 Is College a Worthwhile Investment?Annual Review of Economics, 2015, vol. 7, issue 1, 519-555 Abstract: This article surveys the existing evidence on the return to a college education and offers new calculations based on recent data. We focus on an individual's decision and outline the standard conceptual framework used by economists to analyze investments in education. We then compare alternative estimates of the value of a college education in the literature and reconcile them with our own preferred estimates. We also conduct a selective review of the literature seeking to estimate the causal effects of college on pecuniary and nonpecuniary outcomes. Finally, we provide additional calculations showing the heterogeneity in returns to college across certain institutional and demographic characteristics, review the related academic literature, and discuss the risk associated with a college investment. We conclude that college is certainly a worthwhile investment on average and likely worthwhile for many subgroups, although not necessarily for everyone. Keywords: human capital; rate of return; postsecondary schooling (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:anr:reveco:v:7:y:2015:p:519-555 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article More articles in Annual Review of Economics from Annual Reviews Annual Reviews 4139 El Camino Way Palo Alto, CA 94306, USA. |
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