Hi, I'm Ali Jackson Jolly. I'm here with Dr. Marcus Collins, who is a critical associate

professor of marketing, as well as the author of his book for The Culture,

the power behind what we buy, what we do,

and who we want to be.

Welcome.

Thanks for having me here.

Yeah, no, I'm excited about this one, because I wanted to have you here to talk about the cost of college

and how students and college consumers should be thinking about making good investments, smart money.

Yeah, I like that, college consumers because we are consuming college college

college consumers thinking about themselves

more as consumers who get to decide what they're buying and how that's serving them well

was a recent bit of reporting that was done by one of our journalists here who

found out that half of college seniors have said that they

will not apply and go to

that cost more than $40,000. That says to me that the consumer has spoken

and that they want a good return on their investment.

Yeah, yeah, they're thinking about the net present value of their investment. Yeah, they're thinking about the net present value of their investment, right?

So I invest today.

What does it mean on the back end?

I guess the calculus are doing is that if I invest X amount of money over these four years what's the likelihood of me

getting the return on that. That's exactly right. That's that's what the

piece said and interestingly though you said to me that one thing you think college kids should think about when they do that calculus, to borrow your word, is something called Cultural Capital.

...