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It Depends What You Study, Not Where

economist.com

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Re: It Depends What You Study, Not Where

#101

Post by 3gg1gg »

dpweb wrote: post #39

These ROI calculations on degrees are more of a (flawed) basis for encouraging (less often, discouraging) college. They are not useful. It may seem like a good idea to develop an "ROI for college", but it distracts from what's important. First, much of the value of a degree is in getting your first job (networking at elite schools must be helpful however). As your career progresses, the importance of having a degree…

The value of the degree varies widely by desired career.

If you want to be a splashy top executive, it's very helpful to have a top-tier MBA, and experience in management consulting or investment banking. If you want experience in IB or MC, it's very helpful to have an ivy league undergrad degree, ideally in something like econ.

If you want to be a great engineer, it's very helpful to go someplace, hang out with smart people, take hard classes, write code outside class, and make sure you make the most of the experience, wherever you are.

If you want random assholes to think that you're a great engineer, it's very helpful to go to MIT, Stanford, or CMU, and just make sure you don't do so poorly that you don't graduate.

Re: It Depends What You Study, Not Where

#102

Post by dschiptsov »

For intelligence. Society, on the contrary, is build upon status, papers and titles - a hierarchy in general, so in the social aspect "where" matters the most. Ask any British about Oxford.)

Btw, studying CS in MIT (a school which traditionally taught principles and big ideas) and in, say, third-rate school that taught Java coding makes a huge difference.

It is not a coincidence that it was MIT and Stanford from where the best things in CS came from (and we should not forget the "parallel universe" of Standard ML and eventually Haskell, which came from UK schools).

Re: It Depends What You Study, Not Where

#104

Post by lukeschlather »

lliiffee wrote: post #97
jeremynixon wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I (and I'm sure, others) would absolutely love to see a link or resource for this, could someone provide one?

It seems unlikely-- in order to be true, computer science majors would need to actually have higher income with degrees from less competitive schools.

These data may only include people who get a bachelor's degree without going on to get a master's/PhD, which could explain the discrepancy.

Re: It Depends What You Study, Not Where

#105

Post by gozur88 »

jldugger wrote: post #76
tdaltonc wrote: post #43

Neither majors nor schools are randomly assigned to students, so I don't think that there's actually much to take away from this.

Actually, the chart shows a pretty damning story for selection bias: despite all the selectivity of schools, there's no sign of improvement in returns for more selective engineering schools. It makes a bit of intuitive sense: any MIT/CMU/Stanford/etc premium on degrees would be capped by management salary structure, since fresh grads don't typically earn more than their boss. It's possible that a linear fit is not a…

>Actually, the chart shows a pretty damning story for selection bias: despite all the selectivity of schools, there's no sign of improvement in returns for more selective engineering schools.

But since we're talking about ROI and not salary, you very much want to get into the most expensive, most selective engineering schools. If I invest money in bonds these days I'm going to get less than a 5% return - if I can get a 12% return I want to invest as much as I can borrow.

Re: It Depends What You Study, Not Where

#106

Post by _asummers »

mroll wrote: post #89
_asummers wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In lieu of GPA I ask what kind of classes they took and what were their favorites. That list is a much better indicator, I think. It also lets you gauge what kinds of questions you can reasonably ask and the types of solutions that you can expect. If someone didn't have to study graph theory, they likely won't see a graph theoretic answer and you shouldn't as a question that leads heavily to that type of solution, an…

But if they haven't studied graphs and are unable to give you rigorous answers, will you forgive them because they haven't taken the right classes? It seems to me you should ask questions you expect the candidate to be able to give good answers for, period.

My philosophy is that you ask questions either a) to ensure someone knows material they say they do (if you claim you have a bunch of Java experience, you are expected to know how java.util.collections works or how the final operator works, as examples) or b) to see how someone thinks. The questions I ask sometimes truly do not have answers, but seeing the walls pop up and the candidate try to work around the walls tells me a lot about how they will approach problems in the workplace.

Re: It Depends What You Study, Not Where

#107

Post by _asummers »

dilemma wrote: post #80
_asummers wrote: post #18

The big thing for me with top schools is the "baseline quality of the degree". I didn't go to a top school, but spent my time studying everything math and CS related I could, and managed to get an awesome education. At the same time, I am fully cognizant of the fact that peers who were less driven likely were more easily able to skate by, for the most part. So when a resume comes across my desk from a guy from my alm…

By the same logic, you should never have been given the job you have today. Is the logic faulty or correct?

I disagree. What in my post said that I wouldn't have given myself a shot? I would have brought myself in for an interview and interviewee me would have to had proven myself to interviewer me, same as someone from an elite school or a dev bootcamp.

Re: It Depends What You Study, Not Where

#108

Post by dspeyer »

auggierose wrote: post #10

It says "return on degree", so is the income measured relatively to what they spent on the degree? If so, it obviously depends still very much on where you study, as top schools cost much more.

Often they don't. Maybe by nominative tuition, but not by median.

Re: It Depends What You Study, Not Where

#109

Post by dspeyer »

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #32
copperx wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I heard this from my peers in undergrad all the time and it befuddled me. I thought "so ... you have no curiosity about the world? about how stuff works?." I'm not claiming that I had hifalutin ideals; I knew that money was important, but I had this (perhaps naive) idea that if I became an excellent practitioner in whatever I did the money would follow. I just wasn't prepared to hear "I'm just here to get a good job"…

I thought "so ... you have no curiosity about the world? about how stuff works?." I don't know when you went to school, but now you can satisfy that curiosity with the Internet. The reason for school is to make connections, and have proof of experience for your resume.

Not so easily. If you're trying to learn really difficult things, classes are a huge help.
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