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Is College Still Worth It? The New Calculus of Falling Returns [pdf]

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Re: Is College Still Worth It? The New Calculus of Falling Returns [pdf]

#321

Post by burfog »

philwelch wrote: post #146
burfog wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Medicine from 70 years ago can be superior to modern medicine. Which would you prefer if you couldn't breathe on your own, an iron lung or a tube jammed down your throat?

By what authority and rationale do you feel so strongly about intubation, I wonder? Could it be that the entire medical profession is wrong and you are right?

There are obvious reasons that have nothing to do with quality of care.

Iron lungs are physically large and heavy. They are expensive and difficult to move. Health insurance doesn't want to pay extra for your comfort.

With an iron lung you can talk and eat. There is minimal difficulty; simply time your sentences or swallows to match the action of the iron lung. There is also no danger of tubes damaging your vocal cords.

The choice of technology is obvious, depending on how much patient comfort is valued. It is clear that the modern system doesn't give a damn if patients are miserable.

Re: Is College Still Worth It? The New Calculus of Falling Returns [pdf]

#322

Post by rossdavidh »

dahart wrote: post #307
Akababa wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like you're talking past a lot of the other commenters in this thread. I'll try to frame it another way: Generating value is synonymous with growing the economy and being more productive. You can't inflate incomes without either increasing productivity or printing money. If degree holders command higher incomes without offering higher productivity, it comes at the expense of non-degree holders earning lower wa…

I totally agree that a big factor in income differences is due to cultural biases that favor degree holders. I don’t think degrees are economically zero value though, for example patents are primarily held by inventors with postgraduate degrees, and more businesses are started by degree holders. I’m not really sure how to answer your first part, I’m not trying to talk past anyone, but I feel like people are respondin…

So, if in the aggregate a higher percentage of people have degrees in recent decades (true), but the productivity growth per employee hasn't gone up (also true), then the economy as a whole hasn't benefited (economically, anyway) from having more people go to college.

The example of patents looks a lot more like "people with advanced degrees are more likely to be in jobs where filing for patents is encouraged by the employer" than it does like "people with advanced degrees invent more". To be honest, the fact that our current patent situation is so obviously a net negative might be skewing my judgement on this, but if you thought that bringing up patents was a way to make it sound convincing that college degrees enhance productivity, well it doesn't for me anyway. I even have a patent, or my employer got one from my work anyway, and I still think our patent system is value-destructive.

Re: Is College Still Worth It? The New Calculus of Falling Returns [pdf]

#323

Post by rossdavidh »

dahart wrote: post #278
rossdavidh wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't say anything about which is cause and which is effect, which is what is relevant for an increase in college education to make a more productive workforce. In fact, the labor productivity growth rate does not seem to have significantly changed at all, even as the percentage which is college educated has gone up a lot: https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=PDYGTH

Again, I wasn’t talking about productivity, that is orthogonal to my point. I was talking about the income taxes that the government extracts from the workforce, and the income taxes the government gets are higher on average from college grads. Productivity is subjective, and while it matters indirectly to whether the economy is growing, it has no direct bearing on whether the government recoups it’s investment in st…

Having done my master's degree in neural networks in the 90's, I reluctantly have to admit that they are not all that productive in the great majority of cases where they are used (although there are exceptions). The reality is that the vast majority of what AI or neural networks are used on, is buzzword bingo.

Re: Is College Still Worth It? The New Calculus of Falling Returns [pdf]

#324

Post by throwaway100773 »

thebean11 wrote: post #312
chrisseaton wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone said a plumbing business wouldn’t scale. He scaled a plumbing business. Obviously in scaling it, this multi-millionaire is not personally doing the plumbing anymore - you are right. I don’t see how that means he hasn’t scaled it though?

Exactly, none of the tech billionaires got where they are by coding or even designing software forever. I don't see a fundamental difference between that and managing a plumbing business.

The point I was trying to make was that the trades don’t scale like tech or banking do. It’s clear that this guy, who did manage to scale a trade, has a net worth of about 100mm after almost 40 years of scaling, whereas the most successful tech entrepreneurs have multiples of that in a quarter (or less) of a timeframe. This guy is an exception, but still sort of exemplifies what I’m trying to say. It’s worth noting that this guy may be the most successful plumber in the world (or at least on a short list of the most successful plumbers in the world). If we made a list of people in tech or finance, the people would be younger and richer by several orders of magnitude in some cases which is saying something when we’re talking about 100mm bucks.

My argument wasn’t that the trades don’t scale at all (this would be an asinine argument as I know contractors that do scale and this guy is clearly an exception to that argument), but rather that the trades don’t scale the same way tech or finance do.

Re: Is College Still Worth It? The New Calculus of Falling Returns [pdf]

#325

Post by dahart »

rossdavidh wrote: post #323
dahart wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, I wasn’t talking about productivity, that is orthogonal to my point. I was talking about the income taxes that the government extracts from the workforce, and the income taxes the government gets are higher on average from college grads. Productivity is subjective, and while it matters indirectly to whether the economy is growing, it has no direct bearing on whether the government recoups it’s investment in st…

Having done my master's degree in neural networks in the 90's, I reluctantly have to admit that they are not all that productive in the great majority of cases where they are used (although there are exceptions). The reality is that the vast majority of what AI or neural networks are used on, is buzzword bingo.

I agree with you there! But... the buzzword bingo is generating big business right now, even if it’s a fad or doesn’t work well or poorly applied.

Re: Is College Still Worth It? The New Calculus of Falling Returns [pdf]

#326

Post by redis_mlc »

barry-cotter wrote: post #133
jhoechtl wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you are portraing is your exploitation of your countries education system for your own benefit. The NZ tax payer invested in yours for your future ROI into NZ and you put this ROI in your sack.

The possibility of migrating to richer countries causes greater investment in education. https://appam.confex.com/appam/2018/webprogram/Paper27374.ht... > Using a new administrative dataset combining the universe of permanent migrant departures from the Philippines with the universe of institution-level post-secondary enrollment and graduation, we show that enrollment and graduation in nursing programs increased in r…

Uh, that's the Philippines.

Their economy runs on remittances, and the population is mostly under 18, so the government wants graduates to emigrate and send money home.

They even have the OFW department to monitor treatment of their emigrant workers, and provide a parallel immigration office.

Possibly the worst citation ever. :)

Re: Is College Still Worth It? The New Calculus of Falling Returns [pdf]

#327

Post by sansnomme »

losvedir wrote: post #214
barry-cotter wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zuckerberg and Gates would have been elite if they’d never worked a day in their lives. Lots of people who come from money do something that doesn’t pay that well, like working in acting or the arts. Others don’t, and work as executives or found their own businesses even though there’s no danger of running out of money.

> Zuckerberg and Gates would have been elite if they’d never worked a day in their lives. What do you mean by that? Zuckerberg and Gates are indisputably elite because they're two of the richest people in the world. But I wouldn't call them elite beforehand, and definitely not if they didn't work a day in their lives. Their parents' money seems to come from being a lawyer, a dentist, and a psychiatrist. That's not "e…

Gates' family was in banking, Zuckerberg attended Phillips Exeter. Neither were hardly "Middle Class".

Re: Is College Still Worth It? The New Calculus of Falling Returns [pdf]

#328

Post by macspoofing »

scarface74 wrote: post #263
macspoofing wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you really trying to say? That black and Hispanics families are disproportionally a higher risk of defaulting but should still get loans they cannot afford? Is that your argument? Loans are not grants nor gifts. You're not doing anyone a favour by giving them a loan they cannot afford to repay. There are other ways to subsidize education rather than distorting the lending market.

You are expected to pay student loans based on future income not based on whether your parents are affluent enough to pay them.

>You are expected to pay student loans based on future income

Sure. Let's go with that. Even under that assumption, there are multitudes of reasons why a bank would require cosigners, all coming down to you being a risk factor. For example, your grades may be low (risk of not graduating), you may be choosing an expensive art college with high tuition, or a degree wit no guarantee of reasonable income.

Again, loans are not gifts. You do not do anyone a favour by giving them a loan they cannot afford.

Re: Is College Still Worth It? The New Calculus of Falling Returns [pdf]

#329

Post by dahart »

rossdavidh wrote: post #322
dahart wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally agree that a big factor in income differences is due to cultural biases that favor degree holders. I don’t think degrees are economically zero value though, for example patents are primarily held by inventors with postgraduate degrees, and more businesses are started by degree holders. I’m not really sure how to answer your first part, I’m not trying to talk past anyone, but I feel like people are respondin…

So, if in the aggregate a higher percentage of people have degrees in recent decades (true), but the productivity growth per employee hasn't gone up (also true), then the economy as a whole hasn't benefited (economically, anyway) from having more people go to college. The example of patents looks a lot more like "people with advanced degrees are more likely to be in jobs where filing for patents is encouraged by the…

I feel like the point I’m trying to make is being repeatedly ignored in favor of the thing you want to talk about. I have not been arguing that college benefits the economy as a whole. It doesn’t take benefitting the economy as a whole for the government to make back it’s money on student loans, specifically because the government gets the first cut of the income, even before the student does. Is it clear at this point that the current income premium and the wealth premium are separate things, and that the wealth premium is the only one currently disappearing?

Maybe the government part is confusing here. Imagine student loans coming strictly from for-profit banks. It is possible for the banks to make their money back, while students lose money, right? This happens to restaurant owners and poor families all the time. It doesn’t matter if the loans stimulate the economy, or if a percentage of loans default, the bank still makes it’s money.

Anyway, I’ll play along with the other arguments, just for fun. So by what metric are you declaring that productivity is not growing per employee? The US per-capita GDP has been growing steadily. How do you back up your claim that productivity hasn’t gone up?

Even if it were true, I don’t think it’s clear or true that you can declare the economy as not having benefitted from education in the past. The paper we’re commenting on has data that shows a net positive economic value in the past, even though the wealth premium is disappearing. And BTW do you really believe that - that the education system has done zero economically? Is that what you’re implying?

People with advanced degrees do invent more, in part because people with advanced degrees are more likely to be in jobs where invention and patents are encouraged, yes. Also because people who are prone to inventing are more likely to choose to do a PhD. How does this demonstrate that people would be inventing more if they chose not to go to college? People can already choose not to go to college, and choose to invent, and by and large that is not happening - what’s really stopping all the non-degree holders from inventing right now? You’re saying it’s just jobs keeping inventors out? There’s no education requirement on submitting a patent, so if college does nothing, why aren’t high school graduates already the majority of applications?

Re: Is College Still Worth It? The New Calculus of Falling Returns [pdf]

#330

Post by anonymoushn »

seem_2211 wrote: post #316
anonymoushn wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For knowledge workers who could have begun a similar career without college, the cost of the degree should also include the money they would have made by working 4 additional years at the end of their career (probably one of the highest points?)

I've done the math on the opportunity cost of how much I would have made if I hadn't gone to university. It was about $120k over 4 years, and raised the opportunity cost to about $160k (I borrowed $60k, but some of that money was for living expenses, that would have been covered by working full time). I was earning about $16/$17 per hour at the time. It increased the jump I needed to make from $.50 per hour to $2 per…

Alright. I probably would have taken a similar job to the one I actually took 3 years earlier and followed a similar career path the whole time. That is, I wouldn't add 3 additional years of entry level IC work, I would add 3 additional years of senior IC work or better. Right now I'm working for half of prevailing wages for senior ICs in exchange for living in a civilized country, so half of prevailing wages * 3 years - taxes is around $400,000. If I ever move back to the US or get promoted it will be pretty easy to get to an opportunity cost of seven figures of post-tax money for 3 years of math degree.
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