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Is College Worth It?

priceonomics.com

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Re: Is College Worth It?

#71

Post by sanxiyn »

yetanotherphd wrote: post #47
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…

>In other words, the data is correlational, and not based on random assignment to an experimental condition and control condition. If you would like to see studies that use random or quasi-random selection into education, there is a huge literature in labor economics on this topic. For various reasons such literature would never make it onto HN. See a very brief summary here http://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/re/…

Now I am curious. Why would such literature never make it onto HN? (And eh... didn't you just make it onto HN?!)

Thank you for the link anyway.

Re: Is College Worth It?

#72

Post by xerophtye »

ppereira wrote: post #49
zeteo wrote: post #45

This kind of BS analyses are exactly the root of the current problems with the higher education system (insane tuition, CS majors who can't do fizbuzz etc.) - because they are self-fulfilling prophecies . For comparison, let's imagine that some evil marketing genius decides to examine the corresponding statistical impacts of wearing a business suit. "Our data indicate that people who wear a business suit to work earn…

There are many students who have a choice between a state school and a private school, or an Ivy League school and a top school near their home, or an engineering degree and an arts degree. I think a detailed study of career outcomes and cost of schooling is incredibly valuable. Your suit analogy is flawed. Students invest in a program and later earn money in their chosen career. In your suit example, the ignoramus a…

Well i think you misunderstood the analogy. let me try to explain a bit.

What he means to say is that a Suit is one thing most high earning people HAVE. But they are not necessarily earning high BECAUSE of the suit. "The suit doesn't make the man". But if hypothetically people were ingrained with the idea that it's the SUIT that sets your value! Then of course things would get out of hand like he said.

Now let's look at college. Most really talented and smart people go to college. And then later they excel in their careers. So what is really the COLLEGE due to which they were awesome? Or just like the suits, was it simply a matter of Highly talented people going to college? Now since all of us have been taught that it's the COLLEGE that makes who you are, the education industry in this weird state.

Re: Is College Worth It?

#73

Post by xerophtye »

nicholas73 wrote: post #34
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. Ev…

Interesting point. While college gives you a better chance of a regular salary, it pretty much disables you from taking advantage of BIG (albeit risky) opportunities and thus in a way limit your returns. But isn't that how all financial instruments work? You always have to sacrifice a portion of your potential returns to decrease risk.

(look up derivative market and hedging your position etc)

Re: Is College Worth It?

#74

Post by randomdata »

thejteam wrote: post #57
hawkharris wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm interested in your critique, but I don't see any research-based evidence in your comment that disproves the claims made in the article. Will you elaborate on your comment and provide links to show why the author's statistical analysis is flawed?

One flaw is the failure to control for intelligence. Or socioeconomic background. Or any number of other factors that influence lifetime earnings that also positively correlate with college attendance. If you were to only look at people who grow up in a very-middle class household (a very ill-defined term I admit) and who scored in the X to Y percentile (not sure what good numbers would be) on some measure of intelli…

Additionally, to observe the value of a college education, you have to compare it to education received without going to college, while excluding the people who choose to not go to college because they were not interested in furthering their education. The high school graduate that spends hours every evening scouring the internet, or the library, for educational purposes is not comparable the person of equal formal education who goes home to watch sitcom TV each night.

Re: Is College Worth It?

#76

Post by randomdata »

Zimahl wrote: post #11
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…

Yes, I know that college was worth it 30 years ago, and even 15 years ago. That is not the real question. The question is will this continue to be true in the future? I know this gets brought up all the time on here but HN is not a good indicator of college worth. One of the few (if not the only) disciplines where college might not be necessary is software and this board is primarily software. Even then looking at th…

> One of the few (if not the only) disciplines where college might not be necessary

I struggle to think of many professions that do require a degree. Doctor, lawyer, and engineer stand out as the obvious ones, but where there is no legal mandate, there is no requirement. 50% of high-level STEM jobs do not even require a degree[1].

[1] http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/reports/2013...

Re: Is College Worth It?

#77

Post by Zimahl »

randomdata wrote: post #76
Zimahl wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I know that college was worth it 30 years ago, and even 15 years ago. That is not the real question. The question is will this continue to be true in the future? I know this gets brought up all the time on here but HN is not a good indicator of college worth. One of the few (if not the only) disciplines where college might not be necessary is software and this board is primarily software. Even then looking at th…

> One of the few (if not the only) disciplines where college might not be necessary I struggle to think of many professions that do require a degree. Doctor, lawyer, and engineer stand out as the obvious ones, but where there is no legal mandate, there is no requirement. 50% of high-level STEM jobs do not even require a degree[1]. [1] http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/reports/2013...

One would be hard pressed to learn chemistry or physics without the resources of a university. I don't want a building designed by a self-taught architect or a bridge designed by a self-taught mechanical engineer. I don't want to fly in a plane designed by a self-taught aeronautical engineer.

While 50% of STEM jobs don't explicitly require a degree, it would be prohibitively difficult to get a career in those fields without one.

Re: Is College Worth It?

#78

Post by sanxiyn »

jseliger wrote: post #22

Here's the other problem with this method of asking, "Is college worth it?": as far as I know, Alex Mayyasi doesn't collect data on dropouts. Starting and finishing at a public school in four years is almost certainly worth it for most people. Starting and dropping out, especially when you're more than one semester in, is a disaster, and the dropout numbers for many schools are staggering. I was a grad student at the…

The article does discuss dropouts (although the word "dropout" is not used). Emphasis mine.

"A recent Washington Post article covers some of the studies - investigations of the increased earnings of those who attend college without graduating - that suggest a college education itself leads to increased earnings."

Re: Is College Worth It?

#79

Post by randomdata »

Zimahl wrote: post #77
randomdata wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One of the few (if not the only) disciplines where college might not be necessary I struggle to think of many professions that do require a degree. Doctor, lawyer, and engineer stand out as the obvious ones, but where there is no legal mandate, there is no requirement. 50% of high-level STEM jobs do not even require a degree[1]. [1] http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/reports/2013...

One would be hard pressed to learn chemistry or physics without the resources of a university. I don't want a building designed by a self-taught architect or a bridge designed by a self-taught mechanical engineer. I don't want to fly in a plane designed by a self-taught aeronautical engineer. While 50% of STEM jobs don't explicitly require a degree, it would be prohibitively difficult to get a career in those fields…

> it would be prohibitively difficult to get a career in those fields without one.

Is that assertion based on more than emotion? If 20% of all jobs require high-level STEM knowledge as stated in the paper, the degree attainment rate is 30%[1], and less than 20% of the degrees awarded in 2010 were STEM-based[2], the numbers do not appear to add up.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_U...

[2] http://www.economicmodeling.com/2012/01/11/humanities-or-ste...

Re: Is College Worth It?

#80

Post by Zimahl »

randomdata wrote: post #79
Zimahl wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One would be hard pressed to learn chemistry or physics without the resources of a university. I don't want a building designed by a self-taught architect or a bridge designed by a self-taught mechanical engineer. I don't want to fly in a plane designed by a self-taught aeronautical engineer. While 50% of STEM jobs don't explicitly require a degree, it would be prohibitively difficult to get a career in those fields…

> it would be prohibitively difficult to get a career in those fields without one. Is that assertion based on more than emotion? If 20% of all jobs require high-level STEM knowledge as stated in the paper, the degree attainment rate is 30%[1], and less than 20% of the degrees awarded in 2010 were STEM-based[2], the numbers do not appear to add up. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_U... [2…

Is that assertion based on more than emotion?

Emotion? It's based on honest assessment.

Please show me one architecture firm who will hire a self-taught architect or an aeronautical company that will hire a self-taught aeronautical engineer. Other careers are simply unable to attain without the resources of universities because you can't practice the craft to even begin to be proficient.

The offset in the percentages has a lot to do with IT. I do not consider much of what IT does to be STEM. It's skilled labor with respect to (T)echnology but a lot of it is no more skillful than a carpenter using math to cut a 2x4. Yet some articles put the carpenter as a STEM job[1]. I'm sorry, I just don't consider a mechanic or electrician as a STEM job in most situations.

[1] http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/06/10/study-half-of...

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