Name-brand colleges not worth extra debt

Summer jobs underwrote most of my undergraduate years at a state university. After college, I worked for a year to earn enough to pay for a master’s degree at an Ivy League university.

But with the leap in the cost of higher education, the only way today’s college students could pull that off is by spending that year running drugs and the summer selling body parts.

In a generation, the average annual tuition at public four-year colleges and universities rose 268 percent, while the cost of private schools swelled 248 percent.

Last week, my high school senior came home with a list of small liberal colleges that his counselor felt were good academic matches. I spent a while on the Internet researching costs, and it wasn’t easy. Pricey colleges tend to downplay their prices, omitting them from their “At a Glance” or “Quick Facts” pages.

No wonder. Tuition and room and board at two of the schools exceeded $50,000. Both reject more students than they accept, so they have no reason to fret much that their prices are driving off applicants. In fact, the most selective universities are typically the priciest.

College presidents blame climbing costs on the bidding war for the very best faculty, demands by students for fancy amenities such as tony health clubs and competition to attract the most talented scholars. Critics counter that college presidents are overlooking a few factors, such as their own lack of market discipline and their indifference to productivity. For example, research shows that while teaching loads of tenured professors have fallen, salaries have increased. And the scholarships dangled in front of talented students are more about enhancing a school’s U.S. News & World Report ranking than improving education for all students.

As long as parents take out second mortgages and raid retirement funds to afford college, critics say, schools have no motivation to change. Plus, parents can point to evidence that their investment in a brand-name campus pays off for their child.

A study released this summer by PayScale Inc., which compiles compensation data, found that the median starting salary for Ivy League graduates is 32 percent higher than that of liberal-arts college graduates. PayScale says the median starting salary for a University of Georgia graduate is $44,100, compared to $66,400 for a Harvard grad. However, the study doesn’t address whether that pay differential is the result of a better education, or simply because the Ivies can attract higher-achieving students in the first place.

To me, the question is whether the additional prestige of a high-priced college degree justifies the additional debt that often comes with it, especially in this dicey economy. We’ve all heard stories about the bright college grad who moves back home with an anthropology degree, $40,000 in loans and a waitress job.

My oldest transferred from a private school to UGA this year, and says she’s much happier. She’s not juggling schoolwork and two part-time jobs. With the HOPE scholarship, she’s not feeling guilty about whether we’ll have any money left to send her three siblings to college, a feeling probably fueled by tales of how often I’ve been serving macaroni and cheese for dinner.

With two kids in college next year, there’s a lot more mac and cheese ahead. Fortunately, I like it.

Learning Curve is a weekly column on education. Please send suggestions for topics or feedback to mdowney@ajc.com.