The media and the OWS crowd question the worth-whileness of college. But data I see say they're wrong.

The higher education business is taking a beating in the news.  

You can hardly avoid hearing about how getting a college degree is such a rip-off these days.  It seems like every one is complaining that it costs too much and--to make matters even worse--it's doesn't pay for itself.  It almost seems that it should be free--or virtually free--for the value and benefits conferred.  

If you believe what you hear, professors and administrators are making 'way too much money, dorms are too plush and comfy, foot-ball stadiums are too big and unnecessary; all of this adds up to the fact that students leave after graduation with $20,000 or $30,000 in student loans and can't get work to pay them off.  But I think the beating up on higher ed is simply an easy prey for people who don't understand that it costs a lot of money to provide something of long-term value.  

Albeit misguided, it's a cause de jour.  

A couple of points need to be made to bring the discussion in to a greater clarity.  First, getting a college diploma does cost a lot of money, but so do a lot of other things: an attractive home in a good neighborhood, a kidney transplant, promising business to buy and profit from, or a hundred other things that have lasting, intrinsic benefit and value.  If anyone thinks that there are very many things in life for free or cheap that continue to have a pay-off potential, well, they live on another planet than the one I'm living on.

Second, when the wrong person pursues a college education is, indeed, an incredible, obscene amount of money--the result is a waste of everyone's resources.  Is getting a degree in higher education something for everyone?  The answer is an obvious 'no," but everyone has to figure that for themselves--and the sooner the better for whoever's writing the checks.  

Third, if someone goes to college to maximize the financial benefit of getting a higher education, the choices of what to study and major in are not all the same.  Some areas of concentration provide grads with a terrific life-time income for those who apply themselves in a given field; for others, not so much.  

But I promise you, no one campus is arm-twisting students to take one major over another--it's an open, free-choice marketplace but with clear, differing economic outcomes.  Again, a person has to have their wits about them when they make these kinds decisions, for there are substantially disparate outcomes after they play Pomp and Circumstance.  But there's no reasonable basis for anyone getting sore when a degree in philosophy or art isn't the ticket to a fabulous career-long stream of money?  It'd be nice if Life worked like that, but, sadly, it doesn't.

Check out for yourself what college grads actually make.

You don't have to take my word--or that of the media or the Occupy Wall Street crowd--for any of this; indeed, there's independent, reliable data to let you draw your own conclusions.  It's the 2010 U.S. Census data--and let's face it, it'd be hard to improve on that for what you need to get information on.  In today's Wall Street Journal there's a very powerful link on the topic of one's college-major-to-career decision. It's well worth the time to check it out if you have doubts about the worth-whileness of getting a college degree.  

If and when you do [and, to make it easy, here's the specific link: From College Major to Career], you'll discover two important points:

[1] There is a wide variation in the income-generating potential, one major versus another.  Pick one field over another and you'll likely be in fat-city for the rest of your professional life; pick another and you're not going to do so hot.  What's more, in a time of economic difficulty, there's also a substantial variation in unemployment.  But none of these differences are the fault of the college, the faculty, or greedy administrators.  Let's face it, going to college should never be thought of as an economic guarantee of financial tranquility--mostly because it simply isn't and can't be.

[2] The income level of college grads in almost any field of study is not all that unattractive when you compare it with the average income of non-college grads.  The numbers vary, depending on who one pays attention to, but a good working comparison is about $20,000 a year for the difference between a college grad and a high-school-degree-only person, 25-34 years of age; conservative estimates of the life-time advantage of a college degree approach a half-a-million dollars.

Yes, these days some say that going to college is a rip-off, but I just don't see it.  Maybe I'm blinded by being part of the process--but even so, I'd be hard-pressed to recommend a different course of action based on the data that's out there to make an informed judgment with.  
_______________________________________________________________

Follow Keith's biz blog on Twitter for updates and see more of what he's reading about on his Facebook Page. If you are inclined, you can write him at kmurray@bryant.edu.