Is College Overrated?

When a college degree no longer guarantees a good job after leaving university, maybe it’s time to be less pragmatic about career choices and prefer a cultural education to a vocational one. “That way, regardless of each graduate’s ultimate path, all might be qualified to be carriers of arts and letters, of which the nation can never have too many,” writes Rebecca Mead at The New Yorker. On the other hand, Mead realizes that “The skip-college advocates’ contention—that, with the economic downturn, a college degree may not be the best investment—has its appeal. Given the high cost of attending college in the United States, the question of whether a student is getting his or her money’s worth tends to loom large with whoever is paying the tuition fees and the meal-plan bills.”