The famous college payoff is $1.2 million. Control for who enrolls and half of it disappears. Price it like an investment and the median degree turns negative. Even the smartest people in the field, evidence in hand, were so convinced of the promise that they explained the doubt away, and the families who could not…

The discount-rate fight decides only whether the median graduate wins. A degree cannot be discounted like a Treasury bond, and even the most generous rate leaves a third of four-year colleges underwater at full price. The failures underneath never move with the rate.

Sort Georgetown’s ROI rankings by the forty-year column and the lowest number in it is positive $361,000. Sort their ten-year column and schools run to negative $157,000. Same schools, same data. The sign is the window, not the school. Ask the question the table never does: compared to what?

I audited the famous numbers that say college pays, the million dollars, the 12.5 percent. None of them survives as a real return on investment.

College is a bet, and most families are never shown the odds. Count the dropouts and the underemployed, and about two in five tickets win.