The question “Is college worth it?” is a favorite of op-ed writers. Its latest iteration, published in The New York Times this week, argues firmly that it’s not.
In that op-ed, Ellen Ruppel Shell, a journalism professor at Boston University, contends that college is not as effective a catapult for social mobility as students, families, and policy makers think, especially where low-income students are concerned. “It’s a cruel irony that a college degree is worth less to people who most need a boost: those born poor,” she writes.
