Will College Pay Off?: A Guide to the Most Important Financial Decision You'll Ever Make

The college marketplace today is bewildering. Many of the new developments mirror what has happened in healthcare: costs continue to rise with prices all over the map depending where you go, a barrage of advertising making us aware of options we never knew existed (degrees like “sports broadcasting” are the equivalent of treatments for “restless leg” syndrome in medicine) while confusing us about the quality of schools and degrees. For-profit providers are muscling into the market, and the traditional not-for-profit colleges are acting like for-profits in their pursuit of dollars.

The major concern for parents facing the enormous costs of college may be whether different degrees will pay off in the form of a job for their child at graduation. Reports in the media offer no help. Stories about employers complaining that they can't get enough graduates with the right academic background are followed by others where recent grads struggle to find even unpaid internships.

Specialized career degrees designed to get graduates into jobs in a particular industry like hospitality or fields like counseling have exploded in part because of this concern and because of the very real fact that employers have become reluctant to train new hires. It is up to the student, and often their parents, to get those entry-level job skills now.