Some thoughts (mostly in comments):
The idea of going to a theme park, on your parents’ dime, with fashionable political fear, having undertaken no scholarly preparation…every single thing about this enterprise seemed wrong.
And expensive and destructive. We have a generation that’s putting off home buying and starting a family because they wasted tens of thousands on either useless degrees or (worse yet) never graduated at all.
The problem is this is a self reinforcing trend. A lot of employers demand degrees in order that they don’t need to bother interviewing a lot of people that may actually have the required skills even if they never got a degree.
Home buying? Why would anyone want to make a 30 year investment with monetary policy the way it is?
You mean “enter into a 30-year obligation.” The “investment” — monetary or otherwise — lives only as long as the buyer owns the home.
I meant what I said. There’s no other sensible reason to buy a house. If you can’t reasonably expect to get a return put your money into something else.
A house is a place to live. It’s rarely a good investment when you factor in not only the purchase price and inflation but also all of that interest you paid, the maintenance you put in and all of the other expenses. The mortgage interest deduction helps a bit but only to the level of your income bracket. In most housing markets, a house doesn’t really break even when you factor in all of the costs. But, you have to live somewhere. There are intangible values to home ownership that are worth it for a lot of people.
I think the idea in such cases is that you just pay until your living circumstances collapse and then move on. In the meantime, you get to enjoy a home as an owner. That has some value beyond rent and apparently people are willing to pay some degree of premium and accept a considerable amount of risk for it.