For the best ROI, go to your local community college for an LPN or RN, then finish up the remaining credits for a BSN at your local state college. Have your employer pay for advanced certifications in cardiac care or oncology.
There’s your ROI.
For kids who are not interested in nursing, the world of ROI is much more nuanced. All of my kids are currently out-earning me (and I’ve been in the workforce at major corporations for 36 years, with less than 15 weeks total of maternity leave). They have “non practical” degrees but have managed to find careers which they love AND which pay very, very well. All have taken risks which their boomer parents advised against (leave a high paying corporate job for a startup… I thought that was crazy) but all it takes is one disruptive technology to make your kid look like a prophet and not a lunatic.
If any of us can predict the future and figure out:
1- What will my kid be good at professionally
2- What will be the hot career in 4 years or 10 years or 20 years
3-What’s the one skill my kid can learn in college which will make him/her a “unicorn” such that he or she will be indispensable in the labor market…
then you shouldn’t be on CC, you should be out there advising Warren Buffet et al.
for anyone else- if you’re smart enough to figure out ROI for a HS kid then god bless you.
I’m not that smart.