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ROI on a college degree depends what you study, not where

economist.com

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Re: ROI on a college degree depends what you study, not where

#91

Post by jackcosgrove »

bisRepetita wrote: post #67

This study, like pretty much all the ones I have read on such topic, seems to compare income people going to college vs people not going to college. And they attribute all the benefits and ROI to college. While often it just measures that people that are smarter and motivated (because they can and want to go to college) do better financially than the one less smart and less motivated. I wish I could find a study of s…

I predict that in the future college will become so expensive that students of all abilities will rely more on online certificates to measure their ability and training. Employers will more slowly accept these credentials. If enough smart people don't go to college, the signaling ability of college will be broken and then the higher education market will collapse or radically reform itself.

Re: ROI on a college degree depends what you study, not where

#92

Post by saint_fiasco »

bisRepetita wrote: post #67

This study, like pretty much all the ones I have read on such topic, seems to compare income people going to college vs people not going to college. And they attribute all the benefits and ROI to college. While often it just measures that people that are smarter and motivated (because they can and want to go to college) do better financially than the one less smart and less motivated. I wish I could find a study of s…

I think another way to study this would be to give free scholarships to half a group of random people and see if they earn more money than the other half of the random group.

Re: ROI on a college degree depends what you study, not where

#93

Post by existencebox »

rayiner wrote: post #29
emodendroket wrote: post #8

I find it disheartening that the only way it seems we can think about college anymore is a sort of vocational school where we train for careers.

I find that point of view to be a conceit. It's an emulation of the noble classes of yore, who learned things they didn't need to know as a way of signaling that they could afford to do so because they didn't need to work. Most people are no better off 10-years down the line for having learned about what native Americans used to live in Virginia or what covalent bonds are.

I could not disagree more thoroughly.

The fact that I've had the opportunity to learn about a broad range of domains in addition to my technical focus has allowed me to not only have a better understanding, appreciation, and direction in my interactions with the broader world, it lets me draw parallels between similar scenarios in distinct fields, learn from the experiences of others, see novel solutions to entirely distinct problems, and all in all have a more holistic view of Life.

I would not be the engineer I am today if I did not spend a portion of my time learning about "what native Americans lived in Virginia" (Would heavily recommend Ken Burns's "The West", speaking of similar topics, that man is a hero to the presentation of american history), and as such I'm a strong advocate for giving _everyone_ the opportunity to learn about things that may not have any direct benefit, not only because you don't know until you've tried (and benefits as I said can be very transitive) but also because learning in and of itself I see as very central to the human experience.

Re: ROI on a college degree depends what you study, not where

#94

Post by [deleted] »

rayiner wrote: post #29
emodendroket wrote: post #8

I find it disheartening that the only way it seems we can think about college anymore is a sort of vocational school where we train for careers.

I find that point of view to be a conceit. It's an emulation of the noble classes of yore, who learned things they didn't need to know as a way of signaling that they could afford to do so because they didn't need to work. Most people are no better off 10-years down the line for having learned about what native Americans used to live in Virginia or what covalent bonds are.

[deleted]

Re: ROI on a college degree depends what you study, not where

#95

Post by School-Cotton »

lintiness wrote: post #55
kdamken wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's way more "free" in Europe than the US though.

is it? how does one measure that? do they have some super secret method to running a university more cheaply than the us? is anything sacrificed in so doing? how do reputations stack up? these are complicated issues, and pretending one's free and the other's an outrageous ripoff is a ridiculous simplification.

OECD expenditures on tertiary education per student in 2011: http://imgur.com/5brGGWw [1]

The U.S. is an outlier.

[1] Source: http://www.oecd.org/edu/EAG2014-Indicator%20B1%20(eng).pdf

Re: ROI on a college degree depends what you study, not where

#96

Post by jerf »

traverseda wrote: post #71
jerf wrote: post #4

In addition to the obvious 0 line, it's worth taking the article's observation that S&P has returned 7.8% and mentally drawing a line there too. Also, for anyone in the position of deciding which to do, I'd add the observation that it is way easier to go to college and get a formal education in science, math, or engineering, and pursue an ongoing adhoc self-directed education in the arts and humanities in your remain…

As a self taught-programmer, I'd be interested in why HN thinks >it's on the short list of exceptions, not the rule. As an example, I've fiddled around with circuit design. I'm not good at it, but I can make some basic stuff. It feels a lot like fiddling around with linux early in my career, and I'm not seeing any obvious point where it suddenly becomes more difficult to learn the skill. It's just a bit harder to get…

"It's just a bit harder to get into, and a bit harder to get on-the-job training/mentorship."

Seems like you answered your own question.

Part of my point is that there really isn't a sharp dividing line between "college" and "self-education". If you're going to college and not also using it to do a lot of "self-education" you're really wasting your time, for instance. But programming seems to have a fairly solid track for moving from casual hobbyist to full-on professional that I don't witness in very many other disciplines.

Why not carefully pick which things you're going to use the "college" on, bearing in mind that there's also no magical "YOU SHALL STOP LEARNING NOW" barrier that gets thrown up on college graduation day?

Re: ROI on a college degree depends what you study, not where

#97

Post by morgante »

jerf wrote: post #4

In addition to the obvious 0 line, it's worth taking the article's observation that S&P has returned 7.8% and mentally drawing a line there too. Also, for anyone in the position of deciding which to do, I'd add the observation that it is way easier to go to college and get a formal education in science, math, or engineering, and pursue an ongoing adhoc self-directed education in the arts and humanities in your remain…

> it's worth taking the article's observation that S&P has returned 7.8% and mentally drawing a line there too.

Unfortunately people aren't generally in the habit of handing out low-interest loans to recent high school graduates with no assets so they can invest in the S&P.

I mean this seriously. One of the bigger advantages of college as an investment is that you can get favorable interest rates on purchasing it. Though perhaps this advantage is minimized by the relatively poor tax treatment of college returns (ordinary income vs. capital gains).

Re: ROI on a college degree depends what you study, not where

#98

Post by morgante »

kriro wrote: post #20
jerf wrote: post #4

In addition to the obvious 0 line, it's worth taking the article's observation that S&P has returned 7.8% and mentally drawing a line there too. Also, for anyone in the position of deciding which to do, I'd add the observation that it is way easier to go to college and get a formal education in science, math, or engineering, and pursue an ongoing adhoc self-directed education in the arts and humanities in your remain…

The 7.8% line is to be taken with a grain of salt though. If you decide to invest all the theoretical college money and work without said education you'll (hopefully) still earn >0$. It would have also helped if the article said what degree/how long it takes (BA, MA) and what the investment cost for the degree actually is (provide median or something). A typical BA takes 2 years and is in the ballpark of 50k$ on the…

> A typical BA takes 2 years

Do you mean 4 years? It's extremely rare for someone to get their Bachelor's in fewer than 4 years.

Re: ROI on a college degree depends what you study, not where

#99

Post by dboreham »

saint_fiasco wrote: post #92
bisRepetita wrote: post #67

This study, like pretty much all the ones I have read on such topic, seems to compare income people going to college vs people not going to college. And they attribute all the benefits and ROI to college. While often it just measures that people that are smarter and motivated (because they can and want to go to college) do better financially than the one less smart and less motivated. I wish I could find a study of s…

I think another way to study this would be to give free scholarships to half a group of random people and see if they earn more money than the other half of the random group.

We could call it....Scotland: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/f...

Disclosure: I am a beneficiary of Scotland's free university system, long ago.

Re: ROI on a college degree depends what you study, not where

#100

Post by jerf »

emodendroket wrote: post #45
jerf wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the thousands of majors, there are certainly exceptions on both sides. But I'm still comfortable with that assessment in general; "learning an entire language" is also one of the exceptions. I'd also point out that if for the sake of argument that was your primary goal at college, college is a very cost-ineffective choice. There's plenty of non-college ways of doing that, for way less money, since it's somethin…

I'd be very surprised if business people spend much time reading Japanese literature, learning anything other than pure modern business Japanese, or probably even learning to read and write the language.

Who cares what other people do? What are you going to do? Are you incapable of leveraging from an intro course in Japanese into anything you want? If so, why do you think you're going to do any better in a formal environment either? It's not like they crack open your head and pour pure distilled knowledge into it while you passively sit back and just take it in.

Also, I think people are fundamentally missing the comparitive here. My claim is not that learning humanities is "easy". Nothing worth doing is easy. My contention is that it is easier to learn math, engineering, and science in school and study humanities on your own that to learn humanities in school and then try to break into math, engineering, and science on your own.

And as I watch the conversation flow here, bear in mind I do mean "math, engineering, and science" here and not just "programming". Which is easier to do on your own, learn Japanese from scratch enough to get a relevant job, or learn biochemistry from scratch enough to get a relevant job? (Note we're also discussing "learning Japanese" as an extreme in the humanities but I consider "biochemistry" an average sort of what I'm talking about.) And part of my "easier" also encompasses the fact that life is a lot easier when you have a job and a paycheck. Someone who actually has leisure time due to not working two-and-a-half jobs and who is much more relaxed about paying off their loans will find it easier to spend their leisure time learning things.

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