With the rising costs of college tuition coupled with high unemployment for new grads, it is becoming very fashionable to question the value of a college degree. At least, that’s what this long New York Magazine article (via TML) says. Most articles in the past have focused on the pay gap between a median bachelor degree holder and a high school graduate, which recently has increased to $21,900 a year.

Now, there are more articles about how a college degree is worthless. As part of their argument, if you assume a high school graduate goes out, gets a job, and starts earning their lower salary and investing money right away, that person’s nest egg will outpace a college graduate that eventually earns a higher income has to start later and pay off a ton of debt first. Given the head start and lack of debt, the high school graduate actually ends up with more money. This is fed even further with the notion of a college tuition bubble.

Is college worth it? My answer is the most common true answer. It depends! One way I started thinking about it was by going backwards in a way. Let’s look at some possible outcomes and how that may affect how you look at college tuition.

Outcome #1 – You won’t need a college degree.
There are several outcomes that won’t have needed a college degree. You could end up working in a skilled trade such as electrician, plumber, or carpenter that earns a healthy salary. If you add in some business acumen (no MBA required), you could own your own business and end up like the millionaires profiled in the popular book The Millionaire Next Door. You might prefer to be a outdoor adventure guide or flight attendant.

Outcome #2 – Any college degree will do.
There are many jobs out there that simply require some sort of undergraduate degree. It’s just a lazy screening process for applicants, but that’s reality. In this case, the best value would have come from getting your degree from any accredited university for the least amount of money. Perhaps this involves two years of community college and one year of intense upper division coursework at an in-state university (taking additional courses during the summer as possible) to graduate in a total of three years. It’s possible, and you could end up paying less than $10,000 even without any financial aid.

Outcome #3 – You’ll actually use the technical skills you learned.
Professions that come to mind are accountant, doctor, nurse practitioner, engineer, lawyer, professor, teacher. Here, it’s more likely that you’ll use the technical skills you learned in school. If you’re talking about a profession that requires a graduate degree like law or medicine, then the final school is the matters the most in terms of prestige. If you really take full advantage of your education, then your return on investment can be high. I know doctors with $250k of debt, but now they make $250k a year.

Playing The Odds

The fact is, nobody really knows ahead of time which outcome will actually happen. But you probably have an idea of the relative odds based on the child’s interests and motivation levels. I would say take into account all your options, and make a decision based on the individual and your financial situation.

The reason why many pushy parents want their kids to be either a doctor, lawyer, or engineer is that this increases the probabilities that the kid will get a decent job and support themselves. Sure, some engineers or lawyers don’t make that much, but how many of them are starving? Parents are playing the odds. I imagine if I really wanted to play the odds these days, I’d teach my kid a skilled trade (ASE certified mechanic? Electrician?) in high school, and then continue to push them towards college and a professional degree.

After seeing my Grandparents and 529s article, a reader sent me a link to WhyPayTuition.com, which is a matchmaking site that promotes the idea of getting a “convenience” marriage solely for the purpose of reducing your tuition bill:

The easiest way to obtain free tuition is to get out from under your parents financial umbrella, and fall into the college’s low-income aid category. Most colleges offer free tuition, reduced tuition and reduced fees. […]

The idea is to get married, remain married for the duration of your college years, then get a non-contested, no property divorce. The girl will keep her last name, you live separate lives, and no one will need to know you are married.

As long as both parties are US citizens, there appears to be nothing illegal about this. Certainly it seems a bit overboard, but so is giving any 18-year old with zero income the ability to take out $200,000 in loans. This NY Times article mentions several student-couples who have saved $50,000 or more by getting married and qualifying for in-state tuition:

Economically, in-state students have a huge advantage over non-Californians, for whom tuition costs an additional $22,000 a year (as of 2010-11). […]

A few years ago, a student from the Midwest believed she could not afford the annual $30,000 in student fees (including $20,000 in out-of-state tuition), so she posted on Facebook that she was looking for a husband. […] An out-of-state student whom she did not know responded to her post, and they married in 2007, the summer before her junior year. She graduated in 2009 and estimated that the marriage had saved her $50,000. The couple has divorced.

But being married has many potential pitfalls. This WalletPop article gets some opinions from a divorce lawyer:

“If you’re someone who is jumping through these hoops to save money going to college, at least be smart enough to get a prenuptial agreement,” he said.

Potential problems in not getting a prenuptual agreement, in addition to having to share earnings for life, include being responsible for the spouse’s debt and other issues that married couples face, such as inheritance if one person dies.

I know of people getting married for health insurance reasons, which outlines another societal problem. As the college tuition bubble also continues to grow, I expect more and more stories like this to pop up.

There was a discussion on Bogleheads recently about giving money to grandparents so that could invest in a 529 college savings plan for their grandchildren. While it brought more light on what I think is a flawed financial aid system, it also presented a learning opportunity for me and any parent with college-bound kids.

The idea was that if a 529 plan is owned by someone other than the parent or child (e.g. aunt/uncle, grandparent), the plan will not be considered as an asset for financial aid purposes. It won’t be a parental asset, and it won’t be a student asset. This, in turn, will lower your “expected family contribution” and increase the possibility of receiving financial aid. Loophole! Note that this holds for the popular FAFSA, but not schools that use the CSS Profile, which requires you to list all 529 plans with the student as beneficiary.

However, there is a catch. If a qualified education benefit such as a 529 plan distribution is not reported as an asset on the FAFSA, then those distributions are reported as untaxed income to the beneficiary on the subsequent year’s FAFSA. (You must fill out a new one every year.) As a result, next year’s financial aid eligibility for the student can be significantly affected.

Still a loophole, just smaller. So what can you do? If a grandparent has money in a 529 plan for your child, they should delay taking a distribution until the student’s senior year in college, so next year’s financial aid picture won’t matter. (Assuming no graduate school or that you won’t need aid there.) According to Finaid.org, technically you can take the distribution any time after January 1st of the junior year in college.

Theoretically, the grandparents could fund a quarter of the undergraduate education this way, without the assets in their 529 plan ever counting against any financial aid eligibility. I never knew this, but it’s true unless future legislation changes it.

Sources: FinAid.org, The Guide to Federal Student Aid

During recessions, interest in graduate school rises as people lose their jobs or otherwise decide to go back to school for better prospects. Are you thinking about law school? I’ve thrown the idea around, as I think estate law would be a growth area. Well, check out these stats from the National Association for Law Placement (NALP) first.

The NALP found the national median starting salary for full-time law jobs for the Class of 2009 was $72,000 and the average was $93,454. After adjusting for the fact that many smaller law firms don’t report salary details (and also tend to pay less), it found the adjusted average salary to be $85,198. But you should also consider the distribution of the salaries as well, shown below.

From this Law.com article:

That’s because salaries are clustered in two areas — a phenomenon known as the bimodal distribution curve. One cluster is in the $40,000 to $60,000 range and the other around $160,000. The lower range tends to include attorneys in public interest and government jobs, while the higher cluster includes associates at large law firms.

This means that after three years of law school and probably accumulating more student debt, lots of new grads are still far away from six-figure salaries. For the Class of 2009, 1 out of 4 are working temporary jobs. Going to law school primarily for the money can be a long road.

What about after the entry-level? This article quotes the Department of Labor as stating that the median lawyer makes $113,000 per year, and those in the 25th percentile make $76,000 per year. Certainly, many people still make solid livings as lawyers. I know a lot of other JDs that are doing things unrelated to law as well, and most of them are doing alright. However, I don’t know if they would have still gone to law school again if given a redo.