Money Talks: Counting the cost of education
Money Talks from The Economist
The Economist
4.4 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 24 August 2023
⏱️ 41 minutes
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Summary
Is a college degree worth it? That question hangs over millions of would-be students, as they prepare to apply to university. It is one that many graduates might be mulling over as they have to start paying off their college debts once more. America’s pandemic-era moratorium on student debt payments comes to an end in September.
On this week’s podcast, hosts Alice Fulwood, Tom Lee-Devlin and Mike Bird examine whether college is still worth the time and the money. Constantine Yannelis from the Chicago Booth School of Business explains how the US economy will be impacted when up to 45 million Americans are confronted with their student debt payments once more. And Michael Itzkowitz, who was appointed to the US Department of Education by former President Obama, reveals how often students fail to earn a return on their investment in education.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Who are the women who will help fight our country's war? |
| 0:05.0 | It's 1942 and Julia McWilliams, as she was known then, had just signed up. |
| 0:12.0 | Oh yes, it's your war too, Mrs. America. |
| 0:17.0 | At 6 foot 2, Julia was too tall for the army or the Navy. |
| 0:21.0 | So she accepted a job in the office of strategic services, the precursor to the CIA. |
| 0:28.0 | She was tasked with whipping up a shark repellent to deter curious marine life from detonating underwater explosives, intended for German e-boats. |
| 0:38.0 | But it wasn't her recipe for shark repellent that she would become famous for. |
| 0:44.0 | After the war, she married fellow Spook, Paul Child, and the couple moved to Paris. |
| 0:50.0 | At a loose end, Julia Child enrolled at the Cordon Bleu, tapping into the benefits offered to World War II veterans by the GI Bill, which offered to pay for veteran education. |
| 1:02.0 | Welcome to the French chef. I'm Julia Child. Today we're going to do cock over chicken and red wine. It's one of the best... |
| 1:12.0 | American taxpayers saw a delicious return on investment for the money spent on Julia's training at the Cordon Bleu. |
| 1:18.0 | Her many cookbooks trained the American women in the ways of Oatokwazine. |
| 1:23.0 | In Washington today, the value of education has again become a hot topic. |
| 1:28.0 | The moratorium on student loan payments, which was past of the early days of the pandemic, and suspends payments into as charges and collections on more than a trillion dollars in federal student loans, is coming to an end. |
| 1:40.0 | Millions of Americans will have to stop paying off their college tab again. |
| 1:44.0 | But what about their return on investment? Is all the time and money students spend getting a degree? Really worth it. |
| 1:52.0 | You're listening to Money Talks from the Economist, our weekly podcast on the markets, the economy and the world of business. |
| 2:08.0 | In Lexington, Kentucky, I'm Alice Fullwood. In London, I'm Tom Lee Devlin. In Singapore, I'm Mike Bird. |
| 2:17.0 | And in today's show, how do you value higher education? |
| 2:21.0 | First, we look at what happened when students got to stop paying the bill. |
| 2:26.0 | They were using those extra dollars that they had every month to service other debt. |
| 2:32.0 | So you see mortgage borrowing go up, we see auto loan borrowing go up, we see credit card borrowing go up. |
... |
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