- Question
- Is college education worth it?
- Position‹3 of 3
- No, college education isn't worth it
- Argument‹4 of 4
Student loan debt is crippling
Student debt is financially and mentally draining. With both the number of those who owe student loan debt and the average debt increasing, many young adults and recent college graduates face multiple financial concerns.
The argument
Proponents of this position begin from the scale of the obligation a degree now carries. The average student graduates from university with around $37,000 of debt, and a report from LendEDU indicates that roughly 16% of students leave college with a debt-to-income ratio — monthly loan repayments measured against monthly income — of over 20%. On that measure more than a fifth of what a recent graduate earns is committed before any other claim on it is met, and the figure counts only the student loan. It is calculated without reference to the other obligations a household ordinarily carries at the same stage of life: credit cards, car payments, or a mortgage. The argument's force lies in what that leaves. A graduate paying a fifth of income to a loan is making the payment out of the very salary the degree was supposed to improve, so the earnings premium a degree promises is drawn down by the cost of acquiring it for as long as the repayment lasts. Meanwhile the ordinary steps that salary is meant to make possible — saving, borrowing for a home, absorbing an unexpected expense — are deferred or ruled out, because the repayment is fixed while the rest of a budget is not. Nor is the burden only financial. On this view the debt weighs heavily on graduates' mental health and causes extreme stress and financial anxiety, and it does so for a reason the arithmetic explains: an obligation that cannot be discharged quickly, cannot be escaped by changing course, and constrains every subsequent decision is experienced as a standing condition of a life rather than as a one-off price. Taken together, proponents argue, a purchase whose cost is crippling in these terms fails the test of being worth making, and college education is not worth it.
Context
College students graduate with large sums of debt. This takes a financial and psychological toll.
Premises
Counter-arguments
Unemployment is even more financially and mentally crippling. College reduces the chance of unemployment and improves job prospects. A college education is worth the debt incurred as it is the lesser of two evils.
Rejecting the premises
[Rejecting P1] Unemployment has worse financial and psychological outcomes.