> The question shouldn't be "Are the people who go to college making more money than the people who don't?" The question should be "Are highly motivated and educated people better off if they go to college instead of doing something else?"

> And the answer to that is often "No, they aren't."

It's certainly possible to get a job in some fields (notably tech) without a degree. And if you work long enough, you'll probably get to the same point you would have with one. On the other hand, I'm quite willing to bet that the average salary of a 22 year old with a 4-year CS degree vastly exceeds the average salary of a 22 year old with 4 years of work experience.

The same goes for graduate degrees, especially for tech companies that have a technical job ladder (those where you can get promoted without becoming a manager): take a look at the starting point for new hires with various degrees, then take a look at the average work experience of people who worked up to those starting points.

When I first started considering graduate school, I actually ran the numbers for whether it made economic sense to pursue a graduate degree, and it most definitely did, by a huge margin.

I do, however, agree with the concept of selection bias here: college is as much a signal of who you already were when you entered as what you learned.