The Ultimate Question: “Is College Worth It?” (Part 4)

Do graduates find well-paying jobs?

In Part 1 of this series of blog posts, I said that the question of the worthiness of investing in a college education was best addressed by looking at four discrete concerns: high cost, high debt, scarce jobs, and low graduation rates. In Part 2, we looked at the first concern, that too many families were finding that a college education had become too expensive. In Part 3, we analyzed the student debt “bubble.” This week, we’ll examine the concern that too many college graduates can’t find well-paying jobs.

There are too many unemployed or underemployed college graduates who are not earning enough to pay back their debts.

The Ultimate Question: “Is College Worth It?” (Part 3)

The realities behind student debt and the “bubble.”

In Part 1, I argued that the proper way of determining whether college was worth the investment was first to examine four distinct concerns—high cost, high debt, scarce jobs, and low graduation rates.  Last week, in part 2, we looked at the first of these concerns: has college simply become too expensive for many families? This week, we’ll examine the second concern:

There is a student debt “bubble” that is preventing young college graduates from buying homes, starting families, and thereby acting as a drain on the entire economy.

“It’s the Economy, Stupid!”

Addressing today's employment and economic development challenges will require careful and complex solutions

During the presidential election campaign of 1992, and on the heels of a short, sharp national recession, James Carville, a political advisor to the Clinton campaign, famously characterized what the election was all about by coining the phrase that I’m using as the title of this blog post.

Now here we are, 22 years later, and in every political campaign since the Great Recession of 2008, this same phrase—although now tellingly focused specifically on jobs—is the basis of the platform of almost every candidate for office.

The problem is that the focus on jobs—understandable, given that in almost six years the economy has not fully restored the jobs lost in 2008 and 2009—goes well beyond mere political sloganeering.  It permeates every conceivable facet of society: