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

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

#121

Post by School-Cotton »

morgante wrote: post #108
School-Cotton wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I went to a very elite high school in the US and my final exams included questions similar to that (the IB). Some of my teachers literally wrote the textbooks on their subjects. That doesn't mean my high school classes were anywhere near the depth or intensity of my college classes. While high school provided me with a solid foundation in all the disciplines, it's not set up to go in depth on specific areas. As a com…

Where did you go to college?

Also, I did IB too (got a 7/7 in HL History ;) ), and anecdotally I think it's dramatically easier than the French high school diploma. The History exam, at least, may not be multiple choice but it usually asks about very concrete things.

"1. With reference to one war before 1945 and one war after 1945, assess the significance of either air power or naval power in deciding its outcome."

This is basically a step up from regurgitating facts. I agree it is not as deep as what you will have to learn in a university course.

The questions I gave in my example were much more open-ended and require a lot of independent analysis and synthesis to approach, as well as knowing a lot of facts.

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

#122

Post by morgante »

School-Cotton wrote: post #121
morgante wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went to a very elite high school in the US and my final exams included questions similar to that (the IB). Some of my teachers literally wrote the textbooks on their subjects. That doesn't mean my high school classes were anywhere near the depth or intensity of my college classes. While high school provided me with a solid foundation in all the disciplines, it's not set up to go in depth on specific areas. As a com…

Where did you go to college? Also, I did IB too (got a 7/7 in HL History ;) ), and anecdotally I think it's dramatically easier than the French high school diploma. The History exam, at least, may not be multiple choice but it usually asks about very concrete things. "1. With reference to one war before 1945 and one war after 1945, assess the significance of either air power or naval power in deciding its outcome." T…

> Where did you go to college?

I went to New York University.

> Also, I did IB too, and anecdotally I think it's dramatically easier than the French high school diploma.

French exams are notorious for their grading. That doesn't mean the education actually includes greater depth. Anecdotally, my friends who went through the French education system have a keen appreciation for difficult exams but aren't any more knowledgeable than me.

I don't think you could convincingly argue that an IB-level of education isn't a "functioning" education system though.

After all, even in France you do in fact have higher education beyond high school.

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

#123

Post by School-Cotton »

morgante wrote: post #122
School-Cotton wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where did you go to college? Also, I did IB too (got a 7/7 in HL History ;) ), and anecdotally I think it's dramatically easier than the French high school diploma. The History exam, at least, may not be multiple choice but it usually asks about very concrete things. "1. With reference to one war before 1945 and one war after 1945, assess the significance of either air power or naval power in deciding its outcome." T…

> Where did you go to college? I went to New York University. > Also, I did IB too, and anecdotally I think it's dramatically easier than the French high school diploma. French exams are notorious for their grading. That doesn't mean the education actually includes greater depth. Anecdotally, my friends who went through the French education system have a keen appreciation for difficult exams but aren't any more knowl…

> After all, even in France you do in fact have higher education beyond high school.

That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about broad "liberal arts" curricula that touch on a variety of subjects. In France, it would be very unusual for a math student in university to take classes on philosophy, literature, etc. (ok, maybe some easy English classes for practical reasons, but that's it)

Yes I of course agree that high school doesn't teach you everything you need to know about your topic of specialization. But a good high school education in advanced European countries is basically comparable to undergrad liberal arts/distribution requirements at average American universities.

BTW, NYU is not typical; it's an elite school. You can't compare your experience there to typical colleges in the US.

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

#124

Post by School-Cotton »

criddell wrote: post #117
morgante wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went to a very elite high school in the US and my final exams included questions similar to that (the IB). Some of my teachers literally wrote the textbooks on their subjects. That doesn't mean my high school classes were anywhere near the depth or intensity of my college classes. While high school provided me with a solid foundation in all the disciplines, it's not set up to go in depth on specific areas. As a com…

What do you think about the IB program? My daughter is on a track that leads to IB in 11th grade and I'm not sure how I feel about that.

I did IB. It's the best you are going to get in the US. What are your reservations?

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

#125

Post by morgante »

criddell wrote: post #117
morgante wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went to a very elite high school in the US and my final exams included questions similar to that (the IB). Some of my teachers literally wrote the textbooks on their subjects. That doesn't mean my high school classes were anywhere near the depth or intensity of my college classes. While high school provided me with a solid foundation in all the disciplines, it's not set up to go in depth on specific areas. As a com…

What do you think about the IB program? My daughter is on a track that leads to IB in 11th grade and I'm not sure how I feel about that.

In my experience, it's excellent. I definitely found my IB classes a lot more intellectually challenging and invigorating than my AP classes. The curriculum is well-rounded and in-depth. Plus, the requirement of choosing only 4 HLs provides an automatic defense against excessive commitments.

I'm not sure how generalizable my experience is though. My AP classes were at a normal public high school while my IB classes were at an elite boarding school. I will say that the exams are definitely much better for the IB (they're much more detailed and require actual understanding rather than rote memorization).

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

#126

Post by JackFr »

saint_fiasco wrote: post #110
JackFr wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most people are no better off 10-years down the line for having learned about what native Americans used to live in Virginia or what covalent bonds are. That all depends on how you measure better off. Knowledge, understanding, wisdom are goods unto themselves. No doubt, we need to eat, but I'd rather know Latin, Norse mythology, Anselm's ontological proof, the Platonic solids, and the major players in the Glorious…

>Knowledge, understanding, wisdom You can get the first two for free on a library. You are making a mistake when you compare the knowledge, understanding and wisdom you would get in College against nothing and then decide that College is better than nothing. You should compare it against all the other things people could be doing with that time and money. The opportunity cost.

> The opportunity cost.

With respect to the original article, yes absolutely.

I was responding to the parent comment who described people 'no better off' for knowing versus not knowing.

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

#127

Post by goldbrick »

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…

> 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.

This isn't really true. You can't really have any kind of art career, for example, if you don't go to art school. Meanwhile, tons of companies will happily hire whatever chumps code bootcamps are churning out.

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

#128

Post by a_c_s »

kriro wrote: post #20
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…

The 7.8% line is to be taken with a grain of salt though. If you decide to invest all the theoretical college money and work without said education you'll (hopefully) still earn >0$. It would have also helped if the article said what degree/how long it takes (BA, MA) and what the investment cost for the degree actually is (provide median or something). A typical BA takes 2 years and is in the ballpark of 50k$ on the…

The average in-state tuition & fees at a public university in the USA is $9,410/year, ranging between $4,890 and $15,160 [1].

Unless otherwise specified, US publications tend to assume "college" = 4 year bachelor's degree.

[1] http://trends.collegeboard.org/college-pricing/figures-table...

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

#129

Post by VLM »

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 wish I could find a study of similarly smart and motivated people"

Skilled trades? Some oil field trades at least while there's not a bust going on?

It takes electricians more than four years to own their own company and have a couple guys working under them, but in all fairness many people take a lot longer than four years to get that art history degree and not all electricians want to own a small business and manage employees. Union payscale for 40 hrs no overtime is about twice median income where I live, I make about twice that programming, 2x median sounds bad compared to 4x median, but compared to joe6pack, twice median isn't that bad of a life, and there's something to be said for leaving work at work when you go home at the end of the day.

I have a cousin in law who's a stationary diesel mechanic with decades of experience and certifications, he's running about 8x median income, but that includes overtime and oncall and unlike fields like programming, diesel mechanic work is a profession that values decades of experience so a noob grad is not going to get that kind of pay. Pay might vary based on local values of supply and demand. Stationary diesels run your datacenter and hospital UPS, and corporations at least seem to have a blank checkbook for disaster recovery spending.

Something to think about WRT lifetime ROI is its widely understood that some fields like programming kick the vast majority of declared employees out by age 40 or so... (please no anecdotes about 2% being permitted to remain in the field, etc) That will confuse the results because a contractor / small business owner / manager / project coordinator will not show up in employee salary stats under "programmer", even if they like to call themselves a "programmer".

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

#130

Post by incongruity »

roymurdock wrote: post #48
incongruity wrote: post #6

Do those ROI calculations include the cost of borrowing? I'd expect they don't - and if not, it means that most degrees are no longer worth it if you have to borrow a significant portion of the money. With federal loans ranging between 6-8.5% (last I looked) it means that for the first 10-20 years, the government is the one capturing the gains from many people's college educations. There may well still be a positive…

They do. Here's the website that compiles the data: http://www.payscale.com/college-roi Average loan amount is factored into the ROI calculation.

Awesome. Thanks for the pointer.

The concern is definitely still there for folks who take above average loan amounts.

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