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发表于 2016-7-11 18:35:04
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Why are we spending so much money on college?
A. And why are we so unhappy about it? We all seem to agree that a college education is wonderful, and yet strangely we worry when we see families investing so much in this supposedly essential good. Maybe it's time to ask a question that seems almost sacrilegious: is all this investment in college education really worth it?
B.The answer, I fear, is that it's not. For an increasing number of kids, the extra time and money spent pursuing a college diploma will leave them worse off than they were before they set foot on campus.
C. For my entire adult life, an education has been the most important thing for middle-class households. My parents spent more educating my sister and me than they spent on their house, and they're not the only ones ... and, of course, for an increasing number of families, most of the cost of their house is actually the cost of living in a good school district. Questioning the value of a college education seems a bit like questioning the value of happiness, or fun.
Donald Marron, a private-equity investor whose portfolio companies have included a student-loan firm and an educational-technology startup, says, "If you're in a position to be able to pay for education, it's a bargain." Those who can afford a degree from an elite institution are still in an enviable position. "You've got that with you for your whole life," Marron pointed out. "It's a real imprimatur that's with you, as well as access to all these relationships."
That's true. I have certainly benefited greatly from the education my parents sacrificed to give me. On the other hand, that kind of education has gotten a whole lot more expensive since I was in school, and jobs seem to be getting scarcer, not more plentiful. These days an increasing number of commentators are nervously noting the uncomfortable similarities to the housing bubble, which started with parents telling their children that "renting is throwing your money away," and ended in mass foreclosures.
An education can't be repossessed, of course, but neither can the debt that financed it be shed, not even, in most cases, in bankruptcy. And it's hard to ignore the similarities: the rapid run-up in prices, at rates much higher than inflation; the increasingly frenetic recruitment of new buyers, borrowing increasingly hefty sums; the sense that you are somehow saving for the future while enjoying an enhanced lifestyle right now, and of course, the mountain of debt.
The price of a McDonald's hamburger has risen from 85 cents in 1995 to about a dollar today.
D.The average price of all goods and services has risen about 50 percent. But the price of a college education has nearly doubled in that time. Is the education that today's students are getting twice as good? Are new workers twice as smart? Have they become somehow massively more expensive to educate?
E.Perhaps a bit. Richard Vedder, an Ohio University economics professor who heads the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, notes that while we may have replaced millions of filing clerks and payroll assistants with computers, it still takes one professor to teach a class. But he also notes that "we've been slow to adopt new technology because we don't want to. We like getting up in front of 25 people. It's more fun, but it's also damnably expensive."
Vedder adds, "I look at the data, and I see college costs rising faster than inflation up to the mid-1980s by 1 percent a year. Now I see them rising 3 to 4 percent a year over inflation. What has happened? The federal government has started dropping money out of airplanes." Aid has increased, subsidized loans have become available, and "the universities have gotten the money." Economist Bryan Caplan, who is writing a book about education, agrees: "It's a giant waste of resources that will continue as long as the subsidies continue."
F. Promotional literature for colleges and student loans often speaks of debt as an "investment in yourself." But an investment is supposed to generate income to pay off the loans. More than half of all recent graduates are unemployed or in jobs that do not require a degree, and the amount of student-loan debt carried by households has more than quintupled since 1999. These graduates were told that a diploma was all they needed to succeed, but it won't even get them out of the spare bedroom at Mom and Dad's. For many, the most tangible result of their four years is the loan payments, which now average hundreds of dollars a month on loan balances in the tens of thousands.
A lot of ink has been spilled over the terrifying plight of students with $100,000 in loans and a job that will not cover their $900-a-month payment. Usually these stories treat this massive debt as an unfortunate side effect of spiraling college costs. But in another view, the spiraling college costs are themselves an unfortunate side effect of all that debt. When my parents went to college, it was an entirely reasonable proposition to "work your way through" a four-year, full-time college program, especially at a state school, where tuition was often purely nominal. By the time I matriculated, in 1990, that was already a stretch. But now it's virtually impossible to conceive of high-school students making enough with summer jobs and part-time jobs during the school year to put themselves through a four-year school. Nor are their financially shaky parents necessarily in a position to pick up the tab, which is why somewhere between one half and two thirds of undergrads now come out of school with debt.
In a normal market, prices would be constrained by the disposable income available to pay them. But we've bypassed those constraints by making subsidized student loans widely available. No, not only making them available: telling college students that those loans are "good debt" that will enable them to make much more money later.
G. It's true about the money-sort of. College graduates now make 80 percent more than people who have only a high-school diploma, and though there are no precise estimates, the wage premium for an elite school seems to be even higher. But that's not true of every student. It's very easy to spend four years majoring in English literature and beer pong and come out no more employable than you were before you went in. Conversely, chemical engineers straight out of school can easily make triple or quadruple the wages of an entry-level high-school graduate.
H.James Heckman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, has examined how the returns on education break down for individuals with different backgrounds and levels of ability. "Even with these high prices, you're still finding a high return for individuals who are bright and motivated," he says. On the other hand, "if you're not college ready, then the answer is no, it's not worth it." Experts tend to agree that for the average student, college is still worth it today, but they also agree that the rapid increase in price is eating up more and more of the potential return. For borderline students, tuition hikes can push those returns into negative territory.
I. Everyone seems to agree that the government, and parents, should be rethinking how we invest in higher education-and that employers need to rethink the increasing use of college degrees as crude screening tools for jobs that don't really require college skills. "Employers seeing a surplus of college graduates and looking to fill jobs are just tacking on that requirement," says Vedder. "De facto, a college degree becomes a job requirement for becoming a bartender."
J.We have started to see some change on the finance side. A law passed in 2007 allows many students to cap their loan payment at 10 percent of their income and forgives any balance after 25 years. But of course, that doesn't control the cost of education; it just shifts it to taxpayers. It also encourages graduates to choose lower-paying careers, which diminishes the financial return to education still further. "You're subsidizing people to become priests and poets and so forth," says Heckman. "You may think that's a good thing, or you may not." Either way it will be expensive for the government.
K.What might be a lot cheaper is putting more kids to work: not necessarily as burger flippers but as part of an educational effort. Caplan notes that work also builds valuable skills-probably more valuable for kids who don't naturally love sitting in a classroom. Heckman agrees wholeheartedly: "People are different, and those abilities can be shaped. That's what we've learned, and public policy should recognize that."
L.Heckman would like to see more apprenticeship-style programs, where kids can learn in the workplace-learn not just specific job skills, but the kind of "soft skills," like getting to work on time and getting along with a team, that are crucial for career success. "It's about having mentors and having workplace-based education," he says. "Time and again I've seen examples of this kind of program working."
M. Ah, but how do we get there from here? With better public policy, hopefully, but also by making better individual decisions. "Historically markets have been able to handle these things," says Vedder, "and I think eventually markets will handle this one. If it doesn't improve soon, people are going to wake up and ask, 'Why am I going to college?'?"
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姓 名：王媛
教授课程：新概念 四级阅读 美国口语
教师简介：英语专业，曾获安徽省口语大赛二等奖，在校期间多次获得演讲比赛冠军教学经验丰富，善于在课堂上不断的引导和启发学生，课堂教学生动活泼，鼓励式的教学深受广大学生的一致好评。
合肥新东方王媛老师所授课程》》
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UQ41406
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四级基础强化全程班
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每天8:00-12:20
（1月28日-2月2日放假）
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40
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1100
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