It's funny to me that people can immediately see the issue with falling returns here as prices increase, but can't see the same thing when it applies to the stock market. In the stock market, the prevailing wisdom is "buy and hold no matter what the price is, because you can't time/game the market." Why doesn't the same logic apply to college? Shouldn't the efficient market cause college costs to rise to the appropriate level? Given that, shouldn't you just do it and ignore the cost?
Is College Still Worth It? The New Calculus of Falling Returns [pdf]
131–140 of 360 posts
Re: Is College Still Worth It? The New Calculus of Falling Returns [pdf]
#132College 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.…
> Notable that these articles about the doubtful value of a university degree are written exclusively by people who have one.
Why is it notable?
Re: Is College Still Worth It? The New Calculus of Falling Returns [pdf]
#133I 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 you are portraing is your exploitation of your countries education system for your own benefit. The NZ tax payer invested in yours for your future ROI into NZ and you put this ROI in your sack.
The possibility of migrating to richer countries causes greater investment in education.
https://appam.confex.com/appam/2018/webprogram/Paper27374.ht...
> Using a new administrative dataset combining the universe of permanent migrant departures from the Philippines with the universe of institution-level post-secondary enrollment and graduation, we show that enrollment and graduation in nursing programs increased in response to demand from abroad for nurses. The supply of nursing programs increased to accommodate this. The increase in nursing enrollment and graduation during the period was much larger than the increase in nurse migration and contributed to a brain gain
Re: Is College Still Worth It? The New Calculus of Falling Returns [pdf]
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Skilled manual work. Cannot be outsourced. But it can be dramatically diluted through lenient immigration policies (and that's exactly what happened). Bottom line, you have to be clever stay on your toes to make it in today's economy, and even then you need lots of luck and excellent health. UBI would result in a much more just society.
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.
Yang is willing to adjust policy positions if the data supports it. If property prices are being raised due to UBI, then I'm sure he'd support something like LVT.
That's the difference with Yang. He's the most data-driven politician I've ever seen.
Other politicians seem mostly ideological, and I don't think they'd adjust their policies even in the face of overwhelming data it's not working. Like if Warren used Antitrust law to break up Amazon and it didn't change any relevant metrics, I think she would still call the policy a success. Ideological politicians like that are way more dangerous than someone who wants to try new ideas and is willing to adjust if they don't work.
Re: Is College Still Worth It? The New Calculus of Falling Returns [pdf]
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Zuckerberg and Gates would have been elite if they’d never worked a day in their lives. Lots of people who come from money do something that doesn’t pay that well, like working in acting or the arts. Others don’t, and work as executives or found their own businesses even though there’s no danger of running out of money.
Re: Is College Still Worth It? The New Calculus of Falling Returns [pdf]
#136A 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…
> The demand is so high he just rejects work.
I think as we advance in the information age, maybe degrees are less about helping you actually get the job done, and more about serving as a mean for companies (and countries) to roughly filter high surplus of candidates. Add the fact its easier today to apply for job posts, its very hard for recruiters to filter intelligently at reasonable time. My guess is if everyone would have first degree, the recruiters will require a second degree.
This has less weight on jobs short in candidates (i.e specialized nurse, plumber, welder, proven AI expert, or whatever is hot right now).
Re: Is College Still Worth It? The New Calculus of Falling Returns [pdf]
#137Three words. Income Sharing Agreement. Banks and insurance agencies have already calculated what a degree at a particular college is worth.
People just tend to get really butt hurt when they see that a degree in Tuba Performance from NYU is not valuable.
Re: Is College Still Worth It? The New Calculus of Falling Returns [pdf]
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Zuckerberg and Gates would have been elite if they’d never worked a day in their lives. Lots of people who come from money do something that doesn’t pay that well, like working in acting or the arts. Others don’t, and work as executives or found their own businesses even though there’s no danger of running out of money.
Zuckerberg and Gates would have been elite if they’d never worked a day in their lives.
Perhaps it's just me, but in the Zuckerberg case specifically, I'd think quite a bit of luck and timing had to do with it. If Zuckerberg had been born 10 years later after the obvious social network ideas were already created? Or if he had gone to a no-name college (or none whatsoever) and Facebook had never taken off the way it did at Harvard?
Or maybe you meant they were born elite, in which case, I don't know anything about that.
Re: Is College Still Worth It? The New Calculus of Falling Returns [pdf]
#139A 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.
Suddenly makes you feel very bad for all the people out there making $15-20ish an hour.
Re: Is College Still Worth It? The New Calculus of Falling Returns [pdf]
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah it's not great! There's fairly decent financial aid available to cover your living costs if you're from a low income family, but that cuts off pretty quickly, and unlike the US, there isn't really a culture of paying for your children's education, so there's a lot of kids (like me) who grew up upper-middle class but didn't get much help through university. Overall, I'd equate the USD = NZD as realtively equivale…
Sure, I used the FX rate in your case as you are paid USA wages but your debt was NZD.
Oh yeah, it's a great deal for me. What I meant was Americans who studied and then work in America end up paying roughly the same (when you take into account average earnings) as Kiwis who study and then stay in NZ.