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Comment by dec0dedab0de | Hacker News Reader

The answer is in the subtitle, or summary, or whatever the first line is called: Some degrees are worth millions, while others have no net financial value. The biggest factor is your major.

I'm pretty sure everyone already knew that. I distinctly remember friends joking about how their major was worthless 20 years ago, and now see the same people complain about how they got suckered into taking a student loan they can never repay.

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Some certainly know this. But easily NOT the majority. If they did know it, most people would stop getting worthless degrees or skip college!

They are mostly lemmings told to run off the cliff and they gladly fulfill their personal financial doom!!

Or people select those degrees for non-monetary reasons. I highly doubt anyone is getting a degree in religion for the earning potential. Similarly, there might be other non-monetary benefits, like social capital, for going into fields like art.

You're giving naive 17/18 year olds way too much of the benefit of the doubt. Your average education system doesn't wait until they're in the college prep high school to start drilling into them that going to college is their best option and that they need to start thinking about what they want to do for the rest of their lives even though they're not even legal adults. This shit happens so fucking fast that most kids don't even question it. You have your monthly meeting with your guidance councilor that barrages you with "so what major do you want to study? What schools have you looked at? Do you have a list of reach schools? Do you have your list of safety schools? Have you started any of this? Huh, huh, huh??????" and so you just go through the motions of it all and ultimately this is how we end up with only 1 in 4 kids actually finishing college.

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