The costs of a college education outweigh the benefits

My refutations:Monetary BenefitsMy opponent comes up with a number similar to that cited by collegeboard, of roughly 1 million more dollars being earned by those holding bachelors degrees, as opposed to those holding high school diplomas. However, my opponent's calculations fail to take a variety of other factors into account. The letter from Charles Miller, cited in my "Benefits" section, shows one of the issues: "The report assumes a student will finish college in four years. Actually, the typical time to graduation is closer to six years in higher education today. The addition of two extra years of college costs and two less years of earnings makes a significant difference. " My opponent also fails to take into account the fact that tuition is financed by student loans, which are difficult to pay off. As I already mentioned, the average college graduate will be unable to pay off their debt until age 33. Given my opponent's estimates, this age should be 23.5 years, or after 1 and a half years of earnings. My opponent's number for the yearly cost of college also should not be considered, as he only included the price of public institutions. According to the fact sheet that he cites, the yearly cost of all four year institutions is $20,986. The income data which is cited by my opponent is also from the 2000 census, which is far too outdated. To repeat the quote used in my "benefits" section: "Properly using the present value of the lifetime earnings, adjusted for the cost of going to college and the difference in the number of working years. .. calculated and the three percent discount rate used in the report produces a lifetime earnings differential of only $279,893 for a bachelors degree versus a high school degree. "At the end of this round, I will be showing another major issue with my opponent's case in general which works to farther refute this monetary point. Social BenefitsThe majority of societal benefits cited by my opponent are not gained solely through a college education. An individual must learn to live on their own even if they don't go to college. Other benefits which my opponent brings up, mostly social skills, aren't as beneficial as one might think. Students already go through 12 years of school to gain social skills. The additional four years, while it may be beneficial, are by no means required. Rather, students should be putting their social skills to the test in the real world. Simply put, real world experiences outweigh college experiences. My opponent also briefly mentions "job connections. " In this case, the 4-6 years of employment and job experience gives far better job connections than the college experience. The overall impact of this point is very small, and can be easily countered by weighing it against the arguments I brought up. Opportunities My opponent is attempting to decrease the impact of my risk point. "Fear of failing" is not an adequate phrase. The fear is of 54% chance to drop out, and to not gain any of the benefits from a college degree. The high default risk, almost 20%, is far too large of a risk for the average student to take. I'd also like to state that student loan debt cannot be forgiven through bankruptcy. Defaulting on such debt is virtually a guarantee to have your wages garnished, to suffer an incredibly large drop in your credit, to have tax returns offset, and to be ineligible for future federal employment. My opponent also asks if "the value of a college education is dropping - then how worthless is not even having one to begin with then? " The reason why the value of a college education is dropping, largely in respect to employment opportunities, is because more and more individuals are graduating college, while job growth simply cannot keep up. This does not decrease the value of not going to college. My opponent then brings up job sector growth. There is a large issue with the statistic my opponent brings up: It is focused on percentage increases. Meaning an industry which goes from 100,000 to 200,000 jobs would be said to have higher growth than an industry which goes from 5 million to 9 million. The study which I cited in round one focuses on the actual number of jobs created. Among the top 10 growing jobs, only one requires a bachelors degree, and among the top 20, only 4 do. Problem With Pro-College StudiesThis section is aimed at employment and income prospects. Any study which brings up the benefits of a college education must show that these benefits can be obtained by recent graduates. For this reason, the quote "individuals with only a high school diploma were twice as likely to be unemployed as those holding bachelor’s degrees" cannot be considered because it includes individuals who graduated college 20-30 years ago, when the benefits of a college education were much larger. College graduates were hit especially hard by the recession: the previous unemployment rate of 5.8% has nearly doubled to 9.2%. "That means recent grads have about the same level of unemployment as the general population. "The same goes for future earnings. Studies cannot include individuals who have already held a college degree for 20+ years, and already achieved a large income. This is due to the fact that the rising costs prevent current graduates from reaching such future earnings. Effectively, recent graduates are no longer able to obtain the employment and income benefits that past graduates have. Therefore, studies which show the benefits achieved by past graduates do not show that recent college graduates will obtain such benefits. Causation Versus CorrelationWhile this may be a generic argument, it is important to consider in this round. What's important to note is that college's tend to enroll students who are already geared toward success. Students who graduate with high gpas will, more often than not, continue in to college. However, as high school gpa is also correlated to future earnings, this skews statistics which report on the earnings of college graduates. This rebuttal can be summed up as follows: Any student which meets the requirements to go to college will, on average, earn more than the average high-school diploma holder, regardless of whether or not they attend college. This does not completely negate con's future earnings statistics. It is true that college graduates will have higher incomes. However, one must always keep in mind that, due to what I described above, the numbers will always be a couple thousand dollars lower than what is cited. The Overall Chance of Any BenefitsThis relates to my rebuttal against "opportunities," yet is large enough to deserve its own section. The overall chance of achieving these benefits is very low. The 54% drop out rate means that one is more likely to not receive any of these benefits, and instead be faced with massive student loan debt. The 20% default rate means that even if one does manage to beat the odds and graduate they will not receive any of the benefits. Instead, they will receive massive wage garnishments and federal benefits being offset. Even if one can somehow manage to graduate and not default on their student loan debt, they will more likely than not be put into a job that doesn't even require a college degree. Thus, even if my opponent manages to prove that the monetary benefits of college outweigh the monetary costs, voters must keep in mind that its extremely unlikely any college graduate will actually achieve these benefits. ConclusionCollege graduates only earn $279,000 more over the course of their lifetime, not $890,000. A college graduate is unlikely to actually obtain such lifetime earnings. There are very few social benefits of going to college. The large risks taken to obtain a college degree vastly outweigh the potential benefits. College graduates do not have a lower unemployment rate. Job potential for high school graduates is increasing.