In a new op-ed for USA Today, Professor Glenn Reynolds points out that not everyone needs to go to college and that the debt associated with higher education can damage lives.

For some, college not worth the debt: Column

Is college for everyone? That’s pretty much the conventional wisdom today, but I don’t think so. And, in fact, for some people, it may be actively damaging. In deciding whether to take on debt— and give up years of their lives — in exchange for a college degree, applicants need to think more about potential downsides. And alternatives.

When people think about college, it’s often through a gauzy veil of imagination and memory. For the kinds of people who write about college, the memories are often positive: To be in the position of (say) a newspaper columnist or a professor, you probably did pretty well in college, which means your memories are probably pretty good. But it’s not that way for everyone.

While some college students make friends, and memories, for a lifetime, others are lonely, depressed and uncertain, drifting from major to major until eventually they graduate with whatever degree is easiest, and a lot of debt. Or, sometimes, they don’t graduate at all, but still have a lot of debt. For some, college is the beginning of problems with drugs, or drinking, or sex that will cloud their adulthood for years, or even a lifetime.

College can even make income inequality worse, despite its being touted as the great equalizer. In a multiyear study of female college students, Paying For The Party, sociologists Elizabeth Armstrong and Laura Hamilton found that students who looked similar in terms of “predictors” — grades and test scores — came out of college on very different trajectories. The biggest danger was when smart women from less-well-off backgrounds got onto what Armstrong and Hamilton call the “party pathway.”