[HN Gopher] Is college worth it? A return-on-investment analysis
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Is college worth it? A return-on-investment analysis
Author : paulpauper
Score : 128 points
Date : 2021-10-26 15:13 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (freopp.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (freopp.org)
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| The answer is in the subtitle, or summary, or whatever the first
| line is called: _Some degrees are worth millions, while others
| have no net financial value. The biggest factor is your major._
|
| I'm pretty sure everyone already knew that. I distinctly remember
| friends joking about how their major was worthless 20 years ago,
| and now see the same people complain about how they got suckered
| into taking a student loan they can never repay.
| xyzzy21 wrote:
| Some certainly know this. But easily NOT the majority. If they
| did know it, most people would stop getting worthless degrees
| or skip college!
|
| They are mostly lemmings told to run off the cliff and they
| gladly fulfill their personal financial doom!!
| cpitman wrote:
| Or people select those degrees for non-monetary reasons. I
| highly doubt anyone is getting a degree in religion for the
| earning potential. Similarly, there might be other non-
| monetary benefits, like social capital, for going into fields
| like art.
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| You're giving naive 17/18 year olds way too much of the
| benefit of the doubt. Your average education system doesn't
| wait until they're in the college prep high school to start
| drilling into them that going to college is their best
| option and that they need to start thinking about what they
| want to do for the rest of their lives even though they're
| not even legal adults. This shit happens so fucking fast
| that most kids don't even question it. You have your
| monthly meeting with your guidance councilor that barrages
| you with "so what major do you want to study? What schools
| have you looked at? Do you have a list of reach schools? Do
| you have your list of safety schools? Have you started any
| of this? Huh, huh, huh??????" and so you just go through
| the motions of it all and ultimately this is how we end up
| with only 1 in 4 kids actually finishing college.
| VHRanger wrote:
| I discuss it in this blog post:
| https://www.singlelunch.com/2021/09/20/inflation-is-not-cost...
|
| The ROI on college has been steadily going down since the 1970s.
| Colleges are in a position to extract the economic value they
| provide, so they increase price to keep a low ROI
| sarajevo wrote:
| The are pretty accurate for earnings for my school and major (if
| I compare it to my personal experiences)...
| papito wrote:
| The weight of your college experience degrades rapidly after your
| first job.
|
| What did I do? I went to a shitty city college, self-educated
| myself in coding, and then I got hired by the smallest
| bootstrapped startup I could find, so thrifty and broke that they
| only bought used equipment for everything.
|
| My asking salary was so low that even they had mercy, upping it
| by 1K a year. Yes, I was underpaid, but guess what - that is the
| price of actual education.
|
| Don't go into debt - get AN education, and low-ball yourself on
| the first job. That's where you learn and make connections, that
| is where you want to pay the "fee".
| xyzzy21 wrote:
| Sort of a rip-off of Aaron Clarey's books (written >10 years
| ago). It's specifically covered in his book "Worthless".
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Aaron-Clarey/e/B00J1ZC350%3Fref=dbs_a...
|
| https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006N0THIM/ref=dbs_a_def_r...
|
| His other books are also insightful though go against the grain
| of many who want to believe in fantasies, fairy tales and
| unicorns (but will inevitably be disappointed and too late).
| treeman79 wrote:
| My opinion. Private tutors are much cheaper then college.
|
| During covid we made use of them for elementary age kids since
| they were falling behind on every subject.
|
| The effectiveness was drastic. So much so that we stopped because
| they got so far ahead of the class.
|
| Figure at 20,000 a year will cover a lot of private lessons with
| experts in most fields.
|
| One wants to be a vet. So that will probably be more traditional.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| The point of college isn't to learn. It's to get a white collar
| job. To get a white collar job you need a network and a
| diploma, private tutor gives you neither.
| treeman79 wrote:
| You just made a good argument for eliminating college. Or at
| least any tax payer money for it.
| xyzzy21 wrote:
| The problem with this oft trotted out theory is that:
|
| * Extraverts don't need college to network - the skill is to
| innate they never need an expensive excuse
|
| * Introverts won't learn to network even if put into an ideal
| environment for doing it - most people who claim university
| didn't enable networking are usually introverts
|
| * This leaves people are in the middle of being extroverted
| or introverts who need just a nudge. That's less than 5% of
| the population - so the claim of "networking" is mostly only
| helping a tiny minority and doesn't benefit the majority.
|
| I'm one of those middle people in the last group and quite
| honestly I didn't even benefit - I wasn't "ready" for the
| opportunity. Once I had a job in my industry, that's when it
| "all made sense" and tapped into my extrovert side to
| enormous advantage.
|
| My current job primarily involves tapping into that post-
| university network for sales leads, collaboration partners,
| vendor opportunities, etc. I only recently got in touch with
| my university friends and most "weren't useful" to what I do
| today. One switched from EE to Gerontology. Another is still
| mentally in university (don't ask). Most aren't in fields I
| interact much with despite nominally being EE grads.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| It is much easier to network in college, no matter how
| extraverted you are. Career fairs commonly require you to
| be a student to attend, so I'm not sure how being an
| extravert accomplishes anything for the most common way for
| students to network.
|
| Anyway, the diploma is what's actually important. Most
| white collar jobs won't even look at you if you don't have
| one.
| slackfan wrote:
| I had a stable, white collar job approximately midway through
| college. Some of the best engineers I've worked with in my
| career don't have a degree. This wasn't that long ago either.
|
| The network reasoning for college is vastly overstated.
| handrous wrote:
| What... did that run per kid, roughly, if you don't mind my
| asking? Was this remote? Where did you find tutors? How much
| parental oversight is needed? How much time in management of
| tutors is required--are they consistently reliable, how much
| time looking for replacements when they change jobs or
| whatever, that kind of thing?
|
| We've gone with a private school because we've got a couple
| elementary-aged kids who are far enough ahead that public
| schools were plainly holding them back and we were already
| starting to get early signs of "gifted kid who isn't challenged
| then crashes and burns later" syndrome, but if tutors are at
| least as effective, and cheaper, that'd be awesome.
| treeman79 wrote:
| 50 an hour. We had a foreign language and english reading
| writing.
|
| Local tutor.
|
| Spent around 1000 a month between two kids at the most
| expensive month, depending on need. I handled math.
|
| Both severe ADHD. So class room setting is hard on them.
|
| Now that they are ahead and back in classroom they are doing
| fine.
| handrous wrote:
| Thanks for the information. $1,000/m for two kids in two
| subjects isn't as bad as I thought it'd be.
|
| > Both severe ADHD. So class room setting is hard on them.
|
| We've dealt with a bit of that. No fun for any of the
| parties involved.
|
| > Now that they are ahead and back in classroom they are
| doing fine.
|
| Awesome. Always such a relief when kid-stuff goes the right
| way. Then you can rest up for when you're thrown the _next_
| curve-ball :-)
| renewiltord wrote:
| Excellent stuff. It should be mandatory for universities to
| publish these stats.
| the_only_law wrote:
| I didn't go to college for a number of reasons some of which i
| stand by to this day and others are the result of being a
| arrogant teenager.
|
| I want to go back for a career change, I feel, at least from an
| education and career perspective I could get more from it than I
| would had I chose to go at 17/18, though I'd only get a fraction
| of the social benefits.
|
| The thing is, I still am incredibly on the fence about the ROI.
| The problem is that no matter what, at this age (still pretty
| young) going back to school will suck my two most valuable
| resources: time and money significantly. The bureaucracy
| surrounding higher education (US context) is basically unhackable
| in my experience and the way its set up, the longer I wait, the
| higher the time cost, but if I try to go back ASAP the monetary
| cost is too heavy.
|
| Going back would probably use up the rest of my "youth" (not that
| I'm doing much with it either way) and almost certainly lead to a
| lower lifetime earning amount (though by what degree is dependent
| on a number of things) which are both fine, if things work out
| ideally.
|
| If not, the ROI is ridiculously low.
| fallingknife wrote:
| This analysis is fatally flawed in that it assumes all of the
| difference in earnings is caused by the presence or absence of a
| degree.
| xyzzy21 wrote:
| Empirical evidence says you're wrong about that.
|
| And it's a very simple thing to prove: can you easily pay off
| the cost of your degree within 10 years or less? And is this
| generally true for most people with your degree? The answer is
| easily shown by thousands of news reports of liberal arts
| degree holders being stuck in debt into their 50s and losing
| ground.
|
| The exceptions (STEM degree primarily and people who come from
| enough money that ROI doesn't matter) prove the rule.
| Kranar wrote:
| First, even if that were true, it would not be a fatal flaw.
| Second the report makes no causal inference and even points out
| that such an inference is very difficult to make. Instead the
| study controls for a variety of factors such as family
| background, geographic location, demographics, health and age.
| sfink wrote:
| No it doesn't. Its "counterfactual" earnings are an attempt to
| estimate the earnings of the same cohort of people had they not
| gone to college. Which is impossible to do without random
| assignment, but they _are_ making a good-faith estimate.
| jacksnipe wrote:
| College dropouts are not guaranteed negative ROI. Likely,
| probably, but absolutely not guaranteed.
| motohagiography wrote:
| I like that they calculate net opportunity cost, as foregoing 4
| years of salary after the age of 30 can be equal or greater than
| the benefit of having the degree. Intuitively, it seems like the
| financial benefit of a degree appears to be proportional to the
| price of a house in an area where graduates of a given program
| live.
|
| This analysis seems mainly for US citizens, as the big value of a
| degree for people outside the US is the preference for graduates
| for immigration and expat job opportunities. Without a degree,
| you are competing mainly in your national vertical job market,
| whereas with one degree or more, you have a horizontal job market
| around the world. The opportunity for graduates in the job market
| is many orders of magnitude greater, and without a degree, your
| competition in your national market comes from the best in every
| other country, who are using their education as leverage to get
| into the US/CA/UK etc. Direct ROI is only a proxy for these other
| factors.
|
| Finishing a degree is the dominant strategy, and I'd say the
| conditions under which it might seem reasonable or strategic to
| not do one is if you already own a home in a city outright, own a
| successful business that generates the equivalent of a decade or
| more of earnings in passive income, or are succeeding at a fame-
| work business with lifetime level returns where the opportunity
| isn't there after the age of 25-30. Otherwise, even in these, and
| almost every other situation, you should go to school.
| roughly wrote:
| > Others, including art, music, religion, and psychology, often
| have a zero or even negative net financial value.
|
| One starts to suspect might be a societal problem at root.
| CincinnatiMan wrote:
| Can you expand? If the collection of people known as society
| doesn't value something, it makes sense that someone studying
| how do that thing does not end up being valued.
| roughly wrote:
| I agree it reflects society's apparently expressed values. On
| that list, per the article, are "art, music, philosophy,
| religion, and psychology." I'd argue a society that doesn't
| value those things is a poorer society than one that does.
| handrous wrote:
| Our particular market we've created not valuing something
| very highly, and _society_ not valuing something very highly,
| may have a lot of overlap, but it 's not perfect.
| animalgonzales wrote:
| cursed late stage capitalism. let's reduce everything in our
| lives down to ROI. this article feels like a symptom and not an
| answer for the problem of a required college education and it's
| astronomically stupid costs for working families.
|
| Other articles soon to come:
|
| * Are friends worth it? * Is family worth it? * Is doing anything
| besides making money worth it?
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| > But the financial returns to college vary widely depending on
| the institution a student attends and the subject he or she
| studies.
|
| Let's not forget grit. That is, a given individual's drive and
| willingness to persist, to move forward. _That_ is a key source
| of energy, and a critical chacter trait.
|
| Unfortunately, adversity is out of fashion, and coddling is in.
| Yes, of course. There's luck and other intangibles. But simply
| showing up isn't good enough.
|
| The point being: no one has a more significant impact on the ROI
| of your education than you do.
|
| https://angeladuckworth.com/grit-book/
| tyre wrote:
| Note that this is a narrow look based on salaries. Education
| levels correlate with a wide range of other things.
|
| For example, from the CDC:
|
| > Adults without a high school degree or equivalent had the
| highest self-reported obesity (38.8%), followed by adults with
| some college (34.1%) or high school graduates (34.0%), and then
| by college graduates (25.0%).
|
| 9 percentage points is a considerable difference. One in eleven
| people.
|
| Obesity is linked with a host of health conditions, both chronic
| and acute. These incur higher medical costs.
|
| Lower education levels also highly correlate with susceptibility
| to misinformation, watching more television, and lower self-
| reported life satisfaction.
|
| Comparing salaries isn't all that useful in measuring the impact
| of education.
| mcguire wrote:
| Here's a goodly list of other benefits:
| https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259912440_On_the_no...
| thebigman433 wrote:
| Yea I really wish articles like this would include other
| factors too. Having a college degree lowers your chances of
| getting a significant amount of health problems
| fallingknife wrote:
| correlation != causation
| randomdata wrote:
| Seems more likely that not being prone to significant health
| problems enables you to find greater success in school.
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| On the other hand, maybe people who can successfully graduate
| college are more conscientious, and are better able to maintain
| a healthy diet. Proper diet and exercise isn't rocket science,
| it's just hard to find the motivation to do it.
| mym1990 wrote:
| If people rely on motivation to have a proper diet and
| exercise, that sounds very painful. Motivation is a very
| fleeting feeling, something more sustained has to be in
| place. Instead I think it comes down to the habits that
| people have developed. Motivation does help in starting that
| ball rolling, but once you have developed a habit of doing
| something, it becomes a lot easier.
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| Motivation gets you started, discipline gets it done. Much
| the same with college. I was _not_ good with math, but I
| busted my ass studying at the 'math lab' in college, so
| much so that the TAs said they were going to start charging
| me rent :^). The sort of person who's motivated and
| disciplined enough to get a college education is probably
| the sort that can stick with a diet and not buy that
| delicious looking strawberry cheesecake at the bakery
| (ummph).
| mym1990 wrote:
| I don't know, I ate a ton of junk food in college due to
| stress eating while studying haha. But completely agree
| with your points!
| sfink wrote:
| It makes my flesh crawl to see college reduced purely to ROI, but
| at least they're honest that that's what they're doing.
|
| I just hope people at least consider all of the other "outputs"
| of going to college when reading something like this. The ROI
| analysis is good data, it answers an important question. But
| there are many, many other important questions worth answering.
| (And most of them aren't quantifiable, so it's not like you could
| do a study on them if you wanted to.)
|
| College can be an awful experience for some people even if they
| end up making good money. And it can be an excellent life
| experience for people who end up making dirt. I got lucky -- I
| had a great experience, I learned a lot of important non-academic
| things, I broke out of my shell, _and_ it 's pretty directly
| responsible for a large portion of my earnings. (And yes, the
| numbers for my university and major from the study match my
| current income and age quite well.)
|
| But now I have a kid in high school, and I'm facing all the
| questions about what futures to keep open and what ones to
| sacrifice in the service of others. College is much more
| expensive now. My family was dirt poor and so I had massive
| financial aid; any financial aid my kid gets will have to be
| merit-based. Degree inflation has sucked away a lot of the value
| of having a degree. I can afford to support a less secure (low-
| risk) path through life if I think it would be better for my kid
| as a human being. These are not easy questions to be facing.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| It also makes my flesh crawl knowing that American kids at the
| age of 18 take up massive debt, while they aren't even
| considered mature enough to drink legally by the same country.
|
| Large debt is a unique burden. One should not start their
| financial life with it. Much like skiing, running or doing
| calculus, one should do baby steps first before proceeding to
| make huge investments and committing oneself to a decade or
| more of indebtedness.
|
| Many ancient societies held a strong taboo against massive
| debts - for a reason. For people outside prison, it is the
| closest you can get to enslavement in a completely legal way.
| Fogest wrote:
| I was in high school about 6-8 years ago now and I can tell you
| that high schools constantly push going to University. It
| doesn't matter if you're going into a program like psychology
| with 800 other students or if you're going into STEM, they push
| you to just go to University "because employers want it". And
| parents often feel that same pressure and just want their kid
| to have a degree. I went to university for software
| engineering, but I minored in psychology. So many people in my
| minor seemed to be doing it for their parents and not as much
| for themselves. When they graduated they weren't really much
| further in life than before University. If anything a lot of
| them were further set back. Because their job prospects with
| such a degree are basically non-existent. The university will
| happily pump through tons of students in degrees that have
| almost zero demand. In a program like psych the only way to
| even find a job that needs you and would pay a bit more is if
| you get a masters or PhD.
|
| I know so many people who graduated programs like psych and
| they are barely making above minimum wage and didn't really get
| to utilize their degree. And not only that, but they often have
| a lot of debt.
|
| On the other hand, trades are in very high demand. Most trade
| programs here are just 1-2 years long and you'll exit them with
| a job secured almost right away and already be making fairly
| decent money. You'll be making more money than almost anyone
| with a Uni degree in a non-STEM field. But despite this, it was
| barely even presented as an option in high-school. We had
| Universities come and give talks about what it's like, and what
| kinds of programs they offered. Did we get the same about other
| education options? Nope.
|
| For some reason there is this view in society that you have to
| have a degree otherwise you won't be successful and that you're
| not smart. In fact media/entertainment often also pushes this
| same narrative which doesn't help things either.
|
| So many of those psych grads I talked about ended up going back
| to college (In Canada college is like a trades school or
| community college in America) to take additional programs on HR
| or admin related topics. They find their degree didn't get them
| anywhere and they end up having to go to another kind of
| education to make themselves hirable.
| jerf wrote:
| Increasingly I see the idea of thinking of college in any other
| terms as a deliberate meme designed to make people pay
| extremely high prices and put them in a debt trap, and that the
| sources of that meme like it that way.
|
| _Before_ college can be creating well-rounded citizenry or
| provide "excellent life experiences" or any of the other
| things people want of it, it must _first_ provide a good ROI.
| This is a necessary foundation. If it is not doing that, then
| all the other fancy things are merely digging the debt trap in
| deeper because you 're paying for all these things while
| failing to obtain a method of paying them back.
|
| As a culture, in decades past we were used to college generally
| being so cheap that providing a good ROI wasn't that big a
| deal. It's much easier to get a good ROI out of something
| cheap. So we focused on the higher layers and were able to
| neglect the fact that the higher layers were _always_ built on
| a foundation of the fact that college in general was a good
| ROI. Consequently we have come to misinterpret those higher
| level things as the purpose of college.
|
| But it is necessary that these aspirational benefits be setting
| on a good foundation of good ROI to not be abusive to the
| customer.
|
| It is not and must not be considered some sort of betrayal to
| be worried about ROI for college. It must simply be seen as an
| understanding of the fact that as the costs have changed, the
| way we must analyze college has also changed. It was always
| true, it's just now it has manifested in a larger way.
| burnafter184 wrote:
| Do you actually have anything to back that up? I'm not being
| antagonistic, but the impression I've gotten is that
| education was largely done for the sake of itself, like if
| you read Les Miserables the collegiate cast was largely poor
| - with the exception being those of high birth. Which I mean,
| take that for how you will, it is a fictional work. But then
| in Ancient China we see stuff like the Imperial Exam, which
| does sort of direct the education->wealth, but you still see
| the pattern of high birth being the ultimate determinant of
| success in most cases. Which to me says there is a paternal
| drive to have your kids educated, but for the sake of
| education itself, since ostensibly the family unit is already
| well established.
|
| But I'm actually really interested in reading a historical
| perspective of education, so if you've got some sources I'd
| appreciate your sharing them.
| jerf wrote:
| My point is philosophical, not historical.
|
| To put it another way, education for the sake of education
| is higher on the Maslow Hierarchy than being able to make a
| decent ROI on college. Self-actualization is great and all,
| but when you're telling people to pursue it at the expense
| of whether or not they're going to eat something it's not
| noble and honorable, it's tone-deaf at best and can be
| downright evil when huge propaganda machines are deployed
| to convince people to do it, because the people selling
| self-actualization benefit.
|
| Debt skews the understanding by moving the time that the
| payments come due around but they're still due. It doesn't
| change the fundamental calculation.
|
| "the collegiate cast was largely poor"
|
| But were they _going into massive, life-changing debt_?
| Poor people going to a generally cheap (by modern
| standards!) college is no big deal. But now we 're sending
| poor people to _expensive_ college, so they can self-
| actualize at the expense of a good chunk of the rest of
| their life. This isn 't noble.
| thebean11 wrote:
| Did college in those places / time periods put you into
| debt?
|
| But anyway, what's the point of looking that far back and
| cross-content, why don't we compare it to American
| universities just a few decades ago?
| barry-cotter wrote:
| > Did college in those places / time periods put you into
| debt?
|
| It was common for family lineages fo hundreds of people
| to support promising students to do the Imperial
| examinations and they didn't do it out of the goodness of
| their hearts. Equally people don't pay for their sons to
| study law for their intelectual development. Only the
| relatively wealthy could afford to send a son to college.
| Just being able to afford them not working for 3-5 years
| marks them as wealthy even if they fely poor in
| comparison with others of their social class.
| bakuninsbart wrote:
| > Before college can be creating well-rounded citizenry or
| provide "excellent life experiences" or any of the other
| things people want of it, it must first provide a good ROI.
| This is a necessary foundation. If it is not doing that, then
| all the other fancy things are merely digging the debt trap
| in deeper because you're paying for all these things while
| failing to obtain a method of paying them back.
|
| I don't disagree, the thing is that well-rounded citizenry is
| a necessary prerequisite for a democratic society. That
| means, as a society we need to make the ROI for an individual
| worth it by paying for it as a society _or_ offer meaningful
| alternatives.
|
| This is one of the things that capitalism is terrible at, and
| thus it must be supplemented through public spending.
| compiler-guy wrote:
| College wouldn't need to provide a good roi if it were much
| mess expensive. Just like, strictly speaking, going to a
| movie doesn't provide a good roi.
|
| It's one thing to take four years of your life deepening your
| thinking ability and stretching your mind without a good roi
| if you come out the other end without crushing debt and
| prospects for employment that can sustain you, even if those
| prospects have nothing to do with your college experience.
| This is what college was like until the last four decades or
| so.
|
| It's entirely another to come out the other side in crippling
| debt and no prospects for any kind of sustaining job.
| karamanolev wrote:
| If it provides the same value, but costs less, then by
| definition, the ROI is better. OTOH, if it puts you in
| crippling debt, but you have no prospects of a job to
| support that - the ROI becomes bad or even negative. So
| doesn't it capture all of that already?
|
| In some sense, twice the cost for twice the benefit might
| be worth it to those who can afford it, because the time-
| wise investment (4 years or so of your life) remain
| constant.
| compiler-guy wrote:
| No, it doesn't capture all of that already.
|
| A "better" ROI doesn't necessarily mean a _positive_ ROI.
|
| Getting negative 10% return on a $1,000 investment
| doesn't matter as much as getting a negative 10% return
| on a $100,000 investment.
| westurner wrote:
| Magnitude certainly is relevant to vector comparisons;
| but, if we define ROI as _nominal rate of return_ , gross
| returns are not relevant to a comparison by that metric.
|
| Return on Investment:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_on_investment
|
| From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_(mathematics_an
| d_physic... :
|
| > _A Euclidean vector is thus an equivalence class of
| directed segments with the same magnitude (e.g., the
| length of the line segment (A, B)) and same direction
| (e.g., the direction from A to B).[3] In physics,
| Euclidean vectors are used to represent physical
| quantities that have both magnitude and direction, but
| are not located at a specific place, in contrast to
| scalars, which have no direction.[4] For example,
| velocity, forces and acceleration are represented by
| vectors_
|
| Quantitatively and Qualitatively quantify the direct and
| external benefits of {college, other alternatives} with
| criteria in additional to real monetary ROI?
|
| From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_economics
|
| > _Welfare economics also provides the theoretical
| foundations for particular instruments of public
| economics, including cost-benefit analysis,_
| westurner wrote:
| From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18833730 :
|
| >> _Why would people make an investment with insufficient
| ROI (Return on Investment)?_
|
| > _Insufficient information._
|
| > _College Scorecard [1] is a database with a web
| interface for finding and comparing schools according to
| a number of objective criteria. CollegeScorecard launched
| in 2015. It lists "Average Annual Cost", "Graduation
| Rate", and "Salary After Attending" on the search results
| pages. When you review a detail page for an institution,
| there are many additional statistics; things like:
| "Typical Total Debt After Graduation" and "Typical
| Monthly Loan Payment"._
|
| > _The raw data behind CollegeScorecard can be downloaded
| from [2]. The "data_dictionary" tab of the "Data
| Dictionary" spreadsheet describes the data schema._
|
| > _[1]https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/_
|
| > _[2]https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/data/_
|
| > _Khan Academy > "College, careers, and more" [3] may be
| a helpful supplement for funding a full-time college
| admissions counselor in a secondary education
| institution_
|
| > _[3]https://www.khanacademy.org/college-careers-more_
| compiler-guy wrote:
| Except that the grandparent post that you responded to
| was all about the magnitude of the loss rather than just
| ROI. If the magnitude of the loss is manageable, then the
| ROI becomes less important for life decisions.
|
| So sure! If all we are looking at is ROI then you are
| right! By definition! As long as you restrict your
| refutation ("by that metric") in a way that ignores the
| additional metric I had been trying to add to the
| conversation. I was trying to point out that there are
| other metrics that matter.
| gshubert17 wrote:
| > Before college can be creating well-rounded citizenry or
| provide "excellent life experiences" or any of the other
| things people want of it, it must first provide a good ROI.
| This is a necessary foundation.
|
| I'd like to say _at the same time_, college can provide a
| good ROI and good citizens, life experiences, etc.
|
| But besides college, what are some other choices, programs,
| whatever that could provide some of college's added features?
| Public service (in the U.S., military, Americorps, Peace
| Corps)? What's available in other countries?
| bakuninsbart wrote:
| If there is one part of the german system I'd recommend
| other countries to (partially) emulate, it is the
| apprenticeship model. Germany has multiple ways a person
| can finish school; from Hauptschulabschluss (limited
| apprenticeships), over Realschulabschluss
| (apprenticeships), and Fachabitur (apprenticeships +
| applied studies in a field you specialised in) to Abitur
| (everything).
|
| The thing is that finishing an apprenticeship enables you
| to do an applied Bacelor in the field. After a Bachelors,
| you can continue on in academia if you like. And you can go
| back to school at 30 to finish your (Fach-)Abitur, if you
| failed it before. The state will even pay you to attend.
| There's very clear paths to jobs, but also a lot of ways to
| change your direction.
|
| Going back to apprenticeships, they are plentiful and often
| well-payed. For example, most of the Sys-admins I know did
| an apprenticeship, which consists of 3 years of school
| while working half-time at a company. This combination of
| school and work is the best of both worlds for experience,
| and it enables young people to get a career path without
| too much though.
| rmason wrote:
| ROI shouldn't be the only consideration. But a student should
| know it ahead of time.
|
| I was undecided whether to major in either electrical
| engineering or journalism. I had a passion for both, I was a
| amateur radio operator who built his own gear and was also
| editor of my high school newspaper.
|
| When a counselor at my university told me that I was four times
| more likely to get a job as a J grad in when I graduated vs an
| ee grad it made my decision for me. I mean after all he was the
| expert. Four years later however the exact reverse was true
| ;<).
| tshaddox wrote:
| I don't know. To some extent I do agree with you that the
| social experience of attending university can be very valuable
| in ways that aren't easy to measure. But part of the reason for
| that is that university is pretty much the only socially
| acceptable way for 18-22 year olds to move away from their
| parents for the first time and spend 4 years burning huge
| amounts of money hanging out with other 18-22 year olds. And I
| mostly agree with the article's claim that "Most students
| attend college in order to get a better job with a higher
| salary," or at least that's the _core_ reason why it 's
| generally socially acceptable to attend a university. What if
| there were other socially acceptable ways for 18-22 year olds
| to hang out with peers, and get exposure to various fields of
| study and potential career paths, that had significantly
| different ROI factors than traditional universities?
| mcguire wrote:
| The tragedy of the commons---the return on your (personal)
| investment, in monetary terms, is the easiest and obviously
| most (personally) important factor to consider.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > It makes my flesh crawl to see college reduced purely to ROI,
| but at least they're honest that that's what they're doing.
|
| Every choice a person makes has an implicit ROI calculation. It
| is good to make them explicit to make them accurate, to prevent
| from being disappointed due to erroneous calculations.
| Dudeman112 wrote:
| >from being disappointed due to erroneous calculations
|
| It's also good to be explicit about the bits not calculated
| in the ROI.
|
| Utility functions that only use monies as input is sooo 18th
| century.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The concept of ROI does not need to be restricted to money.
| Every time someone thinks "I will do this because it is
| worth it or worth my time", whether it be talking to a
| neighbor or performing labor in exchange for money, you are
| making the calculation.
| Dudeman112 wrote:
| That's... My point.
| beefman wrote:
| My flesh is crawling because ROI doesn't have units of dollars.
| tzs wrote:
| John Adams had it right in a letter he wrote from Paris, France
| in 1780 to his wife Abigail who was back in the US [1].
|
| > I could fill Volumes with Descriptions of Temples and
| Palaces, Paintings, Sculptures, Tapestry, Porcelaine, &c. &c.
| &c. -- if I could have time. But I could not do this without
| neglecting my duty. The Science of Government it is my Duty to
| study, more than all other Sciences: the Art of Legislation and
| Administration and Negotiation, ought to take Place, indeed to
| exclude in a manner all other Arts. I must study Politicks and
| War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and
| Philosophy. My sons ought to study Mathematicks and Philosophy,
| Geography, natural History, Naval Architecture, navigation,
| Commerce and Agriculture, in order to give their Children a
| right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture,
| Statuary, Tapestry and Porcelaine.
|
| We've just gotten a bit stuck at the middle step.
|
| [1]
| https://www.masshist.org/digitaladams/archive/doc?id=L178005...
| vmception wrote:
| sort of? Many people study the final steps, it just needs to
| be an objective decision, and somehow it just isn't for most
| of the US college attending population.
| MR4D wrote:
| >It makes my flesh crawl to see college reduced purely to
| ROI...
|
| Imagine knowing that one of the houses you are looking to buy
| will leave you worse off than the others. Would you find that
| information useful?
|
| Think of this as the same thing - some choices will leave you
| permanently worse off. I'd rather know that ahead of time so
| that I can either avoid them, or at a minimum, understand what
| I'm getting in to.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| > It makes my flesh crawl to see college reduced purely to ROI,
| but at least they're honest that that's what they're doing.
|
| When going to college means taking on tens of thousands of
| dollars in debt, it makes sense to start looking at ROI,
| especially when there's a certain group of people that will
| tell you "If you want to make a living wage, then you need to
| go to college and make something of yourself!", then will
| ostracize them for making bad financial decisions when they
| take on massive student loan debt to pay for the college.
|
| EDIT: To add a point of anecdata, when I finished my BS in CS
| in 2014, I came out with ~$45,000 in student loan debt. And
| this is on the LOWER end of debt, and I was only able to have
| it so low because I had already been living in the city my
| university was in. I still worked ~30 hours/week while going to
| school full time. If I had to stay in dorms or something, I
| probably would have had $100K+ in debt. It's absolutely
| ridiculous.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| > I got lucky -- I had a great experience, I learned a lot of
| important non-academic things, I broke out of my shell
|
| 11 years of schooling before college, extracurriculars, friends
| and family weren't enough for that? Huh, maybe something wrong
| is not only with colleges but with child upbringing as a whole
| if that's true for many people.
| showerst wrote:
| 18-22ish is a formative time for many people. If you were
| fully formed at age 18 with just exposure to the family any
| friends you grew up with that's great, but the new
| perspective and easing into freedom of college is valuable
| for many people.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| Is it valuable or just different? What's so magical about
| the numbers 18-22?
| showerst wrote:
| It's not the years (roughly speaking) -- move college to
| 16, or 20, the point still stands. For many people it's
| the first time they leave the only
| family/friend/schooling setting they've ever lived with.
|
| Some people certainly don't need that, but I think a
| soft-entry into the real world in a more limited
| environment is not to be dismissed outright. It was
| certainly helpful for me.
|
| No matter how good your family and secondary schooling is
| (and for many people, it is lousy!), I think that having
| only one environment and set of perspectives before
| you're assumed to be a solo capable adult is not ideal.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| What does this have to do with college? You can just move
| out.
| KittenInABox wrote:
| I can't speak for everyone but I want to say it was
| valuable for me to be separated from my family at that
| age and put in another semi-structured environment like
| college. My family was incredibly supportive, well-
| roundeded, upper-middle-class, and therefore I lived in a
| neighbourhood surrounded mostly by other families from my
| background. Being able to be separated from that
| environment and exposed to a diverse background of
| wealth/privilege was incredibly helpful to my capacity
| for empathy and willingness to be wrong. (I went to a
| state college in a primarily working class city.)
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| What does this have to do with college? You can just move
| out.
| BeetleB wrote:
| I'd agree with your sentiment if college was as cheap as it was
| 20+ years ago, but in many places it's become so expensive that
| it's almost mandatory to consider the cost in these decisions.
| david38 wrote:
| If you have to borrow for college, you should consider ROI.
| neutronicus wrote:
| The ROI analysis helps understand whether subsidized college
| enables social mobility.
|
| Subsidized college is politically convenient because you can
| sell it to corporate interests as reducing the cost of skilled
| labor, to labor as a way to move up social strata, and to
| lower-level elites as a way to facilitate booting incompetent
| or uncouth people out of their stratum (you can sum up the
| latter two clauses as "meritocracy").
|
| If people weren't forced to accept subsidized college as a
| _substitute_ for wealth redistribution (IMO this is largely the
| case) you might not see so much obsession with ROI.
| didip wrote:
| > It makes my flesh crawl to see college reduced purely to ROI,
| but at least they're honest that that's what they're doing.
|
| This comment is coming from the position of privilege. And I
| cannot possibly agree to it.
|
| Gone are the good old days of cheap/free college in the US. As
| parents, it is our responsibility to help our kids to avoid
| these "new" financial traps.
|
| These kids will be robbed from their own future if we let them
| be enslaved to large debts. Not to mention a lot of other
| complex issues such as jobs disappearing due to automation,
| greater wealth gap even between the middle class, etc.
|
| The kids are too young to understand these traps. We should
| help them.
| zdragnar wrote:
| The thing is, all of the other benefits you list are luxury
| items. There are myriad ways of improving yourself. Taking out
| massive loans to do so with everything we have access to now
| only makes sense if the loans have a lower interest rate than
| your investment returns, or if the end result is a degree that
| opens doors to a higher income bracket.
|
| There are other funding mechanisms possible, but after decades
| of free flowing money from government backed loans to students,
| university budgets are extremely inflated and should be
| substantially cut back if we expect someone else (I.e. taxes)
| to be paying the tuition.
| WkndTriathlete wrote:
| > decades of free flowing money from government backed loans
| to students
|
| This, along with the perception that any college degree is a
| golden ticket, is the root of the problem.
|
| The article mentions that 2/3rds of high-school graduates now
| attend college. That number is _double_ what it was 30 years
| ago, and I 'd argue that only a small fraction of that
| additional one-third _should_ be getting a college degree.
|
| My assumption is that a large percentage of the additional
| one-third is getting college degrees based in part or whole
| on free-flowing government-guaranteed financial aid, which is
| provided under the (mistaken) assumption that raising
| disadvantaged students up the income ladder can be solved by
| throwing money at them in order to get them any college
| degree.
| fiftyfifty wrote:
| The problem is colleges and universities have increased their
| prices so much over the last 20 years they're forcing people to
| make this kind of analysis on ROI. In the old days a young
| person could pay for a local university with a part time job
| and spend 4 years getting a major with a poor ROI just because
| it was interesting or so they can participate in campus life,
| but those days are gone. Now that a 4 year degree could result
| in a lifetime of debt people should do some careful analysis
| before making that kind of decision, and that's purely on these
| institutions of higher learning for pricing themselves out of
| the market.
| bjelkeman-again wrote:
| Here is where I realise how happy I am to live in a country
| with a pretty good educational system, which is free to any
| citizen who qualifies to enter.
|
| Commercial healthcare and education seem to really bring
| about the worst aspects of a market economy, in some
| countries. Not sure where it works well, it maybe somewhere.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > Commercial healthcare and education seem to really bring
| about the worst aspects of a market economy, in some
| countries. Not sure where it works well, it maybe
| somewhere.
|
| Mostly, IMO, because they're _not_ free markets. Healthcare
| actively fights price transparency, and is largely driven
| by fixed demand and artificially constrained supply.
| College costs can only do what they do because the whole
| thing is financed by grants and uniquely binding loans
| pushed on students who barely understand what they 're
| getting into. If we could force the whole thing into an
| actual free market, it'd vastly improve the situation.
| sharadov wrote:
| Don't go to college in the US. Go to college in other countries
| which are cheaper - Canada, certain European countries, Asia.
| The money goes a long way, and you get a multitude of rich and
| diverse cultural experiences. This might not work for everyone,
| but if the individual is independent, mature and extroverted,
| might be a great choice.
| otoburb wrote:
| >> _Go to college in other countries which are cheaper -
| Canada_
|
| Canadian universities are still eye-wateringly expensive if
| you're an international (i.e. non-Canadian) student according
| to tuition fee schedules from University of Toronto1,
| McGill2, Queens3, University of British Columbia4 and Western
| University5.
|
| 1 https://planningandbudget.utoronto.ca/wp-
| content/uploads/202...
|
| 2 https://www.mcgill.ca/undergraduate-
| admissions/finances/cost...
|
| 3 https://www.queensu.ca/registrar/sites/webpublish.queensu.c
| a...
|
| 4 https://students.ubc.ca/enrolment/finances/tuition-
| fees/unde...
|
| 5 https://www.registrar.uwo.ca/student_finances/fees_refunds/
| p...
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Francophone universities are significantly cheaper, but you
| have to speak French.
|
| As a Montrealer the thought of paying 53 000$ to study a
| year at McGill is insane to me. Especially since
| international students have to study one more year than
| those from Quebec!
|
| McGill being more expensive than other universities is a
| large part of why I chose not to study there, and that was
| only around 10 000$ extra over my whole degree.
| R0b0t1 wrote:
| It's not easy to get in to these places if you are from the
| US. Less than the top 10% of students would qualify with
| their diploma.
| trixie_ wrote:
| There are cheaper ways to learn 'non-academic things' and
| 'break out of your shell' than by paying 20k a year.
| ryan93 wrote:
| *60k
| standardUser wrote:
| In-state tuition is around $13k/year at UCs and $7k/year at
| CSUs, and that's before applying the _many_ grants available
| to lower and middle income families.
| barry-cotter wrote:
| Don't forget to include the cost in forgone wages. That's
| got to be at least $20k a year.
| nsv wrote:
| If something costs tens of thousands of dollars, it must be
| looked at in terms of ROI, or otherwise be reserved for the
| ultra-wealthy.
| winternett wrote:
| The effectiveness of a college experience really depends on the
| type of person that is attending it.
|
| College is indeed becoming overpriced.
|
| If the person is seeking a party experience, it's a bad idea if
| they don't have rich parents that will support them and pay off
| loans later on.
|
| If the person is a mature, informed, and energetic business go-
| getter, and they actually manage to start new ideas while they
| attend school, and then establish vital bonds with other go-
| getters they meet, they can potentially gain a lot from a college
| experience.
|
| Once you join the working world, the diversity of ideas and
| ability to meet ambitious people regularly wanes a bit. Also as
| one ages, the energy and enthusiasm for change also decreases to
| an extent. Carpe Diem.
|
| I also believe though, that some people can and have create(d)
| amazing and ambitious careers without a college education, or by
| dropping out early from the process. There are no rules...
| Kafkish wrote:
| > If the person is a mature, informed, and energetic business
| go-getter...
|
| But by the time most people get to college, they're still
| immature and not very well informed.
| grvdrm wrote:
| And I'll add that lots of people are still immature and not
| well informed after graduating and well into post college
| adulthood.
| mcguire wrote:
| " _I also believe though, that some people can and have
| create(d) amazing and ambitious careers without a college
| education, or by dropping out early from the process. There are
| no rules..._ "
|
| Absolutely true. Do you have any statistics on their rate of
| doing that?
|
| Survivor bias: If the only thing you look at is success,
| success looks pretty easy.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| Doesn't anyone go to uni. to learn stuff any more?
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >If the person is a mature, informed, and energetic business
| go-getter, and they actually manage to start new ideas while
| they attend school, and then establish vital bonds with other
| go-getters they meet, they can potentially gain a lot from a
| college experience.
|
| I could not disagree more. What this person gets out of college
| is nothing more than checking the "has 4yr degree" checkbox you
| need these days. College will do nothing for them other than
| check that box. Their own accomplishments will be what carries
| them through life.
| [deleted]
| bradj wrote:
| I partially disagree. Assuming you are majoring in something
| that has some positive ROI and do enough to actually graduate,
| which isn't hard at most colleges, the party experience can be
| very supportive of most people's future careers.
|
| The social skills, networks, and alumni connections you build
| at college are a large fraction of the benefit that college
| gives the average person to further their career.
|
| Otherwise, I agree. College is a great time to take advantage
| of the time you have to change your network, generate new ideas
| and take risks. And I also agree that most there can be benefit
| (though highly unlikely) for some people to not attend college
| or to drop out.
| Spivak wrote:
| I find it really funny how we talking about socialization
| like it's just for really young kids when we all have
| experience dealing with adults that never learned the skills.
|
| College is expensive socialization to be sure, so make sure
| to go for other reasons as well -- but if you aren't going to
| parties, making friends, and doing stupid shit then you're
| missing out on part of the real tangible value provided by
| colleges which is community. (And to be clear this is
| something totally separate from professional networking.)
| cogman10 wrote:
| > If the person is a mature, informed, and energetic business
| go-getter, and they actually manage to start new ideas while
| they attend school, and then establish vital bonds with other
| go-getters they meet, they can potentially gain a lot from a
| college experience.
|
| A lot of that depends on the college you go to. Doesn't matter
| how much a "go getter" you are if you don't make connections
| with someone that can ultimately fund/execute your ideas. Even
| if they themselves are "go getters".
|
| Further, hard to really judge if you are a "go getter" or a
| "So, it's like facebook, but for cats!" person.
|
| And here's the real rub, likely the person seeking the party
| experience with rich parents IS the person that can
| fund/execute ideas. They don't need to be go getters, they just
| have to have deep pockets.
|
| Of course, this is all talking about someone going to college
| primarily for entrepreneurial ideas.
|
| This is the real and true value of ivy league/prestigious
| schools. It isn't the quality of the knowledge, it's the old
| deep pockets that also go there.
| winternett wrote:
| I was pretty lucky that the Internet came about right when I
| was attending college. Prior to that, mostly Lawyers and
| Doctors were the only college grads regularly breaking past 6
| figures in jobs. I was also lucky to get through without 6
| figure debt, and at low interest rates on Federal loans.
|
| Private loans preyed on so many of my peers and other family
| members. Also schools quickly raised charges, while
| underpaying staff. It's really the influence of comerical
| industry that screws a lot of the benefeits of a college
| education up nowadays.
|
| The student needs to be a special type of person to get
| through it, solve all the problems that arise, work out how
| to maximize their potential, and then quickly get to work on
| their future.
|
| College is not only a learning process, it's also a huge
| personal test of character, dedication, and analytical skill.
| The GPA though really does not determine a person's full
| capacity though, and the classes are often not what teaches
| you the most important things.
|
| Many people from non-ivy-league schools also go far beyond
| many other ivy league students in terms of lifetime
| accomplishment -- usually because of the type of character
| they have and people they are (and sometimes because they
| cheat), but for certain jobs in this world, Ivy League is
| often an unwritten "pre-requisite".
| paulpauper wrote:
| It does seem overpriced but wages are pretty high these days
| for grads and there is considerable aid. The biggest cost is if
| you don't finish.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I assume the conclusions change considerably when you plug in
| non-American numbers?
|
| My degrees were about 1/8th the price of many U.S. peers', which
| made them more palatable given that my original career was
| looking at a lifetime ceiling of maybe $90k CAD.
| Avalaxy wrote:
| Of course. In other countries it's affordable and going to
| college becomes a no-brainer.
| mcguire wrote:
| Not really. Many of _those_ countries have lower proportion
| of college degrees than the US. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wik
| i/List_of_countries_by_tertiary_...)
|
| If cost isn't an issue, I wonder what prevents more from
| getting degrees?
| R0b0t1 wrote:
| But is it easy to get in? Most English speaking Europeans you
| can talk to (barring the UK, etc) are in the above average
| category for their country. A lot of people may only speak
| their mothertongue or another European language that is not
| English.
| hibikir wrote:
| You'd be surprised. Take Spain: College is very cheap, but in
| 2014, the median student that graduated was 27... and that
| was with a plain degree. This also didn't mean that most of
| their college degrees were on any topic that helped their job
| prospects. If you spend most of your 20s working hard on a
| course of study that doesn't lead to a career that pays much
| better than minimum wage, going to college sure isn't a no-
| brainer. This isn't purely a matter of motivation, but of the
| quality of their school, their interest in teaching, and
| setting sensible exams. My US college had plenty of Spanish
| engineering students which had gotten nowhere in their
| Spanish college, and were doing very well under the US
| system. Nothing like seeing engineers now at NASA that were
| unable to pass a single class in their first year in Madrid.
|
| Salaries can also be quite different across borders. Studying
| computer science in the US isn't cheap, but the jobs
| available right when you are done are not paying anywhere
| near the same as those of the Spanish developer. You see
| American companies opening software shops in the least
| developed parts of Europe, and a big part of it is that you
| might be getting up to 5 developers for the price of one. I
| emigrated because I knew that the Spanish college route was
| far more dubious than a pretty average US college, even
| paying for the whole thing.
|
| So a no-brainer? Hardly. And the life path that makes sense
| in 2010 might not make all that much sense in 2030. Just like
| someone that became a mining engineer, specializing in coal,
| had a very different career if he made his choice in the
| 1950s, vs doing the same in 2005.
| capableweb wrote:
| I don't think it's a no-brainer. You spend a lot of time in
| college, and it would be interesting to see how much
| information/learnings you could ingest on your own time,
| compared to what they would give you in college.
|
| Many people (but probably not everyone) would be better off
| not going to college at all, and start learning/working on
| their own, especially if they have specific interests instead
| of not knowing what they want to do.
| nelgaard wrote:
| Depends on how you calculate it.
|
| If had become say a plumber instead of going to university,
| had lived as cheap as a student with a plumber salary and
| invested the surplus 100 percent in the stock marked that
| would be a lot of money now many years later. I prefer not
| to calculate it.
| oneplane wrote:
| In college you are not 'given' information/learnings, you
| actually have to do the work and selection to 'get' that
| yourself. At least, that is how it works here (EU). If you
| don't pro-actively do this, you simply won't succeed (and
| from a ROI perspective that would be a bad one).
|
| The big difference between 'in' college and 'outside' or
| 'on your own' is context; the facilities, culture and
| exchange of ideas available to you in a college setting are
| very different from anything else. Especially when to take
| the sandbox element in to account.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| There are also many fields in which receiving "expert"
| feedback is a substantial part of the learning process.
| oneplane wrote:
| And on top of that there is the difference between
| studied subjects and experienced subjects. There is no
| golden 'do this, get everything' path. Going to college
| or university doesn't mean there is nothing you need to
| learn in a work context. Same goes the other way: only
| learning things at work means you probably get a lot less
| abstract underpinnings and overarching context (or you
| might get none at all) which reduces understanding of
| your surroundings significantly.
|
| The first iterations of school (in the first one or or
| two decades of life) are mostly "learning how to deal
| with people", "learning how to learn", "learning within a
| context" and after all that you get to "learn how to make
| use of what you have learned" in the real world. The
| earlier you stop, the fewer tools you'll have for the
| rest of your life.
|
| There would be two avenues that are somewhat distinctive:
| academia which blends school-type context into work-type
| context at some point, and there is vocational training
| which reduces school-type context earlier and eliminates
| it before you're even "out of school". Neither are 'bad'
| or 'good', just different paths.
| itronitron wrote:
| I agree. I feel like there should be a credentialing system
| where you can 'test into' knowledge for specific course
| loads and however the person (at their own pace) arrives at
| that knowledge is considered secondary to whether they pass
| the test.
|
| It's sensible to require one or two years of in-person
| study but requiring the whole 4 years seems like a
| potential waste of time due to the differences in maturity,
| social development, and focus among college aged students.
| TylerLives wrote:
| I went to a college in a developing country and I regret it.
| I didn't lose money, but I wasted a lot of time and didn't
| really learn much (or rather, I did learn things during
| college, but not because of it). The lectures were unbearably
| boring and I didn't socialize much. More than anything, I
| hate the fact that I was too much of a coward to drop out
| once I realized how miserable I was doing all the fake and
| pointless work that was assigned to me. I forgot to say, I
| studied computer science.
| graup wrote:
| Sometimes I wish these articles would include "in the US" in
| the title. "Is College in the US Worth It? A Return on
| Investment Analysis"
| guyzero wrote:
| Americans write articles for an American audience and don't
| ever acknowledge the existence of other countries.
| itronitron wrote:
| From an ROI perspective, college in the US is not worth it
| for all but a few degree programs. The university I graduated
| from in the early 90's (on scholarship) was at the time the
| most expensive college in the US but now most public schools
| cost more than that.
|
| Something not accounted for in these studies is financial aid
| in the form of grants, scholarships, and loans. That will
| radically change the ROI for individual students.
| compiler-guy wrote:
| The paper shows that the ROI for college in the US is
| positive for many, but not all, majors and schools. It's
| literally the entire point of the paper, complete with
| data, graphs and the rest.
|
| Not as positive as some might think, and there are a
| significant number of losers, but only "a few degree
| programs" being positive is not supported by the data.
| itronitron wrote:
| ROI may be positive for many programs but still only
| worth it for a few of them.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| If going to college gets you away from a bad home life, it's
| value is near infinite.
|
| It's never going to be a hard equation or a matter of spending x
| to make y.
| ativzzz wrote:
| Something the article doesn't take into is how the ROI would be
| exponentially increased by interest and investments. Not everyone
| invests, but for those who do, raw dollar values will translate
| to even greater earnings on interest, and typically jobs with
| high ROIs will provide benefits like 401k matching and better
| health insurance so the actual ROI is even higher.
| dyingkneepad wrote:
| I paid $0 for a Computer Science degree in a poor country. It was
| absolutely worth it. We used the very same books as the most
| prestigious US universities as a basis for our courses, we
| learned the exact same things, and now that I work with people
| who paid a ton of money for those degrees I don't feel
| disadvantaged at all. Cormen, Knuth, Hennesy & Patterson,
| Tanenbaum, Ulman, you name it.
|
| Sometimes I know a little about a topic but, but the University
| gave me the framework so that I can learn anything computer-
| science related with a much smaller effort compared to those
| without a degree.
|
| That said, I do recognize the name of the university on their CVs
| does draw more attention and may make them have an advantage
| during job hunting. Also, their powerful contacts acquired over
| there. But once we're in the same room, we're equal.
| musicale wrote:
| > The median bachelor's degree is worth $306,000 for students who
| graduate on time. But the median conceals enormous variation.
| Some fields of study, including engineering, computer science,
| nursing, and economics, can produce returns of $1 million or
| more. Others, including art, music, religion, and psychology,
| often have a zero or even negative net financial value.
|
| So:
|
| 1. Make sure you graduate 2. Be aware that certain majors have
| "zero or negative net financial value"
|
| But I wonder what happens if we apply the article's policy of
| optimizing for ROI? Do we eliminate art and music programs (and
| art and music schools?) Eliminate psychology as a major? Shut
| down film studies departments in the Ivy League (though
| philosophy is OK apparently?)
|
| Or should "low-value" majors only be permitted as double majors
| and minors?
| silexia wrote:
| Why are we still doing education the same way it was done in the
| 1880s? The best technology in the 1880s was books and classrooms
| led by a professor. Our universities today look identical to
| that.
|
| Now we can build a university online where every lesson is taught
| by the absolute best teacher in that one narrow area. Every new
| lesson you do, maybe 5 to 10 per day, would be taught by the very
| best teacher for that one particular topic. A different teacher
| from who taught the lesson could even prepare the quizzes for
| that topic.
|
| Alternatively, I have been working for the last 8 months on
| YouTube to give myself a university level education in the
| construction trades. I have watched hundreds of hours of
| educational content on dirt work, concrete pours, framing,
| drywall, roofing, mechanical, electrical, plumbing, tile work,
| and finish features. I have built a shed using basically
| residential framing, and I am working on a second one now.
| Following this I'm going to build a small residence with a large
| garage, then I'm going to build a large residence. I am just
| doing this for my own hobby basically, but anybody who wanted to
| become a home builder can now do so just with the content online.
| cletus wrote:
| I have an issue with this quote:
|
| > Individual financial returns to college are the paramount
| consideration for most students. Almost all students say access
| to a well-paying job is a primary reason for attending college.
|
| First, I don't think financial return is the near-universal case
| asserted here. People go to college for many reasons and some
| programs (as noted) have a terrible ROI. Why then would these
| programs continue to survive?
|
| Second, people have bought into this "follow your dream" meme and
| human ego is predisposed to thinking we're special and we'll be
| the exception so even with a terrible ROI, people don't think
| that'll be their fate. It's why people end up working as a
| barista after going $150,000 into debt to study theater arts at
| NYU.
|
| Third, 18 year olds who are making these decisions, like many
| people much older, simply don't understand financial
| consequences.
|
| I'm personally more interested in how much college ranking and/or
| debt affects ROI but I guess that's a separate question.
| ativzzz wrote:
| > Why then would these programs continue to survive?
|
| Because the government provides no questions asked loans to
| anyone willing to attend these programs, and many people don't
| do their research or simply don't even consider the
| implications.
| JoeJonathan wrote:
| Are friends worth it? A return-on-investment analysis.
| pahool wrote:
| Some background on FREOPP:
| https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Foundation_for_Researc...
| randomdata wrote:
| _> Naturally, among students who drop out, 100% of programs have
| negative ROI._
|
| This is interesting. It means that education, experience, and
| network gained in college has no economic value. Whatever ROI
| college may provide is found entirely in the recognition of
| completion.
| Kranar wrote:
| Yep, the education you can get for free. The networking you
| gain in college is likely to your detriment if you don't pass,
| you're basically known as the guy who flunked out.
|
| Any ROI from college is in the credential.
| [deleted]
| randomdata wrote:
| _> the education you can get for free._
|
| Perhaps I should have elongated my quote. The findings
| indicate that there is absolutely no economic gain to be
| found in education, no matter how much or little it costs.
|
| It is not a case of `Economic gain of $50,000 - Costs of
| $100,000 = -$50,000 ROI.` It is straight up suggesting that
| there is no economic gain at all. So even if you eliminate
| your costs in acquiring an education, your gain is still
| nothing.
|
| This is very much in contrast to what most people believe,
| who see economic value in having knowledge and skills. Most
| interesting to me is that it passes this state of education
| having no value off as "Naturally".
| smsm42 wrote:
| The problem I have with such research that it takes college
| degrees obtained decades ago and compares them against salaries
| that are happening now. In the best case, it makes inflation
| index adjustments, but it's useless. College prices raise much
| faster than inflation, and people that earn today's salaries went
| in college decades ago. So if college prices 20 years ago were
| worth it today, that doesn't mean college prices _today_ will be
| worth it in 20 years.
|
| Moreover, it suffers from one more problem - for certain classes
| (I'd call it "classes" for the lack of a better word) in the US,
| everybody would go into a college, because that's what people of
| this class do. There are exceptions, of course, but they are
| rare. Those are the same classes that end up working in
| professions that command higher salaries. Does that mean that
| going to college caused it? Maybe yes, or maybe if they spent the
| same time in the libraries, studied online or even went for a
| tour to Madagascar instead, the outcome would still be the same.
| We can't really tell by comparing them to people of a different
| class, that traditionally don't go to college and also
| traditionally occupy positions that command lower salaries. I'm
| not talking about positions which require many years of training,
| like medicine or law - there's, obviously, the question is moot,
| if you want to be a doctor, you have to go to a medical school,
| so there's no question of "worth it". But e.g. in software, I am
| not convinced college really has as much ROI as it is claimed,
| only because a lot of people go to college (because in their
| class, everybody goes to college) and later have high salaries.
|
| I personally think that my college education was well worth it -
| but I didn't pay over $100K for it, in fact, I didn't incur any
| debt at all that I haven't paid off within a year by working
| half-time, and later paid for my next degree entirely from my own
| earnings, with very short-time loan just to structure the
| payments in a more convenient way. If it were at today's costs,
| coming with a nearly-lifetime debt burden - I might have a
| completely different opinion on it.
| bluepoint wrote:
| There are some benefits that are hard to evaluate. For example a
| higher education that promotes critical thinking and allows one
| to have a good understanding of reality, can save you millions of
| dollars on snake oils of all kinds and useless drugs. I think
| considering only salary prospects is a bit shallow.
| ThrustVectoring wrote:
| An important thing to note is that college is often a positional
| good. A large part of the value of a college degree is that it
| gets you hired at the expense of people with a worse educational
| background. This is necessarily something that does not scale as
| total investment in higher education increases.
|
| In other words, this is very much the value _to the student_ ,
| not the value _to society_. The ROI values should be used for
| personal decision-making, and _not_ for funding of institutions
| and subsidies for college attendance.
| beefman wrote:
| Payscale has done similar analysis annually since 2013 at least.
| May be interesting to compare their results
|
| https://www.payscale.com/college-roi
| vr46 wrote:
| Does this take into account network and connection building?
| galenlynch wrote:
| Here's the page that describes the methodology:
| https://freopp.org/how-we-calculated-the-return-on-investmen...
| rory wrote:
| Yes, that should be implicit to the earnings numbers they are
| using for the ROI calculation.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I saw nothing like that in the article.
|
| Got me wondering what the ROI for dating was.
| enigma1 wrote:
| For men in the US at least, there is a book called "The Book
| of Numbers: Analyzing the ROI on the Pursuit of Women". It
| should make men at least consider how much time and money
| they put into dating.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| If your goal is to land a spouse with secure income, and/or a
| spouse from a family with secure income, I would say it is a
| very high ROI since your university friend network can be a
| valuable place to draw potential partners from for many years
| to come.
| dijit wrote:
| Since it's lifetime earnings: yes.
|
| Unless there is a non-financial investment which can't be
| converted to a financial one or one which people are not
| redeeming for some reason.
|
| Unless you mean that there are non-financial benefits to life.
| Like if you know your doctor and he checks you for free.
|
| That is not included. No.
| keynesyoudigit wrote:
| Colleges giving new graduates even 10% of this context would
| completely change the game. I went in with a ton of passion but
| absolutely 0 guidance, ended up 6 figures in debt with a degree I
| only kinda use today.
| noslenwerdna wrote:
| As colleges are run like businesses and most people expect some
| sort of financial benefit from attending them, we should see the
| ROI continue to decrease until it is close to neutral.
| unnamed76ri wrote:
| I spent a lot of years struggling financially because of not
| having bought a piece of paper from a university that signaled my
| worth as an employee. The most laughable was over a decade ago
| when small retail outlet wouldn't even consider me for an
| assistant manager position because I didn't have a 4 yr degree,
| even though I had years of retail management experience.
|
| In other news, I thankfully escaped that soul sucking career path
| awhile ago...
| unixhero wrote:
| Yes university is worth it, period.
| bumby wrote:
| > _Almost all students cite getting a better job as a primary
| reason for attending college._
|
| I think it's interesting how the intent of college has changed
| from one of creating a philosophy of life to that of essentially
| a vocational school that may or may not teach the actual skills
| necessary for a job. From what I can tell this shift goes back as
| far as the Morrill Land Grant of 1890 in the U.S.
|
| It's also interesting to me how much inertia the system has. When
| I talk to young students, many seem to go to college because
| "that's just what you do after high school" or pick a particular
| school simply because "everyone" has agreed that's a great school
| without being able to articulate why. Marry that to human
| resources who require degrees to filter applicants because that's
| the method "everyone uses" while not being able to articulate
| what relevant skills that particular degree confers to the job
| and you get a self-licking ice cream cone.
| IntFee588 wrote:
| It's not so much high schooler choice or HR's inability to
| properly assess candidates (although that is also a factor).
| It's the emotional and material "stock" put into degrees by
| degree holders that guarantees that this system will remain in
| place. Most people do not have the strength of character to
| extricate their personal identity and value from their level of
| education.
|
| Post-secondary credentialism is the new form of feudalism. This
| book is a little too woke for my tastes but there's a
| significant amount of scholarship on this concept of
| education's rise as the new "cool guy" power structure,
| replacing politics and the church.
|
| https://books.google.ca/books/about/Beyond_Education.html?id...
| bumby wrote:
| > _It 's not so much high schooler choice or HR's inability
| to properly assess candidates (although that is also a
| factor). It's the emotional and material "stock" put into
| degrees by degree holders that guarantees that this system
| will remain in place_
|
| I think this might be saying the same thing but you did it
| more clearly. I'm saying people can't objectively articulate
| why one choice is more valuable than the other largely
| because they are making emotional decisions and not rational,
| objective ones. Unless of course the rationale is "this is
| the way the game is played, regardless if it makes objective
| sense." The irony, as you point out, is that just entrenches
| a silly system
|
| Interesting book suggestion, I'll check it out.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| Well then it was more of a luxury for the gentry who didn't
| truly have to worry about money from the career itself in the
| same way. The classical university system wound up falling into
| aristocratic "disdain of the practical and worldly as base"
| flaw. Part of what drove the industrial revolution in the
| United Kingdom were the colleges of the heterodox, largely
| scottish which ended up providing the more practical but still
| sophisticated engineering schools. They lead to the "new money"
| captains of industry and middle class.
|
| The two types of schools blended along the way of course and in
| other contexts. Trade-college blending is a very slow process
| but happening some. Farming is the furthest alarm but arguably
| that was an "agronomy and automation coup" as the model changed
| and made farm work a niche job instead of the majority.
|
| The current system is related to more eglatarian mutation from
| hard class gatekeeping. Frankly that a lot of positions are
| flat out about justifying your actions to others as the
| practical skill component of the "philosophy of life". It is
| about getting what they measure for.
| treespace8 wrote:
| I think the only fix for this is to make it illegal for
| companies to list educational requirements in job postings.
|
| Search for any entry level job in an office environment, how
| many list a college degree as a requirement? Anywhere north of
| 80% sends a message (Get a college degree or work for minimum
| wage).
| bumby wrote:
| This is my (maybe unpopular) take. I'm not sure many HR
| people can adequately assess the skills for a position,
| particularly technical ones. So they use education
| credentials as a lazy proxy. I'm not sure outlawing education
| requirements fixes this and may just result in some other
| lazy proxy like nepotism.
| noslenwerdna wrote:
| It has changed! But it's changed because class mix of the
| people going to college has changed. Wealthy people used to
| make up a significant proportion of people going to college.
| People who didn't _need_ to work for money. Now it is more
| lower and middle class people, with different needs.
| bumby wrote:
| I think the real question is whether college fulfills those
| different needs and, if so, if it does it at a reasonable
| price.
|
| At many orgs I've worked at, I felt like there were a lot of
| people who could have done the same work from a two year
| apprenticeship. Even though many had engineering degrees, I
| don't think most brought an engineering mindset/education to
| the problems they faced on a daily basis, with the exception
| of some PIs
| lvl100 wrote:
| College would be worth it if it costs exactly ZERO. Otherwise
| it's a scam outside of maybe top 50-75 institutions across the
| world.
| paulpauper wrote:
| the wage premium holds even for lower-ranked institutions and
| for even for so-called 'worthless' degrees
| Aaronstotle wrote:
| It really depends on the college attended. I transferred to
| Berkeley and majored in Philosophy, with the intent of going to
| law school after.
|
| I was interested in tech stuff and got a campus job doing linux
| administration which led me to my current career.
|
| Even though I didn't enjoy the major _that_ much, attending a top
| ranked school was absolutely worth it for both the connections
| and opportunities. Transferring made it absolutely worth, would
| most likely not be the case if I had to take out lots of loans.
| mcguire wrote:
| The article doesn't seem to discuss post-grad education at all,
| including law school, med school, etc.
| sys_64738 wrote:
| What can I say? The Computing Science degree I took is absolutely
| the single biggest investment giving greatest RoI for me
| financially, for intellectually, and for longevity of working
| experience.
|
| But the costs are driven higher due to federal loans. If we stop
| Uncle Sam being an underwriter for college loans then the market
| will collapse, bringing prices down, IMO.
| GordonS wrote:
| It may have led to you getting a job, but putting aside that
| checkbox on your resume/CV, do you think it's worth it in a
| general sense?
|
| When I'm hiring for tech roles, I personally couldn't care a
| jot about whether or not the candidate has a degree. If someone
| already knows how to code, do DevOps or whatever, what would a
| degree really add, apart from making sure candidates had gone
| through the same debt-gathering process that I had?
|
| For background, I do have a Computing degree, but have often
| wondered what the real point was, and what the real point
| behind companies gatekeeping based on degrees is.
| fullshark wrote:
| Result aligns with my expecations today, but not my expectations
| in High School, which well...is why we have so many people in my
| age cohort (millennial) who think they got a raw deal.
| idrios wrote:
| Yup, this data is better suited for reflection than prediction.
| 20 years ago this study would have drawn some very different
| conclusions.
| throw63738 wrote:
| Did not just some colleges kicked out non vaccinated students?
| Even from remote classes, with no option to finish their studies.
|
| Seems like risky investment if they can change rules in middle of
| studies.
| fasteddie31003 wrote:
| College only has two economic benefits: human capital improvement
| and signaling of values. My personal experience is my rate of
| learning in college was much less than on the job experiences.
| College honestly made me learn how to learn because the lecture
| model that colleges use does not work well for me. My college
| benefit was 25% human capital improvement and 75% signaling of
| values. Also, it was a lot of fun.
| IntFee588 wrote:
| While these sorts of analyses are worthwhile, the primary reason
| they're necessary is because college has become such a raw deal
| and costs far too much, even for degrees with "good" ROI. I paid
| $40k to teach myself 80% of the material from Khan Academy and
| Youtube videos.
| crawsome wrote:
| College IS worth it. Just have rational plans for a career as you
| educate.
| myfavoritedog wrote:
| The US government should require schools to divulge this
| information and make sure that students/parents applying for
| government-backed student loans are keenly aware of and agree to
| the financial risks implied by the statistics.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| Agreed.
|
| I've always thought you should have to get career and financial
| counseling before taking out student loans. How many people get
| Psychology degrees and then can't find employment? Would fewer
| people take on 6-digit student loan debt if they knew they'd
| still end up working at Starbucks for a hair over minimum wage
| afterwards?
|
| If you want to go to college for the sole purpose of getting an
| education, then nobody should stop you. But you should at least
| be made aware of your future prospects vis-a-vis employment and
| debt.
| jostmey wrote:
| I don't see how this analysis identifies the causal factor. Do
| some college programs select students already on a trajectory to
| succeed? I would love to see an analysis comparing ACT/SAT scores
| and lifetime earnings for those that did and did not attend
| college. Still, I find the insights of this article important to
| the college debate
| analog31 wrote:
| Indeed, even at the college level, the universities in my state
| give each incoming freshman a math exam, and the results of
| that exam are for all intents and purposes a "sorting hat" for
| whether you can even get into particular majors. This is even
| before the first day of classes.
| grp000 wrote:
| I think that's basically every university. That being said,
| its just a way to test out of math reqs to hit minimums for
| starting certain major tracks. No reason someone couldn't
| take the math courses at university in a general ed. major
| and then transfer over.
| ghaff wrote:
| I don't have a large personal sample size, but 1.) I'm
| pretty sure giving a math test to incoming students isn't
| standard in the US. In any case, they generally already
| have SAT/ACT scores. 2.) Furthermore, in many (though not
| all) cases, once you're enrolled you can major in whatever
| you want.
| analog31 wrote:
| I'm only familiar with the University of Wisconsin
| system. They use the math test to slot you into levels
| ranging from calculus to a remedial math course. Don't
| know why they don't just use SAT/ACT.
|
| As for majors, there are limited admissions into some
| programs such as engineering and business, where you are
| not formally admitted until after your first year, and
| have to make a certain GPA. Not all majors had such
| requirements.
|
| Then there were some unique situations. Majoring in music
| performance required an audition, and the incoming
| students tended to be playing at a very high level.
| gianpresq wrote:
| I think it goes deeper than that, although you're making an
| incisive point.
|
| The value is sort of in how the degrees are used as well.
| Increasingly, they're being seen as licenses of sort, even
| though that might not be the intent of the program or even
| reflect the actual experiences of the person in college. That
| is, the ROI is due as much to the marketplace as it is the
| degree itself. If HR departments decide that understanding of
| DL/AI requires a degree in comp sci, even if someone did an
| honors thesis on that as a psychology major, demonstrating a
| new proof-of-concept DL model, it doesn't matter what sort of
| talent is being recruited. Is it the degree holder, the degree,
| the program, or the employer?
|
| I feel like college degrees have become this kind of signalling
| label, like much of the modern world, like clothing or
| something. That's not to discount the skills one obtains as
| part of a major, but it hurts the person who is going outside
| the box (in a good way). There's also something disingenuous
| then, about treating degrees as a resource to be obtained, when
| the value of that resource is entirely dependent on the way it
| is treated by others. That is, a hammer is more useful than a
| rotting stick, but if for whatever reasons there's rotting
| stick mania, the ROI will be greater for the latter. That
| doesn't mean the ROI analysis is wrong, but it might give a
| misleading impression about why.
|
| I admit I didn't read this in enough detail, but I had other
| questions as well. For instance, in other similar analyses I've
| read in other outlets, they've explicitly ignored people who
| have graduate degrees, as it muddies interpretation. But isn't
| that important? What about the person who gets an undergrad
| degree in psychology, but then pursues symbolic logic
| programming and DL models in their master's program in comp
| sci? Or who goes on to medical school? Some of these degrees,
| like philosophy, are notorious for being pre-professional
| degrees, and comparing a BA-only philosophy grad to a BA-
| philosophy + JD is a little odd, both because it's unfair, but
| also because the person who gets a BA in philosophy and then
| stops is maybe different from the person who gets that degree
| as part of a longer-term plan that includes law school.
| madrox wrote:
| You can't establish causation in an observational study like
| this one. You'd have to conduct an experiment to do that, and
| people don't usually want to leave their careers up to double-
| blind. There's still value in measuring the correlation.
|
| However, it accounts for things like dropout status, so I don't
| think your hypothesis fits the data.
| jostmey wrote:
| Sometimes it is possible to establish causation from only
| observational data, but in general, you are correct. Without
| the ability to conduct an experiment, the best we can do is
| use college acceptance criteria for screening candidates to
| compare populations that attend and do not attend. The best
| we can do is better than nothing
| madrox wrote:
| This is fair. I was familiar with methods of evaluating
| causality, but didn't think it applied here since it hadn't
| occurred to me to design the study that way. Yet another
| lesson in "just because I can't think of it doesn't mean it
| can't be done."
| _delirium wrote:
| I can't seem to find it, but there was a report from a few
| years back that compared an income prediction based solely
| on incoming student demographics (using a regression model
| on things like parental income and education levels) with
| graduates' actual income a few years out. It still doesn't
| prove causality, but if there's a big difference between
| the two in the positive direction, it at least suggests the
| university is providing some kind of actual value-add, vs
| just passing through students who were already from a high
| socioeconomic background.
| sfink wrote:
| I use this framing quite a bit ("The best we can do is
| better than nothing"), but I don't really like it. A better
| framing is that it's not _how much_ we can figure out, it
| 's _what_ we can we figure out.
|
| Observational data is great for explaining things after the
| fact. It must be handled very carefully when used for
| predicting things before they happen. But if you can
| identify the most likely confounds and eliminate them, you
| may still be able to answer a lot of useful questions to a
| fair degree of certainty.
| bumby wrote:
| You could design an experiment that looks at people who were
| accepted into a program correlated to higher wages but went
| to a different program instead. (E.g., accepted to an
| engineering school but went to a psychology program).
| WORMS_EAT_WORMS wrote:
| Or, what about factoring in long-term and steady stability as
| being "worth it"?
|
| There's definitely a bit of insurance and fallback with having
| higher education that isn't measurable simply by some ROI
| analysis.
|
| There are a lot of jobs you will never be able to apply to if
| things go south simply by not meeting the minimum requirements.
| I was considering a dirt-cheap online MBA once simply for this
| reason if my biz stuff died (did not pursue).
| bumby wrote:
| _Do some college programs select students already on a
| trajectory to succeed?_
|
| This is interesting and I know there was some studies
| performed, not on the program, but on the school. IIRC, the
| results were that it wasn't the school that contributed to
| success, but the person. Meaning, if you were accepted to a
| top-tier school but attended a lower-tier one, you had as much
| success as the people who attended the top-tier school. So, as
| you say, the schools were already selecting for those who were
| on a trajectory to succeed. There was a caveat that the school
| did provide more help if the person was from a low-
| socioeconomic background, and I've wondered if that is due to
| network effects.
| tzs wrote:
| > The best program anywhere in the United States is the computer
| science major at the California Institute of Technology
|
| That's interesting because in most rankings I've seen of US CS
| programs Caltech's comes in around 5-10 from the top.
|
| Which ones rank above Caltech depends on the particular
| organization doing the rankings, but schools that in at least
| some well known lists place above Caltech in CS include CMU, MIT,
| Stanford, Berkeley, Cornell, U of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,
| Georgia Tech, U of Washington, Princeton, UT Austin, Harvey Mudd,
| Harvard, UCLA.
|
| That _a_ CS program is the best investment monetarily is not
| surprising, but I would have expected it to one of the higher
| ranked programs from a school better known for CS.
| [deleted]
| selimthegrim wrote:
| You might want to ask Caltech CS majors about this, I wasn't
| one but I took a few CS classes when I was there and they
| definitely lacked an OS class, for example.
| mcguire wrote:
| Among other things, the state schools are cheaper.
|
| That said, Caltech _is_ a surprising choice.
| junar wrote:
| I wonder if the small sample size distorts the figures. Caltech
| has only ~220 undergrad students per year (across all majors).
| And it seems there are two similar majors split up into
| separate rows.
|
| 1; California Institute of Technology; Computer and Information
| Sciences, General; $4,409,147
|
| 22; California Institute of Technology; Computer Science;
| $2,812,200
| varjag wrote:
| Campus proximity to Bay Area.
| WkndTriathlete wrote:
| That was my guess, too. I would liked to have seen the ROI
| adjusted for cost-of-living, but I suspect that's a lot of
| work to get that data and integrate it into the analysis.
| tzs wrote:
| Is it really close enough to the Bay Area to make a
| difference? It's in the Los Angeles area. It's about a 7 hour
| drive from Caltech to San Francisco.
| varjag wrote:
| Fair point. And there's Stanford too..
| analog31 wrote:
| Does the study compare people with specific degrees, with the
| same demographic of people not getting degrees? For instance, a
| person who is capable of finishing an engineering degree and is
| inclined to do so, is already a "selected" person while still in
| high school, putting the term in quotes to avoid trying to define
| it precisely.
| CincinnatiMan wrote:
| Yes, from the article:
|
| " ROI must also consider counterfactual earnings, or what each
| student would have earned in a parallel universe where he or
| she did not attend college. Assessments of ROI often compare
| the earnings of college graduates to the earnings of the median
| high school graduate. However, this simple analysis is
| insufficient for an accurate estimate of ROI. People who choose
| to attend college are different from those who do not. The two
| groups have different earnings potential. The counterfactual
| earnings for a college graduate are likely to exceed the
| earnings of the median high school graduate.
|
| The same principle applies to different majors. Does an
| engineering graduate have high earnings because of his degree,
| or because engineering tends to attract people with scientific
| minds who would earn high wages no matter what? If so, an
| engineering major might have different counterfactual earnings
| than an English major. What about students who attend public
| colleges versus private colleges? Private college students
| often come from wealthier families. Are high earnings for
| private-college graduates due to the school, or due to family
| background?"
| devwastaken wrote:
| The costs are artificially inflated. There's plenty of jobs and
| offices that do not need to exist and do not benefit people.
| General classes are overwhelmingly a waste of time and are not
| demonstrated to educate. Accreditation is a scam that's
| incredibly outdated and ineffective at ensuring fair instruction.
| There's wide variety in instructors, some designed to fail
| students because they believe themselves far more important than
| they are.
|
| We need to strip unions, fire a lot of people, delete and re-
| impliment accreditation, and in the end it's probably better to
| turn the brick buildings into a shopping mall, it would have
| better economic effect.
|
| Like remote work in COVID, we can get it if the government forces
| actually do it.
| amznthrwaway wrote:
| If the free market starts rewarding people who use other forms
| of education, demand for those forms of education will
| increase.
|
| This isn't happening because those other forms are, for the
| most part, viewed as inferior.
| jimt1234 wrote:
| The "college experience" was worth it for me. I hung around a
| bunch of losers and do-nothings in high school. When I got to
| college (by way of California community college), it was amazing
| to associate with people who had ambition and an overall
| optimistic outlook on life. I had never associated with people
| like that before and never been in an environment like that
| before, and it helped me grow as a person like I never imagined
| possible.
|
| When people talk about the "college experience", I think they're
| often talking about partying, which I think is unfortunate,
| because for me the "college experience" was worth every penny.
| randcraw wrote:
| This article should be required reading for every student
| considering college. Most students choose majors as a path to
| career. Knowing that some majors are entirely unsuited to that
| end, or that for-profit schools are very inferior to not-for-
| profits, could save a lot of grief later.
|
| A mass student diaspora away from useless majors also might force
| universities to finally rethink their priorities, which at
| present serve most students poorly and at insane cost.
|
| I got a BS in zoology (followed by a MS in CS). Had I known the
| truly terrible prospects for a biology degree, I would
| _certainly_ have chosen a subject more interesting than
| memorizing the latin monnikers of minutiae, especially if I knew
| I could later rely on a MSCS to do the heavy lifting.
| mcguire wrote:
| Biology is one of those weird degrees, like many of the
| sciences. A BS in anthropology, for example, is completely
| worthless except as a step on the way to a PhD in anthropology
| (at which point you get to _do_ anthropology or archaeology, or
| whatever).
|
| Biology is also a very special case: _all_ of the bio majors I
| 've ever met were pre-med. (Except for that one guy who wanted
| to go into genetics research.)
| neogodless wrote:
| I like how it shows 100% of drop outs have a negative ROI.
|
| I guess dropping out before getting my computer science degree
| means I didn't get any benefit, or make any money writing
| software.
|
| (Guessing the assumption here is maybe that I'd still have gotten
| the same career with no college education at all, but I don't
| think that's accurate in my case.)
| treeman79 wrote:
| For a time around 2000s. The best programmers were drop outs.
|
| Heck I dropped out after 3 years because I ran out of useful
| classes.
|
| Later completed with the wife of a VP who had a masters at same
| university for a position. I got the job.
|
| I would like a degree, but it's just pointless for me at this
| point.
| [deleted]
| Tarucho wrote:
| I'm not in the US. Why has college got so expensive there lately?
|
| Could it be higher education is becoming a thing for the upper
| class?
| lukasb wrote:
| Heaven forbid someone should study something for any reason other
| than money. I'm pretty sure humanities majors realize they're not
| maximizing their expected salary.
| fullshark wrote:
| I can't believe you find the concept of this even offensive,
| kids are taking out crippling loans to go to college in order
| to better their social standing and be self-sufficient adults
| by and large. Ignoring the ROI on college is a luxury that the
| vast majority of college students can't ignore.
| hh3k0 wrote:
| > Heaven forbid someone should study something for any reason
| other than money.
|
| Yeah, I was grossed out when I read this. Glad I wasn't alone.
| anoonmoose wrote:
| people gotta eat
| compiler-guy wrote:
| The article expressly says that there are other benefits
| besides financial, for going to college and choosing a major,
| and that those reasons make sense and are valuable. But that
| students should make that choice with their eyes wide open.
|
| So this complaint is a bit of a straw man.
| hh3k0 wrote:
| > The article expressly says that there are other benefits
| besides financial [...]
|
| Yeah, one sentence or so in an entire article almost
| entirely about money.
|
| That's nothing but an alibi or some sort of decorative
| item, meant as distraction from the rest of the perversion.
| hajile wrote:
| If you enjoy it, buy the books/textbooks and save the rest of
| the money.
| didip wrote:
| If you look at how expensive education is in the US, as well as
| rapidly rising cost of living, this perspective is incredibly
| naive.
|
| Money cannot buy everything, but it can solves a lot of
| problems.
| smnrchrds wrote:
| This is addressed in the article. It says:
|
| > _Almost all students cite getting a better job as a primary
| reason for attending college._
|
| With a link to this study:
|
| https://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/heri-freshman-survey-2426...
|
| Which says:
|
| > _Students are increasingly placing a premium on the job-
| related benefits of going to college. The portion of incoming
| freshmen that cited "to be able to get a better job" as a very
| important reason for attending college reached an all-time high
| of 87.9 percent in 2012, an increase from 85.9 percent in 2011
| and considerably higher than the low of 67.8 percent in 1976._
| mcguire wrote:
| And yet the proportion going after a business or finance
| degree is less than 100%.
| hinkley wrote:
| > Almost all students cite getting a better job as a primary
| reason for attending college.
|
| You're asking a bunch of teenagers about their life plans, or
| a bunch of 20-somethings to talk about something they put
| more energy into than they've ever put into anything in their
| entire short lives. Every adult in the room should realize
| that it's 80% bullshit rationalization.
|
| What I've learned through many hobbies and non-academic
| classes across many disciplines is that there's a kernel of
| truth to the Kung Fu movie story arc. The instructor tells
| you what you need to hear right now, not the objective truth.
| Sometimes it's carrot, other times it's just keeping you from
| injury. You 'level up' every time the story changes, and you
| graduate when you see the training wheels and take them off.
| This 'rule' is just a guideline and you can break it in these
| situations.
|
| What kids need to hear is that a few more years of hard work
| now will get them an easier life later on. They hear 'career'
| but college gets most of us out of whatever little bubble our
| parents and neighborhoods put us in. You are not in a little
| pond anymore and it doesn't matter how big of a fish you
| thought you were. It softens the blow when you graduate and
| discover the ocean.
|
| If we didn't learn to build bridges in high school, we
| learned to build them in college. All of these things do help
| you in life, including your career, but typically it's
| indirectly. But you try telling a 16 year old who has just
| started looking at college pamphlets this and many just think
| it's more parental lecturing radio gaga.
|
| What they believe is the bait. And hopefully by the time they
| see it for what it is, it's no big deal because they've got
| other motivations instead.
| Loughla wrote:
| I feel like that's a chicken and egg issue, though. People
| who work in the humanities know they aren't going to make
| much, but they 100% will make _more_ than if they try to get
| a job in the humanities without college. Most require a
| bachelor degree, at a minimum, regardless of salary.
|
| So what's the solution there?
| munificent wrote:
| _> they 100% will make more than if they try to get a job
| in the humanities without college._
|
| This is true, but is only part of the equation. You also
| need to factor in:
|
| * The probability of them getting a humanities job.
|
| * The cost of college.
|
| If college is expensive and most humanities majors don't
| end up with humanities jobs, then your statement can be
| 100% but still a net loss for humanities majors in
| aggregate.
| Loughla wrote:
| That is a fair assessment, and I would really, _really_
| like to see accurate data around that question.
|
| Edit:
|
| As a side note - the first person to make a billion
| dollars from educational data will figure out how to
| gather accurate, unbiased data from all schools/colleges
| for accurate comparison data. Not even interpret the
| data, just gather it.
|
| Because right now, working in the belly of the higher ed
| beast for decades and decades, I can tell you that any
| data you see has been scrubbed and scrubbed and
| interpreted as to make it functionally useless to compare
| programs within institutions, let alone separate
| institutions.
| notsureaboutpg wrote:
| The vast vast majority of Americans cannot afford their college
| educations and take out loans that they cannot discharge even
| in bankruptcy.
|
| It's a very very very risky situation for most 18 year olds
| precisely due to the cost. If the cost wasn't so high, we
| wouldn't care about ROI of college degrees.
| dpierce9 wrote:
| Colleges often market themselves/degrees as salary levers. Even
| if you aren't trying to maximize your expected salary it is
| unexpected for programs to have negative ROIs. I also think the
| analysis is deliberately narrow in only discussing the
| financial aspects and not the many other benefits which are
| harder to measure. The headline is awful because it ignores
| these other things. I majored in humanities and consider my
| experience to have been remarkably valuable, but the fact that
| there were benefits along other dimensions doesn't invalidate
| analysis of one dimension (one that is commonly held up in
| marketing materials).
| nitwit005 wrote:
| Imagine a much higher price. Would it still be worth it if the
| degree cost 10 million USD? How about 50 million?
|
| At some point anyone is going to acknowledge that the price
| isn't worth it. The ROI matters to absolutely everyone, without
| exception.
| yboris wrote:
| It does seem possible to audit many college courses without
| paying. Perhaps that would be a cheaper avenue for someone
| pursuing the knowledge rather than the degree.
|
| After graduating I chose to audit 30 credits per semester for a
| year (for free, and while no longer being a student).
| koheripbal wrote:
| It's in the summary you didn't read...
|
| > Four in five engineering programs have ROI above $500,000,
| but the same is true for just 1% of psychology programs.
| kevinventullo wrote:
| Or pure math majors for that matter!
| AlexCoventry wrote:
| Given the financial burden it now poses, you'd have to be
| insane to attend college without picking a major which will
| help you to pay off your student loans. I don't know whether
| you know anyone with $80,000 in student loans and a
| $25,000/year income... It's not pretty.
| goda90 wrote:
| We're stuck on the market value of a major with no regard for
| the less tangible benefits to society a discipline may bring.
| Teaching someone X makes them better at producing business
| widget Y. But we can't put a monetary value on teaching someone
| Z to make them a better neighbor, a better voter, healthier,
| less polluting, etc.
| zepto wrote:
| College doesn't do those things.
| goda90 wrote:
| The people who teach those things in schools, or run
| programs to encourage them, or inspire them in art, etc
| tend to be those who pursue those majors with lower ROI.
| Study of history, philosophy, psychology, civics, and the
| like helps us pass on qualities that aren't needed to make
| business widgets.
| zepto wrote:
| Do they? Where is the evidence that people who study
| these things acquire qualities they didn't already have?
| mcguire wrote:
| https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2012/p0516_higher_educ
| ati...
|
| https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259912440_On_the
| _no...
|
| * Health and life expectancy.
|
| * Family life and marriage.
|
| * Fertility and infant mortality.
|
| * Intergenerational effects.
|
| * Time allocation patterns.
|
| * Asset management.
|
| * Consumption behavior.
|
| * Social cohesion.
|
| * Adoption of new technologies.
|
| * Crime reduction.
| zepto wrote:
| The links you posted have _absolutely nothing_ to do with
| the assertion that "Study of history, philosophy,
| psychology, civics, and the like helps us pass on
| qualities that aren 't needed to make business widgets."
|
| We need a term for the practice responding to requests
| for evidence by posting academic papers _which do not
| contain the evidence_.
| ativzzz wrote:
| Unfortunately in the U.S, it's not really an option if you want
| to have a high quality of life unless you have rich parents.
|
| I've noticed that the majority of maintainers of a couple of
| high profile Linux distros are all European; the opportunity
| cost of doing so in the U.S. is just too high.
| paulpauper wrote:
| Depends what part. some areas of Europe are very cheap,
| others very expensive.
| IdiocyInAction wrote:
| Well, there is also the fact that there are fewer really good
| tech jobs in Europe that would hire those maintainers. (I am
| European).
| bluGill wrote:
| I'm fine with that so long as you can afford your education. If
| your salary won't pay of the loans, then it is a bad investment
| and you shouldn't get a loan. That doesn't means you shouldn't
| study humanities, only that you shouldn't study until you have
| enough saving to afford it. Or you can take a couple courses in
| humanities (which you are required to anyway as generals) while
| majoring in something that will give you a good income.
|
| When you get a loan then financial concerns of is this a good
| investment should apply. If you don't have a loan - many people
| spend their money on all kinds off weird hobbies.
| Loughla wrote:
| The issue I have with this, is there isn't a good solution
| currently. If you can afford it means that it's only for the
| wealthy, closing doors for people based on their parents
| income. That's not right.
|
| But it also shouldn't cost so damned much.
| bluGill wrote:
| I agree it costs too much, and as a result we aren't
| getting all the advantages of education. That is a
| different issue though.
| scroot wrote:
| This kind of ROI analysis -- along with rankings, management
| theory, and other woes that have befuddled the aims of a
| college education -- has really had an interesting effect.
| Fewer graduates of 4 year colleges are proficiently literate.
| Our entire education system is sacrificing its baseline purpose
| (to preserve and inculcate literacy) for really poor concepts
| like "job prospects."
| muffinman26 wrote:
| What do you mean by "proficiently literate"?
|
| The only definition I've ever seen of literacy is the ability
| to read/write, with no requirement that the writing be
| particularly eloquent. I don't know of any college that would
| accept illiterate students (with the possible exception of
| the truly blind, who might have accommodations to use audio
| for all tests). It would therefore be impossible for a
| graduate of a 4 year college to be illiterate.
| JoeJonathan wrote:
| We should be addressing that FREOPP is a conservative think tank
| that's part of the State Policy Network.
|
| Articles like this are a part of a broader conservative attack on
| higher education. If conservatives had their way, elites would go
| to Ivies and study the greatness of Western Civilization, and the
| rest of the unwashed masses would go to coding bootcamps and
| vocational schools.
| cardosof wrote:
| I believe there are two kinds of colleges, the Rich Kids Daycare
| (RKD) and the Trade & Professional Formation (TPF).
|
| RKD doesn't always have a ROI, but it doesn't need to - people
| attending those are usually very rich. They just want to stay
| four years away from their families, attending a multitude of
| classes, play instruments, join clubs and create their network of
| similar minded rich kids. They can stay even longer than the
| required time, for extra activities or pursuing a masters. Then
| they'll move on and get good jobs due to the social value of
| their diploma and network, and start to learn their jobs by
| actually doing them. Maybe those jobs aren't that good and don't
| pay so much, but it's in their passion and they have old money to
| spend on their passions.
|
| TPF is for the not so privileged people, for the ones who have no
| energy to waste, need to learn useful stuff in the least amount
| of time. ROI is essential to those and if they could pay less,
| learn stuff on Coursera and get good jobs, they would.
|
| So when accounting for the ROI of a college tuition, one must
| first separate the institutions into those two buckets, for
| clearer results.
| animalgonzales wrote:
| > I believe there are two kinds of colleges, the Rich Kids
| Daycare (RKD) and the Trade & Professional Formation (TPF).
|
| jesus christ can we stop trying to redefine bourgeoisie and
| proletariat? what is with americans and hating karl marx and
| darwin
| sudosysgen wrote:
| It's pretty egregious. Every time there is a discussion on HN
| that involves wealth (wealth inequality, trends for different
| wealth levels, intergenerational wealth, wealth taxes,
| etc...), people end here up basically redefining bourgeoisie
| and proletariat three levels down into the comment thread,
| and getting it slightly wrong in different ways each time.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| This is an attractive narative but doesn't stand up to even
| initial scrutiny. Where does an engineering degree from a
| decent public school fit? What about a law degree from an ivy?
| Where do you place a teaching degree from a small private or
| religious university?
| mettamage wrote:
| IMO the ROI isn't worth it for CS students. I've taught coding
| bootcamps and I've studied bachelor + master CS.
|
| If all you want is ROI, then after high school go to a coding
| bootcamp, work at a small startup as a web developer and work for
| 3 to 4 years. That's income otherwise missed.
|
| If you happen to _then_ feel that you 're missing out or feel
| inferior, then college might be worth a little more as it will
| basically be a form of professional therapy. Keep your job on the
| side though, don't lose that income.
|
| Now that you're done with college, carry on.
|
| If you happen to go to college, US people should see if they can
| pay like 2000 euro's per year on tuition. This may mean they need
| to travel to Europe.
|
| I regret my college education, but I only know it now that I've
| been through 8 years of it (9 years worth in degrees). It's
| really tough to see upfront whether it's worth it or not, and it
| depends on personality type I guess a bit. I'm a really open
| person interested in science. That's what kept me there so long.
| But I'm also interested in earning an awesome income (e.g. $150K
| or something, not the $60K I do now). If you're in it for the
| money, go do your best to start a job in the field you want to
| make a lot of money at.
|
| A lot of my education was actually amazing! But when I applied to
| jobs people didn't seem to care, I kept failing job interviews
| and I was astounded because a few years ago it was super easy to
| get a job, even as a second year bachelor student.
|
| N = 1, I know. Take it for what it's worth.
|
| Though, _to be fair_ if I am now capable of treating my sleeping
| issues, then it has been worth it. Only time will tell.
|
| I may change my stance on this in 10 years time.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| From what I've heard, it's very difficult to get your foot in
| the door with only a coding bootcamp and that a lot of HR
| people filter for that CS degree.
|
| Personally, I've definitely seen an ROI on my CS degree. Would
| my ROI be better if I had gone to a lower-cost and shorter-time
| coding bootcamp? Maybe. Would my job prospects have been just
| as good? I'm doubting it.
|
| That said, I have not seen an actual articles studying the job
| rates and starting salaries of people with a CS degree versus a
| bootcamp. It's all been anecdotal from what I've seen on
| reddit, and certainly subject to confirmation bias.
| mcguire wrote:
| Wasn't there an article here on HN last week about Lambda
| School (?) students having problems? Something more than the
| usual inflation of hiring rates at the end of the program
| (https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/11/21131848/lambda-school-
| co...)?
| joshstrange wrote:
| For myself college was absolutely not worth it. What they taught
| me in comp sci classes was horribly outdated or not
| representative of the jobs available. I had fun in college and
| made some good friends but my professional life hasn't been
| impacted positively in any way by going to college. I looked up
| my college and my department in their table and I'm making above
| what they estimate for 45 years old (I'm 30) and I beat the
| estimates for 25 by a healthy margin.
|
| I dropped out my junior year after working for a full 40-hour
| week over spring break and realizing I was throwing away money to
| get a degree to.... get a job that I already had. Since then I've
| had absolutely no issues finding new jobs and moving up the pay
| scale. I'm not even sure if shorter (2 year) tech colleges are
| worth it if you want to go into software engineering, maybe some
| of the bootcamps are worth it but I'm not sure. I've learned more
| on the job that I ever learned in the classroom (as it relates to
| computer science) and if I had it to do again I think I would
| have paid a company to intern for a few months until my output
| exceeded any "drain" my lack of knowledge incurred. It would have
| been far cheaper, I wouldn't still be paying off college loans,
| and I'd have an extra 3 years of full time
| earnings/raises/bonuses/etc.
| guyzero wrote:
| Not knowing what post-secondary school you went to it's worth
| saying that not all universities and colleges are equal. Don't
| go to a bad school. Don't go to a mediocre school even.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| If all you need is an overpriced piece of paper to get your
| resume past the HR drones then there is little difference in
| outcome between a good school and a bad school.
| mcguire wrote:
| 55% of degrees from for-profit schools have a negative ROI,
| compared to 24% from public schools.
|
| Further,
|
| " _Attending a very elite school and choosing the right
| field often has a significant payoff. The best program
| anywhere in the United States is the computer science major
| at the California Institute of Technology. Graduates of
| this well-regarded program can expect an ROI of $4.41
| million over the course of their careers. Not far behind is
| the finance major at the University of Pennsylvania's
| famous Wharton School, where lifetime ROI is $4.35
| million._ "
| [deleted]
| guyzero wrote:
| Certain schools will get your resume past the "HR drones"
| when other schools will not, even within the same field of
| study.
|
| We can debate whether top schools actually teach any better
| or whether they're just skimming off top students out of
| high school, but there's a significant difference in groups
| outcomes between schools.
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| I had issues with my college curriculum as well, but the
| biggest thing college did for me was end discrimination.
|
| Without a degree, employers had to make a snapshot judgement
| call on whether or not I was good enough. They didn't see me.
| They saw my disability. After I got a degree, it was like some
| sort of checkbox had magically been checked, and the man who
| had fixed modem drivers in his teens was suddenly good enough
| to hire. I will also say that there are companies to this day
| that will not hire someone without a college degree, and I
| think it's stupid.
| joshstrange wrote:
| > I had issues with my college curriculum as well, but the
| biggest thing college did for me was end discrimination.
|
| This isn't what you are talking about but one thing college
| did that I haven't mentioned is expose me to different
| people, cultures, etc that I was not exposed to in the bubble
| I grew up in. That is something I do value and I think there
| are social aspects of college that are useful. I'll also say
| that as a white male in the US there are doors that were
| opened to me that were not open to everyone so I can
| absolutely believe that college might be necessary (if only
| for a stupid piece of paper) for some people because of a
| number of factors outside of their control. I hate that our
| system works that way.
|
| > I will also say that there are companies to this day that
| will not hire someone without a college degree, and I think
| it's stupid.
|
| 100% agree it's stupid but I just use it as another flag to
| not work at a company that is that short-sighted or stuck in
| the past (same way anti-remote-work companies are immediately
| written off for me).
| paulpauper wrote:
| as it's said in the commercials "results not typical"
| Melting_Harps wrote:
| > if I had it to do again I think I would have paid a company
| to intern for a few months until my output exceeded any "drain"
| my lack of knowledge incurred.
|
| As a biology major who later had to turn to tech (sadly quite
| common as it turns out), I can sincerely empathize with this.
| Unfortunately, in the health sciences you cannot do this, even
| taking a low level lab position requires some level of
| college/university credit because of the samples you are
| dealing with (blood, tissue) and the requirements imposed by
| Law to ensure they gate-keep even though errors occur
| regardless of degree level in labs, which is why you take such
| large samples to begin with.
|
| In my foray with tech I've made a career in fintech (co-founder
| then went to a Megacorp), after spending time in Supply Chain
| roles the auto Industry. In both of those fields you are
| encouraged to not follow the predecessor if you want to be
| successful and move up; it rewards you if can pull it off and
| bring something novel and add value to the Team/Operation. And
| that, more than anything I learned in University, stuck with me
| for reasons that I think you could understand.
|
| After COVID derailed my Life, as it did others, I asked myself
| what I wanted to do and I decided to enroll into a BSc program
| in AI and Machine Learning, with the aspiration of doing what
| you just mentioned--getting a role before graduating by
| leveraging my existing skills and the new skills I'd learn with
| the brand of a University to back it up.
|
| My entrepreneurial habits kicked in during the on-boarding
| process and I saw a need to create a payment processing system
| to pay for tuition as so many students (mainly international)
| at the University in question were forced to pay via a system
| which resulted in delays, missing deadlines and large fees to
| process if it were possible. Some students even had to resort
| to using Western Union to make the deadline!
|
| This was at the time that Twitter had launched its Bitcoin
| tipping feature via iOS on it's platform, so a proof of
| concept/MVP could have been spun in short order.
|
| Eventually the faculty sent out a memo condemning using any
| alternatives (they became aware of the conversations happeing
| in Slack chat) saying it would result in further delays (or
| inability to register at all) if they did, thus making it
| entirely moot to try and flesh anything out. It wouldn't be
| anything but a MVP, as being a middleman/clearing house doesn't
| serve any of my long term goals.
|
| But what it could have done is disrupt the model and force
| progress to be made where it would otherwise remain stagnant.
|
| With all that said, now that you're established in the Industry
| and you likely have Senior Dev status, how would you go about
| this: how could one pitch this in order to take you on for X
| sum of money and not have it fall on deaf ears?
|
| I mean, I'm guessing YOU would be open to this given what
| you've said but how would your project managers react to this?
| I've held developer and consultant status at the aforementioned
| Megacorp and I had way more friction for more insipid things.
| joshstrange wrote:
| > With all that said, now that you're established in the
| Industry and you likely have Senior Dev status, how would you
| go about this: how could one pitch this in order to take you
| on for X sum of money and not have it fall on deaf ears?
|
| This is something that I think about very often but I don't
| have a good answer to it. I started at $10/hr doing web dev
| work and in a short amount of time moved up to $15, $20, $25+
| before moving to a salaried position. My best advice to other
| people is to teach yourself "enough to be dangerous" (online
| tutorials, code camps, etc) using a tech stack/framework that
| a local company uses and then apply at an intern-level. Then
| try to either work your way up at that company and/or pivot
| to another company after a year or so. For me it was
| Wordpress and Drupal, I found a local web dev/marketing shop
| and did that kind of work for them for about 3 years, during
| which I learned Laravel and Angular for personal and
| professional projects, before moving on to a product-based
| company and getting into more complex problems to solve.
| Personally I learn best by being forced to do something, as
| in "Build a site that does X, Y, Z" where I don't know how to
| accomplish X, Y, Z. I enjoy learning on the fly (Maybe I
| should call it JIT learning?) and having a goal I'm aiming
| for. Most of my comp sci education felt like "let's pour all
| these concepts into your head and hopefully you will remember
| them and they will be useful in the future", that kind of
| learning doesn't work well for me, I need to see it applied.
|
| It's my goal to own my own company at some point and aside
| from figuring out a salary/pay structure that I'm comfortable
| with (something like ESOP) a big thing I'd want to do is
| offer an on-ramp for people who want to get into the
| industry. I've helped a friend go from an aborted CS
| education to working full time in the industry (I helped him
| learn enough Drupal to get hired at where I worked and then
| he took it from there) so I know it's possible and it's
| something I want to incorporate into a future company.
|
| EDIT: As for project managers not buying in, I feel your
| pain, the sad thing is that it's such short-term thinking.
| Unfortunately they often don't have the political pull or
| desire to roll the dice on an unknown candidate and it only
| worked for me in past because I knew the candidate well,
| taught him myself, and vouched for him. That's not really
| sustainable IMHO and there needs to be a better way.
| dj_mc_merlin wrote:
| Hehe, are you me? Dropped out in my 2nd year too. I went to
| university in Europe though, and have no loans to pay back.
|
| Being a student definitely helped me get my break though,
| mainly due to the tax status. I had been programming for a
| decade when I got my first job, but everyone's shit and a drain
| on resources for a couple months regardless. Accepting peanut
| pay (relatively) + tax benefits made getting that first job
| easy.
|
| The amount I learned in my first couple of months does not
| compare in any way to university. You cannot just go and get
| personal tutoring with a professor when you are having problems
| designing something. Meanwhile, it's the job of the senior
| engineers to be your babysitter at the start (bless the
| patience of the ones who taught me). And the few times you do
| get an audience, it's very short (as they have to see 50 other
| students), and much too vague. There's too little "you idiot,
| you do that and in 6 months you'll be sorry the DB is
| deadlocking". More "hm, do you not think you could turn this
| O(n*log(n) into O(log(n))", which, at the end of the day, I
| could probably care less for but not by much.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| > You cannot just go and get personal tutoring with a
| professor when you are having problems designing something.
|
| My experience in the US was that you could do exactly that.
| Except for the week before midterms and the week before
| finals, the professor's office hours were often empty. I
| could show up and have at least a 1/4, if not better, chance
| of getting one-on-one talks with someone skilled in their
| field about what they are working on. That was worth more
| than anything else I got out of college (except maybe the
| magic piece of paper that means more companies will interview
| me).
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| You shouldn't have been looking for specific technology
| training is the short answer. I'm not aware of any company that
| would allow you to pay for employment while you were a drain...
| sounds like you should have gone to a vocational institution
| like Devry.
| mcguire wrote:
| I still remember the letter that went around UT Austin's CS
| department when I was in grad school, from an undergraduate
| complaining that the department didn't teach i386 assembly.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Around the time of the dot-com bust, I had been interning at a
| network equipment company. They went under; those without
| college degrees to _much_ longer to get new jobs, even one
| person I know who had over a decade of experience in the
| workforce.
|
| That piece of paper can be worth a significant chunk of change,
| particularly since the gap on the resume caused by fewer
| companies hiring non-college grads can cause companies to low-
| ball their offers to you.
|
| Maybe the job market is different now, but, even if it is,
| maybe it will be that way again in 5-10 years. Predictions are
| hard and all.
|
| Also, CS degrees are varied. Very little of what I learned was
| outdated given that most of what I learned was discrete math.
| The more practically focused classes were OS and networking and
| I've used both of those on the job.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| > What they taught me in comp sci classes was horribly outdated
| or not representative of the jobs available.
|
| That hints of an underdiscussed pitfall when choosing colleges
| in "practical" fields like engineering and apparently nursing -
| the theory:practice orientation of their curriculum.
|
| A theory oriented one tends to give you a backing which not
| eternal or life long, shift far slower. We may not use linked
| lists as much as hash maps but the same complexity analysis
| applies. If you are savvy enough you can pick up the specifics
| as needed backed by theory.
|
| The disadvantage of a too heavily theory oriented one is
| bootstrapping to the workplace is more difficult and it may
| fail to establish proper habits like say how to properly write
| commits for version control.
|
| A more practice oriented one which is proper for the current is
| more relevant and avoids the starting pitfalls but leaves the
| alumni less equiped with theory to deal with shifts. An
| outdated practical oriented curriculum is the worst of both
| worlds really.
| ptudan wrote:
| Do you think you would have had a harder time getting that
| college SWE job if you weren't an active CS student?
| joshstrange wrote:
| I don't think so. My first job hired me because I had done
| some java programing in high school and they needed updates
| to an existing java tool. I did that work and they offered me
| PHP work (which I had taught myself in high school, I even
| wrote a few programs for the school) and I've been doing a
| mix of web dev (front and back) and mobile work ever since.
| In college they only taught C and Perl and I've never used
| either since then. I asked the owner of the second company I
| worked for (the place I was working when I dropped out) if
| getting a degree would change anything and he told me he paid
| me based on what I could do, not some piece of paper. That
| discussion, plus a full-time week of work that I enjoyed, and
| my dislike of my college classes pushed me to drop out.
| wyldfire wrote:
| > What they taught me in comp sci classes was horribly outdated
| or not representative of the jobs available.
|
| Lessons about automata and computability aren't exactly
| 'outdated' but their application to typical software work seems
| very indirect/abstract. In any case, that was my experience
| from a CS degree ~20 years ago, probably similar now if the
| curriculum is similar.
|
| Dijkstra: "Computer Science is no more about computers than
| astronomy is about telescopes."
| joshstrange wrote:
| > Lessons about automata and computability aren't exactly
| 'outdated' but their application to typical software work
| seems very indirect/abstract
|
| I hear this or similar things often but I don't really buy
| it. Sure, if you are doing super high stakes things and you
| need to optimize the hell out of something then you might be
| able to pull from concepts learned in college but I've seen
| new grads waste so much time on pre-optimization and honestly
| it's just not needed for so many things. Also I've had no
| issues learning concepts/algorithm/etc on the fly as-needed
| when performance was crucial. My college experience might be
| different than yours but having an EE teacher rail against
| and regularly make fun of web development as "not real
| development", losing 1 point on each answer of my database
| exam because I didn't put a semicolon at the end, and having
| to write a C program from scratch (headers and all) on paper
| for an exam are only a few examples of what turned me off the
| way my college taught computer science.
| Fogest wrote:
| I feel the same way as you. In high-school I had a chance
| to do a "co-op" program (like being an intern for the
| American's) for a company. I did web development work
| there. I got offered a job there over the summer and
| continued to work there for 6 more summers while I went
| through University for software engineering.
|
| The thing that is funny is that University didn't help me
| in that job at all. The vast majority of skills I used at
| the job were self-taught. A good chunk of those were self-
| taught before I even went to University.
|
| University teaches a lot of theoretical and basically makes
| you teach yourself the practical. I started to realize that
| unless I planned to go the academia route and get more into
| the theoretical, then the degree was pretty useless to me.
| I ended up not completing the degree because it was just
| way too hard to stay motivated. It felt like I had to teach
| myself the important skills anyway, and then listen to
| stuff I could self-teach myself when I needed to know it.
|
| When I had group projects a good chunk of classmates I
| worked with sucked at programming. Like they didn't know
| how to use git, sucked at object orientated program, etc...
| They would produce code that was just in one big massive
| single file. It was frustrating because the degree really
| just made a lot of people book smart, but they weren't
| actually that hirable.
|
| I actually got to help with co-op hiring while I was in
| school for multiple years at the company I was with. When
| we would look at resumes the biggest thing I realized is
| that the degree wasn't really relevant. When almost every
| applicant has the identical degree it's not meaningful.
| What mattered was what kinds of things they did outside of
| school. What personal projects they had, what their github
| looked like, did they have their own website, were they
| involved in groups or starting their own sidegig websites,
| etc...
|
| Our best candidates were the ones that did a lot of stuff
| outside of school. And the funny thing is that the majority
| of those candidates had bad grades. We got the transcripts
| with every co-op applicant.
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