Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

On average, skipping college and investing tuition costs nets a higher return

erikrood.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 669 posts

Re: On average, skipping college and investing tuition costs nets a higher return

#11

Post by heynk »

Definitely an interesting thought experiment. This article assumes 7.1% annually, and gets that by choosing an arbitrary start and end date of stock returns. In reality, it seems to be more like ~4%, which makes this conclusion much different.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/01/02/business/20110...

Re: On average, skipping college and investing tuition costs nets a higher return

#12

Post by nether »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #5
3stripe wrote: post #3

I'd like to hear Mr. Money Mustache's take on this.

Forget MMM, Jack Bogle and Warren Buffett are the ones to ask, and I'm pretty sure they'd agree. (Warren Buffett needs no intro, Jack Bogle founded Vanguard Investments) EDIT: Autocorrect fail. Fixed. Thanks!

Peeve of mine: spelling his name wrong. It's Buffett.

Re: On average, skipping college and investing tuition costs nets a higher return

#13

Post by brians »

Its making some assumptions that don't seem right, accounting for people having safety nets, minimum livable standards, and (for ages 16-66) more sweat-equity to invest tomorrow. If all that money's going into the stock market, compounding, how do you eat? Don't you put some of your higher salary on graduating into the market too?

How long will the no-college person spend unemployed, and will they bounce off bankruptcy?

Re: On average, skipping college and investing tuition costs nets a higher return

#17

Post by brians »

dsjoerg wrote: post #10

This article doesn't explain why we should believe that stockmarket performance, going forward, will be anything like the S&P's performance from 1993 to now. It's also not clear why we should believe the Payscale College ROI figures. I clicked around a bunch and couldn't find any description of their actual methodology for computing it. In particular, before we can take it seriously we need to know how well they've d…

Well, you could repeat it for all the 24-year periods from 1917 through now. I wouldn't expect very different results, though accounting for college deferments will be fun.

Re: On average, skipping college and investing tuition costs nets a higher return

#18

Post by jamespo »

efa wrote: post #8
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #6

How do you skip college and invest the tuition in the S&P 500? Ah, you can't: Of course, lenders won't give out large loans for an individual to skip college and dump tuition into the stock market, this is just a hypothetical scenario. So this article is unrealistic.

If your parents were going to pay for your college you could do this.

Your parents being willing to pay college fees vs giving you all the money to invest are very different things

Re: On average, skipping college and investing tuition costs nets a higher return

#19

Post by soup10 »

If that isn't evidence for capitalism being a joke I don't know what is. By all means go to college, get an education, all so vultures can use your brain to enrich themselves while paying the minimum.

To say nothing of the finance industry which has made an art of skimming off the top.

Re: On average, skipping college and investing tuition costs nets a higher return

#20

Post by zxcvvcxz »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #6

How do you skip college and invest the tuition in the S&P 500? Ah, you can't: Of course, lenders won't give out large loans for an individual to skip college and dump tuition into the stock market, this is just a hypothetical scenario. So this article is unrealistic.

No it's not, because it's directed at our society as a whole. We can collectively change how we recommend people to allocate their time and money. And as a thought experiment, this is an important critique of the value of modern post-secondary education.
Post reply on HN