If the stats supported colleges you wouldn't have this huge nationwide movement of people looking to make college free because they're burdened until retirement by debt they can't pay off. That's not anecdotal, that is a major political platform point.
Which is the problem with your presented stat. "People with degrees make 40% more over their lifetimes on average" is useless because it tells us nothing about whether it's worth the capital expenditure. Just making more money isn't the point, having a better life is the point.
So it is very relevant, and your statement here is basically an admission that your 40% stat I keep seeing in these threads is equally irrelevant. "You can make more money and still be burdened" equates to "making more money won't necessarily make your life better." If that's true, what the hell is the point of going to college? To make 40% more?
We are talking about salaries, not some philosophical discussion. If your goal is to maximize lifetime earnings college is worth it as shown by college vs non-college graduate earnings - including the cost.
We are talking about whether college is worth the investment in unearned capital and time, we are focusing on the capital expenditure. "Paperclip optimizers are great if you want to optimize for paperclips" is not a strong selling point for paperclip optimizers in the real world. Is college worth the investment? It's not purely philosophical at all, it is very practically relevant. Will my life be better for doing it?
The typical horror story of insurmountable college debt of hundreds of thousands of dollars comes from people who go to grad school, where the loans are uncapped, so that they can reach as high as fifty grand a year or more, as opposed to undergrad, where loans are capped to around ten grand a year. Colleges for that reason have to be more generous with financial aid to undergrads.
Unfunded grad school is pretty much never worth it for that reason, especially for non-STEM fields (but even for STEM, it's still pricey enough that it probably isn't worth paying full price). Med school is also pricey, but high salaries make up for that, and what I've heard of law school is that it isn't worth the cost if you aren't going to a top 20 school.
But as for specifically undergraduate education, I do think the financials make it worth it in many cases, but it's misleading to generalise across all majors. 30k of debt for a computer science degree is likely worth it, sure. Is it worth it for an English degree? Debatable, but 30k of debt at least isn't going to financially hobble someone for the rest of their life. Is it worth paying full sticker price (if e.g. the student doesn't qualify for financial aid) for a sociology degree? I think that would be dubious.
The degree obviously makes a difference but, regardless of the degree what’s more important is what you’re trying to do.
Many college grads complete degrees without a strong reason for it nor have they explored the potential opportunities.
Even an English degree is fine if you have an understanding of what you’re trying to do and set yourself up properly, e.g journalist, technical writing, marketing track vs the degree and no clue
> Skilled trades pay better than most bachelor's degree track jobs.
Well, it's hard to tell whether this is true for 'most' bachelor's degree track jobs (this depends on what one means by 'skilled trades' which I don't believe there's an objective definition for), but I would say it's probably true for at least some of them. It seems that electricians, for instance, have higher starting pay than English degree holders, as well as higher median mid-career income. So in that respect it's misleading to say that everyone should go to college because going to college raises their income by 40%.
