Image courtesy: Topos Graphics and as seen on The New York Times Opinion Pages
The Following Post Was Originally Written For and
Published By The Council of Public Relations' Blog
The New York Times recently ran a story by Arthur C. Brooks entitled, “My Valuable, Cheap College Degree,” about the $10,000 undergraduate degree. The author, the president of the American Enterprise Institute and a former college professor, decided that instead of going into debt for a degree from an average college, he would pay $10K for a distance-learning B.A.
Interesting.
Brooks claimed that the ROI from his $10K spend was huge, given that his career turned out as he had hoped and he lives a debt-free life. He also argued that with the cost of education skyrocketing, we would see more innovation in terms of the cost of college.
So the next logical question: Would I as an employer hire a kid with a $10K B.A?
Damn straight I would!
Ours is a “public school” profession, in that most young hires have attended a decent but not top 5-ranked college. I have no qualms about that. My best hire, oftentimes, is a kid from an average college who had four internships and a dirty job along the way—grocery bagger, factory worker, waitress. Although we’ve hired our share of kids who went to boarding schools and graduated from top colleges, they succeed no more frequently than the gritty kid from the average college. And I like the entrepreneurship shown by people who take tough jobs starting out.
Now, let me preface this by saying that I'm the first one to admit that there is such a thing as a 
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