On average a college graduate will have one million dollars more of lifetime earnings than a high school graduate. This one million dollars will be taxed at at least twelve percent federally. Twelve percent is a very conservative estimation on the federal tax rate of that money. This means the federal tax revenue of a college grad is at least one hundred and twenty thousand dollars more than a high school graduate. The average net price of a public college education with room, board, fees, and tuition is fifteen thousand four hundred dollars a year, or just under sixty two thousand dollars for four years.
In four years the federal government spends $62,000 to send someone to college.
Over their lifetime the federal government receives $120,000 back.
Today we create jobs for staff, professors, admins, etc at university. Tomorrow we have a more educated and skilled workforce.
Of course, what I really want is for my fellow citizens to be more well read, better critical thinkers, and better informed citizens. Sometimes the best way to sell someone on something isn’t to focus on what you want out of the deal.
This does not scale. Adding more college degrees does not make that many more productive jobs exist. It just moves the education bar higher for the jobs that do.
College degrees quadrupled since the 1960s. Productive jobs haven't. We already have an oversupply of degree holders working at Starbucks.
The stark reality is that the human race doesn't and can't have enough aggregate demand to productively employ everybody. The necessities of life - food, housing, medical - really only take about 10% of the population to produce and supply. Maybe another 20% in productivity-adjacent areas like finance and government services and other administration. Everything else is leisure and service economy, and there isn't infinite demand for that.
Does that statistic account for greater starting wealth of college entrants?
Maybe 25% of the students in the program were there to learn how to make video games. They weren’t there to get a job in making video games. They weren’t there because there is money in making video games. They were there because they wanted to know enough about computer programming to make video games, and everyone had ideas about what type of game they wanted to make.
The vast majority of people need to work for a living and need practical skills that others are willing to pay them for. The idea that the university should exist for "learning for the sake of learning", and the idea that "everyone should go to college" is incompatible. You can have one, you can have the other, you can't realistically have both.
If you want to learn for the sake of learning (I know I do), there's never been a better time to do it. The average person with a $200 laptop and an internet connection has access to more and better information than a Harvard graduate student did 50 years ago. We need to rid ourselves of the notion that college == education and that education == college. At this point a college degree is mainly just proof that you are diligent and were able to follow directions for four years while meeting deadlines.