College is expensive. And worth taxpayers’ investment

WHEN IT COMES to paying for college, retired NBA player Matt Barnes is like any other Gen X dad in America.

- LZ GRANDERSON COLUMNIST

SATHER TOWER on the UC Berkeley campus.

With his twins Carter and Isaiah in high school, Barnes — a member of the Golden State Warriors 2017 championship team — is looking at the rising cost of higher education with wary eyes.

“Do you need college now to be successful in society today? I’d say no,” he told me recently, “When we grew up, and I was born in 1980, college was the road to success whether you were an athlete or an entrepreneur. Currently, I would never say, ‘Don’t get an education,’ but I would say if you have a business idea, pour into it and go.”

The cost-benefit analysis has definitely changed. When I started college at Western Michigan University in the fall of 1990, the national average for instate tuition, room and board at a public college totaled less than $5,000 a year. I had a scholarship but still needed student loans to attend. This year the average at Western is more than $28,000 per year. Adjusted for inflation, that’s a 150% increase, outpacing the soaring cost of buying a home or a new car.

Don’t get me wrong: The degree enabled me to walk into rooms I didn’t know existed before college, so as far as I’m concerned, my higher education was worth every penny. But for Gen Z and beyond, the return on investment is less clear — or at a minimum, takes longer — because the investment is so much bigger.

Barnes himself spent four years as a player at UCLA before his 15-year NBA career. Today, he and fellow NBA champion Stephen Jackson host the popular “All the Smoke” podcast, and in February Barnes became chief executive of All the Smoke Productions.

When asked him if he thought he could have made the transition from the court to the boardroom without his time as a Bruin, he said no and added: “College was... one of the best times of my life.