If you want to be on the road to a flourishing life in America today, that first step on the ladder is a college degree. It’s become a standard pre-requisite for most well-paying jobs in the country and the hope for parents everywhere who want their kids to succeed. We believe a good education is a piece of the puzzle towards righting social inequality and we like to believe that if you pass that threshold that everything works out for you. However, the dream of higher ed is becoming increasingly more expensive and taking on significant debt is not uncommon along with the education itself.
Our guest on the podcast today, Preston Cooper, a research fellow at The Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, came on the show to talk about why the cost of higher education is so high, how we got to this place to begin with, and how we should think about alternatives to this system and ways to reduce the cost of a better life.
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Show Notes:
Follow Preston’s work at The Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity and at Forbes
Why College Is Too Expensive — And How Competition Can Fix It
The End of College: Creating the Future of Learning and the University of Everywhere, by Kevin Carey
You can follow Preston and keep up with his work on Twitter
About our guest:
Preston Cooper is a Visiting Fellow at the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, where he studies the economics of higher education. Formerly, he worked at the American Enterprise Institute and the Manhattan Institute. In addition to writing for Forbes, his writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Seattle Times, U.S. News and World Report, the Washington Examiner, Fortune, RealClearPolicy, and National Review. He holds a B.A. in economics from Swarthmore College.