Colleges Encourage 'Gap Year' With Cash

We invest vast sums in a future that may not exist, says Peter Thiel

(NEWSER) - We’re in the midst of another bubble, and it's not an Internet one, according to PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel. It's a higher education bubble, and "like the housing bubble, the education bubble is about security and insurance against the future,” writes Sarah Lacy, who sat down to interview Thiel for TechCrunch . Students pay universities big bucks not to teach them, but to guarantee their security, argues Thiel. Questioning the value of education has long been "the absolute taboo," he says—but now more and more kids are graduating ... then moving home, leading many to ask, "Is it worth it?" More»

If you didn't graduate from Harvard, good luck getting a top job

(NEWSER) - If you’re determined to get a great job, you might want to quit your course of study at Cornell or Dartmouth and transfer to one of the "top 5" schools: Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, and Wharton. A new study shows that recruiters for the best law firms, investment banks, and consultancy firms are only looking at graduates of those schools, Business Insider reports. And even if you’re one of those elite grads, recruiters want to make sure you’re not—in their words—"boring," a "tool," or a "bookworm." More»

It's a four year—or more—waste of time, author says

(NEWSER) - College is a must if you want to have a real career, right? Nope, it’s “a scam, a self-perpetuating Ponzi scheme that needs to stop right now,” writes James Altucher for DailyFinance.com . Here are his seven reasons you shouldn’t send your kids:

• It’ll cost more than you think: Thanks to the fact that more than 60% of college students will take more than 4 years to wear that cap and gown.
• It doesn’t matter, money-wise: Yes, the difference in income between a college grad and a non-grad is approximately $800,000 over a 45-year career. But if you invest the $200,000 likely college cost in bonds yielding 3%, over those 45 years plus the 4 spent in college, you’ll end up with $851,000.

These schools offer a good return on investment

(NEWSER) - Which colleges pay off? PayScale crunched the numbers to compute the best returns on investment—by comparing the cost of a degree against what its students earn upon graduation—and Huffington Post rounds up the best of the bunch:

1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology: annual ROI: 12.6%; 30-year ROI: $1.69 million
2. California Institute of Technology: 12.6%; $1.64 million
3. Harvard: 12.5%; $1.63 million
4. Harvey Mudd College: 12.5%; $1.63 million
5. Dartmouth: 12.4%; $1.59 million

Execs take teaching jobs amid crisis

(NEWSER) - With the financial tornado buffeting Wall Street, some of its leading figures are ditching their careers for work in academia, Time reports. Merrill Lynch’s former president is teaching at Yale; Citigroup’s former merger boss headed to Berkeley; a onetime Goldman Sachs exec is now at Harvard. “It’s hard work for little pay,” notes a Goldman veteran now at New York University. More»