“You can’t trust college rankings.”
“Paying, let alone borrowing, big bucks to attend an elite school is likely a huge waste of money.”
“Shacking up, even with Mom, is a very powerful way to safely raise your living standard.”
If these words from Laurence Kotlikoff have your attention, you may want to check out his new book, Money Magic: An Economist’s Secrets to More Money, Less Risk, and a Better Life (Little, Brown, 2022). Kotlikoff, a William Fairfield Warren Professor and a College of Arts & Sciences professor of economics, dispenses financial advice on college, home-buying, marriage and divorce, and retirement (don’t take early Social Security, which cuts your benefit and could cost you hundreds of thousands over your lifetime), as seen through an economist’s lens.
And through personal experience. His disdain for college rankings, he writes, followed the US News lack of interest in academics–-notably BU’s economics department becoming one of the nation’s best in the 1980s and ’90s–while going gaga in its ratings over the University’s “splendid new gym, five-star dormitories, a gorgeous student center, and a state-of-the-art hockey rink.”
He also tells the true story of bringing a pseudonymous art history major to tears after eliciting that she was in hock $120,000 for college, yet couldn’t parlay her degree into a job offer. “This episode still haunts me,” he…
