Rebuttal to the College Contrarians

By John Baylor

[John Baylor Prep’s Mission is to help schools and families create two and four-year college graduates with minimal debt. The following comes from Reaching Higher: the Simple Strategy to Transform America’s K-12 Schools- copyright 2015 by John Baylor, available at JohnBaylorPrep.com.]

The film Ivory Tower spends some time interviewing college detractors, those questioning the return on the financial investment and time. Dale Stephens, the Founder of UnCollege, says, “People say to me all the time, ‘Well Dale, aren’t you ruining people’s lives by encouraging them to take a risk and not go to college. I think it’s much riskier to go to college and take on $20,000 in debt per year and then have miserable job prospects when you get out and have to start repaying that debt. That sounds like a really high risk to me.“

Elizabeth Stark, a mentor for the Thiel Fellowship, which annually gives $100,000 to twenty brilliant young adults to spend two years pursuing their entrepreneurial passion rather than college, says: “There’s no longer a great value proposition in paying $200,000 for a college degree, particularly when you’re not at an Ivy League School.”

I agree with both. However, there are many colleges—Bemidji State, Central Michigan, Northwest Missouri State, Truman State, Montana Western, Alabama-Huntsville, Southern Mississippi, Wayne State, and dozens and dozens of others—that offer solid four-year educations to average high school students from any state for a net cost of under $18,000 a year, often less than $13,000 a year. Most states offer less than $20,000 per year four-year college educations to its in-state residents (Nebraskans annually pay about $18,000 for UNL, UNK, or UNO and about $13,000 for Chadron, Peru, or Wayne). Students can comfortably borrow up to $5,000 and earn at least $5,000 each year, leaving the manageable difference for parents or scholarships. These college skeptics malign high-cost colleges apparently unaware that many colleges don’t require lots of expense or debt.

Few college contrarians can truly feel that America’s 19-year-olds should live at home and just find their way. I can hear China cheering that genius advice. Do we really want to send the message to America’s families that Billy should go right into the workforce at age 18 or “hack” college on his own? All the statistics say NO—as long as we help all teens become informed, quality-conscious, and debt-cautious college shoppers.

Peter Thiel himself says, “The Thiel Fellowship is focused on a small subset of people who I think will do fantastic even without a college credential. I think it is a much more difficult question—what one does for people from average backgrounds, less advantaged backgrounds. I don't have answers for it.”

Securing marketable knowledge and skills without college may seem less expensive initially. The real expense arises over time in the missed earnings potential.

David Autor, an M.I.T. economist, wrote in 2014 that college costs negative $500,000-- even after considering college’s cost, not graduating from one will cost about $500,000 (in missed economic opportunity).

In the film Ivory Tower, Michael Roth, President of Wesleyan University, declares: “Many intellectuals are saying that it would be better if some people don’t go to college at all. I think that’s an assault on democracy, and it’s an attempt to keep people in their place and reinforce social inequality. Education should foster social mobility and the possibility of equality. You’ve got to be crazy to intentionally not get a college degree if you have a choice today.”

Between community colleges, need-based aid, the Susan Buffett scholarship, and low cost, solid four-year colleges, all students have that choice. Adults, especially we educators, should persuade them to make it.

Communities and employers, border to border, say that they need more skilled workers: i.e. two-year and four-year college graduates. It was reported that one reason Conagra left Nebraska was to have more access to “college-educated millennial talent, which is abundant in Chicago.” Let’s make a two or four-year college degree with minimal debt our goal for all K-12 students—for their sake and ours.

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