While millions of students continue to take on billions in debt to attend higher education in America, one economist is reminding everyone to treat paying for college like any other investment.
“We’ve been telling everyone college is the golden ticket, it's the springboard to whatever you want in life,” Beth Akers, author of ‘Making College Pay,' told Yahoo Finance Live (video above). “Not really — it’s an investment, and like any other investment you need to make critical decisions and use economics to make sure that you’re making a choice that’s going to pay off for you.”
One thing is clear: Going to college is generally expensive. The average cost of total tuition, fees, room and board rates charged for full-time undergraduate students in degree-granting institutions in the U.S. has increased more than two times the general U.S. inflation rate in the last 40 years.
Akers advised that prospective students do a cost-benefit analysis to decide where to go to college and, importantly, what to study. To that end, she recommended students make use of the Department of Education's (ED) College Scorecard website.
A student reads on the campus of Columbia University in New York. REUTERS/Mike Segar
