Opportunity
Higher Education Cost and Value
College costs have outpaced inflation for decades, and millions of Americans now carry student debt for degrees that did not deliver the career they expected. Whether college is still worth it is a question more families are asking, not fewer.
A generation ago, the advice was simple: go to college, take on some debt if you must, and you would come out ahead. Millions of Americans followed that advice and are glad they did. Millions of others followed the same advice and now carry payments for a degree that never translated into the job or the income they were promised, in a job market that increasingly asks for a credential just to screen applicants for jobs that never required one before.
The cost of that promise has grown faster than almost anything else American families buy. Tuition, room, and board at many schools have far outpaced overall inflation for forty years, and total student debt now exceeds a trillion dollars, held by people ranging from new graduates to retirees still paying off their own education or their children's. At the same time, employers in skilled trades, health care, and technical fields report real shortages of workers, many of whom would have earned more, sooner, and with less debt by choosing a different path.
Concerns that cross the aisle
Some Americans focus on the price itself: universities that have expanded administration and amenities faster than instruction, propped up by a river of federal loan dollars that removed much of the pressure to hold down cost. Others focus on access and outcomes: first-generation and lower-income students who take on the most debt relative to their resources and benefit least when a degree does not pay off. Both diagnoses point to a system that has stopped serving the students it is supposed to serve.
Why this belongs on a common agenda
A functioning path to opportunity should not require gambling a decade of income on a credential of uncertain value. This affects rural and urban families, red and blue states, and young people whether or not they ever set foot on a campus.
What we ask of members
Common Ground does not prescribe a specific debt relief or free college policy. We ask members to judge higher education by outcomes, not prestige alone, to support real information about what graduates of a given program actually earn, and to treat trade and technical paths as equally dignified choices rather than a fallback for students who could not get into college.
Civic principles
How we approach the topic, before any policy.
A credential should be judged by what it leads to
The value of an education is not the diploma itself but what it opens up afterward. We ask about completion rates, debt loads, and post-graduation earnings for a specific program, not the reputation of the institution in the abstract.
Every path deserves dignity
A four-year degree, a technical certification, an apprenticeship, and military service are all legitimate routes into a stable working life. We refuse to treat any of them as the automatic default or the automatic fallback.
Cost and value are separate questions that get conflated
A program can be expensive and worth it, or cheap and worthless, and everything in between. We evaluate price and outcome together rather than assuming one guarantees the other.
Where agreement stands
- Broad agreement
College costs have risen faster than families can keep up with
There is broad recognition across the political spectrum that tuition and associated costs have grown far faster than household income or general inflation for decades, squeezing families regardless of political affiliation.
- Broad agreement
Students deserve clear information about debt and outcomes before enrolling
Nearly everyone agrees that prospective students should be able to see, before taking on debt, what graduates of a specific program typically earn and how much they borrowed to get there. Disagreement centers on how to build and enforce such a system, not on whether it should exist.
- Emerging agreement
Trade and technical education should be funded and promoted on par with four-year degrees
Support has grown across the spectrum for directing more public investment and high school guidance toward apprenticeships and technical certifications rather than treating a four-year degree as the only respectable outcome of a good education. Implementation and funding sources remain under discussion.
- Contested
Whether and how to forgive existing student debt
Some Americans support broad or targeted cancellation of existing student debt, arguing borrowers were sold a bad deal by a system with weak guardrails and deserve relief. Others believe forgiveness is unfair to those who repaid their loans or never borrowed, and that it does nothing to fix the underlying cost problem for the next generation of students. Both sides want a fairer system going forward; they disagree sharply about what fairness requires for debt already incurred.
- Emerging agreement
For-profit colleges with poor outcomes deserve tighter oversight
Concern about for-profit schools that leave students with significant debt and a credential employers do not value has drawn attention from officials in both parties over multiple administrations, particularly when taxpayer-backed loans are financing the enrollment. Even Americans who otherwise disagree about the role of government in higher education tend to agree that federal aid should not flow to programs that reliably fail to deliver.
- Contested
Whether the value of a broad liberal arts education is being lost to narrow vocational training
Some Americans believe rising costs and uncertain job markets mean higher education should focus tightly on the specific skills employers are hiring for, and that a broad course of study is a luxury few families can afford to gamble on anymore. Others believe an education aimed only at a first job leaves graduates without the critical thinking, writing, and civic literacy that serve them across a lifetime of changing careers, and that narrowing the curriculum trades a durable good for a short-term one. Both sides want graduates who can support themselves; they disagree about what kind of education actually gets them there.
Open questions
We state the tension honestly and do not pretend to resolve it.
Should colleges bear financial responsibility when their graduates cannot repay their loans?
Proposals to make institutions share the risk of loans that go unpaid could pressure schools to control costs and improve outcomes, but could also cause some schools to stop admitting the riskier, often lower-income students most likely to default.
Is the four-year degree overvalued relative to other credentials, and if so, why has that been so slow to change?
Employer job postings and hiring practices still favor four-year degrees for many roles that do not clearly require the skills one, even as employers say they struggle to fill skilled trade positions. Changing entrenched hiring habits may be harder than changing the underlying facts about value.
Who should pay for higher education: students, taxpayers, employers, or some mix, and in what proportion?
Every funding model shifts cost somewhere. Free or heavily subsidized public college shifts cost to taxpayers broadly; income-based loans shift it to the individual student; employer-sponsored education ties workers to specific companies. No arrangement is free of tradeoffs.
Has the availability of federal student loans itself helped drive tuition higher?
Some economists argue that when the government makes borrowing widely available regardless of a program's cost or outcomes, colleges face less pressure to hold down price because students can simply borrow more. Others find little evidence that loan availability is a major driver of tuition, pointing instead to administrative growth, amenities competition, and state disinvestment in public universities. Untangling cause from correlation here has real consequences for whether restricting loans would help or just make college less accessible.
How should the growth in administrative and student-support staff be weighed against complaints that it drives up cost?
Colleges have added staff in areas like advising, mental health services, disability accommodations, and career counseling, which many students and parents say they genuinely need and use. At the same time, administrative growth has outpaced growth in faculty at many schools and is a frequently cited driver of rising tuition. Whether this growth reflects necessary support or unnecessary overhead often depends on which office a given family has needed to call.