That’s the question Rich Karlgaard, publisher for Forbes, asks in his current column there.
He argues that the enormous investment in a college degree these days (often in the $100-175K range) is not worth it for many students. In my view, the U.S. is well beyond the point of diminishing returns on higher education since lots of degree holders end up taking “high school” jobs — sometimes after going to a technical school to learn a useful trade. The notion that we can bootstrap ourselves into ever-higher prosperity just by “investing” more in higher education is no better than the view that we can create prosperity just by printing money.
Rather than teaching specific skills and information that are crucial to success, colleges are merely certifying that grads are probably trainable. The degree is just a proxy for the attributes employers want in young people. When less pricey institutions come along that can also provide the screening that employers want, they will send a lot of non-elite colleges and universities into a tailspin.
