College

The cost for a four-year degree at the University of Minnesota is $125,000 and the average grad ends up with $20,000 in student loan debt. If that same person worked four years at McDonalds at $17 per hour, they would earn $134,000. The difference between the two people is paying out $145,000 or taking in $134,000 or $279,000 to start. The average humanities grad starts out at $50,000. The humanities include the academic study of philosophy, religion, history, language arts (literature, writing, oratory, rhetoric, poetry, etc.), the performing arts (theater, music, dance, etc.), and the visual arts (painting, sculpture, photography, filmmaking, etc.). Assuming the difference in salary of $17,000 ($50,000 - $34,000) holds, it will take the graduate 16 year to recoup. There are many other factors to be considered but this is one of them. For example: Fewer than half of students graduate from four-year colleges within four years. The six-year graduation rate is often used to measure how long it takes students to complete their degrees. In that case it would take 24 years to recoup the college cost.