In Colorado, what is higher education worth? The value is clearer for some degrees than others.
The Colorado Sun
The mountain of student debt that many college graduates now face has state policymakers asking a question that was once viewed as a no-brainer: Given the rising cost of tuition, is a college degree still worth the price of admission?
The answer, according to the Colorado Department of Higher Education, is yes — with a critical caveat: some degrees are worth significantly more than others.
Gov. Jared Polis, at a news conference at the Colorado Capitol on Tuesday, unveiled the department’s first “return on investment” report, an annual cost-benefit analysis requested by the legislature in 2018.
“The good news is, higher education is a good investment — no matter what field you choose,” Polis said.
The bad news? For some fields, the monetary value of that investment is murky. And a Colorado Sun analysis found that roughly half of Colorado students are paying for four-year degrees in fields that pay less than they could make with a one-year technical certificate or two-year degree.
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