Marty Nemko’s essay titled “America’s Most Overrated Product: The Bachelor’s Degree” raises some good points, but overall doesn’t not present a valid argument as to why it is overrated.  Nemko claims that college education is not worth its current cost, for either poor students or even well-performing students.  His biggest point is that for what on pays for a college education, there is not enough of a monetary benefit for almost anyone who goes to college – whether they drop out or make their way through all four (or more) years.  This point is blatantly false for a variety of reasons.
	In his essay, Nemko states “Even worse, most of those college dropouts leave the campus having learned little of value, and with a mountain of debt and devastated self-esteem from their unsuccessful struggles.”(Nemko, 561)  While I can’t make any valid argument against his claim of devastated self-esteem, there are quite a few resources that debunk his claim that college dropouts learn little of value – at least in the eyes of employers.  The average high school graduate makes $28,000/year, compared to the college graduate’s average of $45,500/year.(Pew Research)  The average student will graduate with $27,000 (Rampell) in debt after receiving their diploma, which is no insignificant sum of money – however, with the disparity listed here, that would be made up for in under two years of work – even if you account for lost wages during four years of school, it would only take four years before the college graduate has already matched the income of the high school graduate.  As a further point against Nemko’s argument, these wages are averages for those aged 25-32 – as the years go on, this pay gap will become even more significant, as those with bachelor’s degrees are given promotions and pay raises much more often than their high school graduate counterpart.
	To his credit, however, Nemko has a reason why the above statistics are not a perfect comparator on their own – he writes “You could lock the collegebound in a closet for four years, and they’d still go on to earn more than the pool of non-collegebound – they’re bright, more motivated, and have better family connection.”(Nemko, 561)  While this may be true, there are still flaws with that argument.  Employers still seek those with a college education – even if there are two candidates with identical skills and attributes, employers will be much more likely to pick the college educated person over the high school grad, and employment statistics show this.  The difference between college educated and non-college educated unemployment rates are staggering: 12.2% of high school graduates are unemployed, whereas a mere 3.8% of college graduates are.(Rampell)  Even those with just some college education reap the benefit – they have an unemployment rate of 8.1%.( Pew Research)  While being more motivated and having better family connections may alter the statistics slightly, the fact remains that employers will greatly prefer hiring someone with a college education than someone without one.  In fact, one could argue that this is the greatest benefit of the college education, potentially even more so over the higher wages.  As someone with some or a complete college education, you spend much more time earning money and much less time between jobs than someone with a mere high school diploma, further promoting the benefit of a college education.
	Nemko also tries to support his argument at the end of his essay by listing various famous figures who have become successful without the benefit of a college education – his list includes “Maya Angelou, David Ben-Gurion, Richard Branson, Coco Chanel, Walter Cronkite, Michael Dell, Walt Disney, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Bill Gates, Alex Haley, Ernest Hemingway, Wolfgang Puck, John D. Rockefeller Sr., Ted Turner, Frank Lloyd Wright, and nine U.S. presidents, from Washington to Truman.”(Nemko, 565)  While it is an impressive list of impressive people, there is a flaw with people he chose to represent his point – of the 25 people he listed, only two were born after 1950, and both of them were college dropouts themselves!  For those two (Bill Gates and Michael Dell), while they may have not needed the full college education, there is no doubt that they did get at least some benefit from it that lead to their success in life.  As for the rest, while it is true that they did not have college educations, they were also born in a very different period – college educations were a rarity, and a high school diploma still meant something in that age.  However, it is obvious based on many, many statistics that the high school diploma is all but worthless in this day and age, and a college education is a must for Americans in the 21st century.
	While Marty Nemko likely had good intentions when writing his essay criticizing the value of a college education for many students, his argument is very flawed.  Nemko believes and wrote that there is not enough of a monetary benefit for the majority of college students, whether or not they graduate or drop out.  However, college educated students do benefit greatly from not only higher wages, but a reduced unemployment rate, leading to much higher earnings over a lifetime compared to those with only a high school education.  In addition to this, Nemko lists quite a few successful people without a college education – except for the fact that 23/25 were born before 1950 and of the two that weren’t, two do have some college education.  While Nemko’s views do has some merit to it, the way he presents his arguments ruins the validity of his point.