Is College Still Worth It? No Easy Answers to a Simple Question

Professor Caplan thinks students are wise to the true value of a degree, which could help to explain why almost no student ever audits a class and why students spend only about 14 hours per week studying, down from 24 hours per week in 1961.

It’s a query that would have been unthinkable a generation or two ago. College was once—and in fairness, to a large extent, still is—viewed as a path to the middle class and a cultural rite of passage. But those assumptions are, on many fronts, being challenged. Radical changes on the cost and benefit sides of the equation have thrown the once axiomatic value of higher education into question.

Let’s talk about money first. It’s no secret that the price of a degree has climbed rapidly in recent decades. Between 1985 and 2015, the average cost of attending a four-year institution increased by 120 percent, according to data compiled by the National Center for Education Statistics, putting it in the neighborhood of $25,000 per year—a figure pushing 40 percent of the median income.

That increase has left students taking more and bigger loans to pay for their educations. According to ValuePenguin, a company that helps consumers understand financial decisions, between 2004 and 2014, the amount of student loan borrowers and their average balance size increased by 90 percent and 80 percent, respectively. Among the under-thirty crowd, 53 percent with a bachelor’s degree or higher now report carrying student debt.

Then there’s time to consider. Optimistically, a bachelor’s degree can be obtained after four years of study. For the minority of students who manage this increasingly rarified feat, that’s still a hefty investment: time spent on campus can’t be spent doing other things, like work, travel, or even just enjoying the twilight of youth.