Normally yes, but it depends on what one gets a degree in. I recall reading some analysis some years back that found that a theological degree was normally a net financial loss.
kagis
This isn’t the one I was thinking of, but it basically makes the same point.
https://freopp.org/whitepapers/is-college-worth-it-a-comprehensive-return-on-investment-analysis/
Is College Worth It? A Comprehensive Return on Investment Analysis
Some degrees are worth millions, while others have no net financial value. The biggest factor is your major.
According to their findings, getting an engineering degree is a very large win, for example. However, the majority of degrees in visual arts and music are a net negative.
It also says that going to a more-expensive school has a positive return on average, but the impact of that is much smaller than the degree which one chooses to study for:
Major is the most important factor. College rankings like the U.S. News and World Report emphasize choice of institution. But from a financial perspective, choice of major is the more important consideration. Major alone explains nearly half the variation in ROI. Students will have a much greater chance of financial success if they study engineering, computer science, nursing, or economics, rather than art, music, religion, psychology, or education.
This isn’t to say that lower-earning majors are worthless. Society needs artists and musicians. But low incomes for these majors signal a supply-demand mismatch. Universities are producing too many art majors and too few engineering majors relative to the number of jobs available in each of these fields. As a result, employers bid up the wages of engineers while surplus artists flood the labor market. The answer is not to eliminate low-earning majors nationwide, but to reduce their scale.
