I've posted now and then about the problem with the rising cost of college. For decades the cost of college has climbed twice as fast as inflation.
Walter E. Williams echoes this thought in Is College Worth It?
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As parents pack their youngsters off to college, they might ask themselves whether it's worth both the money they will spend and their children's time. Dr. Marty Nemko has researched that question in an article aptly titled America's Most Over-rated Product: Higher Education.
The U.S. Department of Education statistics show that 76 out of 100 students who graduate in the bottom 40 percent of their high school class do not graduate from college, even if they spend eight and a half years in college. That's even with colleges having dumbed down classes to accommodate such students. Only 23 percent of the 1.3 million students who took the ACT college entrance examinations in 2007 were prepared to do college-level study in math, English and science. Even though a majority of students are grossly under-prepared to do college-level work, each year colleges admit hundreds of thousands of such students.
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If you have a child ready to go off to college you may want to stop and run the numbers. They may be off better financially in choosing to skip college.
(Hat tip: Dr. Hellen)
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Technorati tags: college, children, education
2 comments:
Another option is to shop around and look for colleges that are committed to providing the highest quality curriculum at the lowest possible price. A college that doesn't rely on federal student loan programs to coerce students into enrolling.
I would reccomend almost any DETC school, especially for those who have been homeschooled.
(www.detc.org)
(www.aju.edu)
Don Kassner
President
Andrew Jackson University
Good point.
I think once you get away from the ten percent most expensive colleges, it can make sense to go to college. Mostly I want to encourage people to slow down and make sure they are making a rational decision, not to just follow the crowd.
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