Each year around this time, millions of students graduate college, having completed an educational path that hopefully will help them find a career and gainful employment.
Unfortunately, over the last few decades, we have seen a tremendous spike in college tuition rates, far outpacing inflation. But making college “free” is a nonsensical path that displaces the financial burden on others, oftentimes taxpayers, many of whom did not attend college themselves and do not reap any of the benefits that the student receives. Further, it will only incentivize schools to continue jacking up administrative costs as we have seen in the last 25 years.
We need to make headway on cutting costs at colleges and making the investment worth the debt the student takes on. Since the high cost of college tuition is something that likely won’t go away anytime soon, we need not only to think about creative ways to cut costs but also to advise students on best practices to ensure they make wise decisions on which fields to study so they can actually afford to pay these loans back.
The biggest decision each of these students will face during their time in college is choosing which major to pursue. Obtaining a college degree is an immense investment. For most people, the point of modern higher education is to engage in a field of study that translates into more financial security than they would have without a college degree.
Freshmen in college, often with little understanding of the amount of the debt they are about to take on, sign a dotted line for loans that will ultimately cost them tens of thousands of dollars when they graduate and will affect their finances for decades to come. However, many of the major fields of study offered to these students have little prospect for economically gainful employment. Obtaining a major in subjects such as philosophy, gender studies, creative writing, and more simply does not translate to a marketable career path.
In fact, arts and humanities majors who attended nonselective schools default on their loans the most of any category at a rate of 26.33%. While these courses may be excellent electives for a student’s interest or well-rounded education, they do not give the student the type of degree that guarantees the ability to pay back a loan, much less earn a living.
On the other hand, students who obtain majors in STEM fields earn more on average right out of college and have a much easier time paying off their loans. When coupled with the fact that college is so expensive, gaining a degree in an unprofitable field of study makes going to college counterproductive if a student thinks of college as a financial investment.
Institutions of higher learning have a responsibility to educate their incoming students about the risk of compiling tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, in debt and entering a field of study that doesn’t position their students to succeed any more than they would if they didn’t attend college. Picking a major is often an emotional decision. It needs to be a rational one based on interest and future marketability.
Eliminating some majors while keeping their fields of study as electives should decrease costs and meet more students’ real needs. If a student decides he or she wishes to study more in a particular field in which a major is not offered, that is why we have graduate schools. In a win-win situation, students would not be put on a career path with limited potential for employment, and their financial future would be much more secure. It is time we reversed the trend of exploding fields of undergraduate study that add more to a tuition bill than a real value in education.
Greg Murphy represents North Carolina’s 3rd Congressional District in the House of Representatives. He is the ranking member of the Higher Education and Workforce Investment Subcommittee.
