[NoMoreNicksLeft]

It's unclear that the mechanism you describe behaves as you claim.

Supposing that it's true that a college degree confers (typically, on average, whatever) an extra million over a lifetime career, what would happen if everyone did attend college?

Would that effect remain? If college educations become more common, they also become less scarce and valuable.

You talk about how affordable it was in the 1960s, but this is also a period when a relatively small portion did attend college. If we're willing to return to that rate of college education, the budget likely will make it possible to afford this...

Of course, the screams of institutional racism, sexism, and elitism will be deafening.

[cgearhart]

The Supply/Demand analysis of college degrees assumes that education is a fungible commodity. In some ways that's true -- because many technical skills developed in pursuit of a degree are intended to be generally applicable. But there is also broad economic value in an educated population beyond the instantaneous value of the credential. A college education is about creating value by obtaining an education.

The central challenge of college today is not that everyone is going, but that everyone is going into so much debt to do it. Most people will be able to service their debt (in part thanks to the higher average earnings they'll realize), but it is coming at the cost of delaying other purchases. New grads can't afford new cars, houses, weddings, children, or savings. And the fraction of borrowers who can't afford their debt become a drag on the economy because it is so difficult to discharge.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

> But there is also broad economic value in an educated population beyond the instantaneous value of the credential. A college education is about creating value by obtaining an education.

Even if we assume this is true, none of your claims follow.

If it costs X to educate 10% of the population, it takes more than 2X to educate 20%. And that's only if the population is static. The population has increased since 1960, especially in the demographic we're discussing.

It's not so bad down in the 10% and 20% range, but once we start talking about universal college, it quickly becomes expensive.

> The central challenge of college today is not that everyone is going, but that everyone is going into so much debt to do it.

Costs have ballooned. No longer is it some spartan experience for the nation's managerial and elite classes, before they run off to their lives of gold-plated yachts and spas where they bathe in the tears of orphans.

Now college is something everyone's entitled too, and the dorm rooms no longer pack 4 students into something that looks like a closet. All those new buildings... someone must pay for them.

The price would be roughly the same even if those weren't paid with by loans, but rather with grants.

And since there is no relief from lowered enrollment, prices will stay high.

> Most people will be able to service their debt (in part thanks to the higher average earnings they'll realize),

Only the graduates. You should look at how many drop out after $20,000 or $50,000 worth of student loan debt. This number is significant, I do not know if it's half, but it's close enough.

This isn't a problem that can be fixed with "but those goshdarned republicans broke things, we need to return to the 1960s-era quasi-socialism and it will all go back to normal!". Those policies worked because so few attended college, attended colleges that were much different (and fewer) than today, and were already well within the upper middle class anyway.

[cgearhart]

> ...none of your claims follow.

That was my claim. To wit, that a college education is more valuable than the credential.

> If it costs X to educate 10% of the population, it takes more than 2X to educate 20%.

Why would the cost of providing education to more people increase as a multiple of the baseline costs?

> And since there is no relief from lowered enrollment, prices will stay high.

Restricting enrollment would increase costs as there is more competition among prospective students for the service. Students would have to outbid each other, not merely outperform each other to secure a spot.

> Now college is something everyone's entitled too... [sic]

An education is what we should entitle them to. As you note, colleges have been locked for decades in a competition for students by investing in new buildings, amenities, and sports with no regard for the effect on costs because of the price inelasticity of demand. And it has been a safe investment because student loans & grants have been so readily available.

The best price controls available to us are exercised by holding the institutions accountable for certain outcomes (like excessive dropout & loan default rates), by providing an equivalent service at a lower cost (something like Obama's "free community college" option), and by making student loan debt dischargeable like most other debts. The ready availability of capital is part of what has driven up costs.

> You should look at how many drop out after $20,000 or $50,000 worth of student loan debt.

The national graduation rate was approximately 60% in 2012 [1], while the national student load default rate was 13.7% in 2014 [2]. Students who do not graduate are several times more likely to end up in default, but it is still a manageable risk overall for investors because student loans are so difficult to discharge and because most people will eventually pay them back, and still worth it for students because they still have a positive net ROI.

[1] https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=40 [2] http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/national-stude...

[fullwedgewhale]

Let's step back for a second and realize there's nothing magical about college. We can make the same arguments about the validity of a high school education. In fact, I can take your argument and say that providing everyone a high school education lowers every high school graduate's wages. We can then apply the same argument to middle school or any even providing any education at all. If we teach everyone to read and write, under your model, it devalues reading and writing. Because fundamentally, your model is one where there is a fixed pool of demand for educated people and beyond that any additional education add little additional value. And that is a completely wrong assumption.

The reason why education works is that it makes all parts of society function better. Having an educated population produces a higher functioning society. That's a society that, more often than not, is able to produce more wealth faster. In fact, it's in the enlightened self interest of society to have a broadly educated population. Basic research winds up driving GDP growth as science goes from the lab to products. Having more engineers and scientists is important, but so is having musicians, writers, nurses, and so on. All these types of education are important in a modern society. What's going on in the United States is that we are slowly short changing ourselves by making it harder and harder for people to get that additional education.

But in the process we're also creating a more stratified society. A lot of social mobility comes from the "first generation to go to college." By making college education less affordable, we keep people in the lower and lower middle classes that could have a transition up the income ladder from lower skilled, lower paying jobs to white collar professions. That's just one way we're becoming a society with little social mobility. American has moved away from the meritocratic American ideal. Now, even if you're an idiot, if you start out rich you'll probably stay rich. If you're poor, even if you're smart and capable, you'll probably stay poor.