On average, skipping college and investing tuition costs nets a higher return

Re:On average, skipping college and investing tuition costs ... by moomin on Monday June 05, 2017 @11:00AM (#14488065)

Serious point: let's say that, to you personally, investing in the stock market and going to college are a wash. They're not a wash for the state. The state gets more taxes from your higher-paying job. The chances are you're also helping to support some lower-paying jobs as part of your industry. So it's not unreasonable to expect the state to contribute to actually making this happen.

The benefits are actually much larger than I've just described. There's a snowball effect as the industries of the state move up the ladder. America is currently benefiting from past state investment in education. (There's intangible benefits too, but for these purposes let's just talk about the benefits the state accrues.)

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Re:On average, skipping college and investing tuition costs ... by ThrustVectoring on Monday June 05, 2017 @01:40PM (#14489527)

>The state gets more taxes from your higher-paying job.

That's if you accept the higher-education-as-training model. Under the higher-education-as-signaling model, the primary effect of education is to choose how to allocate a fixed set of high paying jobs. If there's 100 slots for new lawyers this year, then the difference between sending 150 and 151 students through law school is an additional unemployed lawyer.

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Re:On average, skipping college and investing tuition costs ... by moomin on Tuesday June 06, 2017 @11:01AM (#14497736)

There's a case to be made for that in particular professions, and there's no way the state should be funding the dodgy law colleges that have sprouted all over America. But then, if you subscribe to that model you should also believe that you should be able to disavow education loans in the event of bankruptcy.

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Re:On average, skipping college and investing tuition costs ... by kesselvon on Monday June 05, 2017 @11:49AM (#14488452)

The federal government is having it both ways right now: it earns interest on the money it loaned to you to get a higher education, and it also generates higher revenues via your increased lifetime earnings. This is a bummer because its not like your state taxes went down along with a decrease in state funding for your in-state universities.

Basically state governments off-loaded the burden of funding on the students while reaping the benefits of said investments.

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