Human Capital ROI: Education Investment Simulator (2D)

The economics of education treats schooling as an investment: you pay tuition and forgo income now in exchange for higher wages later. This simulator renders two 40-year earning paths as growing 2D bar charts — one for going straight to work, one for studying a few extra years first — and discounts every year's cash flow back to present value exactly as a real cost-benefit analysis would. Drag the chart to pan across the career timeline and scroll to zoom in on any stretch of years. A glowing marker shows the break-even career year where the education path overtakes the work-now path, and live readouts compute the investment's net present value and internal rate of return as you adjust tuition, the wage premium, extra years of schooling, and the discount rate.