I know that people have mixed feelings about ROI on a college education, and I think a lot of it depends on why one is going to college. The author posits three possibilities:
What is college for?
Is it a finishing school for the elite? Is it for inspiring intellectual inquiry and fostering critical thinking? Is it an engine of social mobility?
Some might say that itās all three, but I want to focus on the last one, because the question of social mobility drives so many of our public policy discussions and is also a key factor in how students and their families decide what they want to get out of their investment in higher education.
If people think of it as a finishing school for the elite, then they care about the schoolās reputation, or the rank of the fraternity/sorority, and access to a plethora of people who are headed for 6-figure incomes or above. These individuals care little about a monetary ROI, so long as the appropriate status/signals are achieved.
If people think of it as inspiring intellectual inquiry, then they generally only care about ROI insofar as students will be able to support themselves financially after graduation. This is looking at it on the micro-level of students and families and not the overall benefit to society that occurs due to intellectual inquiry.
If people think of a collegeās purpose as fostering critical thinking, then I think the ROI is whether people are able to think critically. Can they detect false claims, analyze the strength of arguments, and resist baseless propaganda? Unfortunately, I donāt know of a great way to figure out an individualās ROI on this, but this is absolutely essential for society (see the direction our country is heading in without that critical thinking, no matter what oneās political views may be). Of course, I think that critical thinking is a necessary skill in K-12, particularly since getting a postsecondary education isnāt (and shouldnāt have to) be in everyoneās future.
Only if one thinks of college as an engine for social mobility would a monetary calculation start to make much sense. If an individual doesnāt have a particular interest in the first three potential purposes of a college education, then money is the main characteristic that the person would care about. These are the individuals who would seek out the fields that will end up earning the most (or earning at the desired level). Students (in high school and before) should be well aware of a variety of well-paying paths that do not need a college education, and that there is lost income by attending college for X number of years when they could have been in the workforce earning money after only Y amount of time. Paths that donāt lead straight to a 4-year college from high school should be explored and presented to high school students repeatedly. But focusing on ācollege prepā and percentage of ācollege-boundā students, etc, is not helpful for so many individuals and our society.
I will say that some of the methodology in the research reports could be problematic. I have not delved fully, but much of it is based on recouping the costs in the first 5 years after graduating from college. That is often a time that some people are attending graduate school. Alternatively, there are many colleges where the numbers donāt necessarily astound people with the high earnings in the first 5 years. But then when they start looking at the value 10, 20, 30, and 40 years out, thereās a definite divergence in the ROI. To me thatās more indicative of whether someone got a solid grounding/education and has been impressing people from wherever they got their foot in the door and led to much advancement, or whether the educational results were such that the individuals never seem to get on to a more financially lucrative path. I have looked at some of those Georgetown ROIs and excluding the tech schools, itās often in years 20-40 that itās easier to separate the shaff from the wheat with respect to college quality, and thus ROI.
Hard to say what divergence is due to if 40 years out from undergrad. Likely many factors other than college.
The most interesting part of the report IMHO was the grad school discussion, an educational level at which students do not normally consider improving their critical thinking skills or social status as major factors in their decision to attend.
One way to improve the ROI is to make the āIā as little as possible then you donāt need as much return.