College Outcomes Should Not Be Measured Just on Lifetime Earnings

An organization called the Postsecondary Commission recently published a study analyzing the earning history of one million graduates of Texas public universities. The study calculated how much higher education contributed to a student’s earnings over 15 years and concluded that, in general, college pays off for students. 

This is good news. But their discovery that engineering students do best and liberal arts students lag behind feeds into an appealing but ultimately misguided logic that universities should direct resources toward the highest-earning majors and away from the ones that don't pay off.