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Comment by graup | Hacker News Reader

Sometimes I wish these articles would include "in the US" in the title. "Is College in the US Worth It? A Return on Investment Analysis"

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Americans write articles for an American audience and don't ever acknowledge the existence of other countries.

Yes it's just a coincidence that we can hear them talk. Almost nobody outside of China is going to read articles written in Chinese because we don't speak that language.

From an ROI perspective, college in the US is not worth it for all but a few degree programs. The university I graduated from in the early 90's (on scholarship) was at the time the most expensive college in the US but now most public schools cost more than that.

Something not accounted for in these studies is financial aid in the form of grants, scholarships, and loans. That will radically change the ROI for individual students.

The paper shows that the ROI for college in the US is positive for many, but not all, majors and schools. It’s literally the entire point of the paper, complete with data, graphs and the rest.

Not as positive as some might think, and there are a significant number of losers, but only “a few degree programs” being positive is not supported by the data.

ROI may be positive for many programs but still only worth it for a few of them.

What difference do you imply between a positive ROI and "worth it" ?

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