Actually, You Kind of Do...

In David Atkins' post "Serfdom Either Way" he references the report discussed here about the wage gap between college grads and high school grads.  He doesn't say much about it, in fact most of what he does say is:

Do I really need to comment here? The insanity speaks for itself.

I think I know what he is talking about: either go into massive debt or get a shitty job.  But you really do need to comment about it, because the implication of the price premium for college grads is that it is, in fact, worth it to go to college, even when it means incurring debt.  Now I certainly think that college should be much more affordable--in fact free to everyone--but so long as we have this capitalist fantasy about everything, it not only makes sense that college tuition has gotten high, this report clearly implies that the high cost is entirely justified.  Because the gap has been spreading it also implies that the value (and the cost) should grow faster than GDP.

If a college degree means an extra $17k/year (for life!) then it sure as hell is worth paying $30k/year for 4 years to get one.  Now this isn't the math that most students (or their parents) do, and the nature of student loans is borderline predatory, but it isn't "insanity" it's perfectly rational capitalism.

(Note: I hope this isn't a trend of him becoming increasingly irrational, because this follows a post of his from yesterday, that was mostly fine but that very oddly stated "Bill Gates isn't exactly an innovator"...I'm not sure what he would call Bill Gates, but innovator, at the least, is pretty damned appropriate.)