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Quantifying The Value Of A College Degree (By Major)

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Re: Quantifying The Value Of A College Degree (By Major)

#11

Post by samd »

If I'm understanding your methods correctly, you only have data for earnings by occupation. So when you say "Computer Science majors earn x." it actually means "People who do the same jobs that computer science majors tend to do earn x."

If that's the case then the data is not really actionable unless we also know the probability of getting a job with and without some degree.

For example, if computer science majors all tend to get job A, but having a computer science degree makes you no more likely than people without computer science degrees to get job A, then the value of the computer science degree is 0.

Of course having a degree does usually provide some advantage at getting a job, and in some fields it's impossible to get a job without a degree.

But still, for this data to be truly meaningful and actionable you must multiply the value of each degree by the amount that the degree aids you in getting a job, which is a hard value to determine.

Edit:

Here's an example of why this is important. Let's compare physical therapy and programming.

According to the data, a Doctorate in Physical Therapy has a value of about $1.2 million, while a Bachelors in Computer Science has a value of around $1.5 million.

You might conclude that the computer science degree is a better value, especially since it costs less than the doctorate.

However, you cannot be a physical therapist without the degree. So the value of the P.T. degree is $1.2m * 100%, or $1.2 million, because without the degree you have a 0% chance of getting the job (and assuming that having a P.T. degree guarantees you a job).

You can be a programmer without a computer science degree. So the value of the degree is going to be $1.5m times some percentage less than 100. In order for the C.S. degree to be more valuable than the P.T. degree you'd have to be 80% more likely to get a job than a programmer without a C.S. degree. (1.5 * .8 = 1.2)

It doesn't seem like people with C.S. degrees are 80% more likely to get jobs. Especially when you factor in the opportunity cost of going to school. That's a lot of time you could spend working on open-source projects, building websites and businesses, etc. which are all things that count more than a degree.

So the value of a C.S. degree could very easily be less than the value of a P.T. degree.

Re: Quantifying The Value Of A College Degree (By Major)

#12

Post by xlorm »

billpaetzke wrote: post #7
patio11 wrote: post #2

Folks have told me on HN several times they wanted to hear about some number crunching/SEO work/etc that I did regarding the worth of particular college degrees. I just got the OK from my client to share results, so here you go. Search tool: http://www.onlinedegrees.org/calculator/ Summary article: http://www.onlinedegrees.org/calculator/salary/engineering-d... Short version: get an engineering degree. The client has…

Great work. I really like it. I wonder if the "Wage Gap" data and article will persuade more women to do engineering and other currently male-dominated careers. But I doubt it. Perhaps we are hard-wired to enjoy certain types of work. Quick bug report: the textbox "Your Major" on http://www.onlinedegrees.org/calculator/ is case-sensitive. I would suggest making it insensitive. Then "computer science" would return a r…

> Perhaps we are hard-wired to enjoy certain types of work.

I would guess it has more to do with expectations.

Re: Quantifying The Value Of A College Degree (By Major)

#13

Post by niels_olson »

A cursory review of the numbers makes me think this is a scam.

> Hard sciences such as Physics and Biology pay rather less well than I would have expected.

Interestingly, when I used the calculator to search for a BS in Physics, it says "No Statistics for that Degree".

I also find it a bit hard to believe that optometrists and lawyers make out better than doctors, or that the lifetime value of a Physician's Assistant masters is $300,000 more than the lifetime value of an MD.

Finally, having perused the Occupational Outlook Handbook more than a few times, this reeks of blatant plagiarism. The text appears to be heavily rewritten, but all the facts come from the OOH and even the outline of each article is identical to the OOH.

This exercise casts a dim light on SEO as a profession. Scams on top of scams.

Re: Quantifying The Value Of A College Degree (By Major)

#14

Post by rubyrescue »

patio11 wrote: post #2

Folks have told me on HN several times they wanted to hear about some number crunching/SEO work/etc that I did regarding the worth of particular college degrees. I just got the OK from my client to share results, so here you go. Search tool: http://www.onlinedegrees.org/calculator/ Summary article: http://www.onlinedegrees.org/calculator/salary/engineering-d... Short version: get an engineering degree. The client has…

This is fascinating and I want to respond on two levels - technical/SEO and moral/emotional. I consulted for the main competitor to these guys until a few months ago so I can speak only generally but I know the subject with some authority.

1. Anyone reading this post is not the target market for this. The real target market are the suckers that they can convince to take out $40,000 in unforgivable government student loans when they enroll at University of Phoenix. Your client is a vehicle for UofP to find these people. It's a very lucrative business for both companies BUT IT IS FOR MOST OF THEIR CLIENTS A SCAM. The people they need are low-income, not tech-savvy, and IRONICALLY, not savvy about the true value of the degree that Online Degrees is selling.

2. Please read the reviews (for instance for Ashford University) http://www.guidetoonlineschools.com/online-reviews/ashford-u... and note that, with rare exceptions, the only positive reviewers are sock puppets.

3. Yet one of the things I don't get is how there could be so many bad reviews and yet people keep signing up. Unfortunately it's probably because of content like this, where the "value" of the degree is shown as "millions of dollars" and not "a slightly higher than minimum wage job (that is not much better than the one i had before) with $40,000 of debt I can't escape even in bankruptcy". I'm NOT exaggerating - please watch the Frontline special on these schools - http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/collegeinc/view/

4. I don't want to pick on you. It's a massive US Government federal student loan subsidy system - handing out essentially free money - that makes this system such a mess and makes the prospective students $30-50k "marks" for the "schools". I personally couldn't take direct part in it anymore but I don't begrudge anyone because it's a system that's broken, some small % of students find it valuable, and these adults are not being forced to go to these schools.

Putting emotion aside for a second and talking about the SEO:

1. The SEO technique you're describing - take public data, build it out with cheaply hired content, and stock photos, is great. That works well and everyone serious (particularly this space, because there is so much data) is doing similar stuff to stay at the top.

2. HNers doing SEO should note that you always have two target markets when you build content - SEO content for people who will backlink to and tweet about that content, and content for the actual users of the site. People looking for an online degree or buying insurance don't tweet and blog (with no-nofollowed links) about it - so you need to put content that SOMEONE ELSE will write about. That doesn't mean the people who link to that content may ever consider using the products your site is selling.

In technology often those two groups are the same; in almost every other area of the web, they're not. Tech guys often don't realize this because their only experience with online content is reading HN and TechCrunch and they see all the consumers of the site's main content tweeting about it. But when was the last time you tweeted about your car insurance?

3. In my SEO consulting, every project is surprisingly, 80% technology and about 20% content. Tech guys are building systems to make massive creation of "useful" content possible, writers are getting paid small amounts to crank out the articles. This trend is accelerating, which ironically makes it a great time for a tech person to be in SEO - the opportunities to crunch data are only growing.

Re: Quantifying The Value Of A College Degree (By Major)

#16

Post by patio11 »

rubyrescue wrote: post #14
patio11 wrote: post #2

Folks have told me on HN several times they wanted to hear about some number crunching/SEO work/etc that I did regarding the worth of particular college degrees. I just got the OK from my client to share results, so here you go. Search tool: http://www.onlinedegrees.org/calculator/ Summary article: http://www.onlinedegrees.org/calculator/salary/engineering-d... Short version: get an engineering degree. The client has…

This is fascinating and I want to respond on two levels - technical/SEO and moral/emotional. I consulted for the main competitor to these guys until a few months ago so I can speak only generally but I know the subject with some authority. 1. Anyone reading this post is not the target market for this. The real target market are the suckers that they can convince to take out $40,000 in unforgivable government student…

With regards to the SEO bits: total agreement.

With regards to the indictment of for-profit education: I half agree. The government giving buckets of free money gets lower class, lower income people who are unprepared for higher education into non-selective institutions, including for-profit institutions. That isn't a bug, it is a feature. They have sucky graduation rates -- in some cases, extremely sucky graduation rates. Free money also inflates the costs of "good" educations -- e.g. kids who get $100k of loans to go to UofI (or Harvard) and then get a degree in photography or religious studies aren't great off, either.

That said, it is a net gain for students if they're convinced to get a low-prestige degree like e.g. an Associates in Radiology rather than going for a Bachelors in English from UoP. (Or, ahem, a Bachelors in English from Harvard.)

Re: Quantifying The Value Of A College Degree (By Major)

#17

Post by ylem »

jerf wrote: post #10
tjsnyder wrote: post #4

I think we're going to see the next generation of kids taking a much closer look at what they will be studying and the cost/benefits of those studies. College tuition has gone up so much and people are in so much debt now that 2nd generation college students will likely have better advice from their parents. All I ever got my whole life was, "go to school." Luckily I majored in engineering, but I know too many people…

Next generation nothing, barring a major and sudden economic turnaround I expect this to happen next year , by which I mean, this next fall school year. Somewhere in March I expect a few little nervous merpings to trickle out about how college applications seem to be a bit down this year but we're talking ourselves into believing they'll pick back up by the start of the school year, and somewhere in June or July for…

Actually, given the differential in the unemployment rate between high school only and college graduates, I expect to see the fraction of people attending college to increase. Furthermore, given the job market for new graduates, I expect to see an increase in the numbers of students seeking masters degrees, hoping to wait out the downturn. It would be interesting to calculate the ROI on that. Imagine that you have student 1 hired in good economic times, vs student 2 hired in a tough labor market--the base salary could be significantly different--and if both have similar abilities and receive similar raises, I'd be curious what the lifetime impact on earnings would be--compared to say, the cost of a masters degree (even, discounting whether the masters degree has any value in terms of increasing the earnings potential of the candidate).

Re: Quantifying The Value Of A College Degree (By Major)

#19

Post by patio11 »

niels_olson wrote: post #13

A cursory review of the numbers makes me think this is a scam. > Hard sciences such as Physics and Biology pay rather less well than I would have expected. Interestingly, when I used the calculator to search for a BS in Physics, it says "No Statistics for that Degree". I also find it a bit hard to believe that optometrists and lawyers make out better than doctors, or that the lifetime value of a Physician's Assistant…

The numbers/graphs were very definitely not taken from the OOH. They're from the same underlying data source as the OOH, the BLS national salary study, and they're both calculated differently and substantially broader in scope than the numbers presented on the OOH. It should not be surprising that the OOH and this site have the same number for e.g. median salary of accountants, since they both use the BLS data set and presumably have the same understanding of the word "median", but the point of the site is to get a generalizable numbers for the degrees, where the OOH hsa 100% focus on the job categories and generates no statistics whatsoever for degrees.

There may well be rewriting of OOH facts on some of the pages. I likewise haven't read the several hundred pages in detail (I wrote the CMS but wasn't in charge of the freelancers who filled it out).

Re: Quantifying The Value Of A College Degree (By Major)

#20

Post by patio11 »

samd wrote: post #11

If I'm understanding your methods correctly, you only have data for earnings by occupation. So when you say "Computer Science majors earn x." it actually means "People who do the same jobs that computer science majors tend to do earn x." If that's the case then the data is not really actionable unless we also know the probability of getting a job with and without some degree. For example, if computer science majors a…

I think this data is a lot more accurate and actionable than "All degrees are equally valuable, honey", which is the advice I'm most concerned with competing with.
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