Every afternoon at 12:45, some of the newsroom baby boomers push two lunch tables together and attempt to solve the world’s problems. Call it the Lean Cuisine brain trust.
During one recent lunch hour, we twirled pasta on plastic forks and talked about the high cost of college education for our kids. If you have school-age children, you know that doing the cost-benefit analysis on college isn’t as clear-cut as it used to be.
I posed a hypothetical question. Would our children be better off with:
A.) The best private, liberal arts college education money could buy? (Estimated total cost $250,000 including grad school; split among grants, loans and parental support.)
B.) A good nurse’s aide job in early adulthood followed by a midlife check for $1 million? (Our hypothetical $250,000 private college cost invested prudently and doubling twice between ages 18 and 38.)