Before a single new shipyard or chip line hires anyone, the country makes one of its biggest bets of talent and capital through its colleges, and in my experience few families run the numbers on what comes back. Run through the American Dynamism lens, the median four-year degree’s loss stops being a consumer story and…

The viral homebuyer-age chart fails basic checks. The honest data is worse: student debt since 2003 grew by enough to mortgage about 3.8 million homes.

One in eleven Harvard students comes from just 21 high schools. On the private side, boarding families pay $300,000 for the pipeline. The prestige purchase happens before the application.

Every mutual fund ad that touts returns must warn you: past performance does not guarantee future results. College is one of the largest purchases most families make. It is sold largely on past performance, and the pitch carries no such warning. Worse, at selective schools the track record is built from hand-picked students. Learn to…

The Department of Education put the softest possible earnings warning on the FAFSA, after the list is set, for a thin slice of students. A quarter of those who saw it moved. Imagine what an honest one would do.