Why the college degree mania? By George Leef Published: December 02. 2012 4:00AM PST RALEIGH, N.C. — For many years the conventional wisdom in the United States has been that the more people who graduate from college, the better off we’ll be. It’s time to challenge that “wisdom." The evidence says it’s wrong.

For many years the conventional wisdom in the United States has been that the more people who graduate from college, the better off we’ll be. It’s time to challenge that “wisdom." The evidence says it’s wrong. Now, as a result of two events from last year, many Americans are starting to realize that college has been oversold. The first event was the “Occupy Wall Street" protests. A large percentage of the occupiers were unemployed college graduates who had a lot of grievances, foremost among them the fact that they couldn’t pay their college loans. The second 2011 event was the publication, by the University of Chicago Press, of a remarkable new book, “Academically Adrift," in which the authors, two highly respected sociologists, showed that a high percentage of college students “did not demonstrate any significant improvement in learning" during their student years. http://www.bendbulletin.com/article/20121202/NEWS0107/212020309/