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Is College Worth It?

priceonomics.com

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Re: Is College Worth It?

#31

Post by krschultz »

greenyoda wrote: post #19

Isn't a $98K median starting salary for math and CS grads a bit high? Yes, the few lucky ones who get a job at Google or Facebook or an investment bank might make six figures right out of school, but it doesn't seem like there would be enough of those jobs to pull the median up that high. The average CS grad probably won't end up working for an internet company; there are probably many more programming jobs in corpor…

Their data is incorrect. If you pull up the linked article, the table they sourced is #12 on page 15, titled "Top 10 Majors with the highest median earnings".

That's the median of all salaries for all people in that job description where the highest level of education is a Bachelor's degree, NOT the starting salary as indicated.

Re: Is College Worth It?

#32

Post by sliverstorm »

lkrubner wrote: post #2

I have a problem with this method: "Payscale draws on its information about alumni salaries. It calculates the expected earnings of a newly minted graduate over a 30 year career by summing the median incomes of alumni from his or her school who graduated between one and 30 years ago." Yes, I know that college was worth it 30 years ago, and even 15 years ago, and even 10 years ago. That is not the real question. The q…

Of course it isn't perfect information, and of course things are changing. But they can't give you the numbers from the future because nobody has them! So projecting forwards based on past trends is just one of the ways we can speculate.

It can still be useful data, too. Assume we are at an inflection point. Concoct numbers, and tack speculative movement on to the end of the graph. See where that puts you.

Yes, it's speculative, but that's all we've got right now.

Re: Is College Worth It?

#33

Post by krschultz »

diminoten wrote: post #29

Wait, 98k starting salary for Math/Computer Science is median ? In the US? What?!?! This does not mesh with my experiences or the experiences of my peers at all . If you want to include the financial industry, you're talking about the top 1% of salaries, if that. Are they so disparate that they drag the median up that much? Edit: Looking at the source data[0], they've separated "Computer Science" and "Mathematics" fr…

That's incorrect data. That's the median for all salaries in the field, not starting salaries.

Re: Is College Worth It?

#34

Post by nicholas73 »

lkrubner wrote: post #2

I have a problem with this method: "Payscale draws on its information about alumni salaries. It calculates the expected earnings of a newly minted graduate over a 30 year career by summing the median incomes of alumni from his or her school who graduated between one and 30 years ago." Yes, I know that college was worth it 30 years ago, and even 15 years ago, and even 10 years ago. That is not the real question. The q…

Another problem with a pure financial projection is that it does not fully consider opportunity cost. The cost/benefit is not simply the difference in earnings, minus tuition, interest, missed earnings and investment on earnings.

The real cost is that being in debt limits your options to pursue possibly more lucrative opportunities, or to enjoy your life outside the system. The better term would be liquidity cost. Every one of us will at some point come across a great investment opportunity. Every one of us can have an idea we would like to pursue. But an employee fully loaded with college debt, added with mortgage and kids, can't afford to do anything else but add to a 401k each paycheck.

Furthermore, every financial investment should have a healthy margin of error to compensate you for risk. This should be at even higher margins when the more leveraged you are. Things like college and a mortgage are a total leverage of your earnings potential as an employee. Thus the question isn't whether college is merely worth it. The question should be if college is totally a no-brainer as an investment.

And it looks like it's not anymore.

Re: Is College Worth It?

#35

Post by larrys »

tokenadult wrote: post #8

From the article kindly submitted here: "The data comes from an analysis by Payscale, a salary data and software company for individuals and businesses." In other words, the data is correlational, and not based on random assignment to an experimental condition and control condition. So we have no idea what the causation is here. By my observation, the kind of young people who get into private engineering colleges are…

"because college has to be paid for with present dollars, but its claimed economic return comes in future dollars"

Please explain how someone who has school loans at low interest rates has to pay for college with present dollars as opposed to future dollars.

Re: "Ivy League" - Separately none of any of these analysis ever takes into account things that simply can't be measured. I can attest to the doors that open when you have attended an "Ivy" school because guess what enough people are impressed to provide a benefit. Perhaps someone can write that off as an "anecdote" but hate to say it I've seen it with others to many times, and, well even the mainstream media always points out when someone goes to a top college (or is a Kennedy for that matter). Of course you could also argue that people aren't impressed when someone is a Physician if you want but that also opens doors and gets better opportunity in many many cases.

Like a pretty girl (or tall handsome man) who gets more attention some things just can't be quantified with all the academic apparatus and analysis known to man. But irl if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck it's a duck usually is correct an overwhelming number of times.

Re: Is College Worth It?

#36

Post by diminoten »

krschultz wrote: post #33
diminoten wrote: post #29

Wait, 98k starting salary for Math/Computer Science is median ? In the US? What?!?! This does not mesh with my experiences or the experiences of my peers at all . If you want to include the financial industry, you're talking about the top 1% of salaries, if that. Are they so disparate that they drag the median up that much? Edit: Looking at the source data[0], they've separated "Computer Science" and "Mathematics" fr…

That's incorrect data. That's the median for all salaries in the field, not starting salaries.

Okay, so the article is wrong! Whew, that makes much more sense.

Re: Is College Worth It?

#37

Post by wmf »

Zimahl wrote: post #14

College is probably worth it but that's not what this graph is really showing. It really should be entitled 'Is Private College Worth It?' because it appears that the only significant cost:wage value is to 'Private Engineering' and even then arguments could be made that state engineering is good enough.

Do you realize that the axes have different scales? Even a state school returns ~$400K with a cost of only ~$75K. I'd like to see the returns converted into net present value, but it still looks like a win.

Re: Is College Worth It?

#38

Post by Domenic_S »

larrys wrote: post #35
tokenadult wrote: post #8

From the article kindly submitted here: "The data comes from an analysis by Payscale, a salary data and software company for individuals and businesses." In other words, the data is correlational, and not based on random assignment to an experimental condition and control condition. So we have no idea what the causation is here. By my observation, the kind of young people who get into private engineering colleges are…

"because college has to be paid for with present dollars, but its claimed economic return comes in future dollars" Please explain how someone who has school loans at low interest rates has to pay for college with present dollars as opposed to future dollars. Re: "Ivy League" - Separately none of any of these analysis ever takes into account things that simply can't be measured. I can attest to the doors that open whe…

> school loans at low interest rates

Direct Unsubsidized Loans are 6.8%.

http://www.direct.ed.gov/calc.html

Re: Is College Worth It?

#40

Post by [deleted] »

lkrubner wrote: post #2

I have a problem with this method: "Payscale draws on its information about alumni salaries. It calculates the expected earnings of a newly minted graduate over a 30 year career by summing the median incomes of alumni from his or her school who graduated between one and 30 years ago." Yes, I know that college was worth it 30 years ago, and even 15 years ago, and even 10 years ago. That is not the real question. The q…

[deleted]
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