Is college worth it?

This is a critical question. Here is one presentation on this topical topic. I will offer my critique of this critique below.

The problem of "going remote" for Covid is more of a sideshow, a distraction, than a root problem. Colleges have been moving "online" for years. Predicted college closings have been exaggerated for more than ten years and colleges -- even the marginal and shrinking ones -- have shown incredible resilience, due in part to blind faith support by the government, immense college debt and naive alums.

Minaj also misses the point in making the "golden ticket" argument. College was never a golden ticket; rather it was a way to participate in the American Dream, to leave the blue collar factory world for white collar office work. Worse, colleges sold dated data on earnings of college graduates, comparing them to those of high school graduates, but these data were based on people earning degrees forty years earlier, not today's graduates. Worse still, there was never any mention of the cost involved. Even a grossly oversimplified payback period projection as a "return" loses credibility when the cost of that degree forty years earlier was $10,000 and today it is $300,000. Add in the poor salary and career prospects of those graduating with a silly degree, a useless major or from a marginal educational system and you have a recipe for bankruptcy, not the American Dream nor the golden ticket. For millions, college has become the American Nightmare.

The "social mobility" argument is also a false hope. Yes, the multiplier effect for elevation into the American Dream is greater for those who start college from low-income families, but they are the same students most likely to drop out of college, to accumulate massive debt, to earn a worthless degree and to enter a low-wage profession. So while there is a small possibility of a great advancement, there is little probability of that happening and a high probability of being worse off for having even tried college. Minaj reverses these probabilities by focusing only on the best possible outcomes. A false hope.

Then Minaj goes to the other end of hope, claiming that a college degree will reduce the likelihood of your committing suicide (at least for whites aged 25-34), making college sort of an incredibly expensive suicide prevention program. But those data are changing, as college debt balloons, career and wage prospects for many college grads sink -- and stink -- and the reality of the horrible decision to pursue an expensive, worthless college degree will lead many 25-34 year old white college grads to consider suicide.

Minaj tries to make a valid point about the deteriorating quality of the educational product by blaming it on the erosion of tenured positions. While many argue that tenured, lazy, overpaid problems are the problem, Minaj sees them as the solution. The product is not worse because of adjuncts; it's worse because of the curricula and majors being offered and the significant decline in the quality of the students coming into the programs. Poorly prepared students completing poorly designed degrees is a recipe for disaster, all justified by claims of equity, justice, access and academic freedom. There is no accountability for the colleges until after the students leave the school, with -- by one survey -- half of graduates regretting their educational choices.

And it is widespread:

For many, all that deceptive rhetoric about "love of learning" and "the value of a liberal arts education" becomes meaningless once they finish their degree and face "the real world." Graduate assistant strikes, lawsuits, loan defaults and forgiveness -- none of these are going to change things as long as colleges are allowed to sell a faulty product to gullible students and status-seeking parents without the college being held accountable after graduation, ensuring that their graduates do earn a real return on their massive investment in college.

Loyola administrators often spoke of the emptiness that supposedly came from pursuing a "vocational" career rather than a liberal arts education, that a liberal arts education is essential for a meaningful life. The real emptiness and meaninglessness come in quite the opposite way, when confronted with the harsh reality of those four years and the hundreds of thousands of dollars spent and borrowed in those four years.