If students across the country judged the value of college by headlines alone, they would come away with a bleak view of higher education. Rising costs. Diminishing value. Questionable career prospects. It’s a small miracle students enroll in college at all. Yet despite the widespread cynicism about higher education, more people are going to college than ever before.
They know investing in their future offers something far more promising than headlines suggest. Students who enroll cite increased earning potential and improved job prospects as their top reasons for pursuing a degree. The value of a college education has never been higher. The close link between college attainment and wages, employment prospects, and job satisfaction is as strong as ever. Even many of the most strident critics of higher education still strongly encourage their own children to pursue a college education. But we need to widen our view beyond individuals to gauge the full value of higher education.
By framing college as an individual benefit alone, we risk omitting the immense societal benefits of college-educated residents and citizens. Compared with individuals whose highest degree is a high school diploma, college graduates are 3.5 times less likely to be impoverished, nearly five times less likely to be imprisoned and almost four times less likely to smoke tobacco regularly. Working-age Americans with bachelor’s degrees are 44 percent more likely to report being in good or excellent health. In 2012, life expectancy at age 25 was an astonishing decade longer for those going to college.
Although these may seem like benefits only to college graduates, they benefit us all. Less crime. Fewer incarcerated parents. Healthier and more productive workers. College graduates are twice as likely to volunteer to help others in their communities and donate over three times as much to charity. Graduates are more likely to vote and participate in and lead civic organizations. The full value of these effects cannot be adequately quantified because their reach extends so far beyond what can be measured only in financial terms.
But college graduates’ direct effect on other taxpayers can be measured. College graduates pay substantially more taxes to provide public services than those never attending college. Bachelor’s degree holders without advanced degrees contribute, conservatively, an average of $563,000 more in taxes over their lifetimes than what high school graduates pay.
College attainment also creates significant taxpayer benefits on the other side of the government ledger. College graduates are less reliant on government programs and services such as Medicaid, housing subsidies, unemployment benefits, as well as the cost of corrections. Since college graduates generally have greater economic opportunities and higher incomes, they are less likely to receive means-tested government benefits.
All told, lifetime government spending for bachelor’s degree holders without advanced degrees is, conservatively, $50,000 less than for high school graduates never attending college. This may exceed per person government spending on higher education. Even accounting for government investment in higher education, the $613,000 in additional taxes and reduced government spending from graduates represents a major net positive for government balance sheets.
All of this is on top of the personal benefits of a college degree such as increased job security. The most recent jobs report reveals that the unemployment rate for workers with a four-year degree is 2.2 percent, while the jobless rate for high school graduates without college is nearly twice as high, 4 percent. College graduates were also far better insulated from job losses during the last economic downturn and quicker to rejoin the labor force if they had left.
Then there’s the boost in earnings. Annual earnings are more than $32,000 higher for bachelor’s degree holders without advanced degrees than their counterparts whose highest credential is a high school diploma. Over a lifetime, this premium for a four-year degree conservatively translates into an additional $1.4 million in earnings.
Yet while the societal benefits of a college education are often overlooked, they are arguably the most important. A college education helps students create a healthier, more prosperous, and civically engaged country. The challenge we face, then, is vastly increasing the number of individuals with access to higher education who can write their destiny—and ours.
