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Is College Still Worth It? The New Calculus of Falling Returns [pdf]

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Re: Is College Still Worth It? The New Calculus of Falling Returns [pdf]

#101

Post by cm2012 »

woopwoop wrote: post #94
cm2012 wrote: post #7

I can't find the citation now but the biggest argument against college I've seen is that once you control for family income, life success is way more correlated to SAT scores/the college's you apply for than the ones you actually attend. This would imply that college success stats merely indicate that they are selective in who they choose to enroll. EDIT: Its not the one I'm looking for, but I found a good one. http:…

I don't think your first dash is correct. It looks like they just integrate the curve in figure 4, multiplied by a 5% discount. This includes both tuition cost and missed work during college. Also, it's not really fair to represent this as a difference in lifetime income because of the discount rate: the college attendee makes significantly more than $100k more over their life, but the gains accrue later in life whil…

Noted, everyone ignore the first dash. Thanks!

Re: Is College Still Worth It? The New Calculus of Falling Returns [pdf]

#102

Post by seanmcdirmid »

yters wrote: post #61
seem_2211 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument you put forward doesn't make sense. It's not a ripoff to make close to minimum wage for a number of years (and possibly take on high levels of student loan debt), all to work in a field where there is an oversupply of labour that depresses wages? Ok...

My experience is the work in academia is more interesting and intellectually stimulating than my high paying tech jobs. That would be one motivation to go the academia route instead of the tech route. If you come out the other end of a PhD, then you have the opportunity for best of both worlds: high paying job to work on the problems you find intellectually stimulating. Also, it is cliche, but doing a PhD does train…

Having a PhD is a bar raiser, it automatically disqualifies you from a lot of jobs that don’t have intellectually stimulating problems to work on. This is all fine and dandy if your area overlaps with a hot field, but not if it doesn’t (or is then but isn’t now). Right now, 95% of the CS industry jobs for PhDs are in AI.

The thinking advantage of a PhD is really valuable, its like an extended apprenticeship with your advisor. Also, it gives you time to look at things you find interesting (well, it should, sometimes not).

Re: Is College Still Worth It? The New Calculus of Falling Returns [pdf]

#103

Post by seanmcdirmid »

ransom1538 wrote: post #18

A person in our family is a specialized nurse. Two years of school, then some more training. $60hr any hour they "wish" to work. Saturdays/Sundays are $90hr, so is any hour after 8 hours. The demand is so high he just rejects work. If he wants to work in American Samoa or Miami: hired. I hired a person to install a garage door. $900 for an hour of work. My plumber wont show up for a 30 minute $300 job. I will call ag…

$60 or even $90/hour isn’t that great if its all 1099 income. It isn’t bad either, but the extra payroll taxes and the need to buy an individual plan (if your partner doesn’t get you into a group plan) make it pretty normal.

Re: Is College Still Worth It? The New Calculus of Falling Returns [pdf]

#104

Post by soperj »

seem_2211 wrote: post #12

I have a degree from a no-name university in New Zealand. I'd do it again for a few pragmatic reasons. 1: Lots of companies will reject you on sight without a degree. I don't think it's a good thing, but it is reality. 2: With a degree your ability to move overseas dramatically improves. I moved to America after graduating. I flat out couldn't have done that without a degree. Points based systems immigration systems…

What are you talking about? Otago is what dreams are made of!

Re: Is College Still Worth It? The New Calculus of Falling Returns [pdf]

#105

Post by robotron »

mch82 wrote: post #57
prepend wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need some better contractors. I have multiple plumbers with same day service for $95 service calls. My garage door was installed for $400 and it took an afternoon. Obviously prices vary. I can make a living with a trade skill, but data shows I’m more likely to make a lot more with a college degree. You have billionaire dropouts and baristas with phds. But on average, degree nets you a lot of lifetime income. Mayb…

Interesting that billionaire dropouts often send their children to college & donate heavily to public education

Their kids aren't going to have the same motivation to work as hard as the previous generation moving from whatever class they were in to the elite.

Re: Is College Still Worth It? The New Calculus of Falling Returns [pdf]

#106

Post by dahart »

magicsmoke wrote: post #30
walleeee wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grad school is often funded in the U.S. (PhD at least, masters not so much)

Even then, depending on your speciality the economic return from a PhD is iffy since you're losing 5+ years of industry wages and experience.

Even though the college premiums might be declining, I don’t think your logic is supported by this article at all. The stats in this article show postgraduate degree holders earning 3x what non-graduates earn, and accumulating 5-10x the wealth.

Re: Is College Still Worth It? The New Calculus of Falling Returns [pdf]

#107

Post by bobbiechen »

motohagiography wrote: post #84

College isn't worth it, but that's the whole point. It's becoming what economists call a Giffen Good, that is, something people consume even more of the more expensive it becomes. The biggest value factor of all is Metcalfe's Law of network effects, where the almost universal availability of higher education means that not pursuing it places your starting position in life on the outer long tail of the success curve.…

The classic example of a Giffen good is a staple food like bread:

As Mr. Giffen has pointed out, a rise in the price of bread makes so large a drain on the resources of the poorer labouring families and raises the marginal utility of money to them so much that they are forced to curtail their consumption of meat and the more expensive farinaceous foods: and, bread being still the cheapest food which they can get and will take, they consume more, and not less of it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giffen_good

Re: Is College Still Worth It? The New Calculus of Falling Returns [pdf]

#108

Post by philwelch »

monoideism wrote: post #45
amiga_500 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UBI would just feed directly into rents because that's how prices are set. UBI would require land value tax to ensure the public value is capture for public spending. UBI alone is a land speculator wet dream and Yang is totally wrong to be pushing it without LVT. Yes in the middle of nowhere it can help, but most people are in cities and rents will rise there to current rent + UBI amount.

I agree that a significant LVT would be extremely welcome. Perhaps even more so than UBI. I'm open to suggestions, but we've passed the point we were in from 1950 to 2000 where any mediocre person could work hard and be guaranteed a middle-class life. And that's wrong, not to mention very threatening to our democracy.

I'm sure that by some economic measurement, any mediocre person today could still work hard and earn enough to afford the same standard of living as the middle class of 1950. The main problem is that this isn't actually possible to pull off, since it costs 10x as much for things like housing and medicine that aren't necessarily 10x better. There just isn't the option to buy the crappy version from 70 years ago.

Re: Is College Still Worth It? The New Calculus of Falling Returns [pdf]

#109

Post by learc83 »

10000100001010 wrote: post #49
50 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for the input. It's interesting, and hey, it might be the case down the road. But my main philosophy behind my seemingly naive post is this: I don't mind what happens. I'm of the opinion that it doesn't matter what is but how you think about what is that matters. Edit: I saw your edit, and again, thank you for your input. I would just like to note that I'll be graduating with ~12k in debt - I went to a comm…

I'm about to finish paying off about $65,000 dollars that I took out for my CS degree. I graduated 4 years ago and have a good paying job. So, I'm lucky to have to be paying it off early. However, even with my 6 figure income, paying off this large sum off money has been a huge burden and has majorly affected other choices in my life like investments, career (I.e. I had to take the high paying jobs), buying a house,…

The $40k I had to pay back wasn't a burden to me at all because I went to a state school and took public loans.

I had the option of an income based repayment plan too, so if I wanted to take a low paying jobs my monthly payment would have just dropped.

The only reason it would have been a burden was if I felt like I had to pay it off in 4 years.

Re: Is College Still Worth It? The New Calculus of Falling Returns [pdf]

#110

Post by mlyle »

throwawayjava wrote: post #5

Their familial controls don't make much sense to me. An actuary's kid will have an easier time becoming an actuary. Same for lawyers and doctors. That doesn't mean that college is a non causal factor in those students lifetime earnings... Quite the opposite. You're not becoming any of those things without college. The student went to college precisely because they understand viscerally and precisely how college sets…

> Their familial controls don't make much sense to me.

There's a lot of recent evidence that, all else being equal (controlling for educational attainment, test scores, and grades) parental income/social class has a huge impact on income.

That is, if you come from a lower social class, you can expect a lower income increase from college than someone coming from a higher social class.

There's significant policy implications here-- our long-standing goal of getting lower income kids to take college loans and go to college may not have a positive expected return for them.

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