August is here. Swarms of freshmen are descending on our college campuses—like locusts.
There are three factors that will have a major impact on whether or not these young people will make a success of college:

• You have to graduate. About sixty percent of these high school graduates who are matriculating will earn some kind of degree.

• What is your major? Your choice of major will influence your starting salary and the probability of you ending up under employed, i.e. working in a job that doesn’t require a college degree.

• Are you going to need student loans? (Seventy percent will.) The amount you borrow, as it relates to your starting salary, is going to have a big influence on your financial condition. Student loan debt also effects net worth. (See notes.)

Here are the outcomes for those who matriculate:

Good To Go 10%

Get a job requiring a college degree, with no debt.
You should be in pretty good shape.

Maybe, Baby 24%

Get a job requiring a college degree, burdened with an average debt of $39,400.
How this is going to go will depend. If you are a school teacher making $40,000 with $39,400 in student loan debt, things are going to be tight. If you are a Computer Science major making $60,000 and looking at a bright job future with bonuses and raises, and you only have the average amount of student loans, you should be able to handle it.

Wasted 8%

Earn a degree, but end up under employed, with no debt.
You probably just wasted five years (average) of your life and a big chunk of your parent’s money.

Busted 18%

Earn a degree, but end up under employed, burdened with an average debt of $39,400.
You could be in a lot of financial trouble depending on how much you borrowed.

Stigmatized 12%

Fail to earn a degree, but no debt.
You will be stigmatized in the job market (Drexel University study), but, at least, you don’t have any student loan debt.

Dead Beat 28%

Fail to earn a degree, burdened with an average debt of $13,800.
You will be stigmatized in the job market. (Drexel University study) Over half of these borrowers are making no payments on their loans.

Summary

Making college pay off these days is really difficult because of the imbalance of Supply (grads) and Demand (suitable jobs) and the outrageously high price tag.
However, forty-five percent of high school graduates, academically qualified or not, enthusiastically head off to the halls of higher learning.
Our colleges and universities welcome them and their parents’ money with open arms.
Most of these students do not have the linguistic and math skills, combined with the necessary level of motivation, to translate this learning opportunity into a suitable, well-paying job. (One in four require remedial classes before they can even launch their college career.)

No one should be surprised that the outcome for many of these young people is going to be disappointing.

Notes:

https://www.burning-glass.com/wp-content/uploads/permanent_detour_underemployment_report.pdf

http://younginvincibles.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Financial-Health-of-Young-America-update.pdf

In the US too many kids (45%) are going to college:

Are too many people going to college? A look at IQ distributions tells us why this is the case

For example, the Swiss understand that “college is not for everyone.”
In Switzerland they SELECT the academically top twenty percent of their high school students and send them on to their highly subsidized universities.