Do we need so many 4-year degrees?

An article on the Chronicle of Higher Education site has me thinking harder about something that has been going through my mind for a while: Do all of my kids need a four-year college degree?

I ask myself that question for several reasons. One is that I look back over my four years at Ohio U, and I don't think I needed all the classes that I took. I often wonder if I was required to take some of them because the school needed to keep its English professors working. It could force me to take English classes, so it did. But those classes ended up providing me very little in the long run.

The same with psychology and sociology and a lot of the other stuff I took.

A wise education consumer might look at a community college for his or her needs. I see what some people with four-year degrees earn, and I wonder if it's worth the time and the expense.

I agree with the author of the Chronicle piece that universities need to make money, and they tend to care more about research than teaching. It didn't take me long as a country boy on a university campus to figure most of that out.

Anyway, this is a conversation I really need to have with my wife and kids.