Comment by whitegrape

I went to college for a number of reasons despite already being skeptical of the "party line" everyone was telling me about how important it was to go to college, but ultimately I was able to swallow the estimated $100k price tag at the place I wanted to go the most (which was small, private, and out of state) because I made the calculations that let me be confident that if I made it to the end it shouldn't be too difficult to get even an entry level job in some field of tech I already had experience in (my degree was computer engineering) at $60k/yr which wouldn't be too bad for paying off that debt. Things more or less worked out, I too don't use any of my degree knowledge on the job and the thing that gets me the most recruiter spam is my broad experience working for peanuts on/off at a local startup while I was still in school. Certainly the degree would have been cheaper by going to the state university, or a community college first, but even those figures are starting to rise and when you can't get any job $30k of interest-accumulating debt probably feels about as back-breaking as $100k. I don't know if I would go back and take the safer, cheaper path. I think I did alright given my information at the time, so I don't put all the blame on the system -- too many college students just don't do the steps of calculating the full program cost (including any loans for housing), the desirability of employees with this particular degree over a degree in general, and then figuring out a plan to actually pay back what they borrow for the degree.