If you think a car rapidly depreciates, try reselling your degree. You might be in for a shock.

Winner: The car.

> getting a decent college degree will pay dividends throughout your life in increased earnings power.

The data says otherwise. Wages have held stagnant through the rise of post-secondary schooling. You can't both have increased earning power and stagnant earning power.

The earning power of not being limited to a physically close job that a car affords did show some upward wage movement, however. There was clear wage growth seen during the rise of the automobile.

Winner: The car.

> According to govt estimates, the average lifetime earnings difference between someone with just a high-school diploma, and someone with a college degree is - on average $550,000.

Ouch. The opportunity cost of a four year degree is, on average, more than a million dollars. That's a nasty haircut.

And that's ignoring that your methodology is flawed. We know that different people are different. Of course the person with down syndrome, who just scraped by in high school and struggles in the workplace for the same reason, is going to have lower earning potential than the person who breezed through their studies at Stanford. These people are not comparable.

Which is why you actually want to compare people over time. Using a time vector maintains the spectrum of people from high functioning to low functioning. Over time, as more and more have attained degrees, incomes have held stagnant. There has actually been no economic benefit gained.

Why would you sell your degree?

>>The data says otherwise

No it doesn't - stop making stuff up

but it sounds like in your case, you are not well suited for college - you should buy a car instead. Uber is always looking for drivers.

The same reason you would sell your car: To try and recoup the cost that you sunk into it, to repurpose and hopefully find productive use for the capital. The trouble you will run into with the degree, with it quickly depreciating to having no remaining value as soon as you drive it off the lot, is that nobody will want to buy it from you. The car will retain at least some value with its much longer depreciation cycle and ultimately scrap value.

Cars being the prime example. Wages were not stagnant through the rise of the automobile. People were able to sell their time at a higher rate by being able to travel further to where the higher paying work was found. Wage gains only started to taper off once car ownership reached critical mass, providing no additional market advantage.

So, yes, you are quite right that most people buy a car because it is the vehicle that gets to higher paying work, justifying the high cost of ownership. However, that is separate to our discussion about recouping the cost when you sell it. Both a degree and a car depreciate, but the degree dramatically faster.

Not when you're not even sure of being able to pay back those $31K+interests afterwards.

If you went to college for 4 years, and didn't improve you situation enough to afford a few hundred dollars a month in debt, then you chose poorly.