We do not get searching critiques, at least from economists, of the Australian university system, perhaps because the universities’ main role here is to bring in migrants for the Great Replacement, as I have argued in previous articles, so immigration has become a sacred cow of the anti-us system. Anyway, in the US context:
https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/college-worth-it-one-study-says-maybe-not
“The unjustifiably high cost of college tuition in the US has dragged a whole generation into debt slavery. The average cost of a 4-year degree in the US is 3x higher than it was in 1990. Even tuition at in-state schools is climbing more quickly than incomes. As more people are forced to go into deep levels of debt to afford an education, more would-be students are being forced to take a hard look and reevaluate the ROI on a college degree. And as college tuition continues to outpace wage growth, for a growing number of people, the answer to 'is college worth it?' is going to be no. A reporter at Clever.com did some digging, and tabulated the ROI on different types of degrees: the bachelor's, master's and doctorate. Generally speaking, people with at least a bachelor's degree typically earn more money over their lifetime than those who never attended college, and it's also easier to get a job with a degree. But while Americans with a bachelor's degree might be on to something, those who earn a Master's and PHD-level degrees can't say the same. While nearly half the population has a bachelor's degree, only 13% of Americans have a master's or Phd-level degree. And according to Clever's analysis, many higher-level degrees may not be worth the time and money that students spend. In fact, the longer someone spends in school, the more the value of their degrees diminishes. Of course, ROI changes depending on the subject that an individual studies. Clever found that the best bachelor's degrees, unsurprisingly, tend to be in the STEM area: operations research, petroleum engineering, biological and physical sciences, biopsychology and gerontology.”
Here is some dirt I dug up on the unemployment of graduates in Australia:
https://www.smh.com.au/education/full-time-employment-rate-for-university-graduates-plummets-20190110-p50qlf.html
“The proportion of graduates in full-time employment four months after finishing their degrees has plummeted over the past decade to 72.9 per cent last year from as high as 85.2 per cent in 2008. However, employment prospects for those with undergraduate degrees have bounced back slightly from a low of 68.1 per cent in 2014 and 71.8 per cent in 2017, which has been attributed to the economy recovering from the effects of the global financial crisis, according to the 2018 Graduate Outcomes Survey. Not all degrees and universities are equal when it comes to graduate outcomes, with the highest full-time employment rates of 97.2 per cent and 94.9 per cent being experienced by pharmacy and medicine undergraduates respectively, according to the survey, which were released on Friday by the Australian Department of Education and Training. The university with the highest full-time employment rates for undergraduates immediately after finishing their degrees is Charles Sturt University, with an employment rate of 87.5 per cent, followed by Charles Darwin University with 83.2 per cent and the University of Sydney with 81 per cent. On the flip side, the degrees with the lowest rates of full-time employment are creative arts, with a rate of 52.2 per cent, psychology with 60.3 per cent and communications with 60.6 per cent, the annual survey conducted under the Quality Indicators for Learning and Teaching survey program found after receiving more than 129,560 responses across 102 higher education institutions. The universities with the lowest full-time employment outcomes are the University of Western Australia, Edith Cowan University and Torrens University, with full-time employment rates of 55.4 per cent, 57.8 per cent and 61.6 per cent, according to the 2018 report.”
Unless one is in some secure STEM area, there is uncertainty about employment in many areas, and balancing up the cost of the degree, one has to ask: is the suffering worth it?
https://www.news.com.au/finance/work/careers/is-it-worth-going-to-university/news-story/2e2e2def7088659eba9b5a647ba8c50a