"If you think education is expensive, try ignorance." --Derek Bok
Whenever someone points out the high, and rapidly increasing, costs of college education, Derek Bok's quote gets included in the open salvos of the argument. Often this leads to a round or two of competitive econometrics comparing employment rates, lifetime earning potential and even a "happiness" study or two which generally favor keeping high school graduates idle for another four years or so to give them a shot at a better life.
These statics make a compelling case for individuals, foundations and governments to provide large amounts of money for higher education. This has reduced the barriers to college entry to the point that a large percentage of the jobs available now require at least a bachelor's degree, and an increasing number require a masters' or PhD. For the student, between federal subsidies, family money, and private debt, the actual cost is generally hidden, and fear of the unknown, but presumably high cost of "ignorance" makes the choice simple.
What I haven't yet seen is someone actually trying to explain what one could do with the cost of a college education while remaining "ignorant." Any statistical approach is only as good as the assumptions behind the models they use to aggregate their data, often with the implicit narrative that there is a "generic person" of which we are all small variations. Here at P&P we harbor strong doubts about this idea, it sounding an awful lot like saying there is a "standard" pie. Your pie maker had a "standard" apple pie when he lived near Michigan's apple country and could buy them by the bushel for a few cents a pound. In different circumstances, he's moving into pumpkin and winter squash, and if the people to whom he's loaned pie plates do not return them, then he may be making a lot of form-free pies in the near future.* The point is, if we just look at econometrics, we're not fulfilling Mr. Bok's suggestion.
Instead, let's try ignorance. Or, to be more precise, let's imagine spending the cost of college on something else and see where that leaves us.
At first, that means defining our assumptions. For the "cost of college", this thought experiment will assume full tuition plus room and board at a private institution. This is significantly more than the "average" student pays, but it does cover the amount that is paid by states and private donors at other institutions. Based on College Board statics, $37,000/yr is a rough estimate if books and travel to and from campus are included. Over four years, that gives us $148,000 to work with assuming tuition doesn't rise at its typical 5% annual rate.
That's a lot of money. What if instead of college a hypothetical student bought a nice, seaworthy Beneteau 361 for $99,000? That could solve the non-student's housing needs, and allow precisely the sort of mobility that defines a modern career. With the rest of the money, it would be highly prudent to buy another ~$6000 worth of training (not education!) from a place like Sunshine Coast. That leaves $33,000 to provision a trip to sail around the world, at a cost of roughly $1250/month. Assuming the non-student takes it slow and completes one cirumnavigation per year, that allows 2 whole trips, with money left over for contingencies.
Now we can actually answer Mr. Bok's challenge. Putting a student through college costs the student, family, charities and government a really nice yatch and two trips around the world. Only a narrow definition of "ignorance" would describe the learning that would happen on such a voyage, and at the end the non-student would have a place to live, a global network of acquaintances and a better personal understanding of math, science and law than nearly every college graduate in the world.
What can a college offer its students that would compete? Comments are most welcome.
*If you currently have one of my pans, send a note and I'll bring you a free form pie in exchange. No, this is not meant to encourage people to "borrow" more of them.
1 comment:
You're making two very strong assumptions here. First, that the money you have for four years of college are not only actually present, but present at the beginning of the four years without either working during the four years of college or providing a significant indication of an ability to repay. Student loans are both subsidized in the interest of promoting an educated populace and lowered in interest because of the promise of increased odds of repayment. Getting such a loan to travel around the world seems less likely and less intelligent for the loaning body.
The second assumption is that the non-student in question has the requisite skills, drive, interest, and mentality to actually do something like this. From my experience with students, a person with sufficient drive to take a trip around the world and master, self-taught, the requisite mathematics, science, and law could a) get sufficient scholarships to significantly reduce the cost of the college experience, and (if their focus was to reduce costs) b) graduate somewhere between a semester and a year early, both reducing the cost and allowing them to take a job early, which reduces the overall expense of the four year period.
I think one of the things you're neglecting, though, is the opportunity cost of a university experience over direct entry into the working world. Given that the importance attached to a degree is eroding, suppose you could reasonably start work after high school. You're now not only saving the $148,000 in debt, you can actually earn money over the four years.
I'd rather start this question at the end of four years. Supposing that our two comparison points are a college graduate (for simplicity, liberal arts) and a high school graduate with four years of work experience.
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