Why College Is Still Worth It, Even With Today’s Price Tag
I work with a lot of high school students here in Charlotte, and more and more of the conversations I am having with their parents sound like this:
“Is there even any point in sending my kid to college if they are just going to graduate buried in debt?”
“I keep seeing people online saying college is a bad investment. I do not want to throw away money or set my child up for a financial mess.”
They raise valid concerns. College is expensive. Headlines about debt are loud. There are successful people who did not go to college, and there are real graduates who are struggling.
I have spent a lot of time digging into the research, including work from economists at the Brookings Institution, and I sit in living rooms every week with families trying to sort this out in real time. After reading, tutoring, teaching, and watching my students go off to college and into the workforce, here is the conviction I keep coming back to:
Even with today’s prices, deciding your child should skip college entirely because of cost is still a major, damaging overreaction.
Let me be clear. Trade schools, apprenticeships, and certifications are real and valuable paths, and they will continue to be. This is not an attack on those options. But most of the students I work with, both in my tutoring and in the schools where I teach in Charlotte, are college-bound. If that is your world, this article is for you.
Cost Panic vs The Bigger Picture
The “college is too expensive to be worth it” story feels very convincing right now. You see scary loan balances on social media. You hear about graduates living with their parents because they cannot get ahead. You see sticker prices at private schools that look like monopoly money.
Here is what the data actually says.
A recent Brookings study linked real college records with credit data and asked a simple question: when you take student loan payments into account, is college still worth it financially? They found that degree holders still outearn similar people who started but did not complete a degree by about eight thousand dollars per year on average, even after loan payments.
Another Brookings analysis on college affordability debates points out that the financial return to a bachelor’s degree has not collapsed the way public conversation often suggests. Over most of their careers, college graduates still earn roughly two to three times as much as workers with only a high school diploma.
In other words, the average graduate is still coming out ahead. The “college premium” is very much alive.
That does not mean every program at every school is a good deal. It does not mean every student should borrow any amount for any degree. But it does mean that the loudest “college is not worth it anymore” takes are leaving out a very important part of the story.
Sticker Price vs. What Families Actually Pay
Part of the anxiety comes from confusing sticker price with what students actually pay.
Economist Phillip Levine at Brookings has shown that when you look past headline tuition and focus on net price – what families pay after grants and scholarships – the story is more complicated than “everything is shooting through the roof.” Net prices at many four-year colleges have risen much more slowly than sticker prices and have even fallen in inflation-adjusted terms for many students over the last decade.
At the same time, Sarah Reber and Katharine Meyer, also at Brookings, point out that cost and value are often incredibly opaque for families. Students are asked to make one of the biggest financial decisions of their lives using financial aid letters and price tools that are confusing and sometimes incomplete. They argue that families need better transparency and better guides, not just more scary numbers.
I see that confusion up close.
Families look at a private school with an eighty thousand dollar sticker price and assume that will be their bill, without realizing that their actual net price might be far lower after merit aid and need-based aid, or that there might be an in-state public option offering serious value that they have not even considered. On the other side, some families underestimate costs and borrow far more than is wise because no one sat down and walked them through the full picture.
So yes, the system is messy. Yes, cost is real. That is exactly why the answer is not to throw up our hands and write college off. The answer is to plan, ask hard questions, and be strategic.
What College Is Actually For
Another reason parents get discouraged is that we have quietly narrowed the purpose of college to “buying a credential for a job.”
If you think of college as a very expensive, four-year ticket to a specific office chair, it is easy to question the value. If the chair feels uncertain, why buy the ticket?
But anyone who has actually walked a student through four years of serious college knows that the real benefits are much deeper than a line on a resume. College, at its best, is where students:
Learn to read hard material and not give up.
Learn to write arguments that hold up.
Learn to sit with ideas they dislike and still think clearly.
Learn to wrestle with data instead of just accepting a headline.
Learn how to manage their own time, their own projects, and their own stress.
Learn how to talk to professors, employers, and peers as adults.
Learn who they are when life is no longer structured for them.
These are the very normal, very human skills that employers still list at the top of their wish lists. When companies and career centers survey hiring managers, they consistently hear the same themes: critical thinking, clear communication, teamwork, ethics, reliability, leadership potential.
In my own work as a tutor and as a teacher here in Charlotte, I see this up close. The students who thrive are not necessarily the ones with the highest test scores. They are the ones who know how to think for themselves, take responsibility, and keep going when things are not easy.
College, chosen and used wisely, is still one of the best environments for that kind of growth.
The Human Advantage: Skills That Make College Worth It
In an earlier blog post, I outlined ten core human skills that I believe every student should be investing in:
Deep reading and writing
Numeracy and data sense
Truth-seeking and critical thinking
Metacognition: learning how to learn
Executive function: focus, planning, follow-through
Communication, rhetoric, and leadership
Creativity and taste
Integrity and character
Interpersonal skills and empathy
Collaboration and group problem-solving
No tool, no shortcut, and no credential can genuinely possess these on its own. They belong to people.
You can certainly begin building these skills in high school, in church, at work, and through life. But college, when approached intentionally, gives students four concentrated years to grow them: in seminars, in labs, in office hours, in group projects, in leadership roles, and in the quiet grind of learning something that does not come easily.
This, to me, is the heart of why college is still worth fighting for. It is one of the few remaining spaces in our culture that is explicitly set up for long-term intellectual and personal formation, not just short-term performance.
A Concrete Example: UNC Chapel Hill and Real Value
Let me make this more concrete for my North Carolina families.
UNC Chapel Hill, my alma mater, is one of the best values in higher education. For 2025–26, in-state undergraduate tuition is just over seven thousand dollars per year, with required fees a little over two thousand, for a total of roughly nine thousand dollars before housing, food, and other living expenses.
When you factor in a realistic cost of attendance that includes housing, food, books, and personal expenses, UNC estimates the total in-state budget at around twenty seven to twenty eight thousand dollars a year, depending on living situation.
That is not pocket change. But for the level of education, mentorship, and opportunity UNC offers, it is an unusually strong deal in today’s market, especially when you consider that in-state tuition has been held flat for several years in a row.
And the broader UNC system includes multiple campuses that offer serious academic quality at prices that are far more reasonable than the national headlines might lead you to believe.
One legitimate worry I hear often is cost. That is exactly why part of what I do with students and families is help them get into the right schools with a plan for scholarships and affordability. College is more expensive than it used to be, so I work closely with my students on things like building a strong academic profile, targeting merit aid, writing competitive scholarship essays, and applying strategically to schools where they have a real shot at substantial aid or even a full ride.
The goal is not simply to go to college. The goal is to go to college in a way that does not leave them crushed by student debt down the road.
How I Think About Cost With Families
When I sit down with a family to talk about college costs, here is the kind of conversation we have:
We look at the difference between sticker price and net price.
We identify in-state options and honors programs that punch above their weight.
We talk honestly about what the family can contribute without jeopardizing their own financial stability.
We look at merit-based and need-based scholarships the student could realistically compete for, and what it would take to be competitive.
We talk through majors and programs in terms of both interest and likely earnings, without reducing the student to a salary number.
We sketch out what borrowing would look like over time, and what a reasonable loan payment would be relative to realistic entry-level earnings.
What I do not want is for a family to make a panicked decision based on a headline or a viral horror story.
Brookings researchers like Reber, Meyer, and Levine are all basically saying the same thing in different ways: the decision is too important and too complex to be made on vibes and sticker prices alone. Families need clearer information and wise guides.
That is part of why I care so much about this as a tutor. I am not just helping students through calculus or the SAT. I am helping them and their parents navigate life-shaping decisions with as much clarity as possible.
My Encouragement to Parents
You see tuition numbers that make you sweat. You see debt horror stories. You see people on the internet telling kids to skip college, start a business at 18, or learn a trade and never look back.
Here is my encouragement.
Do not let fear and cynicism about cost scare your child away from college. Let that fear push you toward being more intentional about what college is for and how you will pay for it.
Ask better questions:
Where will my child be pushed to read and think deeply, not just coast?
Where will professors actually know their name?
Where will they be surrounded by peers who care about something more than the next shortcut?
Where will they have chances to practice the ten core human skills in real, messy life, not just in a classroom?
That is what I care about when I tutor and teach students in some of the best private schools in Charlotte. Beyond just helping them get higher test scores, my goal is to help them become thinkers and leaders who can walk into an uncertain future without handing their agency to panic, headlines, or shortcuts.
College will continue to be debated. Prices will continue to be argued over. Policy will continue to shift.
But college, chosen and used wisely, is still one of the best places for your child to become the kind of human that no trend and no tool can ever truly replace.
