We often hear college attendance hyped by the statistics showing that on average, people with college degrees earn way more than do people without them. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings often says a degree is worth a million dollars over a person’s lifetime.
Recently, Charles Miller, who was the chairman of Spellings’ Commission on the Future of Higher Education, publicly took issue with the use of big dollar figures to promote college enrollments. In this week’s Clarion Call, I comment on this question, showing that for many people, college is a poor investment because they’re likely to wind up doing jobs that call for no academic preparation.