Wages have not kept up with inflation, however, college tuition has. This is the fundamental problem that has made the modern educational system very weak in my opinion. Obviously, education is very vital to personal development, however, spending more than $20K for a college degree is outrageous. A degree simply highlights a persons abilities; it exposes them to certain environments, and gauges a persons reactions to them. I have a bachelors in engineering, and I assure you, if I were to use any of the methods taught to me in college in the real world, the results would probably be disastrous.

So the question is...how much should someone pay to discover what they are good at? The answer is as little as possible, because paying anymore would be getting scammed. I paid about $20K for my degree and about $10K for all my pilot ratings. I took no student loans, and had no debt to pay off when I finished. I'm still working towards a higher degree.