4 ms·

I beg to differ. What is the expected salary of a MIT engineer ? Last time I checked it was 72,000 dollars per year. What is the typical tuition in MIT ? I do

by 1971genocide 11y ago

I beg to differ. What is the expected salary of a MIT engineer ? Last time I checked it was 72,000 dollars per year. What is the typical tuition in MIT ? I do not remember the exact number but it would take a while before students are able to pay back the amount. For 4 years of study its more than 4 years to pay back - that is how I look at it. Its bad enough for home students and astronomical for international ones. Yes, there are some students who make it really big. But that is essentially a lottery and we should ignore them. The most useful skills I learnt were all self taught - as paul graham pointed out - if you put a bunch of motivated people in a closed chamber they will figure out get things. University life consisted of learning how to game the exams and not really learn anything of sustainable value. I knew that from high school and also what Paul wrote about education in general. But I didn't fully accept that our education system is so fundamentally broken. Lets put what you are saying in monetary prespective. 3x - while just working. so if you study for 3 years you get 9 years of experience ? But then you need to spend more than 3 years paying back the debt and you also were not able to earn anything during that time. And also there is no iterative improvement. you do not know how good you are until you have crossed the 3 years period. You might be terrible at your job and there is no way of knowing. The upfront cost and risk is too high for the expected outcome. Some people I know who are studying medicine spend until their 30 to finish. How is this sustainable ?

ChuckMcM 11y ago
I realize I can't convince you, its part of what makes it sad for me. > The upfront cost and risk is too high for the > expected outcome. I understand this is your thesis but you don't have the data to actually argue it. And those who have done the research have come to a different conclusion than you have, so its a good place to start to understand what they considered relevant versus what you consider relevant. There has been a lot of work done on this so its easy to find papers and articles to read.
- 1971genocide 11y ago
  I completely understand what you mean - As Neil Degrass Tyson said - you cannot put a price on ignorance. But the argument I am making is the same argument that people make about healthcare cost. For example its hard to put a price on life but at the same time we need to be realistic. Also I think there is a stronger argument for fairness. If you consider me - with parents who were willing to pay for everything - vs students who are much more apt candidate but are unable to find the funding or get the loan. Do you think society should run like that ? I would hope the best candidate gets placement in all the top schools regardless of their socio-economical background. But all I noticed while in university are super rich kids. No one is arguing that average expected value over a lifetime for better higher education is positive when subtracted from the investment. But is that what it comes down to ? Do we want young people to waste their life's surplus produce paying back their debt ? Even besides those things - it seems there is increased financialization of education. Should we allow students to gamble with 6+ years of their best years. Obama famously finished paying back his student debt when he was in his 30s. Its not so much of question of net positives and net negatives in terms of pure monetary outcome. Its a question of what we want education to be - a public good or a private purchase like a car. Vacuuming out surplus produce from young people also means less new young business / startup / etc. Ben Bernarke is trying to understand why inflation is not rising - its simple, our generation has lost any faith in buying their own homes, cars or having more than 2 kids.
  - ChuckMcM 11y ago
    Ok, there are some interesting statements here that I would like to challenge. First there is this one: > If you consider me - with parents who were willing to > pay for everything - vs students who are much more apt > candidate but are unable to find the funding or get > the loan. This implies there are students "much more apt candidate" who are unable to get funded. But really there are two things here, one is getting into a college and the other is paying for it. In the US there are a lot of colleges, and in my personal experience I got into MIT but there was no financial aid available, and I also got into USC and they offered me a full scholarship. So I went to USC rather than MIT (my first choice). Four years of "in state" tuition, (tuition at a state school where you already live) is generally less than $30,000 which is the cost of a nice car. Graduate school it gets even better since you can often trade tuition for teaching the undergrads or a lab or two. Combining that knowledge with the experience of working with people from a wide variety of collegiate backgrounds and you will find that good people are good people, regardless of the status of the school they attended. What is more, smaller colleges tend to recruit people with similar values so when you find someone from a college who fits well with your company, chances are other people from that college will as well. > Do you think society should run like that ? And yes, it works as expected. Your statements seem to indicate that if you didn't go to a "good" school you can't get a "good" job, but in the STEM field that really isn't the case. And after you've worked for 3 years folks have a record of what you've done to start referring too and the pedigree of your school becomes less and less important as a discriminator. And if you go to graduate school (which can be cost neutral) you may find you "upgrade" your school pedigree. So this seems to be your key pain point -- > Do we want young people to waste their life's > surplus produce paying back their debt ? And it's a fallacy. We don't want students to feel like they have to go to a "top" school to succeed, because they don't. As a student you have a choice of schools from the very expensive to the very modestly priced. That is a healthy market. And there will always be people who will try to make a status symbol out of where they live or where they went to school Etc. But as you get older you will see that those "values" are entirely artificial. Five years from now you will look back and say, "Gee, I really could have gone to any school and arrived at this same point in my career." The cost of an undergraduate engineering degree in the US spans the range of $12,000 - $300,000. Everyone who graduates gets to be an engineer, depending on the size and influence of their school they may know people already in their chosen field. But I cannot find any examples of someone who was "held back" from their potential by graduating at a less well known school. I'm really sorry you got so little value out of the money your parents spent on your education. And I know how "real" your personal experience is relative to your world outlook. However, there are other experiences out there which are very very different than yours and they are very common. You will meet these people in the places you work, and the communities you visit. I'm hoping you will find it isn't as bad as you might think.
wslack 11y ago
The nature of education is that it's always been an investment. Many jobs require a certain amount of preparation and training, and a college degree helps to make the case of preparation for a variety of jobs - and leads to specific training in accounting, business, law, medicine, and academic research. One reason American student loan debt is so hard to shake is that students used to take out massive loans for college, declare bankruptcy, then go off to higher earning lives.
CydeWeys 11y ago
> What is the expected salary of a MIT engineer ? Last time I checked it was 72,000 dollars per year. I don't believe that as the average starting salary, let alone mid-career salary. Your average MIT engineering graduate has the skills to be very successful in the job market, and most often that's exactly what happens. They have a huge leg up over people that didn't go to MIT. The average mid-career salary of someone who got an MIT engineering degree is way, way higher than someone who didn't.
- ChuckMcM 11y ago
  I tend to agree, the Alumni group posts starting salaries here: http://web.mit.edu/facts/alum.html http://web.mit.edu/facts/alum.html but I can't find their 5 year and 10 year numbers. I expect that the median for 10 years would be north of $200,000.
  - CydeWeys 11y ago
    Yeah, per that site, the average starting salary for all MIT undergraduates is $75K/year. That's really damn good. Filter it down to just the software engineers and it'll be a good deal higher. And there's so much upside left too.
  - Kephael 11y ago
    The vast majority of fields are simply not lucrative enough for the median salary to be anywhere near $200,000/yr. A chemical engineer is typically unable to create anywhere near as much value as a software developer at a leading company and is compensated accordingly.
- aianus 11y ago
  > The average mid-career salary of someone who got an MIT engineering degree is way, way higher than someone who didn't. This is meaningless. The real question is how much more do you earn as an MIT grad vs. someone who was accepted into MIT and decided to do something even more worthwhile instead.
  - 11y ago

ChuckMcM 11y ago

I realize I can't convince you, its part of what makes it sad for me. > The upfront cost and risk is too high for the > expected outcome. I understand this is your thesis but you don't have the data to actually argue it. And those who have done the research have come to a different conclusion than you have, so its a good place to start to understand what they considered relevant versus what you consider relevant. There has been a lot of work done on this so its easy to find papers and articles to read.

1971genocide 11y ago
I completely understand what you mean - As Neil Degrass Tyson said - you cannot put a price on ignorance. But the argument I am making is the same argument that people make about healthcare cost. For example its hard to put a price on life but at the same time we need to be realistic. Also I think there is a stronger argument for fairness. If you consider me - with parents who were willing to pay for everything - vs students who are much more apt candidate but are unable to find the funding or get the loan. Do you think society should run like that ? I would hope the best candidate gets placement in all the top schools regardless of their socio-economical background. But all I noticed while in university are super rich kids. No one is arguing that average expected value over a lifetime for better higher education is positive when subtracted from the investment. But is that what it comes down to ? Do we want young people to waste their life's surplus produce paying back their debt ? Even besides those things - it seems there is increased financialization of education. Should we allow students to gamble with 6+ years of their best years. Obama famously finished paying back his student debt when he was in his 30s. Its not so much of question of net positives and net negatives in terms of pure monetary outcome. Its a question of what we want education to be - a public good or a private purchase like a car. Vacuuming out surplus produce from young people also means less new young business / startup / etc. Ben Bernarke is trying to understand why inflation is not rising - its simple, our generation has lost any faith in buying their own homes, cars or having more than 2 kids.
- ChuckMcM 11y ago
  Ok, there are some interesting statements here that I would like to challenge. First there is this one: > If you consider me - with parents who were willing to > pay for everything - vs students who are much more apt > candidate but are unable to find the funding or get > the loan. This implies there are students "much more apt candidate" who are unable to get funded. But really there are two things here, one is getting into a college and the other is paying for it. In the US there are a lot of colleges, and in my personal experience I got into MIT but there was no financial aid available, and I also got into USC and they offered me a full scholarship. So I went to USC rather than MIT (my first choice). Four years of "in state" tuition, (tuition at a state school where you already live) is generally less than $30,000 which is the cost of a nice car. Graduate school it gets even better since you can often trade tuition for teaching the undergrads or a lab or two. Combining that knowledge with the experience of working with people from a wide variety of collegiate backgrounds and you will find that good people are good people, regardless of the status of the school they attended. What is more, smaller colleges tend to recruit people with similar values so when you find someone from a college who fits well with your company, chances are other people from that college will as well. > Do you think society should run like that ? And yes, it works as expected. Your statements seem to indicate that if you didn't go to a "good" school you can't get a "good" job, but in the STEM field that really isn't the case. And after you've worked for 3 years folks have a record of what you've done to start referring too and the pedigree of your school becomes less and less important as a discriminator. And if you go to graduate school (which can be cost neutral) you may find you "upgrade" your school pedigree. So this seems to be your key pain point -- > Do we want young people to waste their life's > surplus produce paying back their debt ? And it's a fallacy. We don't want students to feel like they have to go to a "top" school to succeed, because they don't. As a student you have a choice of schools from the very expensive to the very modestly priced. That is a healthy market. And there will always be people who will try to make a status symbol out of where they live or where they went to school Etc. But as you get older you will see that those "values" are entirely artificial. Five years from now you will look back and say, "Gee, I really could have gone to any school and arrived at this same point in my career." The cost of an undergraduate engineering degree in the US spans the range of $12,000 - $300,000. Everyone who graduates gets to be an engineer, depending on the size and influence of their school they may know people already in their chosen field. But I cannot find any examples of someone who was "held back" from their potential by graduating at a less well known school. I'm really sorry you got so little value out of the money your parents spent on your education. And I know how "real" your personal experience is relative to your world outlook. However, there are other experiences out there which are very very different than yours and they are very common. You will meet these people in the places you work, and the communities you visit. I'm hoping you will find it isn't as bad as you might think.

wslack 11y ago

The nature of education is that it's always been an investment. Many jobs require a certain amount of preparation and training, and a college degree helps to make the case of preparation for a variety of jobs - and leads to specific training in accounting, business, law, medicine, and academic research. One reason American student loan debt is so hard to shake is that students used to take out massive loans for college, declare bankruptcy, then go off to higher earning lives.

CydeWeys 11y ago

> What is the expected salary of a MIT engineer ? Last time I checked it was 72,000 dollars per year. I don't believe that as the average starting salary, let alone mid-career salary. Your average MIT engineering graduate has the skills to be very successful in the job market, and most often that's exactly what happens. They have a huge leg up over people that didn't go to MIT. The average mid-career salary of someone who got an MIT engineering degree is way, way higher than someone who didn't.

ChuckMcM 11y ago
I tend to agree, the Alumni group posts starting salaries here: http://web.mit.edu/facts/alum.html http://web.mit.edu/facts/alum.html but I can't find their 5 year and 10 year numbers. I expect that the median for 10 years would be north of $200,000.
- CydeWeys 11y ago
  Yeah, per that site, the average starting salary for all MIT undergraduates is $75K/year. That's really damn good. Filter it down to just the software engineers and it'll be a good deal higher. And there's so much upside left too.
- Kephael 11y ago
  The vast majority of fields are simply not lucrative enough for the median salary to be anywhere near $200,000/yr. A chemical engineer is typically unable to create anywhere near as much value as a software developer at a leading company and is compensated accordingly.
aianus 11y ago
> The average mid-career salary of someone who got an MIT engineering degree is way, way higher than someone who didn't. This is meaningless. The real question is how much more do you earn as an MIT grad vs. someone who was accepted into MIT and decided to do something even more worthwhile instead.
- 11y ago