Is College Worth It?

Is College Worth It?

Part 1- Article Summary

Introduction

This article has been written by Jeremy Hay on the investment on college education. This article was published on 18th May, 2013 by “The Press Democrat”. In this article, the author has been talking about the investment of people on college education and its worth in long term life. It has been studied that the student debt has been reached to around $1 trillion in United States. It has been questioned by several people that whether the rate of return on investment in college education is worthy enough. At present, it is not valuable due to the fact that it is very hard for students to get a job particularly in their relevant field (Hay, 2013).

Summary

It has been observed that parents have invested thousands of dollars in the higher education of their children and even students have taken huge loans for their college education but they have not yielded the return on that investment. Many students told in their interviews that they decided to drop their degree in the initial years but due to the growing debt they were compelled to continue in order to get good job for loan repayment. Majority of those students now consider getting master's degree in public administration for the improvement of their job prospects (Hay, 2013).

Previously in many studies it was observed that there was a positive relationship between higher education and income. The more education would lead to better income job. However, at present, the value of college education has been questioned by several people. Not every college is valuable enough to invest for the education. At national level, college graduates have an average of $25,250 loans. This is the major reason why a large number of students in America do not finish college (Hay, 2013).

The return on investment in college education is positive if we take 150 colleges, however the total and universities in USA are about 3000. Many students take their major subjects in order to have an identified field for their jobs with a clear path to their career. Hikes in Tuitions and cuts in budget have resulted in crowded classes in colleges. People admire education but they are not happy with the education system in USA. Most of the students have continued their studies in college because their parents had paid for their education. Otherwise if they had to pay for it, they would have continued their education. One more finding of the studies is that when students enter into college for a four-year program they complete it in six years due to part time job burden for earning their bread and butter and for the repayment of their education loan. However, there are some colleges which do not provide guarantee for higher lifetime earnings; on the other hand higher lifetime earning is the chief reason for getting a college degree. Thus it is not worthy to get into those colleges which do not provide assurance.

Furthermore, the article discusses that ...