The last time the intellectual titans of the San Fran Fed, which have made a living out of asking probing, kindergarten-level questions and then spending tens of thousands of taxpayer funds to answer them, performed in depth inquiry into a topic was about a month ago when it asked "How Important Are Hedge Funds In A Crisis [5]." To its dismay, it found the answer to be "very. [5]" Today, the intellectual titanism continues when the regional Fed, which Janet Yellen called her home for so many years, asks (and answers), "Is It Still Worth Going to College [6]?"
Its findings in a nutshell:
Earning a four-year college degree remains a worthwhile investment for the average student. Data from U.S. workers show that the benefits of college in terms of higher earnings far outweigh the costs of a degree, measured as tuition plus wages lost while attending school. The average college graduate paying annual tuition of about $20,000 can recoup the costs of schooling by age 40. After that, the difference between earnings continues such that the average college graduate earns over $800,000 more than the average high school graduate by retirement age.
...
Although there are stories of people who skipped college and achieved financial success, for most Americans the path to higher future earnings involves a four-year college degree. We show that the value of a college degree remains high, and the average college graduate can recover the costs of attending in less than 20 years. Once the investment is paid for, it continues to pay dividends through the rest of the worker’s life, leaving college graduates with substantially higher lifetime earnings than their peers with a high school degree. These findings suggest that redoubling the efforts to make college more accessible would be time and money well spent.
So the answer, in a nutshell, is "yes"... as one would expect of course: because in a world in which marginal revolving debt demand is virtually zero, and in fact declines on many months of the year, the only source of consumer credit - that opiate for the Keynesian masses and certainly for their shamans - for the past five years, is simple: car loans and, to a far greater degree, student loans [7].
[8]
Oddly enough, having perused the paper several times, and having done a word search for both "loan" and "debt" (both of which return no hits), we find zero mention of one particular hockeystick. This one:
[9]
Perhaps for the San Fran Fed to be taken seriously one of these years, it will actually do an analysis that covers all sides of a given problem, instead of just the one it was goalseeked to "conclude" before any "research" was even attempted.