Quote from: ProfMac on August 11, 2014, 12:42:41 AM

Quote from: iopq on August 11, 2014, 12:35:08 AM

I can't help but wonder if the consumers are getting their monies worth, or simply a degree along with debt.

That is a very good question. There are existing numbers to answer it.

One process is as follows:

1. Find the average income in the US of, say, a 30 year old white male with different levels of education, e.g., high school diploma and bachelor's degree.
2. Find the prime lending rate, from public sources.
3. Factor in the unemployment rate and the mortality rate, again from public sources.
4. Assume that people retire at the standard retirement age.
5. Find the income tax burden for each of the incomes.

From these numbers, you can estimate:

1. How much additional income a college degree will yield.
2. How much additional income tax revenue a college degree will yield.

This process is flawed. Someone who is a smart motivated individual is much more likely to finish college than someone who isn't. That doesn't mean that this individual who finished college couldn't have accomplished the same things if he had not gone to college.

A self-selected group that chooses not to go to college cannot act as a control to another self-selected group who chooses to go to college. To have a better comparison, you'd need to actually intervene and randomly select people who will go to college and have a control group that is not allowed to go to college.

For example, someone born with rich parents and doesn't have a high school diploma makes on average more money per year than someone who was born into a poor family, but finished college. This actually says that it's more important to have rich parents than to go to college.