What's the value of a college degree, a four year degree in your mind right now?

Yeah, so a lot of people are asking that question, and I guess it depends on how you define value.

So for me, and I learned this a couple decades ago, three or four jobs ago, and I continue to use this as the kind of as a as a framework for work and a framework for life, which is what is the definition of success and how much is enough? Right.

And you can bring that framing to a whole bunch of different things in your personal life and in your personal finance life.

So when it comes to college, right, you have to ask yourself, I guess, like, what is college for? And to the extent that there are any metrics, like any actual data around this, and when you hear all of the noise out in the world, you would...

or could come to the conclusion that college is about earnings and what you earn after you graduate, right? So you could look at it this way, right? College is about earnings.

what the credential that you're purchasing actually does for your earning power later.

Please feel free to rip it to shreds.

And do we have any sense of how much this growth in master's programs was actually benefiting students? Like, were these programs actually helping to supercharge what they would earn once they graduated, for example?

Yeah, so the data back then wasn't as granular or widespread as what we have today, but there was definitely suspicion that at least some, and, and, and maybe a growing number of those master's programs, weren't really doing the job of helping people increase their, you know, financial and earnings prospects.

But even for those programs that may not have been supercharging people's earnings, the universities started to find what became kind of a workaround for them, and that was the public service loan forgiveness program.

So that was created in the 2000s, and in that program, if you go to work for a nonprofit or the government, what happens there is that if you do that job for 10 years, the federal government will waive the rest of your student loan balance entirely once that period is over.

Mm-hmm

... or that, you know, private universities should stop offering, you know, expensive master's degrees in social work.

But what I am saying is that everybody who's shopping for higher education deserves way better answers and way more data when they come to the institutions with questions about why this costs more than that competing institution down the street by $20,000 or $30,000 a year, or why this master's degree that did not exist five years ago actually offers me something that will make me smarter, that will build my network, and that will advance my career.

[gentle music] When there's a change in public policy that alters the marketplace, it's an opportunity for consumers to pause and say, "Huh, there's a change that's happened here.

Mm-hmm

... can be in a sort of smaller, more focused group.

Obviously, the Greek system can be a real kind of lifelong bond former.

An athletic team.

You know, there are lots of other ways to be in community, uh, you know, at a large institution in a way that makes a difference.

And, you know, not everybody needs to come out of school with 10 or 20 or 30 best friends.

Uh, five would be an incredible return on investment, I think, if they stayed with you for your entire life.

Mm-hmm, or tenured professors.

But what are some of the questions that you think families should really sit with as they approach the college decision process? And one, I think I love one of your questions, which was like, why, if we have an attachment to college and we have an attachment to elite schools specifically, what is that about? 'Cause that can really get you down a certain path, a very expensive one.

Yeah.

So, you know, because I believe in a feelings-forward approach to this, you have to start with the feelings first.

And the three that I see coming up most often are fear, guilt, and snobbery.

There's fear of our kid falling down the social class ladder.

Maybe we've scrambled up.

My wife comes from a, a, a Holocaust survivor family, right? Three-quarters of the family was literally exterminated.

Right.