> Another, more optimistic way to describe it is that students are spending more of their wealth to invest in their own human capital, which isn't measured in statistics.
Statistics can measure this fairly easily. Just these particular statistics cited in this article do not.
However, the root of the argument is probably depressing. It is pretty unlikely that all the money spent on higher education produces a true positive return on investment (please do not cite any "college grads make more money" stats without controlling for co-variant effects). Most loans taken out to fund schooling are forms of malinvestment.
Statistics can measure this fairly easily. Just these particular statistics cited in this article do not.
However, the root of the argument is probably depressing. It is pretty unlikely that all the money spent on higher education produces a true positive return on investment (please do not cite any "college grads make more money" stats without controlling for co-variant effects). Most loans taken out to fund schooling are forms of malinvestment.