An enjoyable education is the best investment:
Learning should be more than a dollars-and-cents downpayment

Alexandra Samuel
June 26, 2002

When I was an undergraduate, my economics professor admonished our class to enjoy our university experience as much as possible.

"Spending is either consumption, or investment -- it can't be both," Professor Kasper explained. "The more you enjoy your education, the more your tuition counts as consumption, and the smaller the amount that is considered investment. Any increase in your future income as a result of your education represents a larger return on that investment. So the more you enjoy your education, the greater the returns to investment." Prof. Kasper's advice has been on my mind throughout this graduation season. Graduates entering the job market this summer are the last generation of students to enjoy universally low post-secondary tuition fees.

With the end of a province-wide tuition-fee freeze, universities and colleges are hiking fees. Many have introduced dramatic increases for select programs, such as business or medicine, which are expected to yield high future incomes for graduates.

The problem with this approach is that it treats tuition as investment only. We are neglecting the other side of the equation: post-secondary education as consumption.

A good education provides many benefits that go far beyond the tangible impact on future earnings. Students luxuriate in an absorbing book, or in the words of an engaging teacher. Young people make lifelong friends in a setting that fosters sociability. Classrooms become playgrounds for discovering new ideas and ways of looking at the world.

These gratifications all fall under the "consumption side" of the education equation. Every tuition dollar that pays for an experience of intellectual or social excitement is one less dollar of educational "investment."

When institutions scale tuition according to anticipated future income, they send students the message that education is all about investment. What you pay is a function of what you will earn.

It's a message that has dire economic and pedagogical consequences.

In economic terms, it constrains future career decisions before those careers even start. For students to commit to paying higher tuitions for "premium" programs, they have to commit to careers with premium earnings.

That's fine for students who do an MBA as a step into investment banking, or a law degree as an entry into mergers and acquisitions. But what about the law student who wants to practice poverty law, or the business student who wants to focus on non-profit management? For these students, advanced degrees become a luxury good.

Discounting the consumption value of education is equally foolish in pedagogical terms. Teachers struggle to ignite students' interest in their course material, to foster genuine intellectual engagement rather than slavish grade grubbing. When institutions price education according to anticipated returns, they tell students that education is about results instead of about the process of learning.

And learning is what post-secondary education should be all about. Sure, it's also an investment. So are stocks, bonds, and mutual funds.

But no mutual fund will enrich your mind, no real estate speculation will lead you to see the world in a new and different way. Nor will a stockbroker ever advise you to maximize your investments by enjoying your portfolio.

For that, you need people like Prof. Kasper, and an education system that supports them in teaching their most valuable lesson: how to enjoy learning.

Harvard PhD candidate Alexandra Samuel is a Vancouver-based researcher and policy consultant specializing in electronic democracy.