I think it goes deeper than that, although you're making an incisive point. The value is sort of in how the degrees are used as well. Increasingly, they're bei

I think it goes deeper than that, although you're making an incisive point. The value is sort of in how the degrees are used as well. Increasingly, they're being seen as licenses of sort, even though that might not be the intent of the program or even reflect the actual experiences of the person in college. That is, the ROI is due as much to the marketplace as it is the degree itself. If HR departments decide that understanding of DL/AI requires a degree in comp sci, even if someone did an honors thesis on that as a psychology major, demonstrating a new proof-of-concept DL model, it doesn't matter what sort of talent is being recruited. Is it the degree holder, the degree, the program, or the employer? I feel like college degrees have become this kind of signalling label, like much of the modern world, like clothing or something. That's not to discount the skills one obtains as part of a major, but it hurts the person who is going outside the box (in a good way). There's also something disingenuous then, about treating degrees as a resource to be obtained, when the value of that resource is entirely dependent on the way it is treated by others. That is, a hammer is more useful than a rotting stick, but if for whatever reasons there's rotting stick mania, the ROI will be greater for the latter. That doesn't mean the ROI analysis is wrong, but it might give a misleading impression about why. I admit I didn't read this in enough detail, but I had other questions as well. For instance, in other similar analyses I've read in other outlets, they've explicitly ignored people who have graduate degrees, as it muddies interpretation. But isn't that important? What about the person who gets an undergrad degree in psychology, but then pursues symbolic logic programming and DL models in their master's program in comp sci? Or who goes on to medical school? Some of these degrees, like philosophy, are notorious for being pre-professional degrees, and comparing a BA-only philosophy grad to a BA-philosophy + JD is a little odd, both because it's unfair, but also because the person who gets a BA in philosophy and then stops is maybe different from the person who gets that degree as part of a longer-term plan that includes law school.