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   scriptjunkie (sj@social.scriptjunkie.us)'s status on Wednesday, 26-Feb-2025 01:17:22 JST scriptjunkie

   We spent $272,000 per US college degree in 2021. If instead you took $272K and invested it at 18 in the S&P 500 and turned 65 this year, you'd have $17.9 million dollars with a return of 6484.45%. That's not even counting interest you keep receiving after retirement. ~10x better than a college degree, which would only have returned 680% over your entire life. (And 680%'s a highly exaggerated number as it's not controlling for who gets college degrees)

   It may still be worth it for individuals to choose degrees. They're heavily subsidized, both directly and via extensive tax credits! But the decision to massively subsidize colleges with no accountability leading to a vast inflation of number of degree holders seems questionable for society.

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   In 2020-21, U.S. colleges/universities spent $702 billion and graduated 2.07 million students. That's $340,000 per degree. If you exclude $139 billion in research funding, it's $272,000 per degree.

   https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=75
   https://www.statista.com/statistics/238164/bachelors-degree-recipients-in-the-us/
   https://dqydj.com/sp-500-return-calculator/

   • Embed this notice
     scriptjunkie (sj@social.scriptjunkie.us)'s status on Wednesday, 26-Feb-2025 02:03:15 JST scriptjunkie

     in reply to

     • CyberAl

     @openbuddha You're right, the next 47 years could be even worse for degree holders. 47 years ago, only the top ~10% could get a degree and so they were truly extraordinary. Now colleges know they can suck down billions of dollars by churning literally most of the country through a degree program which may end up being little more than a worthless paper.

     Maybe demographic trends or bad policies slow market growth a bit, but I doubt we'll go full EU and get their abysmal growth slowdowns. Even so, if the stock market did half as well as it did over the past 47, you're still up an insane amount.

     If you controlled for who gets degrees the marginal gain for getting a 4 year degree may not be positive at all. Right now it's just "The most highly intelligent successful motivated people get selected to do X and then they do better in life! Must be because of X!" which is a ridiculous premise.

     Everything looks good if you ignore opportunity cost.

   • Embed this notice
     CyberAl (openbuddha@megalonyx.social)'s status on Wednesday, 26-Feb-2025 02:03:16 JST CyberAl

     in reply to

     @sj That's assuming the next 47 years will be like the last for markets.