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What the Prestige Study Left Out
Read more: What the Prestige Study Left OutThe study everyone cites in the prestige debate measured earnings only. It never counted cost, taxes, or time. Add what prestige costs and Dale and Krueger’s famous finding gets stronger: at full sticker price, nearly half of America’s most selective colleges leave their own median graduate behind the high school path. Aid is what rescues…
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The $24,000 Row
Read more: The $24,000 RowGeorgetown’s underemployment report admits what the field rarely says: nobody has settled how to measure it. It proposes an adjustment, and the right response to a real idea is a test. Read its own tables down the column and the spread inside one degree is wider than the premium for having it. The $24,000 row…
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The Study That Got Halfway There
Read more: The Study That Got Halfway ThereThe most celebrated new college-value study fixed the flaws skeptics spent years flagging, then stopped before the money math. Discount its own headline number and $86,806 becomes about $24,800. The debate is not over. It finally has its real starting point.
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The Doubt Everyone Explained Away
Read more: The Doubt Everyone Explained AwayThe famous college payoff is $1.2 million. Control for who enrolls and half of it disappears. Price it like an investment and the median degree turns negative. Even the smartest people in the field, evidence in hand, were so convinced of the promise that they explained the doubt away, and the families who could not…
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A Degree Is Not a Treasury Bond
Read more: A Degree Is Not a Treasury BondThe discount-rate fight decides only whether the median graduate wins. A degree cannot be discounted like a Treasury bond, and even the most generous rate leaves a third of four-year colleges underwater at full price. The failures underneath never move with the rate.