> "Nobody talked about college as an investment"
To the contrary, college as an personal investment has been the driving force behind the increase in price for American universities for decades.
Here's a 1976 newspaper article on the topic, which suggests that the analysis of college as an investment wasn't new even then: https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=110&dat=19761113&id=R... and people both pro- and against an emphasis on getting a college education used "investment" to argue their point.
Here's a 2002 article where a higher-education advocate asserts that while not all students may view college as an investment, "I'm sure parents do." https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=266&dat=20020718&id=R... . This is a far cry from "nobody talked about college as an investment."
Here's a 1988 article on the high price of college, where a college president says "It became clear that young people were seeing college as an investment and that price was less important as a result" - https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2199&dat=19880323&id=...
That last shows the connection I proposed in my first paragraph. My belief is that an increasing focus on "college as investment" will mean the price of college will rise until it's just under the expected increase in lifetime income.
Also, if this is a real investment, then multiple people should be allowed to invest, and not just the student. If companies want to hire college-trained chemists, they should be funding colleges for that, or funding employees or giving scholarships to get a college education. Otherwise it comes across as pushing training costs from the company onto the student, yes?
The 1976 article argues that college-educated people are also more informed citizens and more likely to use non-violent solutions for a problem. Is that not a useful investment that the community itself should invest in, even if there is a glut of people with a mathematics degree?
If so, this isn't really raising taxes as a cost, but investing in the future of the community, yes?
Yet it always seems in these debates that only the teenager is considered competent enough to make the correct investment decision on taking on what may be decades of personal debt.