The college wage premium is large and growing.

The problem is that "college" is not an atomic thing. If you break it down by major, some are very much not worth the money and time, while others are very much worth the money and time. I mean, check out Table 7: computer software engineers with a bachelor's degree have twice the lifetime earnings of teachers with a bachelor's degree, who themselves barely earn more than the average person with "some college."

And so when you hear that the number of people seeking journalism degrees is growing, you start to wonder if those people don't know that journalism is a collapsing field, or if they don't care.

I have long been of the opinion that much of that is a result of privilege more than actual benefit of college education. I myself was able to find my way to an income above the national average per individual (and at that on the lower end of average for my industry) without even an Associate's degree. (I've actually done this twice, in two different industries. After the housing market crashed I had to essentially start over from scratch. I made some economic strategy re-assessments after that external wrecking-ball destroyed the path I was then on, and am now once again on a track to an early retirement; it is my long-term goal to have sufficient capital reserves to be able to live comfortably off of 3% APY returns by the time I'm 55. The economic downturn delayed me from 50 to 55. And I will note that I'm doing this without engaging in entrepeneurship of any kind; my sole foray into that field demonstrated I do not have the necessary social skillset to succeed in that venue.)

And I have no student debt to pay off, at that.

My parenthetical is actually demonstrative of my point here: I have achieved all of these things not because I am especially gifted, or especially insightful, or especially privileged. I have started with little to no social safety net and have built/rebuilt myself a total of three times, once from personal failure which I assessed and acted upon to adjust as necessary, once from external failure.

The only thing I can claim to have is what Eliezer would call, I suspect, a "winning attitude". One of my primary supergoals is, simply: "do what works."