This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, June 14th, 2017.

I'm Caleb Brown.

What do we know now about the relative benefits of a college degree

against not having a college degree, and what degree programs deliver

the worst returns for students?

And why is the government subsidizing all this anyway?

Neil McCluskey, director of the K Cato Institute's Center for Educational Freedom, explains.

It's still the case that having a college degree enables you to earn a whole lot more money

over your lifetime than not having a college degree.

So people only have a high school diploma over their lifetime will pie earn around a million

dollars less than someone with a bachelor's degree.

Understanding that, you know, if you put that money,

you paid in tuition in the stock market or something,

that million dollars may have gone, may go down,

it may be I've seen as low as $250,000 but generally if you go to college and you get a

degree you are going to do better financially at least than somebody who only

completed high school.

So how has that number changed over the last 10 years or so?

And that is the really important thing that nobody talks about when we say,

oh, you'll make a million more dollars over your

lifetime than someone with just a high school diploma. The fact of the matter is if

you look at the earnings for people with bachelor's degrees or the last 15

...