Mmm... I think your point is valid, but perhaps a little over-emphasized. It certainly is worth noting what you are mentioning, that there is more to life than

Mmm... I think your point is valid, but perhaps a little over-emphasized. It certainly is worth noting what you are mentioning, that there is more to life than college. The overall summary still is true, though, that college educated students do better career earnings wise. There's just a lot of variance and spread you have to take in account. This website is good, in that it gives some details of the spread inherent in lifetime earnings per college majors. (http://www.hamiltonproject.org/papers/major_decisions_what_graduates_earn_over_their_lifetimes/ http://www.hamiltonproject.org/papers/major_decisions_what_g...) There is a lot of spread depending on your major. In addition to the lifetime earnings, the site does note that there is huge variance within each major itself. As quoted, "the highest-earning 10 percent of high school graduates out-earn the bottom tenth of graduates in every single major". Unfortunately this report does not seem to go in much detail on two year degrees. Because community / 2-year college in the US is so much cheaper than 4 year colleges typically, I am willing to bet that -- especially if you have to go into debt -- there are some good paths there where the pure rate of return is higher than some college paths these days. (The high school diploma path only OTOH doesn't seem that great unless your atypically REALLY self-motivated.) I do think that chasing career paths solely based on current income is a bad strategy. If you are really into music and meh on molecules, no matter what the average numbers say, it's probably better to be a top 10% musician degree holder than a bottom 10% chemical engineer degree holder.