Not worth the debt?

There have been lots of articles like this in the last few years. I'm including this link mostly just to make it obvious where the general wisdom is on these issues. What's often missing from such discussions is the question of net revenue and net costs, which have not been going up nearly as dramatically. Also missing is that the premium for a college education has far outpaced the rising cost of a college education. This article assumes that the value of a college education has not gone up because the average student is studying less. But there are problems with that data as well, because the real decline occurred in the sixties and seventies, and using CLA data only touches on a small part of what higher education is supposed to be all about. Here's the less dramatic version of what's been going on. Tuition rates have been going up faster than inflation, but net costs have been staying roughly flat after adjusting for inflation. And the market value of a higher education degree (in general) has continued to increase in recent years. So, most students are not really paying much more money while reaping a significantly higher profit for their higher education investment. Remind me again, how is this a higher education bubble? http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/not_worth_the_debt_tPmHeOgrp5qbKpoFxUt4hI

End "college for all"?

I like Samuelson a lot. He's one of the more balanced economist/pundits out there. Here he touches on some of the problems that I deal with every day. But I have some concerns with his argument that college isn't for everyone. We see it every day in our degree completion program--adults who didn't think that they could or maybe even should get a college degree doing so and having their lives transformed. In Samuelson's telling, these stories would have less chance of happening. I'm not sure I can support that. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/05/28/ditch_college_for_all_114285.html