College forces graduates to put off major rites of passage

The argument

Proponents of this view argue that the cost of a degree is not confined to the years of study but reaches decades into a graduate's adult life, delaying the milestones by which people ordinarily mark their passage into full adulthood. The mechanism is the financial insecurity created by college debt. Loan repayments are taken out of a graduate's salary ahead of any other commitment, so the income that would otherwise service a mortgage, build a deposit, pay for a wedding or be set aside for retirement is already allocated. A graduate may be earning what looks like a comfortable wage and still be unable to commit to any of these things, because the portion of it genuinely free to be spent is much smaller than the headline figure suggests. Those delays, on this account, are not neutral postponements. Renting for years longer than one otherwise would means paying for accommodation that never becomes an asset, so a far greater share of lifetime earnings is consumed by housing than it would have been had the same person bought earlier. Saving deferred in early adulthood loses exactly the years in which it would have grown longest. And postponing parenthood carries consequences money cannot reverse, since fertility and pregnancy are sensitive to age, so a delay entered into for financial reasons can raise the risk of complications when parenthood is finally attempted. The conclusion drawn is that the usual accounting of a degree, which sets tuition and debt against expected lifetime earnings, leaves out the largest item. What the graduate pays is not only money but years, and specifically the years in which buying a house, marrying and having children are most easily done. Weighed against that, proponents argue, college education is not worth it.

Context

Paying for a university education puts graduates deep into debt. They then spend the next decade or two focusing on paying off this debt instead of buying a house or starting a family.

Premises

Counter-arguments

What this indicts is a method of financing higher education, not higher education. In systems where tuition is free or heavily subsidised — much of continental Europe — the debt mechanism described is absent while the degree remains, so the harm identified is contingent on a particular funding model rather than on college itself. That points toward changing how study is paid for, which is a different conclusion from the one drawn. The comparison is also the wrong one. The question is whether college is worth it, which requires comparing graduates with non-graduates, not graduates with a hypothetical debt-free version of themselves. On that comparison, most datasets show graduates earning more over a lifetime, facing lower unemployment, and — on the argument's own chosen measure — reaching homeownership at higher rates, if later. Delayed milestones are compatible with a positive return. The delay itself is also not isolated to graduates. Ages at first marriage, first birth and first home purchase have risen across whole populations, including among people who never attended college, driven by housing costs, labour-market changes and shifting preferences. Attributing the postponement to student debt requires separating it from those trends, which the argument does not attempt. Where the burden genuinely falls hardest is on those who borrow and do not complete a degree — who carry the debt without the earnings premium. That is a strong case for reform of pricing and completion rates.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The debt mechanism is a feature of one financing model rather than of college; in systems with free or subsidised tuition the degree exists without the repayments described. [Rejecting P2] Ages at marriage, parenthood and first home purchase have risen across whole populations including non-graduates, so the delay cannot be attributed to student debt without isolating it from those trends — and the relevant comparison is with not attending at all.