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It deeply depends on your field.

I saw a developer position recently that required at least a four-year degree and it genuinely surprised me because of how infrequent that requirement appears on developer job postings. The vast majority of posts I see are "four years degree or equivalent experience"

I've worked in software shops before where less than half of the staff had a 4-year degree completed—but it is noteworthy y that everyone had at least some college.

>and my own employer when applying for advancement

That I have seen before, but in higher-ed, where it is kind of a given as it is sort of an eating-your-own-dog-food requirement. If your top employees don't have a degree, and you sell degrees, it can tarnish your appearance.

A dirty secret of higher education is that few people actually pay the sticker price. A lot of people get some degree of funding via pseudo-automatic scholarships.

The government is heavily involved in the student loan industry. Consequently, the entire market is heavily distorted. One of the largest programs is the Direct/Stafford loan program [0]. Essentially the student (and only the student; no cosigners allowed) directly borrows money from the federal government at a fairly cheap interest rate (in the last decade [1], it has ranged from 3.4% to 5.05%). In some cases, the student is not liable for interest accrued while they're in school (see the following paragraph for details if you're interested). The loan limit is $31k for dependent students and $57.5k for independent students.

There's two variants to direct loans: subsidized (where the government pays for the interest while the student is in school) and unsubsidized (no qualification necessary). Anyone can take out unsubsidized loans, limited to the COA (cost of attendance: the amount a college declares it would cost to attend; inclusive of tuition, fees, books, room & board, etc.). Anyone who's EFC (expected family contribution: the amount the government expects the student/their parents to pay annually based upon their income and assets) is less than COA can take out up to the shortfall in subsidized loans (but no more than the specified limit which varies by dependent-status and year in school).

[0]: https://studentaid.gov/understand-aid/types/loans/subsidized...

[1]: https://studentaid.gov/understand-aid/types/loans/interest-r...

my gf just finished her nurse practitioner degree and while she increased her salary from 60k to 90k, her student loan payments, with some loans being 10% !, eat up all of her increased income. She's happier, but after all the bills, she has the same left over. So from an economic standpoint, she got an advanced degree that benefitted her school and the bank.

Will she never pay them off and then reap the benefit? Is happiness not something she benefits from?

That is only true if student loan payments are for a lifetime, but mine were only ten year loans if I paid the bare minimum. You're also ignoring her future pay, salary increases are cumulative.

Aren't you contradicting yourself somewhat here? The alternate universe version of you wouldn't have the same job - as you say in paragraph 1 you'd work somewhere else.

People on here earn top percentile salaries which warp the calculus, myself included, but $50K is approximately one year of the UK median income (I imagine the US figure is similar).

I'd be worried about making back hundreds of thousands in a low paid field. But a 50K degree in a well paid field is a no brainer to me.

Earnings increases are cumulative. I'm almost certainly 200% over what I'd have without my undergrad, and not just due to the piece of paper.

UK median income in 2018 was GBP 28,400 which is at today's rate about USD 36,600. I don't see why you made the comparison though? The person deciding to start a 4 year degree can't assume they personally have an opportunity cost of 4*annual median earnings.

My claim is roughly that making back ~1 median wage is not a high bar to meet. Over a working career I'd consider it below the error margin; it's 2-3% of lifetime earnings if you only earn median.

Like, flubbing a single negotiation on any job could have a higher impact than that over the rest of your career.

Would you be willing to name names? Outside of government and defense contractors I personally have not run into any blocks from not having a degree, but I am in the SV bubble where up is down so I have a heavy bias.

> Would you be willing to name names? Outside of government and defense contractors I personally have not run into any blocks from not having a degree,

There are _so_ many places where a degree is a must that it's better to ask which institution will happily accept you without a degree without complications (besides the obvious Google and Tesla).

But to give you an answer: lots of hospitals, lots of defense contractors. Me, I was hired by a hospital as a researcher, but there were a great many complications about the pay (my boss said he wanted to pay me more but couldn't).

And, suppose you wanted to emigrate somewhere, say Belgium. It turns out it's just easier to do it if you have a degree than not. You encounter these issues in places you'd least expect them. Just for convenience sake I'm considering getting one.

Not OP, I applied to a Wells Fargo job in Charlotte that wouldn't even let me continue the application after entering that I did not have a degree. This was about maybe 3 or so years ago. I had talked to several recruiters about jobs at various companies (from consulting firms to small businesses) which cut communication after learning I dont have a degree. Most recently was a few months back when I talked to a recruiter about a job I was "perfect for" in Atlanta, he called me back later that day to say he couldnt submit me because "the position required a degree". I work at a fortune 500 company, and one of my coworkers straight up admitted the company wouldnt have hired me a few years ago.

These are just the example I could remember at the moment, I'm sure there have been more.

> that wouldn't even let me continue the application after entering that I did not have a degree.

I've had gobs and gobs of jobs found via indeed do this to me as part of the 'pre-qualification'. They want to know where you got your degree, sometimes your GPA etc.

>Would you be willing to name names?

Most major, publicly-traded, corporations want a degree beyond entry-level positions. Some companies won't even touch you without a degree (including many startups): for example, Flexport turned me down for the job I'd already done for over a decade, longer than they've been a company, for not having a 4-year degree, this is a direct copy-paste from the rejection email when I applied:

>You obviously have many of the skills we're looking for. However, for the Customs Brokerage role we require a BA/BS degree as well as previous experience in a broker role doing entries and customs classifications.

At the time of that email rejection I'd been doing the job for 12 years and 1 month at my current employer.

Even postings at places like YC have degree requirements for stuff that shouldn't (like assistants).