The Higher Education Bubble [infographic]

No doubt that college debt is the new bubble.  One clarification with the infographic introduction, though, “One in three students will not learn any critical reasoning or thinking skills during their first two years of university” – it’s important to note that many of the students examined in this particular study attended colleges and universities which enrolled a high percentage of students who would have attended a private college-prep school.  It’s not that critical thinking is not taught at these higher ed institutions, but instead, that the entering students might have already learned this information in high school, so they reported no additional learning.  This was my personal experience – except I attended a small liberal arts school after college-prep and was astonished to find that most of my peers were learning such critical thinking skills for the first time in college.

I’m always wary of assigning “economic value” to certain degrees. Often it’s not the degree that matters, but what students do with it. Degrees in the humanities or social sciences can be just a valuable as degrees in engineering or hard sciences if students get valuable skills and experience from internships, minors, part time jobs, etc. in addition to the degree itself.