Last month, Tom Foley, President of AICUP (The Association of Independent Colleges and Universities of Pennsylvania) and I wrote the following op-ed for PennLive in response to an earlier editorial they had published that presented some very misleading information. It made good points, but left out the most important details.

A college degree is still the best way to earn more over your lifetime.

Yes, there are some examples, like the one cited in the PennLive piece, where someone without a degree may have a higher base salary early in their career than those who have a college degree. But if money is your only measuring stick on the value of higher education, your best choice is still college. The return on investment of a college degree has never been greater.

According to repeated analyses by economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, a four-year degree generates an annual return of 14% over a 40-year career—that’s annual return. That means that a college degree will show a rate of return more than twice the rate than if you just put your college money into Dow futures four years ago, and five times the return for bonds, gold or real estate. If college were a stock, it would be the darling of Wall Street.

Bottom line: college grads are 3.5x as likely to improve their income and their “position in life” than those who don’t get the chance to go to college.

And college isn’t just about making more money. On top of those immense economic benefits, there are also societal benefits to a college degree. College graduates volunteer twice as often for local causes, donate 3.5x as much to local charities, are twice as likely to build a small business in their hometown, and 50% more likely to vote.

What families actually pay is the right measuring stick, not the sticker price

Although the price tag of college has risen significantly, institutional financial aid at independent nonprofit institutions has risen more. This is in direct contrast to the PennLive graphic attached to the editorial.

Had PennLive used net tuition and fees (what families actually pay) in its graphic, it would show that AICUP schools’ average net tuition has remained constant (non-inflation-adjusted) for the last 10 years (US Department of Education IPEDs data), averaging $13,057 in the 2020-21 academic year as compared to $13,022 in 2011-12–for the 90+% of students who receive financial-aid grants. If you factor in inflation, the actual cost to families at AICUP schools has gone down.

Here are some other important facts about Pennsylvania’s independent nonprofit colleges and universities:

• Independent nonprofit schools are embedded in 60 communities in PA. They generate $24B to our economy each year, employ over 195,000 people, and pay $1.1B in state/local taxes. These AICUP schools operate without any of the $1.4B in direct State institutional aid that goes to public higher education. They have been competing in the free market (against both publicly funded schools and out-of-state institutions) for an average of 137 years.
• Independent nonprofit schools provide 90% of student financial aid grants, far more than any other higher ed sector. AICUP schools provide 90% of all financial aid grants to first-year students, with the federal government contributing 7% and the state government (largely through PHEAA) 3%. Their competitive net tuition and generous aid policies are part of the reason that PA remains the second-best net importer of out-of-state students in the country.

At the end of the day, the average young person graduating high school today will have 17 jobs in five to six different professions. They will have to be lifelong learners to keep pace with the technology changes that hold so much sway over our daily lives and now occupations. A post-secondary education is still the best way to build skills and the kind of confidence (intellectual and otherwise) that will help you adapt to all that change.