It's important obviously but college degrees don't mean what they used to either, as Graduate school is becoming the new college. High school is only sufficient for those who have mechanical or technical skills not in need of furthur development in the University setting. It's not really necessary to expand one's education(economically speaking) in a college setting if one can already program a computer or fix a car. But I think the face of the modern day University is changing drastically in such technologically progressive times. Engineering and Sciences are the key for students seeking steady employment after college is over with, while the Arts and Humanities have never paid well and even less so today.

In fact, some colleges are trying to make studies in the Liberal and Performing Arts more relevant to modern life. After all, what's the point of sifting through 1,000 year old diatribes if they don't relate to today's modern problems? How superfluous is it for students to study the lineage and history of authors, philosophers, or poets who lived centuries ago? Not that I think a university should be 100% professionally oriented, but schools' inability to teach real life in drastically changing times is the cause of so many dropouts and God forbid student suicides (which occur every day in this country). Departments such as philosophy and literature are becoming little more than relics of the past.

And with the economy tightening and tales of graduates stuck in low-paying jobs with $50,000 in student loans, college doesn’t look like an automatic bargain. Over the past 30 years, the average cost of college tuition and fees has risen 250% for private schools and nearly 300% for public schools (in constant dollars). The salaries of professors have also risen much faster than those of other occupations. At Stanford, to take but one example, the salaries of full professors have leapt 58% in constant dollars since the mid-1980s. College presidents do even better. From 1992 to 2008, NYU’s presidential salary climbed to $1.27 million from $443,000. By 2008, a dozen presidents had passed the million-dollar mark.