1. Beginning adulthood without debt is worth far more than a designer diploma.
The authors’ No. 1 rule for parents: Don’t let your child go into debt for college. In 2010, almost two thirds of undergraduates borrowed money, and student-loan debt outpaced credit card debt for the first time. The College Board likes to say that a typical senior graduates with “only” $24,000 in debt, but with interest, collection charges, and penalties for postponed payments, the amounts owed can exceed $100,000. If you ever default on a federal student loan (and the rate of defaults is rising), you’ll be hounded for life. Lenders can garnish your wages, intercept your tax refunds, and have your professional license revoked. You can’t work for the government or collect your social security. “People have been sold this propaganda: ‘The rates are so low; just get a loan,’ ” Dreifus says. “The long-term effect is to cripple your children.”
9. Going to an elite university does not guarantee success.
To prove this point, Hacker and Dreifus tracked the 900-odd students who graduated from Princeton in 1973 to see if the school was delivering on its promise “to prepare students for positions of leadership,” whether in business, public service, or the arts, which Princeton administrators claim as their goal. “We were very disappointed,” Hacker says. “There were only a handful of recognized names in that class of 900. What that tells us is simply this: In America, if you put your talents to their best use, by the age of 35 or 36, you’ll be passing people from Princeton, no matter where you went to school.” Sure, the authors acknowledge, a designer degree might help you get into medical school or law school at Harvard, Stanford, or Yale. That’s a nice bonus if you can pay the full sticker price, they say, but not enough of an edge to saddle your child with many thousands of dollars in debt.
