The American Enterprise Institute recently published a study indicating that for many students, the answer is no. Looking a pay data for graduates of a wide array of schools, author Mark Schneider finds that at quite a few non-selective schools, the average grad doesn’t earn enough to cover the cost of borrowing the necessary funds. In North Carolina, Shaw and Campbell make the list of low-performance schools. Of course, that doesn’t mean that no students do well enough to make the cost worthwhile, but that quite a few students are getting credentials that aren’t worth the price.

This study supports the argument I’ve been making for years: we have a glut of people with college degrees working in low-pay jobs either because they don’t have much in the way of marketable skill or because there simply aren’t enough “good jobs” to go around.

Will the groups pushing the “we’ve got to get more people through college” idea pay any attention?