By Teresa Lubbers
Indiana Commissioner for Higher Education
An investment in higher education may be the most important purchase Hoosiers ever make.
Investing in a college degree pays off in terms of more job opportunities and higher earnings, but the benefits extend far beyond financial returns. The advantages include increased social mobility, greater civic involvement, improved health and wellness, and a higher standard of living.
Indiana Higher Education Commissioner Teresa Lubbers says an investment in a college degree is worthwhile. Photo by Lesley Weidenbener, TheStatehouseFile.com
Despite the undeniable benefits of higher education, some have begun to question whether college is still worth it in response to rising tuition costs, growing student debt, and anecdotes about graduates who can’t find a job. Though these concerns are understandable, it’s clear by every meaningful measure that individuals with education beyond high school today are better off than those without it.
College graduates earn an average of $1 million more over their lifetimes and experience half the unemployment risk of those with only a high school diploma. As a group, college degree-holders represent a better-prepared workforce that increases Indiana’s ability to attract outside investment, create jobs and spur new innovation. Moreover, as the state’s college graduates increase their standard of living, Indiana’s per capita income and tax revenues grow as well, paving the way for a higher standard of living for all Hoosiers.
The Indiana Commission for Higher Education’s new “Return on Investment†report shows these realities in compelling detail. The report, available online at www.che.in.gov, is designed to empower students and families to make more informed decisions as they consider their higher education options. Through consumer-friendly profiles of Indiana’s colleges and universities, the report provides essential information about the average cost students will pay for college, the level of debt they incur, which industries graduates are likely to be employed in and what their earnings are likely to be over time depending on their program of study.
There is no mistaking the value of a college degree, but the data clearly show that the outcome also depends on individual choice — where students go to school, what they study, how long it takes them to graduate and how much debt they incur. Hoosiers also benefit from understanding which degree programs offer direct paths to specific professions versus those programs that may require more research, planning or advanced education to determine a career pathway.
Beyond future earnings, students should also consider other factors, such as personal interest, career development potential and value to society when selecting an area of study. Harder to quantify but no less important, these factors underscore the importance of purposeful planning, proactive college advising and effective career counseling.
Our goal — with the new “Return on Investment†report and through other ongoing efforts — is to present students and families with the facts, equipping more Hoosiers to complete college, maximize their return on investment, and achieve the passport to opportunity that a higher education provides.
Teresa Lubbers is the Indiana Commission for Higher Education and is a former state senator.
“Despite the undeniable benefits of higher education, some have begun to question whether college is still worth it in response to rising tuition costs, growing student debt, and anecdotes about graduates who can’t find a job. Though these concerns are understandable, it’s clear by every meaningful measure that individuals with education beyond high school today are better off than those without it.”
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While this blanket statement above can apply to all college graduates or just a few it still all depends on what type of college degree you get and how you use it. So the last sentence in the paragraph above is not true as it’s never true in all cases. It’s only true in some cases. So it does not pass the “smell test” for me.
Some college degrees like engineering and nursing will get you ahead. Other college degrees like degrees in the humanities may not get you a raise at McDonalds.
So be careful what you major in and make sure that that major can provide you a good paying job when you graduate.
I know a lot of college graduated that are working for peanuts and promise of a small raise and possibly getting some health insurance down the road if you can stick it out for a year.
So the above statement is both true and false for many college graduates.
College use the students an gleefully take their parents hard earned money for tuition and housing. But there is no promise of a good paying job after you graduate. But the kids won’t know that until the day after they get their diploma and find out that their job search is going now where fast. There are no company recruiters calling their phones or answering their emails. Only then does the reality set in that they spent a fortune on a college degree that is not really worth much.
Which is another reason why I hate blanket statements like the one at the top of this post.
I agree with you. Students need to be told up front if a degree has some currency. I think a current problem is the number of liberal professors pushing social science degrees that are not worth the cost, effort and time. These are also the professors that help set up a curriculum that turns a bachelors degree from 3 years to 5 years. If a person is independently wealthy then do whatever pleases you, but for students using loans or getting it from parents both need to be made aware. I disappointed one of my children by saying not on my dime. A sociology/psychology degree will keep you in your parents house a long time. If you want a well rounded general education pay for it when you get a good job. I found that sociology and psychology are the degrees most awarded when students are told they are not college material.
Earth sciences,Bio Medical and Engineering across the board,in all projected fields applicable.
Technical support positions opening for movement forward needed by demands created by sustainable planet smart technology.
Metropolitan civil services redesign for expected climate action preparation.
Geographical Population Change(“GPC) support,moved forward for redistribution of developing balanced carbon sequestration infrastructures.(“BCSI”) Orbital science evolution. (CDC) development for sub tropical pandemic outbreaks.
Evolutionary support for projected transportation and supply chain logistics planning to meet Expected Climate Change Evolution (“ECCE”).
Solid Degree programs involved with a large planet wide developing social economic environmental imprints in the next 30 years moved forward.
Don’t believe that,Then ask someone in Tacloban,Leyte province,Philippines just who might now find some very needed civil engineering,and bio-medical jobs there,or say even Atlantic City N.J.
Anywhere in the American continental ecosystems within 50’of sea level.
Wow, Veterans day,and Leyte province,MacArthur landed 174,000 troops close by Tacloban October 20 1944. I’ve been there while in the service, I simply cannot imagine the oppressive conditions the surviving population must be experiencing right now,7.1 recorded earthquake less than a month ago and now this.
They suddenly have nothing,plans to respond to these increasing desperate situations must be addressed and moved forward with planet wide climate action sciences starting now. These people have to be relocated into an area that can support that population shift almost overnight.
We might has just as well start to educating the present generation to prepare for the coming horizon on these very issues right now. Its no longer looming,its here.
“Despite the undeniable benefits of higher education, some have begun to question whether college is still worth it in response to rising tuition costs, growing student debt, and anecdotes about graduates who can’t find a job.”
It is this overly simplistic gross over statement is the very foundation of why there is an issue. Certain careers simply do not contribute the economic value. Others are over crowded to the point that the supply exceeds demand. Higher education takes no responsibility for effective return on investment. They are a business which simply grabs student dollars; worse, aiding and abetting students to leverage themselves to spend dollars they and there families do not have.
Broader government oversight of loan sharking is appalled as socially beneficial. This shift is starting to move forward to correct similar gouging by higher education. For evidence, check Gov. Walker of Wisconsin and the shifting control of the University System board of regents.
Think the possibility of a shift is why conservatives are so upset with Mitch at Purdue?
You have some very pertinent points. Thanks for sharing!
I can’t help but be put-off by the attitude that the be-all-end-all of higher education is higher earnings. A higher education should offer greater life-satisfaction to those who have it, but often those people choose occupations that do not pay as highly as having a skilled trade.
UE is one of the best values in higher education in the country, both in terms of graduate earning power and job satisfaction, judging from some of the ratings I have read. I think it is an under-emphasised asset to the city.
It’s hard to have some level of satisfaction when you’re working a low paying job and the job is low paying because that’s all the job is worth. It’s hard to be satisfied at these jobs when you have a $100,000 student loan to pay on. I worked with a person graduated UE and ask her about the quality of education, she simply said, wish I had my money and time back. She currently works as a waitress, has a social science degree. I had an adjunct professors who taught at UE and USI, taught the same course, same text. I ask if he taught differently between the 2 schools, he stated USI was more demanding because of so many non traditional students. I believe in continuing education and the lifelong satisfaction it provides but being educational satisfied does not put meat in the freezer, keep the lights on, or gas in the car. But if you are speaking from a liberal trustfunder point of view it works.
Oh and liberal trust funder? There aren’t any conservative trust funders?
UE is not worth the money by a long shot.
My UE degree was worth every dime. My engineering degree at UE made it possible for me to land a job at the RCA Advanced Technology Labs in New Jersey and then into graduate school at Stanford out in the entrepreneurs paradise of Silicon Valley. It changed my life for the better. No other local options would have led down those paths back in 1982.
Times have changed.
Indeed they have. 1982 as you may recall was not exactly a sparkling economy either. Even though things have changed, accredited engineering degrees and computer science degrees command low 6 figure starting salaries to the grads who are willing to move to tech meccas like Silicon Valley, Boston, or Austin. The latest data for computer science is that there are 4 jobs awaiting every graduate. That is a formula to drive up salaries.
I think you are right on target for a student that wants to get a major with little demand and live in a place that does not place much value on education. Times have changed and they have changed for the worse. The year 2000 started the decline and it has continued unabated.
Could be. But another way one needs to look at situations like this is the recruitment filtering process rather than the educational content delivered. If you look at the admission standards of different schools and then the earning power or social/economic contributions of its graduates, you have to wonder if it is not the filtering process of the selection of raw material input of students that is the real predictor of outcome. Selective schools point to better graduate output. On the other hand, they have the premium raw material already well prepared by their families, and elementary, middle, and high school contributions. These students are already destined for success and the filtering institutions are simply ‘claiming it’.
What we need to do is identify the individual stepwise contribution portions to long range outcomes. And we need to do this in a systematic, controlled scientific double blind study manner. I would point to a number of life impacting educational contributions in various preparatory, undergraduate, and graduate experiences like you have. However, I also know from enough research work on my own that anecdotal evidence is not to be trusted; even my own. My “educated” guess might be better than average because of training and experiences. But credentials are NOT evidence and this is a societal error we make of major proportions.
It is time to rethink educational approaches and submission of methods to true scientific principles is long overdue in the field of education. So much so, that real assessment must actually be external to the field and independently applied to have any credibility at all.
Every time I get a chance I encourage college bound students to get a degree in a field where there is a high job demand for that skill and one that pays well.
It kills me to see parents run up big debt for their children to go to college and then upon graduation,they cannot find job in their field of study or one that pays well.
I feel very fortunate to have gotten an Engineering degree from Purdue. It has served me well.
Somebody has to dismantle, clean, measure, weld, machine, rewind, wire, align, plumb, etc, etc, etc, and then reassemble or the lights will go off.
If we continue on this same everybody needs a college education path that will become a reality and degree’s wont mean a thing.
Check out Mike Rowes web site; http://www.mikeroweworks.com/mikes-office/, without skilled labor engineers can’t get er done.
Just Sayin
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