Not a fan of this way of thinking about university, as though it's some power-up in the competition to make the most money. It's all very American. What about learning and being in an environment that inspires you?
Private colleges are a waste of money for white, middle class kids
31–40 of 92 posts
Re: Private colleges are a waste of money for white, middle class kids
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interesting. That's directly opposite what I've seen. My close high school friends nearly all went to Ivy League-quality schools: Yale, Penn, MIT, Caltech, etc. Some of us are happy. Most of us are succeeding. A few of us are excelling. (Personally, I'm struggling. I have this irrepressible notion that liberal arts are a waste of my time, no matter how hard I try to subscribe to the learning-for-learning's-sake theor…
You can't assess anything until college is over and you are actually in the real world. Good Grades does not mean you will succeed in real life. It mostly means you are good at following orders.
>It mostly means you are good at following orders.
Maybe if you went to a terrible school. In any decent school it means you were able to come up with a solution to a problem presented to you. This is especially true for upper-level classes where the majority of the grade is based on a personal project.
Re: Private colleges are a waste of money for white, middle class kids
#33Everyone talks about the great network-effect from going to a good school. As someone who went to one of these supposedly great "network-effect-ey" schools I say it's bullshit. As a thought experiment, think of your own college experience. Do you really keep in touch with that many people? Of the people you do keep in touch with, can any of them open opportunities for you that are at all relevant to your field? Peopl…
Door-opening is the biggest network effect, no? You climb the corporate ladder or close the deal [largely] based on your merit, but it's the network that gets you the job interview or investor pitch.
It's the friend who graduated two years ago at that consulting firm who puts in a good word for you after your interview; it's the final club grad council member who makes a few calls on your behalf; it's the other students in B school who are already successful venture capitalists and are actively looking for projects to fund.
I'll agree the branding is powerful. But, to be blunt, I'm skeptical that your lack of connections means that the network effect theory is bullshit.
I'd be curious to see the results of your thought experience on some other folks who went to "network-effect-ey" schools! I'm still mustering my way through higher education myself, but I feel like I've made some incredibly valuable connections.
Re: Private colleges are a waste of money for white, middle class kids
#34Everyone talks about the great network-effect from going to a good school. As someone who went to one of these supposedly great "network-effect-ey" schools I say it's bullshit. As a thought experiment, think of your own college experience. Do you really keep in touch with that many people? Of the people you do keep in touch with, can any of them open opportunities for you that are at all relevant to your field? Peopl…
I'm thinking on my own collect experience, and yes, the past few jobs I've had came because of friends I met in college, and I attended a public state university (back in the early 90s).
I got a job at IBM as a co-op during college. My third on-campus job was programming related due to a conversation I had with a masters student in Psychology (programming Myer-Briggs personality type tests plus some other more esoteric simulations); some other small programming jobs because of local companies posting on the bulletin board at college.
Once I got out of college, a friend and fellow school-mate hired me for the web-hosting company he started (which transformed three times). My current job is due to a another school-mate.
Re: Private colleges are a waste of money for white, middle class kids
#35Not a fan of this way of thinking about university, as though it's some power-up in the competition to make the most money. It's all very American. What about learning and being in an environment that inspires you?
Learning and being in an environment that inspires you is great, but has nothing to do with the vast majority of people's college experience. For most people, it's just a job credentialing service.
Re: Private colleges are a waste of money for white, middle class kids
#36I have a tough time with this article. I understand what it is trying to say. The costs are ridiculous. But what I see among my friends is that those who went to large public flagship schools got lost, and had a much tougher time. However, those who went to smaller private schools on scholarships built better connections with professors, and tended to do better long run.
Interesting. That's directly opposite what I've seen. My close high school friends nearly all went to Ivy League-quality schools: Yale, Penn, MIT, Caltech, etc. Some of us are happy. Most of us are succeeding. A few of us are excelling. (Personally, I'm struggling. I have this irrepressible notion that liberal arts are a waste of my time, no matter how hard I try to subscribe to the learning-for-learning's-sake theor…
> a "better life"--which is an inherently unquantifiable notion.
Spoken like a true liberal arts major.
A better life is pretty easily quantified. The part that gets you tied up in knots is deciding what "better" means. You stop a thousand people on the street, I guarantee you that a ridiculously overwhelming majority can give you an easily quantifiable answer to the question, "What is a better life?"
The answers won't be that hard to distill down to, "Enough hours spent doing these things." The numbers are there.
And no. College is not optimizing its graduates for a better life. College, since its inception, has assumed that you came in with one.
Re: Private colleges are a waste of money for white, middle class kids
#371) Network generation is weak, but still there. Does it justify 150k + 150k opportunity cost? The data says no.
2) Colleges are, however, great at identity generation. People who come from top tier schools feel and act like they are awesome. This dramatically helps when it comes to asking for a higher salary, better position, etc. I have met a number of people who didn't go to college, and a lot of them feel they need to prove that they are just as smart as college alums (which they are).
3) Colleges shouldn't be viewed as an economic investment. It is also an intellectual investment. It helps change your world view into something larger and more interesting. I benefited dramatically from reading Plato under the tutelage of Ancient Greek scholars.
4) Lastly, colleges are FUN. Colleges are filled with parties and friends. You have to include this in the costs.
Re: Private colleges are a waste of money for white, middle class kids
#38I'm about 20 years in on my career and can maybe provide a few observations:
- Outside of very few jobs, this article is absolutely correct. The few jobs that it really matters are ones where they won't even look at your resume unless is has "Harvard" under "Education" on the resume for no set of reasons that have anything to do with the quality of the education. I leave it as an exercise to the reader as to if they really want to work in those kinds of places -- note: the burn-out rate on those places is usually around 2 years, then you're out in the market with the plebs and a pretentious work history you'll have to explain away for the rest of your life.
- Very early in your career, maybe the first 2-3 years, if you went to a top-tier private school you might receive a slight pay or position stats buff over your state schooled peers. If you went to a private school that wasn't top-tier nobody will recognize it and it'll be a waste of your money. Rule of thumb, if the private school you fight your way to get into and pay out the nose to attend isn't immediately name recognizable, nobody will care in the slightest early in your career and it may as well have been the local commuter school later on.
- This stats buff goes away very fast and hard as your movement up the corporate ladder start to be based on factors other than the school you went to. After your initial 2-3 years, you'll be expected to have learned the job and be able to perform at the working level. I've observed that there is almost no correlation between the best performers and the school they went to. If anything there might be a slight bias towards those that went to impersonal state schools since they're used to not having their hand held. This is the hard lesson that places like Google are learning. One of the difficult things with being data driven is that when the data shows your state school grads do as well or better than your top-tier grads in the workplace, you have to pay attention. And the data has shown conclusively that it really doesn't matter.
- By 10 years in, employers look for degree level (M.S. over B.S.) and possible field (relevant like Computer Science vs. irrelevant like Anthropology) and completely don't care what school you went to in the slightest. Those that do, 10 years in on a career, are usually places you don't want to work long-term.
- By 20 years in, you could have gone to the worst cow-poke state school in the country and nobody will care even in the slightest and your peers at that level will have educations from an impossibly diverse collection of schools.
- Many of my peers who graduated from a top-tier/private school realize that they'll need to return for an M.A./M.S. or an M.B.A. at some point in their career to maintain upward momentum. Since they're working at the same time this inevitably means going to the local state school. A comment I've heard over and over again is that state schools often don't do as much hand holding and advising (degree counseling) as the privates and they often feel lost in the impersonal grind. Many of them drop out a year in because of this. If you end up here, don't drop out, it's not that hard, but state schools won't treat you like a special snowflake.
- However, you can go to the wrong school. The big commercial for profit schools, like University of Phoenix or similar, can be a slight drag on your early career post-school and make it harder to hit career maximums. Companies like to fill up the "Leadership" page on their web site with people who went to well credentialed schools: state and private doesn't make a difference, exploitive for-profit does.
- All of my peers with huge student debts went to private schools. 20 years in, I have peers still paying $200-500/mo to service their loans. That's a car payment. The people who are debt free, and get to take on expensive hobbies, travel a lot, etc. are the ones who went to an in-state State School.
- People agonize over what school they're going to go to for their undergraduate education, usually over very minor reputation differences. By 5 years into your career it won't matter even in the slightest.
- The only people I've ever met who introduce themselves as "I'm so and so and I went to " or say "When I was at " instead of "when I was in college" went to an Ivy. Most people stop saying this pretentious nonsense about 10-15 years in because they'll finally clue in on the social signal that it's not impressive to anybody.
- If you have money to burn, and you want to carry cachet more than 10 years into your work, go to a well known overseas school like Oxford. You'll get name recognition, tales of the foreign, etc. However, if you have to explain that "I went to basically the Harvard of " you won't get the same effect. Americans still think there's some secret sauce that well known top-European schools impart on a student.
- If you went to school because of the great sportsball team, nobody gives two flying fannies about it when they're hiring you. On the things that are important about you as a candidate, it's at or near the absolute bottom of the list.
- Your in-career social network will be far more meaningful for you than the one you get from school.
- Spending the extra money to go to an out-of-state state school is almost always a complete waste of money. Just go to your local state school and use the difference to pay off your loans in a couple years or buy a car or something. It makes absolutely zero difference to your employer and slight reputation differences in programs won't make that much difference once you're out in the working world.
Re: Private colleges are a waste of money for white, middle class kids
#39The more elite the school, the more elite the ppl you meet. The financial outcomes can be easily explained solely on the networking effects of meeting ppl from more powerful sectors of society. No one sends their kids to an Ivy league school to get "Super smart", its to hang around the "right group" for later influence and networking with the "right people".
Exactly look at how many of the British political elite know each other through Oxbridge let alone the memners of the buller (think skull and bones but with much more dinking and bad bahavior).
Re: Private colleges are a waste of money for white, middle class kids
#40Everyone talks about the great network-effect from going to a good school. As someone who went to one of these supposedly great "network-effect-ey" schools I say it's bullshit. As a thought experiment, think of your own college experience. Do you really keep in touch with that many people? Of the people you do keep in touch with, can any of them open opportunities for you that are at all relevant to your field? Peopl…
> Ivy league degrees are simply the best door-openers out of all the door openers you can get. Once you're in the door they're as useless as the other degrees are.
I present a counterpoint - I know someone who's a Stanford Law JD, and she's gotten quite a few doors opened (or opened wider) because of her degree. In fact, she wouldn't have made partner (smaller law firm) so fast without it.
Also many places like specific alumni because the founders or CxOs went there.
However, the skyrocketing cost of (private) higher education in general seems to reinforce your point - a 4-year degree simply isn't worth it for the Ivy-league if you factor in the price.