Two sources this week have reminded me of further problems of cost and debt in Higher Ed; problems that are beyond the cost of tuition, room, or board.

First, the NYT just published a fine article on Business Majors–the most widely chosen major in all academia–and their general failure to study, learn, or succeed. The landscape is littered with inflated, but still mediocre GPAs, easy take-home tests, few substantive projects, and minimal real-life business experience.

They quote one student who describes his typical day, “I just play sports, maybe go to the gym. Eat. Probably drink a little bit. Just kind of goof around all day.” He says his grade-point average is 3.3.

For those of us who have been to colleges with a lot of business students, you know that the statistics they present and the anecdotal evidence they offer are not just stereotypes, but the norm. Although majoring in business can be a valuable and challenging program for certain people in certain places, across the board it has become a bland choice for the uninspired, lackadaisical student who isn’t really sure what they want to do, but know they want a job when they graduate.

The most interesting aspect of the article is this: “According to national surveys,[employers] want to hire 22-year-olds who can write coherently, think creatively and analyze quantitative data, and they’re perfectly happy to hire English or biology majors. Most Ivy League universities and elite liberal arts colleges, in fact, don’t even offer undergraduate business majors.” Now, if a student actually had experience running a business, starting a business, or even working in management that would give them a step-up, but few business programs offer anything resembling those experiences.

The problem of cost and value here is the student. Regardless of what they are paying for their courses, they aren’t getting their money’s worth and the majority of things they are doing instead of studying are quite costly (alcohol, restaurants, video games, movies).

The second interesting source is http://www.everfi.com

This is an online company that specializes in teaching and credentialing, what they call “critical life skills”; specifically, financial literacy, loan management, and alcohol prevention. They provide an online platform for schools (both high school and college level) to share this content with their students. The need for providing students with these basic developmental skills–don’t drink too much, don’t spend too much–is becoming a necessity.

Although, I would argue, the burden for this common sense education should fall on the lower schools, parents, and the individuals themselves, it is essential to recognize the problem at the collegiate level as well. The Saxifrage School do more than offer students an inexpensive education, we must also teach them to no make themselves debtors in other ways and to actually get their money’s worth from their experience. Even if the tuition is low, the opportunity cost of four years ill-spent is tremendous.

It is not yet decided what a financial literacy course might look like, but it will certainly exist for the freshmen students of The Saxifrage School; this literacy will encompass not just money, but value, true economy, and conservation.

Our nation’s students must learn to conserve–to use well–their time, money, opportunities, and relationships as well as their communities and environment.