The Cost of College v. Payout

I saw this article on Slate, and it resonated with me. As a lawyer, my college loan debt level is approximately $100k. Fortunately, I have a job I like and I make decent (but by no means the mega-bucks Big Law pays) money. Right now, I am looking at paying about $800 a month for the next 10 or 15 years. I had some scholarships, but largely my family simply could not afford to pay for college, so my education was financed by government loans.

One part of the article I noted is the part that discusses the sociology degree and its comparative worth. There are a lot of degress that aren't worth the paper they are printed on in the open market. I remember back to the meetings with my academic advisor - one of the rarest topics was whether the major I picked had any significant employment prospects. The ivory tower academics can provide some very expense and ultiamtely worthless pieces of paper, and even that degress that have value do little to prepare students for their future.

I went through three years of law school, a largely practical education, full of discussions on case law, precedent, argument, and so forth - and my on-the-job training still continues. For degrees like psychology and sociology, at least a Master's level degree is basically required in order to participate fully in the job market - and for jobs that pay $30k to start.

So I add my voice to the chorus - we need to seriously consider revising the seconday education system. The liberal arts education has become a joke. Certainly there are necessary areas that need to be taught - writing, literature, math - but there is an awful lot of fluff in the cirriculum. For example: two credits of physical education - in my case, archery and golf. What a waste of $1,000 (I went to a private undergrad @ $500 a credit hour). Put a joke in here, but my ethics class was a joke too - I learned nothing in it.

There is another aspect too - many of these degrees are basically "toxic" debt - they aren't worth it. Why are we, the taxpayers and goverment, investing in the education of individuals, sometimes to the tune of $200,000 plus, when their chances of paying it off in any reasonable amount of time are zero?