Yes, Tribune, College is Worth it

Another day, another bogus trend story in the Chicago Tribune, this time on the front page.

The headline "Is College Worth It?" says it all -- the sort of manufactured, fear-inducing question headline typical of the new Trib. The story is almost as disingenuous.

The writer found a cocktail waitress who is making -- well, we don't know how much she is making, because the story doesn't tell us, but apparently it's not enough to pay off $60k in loans piled up while earning a fashion marketing degree. Combine that with the fact that the earnings gap between college grads and high school grads has shrunk (again, no specific numbers here, nor a source) and...voila! You have a trend that "the question of whether higher education is a worthy financial investment is no longer a no-brainer."

Nevermind the fact that college grads still make about 40% more than non-degree holders, as the article notes. Or that the one other "real" person the writer quotes is about to pull in $55k from a major accounting firm.

Now, you can tell a story is confused when the writer is starting a lot of sentences with "But..." This writer does that about six times in the first 20% of the story. It's so over-caveated that it's hard to know where the reporting ends and the stuff the editors steamrolled into the rewrites begins.

After the four dueling graphs that try to describe a thesis, the story goes into tired common-sense information about how if you're going to be a nursery school teacher, you shouldn't spend too much on college. Here's one of several statements that add no information to the reader's understanding of the supposedly new calculus of college attendance.

Does attending an elite college make a difference? The answer is unclear. While some researchers have found that graduates of top schools earn more on average than those from less prestigious institutions, others have found no difference.

By the last few paragraphs, the article is talking about how grads are more likely to donate blood -- if (yet another caveat) people who are likely to give blood don't self-select for college.

There's a case to be made that the value of a college degree is lower than it was, and that that could change your educational decision making. In fact, the Wall Street Journal did a much better story about that last summer. One might also claim that people should be going to cheaper public schools, or applying for more financial aid grants instead of loans (or that the government should spend more money on grants), or actually looking at the job market before applying to a professional degree program. Or even that we're in a bad economy, so recent graduates are having trouble, or that the Chicago fashion industry is in bad shape and not hiring. The Tribune kinda/sorta wrote all of these stories, without doing any of the reporting to make anything stick or memorable. Is college worth it for everyone? No. Is every college worth the price? No. Is any of the content in this story at all original? No.

The "consumer watch" logo (in the print edition) only heightens the absurd notion that this is somehow news. Compared to a real consumer watch story -- about lead in children's toys, for example -- this is embarrassing.

Too bad the insightful, counterintuitive feature on a Highland Park resident deported back to Guatemala didn't make the front page. That's well worth a read.

Comments

[Just2Fitz]

I believe the question that should be asked is: Are elite schools with elite cost worth it? The answer is simply NO!

State schools have done a swell job at allowing students to attend and not burden the cost that comes from learning at elite institutions, such as the Ivy's and top 15s.

[Queenofthedamned]

This is the kind of drivel that Sam Zell's minions want to pass off as news. There's no "reporting" in the article, because there are fewer and fewer real reporters and, the most important feature of the new , visually dazzling (sarcasm here) is the really big PICTURES, not the words, Ryan. It's much cheaper to fill the "news hole" with pictures and "content" of less quality than our school-days' Weekly Reader.
Since you're a Chicagoan, can you please get Penny Pritzker & pals to buy the Trib AND WGN-TV/Radio? I can't imagine Zell will be able to make the baloon payment in December w/ the ad &
credit markets as the are.

[jumperpin]

No one bothers anymore citing depth/joy of knowledge for post-secondary schooling. They jump right into edubiz talking points about salary differential, "global competitiveness", etc.

Of course college grads are likely to earn more. Today's HR department routinely insists on a "college degree" before they (might) pay a living wage. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy as grades 13-17 have evolved into finishing camps for corporate acceptance.

Anyway, rest assured that all the T's were properly crossed by alumni from our "best schools" when THEY traded off OUR manufacturing and technology bases for the fine print of financial derivatives. The "numbers" were there.

We CAN matriculate our way to the top of the globalization heap. Look what a Yale MBA like GWB could do.

[larry278]

Citing W as an example of what Yale's MBA produces is unfair to Yale & to MBA'a as a class. W's wars, attacks on the Constitution & the melt-down are examples of what W & neo-cons have accomplished. Scholars at Yale will teach Yale's student of these accomplishments. Perhaps students have done case studies of W's managment style & his accomplishments. Writing learned articles & books about W will become a popular cottage industry if it hasn't become an established industry yet. W has encouraged a growing industry. That's part of W's legacy.