higher-ed-investment

Why higher ed is still a smart investment


Higher education is not just about money…it’s about empathy

higher-ed-investment

Rising college costs and a challenging economy are continuing to intensify the debate over whether a college degree is still worth the investment, both in time and money.

Traditionally, a bachelor’s degree was seen as a no-brainer for many students: a ticket to a comfortable middle-class lifestyle that typically came with at most a manageable amount of low-interest student loan debt.

But from 2000 to 2013, the cost of attendance after accounting for financial aid and tax breaks—not the “sticker price” that few students pay—increased by 55 percent for public four-year universities, at a time when the median household income in the U.S. actually declined. At the same time, by 2012 the average student debt at graduation was nearly $30,000, with over 70 percent of students graduating with debt.

The good news is that there is still a strong economic argument for investment in higher education: Bachelor’s degree holders will, on average, earn a full million dollars more over their lifetimes than high school graduates. But I believe that the real value of higher education is more than just money: the best higher-education experiences transform students into citizens who are able to engage with the world around them both critically and empathetically.

(Next page: The harder-to-measure value that higher education brings)

Critical thinking is an overused term and a vague one at that, but it implies a host of skills that are increasingly important in today’s world: evaluating evidence, forming and justifying opinions, and making decisions based on information that is often unclear or incomplete. Unfortunately, because these skills are hard to measure, they often get short shrift in our assessment programs, at all levels of education, and we often fail to appreciate their importance; the wealth that our graduates acquire after finishing their degrees is only one component of their success as people.

The world is becoming an increasingly complex place, and meaningfully engaging with the issues of the day—scientific issues such as climate change, political issues such as the proper role of the U.S. on the world stage, and social issues such as healthcare—requires not just the application of previously learned knowledge but also the ability to learn and evaluate new information. This includes learning how to learn as well as developing the metacognitive skills to know the limits of one’s knowledge. And learning is not confined to the classroom: a key benefit of diversity in higher education is that students can be exposed to experiences and viewpoints that differ from their own, affording them the ability to see the world from different perspectives.

This is not to say that all of our graduates are leaving their higher-education experiences with these skills. On the contrary—as educators, we have a lot of work to do to make the experience of higher education live up to its potential. And it has never been true that higher education is right for every student. But higher education still offers the best opportunity for most students to be able to develop intellectually and emotionally and to become successful citizens in an increasingly competitive and interconnected world.

Brian Lukoff, Ph.D., is Program Director of Learning Catalytics at Pearson Education.

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