How to move past the college-at

Editor’s note: This is part of a Deseret Magazine series examining the question: What happened to the promise of college?

Few decisions young Americans make will have as large an impact on their financial lives as whether — and where — to go to college. Yet far too often, those decisions are made with less rigor than we’d use for similarly impactful transactions, like buying a car or taking out a mortgage. We assume college is “worth it” simply because it always has been. But the modern higher education landscape is far more complex than the familiar slogans would have us believe.

Over the past two decades, political leaders on both sides of the aisle have championed college as the surest path to the American dream. One of the most prominent voices in this movement was President Barac