>The lifetime ROI of college is only 13%? Yeah, that's BS. Right off the bat, I'm seeing different numbers[1] for median earnings elsewhere: $60K for college

>The lifetime ROI of college is only 13%? Yeah, that's BS. Right off the bat, I'm seeing different numbers[1] for median earnings elsewhere: $60K for college graduates vs. $36K for high-school diploma holders. I have no idea where they got the $47K wage for high-school graduates from, and it's a substantial difference. Because the difference between being able to make ends meet, and not being able to make ends meet isn't quantifiable in terms of ROI. Not having to worry about your card bouncing at the grocery store is a step-function-like quality of life increase alone. What's the ROI of decreased risk of depression and suicide? [2] Or living 7 years longer, as the article we're discussing acknowledges. Then, the devil is in the details. Wages of someone with only a high school diploma and 20 years of experience today might be acceptable, but that's because they were able to get into the field with only a high school diploma 20 years back. The job landscape right now is different, and will be different still 20 years into the future. We all know that a factory worker in the 1950s could get by just fine with only a HS diploma, but lumping their end-of-career earnings with those of a fresh high-school grad entering a dead-end job makes for bad analysis. Yet this study attempts no such distinction. Then, there's looking at the toll jobs available to HS diploma folks take on them. With social security and retirement potentially not being an option anymore, that's probably the most important factor to look at today. I can go on and on; the point is, ROI calculation could make sense, but it is awfully incomplete in studies like this. And that's ignoring the elephant in the room, which is that colleges are not merely trade schools. College education develops the mind, introduces people to different perspectives and backgrounds - and, on average, creates more informed voters with better critical thinking skills and more ability to resist Russian-style firehose-of-falsehood propaganda.[3] There is no cure to that, aside from teaching critical thinking (according to the same RAND study) - which Finland has started doing a decade ago, starting from elementary school[4]. That kind of thing is one of a million reasons of why college education (beyond being a trade school with an ROI) is important for the society as a whole. That, and probably the fact that even if a plumber makes the same as a college-level mathematics instructor, we shouldn't be pushing potential mathematicians to become plumbers for a better ROI. Just a thought. [1] https://www.aplu.org/our-work/4-policy-and-advocacy/publicuvalues/employment-earnings https://www.aplu.org/our-work/4-policy-and-advocacy/publicuv... [2] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6739140/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6739140/ [3] https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html