By Sandra Kirschenmann and John Jackson
It’s easy to name what we believe is wrong with American higher education today – a bachelor’s degree costs too much, takes too long to complete, encourages students to take on too much debt and doesn't guarantee a job on completion.
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John Jackson is president
of William Jessup
University in Rocklin |
Concerns about cost, time to completion, debt, and usefulness are pretty powerful objections to a college education.
However, most of our society recognizes the virtually unassailable truth that a college education is the premier portal to career success and personal prosperity. Michael Greenstone and Adam Looney of the Brookings Institution estimate that “the return on a bachelor’s degree is equivalent to an investment that returns 15.2 percent per year – more than double the average return to stock market investments since 1950, and more than five times the returns to corporate bonds, gold, long-term government bonds, or home ownership. Over a lifetime, the average college graduate earns roughly $570,000 more than the average person with a high school diploma only.”
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Sandra Kirschenmann
is associate vice provost
of Drexel University Sacramento |
The return on this investment is clear. But the choice of how and where to invest in a college education is less clear.
Maybe it’s time for us to look at a college degree differently. Maybe it’s time to realize that as with all products and services, there is not a single version in the American marketplace that makes sense for all people.
What do we want from a college degree?
Without a doubt, Americans want college degrees linked to good jobs because good jobs lead to prosperity and self-sufficiency. According to a 2010 survey by Hart Research Associates, successful performance in good jobs requires the very things students should learn in bachelor’s degree programs: good thinking skills, the ability to write and speak clearly, to read critically and with comprehension, and to synthesize and analyze data from a variety of inputs.
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