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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]

#211

Post by JshWright »

caenorst wrote: post #149
vonseel wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 d…

They seems obvious to you now but they weren't at that time. Not that I am a Zuck fan at all but he deserve credit for that and that probably demonstrate some creativity and vision from him. No ?

The point is that even without Facebook, he would have access to a significant amount of wealth.

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

#212

Post by achenatx »

kortilla wrote: post #180
vonseel wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suddenly makes you feel very bad for all the people out there making $15-20ish an hour.

Not sure you understand. 1099 income means they aren’t an employee. That’s not the arrangement for people making $15-20. Those folks are regular employees so they receive that income after benefits, payroll taxes, etc. As a 1099 employee you need to be clearing at least double the equivalent employee hourly wage because there is so much overhead. Remember, a contractor doesn’t get a single day of paid vacation.

benefits only run about 30%. So a contractor wage should be about 130% of a salaried employees wage.

This does not count when a salaried employee works more than 40 hours.

My plumber charges 150/hour.

Contractors around here bill by the job. I had bids for $5000 for a 1 day job for 2 people when incorporated into a GC bid. The GC was getting 25% on top of the 5000.

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

#213

Post by macspoofing »

brownbat wrote: post #195

This is a really interesting addition to the literature if you dig through it, with subtle distinctions between income gains and wealth gains and interactions with demographics. It's not a simple "college ain't what it used to be" story. The biggest puzzle is how to explain why recent grads still command significantly higher incomes than nongrads without accumulating significantly more wealth. Increasing tuition is a…

>Policy circles are hotly debating right now how to overhaul the entire system.

No guaranteed federal loans would fix everything. This means tuition loans could then be discharged and the lender would be more discerning about loaning to a student heading to some boutique private college with sky-high tuition and ending up with a humanities degree.

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

#214

Post by losvedir »

barry-cotter wrote: post #135
robotron wrote: post #105

Earlier 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.

What do you mean by that? Zuckerberg and Gates are indisputably elite because they're two of the richest people in the world.

But I wouldn't call them elite beforehand, and definitely not if they didn't work a day in their lives. Their parents' money seems to come from being a lawyer, a dentist, and a psychiatrist. That's not "elite", that's something any family can achieve in two generations.

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

#215

Post by someguydave »

mdorazio wrote: post #99
seem_2211 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does STEM actually pay off, or does engineering/technology pay off? I've got a few friends who work in science, and it seems to be a pretty poorly paying field, with a real lack of job prospects, unless you secure a job at a government research department.

Even in the engineering field, pay is massively different for different types of engineers. Civil and mechanical engineers generally aren't making anywhere near what software engineers make in top markets, for example. Similar story with chemists working in biotech vs. physicists doing fundamental research.

“Software engineering” is not a recognized engineering discipline.

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

#216

Post by [deleted] »

monoideism wrote: post #37
amiga_500 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Skilled manual work. Cannot be outsourced.

> 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.

[deleted]

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

#217

Post by ipython »

kortilla wrote: post #176
seem_2211 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough. When it comes to career advice, I prefer anecdotes to large data sets, because there are far too many variables, and it's too easy to torture numbers.

I take it you didn’t go the STEM route then. ;) More seriously, anecdotes are terrible when giving advice to fresh high school seniors on their way to graduation. When people think of degrees in certain fields, they gravitate to the successful people (“I’ll study acting and make millions like the famous actors I know”, etc). They don’t think of and aren’t even aware of how many people get those degrees and fail hard.…

If that friend is himself an actor, or someone else who can influence hiring decisions, then I would say go for it!

At the end of the day, people hire you. Not data. After all, who says that a teenager can tell apart badly interpreted data any better than poor anecdotes?

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

#218

Post by Retric »

macspoofing wrote: post #213
brownbat wrote: post #195

This is a really interesting addition to the literature if you dig through it, with subtle distinctions between income gains and wealth gains and interactions with demographics. It's not a simple "college ain't what it used to be" story. The biggest puzzle is how to explain why recent grads still command significantly higher incomes than nongrads without accumulating significantly more wealth. Increasing tuition is a…

>Policy circles are hotly debating right now how to overhaul the entire system. No guaranteed federal loans would fix everything. This means tuition loans could then be discharged and the lender would be more discerning about loaning to a student heading to some boutique private college with sky-high tuition and ending up with a humanities degree.

Discharable loans would also increase interest rates by about 2%. That’s 100$ a month for 60k worth of loans, which makes them even harder to pay back.

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

#220

Post by learc83 »

macspoofing wrote: post #213
brownbat wrote: post #195

This is a really interesting addition to the literature if you dig through it, with subtle distinctions between income gains and wealth gains and interactions with demographics. It's not a simple "college ain't what it used to be" story. The biggest puzzle is how to explain why recent grads still command significantly higher incomes than nongrads without accumulating significantly more wealth. Increasing tuition is a…

>Policy circles are hotly debating right now how to overhaul the entire system. No guaranteed federal loans would fix everything. This means tuition loans could then be discharged and the lender would be more discerning about loaning to a student heading to some boutique private college with sky-high tuition and ending up with a humanities degree.

Loans aren't federally guaranteed anymore. They are made directly by the government.
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