Should College Be Giving Us More for Our Money?

Increasing numbers of twenty-somethings regret getting a BA

According to the Guardian, an astonishing 37% of college-educated young Brits are bitter about their undergraduate degrees, given the cost.

More than a third of UK graduates regret attending university

The numbers come from research done by an insurance company, Aviva, which found that, among Millennials:

37% of those who went to university regret doing so given the amount of debt they now have. A total of 49% said they could have got to where they are in life without the benefit of a university degree.

Well, you can’t prove a counterfactual. Pretty sure I learned that in college.

Still, young people feel ripped off, and that matters. As Nicole has pointed out, they have reason to be.

The BBC’s ‘Your Money and Your Life’ Worries About Thirtysomethings’ Instability

Universities were quick to critique the Aviva study’s various vulnerabilities, but other researchers came up with similar answers earlier this year.

Less than half of students are confident that their university education will secure them a graduate-level job that will enable them to pay off their debts, according to new research. A survey of more than 2,000 students found that 48% were either confident or very confident that their education would pay for itself in the future, with 24% saying they were either unconfident or not confident at all.

Eight out of 10 students who took part in the survey, commissioned by Future Finance, a private student lending company, said they expected a lot more from their university because of the £9,000 annual tuition fees they now pay. … fewer than 60% agreed that an education was worth the cost.

Tuition in England used to be a bargain, so much so that when I was 18 a good friend’s dad told me, “Save your parents money and apply to Oxford.” It’s gone up drastically in the past 5–10 years, though, and continues to rise. On both sides of the pond, then, members of my generation are broke and unsatisfied. And at least one expert can’t wait to say, “I told you so.”

I Asked Academia’s Most Vocal Critic Why College Is a Waste | VICE | United States

Charles Sykes, author of Fail U., tells Vice:

college costs too much, takes too long, and offers dubious value to too many students. That would be the short version. Higher education has been able to get away with this stuff because people were willing to pay anything. And I think at a certain point — like when you’ve got $1.3 trillion in student loan debt — people are starting to ask, “What am I getting for these dollars? What’s going on there?”

He calls undergraduate education “a bubble” and implies if not states that it’s a scam.

We have too many students going to college. There are millions of students who have gone to college, who are not academically prepared for it, who have taken on debt, who have then dropped out with the debt load, and the wage premium for those students is absolutely zero. And I think those students have been conned.

Then he gets all sniffy about “micro-aggressions” on today’s campuses, which makes me 36% less likely to take his other points seriously.

It’s a sort-of culmination of the idea that we need to bubble-wrap children. You go to a university because you want to expand your thinking. If you don’t want to see or hear things that make you uncomfortable, you should go to a Trappist monastery or stay in your mom’s basement. When you go to a university, you have to understand that you don’t have a right to not be offended. You don’t need to go into a safe room to watch a movie about puppies because someone is giving a speech that you disagree with.

Well anyway. Digressions about the latest iteration of “PC culture” aside, the inescapable truth seems to be that college is both more expensive and more necessary than it used to be. And as long as it remains necessary, universities have little incentive to make it more affordable. Meanwhile, states are slashing funding to public schools at a time when unions are barely holding on in any blue-collar field and young people, especially those coming from low-income families, have few reliable avenues into the middle class besides a BA.

Is there something your school could have done or could do that would change for the better how you feel about the value of your degree?

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