What are some of the worst and best reasons for pursuing post-secondary education?

Best: To get a degree, which will increase your career options and earning potential.

Worst: to have four more years to party on your parent’s nickle.

Best: To get a Co-op position in a good company that will offer employement upond grduation.
To take courses and study in fields that require facilities with lots of technical equipment and expertise that can only be found in a well funded university, research facility, or industry setting.

Worst: To study something soft and fuzzy (e.g. Asian, Lesbian, Art History of the 18th Century) that could be learned in your spare time for free as a hobby.

Best: you learn to think and learn what there is to appreciate in the world.

Worst? There is no worst. Unless you don’t take advantage of what the school has to offer.

Best: to tell your parents who want to arrange-marriage you that you simply can’t until you finish your Masters, then your PhD then…

Best: By completing a degree you show prospective employers you are able to commit to something and follow through, and are trainable.

Worst: you must suffer fools now and again for four years.

Best: to further your knowledge in subject you love.

Worst: to get a better paying job.

Best: You have an opportunity to learn a lot, lot, lot of fascinating things from many, many fields and discuss the heck out of them with like-minds. You get to hang around with friends and constant stimulation in a dorm setting and change your decor every semester or year. You get a “get out of jail free” card from the drudgery of corporate-America for a while. You make friends that often last a lifetime.

Worst: You have to deal with unbeleivably gigantic EGOS who really think that a PhD certifies that they’re better than everyone else and that their word is sacrosanct (some of the dumbest questions I’ve ever been asked came from a professor of PhD students), when it often just means they’re good at hoop-jumping. You have to parrot back irrelevant, outdated, or opinion-based information to those said egos and sometimes will be indiscriminately evaluated for it. You rack up a debt that makes you wonder if it was all worth it? Before you jump on me, I say this as a future PhD candidate

Best reason is well covered in the previous answers.
Worst reason: to look for a spouse.

Best Reason: Take Classes in Your Pajamas
Worst Reason: Take Classes in Your Pajamas

Best – To get a job that values your ability to rack up debt more than they value actual knowledge.

Worst – No guarantee that you will earn enough to pay off that debt.