After reading through your response, I believe you missed my point. What I was referring to is that for a large population of potential students - those who wis

After reading through your response, I believe you missed my point. What I was referring to is that for a large population of potential students - those who wish to simply make more than if they do not go to a higher education program - going to a two year or vocational path school is exceptionally smart. Leaving that out of consideration is...not smart...highly biased...as in, how many readers of The Economist would consider sending their kid to become a diesel mechanic? From the research I've absorbed over the years, students that can afford to go to prestige universities often come from well-to-do, college educated families - these are high indicators of future success. For a much larger swath of the population that is trying to advance their stake in life, they are first-generation students, and often not well-served by taking on debt and attending a large University environment. Thus, many Universities are, practically speaking, very bad at ROI for a large contingent of students who simply want to make more money - vocational training? An excellent prospect. What remains to be seen is how much more earning potential there is in professions that require vocational training to be licensed or successful (i.e. welding, machining, air traffic control, plumbing, electrical contracting) as the generation currently working retires / dies from the workforce, thereby spiking demand, and in fields where a "traditional" University degree are, well, useless.