Princeton president: Graduating college with $100k debt? ‘Something’s gone wrong in your financial planning’

Nicole Mulvaney:

PLAINSBORO — If you’re an undergraduate leaving a four-year institution owing $100,000 or more in debt, “something’s gone wrong in your financial planning,” according to Princeton University President Christopher Eisgruber.

“It’s highly atypical of what you see coming out of colleges,” said Eisgruber, speaking before about 150 business officials today at a Princeton Regional Chamber of Commerce luncheon.

After serving as Princeton’s provost for nine years, Eisgruber was named the university’s 20th president in July after Shirley Tilghman stepped down. In his remarks today, Eisgruber stressed the necessity of obtaining an undergraduate degree to compete in the current job market, debunking claims in news media, he said, that four-year degrees are no longer worth the increasing costs.

“If you talk to labor economists who study higher education about those kinds of topics, they are baffled by that kind of coverage in the press, because the case economically for the value of higher education is extraordinary,” Eisgruber said. “The premium from a college education today is higher than it has been at any point in our history.”

To justify this, Eisgruber referenced economists’ figures for the value of an undergraduate degree: between 7.5 percent and 15.2 percent annually in return on investment, he said.

“Think about that: How many investments can you make where the anticipated return is about 10 percent compounding?” Eisgruber asked.