You guys will like this. In labor economics class today we discussed how to determine if a college education is more beneficial than not. Without getting into details, here is the main takeaway relevant to us here:

Nobody knows. The government's economic justification for subsidizing college is based on real statistics that show a positive association with college and lifetime benefit, yet this is a meager fraction of what's going on. We don't even know if the reason for that association is that smart people choose college and not smart ones don't. In fact, not smart people entering college may actually be reducing their lifetime benefit.

Sheesh. For all we know, government policy is doing more harm than good by incentivizing college so much. Lots of economists have argued that, I would argue that, and it is classical economic theory. That theory is not in use by majority today, but it never got debunked; people just stopped liking it for political and zeitgeist reasons.