Is College Still Worth It? The New Calculus of Falling Returns [pdf] • Hacker News Board

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

#301

Post by anonymoushn » Sat, Dec 28, 2019, 5:48 PM UTC

mygo wrote: post #296

anonymoushn wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For knowledge workers who could have begun a similar career without college, the cost of the degree should also include the money they would have made by working 4 additional years at the end of their career (probably one of the highest points?)

The Opportunity Cost would have been incurred while they were in college, not 30+ years after. There are too many variables in play when projecting that far out in the future, but you can make good estimates as to what would have happened in the past as an alternative to the 4 years spent in college.

I didn't get compensated as if I had 4 YoE when I had 0.

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

#302

Post by sokoloff » Sat, Dec 28, 2019, 5:50 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #297

sokoloff wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

College Board suggests that going from 0 to “6-8 hours” of prep is good for about 90 points and to 20 hours is good for only an additional 25 points. It would seem folly to take the test with 0 prep and there’s a Khan Academy free prep course that you could use for the 20 hours of prep. Given that, I’m not so sure that intensive prep is going to boost someone’s score significantly beyond basic prep.

Again of course the College Board has every reason to perpetuate the myth that the SAT is about college readiness and not about how much access you have to tutorials. Do you really think some free online tutorials are as good as $100/hour private tutor who is a college professor that we got for my son or in my case having a mother who was not only a high school Math teacher but also taught SAT tutorials? Do you reall…

Both my parents were math teachers. I qualified for SMPY/SET (and came from a rural high school where only ~10% went on to four-year colleges).

I am fairly convinced that outcome was likely from years of math education in daily life, on car trips, doing math puzzles with my parents, etc. We’re doing the same with our kids now. My daughter just scored perfect on the SSAT practice math test and finished in half the allotted time. My total extent of “dedicated” prep was under an hour. Our total extent of informal prep was thousands of hours over nearly a decade. (That test isn’t nearly as difficult as the SAT, of course.)

I suspect your mom had more to do with your outcome based on years than the expensive tutor did in a few dozen hours. (I’ll also not hesitate to do that if I think it’s needed.)

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

#303

Post by Akababa » Sat, Dec 28, 2019, 5:52 PM UTC

dahart wrote: post #281

rayiner wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Individually, yes. But that doesn’t mean that people are making more money in the aggregate by more people going to college. If the government subsidizes college and that results in more people going to college, but employers just respond by taking previously non-college jobs and making them require college degrees, there isn’t actually more money in the economy as a result to justify the government expenditure.

You’re moving your own goal post. You complained about the government’s relatively small outputs from the student loan program, which is absolutely recouped many times over by today’s income premium, in the form of income taxes, regardless of whether the economy grows. Your hypothetical isn’t the way things are actually playing out, so I don’t feel like it needs to be argued. Degree holders are generating value on av…

I feel like you're talking past a lot of the other commenters in this thread. I'll try to frame it another way:

Generating value is synonymous with growing the economy and being more productive. You can't inflate incomes without either increasing productivity or printing money. If degree holders command higher incomes without offering higher productivity, it comes at the expense of non-degree holders earning lower wages than they would have without the degree holders around.

In my opinion, much of the income premium comes from employers using degrees as a filter (similar to a standardized test). Doing well on the SAT doesn't make you more productive, but does give you a leg up over your peers.

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

#304

Post by scarface74 » Sat, Dec 28, 2019, 5:56 PM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #302

scarface74 wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again of course the College Board has every reason to perpetuate the myth that the SAT is about college readiness and not about how much access you have to tutorials. Do you really think some free online tutorials are as good as $100/hour private tutor who is a college professor that we got for my son or in my case having a mother who was not only a high school Math teacher but also taught SAT tutorials? Do you reall…

Both my parents were math teachers. I qualified for SMPY/SET (and came from a rural high school where only ~10% went on to four-year colleges). I am fairly convinced that outcome was likely from years of math education in daily life, on car trips, doing math puzzles with my parents, etc. We’re doing the same with our kids now. My daughter just scored perfect on the SSAT practice math test and finished in half the all…

Doesn’t that kind of make my point? That kids who either grow up in an environment where they have affluent parents with access to resources or in my case, highly educated parents teaching me what ended up being 11th grade math in 8th grade is advantageous? That still doesn’t make the SAT unbiased.

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

#305

Post by austenallred » Sat, Dec 28, 2019, 6:00 PM UTC

kerkeslager wrote: post #118

One thing I don't see talked about a lot is the risk involved in going to college. All the frequently-cited studies about college look at the incomes of college graduates versus the incomes of non-college graduates, and then compare that to the cost of education, and that generally looks fairly positive. But of students who enroll in 4-year programs, only 60% graduate within 6 years[1]. For these students, college ha…

Bingo

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

#306

Post by sokoloff » Sat, Dec 28, 2019, 6:02 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #304

sokoloff wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both my parents were math teachers. I qualified for SMPY/SET (and came from a rural high school where only ~10% went on to four-year colleges). I am fairly convinced that outcome was likely from years of math education in daily life, on car trips, doing math puzzles with my parents, etc. We’re doing the same with our kids now. My daughter just scored perfect on the SSAT practice math test and finished in half the all…

Doesn’t that kind of make my point? That kids who either grow up in an environment where they have affluent parents with access to resources or in my case, highly educated parents teaching me what ended up being 11th grade math in 8th grade is advantageous? That still doesn’t make the SAT unbiased.

Well, the question is whether you were simultaneously prepared for the SAT and for college by 18 years of daily reinforcement of the value of education and practical subject matter drilling? I believe I was, far more than someone whose parents were equally loving and caring, but who worked in a factory or a trade.

If your upbringing was causal in preparation for both, it seems the college board might be correct in claiming that the SAT measures college readiness.

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

#307

Post by dahart » Sat, Dec 28, 2019, 6:09 PM UTC

Akababa wrote: post #303

dahart wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re moving your own goal post. You complained about the government’s relatively small outputs from the student loan program, which is absolutely recouped many times over by today’s income premium, in the form of income taxes, regardless of whether the economy grows. Your hypothetical isn’t the way things are actually playing out, so I don’t feel like it needs to be argued. Degree holders are generating value on av…

I feel like you're talking past a lot of the other commenters in this thread. I'll try to frame it another way: Generating value is synonymous with growing the economy and being more productive. You can't inflate incomes without either increasing productivity or printing money. If degree holders command higher incomes without offering higher productivity, it comes at the expense of non-degree holders earning lower wa…

I totally agree that a big factor in income differences is due to cultural biases that favor degree holders. I don’t think degrees are economically zero value though, for example patents are primarily held by inventors with postgraduate degrees, and more businesses are started by degree holders.

I’m not really sure how to answer your first part, I’m not trying to talk past anyone, but I feel like people are responding to my point that the income premium is what matters to the student loan program by repeating the conclusion of the paper that the wealth premium is going to zero.

The income premium and the wealth premium in this paper are two different things, and even though people with degrees might end up having net zero additional wealth accumulation at the end of their lives, that doesn’t mean the student loan program is also net zero, or that people with and without degrees have the same lifestyle.

The student loan program gets to make it’s money back before degree holders get to save the money, so the income premium matters to the government more than the wealth premium, when figuring out whether forgiving loans is worth it or not.

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

#308

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Dec 28, 2019, 6:17 PM UTC

vegetablepotpie wrote: post #244

macspoofing wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key here is that you wouldn't get a loan to a college that won't provide you a useful degree for the tuition rate they charge the student. You want the lender to be discerning and not give out bad loans. Right now, the entire industry assumes students are not price conscious and you only need to sell them on the college experience instead of the price and value of the degree. Having said that, the government can…

>you only need to sell them on the college experience instead of the price and value of the degree. I think this is a good point because the problem with college recruiting is that they simultaneously advertise that they are an experience and a good investment, while shrugging off the responsibilities of being a good investment. I disagree with the idea that financial institutions should be in the business of determi…

[deleted]

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

#309

Post by kerkeslager » Sat, Dec 28, 2019, 6:32 PM UTC

asutekku wrote: post #163

kerkeslager wrote: post #118

One thing I don't see talked about a lot is the risk involved in going to college. All the frequently-cited studies about college look at the incomes of college graduates versus the incomes of non-college graduates, and then compare that to the cost of education, and that generally looks fairly positive. But of students who enroll in 4-year programs, only 60% graduate within 6 years[1]. For these students, college ha…

Or they got a job before graduating. Tech companies actively hire people from universities, those 40% are not inherently negative.

If we're talking anecdotal experience, I'm one of the people who you're talking about, and if I could go back in time, I'd a) not have done any internships and b) not have quit college. But let's not discuss anecdotes, because that's not how policy should be determined. Let's keep the focus on data.

What you're describing happens, but it's enough of an outlier that it doesn't tip the median outcomes to the positive. People with some college but no degree still have above-median unemployment and below-median earnings. In fact an associates degree only gets you below-median unemployment: it still doesn't allow you to reach median earnings.

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

#310

Post by JMTQp8lwXL » Sat, Dec 28, 2019, 6:45 PM UTC

solatic wrote: post #287

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…

> The biggest puzzle is how to explain why recent grads still command significantly higher incomes than nongrads without accumulating significantly more wealth. Is it? Permit this armchair economist a theory: People with degrees tend to use those degrees in pursuit of career development. Career development causes people to move to "cluster" regions e.g. Silicon Valley, New York "Cluster" regions tend to have a high c…

Some things cost the same nationwide, for example the MSRP of a new truck. A college degree means higher income and certain higher expenses (e.g, housing), but not others. Your college debt balance is the same regardless if you earn $70,000 in an entry level Software Engineering job in Philadelphia or $120,000 in SFBA. That creates room for some arbitrage and wealth building.