We all bore witness to the financial meltdown. We all know it was caused by sub-prime mortgages and greedy financial engineering and that it was exacerbated by a flailing auto industry, a deregulated, price-gauging credit card industry, and a general population who had to learn not to live beyond their means the hard way. We have all suffered as a result. Yet, the one endearing doctrine of value throughout the history of this country has been education. The value of a good education, our parents told us, was the foundation for a successful professional life. Well, call me a pessimist, but the more I think about it, education is what is going to cause this country’s next big economic disaster. How so? Let’s take a look….
It used to be that higher education was luxury of the wealthy, and was evidenced by the well less than a quarter of the population attending and graduating from four year colleges. Now, it seems as though it has become a rite of passage. Of course, with the burgeoning rise in enrollment and graduation from college, so have the costs to attend. I graduated NYU in 2004, and it cost $40,000 per year to attend. The average cost just a short 5 years later? $60,000! That’s a fifty percent rise within five years. While NYU is one of the most expensive universities to attend, it is a perfect poster child for the rising costs associated with attending college.
Somehow, universities have been able to convince most Americans that higher education is not only necessary to land a job today, but that the investment is also a worthwhile one. I would agree that higher education is generally a prerequisite to landing a good starting job, but beyond that, most of a person’s career depends more on how successful they are in that first role, and in roles at future positions, than where they went to school. After all, most HR departments check with former employers to gauge a candidate’s merits, rather than checking with the university registar’s office to make sure they did indeed graduated cum laude.
