I have to agree, it isn't.
College these days are a business like any other. Its almost more valuable to toss someone into the deep end to learn to think on their own feet rather than have them come out of a college with 4 years of 'experience' thinking they know anything about how life/business/money works. Going to college to get a certification (i.e. law, medicine) might potentially be worth it but I know people who have left those industries as well.
What I think is more unbelievable is that all degrees are 4 year highly structured degrees, which is simply not the case for every job out there. Looking back it all seems so ludicrous, the whole process of being educated in that system. Even video games today are more realistic than this.
In any case, property prices in high CoL locations is mainly the cost of the land. I've visited homes in the midwest nicer than almost anything I ever saw in the Bay Area that cost 200-300k.
When you buy a house here it’s more like you’re buying a $900,000 piece of land and getting a free house in the deal. Those houses are practically worthless and a lot of new buyers tear them down and build a new one.
I’d guess that doing that costs a few hundred thousand. But most of the time I see that, the new houses are way better quality. If you wanted to bare minimum meet code, it’d probably still be cheaper to build a new house than to refit the old one.
And land you can build on is expensive because it's scarce, because people vote to make building anything illegal (except places that are already in decline and need residents)
My house is a death trap, for that matter, but it's thatched..
It feels a bit like the supply of housing and the supply of debt are both manipulated to make sure people work as hard as possible but without revolting. Living free and clear of debt is extremely hard; the places you can build a home without restriction are generally not near decent jobs, and the places near decent jobs make it more or less illegal to build homes (and those you are allowed to build have to meet labrynthine requirements about outdoor space, parking, density, etc. - certainly the sorts of homes normal people could afford to build with the cash they have aren't allowed in the major metros).
Of course, those who already own homes have a strong incentive to preserve the housing cartel, as it increases the value of their asset (which they can then sell when they retire and move somewhere cheap with no jobs)
So far as I can tell the best path out is remote work and a low cost of living area, but that's open to rather few people and I have a suspicion wages will drop as more people gravitate towards this option and there's more competition.
Not to mention that we explicitly encourage young people to throw away 4 years of their life _and_ take on massive debt before starting. I'm not sure a degree, a pile of debt, and 4 years of opportunity cost are worth more than your wits and a clean slate.