As far as ANY education goes, successfully providing children with a means of being a productive member of society provides them with 'things to loose' and thus they are far less likely to be a 'non-productive' as either a flat resource drain, or worse, as someone forced to find methods of employment that drain resources from others (such as crime).

I suspect you'd get the most RoI on education related to what the economy needed at the time. However if the market is compensating employees fairly* then students will likely pick what enjoy doing which also best fits the needs of the economy (as dictated by the benefits of the job).

*For example, when you have to hire employees from out of nation requiring that they make 2X or more of the median pay for the job in that area, and also allowing this valued employee to freely take any other similar offer (2X median pay in the area of the job) as well as have a fast track to citizenship.

"I suspect you'd get the most RoI on education related to what the economy needed at the time. However if the market is compensating employees fairly* then students will likely pick what enjoy doing which also best fits the needs of the economy (as dictated by the benefits of the job)."

The problem being that much education has a minimum of 4 year lag time. So one could go into a degree program when the market is hot, only to see it cool off by the time they graduate.