Zhang: The peril of unending spring break

Steven Zhang, a rising senior at Cornell University, was an intern for Newsday Opinion.

It's that time of year again when students and their parents pack the family car to make the drive to their college dorms. And that means their wallets will be feeling significantly lighter as well. College tuition has surged 439 percent since 1982, and it doesn't appear to be slowing down anytime soon.

But despite the precipitous rise in the cost of college, its return on investment for students has only diminished. According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers, only 24 percent of graduating students had secured a job after graduation in 2010, compared with more than double that in 2007.

The college degree is no longer as precious as it once was. Thanks to academic inflation, the bachelor's degree is the new high school degree -- so in order for hopeful college grads to distinguish themselves from the army of jobless applicants, many now go on to pay for master's degrees, which can cost as much as $100,000 for a two-year program.

Still, the demand for bachelor's degree remains high. College applications steadily increase year after year at private and public institutions.

And surprisingly, despite debilitating student loans, 86 percent of graduates still think it was a worthwhile investment, according to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center.

Clearly, it's not for the economic return. So what's so worthwhile about it? The free-flowing booze, frat parties and no-strings-attached hookups? Unfortunately, that appears to be what our parents are pouring their incomes into.

Many college students have made these "best four years of their lives" about self-enjoyment and giving into temptations before being shepherded into adulthood, chained to a 9-to-5 job (assuming they're lucky enough to get one, of course).

The 21st century undergraduate student centers his or herschedule on the weekends, which start Thursday night. Academic debates are replaced by beer-pong competitions. Facebook is permanently etched on the screens of laptops, instead of research papers. And being on time for class is secondary to being on time for tonight's big party.

The focus on socializing rather than scholarship shows in the data. According to the 2011 book "Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses" by professors Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, only 36 percent of students had any significant improvements in learning over the course of four years. And those students who did improve didn't improve by much -- only 7 percentile points on the Collegiate Learning Assessment, which is designed to measure critical thinking skills, at the end of their sophomore years. Our universities, despite their growing price tags, are churning out students with plump resumes, but little change to their reasoning and writing.

And that's unfortunate, because those skills are the most useful and necessary right now, when jobs are at their peak vulnerability and are as scarce as ever. When developing countries can provide cheap and high-quality labor, and technology has automated our most menial and repetitive tasks, a diploma is no longer a golden ticket to career stability. And everyone -- both blue- and white-collar workers -- is threatened, according to a paper last year by David Autor, an economist from MIT. Even some paralegals and lawyers, once seemingly indispensable, can now be replaced by software able to sift through data and provide analysis using algorithms and word patterns.

It's a scary thought: Either we college students elevate our skills by taking our four years more seriously or be supplanted by a worker in India or robot made in China.

Our Animal House mentality doesn't suit this era of globalization and technology. And unless there's a sudden demand for the ability to binge party, it's straight back to living with our parents.