In the United States, the costs of a college education outweigh the benefits

Thanks for accepting. I'd like to start off by outlining a framework for this debate. There are a few key factors that need to be looked at: 1) The cost to the individual 2) The benefit to the individual 3) The cost to the majority 4) The benefit to the majority In any effective cost/benefit analysis, the cost or benefit to the majority is always carries more impact than the cost for benefit to the individual. Thus, for framework of this debate, the Pro must prove that the costs outweigh the benefits for the majority of the U.S populace, and the Con must prove that the benefits outweigh the costs for the majority of the U.S populace. With that, here are my contentions: 1. College does not benefit the majority The Bureau of Labor Statistics sheds some light on the amount of students who attend college, and from that, the amount who actually graduate. According to a BLS study in 2010[1], 68% of high school graduates attended college. According to this same study, 45% of those who enrolled in college didn’t even graduate. From that, we can conclude that 62.6% of the students that graduate from high school did not receive a college degree, whether they dropped out or didn’t even attend in the first place. Right off the bat, that's more than half of the U.S population who do not receive individual benefits from a college education, whether the reason be dropping out of college or not even attending at all. Although that doesn't seem like a lot, it's enough to prove a point. The Labor Department’s American Community Survey[2] tells us of another 22% of college graduates that are currently employed at a job that doesn't even require a degree. All of this points to the idea that all of the individual benefits that the Con is sure to point out aren't actually obtained by the majority of the U.S populace. 2. College contributes towards the growing income gap in the U.S Bryan Caplan, a professor of economics at the George Mason University, says that “From a moral point of view, far too many students are going to college – just as far too many people stand up at concerts”[3]. This analogy compares going to college with standing up at a concert: Sure, doing so will benefit you individually, there's no denying that, but by doing so you are effectively hindering the people around you. The more people that stand up at concerts, the more it hinders everyone there, just as the more people who attend college, the more it hinders the U.S populace, which includes both people who chose to attend college, and those who did not. According to the Center for the Study of Democracy in 2007[4], from 1973 to 2005, wages of those in the 90th percentile – where most people have college or advanced degrees – rose by 30 percent or more, and among this top 10 percent, the growth was heavily concentrated in the top 1%, which includes venture capitalists, corporate attorneys, and CEOs. In contrast, at the 50th percentile and below, where many people have at most a high school diploma, real wages rose by only 5 to 10 percent. Although there isn't a causal relationship between the growing income gap and college education, these statistics still show an increasing gap between the payment of a blue collar worker and a white collar worker. This means that people who can’t afford college, people who drop out or fail college, or even people who don’t want to go to college are punished, and in most cases, the act that they’re being punished for is completely out of their control. 3. College contributes to the destruction of the U.S health care system The U.S is infamous for its astronomical health care prices, and semi-infamous for the high cost of a decent college education. Is it a coincidence that a medical school education is one of the most expensive educations that one can receive, but the potential profit from that career path is exponentially higher? I think not. The Association of American Medical Colleges reports that tuition rates alone for first year students averaged at $50,000 a year[5]. This doesn’t include room and board, textbooks, and other expenses, and it also doesn’t include graduate school. A study done by the American Medical Association reported that the average educational debt of indebted graduates of the class of 2010 was $157,944[6]. From the same study, they found that 78 percent of graduates have debt of at least $100,000, 42 percent of graduates have a debt of at least $150,000, and 85 percent of graduating medical students carry outstanding loans. In fact, the average amount of time that it takes for a graduated medical student to pay off his or her debts acquired from med school is 11 years. It's no wonder why health care costs are so high, how else would these students pay off their loans? The AMA states that tuition fee is the largest contributor towards the astronomically high price of health care by saying "Medical education debt is driven by rising tuition. AAMC data show that median private medical school tuition and fees increased by 50 percent (in real dollars) in the 20 years between 1984 and 2004. Median public medical school tuition and fees increased by 133 percent over the same time period. Other recent 20-year periods show similar trends." What problems does this cause for our health care system? Reuters ranks the United States as the most expensive health care in the world[7], which is largely due to the debt accumulated by medical students and their need to pay it off. The cost of U.S health care has led to 16.7% of the U.S population who are completely uninsured because they can’t afford health care, according to the U.S Census Bureau in 2009[8]. This lack of insurance leads to the unnecessary deaths of 18 thousand people per year according to the U.S Institute of Medicine. Those who are insured still have trouble paying the costs of the health care they receive. A 2001 study in five states found that medical debt contributed to 46.2% of all personal bankruptcies and in 2007, 62.1% of filers for bankruptcies claimed high medical expenses. Having the most expensive health care in the world wouldn’t be so bad if it was also the best, but that’s not the case either. The World Health Organization ranks the United States as having the 37th most effective health care out of the 191 countries that were analyzed. So if you’re somehow able to afford health care, it’s still not even the best you can get, despite its outrageously high cost. To summarize, college education in the United States does not benefit the majority, it contributes towards an increasing income gap between blue and white collar workers, and it leads to the increasing of price in the already ridiculously overpriced private health care in the U.S. Given these contentions, I affirm. 1. http://www.bls.gov... 2. http://www.census.gov... 3. http://chronicle.com... 4. http://www.frbsf.org... 5. http://services.aamc.org... 6. http://www.ama-assn.org...? 7. http://www.reuters.com... 8. Unfortunately, this isn't available online anymore, so here's the most recent version, it gives the same information: http://www.census.gov...