Leveraged education is not worth it

Glenn Harlan Reynolds:

...For students, piece of advice No. 1 is: Don’t go into debt. When I went to law school, back in the ’80s, I turned down free rides at a couple of excellent schools to go to Yale Law School, even though it meant taking on a lot of student-loan debt. I’m not sure I’d advise anyone to do the same thing today, even to go to Yale Law, the undisputed king of the law-school rankings — and I’m positive I wouldn’t make a similar tradeoff for many other places, even Harvard Law. 

Debt is what gets people into trouble in bubbles: They borrow heavily because they think the value of what they’re buying, whether it’s a house or a tulip, will go up. When it stops going up, they’re sunk. 

Today, the value of an education isn’t going up, but the price is. That’s a bad combination. So don’t borrow heavily. 

That’s good advice for schools, too. Those that borrow money based on the expectation that tuition revenue will continue to increase will have problems, and, in fact, some already are. 

Instead, schools should be looking to cut costs and increase value — the exact opposite of what many have been doing in recent years. 

Over the last few decades, tuition has grown at an annual rate of 7.45 percent, far outstripping inflation. But studies from the American Council of Trustees and Alumni have found that students are studying 50 percent less than decades ago. Indeed, the recent book “Academically Adrift,” by Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, looked at what students are actually learning in college and found that they’re doing much worse than they were decades ago.We need change. 

Taxpayers should realize that change is unlikely without external pressure, though. Left to themselves, most faculty and administrators (especially administrators) will protect their perquisites to the bitter end. 

But, since we’ve been told for decades that higher education is a matter of public interest, perhaps the public should start taking more of an interest in where the money is going, and what they’re getting for it.
...

I agree with Reynolds.  I suggest going to a community college and living at home for the first two years and then decide where you want to get your degree from.  Don't waste your time and money on ethnic studies or  gender studies programs. The chances you can find a job in those fields that will pay your way are remote.  Engineering and accounting are currently jobs with the best prospects.  Business degrees oriented toward eventually getting an MBA also give you a good chance for success.

I enjoyed law school and my work as a lawyer, but the field is grossly over crowded now.  I would not recommend it.  You may find psychology interesting, but you will have difficulty finding a well paying job even with a PhD.

The government should get out of the student loan business.  It is contributing to the problem and helping administrators become predatory lenders to sustain their life styles of the rich.  They clearly are not worth what they are being paid. They can't control their budget and their product is not leading to the success of the students that attend.