The prevailing dialogue in higher education has been centered on its “ROI” (return on investment). In these conversations, it is a given that “the return” has to be monetary. Can the true value of higher education simply be boiled down to money in an age of “life-maxxing” and overoptimization? Or are there intangible benefits that higher education can, and should, provide? The debate about education’s purpose has been raging since Plato’s times (c. 387 BCE). And we know this because someone once had a classics or philosophy department or decided to major in history. Then, as in now, the return on an education is broad and the market continues to value the credential, if not the journey.
Higher Ed Dive’s report on the most recent Gallup survey shows skepticism in the importance of education, “The share of surveyed Americans who think a college education is “very important” has hit a new all-time low — 31% — since Gallup started asking the question in 1978, according to new data from the polling organization. The percentage of those who rated college as very important has collapsed since 2013, when Gallup registered a high of 70% of respondents.” The size of the decline is just as notable as hitting the low. The authors at Gallup speculate that this is likely due to cost concerns, “just 12% of U.S. adults say they consider a four-year college education affordable.” If you’re going to get a monetary return you make it harder to balance the books when the price of attendance is high.
Amazingly, the debate over the cost of education is also nearly 2,500 years old, Plato’s dialogue captures the Sophist, Protagoras’s philosophy for tuition in response to doubts about value, “Therefore I have introduced a practice regarding my fees: when anyone has had lessons from me, if he likes he pays the sum that I ask; if not, he goes into a temple, states on oath what he considers the lessons to be worth, and deposits that amount.” And just as then, the value discussion is there because parents and candidates continue to seek out education, as Forbes noted, “The collapse in enthusiasm for college hasn’t produced a comparable decline in demand. Parents still overwhelmingly want education beyond high school for their children, college enrollment is growing and applications continue to rise. The disconnect suggests Americans may not be giving up on college so much as becoming more skeptical about what it costs—and more demanding about what they get in return.” And that word “return” continues to be ill defined.
As we have written about several times, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1947 piece, “The Purpose of Education” in the Maroon Tiger argues for a balance in education between efficiency (a utilitarian read) and morality (character), an echo to the works of Aristotle, who stated, “…to seek for utility everywhere is entirely unsuited to men that are great-souled and free.” This importance of balance is still underappreciated. In a UK survey, 1,000 past students between the ages of 21 and 36, including some with the highest paying jobs, still reported regret about their degrees. Regret does not track pay. Finding purpose alongside remuneration is part of the collegiate experience. And our definition of “return” has to broaden to encompass this.
Caught in the affordability conversation, along with a broadside of federal policies, academia has had moments of self-reflection and the results are telling. Cornell, Yale, Vanderbilt, and Washington University in St. Louis all ran self-studies about their delivery of education. As reported by The Chronicle of Higher Education, “The Cornell and Yale reports both discuss cost, the opacity of their admissions processes, and ‘cancel culture’ on campuses.” The institutions agree that return is not just a paycheck, and certainly shouldn’t be judged on the first paycheck, but they disagree about what the university is for. The institutions seek to meet the short-term demands of their constituencies while continuing to define, but more often defend their primary missions.
On the defense side, nothing is more salient than the short-term value of a degree as the definition of “return” particularly as headlines are focused on the unemployment rate of recent college graduates, particularly in fields where the narrative is that AI has eaten the jobs. As an article from Fortune identifies, “Graduates who majored in computer science and other AI-exposed fields are increasingly missing out on the jobs they trained for, and a chunk of them are landing behind restaurant counters and retail registers instead, according to two Census Bureau papers. … An April 2026 Census paper tracked matched employer-employee records and found that hiring of workers ages 22 to 24 fell sharply in the industries most exposed to AI, while hiring in less-exposed industries held steady.”
It’s always been difficult to project the long-term benefits of our actions. We have parables, like the Little Red Hen to remind us at a young age of the importance of hard work and delayed gratification. And we have abdicated our rationality to the fears of our AI futures. If we believe in the trends, the long-term value of a university education will pay out. The Education Data Initiative has statistics that show an average 560%+ (1,040% median) return of a college degree over a lifetime, but the break-even point is at year 12 for most. So if your projected lifespan is over 34 years old, then college should be worth the investment. Having doubtful 18 year olds and their parents thinking about a decade of being in the red before benefiting in their investment is the challenge.
We’ve been debating the ROI of education for nearly 2,500 years, so we don’t expect this latest questioning to resolve itself quickly or with any finality. As we continue to work to improve the outcomes of our higher education institutions, we should ask ourselves, what the definition of “return” is to us. Along with whose return it is, over what time, and with what measurement? As with many of our optimizations, there will inevitably be unintended consequences, setting our goal as numbers in a bank statement or a lifetime of fulfillment and purpose, or a balance of the two, will develop a different educational system and power a society that matches.
