> You've established that education is a good investment.

My friend often comes to me and says, "Hey, man, how come you don't invest your money in <x>?" Because I'm living in poverty. People who live in poverty don't have money to invest.

> So why not find an affordable college?

So I did a quick calculation. Affordable, meaning junior college and public state college, would come out to roughly $23k for a bachelor. Maybe round it to $30k. When I was paying off my car, which only come out to about a little over $10k. Two years of having to work JUST to pay that off felt really, really uncomfortable. A college infused starting salary would probably only pay about 1 and 1/2 times more than what I was making then and the idea of having to do that for even longer without being able to absolve myself of it through bankruptcy is not something I want to do.

> Can't you just hack this by going to school for pretty much anything you're interested in and being able to work in an unrelated field?

That particular situation doesn't apply to every job. It seems like its mainly tech jobs I see that in and I'm not 100% certain I'd want to work to be forced into a tech job.

So I'm trying to think of the best way to explain this because I feel like I'm going in different directions but it seems like there's two paths:

1) go to college, accrue debt to get a job then work at your job for 5-10 years to pay that debt off

Barring someone making sure I have the proper technical bonafides, I'm philosophically opposed to getting a piece of paper for a job that I could do just as easily without a college education as I could with one. I also feel really uncomfortable with debt in general, especially debt that I cannot choose to have absolved through bankruptcy.

2) live at the lowest possible means necessary and eke out a living as best you can

As it stands now, my current expenses are no more than $500 a month (including rent). My biggest challenge, currently, to maintaining that type of lifestyle is getting remote work that I can do on an ad-hoc basis that will allow me to stay under the income necessary for government subsidies.

these are the rules of the game. you didn't create them, you have little to none influence on them. you can disagree with them on principle, you can exploit them to your benefit. you can do both.

> People who live in poverty don't have money to invest.

You wrote below this line that your current expenses are $500/month. The poverty line is currently $12,880. Even if you are making one half of that (which is hard to believe: $6,440/year works out to $3.10/hour), you would still have $440/year to invest. You wrote elsewhere that you are in your late thirties; $36.67/month invested in the S&P 500 over the last 15 years (which has returned 8.4% over that time) would be worth $13,195.76 today. That is not a lot for folks above the poverty line, but by your own math that works out to over two years' living expenses. Over the course of forty years at the same long-term rate one could expect to have enough saved up for twenty-four years' expenses.

Or you could invest it in something with a greater than 8.4% return … such as a college education.

> I also feel really uncomfortable with debt in general, especially debt that I cannot choose to have absolved through bankruptcy.

Debt can be a problem, but it can also be a solution. Borrowing at X% and investing at Y% is a great idea when Y > X (of course, if Y or X is not constant, then there is a risk that Y < X at some point!). When Y >> X, as in the case of going to college for a marketable degree, it is an easy decision.

You get out of a college education what you put into it. I wouldn't recommend it just for a job, and the debt is an unfortunate modern heavy consideration to keep in mind. However, consider that it can be a force multiplier for your income for life, and give you the time/motivation to study things you may not otherwise come across, which can open you up to new opportunities and expand your network.

Also, people who come to college later in life tend to do better than average, because they want to be there, and have more maturity and discipline to do the work necessary.

I'm not saying college is the right choice for you, you do have important considerations that you're clearly weighing against each other. But, I am saying it may have more in the "pro" column than you credit it for, and there are also some non-loan subsidies that open up for students as well.

But yeah, student loans suck. A lot. For sure!

"Because I'm living in poverty. People who live in poverty don't have money to invest."

You have your time and energy to invest, and you can get an educational loan.

" then work at your job for 5-10 years to pay that debt off"

I don't think all of your money goes into paying off the debt during that time.

"I'm philosophically opposed to getting a piece of paper for a job that I could do just as easily without a college education as I could with one"

Well if you don't need it and don't want it, obviously don't get that degree.

" I also feel really uncomfortable with debt in general, especially debt that I cannot choose to have absolved through bankruptcy."

Since you have established you can earn as much without a degree, and it takes 5 years to pay off the costs, you could also work for 5 years and save money for the degree.

You don't address the concern here

"Well if you don't need it and don't want it, obviously don't get that degree."

The concern is that, according to parent, and I believe parent, is that the system requires a useless piece of paper. The degree is more an economic hurdle than a proof of capacity. That merit is a social construct.

Money is a social construct. In fact almost everything other than food, shelter and tools are either social constructs or only have value in a social context. Jobs are social constructs too.

But the parent also claimed he can make the same money without the degree. Both things can not be true at the same time ("you need the useless paper", "you can make the same money without it").

Apart from that, while the usefulness of some degrees can be questioned, there is a general concept called "signalling" which has actual value. That is you demonstrate certain qualities in a way that are difficult to fake (usually by doing something costly, like getting a degree, or carrying around a huge tail if you are a parrot).

I think their point (which i agree with) is why do you need a college degree just to get a basic entry level job with a career path. You're delaying entering the workforce for 4+ years ($100k+ at minimum wage, minus some if you work during college) with ~30k debt (with your example tuition/costs not sure if it include room & board) so they should get a similar output from that education.

This probably wasn't the situation prior to the USA population tripling over the last 70-80 years while tech/automation has acted as a limiting force to job growth. It's easy to say the cost of college has skyrocketed because of cheap non-discharable debt but it's pusdo-requirement has also caused demand to skyrocket too.

> why do you need a college degree just to get a basic entry level job with a career path.

The two options here are that either all the businesses using college degrees as a signal are wrong and they could be saving a lot of money by hiring non college educated applicants for slightly less pay and building them up.

OR college education is a useful signal and so businesses are willing to pay a higher price for it.

If the prior were true, then I would assume a business would have developed already to take advantage of the arbitrage opportunity. It is not a novel or less known idea.

A degree can be a valuable signal to employers and also be a terrible waste of time and resources. It can be both at once.

It would be better if we found ways to let young people get into white collar and middle class professions without spending $100K and four years of their lives. This used to be possible. I'm quite sure it could be done again, but collectively we're not going to go there. Yet, anyway.

> A degree can be a valuable signal to employers and also be a terrible waste of time and resources. It can be both at once.

Sure, but it answers the question of why a degree is “needed”, and that is given the supply and demand curves for labor, the suppliers of labor need it to compete with each other.

> It would be better if we found ways to let young people get into white collar and middle class professions without spending $100K and four years of their lives.

Really simple, remove all taxpayer funded (including guaranteed) education loans, and any special bankruptcy protection they might have.

Yeah, and the OP's point is that refusing to participate is self defeating. If you see a bad system, you should hack it, not take the hit.

And by all means, keep complaining and if you have some power, use it to fix the system. But don't incentive people to act in self-defeating ways.