Even The Idiots Have College Degrees

“Today, even the idiots have college degrees. And the idiots have seniority.” Joe Queenan, Wall Street Journal

America’s youth is digging itself deep into debt funding college educations, but is it worth it? 

In the Wall Street Journal, Joe Queenan paints a gloomy portrait:

Over the next few weeks, hundreds of thousands of Millennials will graduate from institutions of higher learning. They will celebrate for several days, perhaps several weeks. Then they will enter a labor force that neither wants nor needs them. They will enter an economy where roughly 17% of people aged 20 through 24 do not have a job, and where two million college graduates are unemployed. They will enter a world where they will compete tooth and nail for jobs as waitresses, pizza delivery men, file clerks, bouncers, trainee busboys, assistant baristas, interns at bodegas.

As they struggle to dig out of this morass, today’s graduates may never catch up with their parent’s generation. Queenan adds:

There are three formidable obstacles confronting college graduates today. One, the economy, though improving at a glacial pace, is still a wreck. There are no jobs, and the jobs that do exist aren’t the kinds anyone in his right mind would have spent $100,000 to $200,000 to land. Two, nothing in most middle-class kids’ lives has prepared them emotionally for the world they are about to enter. Three, the legacy costs that society has imposed on young people will be a millstone around their necks for decades. Who’s going to pay for the health care bill? Gen Y. Who’s going to pay off the federal deficit? Gen Y. Who’s going to fund all those cops’ and teachers’ and firemen’s pensions? Gen Y. Who’s going to support Baby Boomers as they suck the Social Security System dry while wheezing around Tuscany? Gen Y.

The prescription: save $200,000 and skip college. Jacques Steinberg argues that many students spend a six or more years on college tuition, with nothing to show for that expense.

The idea that four years of higher education will translate into a better job, higher earnings and a happier life — a refrain sure to be repeated this month at graduation ceremonies across the country — has been pounded into the heads of schoolchildren, parents and educators. But there’s an underside to that conventional wisdom. Perhaps no more than half of those who began a four-year bachelor’s degree program in the fall of 2006 will get that degree within six years, according to the latest projections from the Department of Education. (The figures don’t include transfer students, who aren’t tracked.)

For college students who ranked among the bottom quarter of their high school classes, the numbers are even more stark: 80 percent will probably never get a bachelor’s degree or even a two-year associate’s degree.

That can be a lot of tuition to pay, without a degree to show for it.

And, demand is rising for many jobs that don’t even require a 4-year college degree:

But this growth is expected to be dwarfed by the need for registered nurses, home health aides, customer service representatives and store clerks. None of those jobs require a bachelor’s degree.

Given the rise of college courses online, isn’t it time to question the value of a brick and mortar 4-year college education?