Is college still worth the price? 大学的价值

Costs are soaring twice as fast as inflation, even as salaries for graduates are falling.

Well, we all know that going to college can suck your wallet dry, leave you thousands and thousands of dollars in debt, the question is, is it worth it? Penelope Wang of Money Magazine, a senior writer for Money Magazine has been doing the research. Thanks you joining us here.

Thank you.

I, when we look at the cost of going to college now, an increase of 439% since 1982, a pretty unbelievable statistic. What is behind the surge, because this is not just inflation that we are talking about.

That’s right. It’s double or four times the inflation rate, when we took a look at this, we discover they are a number of factors, some of them pretty obvious, ur driving college costs. One is going demand, there’s record numbers of kids graduating from high school, all wanting to go to college or at least a good portion of them. And there’s also less support from the government, both federal and state which also pushes tuition prices up. But one of the most surprising factors we found was the demand from many parents to send their kids to really expensive brand-name colleges, and that creates a cycle that pushes up tuition at all colleges.

When we talk about these big name schools, it’s not always the case, but generally the more prestigious the school, the more expensive it is, for parents, for kids taking on this loans to go to college. So the question that you really addressed in your pieces, is it worth it any more. What did you find?

Well, we found that, in many cases, it’s probably not, I mean what it really comes down to is what your kid wants to do with that degree and how much debt the child and the parents have to take out in order to afford the college. And there are plenty of cases and a growing number where people are taking out way too much debt that they don’t have realistic prospects of paying back. And going to an expensive college isn't gonna necessarily help that.

What‘s interesting, you compare the surge in the cost of going to college to the housing boom or even the tech frenzy in the late 1990s, I mean is it really comparable to that or is there gonna be a bust like, you know, those two situations or strategic going up.

If only there would be a bust, in college tuition prices, we don’t think that’s going to happen. But we have found that there is more the backlash against rising prices, and colleges themselves are becoming more sensitive to this. There’s been some push by Congress to take a look at colleges that aren't spending part of their endowments to reduce, to increase financial aid or keep tuition prices down. And recently, and this is good news for families, that some of the most expensive colleges have really boosted their financial aids, so that many families from middle-class and even upper-middle-class, households can send their kids at much reduced costs to these schools.

Yeah, of course, it seems like more and more people now don’t just want a BA or BS, they wanna a higher degree, whether it’s a Law Degree or whether they want an MD, so that can costs some hundreds of thousands of dollars on top of their college tuition. Is that worth it in the job market?

Well, yes, it is, and that brings up an important point, which is you don’t want to take on too much debt, as an undergraduate, particularly if you are going to go to an expensive graduate school, because then you’ll really be coming out with an,a load of money you need to pay back, that will be really difficult to manage.

All right, Penelope thank you. Some good tips to keep in mind, you can see our entire piece right here on our website.