Greenspun: Let's stop investing in our kids

The article pretends

- That the current salaries of recent college graduates represent their probable average output over their lifetime. This is absurd for reasons that I hope I don't need to explain to all you startup founders.

- That the salary of a graduate is a total representation of that person's value to society (and, transitively, of their education). This is wrong even if you think the total value of an education is in employment. Economics teaches us that for all voluntary economic transactions there are producer and consumer surpluses. It must therefore be the case that an employed person's value to their employer is at least the salary the person is paid. And as cynical as I am about college education sometimes, even I don't believe that the complete value of the education is in its utility for the labor market.

- That there is a reliable way to make a ten percent return on investment overseas. Not as far as I've been able to find, and if you can find it you could probably make a lot of money selling the information to a big player in the American bond market.

- And that the normal personal investment into a college education is really $300,000. This is anti-factual. It is probably also wrong that each marginal elementary schooler costs $200,000, but I can't say for sure about that.

As rhetoric, this article plays well. As honest observation of the American educational system, it's a miserable failure.

First of all, that's not the assertion I was talking about in the comment you originally replied to. I was talking about his stated position on doctors and hospitals. But anyway, the rest of the article is crock too, and if you're curious why you can read my other top-level comment.

The value of a Harvard (or any elite college) education is not in what you learn but in the brand name. That is what people are willing to pay a fortune for. And the brand name does have a value associated with it - it cuts down on the friction of getting through the initial stages to an interview at which a hiring decision will be made, for example. Is this right or wrong? Well, if historically graduates from a certain college have been a safe bet, then there is value for an organization in continuing to hire from there (even if only in time saved). If historically access to an alumni network is valuable, then that has value. Etc, etc.

That's not to say they don't offer a great education, and a great experience of being immersed in a world where everyone is smart and ambitious for a few years. Similarly that immersion is part of the education. But that is another little secret: elite colleges only admit students who would succeed regardless.

I attended an elite college for undergrad (which one doesn't matter) and viewed from that side, it's hard to see if it actually made a difference in my career vs any college. I've never explicitly seen an interviewer be impressed by it. But behind the scenes, for example, I don't see if there were a hundred applicants and mine made it through the initial screening because of that.

A couple friends of mine have done it - they're both physics grad students in Boston. I don't know the full breakdown of their finances (nor would I share it on the Internet if I did), but I know rent and transportation and can fill in the rest from my experience:

  Person 1:
  Rent = $600/month (1 roommate in a small condo on a bus line)
  Transportation = $0 (walks to work/store/bank)
  Health care = ~$0 (grad school presumably covers it, modulo co-pays)
  Food = ~$200/month (guessing at this, lives on lots of rice & beans)
  Electricity = ~$50/month (also guessing)
  Internet = $0 (uses it from work if necessary)
  Total = $850/month = $10k/year

  Person 2:
  Rent = $400/month (basement apartment with 3 roommates)
  Transportation = ~$130/month (T-pass, off Green Line)
  Food = ~$200/month (guessing)
  Health care = ~$0 (presuming he's under the university policy)
  Electricity = ~$50/month (guessing, may be less with 3 roommates)
  Internet = ~$10/month (you could split $40 cable or FIOS among 4 roommates)
  Total = $790/month = about $9500/year.

It's amazing how many necessities really aren't if you're willing to compromise on things like appearances, location, status, etc. Even in Silicon Valley, you can get rents of $600/month if you're willing to share a place in Sunnyvale or one of the poorer sections of Mountain View, and you can get really cheap food if you're willing to eat various rice/beans/pasta dishes. And many people seem to forget that they have two legs and can walk places: I'm in sprawled-out Silicon Valley, not densely-packed Boston, and yet I walk to the bank/library/supermarket and bike to work.

I did not read that article but I have read enough like it to know the general thrust of the argument. The ones I've read so far have hinged

- on life-expectancy data that is measured differently -- sometimes substantially differently -- from country to country and

- the probably false belief that Americans could continue to lead the same lifestyles they do now and still live about as long under a much smaller healthcare regime.