Some higher education advocates claim a college degree will lead to an extra $1 million in earnings over a lifetime. Jenna Ashley Robinson, outreach coordinator at the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, discussed that claim with Donna Martinez during an interview for Carolina Journal Radio. (Click here to find a station near you or to learn about the weekly CJ Radio podcast.)
Martinez: In a nutshell, is a college degree worth that much more over a lifetime?
Robinson: Not on average. For a few people, yes, it absolutely is. But on average, a college degree is worth somewhere in between 1.5 times and 1.6 times a high school diploma, which obviously is nowhere near $1 million over a lifetime. The College Board, where that million-dollar figure originally came from, has even backed off of their million-dollar figure after other people have challenged them on it. They’re now saying something like $800,000, but other economists are saying that it’s much lower.
Martinez: How did the other economists come to that lower figure? Did they have some formula they looked at?
Robinson: Some of the things that they’re looking at are things like opportunity cost. Students are in college for four to six years of prime earning time. So if you’re not earning money for those four to six years, obviously that’s going to hurt the lifetime earnings. Also — the cost of a degree. With the cost skyrocketing recently, that also detracts from the difference over a lifetime in how much it’s really worth.
And, of course, also there’s the difference between future earnings and current earnings. What could you be doing with that money other than putting it toward your college degree? When you look at all of those factors combined, they found that at elite universities, it’s worth about $500,000 over a lifetime. At some smaller universities that are not very picky about the students they take, it’s worth about $150,000 over a lifetime.
Martinez: Wow. That’s a huge difference — from $150,000 to $1 million. I think a parent and a potential student might want to know that. Yet that million-dollar figure still persists. Any thoughts on why that is?
Robinson: I think we’ve heard it for a long time, and for many, many years a college degree really was the most reliable tool to make sure that you earned more money. But with the economy changing and with college prices changing and with so many people in the pool of degree holders, it’s just not true anymore. But that wisdom hasn’t caught up with people’s idea about college.
Martinez: Well, based on all of those factors, then, do we have any way of predicting whether that earnings advantage in the future will grow or stay the same or decrease? Any way to know that?
Robinson: Right now the trend seems to be very slightly downward. We peaked when college degrees were worth about — I think it was about 1.7 times a high school diploma in about 2000 — and that seemed to be the peak of the college earnings advantage. Since then, it’s been trending downward, but pretty slowly. So I think college will continue to give higher earnings than high school for quite a long time, and only if prices of colleges continue to skyrocket out of control will it ever not be the case that there’s some advantage [to] going to college.
Martinez: Now aside from the financial factors — which some people may consider key to their decision as to whether or not they pursue a college degree, but other people might not — how should a parent or a teenager determine whether or not college or a university is right for them? Should they be looking for something that will lead them to a skill and a job? Or should they be looking for learning critical thinking? How do you know what to do?
Robinson: I think it depends a lot on the student. If the student is interested in a world of ideas — in literature, in history, in mathematics, in subjects for their own sake — then college is going to be an investment in becoming a Renaissance man or woman. There’s value in that knowledge that isn’t necessarily going to be translated into a degree. That knowledge can be acquired by other sources — through the Internet, through reading, through mentors — but college is a very good way for most people to come across a wide variety of knowledge on a wide variety of subjects.
So parents and students need to look at: Do I want knowledge? Do I want vocational skills? Do I want the kind of skills that will translate into many, many jobs? Or maybe just one or two particular jobs? There are so many factors that parents and students need to consider, and price, obviously, is a very important one.
Martinez: Jenna, you also wrote about some new data — actually, it’s a book that analyzed whether or not college students are actually learning, and it’s a fascinating book. It’s called Academically Adrift. What do we learn about whether or not people are actually learning when they go to college?
Robinson: What the authors looked at was one university, and they looked at students over a number of years and found that, based on the collegiate learning assessment, which actually measures pre-college and post-college — so you’re measuring the same students, and you’re measuring the gain — they found that after the sophomore year, many, many students had learned nothing.
Martinez: Now wait a second. Say that again. Nothing after the sophomore year?
Robinson: Nothing. After two years, the amount of information that they had going in was the same as going out.
Martinez: That’s very distressing, particularly if you’re the person that’s been paying for that college tuition. That’s got to be very distressing to a parent. Any ideas as to why that is?
Robinson: I think some of it can be traced to falling academic standards. If you admit students who are already at a certain level, and then continue to not challenge them throughout their years in college, they’re not going to feel pressure to learn anything. They’re simply going to kind of skate by, coast by, on what they’ve already learned in high school and what they’ve learned through reading and participating in the world around them. And they’re not going to go out of their way to learn anything extra if there’s no pressure to do so from their courses.
Martinez: Has it always been that way?
Robinson: It has not always been that way. In the past, students studied a lot more, and in fact the literacy gains from college in the past were higher than they are today. The literacy rates of college graduates with bachelor’s degrees were higher in the past than they are today. They’ve actually fallen since 1993. And so, obviously, something has changed in the past 10 years — in the past 30 years — and we’re seeing new trends in the outcomes of college students, and that they’re not learning as much as they did in the past.
Martinez: Jenna, one of the great resources you have at the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy is actually a new site, fairly new. It’s called NCCollegeFinder.org. Tell us about that.
Robinson: That website allows students and parents to search for all 54 accredited four-year colleges in North Carolina based on a large set of criteria. Some of them are financial, as we’ve been talking about, and others are about learning. What are the general education courses that students will take? Which English majors will have to take Shakespeare?
There are also political measures that you might not see elsewhere, like the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education’s free-speech ratings. And so it really allows students and parents to kind of customize their college search, to look at the things that they’re most interested in — whether it’s academics or finances or the campus culture — and really get a tailor-made school out of all the North Carolina ones that is the best fit for that student.
Martinez: You mentioned the speech codes. That’s always a fascinating subject. I think people presume that if you’re on a college campus, that all ideas are welcome, that there’s a rigorous debate about ideas. But in North Carolina, is that always the case on a college campus?
Robinson: It’s not. But you’re right. You always hear that colleges are a marketplace of ideas, but in fact there are many ideas that are taboo or can’t be discussed because it might offend someone, because it might run afoul of the sexual discrimination policy or another discrimination policy. And there are no schools in North Carolina that actually let students have their full freedom of speech.