Topic 6: Opportunity Cost of a College Education

AP Micro - Journal Topic 6: Opportunity Cost of a College Education

Marginal analysis is ubiquitous in our lives, no matter is to examine the benefit and cost of the decision we make or is to analyze what can benefit us the most. One example in video is most of students are struggling with the problem of whether they should spend more years on studying or years on working? Which one will be the most beneficial for them? Statistically, graduated students make more money than non-graduated students; however, looking at some of the richest people, who were non-graduated students at the time, we can see there’s no certain values or answers for the marginal benefit and marginal cost. Depending on different kind of people, marginal benefit and cost can be different. For instance, if you are going to run a company, then I think it’s not really important whether you graduate from college or not; if you are going to work for the person who runs the company, then your educational background has great influence on your wages. By examining their marginal cost and benefit, some students decided to stay in college for one more year in order to make sure they can get a stable job or higher pay. But, like doctor or lawyer, some vocation requires certain years of studying in college. Therefore, marginal cost and benefit is really depends on different people, and we always want to make sure our benefit exceeds our cost. To me, even though I am not sure about what I am going to do in the future, I will still graduate from college in order to make sure I have at least college degree.