From the article: > The analogy is inexact, but for comparison America’s stockmarket [...] So the author thought, "I know this is wrong, but I'll do it anyway

From the article: > The analogy is inexact, but for comparison America’s stockmarket [...] So the author thought, "I know this is wrong, but I'll do it anyways and add a note"? And they literally call the publication The Economist... The return on investment of education is an interesting and difficult question, to distinguish the difference between the people who do and don't seek the education from the difference actually caused by the education. The best results come from natural experiments, like sudden changes in the number of university places available; but even those capture only the effect on the marginal applicant. This of course is mostly unrelated to the article.