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College grad: "I wish I’d gone to prison instead"

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Re: College grad: "I wish I’d gone to prison instead"

#31
post #12

What a stupid article. What's with the sudden rash of "Don't Go to College" articles? It is a WELL proven fact that people with college degrees earn far more during their lifetimes than those without degrees. See the second page of this report for a great graph: http://www.census.gov/prod/2002pubs/p23-210.pdf

What that reports shows is that historically college has paid off, but even with adjustment for inflation the cost of college has increased by 2.5 times over the past 70 years ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/College_tuition has a great chart showing how that varies across institutions, in some schools the adjusted increase is much lower). Combined with the increased percentage of Americans attending college (from http…

My bachelors degree was paid for by the Florida lottery, and the school paid me an extra $8,000 just to choose them. The cost of college is relative to the effort you put in prior to applying.

I honestly enjoyed college, and the experience I gained by going through it was invaluable. I didn't party. I didn't drink. I went to class every day, worked at a small web development shop when I wasn't in class, and I took it all in. I graduated on time, and with the knowledge that it had all been well worth it. That was college for me.

College is what you make of it. If you go into it hating the establishment, you're going to drop out. The school I went to had a foundation exam for CS students after their first 2 years. Basically, it filters out those who knew the material (or were passionate enough to study and take it 3 times, yes that was me) and those who were just doing the degree for a piece of paper. It works.

Re: College grad: "I wish I’d gone to prison instead"

#32
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That isn't fair - there is selection bias. You have to compare people who were accepted to college and choose not to go to those who choose to go. Then, subtract the opportunity cost of the money the college goers paid (i.e., cost * expected ROI in some other endeavor) before comparing lifetime earnings. The studies I've seen to that for a lot of people (mediocre students, no-name school, etc) there is relatively lit…

The study is harder than that. You have to take a sampling of those accepted to college and force a percentage of them to skip out. The "educated people make more money, therefore get an education" arguments annoy me. There's rarely a mention that causation is presumed.

Ideally yes - but we can't (ethically) do that ;-)
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