You left out the leisure value of college. I enjoyed college, for the most part. We don't talk about "returns to vacation", for instance, as being the primary way to assess the value of vacation. The main difference (and the reason this issue bugs me) is that young people are badly mislead about the financial value they should expect from college.
I also think it's pretty dubious what gains people actually tend to make in the items on your list at college. At best, college is a very expensive way to achieve those goals for most people.
Don't get me wrong, I feel like college benefited me on items 1, 3, 4, and 5, and I do recommend it for bright driven intellectually curious students. My teaching experience, however, leads me to believe it's a pretty small minority of students who should be there (in the sense that it's a good use of their time).
You left out the leisure value of college.
That was lumped into the "social training" part in my mind, though as I just mentioned to @SimpleStacker, I should have unbundled that one. (How ironic.)
I read an article once that this inflation of benefits was one of the chief reasons for escalating tuition prices -- some of the more prestigious schools are transforming themselves into combos of cruise ships + Disneyland.
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Yep. It largely goes into physical rec facilities.
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Coach K was the highest paid employee of Duke University. I'm sure various sports coaches are. Utterly a sham if you ask me, though a lot of students love that stuff... so it makes financial sense for the colleges to attract enrollment and attract donors... just don't call it education...
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