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ROI on a college degree depends what you study, not where

economist.com

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Re: ROI on a college degree depends what you study, not where

#81

Post by jhspaybar »

bisRepetita wrote: post #67

This study, like pretty much all the ones I have read on such topic, seems to compare income people going to college vs people not going to college. And they attribute all the benefits and ROI to college. While often it just measures that people that are smarter and motivated (because they can and want to go to college) do better financially than the one less smart and less motivated. I wish I could find a study of s…

I consider myself smart and motivated, I was in sales for about 8 years by choice rather than going to college. I was good at it, but 2 years of college(a double major), and a few years in industry and I'm now making 5x what I did. It's an anecdote sure, but I haven't changed at all, my degree simply qualified me for a different industry.

Re: ROI on a college degree depends what you study, not where

#82

Post by treehau5 »

emodendroket wrote: post #45
jerf wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the thousands of majors, there are certainly exceptions on both sides. But I'm still comfortable with that assessment in general; "learning an entire language" is also one of the exceptions. I'd also point out that if for the sake of argument that was your primary goal at college, college is a very cost-ineffective choice. There's plenty of non-college ways of doing that, for way less money, since it's somethin…

I'd be very surprised if business people spend much time reading Japanese literature, learning anything other than pure modern business Japanese, or probably even learning to read and write the language.

Once you embark on the quest to learn japanese, you begin to look for other avenues to hone in on those skills -- whether its finding other people who speak it, or in some people's cases, play on japanese gaming servers, or skyping/hangouts and converse with japanese people in full immersion. After that you want to start reading more literature, so you do what anyone would do and search for japanese books on Amazon. After a while amazon starts offering you remarkable suggestions based on what the majority of japanese speaking people are reading.

You would be surprised how much you could learn on your own!

My case it was german. I was so fascinated with the german language, and germany as a whole, in part I must sadly admit because I was such an avid fan of WW2 history. I actually tried to go the traditional route, and I hated it. I noticed one time some germans playing counterstrike and other MMORPG's I was playing. I got to know them better, in part because of their extreme delight in my ability to say a few things in german. Then it turned into ventrilo/teamspeak sessions, which then turned into me wanting to read actual german books, then it went on to learning about Otto Von Bismarck, German Reunification, the East/West cultural divide, watching foreign german films such as Der Unterfall, Das Leben der Anderen, Good Bye, Lenin!, effects German engineering such as Gottlieb Wilhelm Daimler and von Braun, which led me down the path of looking into german businesses, especially the ones that are here in my own home state (which are many), it was so much fun!

edit: I realize you qualified it with 'business' people, implying they won't see the value of learning the other things, but since business people is a large group (of which I myself can be considered a part of) I imagine there are others like me.

Re: ROI on a college degree depends what you study, not where

#83

Post by nepstein »

Worth noting that selective schools also tend to be more expensive. Even if the ROI isn't markedly higher, high price tag means a "larger investment" into the high ROI option of college education.

That's a substantive advantage (to those that can afford it) given that 12% return opportunities are scarce.

Re: ROI on a college degree depends what you study, not where

#84

Post by lilbobbytables »

jerf wrote: post #4

In addition to the obvious 0 line, it's worth taking the article's observation that S&P has returned 7.8% and mentally drawing a line there too. Also, for anyone in the position of deciding which to do, I'd add the observation that it is way easier to go to college and get a formal education in science, math, or engineering, and pursue an ongoing adhoc self-directed education in the arts and humanities in your remain…

Yeah, the comparison with S&P was for fun, I hope. Because in one case you're sacrificing 4 years of opportunity cost, then working full-time to make the ROI numbers that the author use for comparison.

Whereas, my understanding of the S&P is that you don't have to work 40 hours per week for it to give you returns ;). So, if you had your college money as cash you could put all that in the S&P, then work full time without a degree to then, most likely, have an even higher ROI. Of course, most don't have the significant cash for college lying around.

Re: ROI on a college degree depends what you study, not where

#85

Post by emodendroket »

treehau5 wrote: post #82
emodendroket wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be very surprised if business people spend much time reading Japanese literature, learning anything other than pure modern business Japanese, or probably even learning to read and write the language.

Once you embark on the quest to learn japanese, you begin to look for other avenues to hone in on those skills -- whether its finding other people who speak it, or in some people's cases, play on japanese gaming servers, or skyping/hangouts and converse with japanese people in full immersion. After that you want to start reading more literature, so you do what anyone would do and search for japanese books on Amazon.…

Maybe they would, but I've attended Japanese courses intended mostly for businesspeople before college and they were almost universally focused on conversational Japanese -- which is fine but nothing like studying Japanese literature with a professor who is an expert in it. We're getting away from the claim that it would be "easy" to learn this on your own, to be sure.

I've been learning some Korean in my spare time and I feel pretty confident in my assessment that being in a college course would both be easier and see me make more progress more quickly.

Re: ROI on a college degree depends what you study, not where

#86

Post by jerf »

keiferski wrote: post #49
jerf wrote: post #4

In addition to the obvious 0 line, it's worth taking the article's observation that S&P has returned 7.8% and mentally drawing a line there too. Also, for anyone in the position of deciding which to do, I'd add the observation that it is way easier to go to college and get a formal education in science, math, or engineering, and pursue an ongoing adhoc self-directed education in the arts and humanities in your remain…

I'd add the observation that it is way easier to go to college and get a formal education in science, math, or engineering, and pursue an ongoing adhoc self-directed education in the arts and humanities in your remaining decades of life, than the other way around. Yeah, not really. There is a huge difference between reading a book by yourself, and reading a book then discussing it with a room full of other intelligen…

That's a null argument. It cuts both ways equally, and therefore can not distinguish between the two.

Re: ROI on a college degree depends what you study, not where

#87

Post by School-Cotton »

cableshaft wrote: post #64
criddell wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My oldest daughter is just entering high school and we are indeed thinking about maximizing the return on education investment. I went to school for computer science and while I have a very good and easy life, I regret not spending more time studying the humanities. I've told her about this hoping to provide another perspective than what she gets at school where they push STEM relentlessly. An investment in education…

Isn't that what general education is for? I majored in Computer Science, but I took classes on Japanese, Theater, Poly Sci, Criminal Justice, Communications, Literature, and probably a couple others I can't remember right now. In several of those subjects I took two or three classes.

In countries with a functioning education system (take your pick), this is what high school is for.

Edit for downvoters: In France, this was the high-school leaving exam (literary track) in history for 2015. Four hours to write an essay on each of the following two topics:

1. "South and East Asia: The challenges of population and growth."

2. "The paths of power: The United States and the world at the end of the 1960s."

(Source: [1])

And this is graded much harder than, say, the A.P. world history exam, which a small minority of students in the U.S. take. Subjects are taught by people who got the highest scores on extremely competitive exams covering their subject areas, often after a Master's degree in the subject.

History school-leaving exam in the U.S.: whatever easy, probably multiple-choice final your bored and undereducated teacher decided to give you in an hour-long class period.

[1]: http://www.lemonde.fr/bac-lycee/article/2015/06/18/bacs-s-es...

Re: ROI on a college degree depends what you study, not where

#88

Post by TDL »

jhspaybar wrote: post #81
bisRepetita wrote: post #67

This study, like pretty much all the ones I have read on such topic, seems to compare income people going to college vs people not going to college. And they attribute all the benefits and ROI to college. While often it just measures that people that are smarter and motivated (because they can and want to go to college) do better financially than the one less smart and less motivated. I wish I could find a study of s…

I consider myself smart and motivated, I was in sales for about 8 years by choice rather than going to college. I was good at it, but 2 years of college(a double major), and a few years in industry and I'm now making 5x what I did. It's an anecdote sure, but I haven't changed at all, my degree simply qualified me for a different industry.

"2 years of college..."

This bit right here might need some clarification. I believe the current U.S. average time in college is more than 4 years. I'm guessing you were motivated to get your degree as quickly as possible. I don't believe young adults in developed nations have the same motivation. 8 years in the real world will disabuse anyone of a desire to spend more time then necessary in school.

Re: ROI on a college degree depends what you study, not where

#89

Post by throwaway049 »

lintiness wrote: post #17
kdamken wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When it costs upwards of $100,000 to attend, you better be thinking of what you're getting for your money. Unfortunately in America it doesn't come free.

nothing's "free", not even college in european utopia.

Undergrad tuition is free to the student in some European countries. As you wrote "free", I concede that the cost is picked up by the taxpayer.

http://www.topuniversities.com/student-info/student-finance/...

Re: ROI on a college degree depends what you study, not where

#90

Post by jasode »

traverseda wrote: post #71
jerf wrote: post #4

In addition to the obvious 0 line, it's worth taking the article's observation that S&P has returned 7.8% and mentally drawing a line there too. Also, for anyone in the position of deciding which to do, I'd add the observation that it is way easier to go to college and get a formal education in science, math, or engineering, and pursue an ongoing adhoc self-directed education in the arts and humanities in your remain…

As a self taught-programmer, I'd be interested in why HN thinks >it's on the short list of exceptions, not the rule. As an example, I've fiddled around with circuit design. I'm not good at it, but I can make some basic stuff. It feels a lot like fiddling around with linux early in my career, and I'm not seeing any obvious point where it suddenly becomes more difficult to learn the skill. It's just a bit harder to get…

>, and I'm not seeing any obvious point where it suddenly becomes more difficult to learn the skill.

In terms of pure theory, I can see what you're saying but a lot of STEM curriculum includes lab work that's hard to replicate for an auto-didactic.

For applied sciences like biology, electrical engineering, applied physics (not theoretical physics), the universities will have expensive equipment that students can use in their lab assignments. Biology students examine specimens in $20k microscopes, physics students schedule time on multi-million dollar particle accelerators, and engineering students working on high speeed GHz digital circuits can use $100k Agilent scopes. Some universities also have specialized and very expensive labs with robotics and virtual reality rooms.

The humanities graduate wanting to "reinvent" himself/herself as a "electrical engineer" can buy the same college books and watch hours of youtube videos about circuits but the lab work is really hard to replicate. That's not to say that there aren't a lot of self-taught electronics engineers out there... there are ... but most I've seen learned it first as children and added to their hobby and knowledge over a decade. That's a very different learning trajectory than a 30-something trying to self-study physics without a particle accelerator in his garage.

Also, the STEM students have access to professors and their professional networks into businesses. Their recommendations opens doors for internships. This is another form of "real-world" lab work to strengthen the acquired knowledge.

Computer programming is unique in that it's a STEM that self-learners can get very deep and practical in -- without expensive lab equipment.

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