Is an Expensive College Worth It?

Does attending a super expensive college translate to having the best education? Probably not. Education quality often depends on how passionate a person is about learning a particular topic.

Stanford University published a paper in 2018 where they tackled the pros and cons of taking your kids to an ultra-elite school. What they found was something super interesting. First, people grossly overestimate how much advantage a child will have from a career standpoint by attending a super expensive elite school versus another school. In some cases, going to a school that’s too challenging for them or where they’re not well prepared academically might actually do more harm than good. Yes, they’ll have social connections, but they might wind up either demoralized, dropping out, or looking at themselves differently as perhaps less successful than their peer groups. This often happens because they surround themselves with the ultra-elite peer group of hyper performers. And on that basis, they don’t develop a sense of confidence and determination that they might otherwise have had.  

Reasons Why College is Not For Everyone

As a parent, you naturally want your kids to grow into successful and productive adults. For most parents, the path to success for their children often goes down the college education route. But here’s the thing, college might be a good option for many people, but it isn’t for everyone. And not attending a four-year college doesn’t mean you won’t have a meaningful professional life. 

The bottom line is that college isn’t for everyone. Employers also realize that some skills just can’t be obtained by attending a degree program. However, specific jobs like engineering or medicine definitely require a college degree. But if you want to pursue art or culinary skills, maybe you just need hands-on experience for that.  

Links and Resources:

Stanford University research 

Other resources from the Stanford researchers’ work: https://challengesuccess.org/

The distribution of GPA and test scores for each college, plus a discussion of their costs: https://www.collegeboard.org/ 

National Center for Education Statistics “College Navigator:” https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/ 

More on college matches:

https://bigfuture.collegeboard.org/college-search https://Cappex.com/college-match http://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator

FAFSA vs CSS Profile: https://www.bankrate.com/loans/student-loans/css-profile-vs-fafsa/ 

College Board, Trends in Student Aid: https://research.collegeboard.org/trends/student-aid

Net cost: https://bigfuture.collegeboard.org/pay-for-college/calculate-your-cost