Nostradoofus

Private college appears to deliver negative lifetime return on investment to most attendees.  Provisos are itemized below, so please resist your instinct to recoil, and read the whole thing.

The Census Bureau reported in 2002 that the median college grad’s income was $45,400, compared to $25,900 for the median high school grad.

The College Board reported in 2006 that private college consumed an average of 5.3 years of the student’s time.  Public college took 6.4 years.

I made these rough assumptions:  40-year working life;  discount rate of 8%;  fully loaded tax rate of 30%, including all mandatory payments to all levels of government.

Based on those sources and assumptions, the after-tax present value benefit of a private college degree is about $65,000. That’s total, not per year.

Unfortunately, college costs much more than that — the College Board says the average is $53,000 $69,000 in tuition and fees alone, including all financial aid, before food and rent.  Add in living expenses, and you’re far beyond $65,000.

So it appears the return on investment is very likely negative for most families, and even more negative if we consider the cost of the subsidies.

What this argument isn’t

This is not an argument for more aid, nor less aid.  ROI (return on investment) appears negative regardless of whether tuition is paid by the parent, student loans, scholarships, or the government.  The problem is not financing or subsidy levels, but the fundamental cost/benefit equation.

This is not bashing private colleges.  I have degrees from three, and I’m glad.

Caveats

NPV is a dubious instrument, highly sensitive to tiny estimation errors in the discount rate.  You can prove anything by turning that dial.  But note that the discount rate would have to be below 6% to justify anything like the median cost of private college today.  It doesn’t add up.

College offers the option value of attending graduate school, which is not reflected in this calculation.

College may have indirect benefits not captured by NPV.

College may have positive externalities for society as a whole, not measured here.

The latest census data on income is several years old, which could invalidate the result.  But I believe it still holds true, because incomes are purportedly nearly stagnant.

Conclusion

There are plenty of ways you could pick this apart, but it’s rearranging deck chairs on an investment Titanic: the answer is so far below zero that you have to make flattering assumptions for private college to look sensible.

Pretty sobering, because it was almost certainly not the case a generation ago.

Public college ROI might be better or worse:  tuition is lower, but since it is internally subsidized, we do not know if the actual cost is lower (though I suspect it is). We do know that students spend much longer attaining a degree there, causing more foregone income.  Could go either way.

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This entry was posted on Monday, October 19th, 2009 at 11:56 pm and is filed under Family Matters, Investing, Policy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.