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College has been oversold

marginalrevolution.com

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Re: College has been oversold

#51

Post by rwl »

"Most importantly, graduates in the arts, psychology and journalism are less likely to create the kinds of innovations that drive economic growth. Economic growth is not a magic totem to which all else must bow, but it is one of the main reasons we subsidize higher education."

I think this is a completely misguided assumption. Maybe this is true these days. But it wasn't always true, and it shouldn't be true. Higher education, especially in the liberal arts, is for training students to become good community members, citizens and leaders. It's about giving them the cognitive, rhetorical, and even emotional skills required to solve the hard problems that we face as a society. And there is a lot more to solving those problems than promoting "innovation" or "economic growth". We subsidize higher education because producing citizens with those skills is valuable to our society.

Are liberal arts programs perfect? No. Do they cost too much? Maybe. Would it be good for society to have more people going into STEM fields? Probably. Does all this mean that liberal arts education is "oversold"? Certainly not. Indeed, it is rare to see people express just how valuable the liberal arts are, and why.

Re: College has been oversold

#52

Post by Eeko »

nobody31 wrote: post #41
maratd wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Really, it's a cultural problem. No, it's an economic one. > I have a liberal arts degree from an "elite private university". Ok. Let's make the assumption that you're at least moderately intelligent and would be able to get a job for 40K from the bat. 40K * 4 = 160K College tuition is 40K itself at an "elite private university". Then you add living expenses, books, food, etc. and you have another 25K. That's 65K.…

>Half a mil to learn about Poetry Writing. Sorry, but that's just silly. Half a mil so that when you apply for a job at $MEGA-CORP or in government the hirer says "Oh you went to %SCHOOL%, same as me" welcome to our management fast-track program, followed by promotion and VP-dom. As opposed to "Oh you got a CS degree", well programmers get to sit in this cubicle and get paid $50k until we outsource the whole thing to…

> Half a mil so that when you apply for a job at $MEGA-CORP or in government the hirer says "Oh you went to %SCHOOL%, same as me" welcome to our management fast-track program, followed by promotion and VP-dom.

Do companies really work that way? I think trying to max-out your competitiveness and money-making skills by hiring the right guys would make more sense than hiring via secluded grapevine.

Re: College has been oversold

#53

Post by wisty »

nobody31 wrote: post #41
maratd wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Really, it's a cultural problem. No, it's an economic one. > I have a liberal arts degree from an "elite private university". Ok. Let's make the assumption that you're at least moderately intelligent and would be able to get a job for 40K from the bat. 40K * 4 = 160K College tuition is 40K itself at an "elite private university". Then you add living expenses, books, food, etc. and you have another 25K. That's 65K.…

>Half a mil to learn about Poetry Writing. Sorry, but that's just silly. Half a mil so that when you apply for a job at $MEGA-CORP or in government the hirer says "Oh you went to %SCHOOL%, same as me" welcome to our management fast-track program, followed by promotion and VP-dom. As opposed to "Oh you got a CS degree", well programmers get to sit in this cubicle and get paid $50k until we outsource the whole thing to…

Elitism only works while it has some kind of advantage.

If going to an elite college gives you a better chance of reaching the top, then hirers will come from elite colleges.

If getting a CS degree gives you a better chance of reaching the top, then hirers will have CS degess.

Re: College has been oversold

#54

Post by marklabedz »

pandaman wrote: post #34
marklabedz wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As is the lack of critical thinking, problem solving and communication skills from the other side. EDIT: In response to some of the questions below, please let me clarify. When I said "other side" I was meaning a lack of well-roundedness. I was NOT trying to pit STEM grads against liberal arts grads. I do not intend to state that STEM graduates don't know problem solving or critical thinking. Far from it. However in…

Many people seem to be confused by this statement but I am guessing your liberal arts school taught you that "critical thinking" is what critics do, am I correct?

If by critic, you mean from the greek "kritikós" and not some creation of cable news or au courant op-ed pages.

Re: College has been oversold

#55

Post by nobody31 »

wisty wrote: post #53
nobody31 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Half a mil to learn about Poetry Writing. Sorry, but that's just silly. Half a mil so that when you apply for a job at $MEGA-CORP or in government the hirer says "Oh you went to %SCHOOL%, same as me" welcome to our management fast-track program, followed by promotion and VP-dom. As opposed to "Oh you got a CS degree", well programmers get to sit in this cubicle and get paid $50k until we outsource the whole thing to…

Elitism only works while it has some kind of advantage. If going to an elite college gives you a better chance of reaching the top, then hirers will come from elite colleges. If getting a CS degree gives you a better chance of reaching the top, then hirers will have CS degess.

Successful go to elite college, successful only hire from elite college, therefore to be successful you go to elite college.

Of course this system eventually breaksdown. But for Eton school it's worked since 1440, for Oxford since 1096, Cambridge since 1284 - but eventually it will break down.

Re: College has been oversold

#56

Post by nobody31 »

Eeko wrote: post #52
nobody31 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Half a mil to learn about Poetry Writing. Sorry, but that's just silly. Half a mil so that when you apply for a job at $MEGA-CORP or in government the hirer says "Oh you went to %SCHOOL%, same as me" welcome to our management fast-track program, followed by promotion and VP-dom. As opposed to "Oh you got a CS degree", well programmers get to sit in this cubicle and get paid $50k until we outsource the whole thing to…

> Half a mil so that when you apply for a job at $MEGA-CORP or in government the hirer says "Oh you went to %SCHOOL%, same as me" welcome to our management fast-track program, followed by promotion and VP-dom. Do companies really work that way? I think trying to max-out your competitiveness and money-making skills by hiring the right guys would make more sense than hiring via secluded grapevine.

competitiveness only matters when you have competitors.

So if you are an engineering company and you work like this you will be destroyed by countries with more meritocratic hiring systems.

If you don't have any competitors because you work for government or in a sector like banking where you are protected from foreign competition and all you competitors hire on the same system - then you will do fine (for now).

Can we spot any English speaking countries which might be an example of this?

Re: College has been oversold

#58

Post by neutronicus »

_delirium wrote: post #20

Is it actually "non-science in particular"? From what I can tell from job/income statistics (depending on how you interpret them), the college degree is actually most valuable for people who intend to pursue non-STEM careers. The unemployment rates are much lower, and average salaries much higher, if you compare degree-holders to non-degree-holders among people pursuing non-STEM careers. Meanwhile, in computer scienc…

I think CS is somewhat of an anomaly among STEM fields in this regard. A degree is an absolute must in, for instance, Civil Engineering.

Re: College has been oversold

#59

Post by jtbigwoo »

maratd wrote: post #38
joshklein wrote: post #27

I have a similar conclusion but slightly different reasoning. And I want to defend liberal arts majors a bit, since I'm one of them. To me, the problem is that most people don't view college as an investment in their future, but rather as a temporary place to delay choices. Certainly, it is positioned as an investment by educators, and it is probably true for science & engineering degrees, but do students approach it…

> Really, it's a cultural problem. No, it's an economic one. > I have a liberal arts degree from an "elite private university". Ok. Let's make the assumption that you're at least moderately intelligent and would be able to get a job for 40K from the bat. 40K * 4 = 160K College tuition is 40K itself at an "elite private university". Then you add living expenses, books, food, etc. and you have another 25K. That's 65K.…

You're working with the edge case in your example where a really smart person can get an amazing job right out of high school. It's more instructive to look at the average case:

- In the current economy, the number of high school grads making $40k/year is vanishingly small. It's more likely he'd be making 25k or less if he has a job at all. - 25k for living expenses and books for a college student is way too high unless she's going to school across the country and flies home a ton. - The average student doesn't pay 40k/year in tuition unless he has rich parents and is a below-average student. The average is less than 20k.

Let's redo the math: Tuition: 20k * 4 = 80k Living Expenses: 15k * 4 = 60k Total Expense: 140k

Let's say that our college student gets a below-average job that pays 32k/year.

In a 35 year career with 3% raises, our high school grad makes a total of $1,511,552. In a 31 year career with 3% raises, our college grad makes a total of $1,600,086.

Considering the time value of that $140,000, it's a wash. Go to college and study poetry if you want. The impact to your long-term bottom line is negligible.

Re: College has been oversold

#60

Post by cq »

That graph in the OP is dishonest. Here's the actual data that wasn't cherry picked (and taken directly from the same data source as the OP, using the excel file provided by the US government and charted in excel):

http://i.imgur.com/YTFMo.png

Here are the tables from the report, if you'd like to do your own analysis: http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/2010menu_tables.asp

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