Think Twice ABout College

It is Friday and I’m just saying…..

·      The cost of a college education in 1980 was $11,000 (in 2012 dollars) now it is $29,000.

·      The average debt for a graduate in 2013 is $35,200.

·      Recent studies indicate that after two years in college, 45% of students showed no significant gains in learning; after four years, and 36% showed little change. Students also spent 50% less time studying compared with students a few decades ago.

·      35% of students report spending five or fewer hours per week studying alone. Yet, despite an "ever-growing emphasis" on study groups and collaborative projects, students who study in groups tend to have lower gains in learning.

·      50% said they never took a class in a typical semester where they wrote more than 20 pages; 32% never took a course in a typical semester where they read more than 40 pages per week.  (These facts from USA Today)

·      There were 1.9 million unemployed college graduates in October, according to the Labor Department, a third of them younger than 35.

·      About half of young graduates are either unemployed or are working in jobs that don’t require a college degree.  DOL

·      The median worker with a degree in counseling psychology earns $29,000…. and those with degrees in early childhood education earn $36,000

·      In 2008, 81 percent of adults thought college were a worthwhile investment. This year, 57 percent think so.

·      Nearly 30% of Americans with associate's degrees now make more than those with bachelor's degrees, according to Georgetown University's Center on Education and the Workforce. In fact, other recent research in several states shows that, on average, community college graduates right out of school make more than graduates of four-year universities.

·      The average wage for graduates of community colleges in Tennessee, for instance, is $38,948 -- more than $1,300 higher than the average salaries for graduates of the state's four-year institutions.

·      In Virginia, recent graduates of community-college occupational and technical degree programs make an average of $40,000. That’s an almost $2,500 more than recent bachelor’s degree recipient.

·      Recent reports increasingly show that bachelor’s-degree graduates are unprepared for the workplace. According to a Chronicle of Higher Education/American Public Media’s Marketplace survey of 50,000 employers, half said they had trouble finding recent graduates qualified to fill positions at their company, saying that many lack basic qualifications such as adaptability, written and oral communication skills, decision-making, and the ability to solve complex problems. –

·      When a college is merely passing along technology as skills, they can’t always teach them what they’ll need tomorrow.  The technology they learn today will be different five years from now. -Create-Better-Prepared-Graduates.aspx#sthash.OrpdZ4h8.dpuf

·      Obtaining a college degree appears, in important ways, to be valuable because it's a reliable signal of diligence and conformity. As an individual, that's just something you should know. But as a society, we should ask whether there isn't some more cost-effective way young people can show that they're willing and able to pursue multiyear projects.