In this post, Abraham Piper poses this question and comment:

How Important is college?

College shouldn’t be considered a take-it-or-leave-it decision. Nowadays, deciding against college is like deciding to not graduate from high school.

Your thoughts?

I posted this in the comments:

Economists call it human capital formation. (I am looking forward to the day when one of my kids says, “Dad, thanks for investing in my human capital formation”). Economists have noted for years that the return on a college education have been increasing over the past decades despite the fact that the cost of a college education has dramatically outstripped the inflation rate over the same period.

Some readers will point out that money isn’t everything. And of course they are right. Better a Christ-treasuring ditch digger than a worldly physician. But on the whole, in our economy, people find more long term satisfaction from the careers that require post-secondary education. And I think finding pleasure in your work is a very worthwhile, God-glorifying goal.

What I find odd, and slightly disturbing, are several families I know that assume that their sons will attend college(and encourage them to) and assume that their girls will not attend college (and discourage or even forbid them).

Steve

I want to elaborate a little.  The data is very clear on two factors:  college grads have higher earnings potential than non-college grads and they have higher job satisfaction.  According to 2000 census data, college graduates earn about $1,000,000 dollars more over the course of a lifetime. 2006 Census data revealed that  adults with a bachelor’s degree earned an average of $54,689 in 2005, while those with a high school diploma earned $29,448. This same phenomenon also explains the growing income disparity between the top and bottom quintiles of income distribution.  The rich are not getting richer because those greedy republicans keep giving them tax cuts but because the return to higher education is growing as our economy transitions away from a manufacturing based economy to a service based economy.

Steve