It is becoming increasingly difficult to pick up a newspaper, open a magazine, or walk into a bookstore without being confronted with yet another screed about the problems of higher education in America, each one seemingly more shrill than the last. With book titles such as Academically Adrift, or American Higher Education in Crisis?, or Why Does College Cost So Much?, it is no wonder that the parents of a prospective college student are confused and frustrated as they enter the season of campus visitations.

By way of welcoming the start of college this fall, The New York Times recently devoted its entire Sunday magazine (Sept. 13) to a series of articles collectively entitled Collegeland. If anyone thought it was safe to go back into the academic waters, these articles will frighten them back to the beach before they get their ankles wet.

There is no question that problems abound in the world of American higher education; they are serious, and they need to be addressed. But the good news is that genuine efforts are under way at many colleges and universities to implement solutions to these problems. Not every college is deaf to the voices of criticism. Consider three of the most vexing concerns:

1. College Costs Too Much: For the past 30 years, the sticker price of virtually all American colleges and universities has risen far more rapidly than has the Consumer Price Index, or any commodity in that index. But the rate of increase of the net price – the money actually paid by students and their families – has been much less. For example, the wealthiest private colleges and universities cover the full costs of students whose family incomes are lower than a set amount ($90,000 is a typical figure). Even among private colleges of modest wealth, the average net price today, adjusted for inflation, is actually less than it was 10 years ago. Pell Grants from the federal government, because they have increased in number and in value in recent years, now generally cover the full cost of community colleges for millions of low-income students.A college education is still an expensive investment, in both time and money, but the situation is improving, not getting worse. However, colleges contribute to the confusion by continuing to raise their sticker prices even as they discount those prices more than ever, in order to create larger pools of financial aid dollars. It’s no wonder parents are confused about college costs.

2. College is Too Risky; Graduation Rates Are Too Low: Low graduation rates are indeed a serious problem, but this is not a new problem. Unlike most other countries, America does not force its young people into particular tracks based on their relative success on qualifying examinations. Countries that limit access to college or university to the highest achievers on entrance examinations have very high graduation rates – but only for a relatively small percentage of the college-age population. America believes in second chances, in “late bloomers,” in doorways of opportunity that stay open far longer than in most other countries. Unfortunately, the price of broader access is a higher rate of failure.But what’s different today is that the consequence of failing to complete college is far greater than it was 40 years ago, when college dropouts could still get well-paying jobs. And that places a burden on today’s colleges to do all they can to help students succeed – but without lowering academic standards.Here, too, we see wonderful examples of colleges that have accepted this challenge. To give just one example, the Accelerated Study in Associated Programs (ASAP) at community colleges in the City University of New York (CUNY) system have been credited with doubling the colleges’ traditionally low graduation rates – and many colleges and universities across the nation are implementing a broad range of strategies to increase student retention and graduation rates. These programs come at a cost, and therefore can conflict with efforts being made to reduce the price of higher education, but they are still cost-effective because the total cost per graduate is falling significantly.

3. Colleges Don’t Prepare Students for the Marketplace: Surveys of business leaders by the American Association of Colleges and Universities show that while employers are generally satisfied with the skills of graduates in their particular disciplines – that is, engineers and accountants know their stuff – they are far less satisfied with general skills, such as communication, collaboration, dealing with people from different backgrounds, and the graduates’ general knowledge of the culture of business. Regrettably, this particular “skills gap” has resulted in a rising rate of job termination among college-educated Millennials. Moreover, as a consequence their dissatisfaction with the quality of recent hires, employers now often limit their search to employees with actual experience, a quandary for newly minted college graduates seeking their first job.The question of who prepares college students for employment has resulted in no end of finger pointing. Colleges note that, historically, they provided their graduates with general skills, and the employers trained them for the specific work they needed done. Employers say that whatever was historically true, they no longer are willing to invest in the costs of a lengthy period of training, but instead are looking for new employees to arrive already trained. The college graduates who are unable to secure a position that requires college-level skills are the victims of the standoff between colleges and employers.The solution is at hand, but colleges and universities have been slow to embrace it, because they will have to change some of their traditional ways of educating their students. Project-based learning, wherein groups of students, often from several disciplines, working with one or more faculty members on a real project that comes from nonprofits or for-profits in the external community, is a way for colleges to give the students valuable working experience before they graduate, even as they continue to earn academic credit. Colleges that have adopted this approach are finding their graduates to be considerably more marketable, and that result, in turn, attracts more entering students who (along with their families) want a good return on their educational investment – meaning a satisfying job that pays well.

Colleges and universities that actively and openly address the problems and concerns the broader society has with higher education in general can change the tone of the conversation from criticism (sometimes, actual hostility) to a point where higher education institutions and the broader society see each other as partners in preparing young people not just for employment but also to serve as leaders and change agents in an economy that continues to evolve at a rapid rate.

Roger Williams University, where I work, has taken these problems (and solutions) to heart. We have not raised the price of tuition since 2012 – and each entering class is guaranteed that its tuition will not increase during its four undergraduate years, thereby giving parents and students predictability and certainty regarding the cost of a college degree. We now guarantee that every student will have the opportunity for at least one experiential education project – often a semester-long project-based learning experience, where the student can apply classroom theory to practice in the external community – as part of their course of study, thereby ensuring that graduates have the proven skills employers want.

We don’t pretend that we have all the answers. But we do take pride in our efforts to give students what they want, and (even more important) what they need, at an affordable price. Our new overarching goal says it all: To build the university the world needs now.

We’ve spent five weeks looking at the question that continues to be the focus of reports and articles in the media – “Is college worth it?” – from the standpoint of four distinct concerns: its perceived lack of affordability; the burden of debt that faces so many graduates; the relative scarcity of well-paying jobs for recent college graduates; and the risk that a student will borrow money, not complete his or her course of study, and be economically worse off than if he or she had never started. (As an aside, I should note that the question of the worth of a college education has been so frequently asked that it is now being satirized. The Onion recently posted the following headline on its website: “Study Finds College Still More Worthwhile Than Spending 4 Years Chained to Radiator.”)

Before I attempt my own answer to the question, “Is college worth it?” I must express a caveat: The way the question has been posed by the media implies that the only value a college degree has is economic. I hope we will all quickly agree that the benefits of a college education extend far beyond mere monetary return. College graduates, as a rule, are more engaged citizens; they are healthier and far less likely to be incarcerated; they live fuller and more complete lives; they have a deeper understanding of the world in which they are living; they are more tolerant and compassionate. These are generalizations, of course, not universally true for every college graduate – but they are most assuredly accurate at the group level.

Moreover, many people who attend college do so in order to have a career in a field they find meaningful and enjoyable, as opposed to accepting a job only because it will pay well. “Show me the money” is not a fair summation of the value of a college education.

All that said, it is still reasonable to ask whether, from a strictly economic perspective, attending college is a sound investment.

As I pointed out in last week’s blog, a recent study by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (“Do the Benefits of College Still Outweigh the Costs?”) found that “workers with a bachelor’s degree on average earn well over $1 million more than high school graduates during their working lives.” The report also points out that the differential between the lifetime earnings of college graduates relative to high school graduates has never been greater.

Those statistics would seem to provide an unequivocal answer. Clearly, college is “worth it.” Why, then, does this question keep being asked?

I think there are four answers, three of which we have considered (at least in part) in previous blog posts in this series:

1. The investment for a college degree seems daunting.

   As I showed in my post of July 28 (and as David Leonhardt noted in his column in The New York Times the next day – July 29), using a college’s list price for tuition greatly overstates the actual cost to the student – particularly in the case of private colleges. Leonhardt notes that, over the past 20 years, inflation-adjusted net tuition and fees have increased by 60 percent at public universities (primarily because of the enormous decline in state financial support), but by only 22 percent at private institutions. (In fact, over the past seven years, net cost at most private institutions has actually fallen.) But the public perception, based as it is on list prices, is that colleges have become prohibitively expensive.

   Even though the actual price paid by the average student has not risen appreciably faster than the price of many other staples (gasoline, for example, is up more than 80 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars over the past two decades), the costs of attending college obviously represent a very large investment for most families – and with more students and families now relying on loans to pay for their college costs, their concern about the amount of their debt at graduation is certainly understandable.

   Finally, there is the worry that some graduates may not be able to find a well-paying job, and therefore not be able to afford to discharge their student loan debt. As we saw in Part 4 of this blog series, fears of underemployment are overstated, but nevertheless remain real, especially for graduates in many of the liberal arts, who may struggle to establish a career path.

   Taken together, these concerns understandably give pause to many families whose children are making a decision whether or not to attend college—and if so, how much they can afford to pay.

2. My son or daughter may drop out and be in debt.

   As we saw in Part 5 of this series, the most valid concern regarding the value of investing in a college degree is the fear that the student might not graduate. Many factors contribute, positively or negatively, to the likelihood of completion: the student’s intelligence, ambition, maturity and level of academic preparation; the relative quality of the college or university; stresses within the family, especially financial; whether or not the student is the first in his or her family to attend college; the socioeconomic status of the family. Students and families must be realistic in evaluating these factors as they make a decision regarding college.

3. The payoff is uncertain because it is uneven.

   There is no question that the average college graduate earns substantially more than the average high school graduate. However, talking about average income obscures the significance of the range of income earned by college graduates as a group.

   To illustrate, a recent study (Urban Institute, “Higher Education Earnings Premium: Value, Variation, and Trends,” February 2014) found that, in 2012, the median income of college graduates aged 35 to 44 was $61,255, as compared to a median income of high school graduates of $35,703 – but one in six college graduates in that age group actually earned less than $35,703. In other words, there is overlap of the income ranges of all college graduates and all high school graduates, such that almost 20 percent of college graduates actually earn less than the median salary of a high school graduate. So one way of looking at this issue is to say that more than four out of five college graduates will earn a premium – often, a very substantial premium – for being a college graduate – but a college degree does not guarantee that all college graduates will earn more than those without the degree.

   As we saw in Part 4 of this series, one important factor in contributing to this salary overlap between college graduates and high school graduates is the fact that the economic value of different majors varies enormously, especially in terms of the salaries earned by the most recent graduates.

   There are also significant regional differences in income. In 2011, college graduates 25 and older had a median income of $71,000 in New Jersey and Connecticut, whereas those in Michigan had a median income of just $44,000 (and the median across the nation as a whole was $58,000). Comparing the salary of a college graduate in one state with the earnings of a high school graduate in another could certainly give rise to a misinterpretation about the economic value of a college degree.

4. The economic payoff for having a college degree may not be large enough.

   The size of the payoff is a factor that underlies much of the concern that people feel about the economic benefit of attending college, and it’s a factor that we have not yet considered in this blog series. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York report I referenced earlier that showed college graduates earning, on average, over $1 million more in lifetime earnings than the average worker with just a high school diploma – an income differential that has never been greater. How, then, can anyone question the economic value of the payoff?

   The primary reason there is such a large differential between the earnings of college graduates and those with just a high school diploma is not only because the salaries of college graduates have risen, but also because the salaries of high school graduates have fallen. Over the last decade, the average hourly wage for college graduates is up just one percent, whereas the average wage for high school graduates has dropped by five percent (The New York Times, “Is College Worth It? Clearly, New Data Say,” May 27, 2014).

   These trends are not limited just to the past 10 years. Indeed, between 1980 and 2012, high school graduates saw an income drop of 11 percent, whereas college graduates experienced an income increase of 20 percent – or 56 percent for those who went to graduate school (Bloomberg View, “Is a College Education Worth a Skinned Eel?” May 29, 2014).

   At the same time, the percentage of jobs that are part-time, rather than full-time, has risen from 16.5 percent before the 2008 recession to 18.8 percent today – and almost 37 percent of home mortgage holders are “effectively underwater” – either the mortgage exceeds the actual value of the house, or the sale of the house would not cover closing costs and a down payment on a new home (Associated Press, “Not All Feeling Gains of Better Job Market,” Aug. 3, 2014). These factors inevitably contribute to the general concern that the economy is still not doing well, and the fear by some parents that now might not be the best time to invest large sums of money sending their child to college.

   Finally, the nature of the job market continues to change rapidly, due to technology and globalization. Occupations such as word processors, telephone operators and travel agents have declined by 75 percent since 2000, whereas the number of computer software engineers, physical therapists, nurses and financial advisors have increased by as much as 160 percent over that same time period (The New York Times, “Fear Not the Coming of the Robots,” June 22, 2014). Of course, the good news is that all those growth occupations require a college degree, whereas most of the occupations in decline do not – but these sudden changes in the growth and decline of specific job categories may be unsettling to families contemplating a major investment in their child’s college education.

To summarize, while it is easy to understand a family’s trepidation as they contemplate spending for their child’s academic future, a college education is demonstrably a sound financial investment – but with three caveats:

1. Be aware of the differences in economic value of different majors. The choice of college major is closely linked to the starting salary of the graduate, and to the extent that students and families are seeking an immediate payoff for spending a good deal of money on a college education, a major in a professional program generally provides a higher economic return in the short run than a major in the liberal arts. (As I have noted in a previous blog post, this difference is typically eliminated by age 40.)
2. Do not over-borrow. Students should not borrow more than they expect to earn in their first year of employment: roughly $30,000 for many of the liberal arts graduates, and up to $60,000 for certain of the professions. Use subsidized government loans, and avoid private loans, whenever possible.
3. Commit to actually graduating. Most important, the student must graduate. There is no economic payoff for leaving a college without a diploma – and there are serious negative consequences to leaving without a diploma and in debt.

A college degree does not automatically ensure a prosperous and satisfying life – but it is most assuredly the single best step a young person can take in planning for his or her future.