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

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

#291

Post by madengr »

alkonaut wrote: post #180
somethingwitty1 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So by keeping out the "unqualified" we continue to increase the gap between the haves and the have nots? I'm not suggesting that is your intention behind the statement, but that is the harsh reality of what will happen. A policy like this will continue to discriminate against the poor and those stuck in areas without access to decent primary/secondary education (inner-city comes to mind). Despite the numerous issues…

Free higher education is usually seen as the biggest helper of social mobility. In the US there is one more fundamental issue that needs to be addressed: the use of local school funding in school districts. Had schools been properly funded with more funds going to schools that need more resources (I.e schools where parents don't have higher education get more money per student than schools where they do) then having…

Spending more does not help. Spending per pupil in Washington, DC is possibly the highest in the nation, with the most abysmal performance.

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

#292

Post by udkl »

almostApatriot1 wrote: post #253
udkl wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you missed the point completely. The parent post isn't against college education. It is against spending those years studying 'non-professional' subjects and calls these a waste. This is corroborated by the statement : "Going to college with no plan about money? The costs are assured. (absurd)"

If 'non-professional' courses are taught well, they can be a huge asset. I personally learned quite a bit from the couple in-depth history courses I took because they taught me how to research, how to understand information, and how to understand the context in which information is presented.

Sure, you will get something out of college.... better reasoning skills, better social skills and other 'horizontal' skills that you would probably have got from say an engineering major too.

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

#293

Post by afuchs »

smsm42 wrote: post #191
Tenobrus wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, this is probably true for people directly looking for jobs on the market. But I'd say most top students are getting internships pre-graduation and getting good return offers, or just using career fairs (that are targeting new grads specifically). From what I've seen that path can get them much higher than average salaries directly out of college, without any experience to speak of (an internship or two and some…

Open source/volunteer projects are great at building resume pre-employment. With additional bonus that you can actually show the potential employer your code and not just talk about it. And if you managed to actually run an OSS project while being a student, instead of merely submitting patches to it, that's even more excellent news. College name - sure, if it's MIT, maybe. Or a handful of others. Otherwise - meh, in…

Open Source and volunteer projects help, if one has time to complete them. If one has to work multiple low-wage jobs to make ends meet, ignoring other burdens, then their options are more limited.

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

#294

Post by learc83 »

twotwotwo wrote: post #246
habitue wrote: post #200

I think a lot of people are looking at this as "maybe this article is offering advice" instead, the way I'm looking at it is this is giving us a rough quantification of what we all know intuitively: that college is so expensive it's reaching a natural ceiling. The way this manifests in reality isn't millions of people all doing a cost/benefit calculus like this and coming to the rational conclusion they can skip coll…

And college got expensive partly through policy choices. Offering easy loans tends to make people price insensitive, so tuitions go up and a lot of that money goes to things like increasingly fancy buildings and making textbook publishers' shareholders rich. Meanwhile often less is going to state schools that, with low in-state tuitions, were historically a way up for a lot of people. (An older friend went to Berkele…

This article from 538 argues that almost 3/4 of the rise in tuition is accounted for by a drop in state support.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/fancy-dorms-arent-the-m...

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

#295

Post by wutbrodo »

MrTonyD wrote: post #254
twotwotwo wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And college got expensive partly through policy choices. Offering easy loans tends to make people price insensitive, so tuitions go up and a lot of that money goes to things like increasingly fancy buildings and making textbook publishers' shareholders rich. Meanwhile often less is going to state schools that, with low in-state tuitions, were historically a way up for a lot of people. (An older friend went to Berkele…

I remember reading an article describing how college costs can be explained by an analysis of supply and demand. There have been a variety of historic reasons for demand rising at different times - mostly related to unemployment and lack of other economic choices. I keep hearing the meme that low-cost college is the cause of college expense - but college is free in many countries where they are doing quite well. So I…

> I keep hearing the meme that low-cost college is the cause of college expense

I think you've misunderstood what you're hearing: low cost college by definition can't be the cause of high cost college.

The claim is that high availability of funds/liquidity for college is what pushes up prices,since there are more dollars available to chase a supply that hasn't kept pace[1].

> college is free in many countries where they are doing quite well. So I question the facile opinions I keep hearing.

This doesn't really make any sense. Colleges that are provided for free are a lot less dependent on markets to determine prices: they treat them like a more or less generic public good (where college choice is determined by quality of student more than ability to pay).

[1] strictly speaking, the supply hasn't been that constrained, but since college is largely perceived as a positional good, this affects all but the bottom rung for-profit colleges.

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

#296

Post by madengr »

darkxanthos wrote: post #57
ue_ wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in university right now, and the reason why I'm here is mainly so that I can get a degree in order to get hired for a job in the field I want. My parents probably got me into it beacuse of the appeal of classical education but also the fact that they want me to get a job, too. Is there any solution to getting a job without a degree? Especially in those technical subjects such as electronic engineering (what I'm d…

Software engineering absolutely. You need to be self-driven and somewhat ambitious but many (myself included) have done it. EE I'm not sure.

My employer (EE) won't hire you as an engineer without a degree, period. There is no reason not to as the BS seems to be as common as the high school degree.

In my department, not without an MS, though there is one guy working on it part time. You also need to be self driven and ambitious.

There seems to be a glut now of pHD, probably due to the shitty economy over the last several years. Might as well just stay in school.

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

#297

Post by imjustsaying »

kcdev wrote: post #289
icantdrive55 wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have an answer either. I do think they should make student loans bankrupt-able. It's time. Oh yea, and put a hiring freeze/salary cap on all administrative personnel for any school that accepts federal loans. The best teachers I had were at community colleges, and usually had summer jobs. I never figured out what most of the administration did besides irritate the better teachers.

Bankrupt-able student loans will not help the problem. The universities who are taking advantage of the easily available money from the government will still get paid. During bankruptcy, the loan write down hurts the lender. In this case it's us taxpayers. The real answer is to cut what's funded by the government, make the rest of the financing come from the universities themselves, AND make it bankrupt-able. Then as…

>The real answer is to cut what's funded by the government

Guaranteed downvotes

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

#298

Post by WrtCdEvrydy »

FLUX-YOU wrote: post #141
codecamper wrote: post #66

I found that investing in bitcoin has outperformed the average post college job. (I conducted my research by comparing 20,000 invested in a college in 2010 vs 20,000 invested into bitcoin in 2010.)

Buying small amounts of many new crypto coins in the hope that some of them goes big is probably possible as well.

I would not risk this though, the failure rate of most new crypto is close to 80% to 90%. Litecoin and Ethereum are the outliers, not the most common cases.

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

#300

Post by afuchs »

ue_ wrote: post #55
krakensden wrote: post #46

As a culture, we really need to stop telling 17 year olds to not worry about money, go to college, and figure something out. There is always someone ready with a romantic appeal to a classical education, and it is so frustrating for me. Wasting four years is a huge cost. Years, decades of debt is a huge cost. Going to college with no plan about money? The costs are assured. Plus, the degrees people are actually getti…

I'm in university right now, and the reason why I'm here is mainly so that I can get a degree in order to get hired for a job in the field I want. My parents probably got me into it beacuse of the appeal of classical education but also the fact that they want me to get a job, too. Is there any solution to getting a job without a degree? Especially in those technical subjects such as electronic engineering (what I'm d…

Employers generally look for prior experience. You don't need a degree. A degree hardly matters, except as a baseline, often taken into consideration for internships.

When interviewing for a job, be prepared to talk about work you have previously completed. Any work is sufficient, whether it was for a previous job, an open source or volunteer project, or any significant projects you've completed for school.

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