The Toyota Corolla Theory of College
Over recent decades, the price of higher-education tuition has risen faster than costs in any other major consumer category, outpacing even medical care and housing. Despite that, for a while, applications kept flooding in—and for good reason: College was still worth it. As the MIT economist David Autor argued in 2014, “the real lifetime earnings premium to college education has likely never been higher.”
Yet today, the value of college is slipping in Americans’ eyes. Fifty-six percent of respondents to a said a four-year degree was a “bad bet.” Enrollment has been declining since its 2010 —a change explained partly by the shrinking pool of 18-year-olds but also by high-school students simply opting out. From 2018 to 2021, the proportion of high-school graduates entering college by 7 percentage points—a decline driven by in particular.
