, by noting that it’s easy to find people who have degrees but nevertheless a low-pay, low-skill job.

Put those two points together and the conclusion is that for many bright and ambitious people, college is an expensive waste of time that delays their entry into business or professional success, and for many of the unbright and unambitious, college is an expensive waste of time that won’t get them near the path to success.

Kaufman repeatedly quotes my good friend (and debate partner) Rich Vedder to show that a college degree is a poor investment for many young people.

What’s more, the article does not include any of the usual drum beating by spokesmen for the higher-ed establishment on how we’re “falling behind” other nations and need to “produce more college graduates” for “the knowledge economy.”

The only thing about the article I found disappointing was the attention paid to a “student activist” who is angry about the cost of college. “I think it’s absolutely despicable that students are asked to pay that much,” says the president of the United States Student Association. What she is saying, of course, is that other Americans should be compelled to pay more of the cost of her education. As Bastiat said, the state is the great fiction whereby everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else.