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Well I said I was making those assumptions, yes. These are the extremely rough estimates. In terms of actual savings rates, you'd also need to account for borro

Well I said I was making those assumptions, yes. These are the extremely rough estimates. In terms of actual savings rates, you'd also need to account for borrowing -- which paints an even worse picture for college ROI. "All I can say is that anecdotally, in my cohort, my peers/friends that got a degree are doing significantly better than those who do not." This is a bit of a different argument, but the relevant cohort to compare are the people who qualified to attend college, but did not. College admissions act as a powerful filter. People who could attend college generally do as well as people who do attend, and have very different earning potentials compared to people who were not able to qualify for admission at all.

rileymat2 4y ago
Oh, I agree, that's why I mentioned the confounding factors making it very complicated, and wondered if there was a source or research paper for it that tried to take all that into account beyond random data points. But there are complications in every statement for example: >People who could attend college generally do as well as people who do attend, and have very different earning potentials In this case you have the hidden factor that a student could have and chose not to. Why did they make that choice? It may have been the cost of college, or maybe even more likely it could have been an opportunity at a family business. So then you have to correct for that factor, because the people who chose to go, perhaps did not have that family business to join. Many of those people who did not go but could have, may have had a much clearer path to earning power than the random person. I guess my point is that this is all very complicated without really in depth study, back of the napkin stuff only goes so far.
- endominus 4y ago
  If you want a much more in-depth analysis covering many more factors (including the larger cohort of people who begin college but never finish, thereby taking on a great deal of the costs without most of the benefits) I cannot recommend Bryan Caplan's The Case Against Education, which comes to the controversial conclusion that higher education is selfishly advantageous for higher-achieving students but probably incurs greater costs than benefits for average-and-below students and society as a whole.

rileymat2 4y ago

Oh, I agree, that's why I mentioned the confounding factors making it very complicated, and wondered if there was a source or research paper for it that tried to take all that into account beyond random data points. But there are complications in every statement for example: >People who could attend college generally do as well as people who do attend, and have very different earning potentials In this case you have the hidden factor that a student could have and chose not to. Why did they make that choice? It may have been the cost of college, or maybe even more likely it could have been an opportunity at a family business. So then you have to correct for that factor, because the people who chose to go, perhaps did not have that family business to join. Many of those people who did not go but could have, may have had a much clearer path to earning power than the random person. I guess my point is that this is all very complicated without really in depth study, back of the napkin stuff only goes so far.

endominus 4y ago
If you want a much more in-depth analysis covering many more factors (including the larger cohort of people who begin college but never finish, thereby taking on a great deal of the costs without most of the benefits) I cannot recommend Bryan Caplan's The Case Against Education, which comes to the controversial conclusion that higher education is selfishly advantageous for higher-achieving students but probably incurs greater costs than benefits for average-and-below students and society as a whole.