Embed Notice

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.

----
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/