Gateway/access to professional-tier job market.
This is what they sell, but it's outdated since the 50s and millennials+ have slowly realized it was largely false promises. (both sides are to blame just to be clear)
This is what they sell, but it's outdated since the 50s and millennials+ have slowly realized it was largely false promises. (both sides are to blame just to be clear)
If that were the only thing, yeah I could see it being a hard sell.. especially as costs have gotten a lot higher than when I went to university at the beginning of the millennium. But add in the peer network and the ease of making friends because of repeated random encounters.. and I think it's still worth it.
The whole "companies expect a degree, at least to show that you can finish a multi-year effort" was always an afterthought for me.
You can get that access without paying tuition. Just show up and talk to the professors. They (most likely) won't kick you out.
If you knew exactly what you wanted (needed) to talk about, I don't think you would have an issue. You could always pay them to consult if the topic wasn't too boring.
However...
At least in the olden days, going to the class and listening to the professor's take on the subject could help you make connections that you wouldn't make in another context, or on your own. In current days, maybe you make those connections by watching YouTube videos. I (vaguely) remember a very interesting post by someone who said when they watched Talk Y at 2x speed, it seemed mediocre, but later they watched it at 1x and started making all sorts of connections from it.
I think that's one of the benefits of college. Experiencing life at 1x, with time to make the connections and do the creative thinking.
The creativity can also come from talking with your colleagues (fellow students).
No, I mean you can literally read the same books and attend the same lectures as tuition paying students.
You can ask a professor if you can sit in class (even if you are not a student). Most will be overjoyed that someone is actually sitting in class just to _learn_, instead of just for the piece of paper at the end.
Now the more controversial stance is we can't say this earning power is causal. That's why specifically I said people buy the gateway ticket into these higher earning jobs. It's self-perpetuating.
I can't disagree with the data, what I can say is people that out-earn non-college people is not _because_ of college. The population represented by non-college goes really down really deep for large variety of socio-economic reasons let's just say.