Earlier this month Forbes magazine published a piece about a controversial question that has garnered increasingly more mainstream attention: “Should nearly everyone go to college?” College professor and director of the Center for College Affordability & Productivity Richard Vedder says no. “All too often,” he explains, “college graduates incur crippling debt and don’t improve their job prospects.” As a result, some students are beginning to feel cheated.

It is still gospel among politicians that college education makes people better off. The federal government showers grants and tax subsidies on higher education; President Obama has set a goal to increase the percentage of Americans with two- or four-year college degrees from 40% now to 60% in 2020. The job market, though, is telling us that this is wasted effort.

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Do liberal arts degrees make people more productive? That’s not clear. The widely advertised difference in incomes between grads and non-grads (over a lifetime, about $500,000) doesn’t really prove anything. It could be that the difference is entirely attributable to traits like intelligence or perseverance that kids have before they matriculate.

In the midst of this painful, seemingly endless recession, and with the skills gap that has left hundreds of thousands of good jobs unfilled — despite the fact that 14.6 million Americans remain out of work — it’s time we examined just how we’re preparing our kids for their forays into the workforce. Is college always the best route?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jessica-dulong/too-cool-for-school-exami_b_695278.html