College costs on average $26K and $52K per year[1] according to my google skills. 4 years of college therefore amounts to roughly $100 to $200K, which in fairness you have to subtract from that initial $541K difference. Still a nice difference.
However, the parent poster mentioned plumbers. According to my google skills again, a plumber makes $55,160 on average, compared to the $56,700 bachelor average. That difference is rather small, and a bachelor probably is worse off than a plumber once you factor in cost of education.
[1] https://www.topuniversities.com/student-info/student-finance...
[2] https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/plumber/salary
People forget that “real” work is not kind on the body.
The thing tho is that people who do not go to college quite often do not have $120K just laying around to invest for 30+ years. In fact a lot of people who go to college (or their parents) do not have that kind of money lying around either.
And let's not forget that the people who do go to college and get that additional $500K can invest that additional $500K as well. Not as a lump sum either, of course.
Your vision is good, but its not reality.
Increase in earnings is a poor way to look at it, that is mainly from the credentialism that companies look for (which is horrible but it is what it is), and the networking that happens.
Are sociology majors measurably better at critical thinking than plumbers?
I kind of suspect a significant portion of the "college teaches critical thinking" meme is just something college educated people say to feel superior.
But maybe this isn’t causality, maybe people with better critical thinking are going to be more attracted to college
Similarly, critical thinking should be learned long before college age. If you're learning that during college, you've got a very late start.
Maybe that's not what you meant, but that's pretty much what you've written.
This might sound like I'm biased against the trades. I'm not! I think they're crucial, and I, along with about half the software engineers I know, often daydream about becoming a fine carpenter.
I'm also not biased against trade schools in particular. They provide an important service and are a pipeline to good union jobs. The criticisms I make at the top of this comment apply equally to students who go to a top music program like Juilliard or the Oberlin conservatory, as those graduates will tell you themselves. They go to learn music, not to broaden their horizons.
If you have any evidence to support this, I invite you to post it. Because according to the study below:
"Getting a Bachelor's degree adds another large increase in lifetime earnings. With median earnings of $56,700 ($27.26 per hour), or $2.3 million over a lifetime, Bachelor's degree holders earn 31 percent more than workers with an Associate's degree and 74 percent more than those with just a high school diploma."
But more importantly, college should NOT be job training. It should be a place to learn critical thinking, to experiment in a safe environment, and a place to learn what you even want to learn about. A college graduate should be able to learn what they need to learn, including pursuing a career in the trades.
I agree that we need more plumbers. But the idea that young adults -- in practice, working class and poor ones -- should be denied the opportunity to learn and grow and instead be offered trade school or nothing, is profoundly unfair.
This is not to say that we couldn't improve the status quo. We could make college less expensive or free, consolidate degrees (getting a law degree in 4 or 5 years of college rather than 4 years of college + 3 more of law school), etc. But a blanket statement that "college is net detrimental to society" seems ignorant even in the kindest light.
https://www2.ed.gov/policy/highered/reg/hearulemaking/2011/c...