People should be apprenticed at 13, and should enter professions at about 18. Only jobs requiring memorization of a large body of prior work (medicine or science) need more than that.
Yeah, I'm glad we haven't formalized that system in the US.
Is college worth the cost?
11–20 of 50 posts
Re: Is college worth the cost?
#12Private, no. (Northwestern and NYU are up to $48K a year just in tuition. Are you kidding me?) Public, especially an in-state school if your state is fortunate enough have a quality one, definitely yes. College: still the best four years of your life. (Then again, I've yet to live the four years one would experience after selling a startup for big money. Maybe we could get input from pg or that Broadcom guy who built…
You do know that a lot of people going to private schools aren't paying full-price, right? Need based financial aid grants are often available (ie not loans) and sometimes they are substantial. I've known people who have paid less for a private school than they would have at a state school.
Yeah, I guess I didn't really consider that -- based on how the question was phrased I was trying to consider the whole range of potential costs of college from the most outrageously high to free.
Re: Is college worth the cost?
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
You do know that a lot of people going to private schools aren't paying full-price, right? Need based financial aid grants are often available (ie not loans) and sometimes they are substantial. I've known people who have paid less for a private school than they would have at a state school.
Yeah, I guess I didn't really consider that -- based on how the question was phrased I was trying to consider the whole range of potential costs of college from the most outrageously high to free.
It's a fair outer bound to place. I just like to be really clear about the fact that people don't necessarily pay sticker price at private schools. I've volunteered for my alma mater at college fairs and there are a lot of people who are interested and then freak when they see the tuition. I have to imagine that there are an equal number who don't even stop by our table because they've done just enough research to think "expensive."
Re: Is college worth the cost?
#14This article includes one of the most misleading statistics concerning higher education: "People with bachelor's degrees... still earn an average of about $1.2M more than high school graduates over a 40-year career". Yes, there is a correlation between higher education and higher salaries -- no, this does not imply causation! There are many confounding factors: People who are more intelligent, have parent(s) who purs…
For various reasons it's actually fairly difficult to do controlled studies like you say. I know a guy doing a study right now who is actually running it backwards. That is, instead of looking at how GPA affects future income, he is looking at how past income affects GPA. For example, business school students usually work for a while before getting their MBA. If you think that students with higher GPAs should earn more money after they graduate, then presumably you also would expect that students who earn more money before going to business schools will get higher GPAs.
The best traditional studies show that GPA accounts for about 3% of job performance, as measured by income and performance reviews among other things. (IIRC Alfie Kohn cites this study in his book What Does It Mean To Be Well Educated?) It will be interesting to see whether or not running the study backwards yields similar results.
Re: Is college worth the cost?
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, I guess I didn't really consider that -- based on how the question was phrased I was trying to consider the whole range of potential costs of college from the most outrageously high to free.
It's a fair outer bound to place. I just like to be really clear about the fact that people don't necessarily pay sticker price at private schools. I've volunteered for my alma mater at college fairs and there are a lot of people who are interested and then freak when they see the tuition. I have to imagine that there are an equal number who don't even stop by our table because they've done just enough research to th…
How about a "nutrition chart" requirement for each college of any type? It would disclose the lower, more average charge per student over 4 years computed by each college using federal standards.
Secondly, the government should run the loan program themselves for public universities, since it's a lot cheaper for it to offer loans than to subsidize banks to do the same.
Re: Is college worth the cost?
#16If you haven't realized it yet, most of the education you're paying for in college isn't found in a classroom. College is a nice buffer against the transition to the real world where you can take risks without consequences for the most part. A lot of a college's value comes from your peer group, which is why smart people congregate at the top schools for the most part (aside from career prospects and prestige).
Re: Is college worth the cost?
#17Let me propose the radical idea that a college education is not solely justified by it's monetary value.
preach it brother!
Re: Is college worth the cost?
#18Let me propose the radical idea that a college education is not solely justified by it's monetary value.
Can one really put a price on learning how to do a kegstand properly?
Re: Is college worth the cost?
#19Let me propose the radical idea that a college education is not solely justified by it's monetary value.
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Re: Is college worth the cost?
#20For me, college was absolutely worth the cost. Focusing on more than just the money, I met dozens of current and potential business clients. My side work as a freelance web developer has come mostly through people that I met in college. I went to a community college paid for entirely by scholarships, so the cost to me as far as money goes was only that of the books. The largest cost to me, though, was the time invest…
There's another cost, some jobs you just won't be able to do when you have a wife, kids, and lots of loans to pay every month. At college age is part of the very short time in your life where you are free from all this and can easily focus on something harder than virtually anyone else.
Of course, the majority of people will never consider even performing at this potential. But could it be different if college as we know it wasn't so severely required?
That's the first cost that came to mind when I read the title. On the other hand, there were some good parties and women.