My Daily Domestic Clips 09/11/2010 (p.m.)

• Some say bypassing a higher education is smarter than paying for a degree – Annotated tags: college debt
  • The hefty price tag of a college degree has some experts worried that its
    benefits are fading.
    “I think it makes less sense for more families than it did five years ago,”
    says Richard Vedder, an economics professor at Ohio University who has been
    studying education issues. “It’s become more and more problematic about whether
    people should be going to college.”
  • That applies not just to astronomically priced private schools but to state
    schools as well, where tuitions have spiked. Student loans can postpone the pain
    of paying, but they come due when many young adults are at their most
    financially vulnerable, and default rates are high. Even community colleges,
    while helping some to keep costs down, prompt many to take out loans — which
    can land them in severe credit trouble.
  • The unemployment rate among those with bachelor’s degrees is at an all-time
    high. In 1970, when the overall unemployment rate was 4.9 percent, unemployment
    among college graduates was negligible, at 1.2 percent, Vedder says, citing
    figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But this year, with the national
    rate of unemployment at 9.6 percent, unemployment for college graduates has
    risen to 4.9 percent — more than half the rate of the general population. The
    bonus for those with degrees is “less pronounced than it used to be,” Vedder
    says.
• Some say bypassing a higher education is smarter than paying for a degree – Annotated
  • Across the region and around the country, parents are kissing their
    college-bound kids — and potentially up to $200,000 in tuition, room and board
    — goodbye.
  • Especially in the supremely well-educated Washington area, this is expected.
    It’s a rite of passage, part of an orderly progression toward success.
    Or is it . . . herd mentality?
    Hear this, high achievers: If you crunch the numbers, some experts say,
    college is a bad investment.
  • “You’ve been fooled into thinking there’s no other way for my kid to get a
    job . . . or learn critical thinking or make social connections,” hedge fund
    manager James Altucher says.
    Altucher, president of Formula Capital, says he sees people making bad
    investment decisions all the time — and one of them is paying for college.
    College is overrated, he says: In most cases, what you get out of it is not
    worth the money, and there are cheaper and better ways to get an education.
    Altucher says he’s not planning to send his two daughters to college

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