While you lament the causes of the increased cost of college of the past several decades, one thing you missed was that the payoff of a college degree has escalated as well. Just look at the ratio of CEO-to-employee pay.

In the 1950s, a typical CEO made 20 times the salary of his or her average worker. Last year, CEO pay at an S&P 500 Index firm soared to an average of 361 times more than the average rank-and-file worker… (Forbes)

Individual industries and even companies can be found at this handy site from the AFL-CIO.

While we can moan about how much CEOs get paid, it is also indicative of the higher pay that middle- and upper-echelon employees make. Those are the employees that normally require the most training and education (both on-the-job and formally through college).

It is similar to the structure of a gang dealing drugs, as detailed in Chapter 3 of Freakonomics. The leader lives like a king, while the street-level sellers still live with their moms.

The same applies to modern-day corporations. The entry-level positions completely suck, but the promise of a bigger salary keeps us working. You may call that being a hamster on a wheel. I call it working towards a goal.

To put some numbers to it, here’s an excerpt from an article I wrote on student loans.

The Social Security Administration calculated the net present value (NPV) of the lifetime earnings one can expect with a bachelor’s degree. The result? An additional $260,000 for men and $180,000 for women. That pales in comparison to the NPV of just under $40,000 for the average loan.

Remember, this is NPV, so it is in today’s value of money. It is the equivalent of giving a stockbroker $40k in the morning and getting $260,000 later that afternoon. That’s a trade I’ll make all day.

Yes, these are averages. And yes, there are some that will have horror stories of never paying back loans.

But how many success stories are there of students who would otherwise have had no chance to go to college if not for student loans?