College education isn't for everyone, survey says

A hefty salary can be had without a college education. Just know how to work a pair of handle pullers. Be patient. Learn from the masters. Work hard several years.

"We have a couple guys who make pretty close to six figures, and our firm pays a 401k and health insurance," said Patty Hillis, chief financial officer of Pete's Plumbing, a family-owned and operated business in Long Beach. "And they came in out of high school as a helper. "

Snaking drains for paychecks is not the path for everyone. But neither is taking on debt to fund a bachelor's degree in the hopes of finding a job.

"We have felt for a long time that there is too much emphasis on every kid going to college," Hillis said.

Those in the know agree.

College isn't the best investment for a lot people, according to the authors of a study published by the Center on Children and Families at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.

"It's a very expensive experience, it's very valuable on average, but not valuable for everyone," Isabel Sawhill, one of the authors of the study, said in an interview.

Sawhill and co-author Stephanie Owen found a wide-ranging variation in the return on investment when it comes to the types of colleges students attend, their majors and the job market after graduation.

"By telling all young people that they should go to college no matter what, we are actually doing some of them a disservice," they wrote in the report.

Sawhill and Owen acknowledge the benefits of college, such as lower crime rates among the educated, healthier social interaction and the higher likelihood of participation in the public square.

But most dinner table conversations about college don't center on attending university to become a better citizen. It's about bigger bucks down the road.

The report, titled "Should Everyone Go to College? ", warns that equating education with earnings isn't an exact science. The cost of attending weighs against net earnings, and the opportunity cost - or what a young person gives up in salary by delaying entry into the workforce - is $54,000 by some measures.

Still, college graduates will typically earn a lot more than high school graduates.

Citing other research by Brookings, Sawhill and Owen say the up-front cost of a four-year degree - opportunity cost plus tuition - is at $102,000, but a bachelor's degree can fetch an extra $570,000 over the course of a lifetime.

At the same time, skyrocketing tuition costs are causing an increasing dependency on loans, which is driving a higher risk of defaults, even as the total of student loan debt is around $1 trillion, or more than auto loans and credit card debt, and lagging behind mortgage debt only.

Of major concern to Sawhill is the startling amount of students who don't finish college and are saddled with loan debt.

"I think what was really surprising to me is the fact that people are borrowing so much money to go to college and so many of them are not finishing," she said. "The dropout rates are very high - 70 percent for junior college and 40 percent at four-year schools. And that's not going to be a return on your money with those kinds of dropout rates. It would be like if you're investing in a bond and half the time the companies defaulted. "

When considering whether college is the right choice, Sawhill suggested that students consider the type of school, its prestige, the cost and financial aid, field of study and the job market, and the chances of actually finishing the degree.

Citing research from the American Enterprise Institute and the American Institutes for Research, the report noted that those who went to the most selective private institutions earned an extra $620,000 over a lifetime.

Private schools with far less standards for admission produced graduates who earned only a third of that amount.

Research found that public schools tend to have a higher return on investment than private schools, and exclusive colleges produce higher returns than more open ones. And the more selective a school, the higher chance that students will finish their degree.

Sawhill said many of the more prestigious schools have generous financial aid packages for the economically disadvantaged, so the message that students should go to whatever college is available is wrongheaded.

Students also need to consider the payoff of their major.

Sawhill and Owen pointed out that the STEM fields-science, technology, engineering and math-consistently lead to higher incomes, while the Census Bureau reveals that the earnings of an arts of education major in the service sector are below the average lifetime earnings of a person holding a high school diploma only.

Sawhill recommends that technical and career programs be emphasized as a viable alternative to college.

"I think that we have embedded in our culture at this point in history the idea that everyone should go to college, and I think we need to take a step back and ask if that's true and look at alternative training programs," Sawhill said.

Some suggest that as colleges are churning out students with degrees, they aren't necessarily producing thinkers.

And that's a growing concern to employers, said Brad Pollak, president of the Long Beach-based Brad Pollak Company, a marketing and career coaching firm.

"The idea is, could we create a system that isn't so much based on a college degree, but based on a system that shows cognitive, creative and analytic thinking?" Pollak said.

Needed skill-sets are rapidly changing, but what employers are especially looking for these days are graduates who can demonstrate that they know how to think. That means simply repeating back information to a professor may get a great grade, but not a job.

"The critical thinking and creative thinking are what most hiring managers are focusing on," Pollak said. "We're still caught up in the old industrial thinking that if you graduate from high school, you go to college and get a four-year degree and get a job. That's just gone out the window. "

On the other hand, if a graduate shows he has cognitive skills and can think creatively, he will likely have a much better chance of landing a job, Pollak said.

And that applies to plumbing.

"The neat thing about our trade is, there's always new technology coming down the pike," Hillis said. "It isn't all just mud and sewage. "

And she may have best summed up what think tanks and education gurus have researched for years.

"Every person is not college material," Hillis said.

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