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 College Education; Does It Pay Off?

Which costs are we talking about? First and foremost the tuition cost but also the time full-time employment students lose when going to college. In addition most students have thousands of dollars of debt when they come out of school. Is it really worth it? Is college education an investment that pays off? These are questions any student and their parents should consider. In this article I will briefly discuss an approach for answering these questions. If we use a strictly economic model, it's pretty easy: You must simply review the investment of the education and estimate the return from it. This can be done both from a personal view and from the view of society.

From a financial point of view, reliable data to suggest that on average and over time a college graduate will earn a great deal more than a high school graduate. The United States Census bureau estimates that over a lifetime a university or web content management graduate will earn on average around $2.1 million dollars compared to an median lifetime income of $1.2 million dollars for a high school graduate.

In comparison with the cost of attending a four year public university or college at an average of cost of about $10,000 per year and even adding the cost of lost working time, it is very clear that attending university or collage has financial value.

But there are more benefits than the strict financial. In a report published by the Institute for Higher Education Policy in 1998, there are evidence that people who completed a college or university program experienced a number of ancillary benefits. Some of the major benefits was:

improved quality of life for their children

more hobbies and leisure activities

higher levels of saving

increased mobility; personal as well as professional

better consumer decision making

Another report from the Carnegie Foundation mentioned some other benefits of higher education like a clear tendency for post-secondary students to become

more cultured,

more consistent

less authoritarian

more open-minded,

more rational

What it also showed was that these advantages are also passed along to their children and even their children's children.

We known for a long time that university or college education can even improve your health and numerous studies have shown positive correlation between completion of higher education and good health, not only for graduates but for their children as well.

There is also advantage and value to the society from higher education. According to the Institute for Higher Education these advantages include

higher tax revenues,

more productivity at the workplace

expanded consumption

more workforce flexibility

less reliance on government financial support.

The conclusion is that even when a strictly scientific method is applied, it seems to be valuable to take a college education.