“Almost all students cite getting a better job as a primary reason for attending college,” writes Preston Cooper in the opening paragraph of his new study, entitled Is College Worth It? A Comprehensive Return on Investment Analysis. He refers to an annual survey by UCLA that found that the percentage of incoming freshmen who state … Continue reading “Let the Buyer Beware!”
No one spoke of college students being trapped in debt until rather recently. Prior to the advent of federal student aid programs, college wasn’t expensive, few Americans regarded it as important to their lives, and what borrowing they did for it was through private institutions that were careful not to lend where they perceived too … Continue reading “How Did We Get Into the Debt Trap?”
With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, experts within the higher education policy space were projecting that four-year colleges could face a loss of up to 20 percent in fall enrollment. While these predictions never materialized, the political infatuation with college enrollment figures is not a new phenomenon. Barack Obama proclaimed the orthodox view of … Continue reading “Reassessing the College Wage Premium Payoff”
Lenient rules encourage students to keep borrowing, ignore costs, and hunt for “public service” jobs.