Making College Worth It Summary

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Motivated by the President Barrack Obama, the attention on the problem of whether postsecondary education is worth or not is rising than ever before. The article – “Making College Worth It: A Review of the Returns to Higher Education”, written by Philip Oreopoulos and Uros Petronijevic, focuses on this concern and trying to explore the complexity behind varying cost-benefit relationships of the optimal decision that prospective students or their families should invest in college or not.
The article starts its illustration with the factors which cause the complexity. Such may include financial constraint, which is definitely a common problem hinders individuals from college. And even without financial problems, interventions including information
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However, the connection between college and higher graduates’ earnings cannot simply be interpreted as a causal effect of college attainment on earnings. It can be concluded as self-selection bias which means “if those most likely to succeed in college are the ones who usually choose to attend, then having a college education does not necessarily explain their positive outcomes”. As a result, other prospective students will probably not attain similar outcomes for them, comparing to those high-ability …show more content…
This certain model consists of two key prerequisites which are “individuals know their ability but their employers do not” and “school is less costly for individuals with higher abilities”. The essence of this model is that school does not forester skills or affect productivity. In other words, attending school is rather a signal allows you to catch attention from employers than a place fosters productivity. However, authors suggest that transcripts, programs graduates took in college or even the name of the college could help employers make the higher level of separations of the labor market in this modern society. On the other hand, while such various means mentioned above enable employers to recognize the ability of college graduates, they need time to recognize the ability of high school graduates. As a result, although the initial signal is important only for a brief period of time, it still may have long-lasting consequences.
Nevertheless, there are also many nonpecuniary benefits that graduates can take from college. A strict controlling research, which has different measures of family background and income, provides suggests people who have taken college are more likely to have a greater sense of accomplishment, more social interactions, better health outcomes, and being more independence and opportunities for creativity. All these benefits have the power to affect individuals in a more profound way over their

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