What’s the point of a higher education? There was a time when college beginners, once known as freshmen, were routinely admonished to get their minds off their future paychecks and to concentrate on their voyage of self-discovery.

Some still hear such advice today, particularly in the liberal arts, although we notice that self-discovery is sometimes framed as an important step in landing a lucrative career. Which seems to be trying to have it both ways.

It was probably easier to rise above the profit motive in the days before college students amassed such crippling amounts of debt. Some of the blame, of course, must be laid at the door of colleges and the fantastic costs of a higher education in 2024.

The average sum of tuition and fees at a private U.S. college in 2023-24 is reported to be $42,162 — for a single year. If colleges and universities are going to charge exorbitant sums, they have an obligation to help their students gain the skills to pay off their student loans. Something is seriously amiss when students must go so deeply into debt that their loan payments are a factor in their retirement planning.

Count us among the surviving advocates of a liberal education. We believe that society needs its poets and philosophers, just as it needs physicists and accountants. But count us also among those who believe that fools and their money are soon parted. That is, we’re all in favor of liberal-arts idealism, so long as the idealists know what they’re getting into.

Fortunately, the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED) is now offering an online tool that lets users imagine an educational path and then see what the financial consequences of that path might be. One can select an academic discipline and a degree level, and then see the median hourly wage those selections portend.

The tool also allows users to see where the trend lines are going — whether a mathematician with a graduate degree is entering a field of rising demand, or not. (Not to pick on mathematicians with graduate degrees, but we notice that their median starting wage fell from $39.33 in 2019 to $31.90 in 2020. The good news is that their median starting wage rebounded to $46.77 in 2022. Also, it’s important to note that in 2022 there were only 12 of them employed in Minnesota, according to DEED’s data.)

As families grapple with the new FAFSA and head out for campus visits, they might find a visit to DEED’s site instructive, or maybe cautionary, or maybe just sobering. We hope it does not prove to be frightening. A few samples of what they will find:

A freshly completed graduate degree in accounting and related services may bring a starting hourly wage of $50.25. A bachelor’s degree in the same field may be good for $37.34, which is still decent. But a bachelor’s degree in English and literature may bring only $26.36. If that English major goes for a higher degree, it might be possible to earn $33.37, and you don’t need an accounting major to tell you which way that wind is blowing.

Someone with a graduate degree in music might expect to earn $32.97 an hour, while somebody with a graduate degree in medicine might bring home $137.70. In other words, you could hire a string quartet instead of a future doctor, and still have enough left over to get coffee.

And if you do buy coffee, be sure to tip your barista. A barista’s starting wages are not listed on the DEED site, but ZipRecruiter reports that baristas make a top wage of $19 in Minneapolis. Let’s hope they don’t have a ton of student loans to pay off.