Are Colleges Worth The Price Of Admission Summary

Introduction Many students are afraid to attend college because of the ever rising cost of tuition. Of course, parents and teachers will still ask, “why are high school students so apprehensive about college?” They may understand that choosing a college and sending applications is a bit daunting, as well as choosing a major. However, unlike in their day and age, college prices have skyrocketed. As Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus put it in their article “Are Colleges Worth the Price of Admission?”, “Tuition charges at both public and private colleges have more than doubled-in real dollars-compared with generations ago.” The ever rising costs of college, paired with the fact that the minimum wage could hardly be considered a living wage, puts fear in students. This brings us to our main point: is college really worth the debt? To add to the previous point, students may also wonder if colleges are really worth it. They are most likely going to be going into debt, after all. If colleges are charging such ungodly costs to attend, they must offer good programs, right? Sadly, Dreifus and Hacker believe that “colleges are taking on too many roles and doing none of them well” (180). Kevin Carey also agrees with this point. In his article “Why Do You Think They’re Called For-Profit
In 2013 studies showed that 19.9 million people were enrolled in college, in comparison to 1990’s 13.5 million (College Education n.p.). Why is that? Well, with recent inflation, one can’t be too surprised. Though it is a wonder that people continue to attend college, when people like Kevin Carey seem to believe that the reason college costs so much is that because most universities are for-profit, and that the degrees that they give out are nothing more than scams. Dreifus and Hacker also seem to believe that most colleges just aren’t worth the money students