The Value of College for 80 Percent of High School Students is Not Worth the Price

WKBN 27 Youngstown (Ohio), which is owned by Nexstar Media Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: NXST),¹As of this post’s published date, NXST has an enterprise value of $12 billion. shared this post on Facebook:²Here’s the archived link to WKBN 27’s blog post.

Eastern Gateway Community College (EGCC)

I should know by now not to click on these click-bait posts whereby the intern or social media staffer leaves out the main piece of information (in this case the actual name of “a Youngstown community college” and why there were so many graduates) in order to drive traffic to a corporate website. Anyway, I was curious to know what community college WKBN’s anonymous social media person (or bot) was referring to, so I clicked the link to its website.³Yes, I know the name of the college is displayed in the image…but I didn’t see that until after the fact!

Don’t waste your time visiting WKBN’s recent website article,⁴Here’s WKBN’s archived article about Eastern Gateway Community College’s spring 2024 graduation. since it doesn’t provide any meaningful information besides the name of the community college, which is Eastern Gateway Community College (EGCC). However, I can recommend another article by WKBN about EGCC from November 2021 titled “Eastern Gateway Community College placed on temporary accredited probation.” And, if that’s not eye-opening enough, then consider the article by The Business Journal (Youngstown Publishing Co.) from October 2023 titled “Eastern Gateway’s Fall Enrollment Down About 50% from Last Year.” The Business Journal, which has much better reporters/editors/investigative journalists, goes on to state that enrollment fell from 30,285 in fall of 2022 to 15,300 in fall of 2023!

[Before you read further, I’ll bet anyone a lot of money that EGCC’s enrollment will plummet to zero by, say, next year. Any takers?]

Anyway, EGCC really is just a distressed regional two-year college because it targets and enrolls people from the tri-state area of Ohio, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania. But, here’s the most important thing to know about this taxpayer funded college, according to Inside Higher Ed:

Eastern Gateway Community College, a long-struggling Ohio institution, will close this fall after battling financial woes for over a year.

The university’s board of trustees approved a plan on Wednesday to shutter the college on Oct. 31. Courses will be held through the summer, with a graduation in August [2024].

Inside Higher Ed (May 17, 2024)

So, one should expect a robust number of graduates this summer, too, given the school is shuttering its doors! I’m sure WKBN’s social media person will post and applaud that as well (without disclosing the details of why…).

The Absurdity of College Tuition Prices

Given how absurdly expensive four-year colleges are today, trade schools and community colleges are some of the better financial alternatives for post-high school education and training. I don’t know enough about them to actually recommend them, though. Furthermore, in light of institutions such as EGCC, I’d be suspicious of them.

The best option for many (perhaps 80% of high school students) is to exit high school by one’s sophomore year or when one turns 16 years old. If one can be home schooled and leave school earlier (like The Amish do), then that’s the way to go for 80% of young adults.

Amish Schools and Education

Just to digress a bit, The Amish only require eight years of formal education.

The Amish believe strongly in education, but only provide formal education through the eighth grade. They are exempt from state compulsory attendance beyond the eighth grade based on religious principles. Schooling concentrates on the basic reading, writing and math skills, along with vocational training and socialization in Amish history and values.

Ohio Amish Country

Moreover, a few years ago, I participated in a couple of days of wood-working training, which included learning about wood species, performing basic math and fractions (especially regarding adding/subtracting various fractions related to measuring devices), and hypothetical safety scenarios.

The trainer gave a series of little quizzes over a two-day period. My cohort had a dozen people ranging in age from late teens (an Amish gal) to early retirement age. Most were in their mid- to late-twenties, though, and half had college degrees. The Amish girl and I were the outliers; she was the least educated (formally) and I was the most educated (master’s degree).

Nevertheless, there was a noticeable gap between the performance of everyone else and me and the Amish gal, especially when it got to performing basic math (this is elementary school stuff, by the way). We easily out-performed everyone else. Of course, I performed the best overall and in math. However, The Amish young lady was a very close second.

To take a broader perspective of this example, I worked with several Amish males, and many of them were better than I was at performing mental calculations of fractions, troubleshooting things, and other practical tasks. The bottom line is, their education system (not to mention apprenticeship programs) seems to be meaningfully better than our taxpayer funded public (and probably private) schooling system for preparing youth for employable and life skills, especially through the 8th grade.

What’s astonishing is that The Amish could send their kids to the local public school, which they actually help fund through mandatory property taxes, but choose to also fund their own private school system. I’ll save my explanation, which should be self-evident to most people (but probably is not), for a future post regarding why public schools (and so many other things for which We the People are forcibly taxed to fund) should be funded only through voluntary payments.

Would I Pay These Prices for College Today?

So, if I were as wise as I am today, would I be willing to work full-time while attending college full-time (or part-time) as a teenager and early twenty-something? In most cases, absolutely not.

I could have easily excelled in any of the jobs I had in my twenties to early thirties that “required” a B.Sc. degree and preferred an MBA. These jobs were in cost accounting, industrial engineering, and high finance (a Wall Street gig!) and not ones that required special licenses and/or education, such as jobs as a medical doctor/dentist; nurse; some engineering roles; lawyer; CPA accountant; etc.).

My energy, competitive drive, eagerness to self-educate, and abilities as a 16/17 year-old young man with practical skills in computer programming and math/calculus acquired through my junior year in high school would have been more than enough for me to compete among “the best-of-the-best,” as they say. Essentially, I was already overqualified for these jobs by the age of 17.

Tuition and Fees at Three different Colleges

Assuming one commutes from home/one’s own residence (meaning one doesn’t buy room and board from the college), here’s the full year tuition (32 credits per year) plus mandatory “fees” for three colleges/universities and how much one would need to earn in gross pay (before payroll and other income taxes, assuming 20% and 30% income tax brackets)…just to pay the annual basic tuition/fees:

2024 Annual Tuition/Fees

Sources for Tuition/Fees

Eastern Gateway Community College

Given it will be closing its doors, here is the archived link to Eastern Gateway Community College – tuition and fees 2024.

I added the per credit prices for tuition…

…to the per credit prices for the “student services fee” [You can’t make this stuff up!] to arrive at $167 per credit hour.

Youngstown State University

As for Youngstown State University, I also added all the various fees to arrive at $364 per credit hour.

These schools, no longer bastions of morals and ethics, are behaving like the airlines and other enterprises, adding extra fees for all sorts of things that were once part of the whole deal/package:

University of Notre Dame

Thank God the University of Notre Dame still operates with morals and ethics in being transparent with prospective students.

It actually does the opposite of the prior two taxpayer-funded schools by clearly stating the total amount for tuition (no bogus extra fees for the use of ND’s awesome technology, tutoring, fitness centers, jogging trails, churches, the Grotto, libraries, and whatnot!).⁵I think it does charge students for season tickets to attend the football games, but those are seriously discounted from face value. I went to all the home games! Furthermore, it then informs potential students of the hidden costs of attending college and suggests they budget for things like books (yes, this gets expensive), transportation, and personal expenses. The other schools conveniently don’t mention these costs.

That said, one needs to be sitting down before reading how much the annual tuition is at the great and beloved Notre Dame.⁶Here is the archived link to Notre Dame’s 2023-2024 tuition.

Closing Words

So, even though I wouldn’t attend college at these prices (and probably not at all unless on full scholarship at a selective school such as Notre Dame),⁷I would have liked Notre Dame even more when it was all-male. Saint Mary’s College, next door to ND, is still all-female (and I’m not sure why). I’d probably look into St. John’s University (all-male) in Minnesota, which also has a sister school next door, the College of St. Benedictine (all-female). college (at least specialized schools — medical, law, engineering) is practically mandatory for many professions such as becoming a medical doctor, lawyer, and certified public accountant (CPA).

Moreover, the value of many colleges and universities is not really in what you learn (YouTube videos and free online libraries are highly accessible) but in the connections you make in person. This latter fact is something I grossly overlooked when attending colleges to earn degrees.

After all, it’s not what you know, it’s who you know.

Footnotes

• 1
  As of this post’s published date, NXST has an enterprise value of $12 billion.
• 2
  Here’s the archived link to WKBN 27’s blog post.
• 3
  Yes, I know the name of the college is displayed in the image…but I didn’t see that until after the fact!
• 4
  Here’s WKBN’s archived article about Eastern Gateway Community College’s spring 2024 graduation.
• 5
  I think it does charge students for season tickets to attend the football games, but those are seriously discounted from face value. I went to all the home games!
• 6
  Here is the archived link to Notre Dame’s 2023-2024 tuition.
• 7
  I would have liked Notre Dame even more when it was all-male. Saint Mary’s College, next door to ND, is still all-female (and I’m not sure why). I’d probably look into St. John’s University (all-male) in Minnesota, which also has a sister school next door, the College of St. Benedictine (all-female).