[Tactitus]

Originally Posted by Nodrog

Statistics like this seem dubious since I assume theyre skewed fairly heavily by degrees such as medicine and law - it's not very clear why having a degree in English literature or theoretical physics is going to increase your lifetime earnings significantly.

It's not just the average earnings that are so much higher but also the median earnings. For example, in the US the median salaries for college graduates are 62% higher than for high school graduates, so it's not just the case of a few really high salaries skewing averages.

There's also a causation != correlation argument that people who are 'smart'/hard-working (haha) enough to get into university are on average more likely to earn more than those who arent even without the benefits of further education.

To the extent that's true it would seem to undermine the case for tuition subsidies even further. Why do smart, hard-working people need to be subsidized?

Apart from anything else, it makes the idea of a university education out to be something you just do in order to get a job.

A university education should help you in most areas of your life, including getting a (better) job. The point is simply that education almost always pays for itself.

This ignores the fact that a) most people dont directly use their degree in whatever it is they do afterwards,

I'm not sure that's really relevant because I think you should get a lot more from a degree than just a pile of facts related to a particular discipline. You should refine your ability to think, learn how to research things you don't know, how to organize your thoughts, how to express your ideas clearly, and how to work towards a goal that takes years of effort. These are skills that ought to be useful in a wide variety of jobs and even outside of work as well.

and b) universities used to be considered institutes of learning rather than something to put on a bullet point in your CV.

Can't they be both?