It's not like people are forced to take student loans.

[lumberjack_jeff]

154. You're still in Lake Woebegone.

Jeff the genie just scaled down the working-age population of the US to 100 people.

About 25 of them don't seek work by choice. Many of them are stay at home parents.

Of the remaining 75, (the workforce participation rate) roughly 25 have college degrees.

It is very true that if one of the 50 workers who lack a college degree were to return to school, they would be better able to compete for one of the jobs, and will probably make a higher wage than would otherwise be possible. Enough to recoup the investment? Maybe if they are lucky.

But what happens, on average, if 10 of those workers get degrees?

In this scaled-down country, there are 65 jobs. Of those, generously, 15 are professional or quasi-professional, requiring a meaningful amount of postsecondary education. The fact that there are only 65 jobs means that about 10% of the working age population want a job but can't find one.

Nothing about more aggregate education creates jobs. "More workers = more jobs" is as false a premise as "more capitalists = more jobs". Only consumers create jobs. With that in mind, what does diverting workers disposable income into education do to their ability to buy stuff?

So, the same pool of people are competing for (optimistically) the same pool of jobs, but instead of 10 people being underemployed relative to their training, now 20 people are. They are broke, dissatisfied with their job and are less experienced on their job than the incumbent worker whom they displaced, either onto lower rungs of the economic ladder... or off the ladder entirely. This increasing aggregate level of education enables credential creep, a job which requires only a high school level of education is advertised to only holders of bachelor's degrees.

Unnecessary spending on an arbitrarily large amout of college is a disservice to workers. It increases the average cost of being a worker without raising the average wages.

If secondary education isn't doing an adequate job of creating an informed citizenry, then fix that.