Student Loans Aren’t Worth It! Here’s Why!

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Rethinking Hedge Fund University. You know what’s great? I love this when this happens. I have various different things that I try to get across. try to teach here on the podcast on our radio show. And you know what? I don’t have an army of college students, grad school kids. I don’t work for a foundation. I don’t work for the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute.

So I don’t do studies. I just tell you what I think and what I know and to me it’s kind of like, yeah, sky as blue as water is wet. But what’s nice is that, you know, years after I’ve been teaching people things, one of these institutions does a study, does a scientific study proving Markowski right again. And again, I’m not being arrogant when I’m saying this, okay. But it was a piece today by

Preston Cooper and Preston works for the American Enterprise Institute. He did a big study, big study about colleges and universities and it looks like, looks like the kids are waking up, little bit. Tuer students go into college, leading many to worry that young Americans, Young Americans, great song by David Bowie, are abandoning higher education and risking their future.

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While college enrollment has dropped by more than three million since 2010, those missing students, they’re not losing out. They’re not losing out because most of the drop in college enrollment has occurred at institutions with outcomes that are traditionally no bueno.

At high quality colleges, enrollment has actually increased. And again, quick side note to this as well. If we actually had a free market when it came to financing, when it came to financing, you we didn’t have the government getting involved, no student, all that stuff. And let’s say banks.

Banks had to make loans to kids based upon their grades and their merit. Do you think that banks would be making loans to these low quality college to kids, especially if these kids could discharge that loan in bankruptcy? No, no. These not so great colleges and universities call it what they are, they would be no longer. And they’re going by the wayside anyway. College, he says, is treated as a monolith.

But as more and more evidence shows, there’s considerable variation in the quality of education in different institutions. You don’t say? While some colleges reliably set up their graduates for success in life, others fail to even graduate most of their students. And the students lucky enough to earn degrees may find that those sheepskins don’t help them land a decent wage job or pay down their student loans.

In a new report, again, that he put together, the AI, AEI, excuse me, they explore the divergence in college enrollment trends between high and low quality institutions. They divide colleges into five groups based on student outcomes, including quantifiable metrics. How about that? Percentage of students who complete their degrees, the share of borrowers paying down their student loans and median earnings after graduation.

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Again, student attending college in the top one-fifth of institutions is four times as likely to graduate and two times as likely to pay down his or her loans as a student attending a college in the bottom fifth. After leaving school, the students at the top fifth colleges earn $20,000 more annually than students from the bottom fifth colleges. Now.

kids are picking up on this between 2010 and 2023 undergraduate enrollment at colleges in the bottom fifth of institutions dropped by 47%. They mentioned, well, it’s the for profit school University of Phoenix, which was massive. They enrolled 330,000 students, but just a quarter of those students graduate. But again, that’s for profit. University of Phoenix online.

Again, you got to be committed to that, but it’s not just that. Not just the for-profit schools, low quality public and private nonprofit colleges also saw their enrollments plummet over the same period. Almost all of the aggregate drop in enrollment is attributed to colleges in the bottom two-fifths of the student outcome distribution. These missing students, how about maybe you shouldn’t have gone to school, but that’s where you could get into, maybe you shouldn’t have gone to college.

It’s not a missed opportunity. Maybe just maybe you dodged a bullet. I’m just saying. Again, these these places they’re called libraries to and YouTube and places where you can educate yourself and get yourself a degree. Again, that’s one of my favorite lines from Goodwill hunting. When Will is arguing with the hoity toity, you know, ponytailed.

a grad student there from Harvard and he just wasted in the argument and talked about how he got his degree with a library card. Anyway, meanwhile, while these weaker schools fall by the wayside, higher quality institutions, they’ve expanded. Institutions in the top fifth of student outcomes grew by 8%.

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between 2010 and 2023. He talked about Texas A &M. Texas A &M in 2010 had 40,000 undergraduates. They’re now at over 60,000 graduates. Students start to learn. Choosing colleges that offer better prospects and sometimes just don’t go. There’s not a good option available. Also,

Kids are wisening up. High-wage majors are becoming more popular. In 2023, colleges awarded three times as many bachelor’s degrees in computer science as in 2010. Nursing degree, conferrals rose 91 % over the same period. Engineering gained 63%. Interest in lower earning majors waned. Again, I saw this firsthand. My eldest son, Providence, they built a brand

new massive nursing school. The numbers add up. Okay. I think Langone Health is paying starting nurses 150 grand a year in and around the New York area. Okay. Starting. Sorry. Again, make sense. You have to do a whole return on investment analysis with your kids. I had this conversation the other day and again, came out of retirement.

Short term retirement short just just a few years Back coaching youth lacrosse again speaking parent Listen your kid my kid. he’s gonna graduate he wants to play College lacrosse, okay Great, I explained I said you use that Advantage to get you in the best possible school possible the highest possible degree what?

What does your kid want to study? Why do they want to go to school? And better not be just to play lacrosse. I want to get involved in finance and business. Okay. What are they looking at? Well, such and such D1 school, not a high level academic school, but not a high level academic school. Well, but yeah, we’ll just say they want my kid and it’s D1. Other options. Well, D3 schools in

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The Nescahk.

Are you kidding me? You go to the D3 school in the Nescahk. You’re talking Williams, Amherst, Connecticut College, Bowdoin. These are outstanding. These are outstanding institutions. One of the top academic conferences in the country. Your kid’s gonna go there. He’s gonna be set. He’ll be set. They’re recruiting there, okay?

Tufted finance degrees, unless you’re going to a top tier school, I’m telling you.

You’re gonna have a very, very difficult time finding a job. Again, you have to see the train. You have to look a little bit further down the line. Why are you going to school? What am I gonna spend? What type of degree? All of these things have to be factored in. Now again, if the kid said, okay, I wanted to be pre-med, well, you you…

Handle you do your pre-med requirements at any school and you do well at the MCAT you’re gonna go to med school It’s different it all depends on what you want to study what you want to do There’s a myriad of different things, but the sooner people wisen up to the racket that it is The better off you are going to be for crying out loud you now even you know in certain fields You’ve even got top tech companies that are looking to you know, almost educate kids

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in certain fields and train them right out of high school. You gotta kinda stay in your lane.

to summary, every kid should go to college. And the sooner you realize it, better off you’re gonna be. Now listen, and I’ve said this before, you got the money as a parent, you got the money as your parent, and your kid wants to go to school and you want it basically pay for it, okay. Just don’t put your kid in the deck.

Don’t put your kid into debt for a degree that wasn’t worth it, that they’re not gonna be able to pay for, that they’re gonna leave school and not, I mean, not know what to do with their lives. Oh my God, I’m 21 and I’m six figures in debt and I’m having a difficult time finding a job. Don’t do that. I don’t care what sticker they’re gonna put on the back of your car. Watchdog on Wall Street.

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