The problem I have with such research that it takes college degrees obtained decades ago and compares them against salaries that are happening now. In the best

The problem I have with such research that it takes college degrees obtained decades ago and compares them against salaries that are happening now. In the best case, it makes inflation index adjustments, but it's useless. College prices raise much faster than inflation, and people that earn today's salaries went in college decades ago. So if college prices 20 years ago were worth it today, that doesn't mean college prices today will be worth it in 20 years. Moreover, it suffers from one more problem - for certain classes (I'd call it "classes" for the lack of a better word) in the US, everybody would go into a college, because that's what people of this class do. There are exceptions, of course, but they are rare. Those are the same classes that end up working in professions that command higher salaries. Does that mean that going to college caused it? Maybe yes, or maybe if they spent the same time in the libraries, studied online or even went for a tour to Madagascar instead, the outcome would still be the same. We can't really tell by comparing them to people of a different class, that traditionally don't go to college and also traditionally occupy positions that command lower salaries. I'm not talking about positions which require many years of training, like medicine or law - there's, obviously, the question is moot, if you want to be a doctor, you have to go to a medical school, so there's no question of "worth it". But e.g. in software, I am not convinced college really has as much ROI as it is claimed, only because a lot of people go to college (because in their class, everybody goes to college) and later have high salaries. I personally think that my college education was well worth it - but I didn't pay over $100K for it, in fact, I didn't incur any debt at all that I haven't paid off within a year by working half-time, and later paid for my next degree entirely from my own earnings, with very short-time loan just to structure the payments in a more convenient way. If it were at today's costs, coming with a nearly-lifetime debt burden - I might have a completely different opinion on it.