In 1970, I returned to college after four years in the USAF.

[hunter]

21. Realistic, I suppose, but it's just fucking noise.

The value of an educated populace really can't be reduced to dollars and cents.

Personally, I graduated from college without any debt.

In the later 'seventies my share of the rent for an apartment I shared with some other guys was $85. My student fees were about $1200 a year, my books (mostly used) were less than $200. I paid no tuition.

Here's the kicker: I had some skills as a laborer and could usually find part time work for $5.00 to $8.00 an hour, even though I was a complete lunatic. I had a $400 car too. You do the math. I've joked that gasoline was free and I abused that privilege a lot, joyriding all over the western United States and the border regions of Mexico.

I know mine was not a typical experience but I knew plenty of people who were working their way through school with part time work that paid less and no student loans.

These days I would have been priced out of school or expelled permanently, and quite likely would have ended up living on the streets, alienated from my family. In school I found the resources to deal with my mental health issues and an education that qualified me to do laboratory work and teach science.

I don't think anyone would have measured me as a good investment when I quit high school at sixteen. Hell, when I was eighteen even the military rejected me, despite the two years of college I'd successfully completed with a "B" average.

So yeah, fuck that noise. College ought to be easily accessible to anyone willing to make the effort.

I can't say my educational choices were lucrative (Evolutionary Biology and English if it matters to you) but they definitely kept me off the streets.