Strictly Right

Buyers see that everyone else is taking on mounds of debt, and so are more comfortable when they do so themselves; besides, for a generation, the value of what they’re buying has gone up steadily. What could go wrong? Everything continues smoothly until, at some point, it doesn’t.

College graduates will earn $1 million more than those with only a high school diploma, brags Mercy College radio ads running in the New York area. The $1 million shibboleth is a favorite of college barkers.

Like many good cons, this one contains a kernel of truth. Census figures show that college grads earn an average of $57,500 a year, which is 82% more than the $31,600 high school alumni make. Multiply the $25,900 difference by the 40 years the average person works and, sure enough, it comes to a tad over $1 million.

But anybody who has gotten a passing grade in statistics knows what’s wrong with this line of argument. A correlation between B.A.s and incomes is not proof of cause and effect. It may reflect nothing more than the fact that the economy rewards smart people and smart people are likely to go to college. To cite the extreme and obvious example: Bill Gates is rich because he knows how to run a business, not because he matriculated at Harvard. Finishing his degree wouldn’t have increased his income.

All the while students have been lulled into thinking of the extra $1 million that will be theirs, they have been forced to disgorge an ever larger fraction of it in pursuit of the degree. While the premium that college grads earn over high schoolers has remained relatively constant over the past five years, the cost of acquiring a degree has risen at twice the rate of inflation, dramatically undermining any value a sheepskin adds.

Offsetting that million-dollar income discrepancy is the $46,700 four-year cost of tuition, fees, books, room and board at a public school and $99,900 at a private one–even after financial aid, scholarships and grants. Add all this to the equation and college grads don’t pull even with high school grads in lifetime income until age 33 on average, the College Board says. Even that doesn’t include the $125,000 in pay students forgo over four years.

“I call it the million-dollar misunderstanding,” says Mark Schneider, vice president of the American Institutes for Research, of the prevailing propaganda.

So if the earnings potential is not there, how about increased general knowledge? Speaking from my own experience, having completed a four year university degree in four years, I can say the process was worthless. The courses, with the exception of one or two outliers, were pointless and repetitive. The general message is to oppose Western civilization, reject religion, reject capitalism, reject your parents and embrace the atheist religion of communism. The lessons taught in arts degrees are not only not helpful in forging a future for graduates, they are detrimental. Students graduate with no understanding or knowledge of history, science or economics. Instead, graduates have tired ideas that have never worked ingrained in them, only to be dispelled once said graduates are forced to leave the academy and enter the real world.

Is university useless? No. There are worthwhile degrees in maths, sciences, economics and so on. There is also a great need for a proper teaching of history, political science and the rest of the arts. However, not everyone needs a university degree. Many people would be better off attending a college and learning a trade, or just entering the work force. University degrees have become over valued and the bubble, like all bubbles, will inevitably burst. Once the education bubble bursts, hopefully a more sound education system can be established in its stead.