Responding to posts a page or so back...
Here is an online comparison of return on investment for college degrees based on the university you attended:
https://freopp.org/oppblog/we-calcu...ment-for-30-000-bachelors-degrees-find-yours/
Note that this is an average and other sites might offer different values. Pick a major and compare to peers. See what it says.
I also note that yes, many students leave Wyoming for college or go to UW, for example, and then leave the state. Many students pick majors specifically that allow them to do this. It would be great to keep them in state, but jobs, or even better, jobs they are interested in, do call them away. Yes, we want UW to focus on majors that provide jobs in Wyoming, but remember that many parents pay taxes in Wyoming for many years and we also owe them and their students an ability to get a college degree at a reasonable price even if they plan to leave the state. If we play the long game, they will get wealthy, retire early, move back to Wyoming and spend their retirement money in Wyoming.
In Wyoming, we (ok, the politicians at least) are always saying we need job growth. But we need to be careful of that. If we had job growth and those new jobs and new people resulted in tax growth (i.e., perhaps a personal income tax), then we do want more people. But if all of the employment growth is in the area of non-extractive industries, then the tax money doesn't come back. If people with new jobs don't pay some more in taxes, then in some ways they become an additional drain on the state. In most other states (with a few exceptions), the population growth results in income tax growth,
