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I'm an undergraduate who made this decision in the past 1000 days. I went to the website and tried to see how much it would have helped me. It wouldn't have. He

I'm an undergraduate who made this decision in the past 1000 days. I went to the website and tried to see how much it would have helped me. It wouldn't have. Here are my criticisms. * This tool should be clear that it's geared towards 17 year olds that are mature enough to be able to view college as a financial investment. That's not to say that college can't be chosen for the experience of it as well, but I don't think you can recommend colleges on such a personal variable. This type of site can be a great tool if you're willing to put that aside for a moment and merely get information about potential return on an investment, which is useful for everyone regardless of how they feel about what college ought to be. * Factor in how confident a student is in what they want to study. I think the largest cost sink is in people who don't know what they want to study, but decide to go to an expensive school and say that they'll figure it out in their first two years. What happens when you don't, or school ends up being hard, and you have friends made and leases signed and now you've locked yourself into paying $80k for something you're not going to see return on? Would you have made that decision before? * Average salary after school is an awful metric. You can't group engineers with those that study humanities and then present that as a meaningful statistic. It makes the person studying philosophy feel more confident in spending money, and it makes the person studying engineering more likely to deviate from liberal arts schools, when in actuality a school can accommodate both groups well but with somewhat different outcomes. * How do you run a site like this and not ask what their SAT / ACT scores are? This is most certainly the most predictive factor for where you'll go. * How do you not ask where they live, and talk about in-state tuition rates? Ultimately it's a nice idea with poor execution, but it's close.

0942v8653 11y ago
> How do you run a site like this and not ask what their SAT / ACT scores are? This is most certainly the most predictive factor for where you'll go. Unfortunately the actual data (at least that the govt has) on this is terribly incomplete. With a quick look (this may be off a bit) 6422/7598 colleges from their set are missing this data. I agree with most everything you said, though.
liyanchang 11y ago
Hi Nick, Agreed! There are lots of places where this tool could be improved! (Disclaimer: I work with people at 18F, Dept. Of Ed, USDS who built this tool, but I wasn't involved and don't have any privileged information and so here are some of my personal thoughts) If I can add a bit of color: 1. This was developed open-source on GitHub. That means you're welcome to file an issue or comment at https://github.com/18F/college-choice/issues https://github.com/18F/college-choice/issues (Given the interest and number of issues filed so far, I'll probably take this opportunity to say that it might be a while before the team gets back to you and appreciate your help and patience!). This shouldn't impress you, but it is, because it's a complete paradigm shift from how government typically works. 2. Average salary is not a great metric and unfortunately, as far as I can tell, the data isn't sliced by major. You're right in your analysis of how it skews the data. I actually think loan repayment is probably the more interesting metric - have others in your income class been able to repay their debts? You're also right that this tool doesn't help people see that choosing college A over B because of a $X,000 delta in average salary isn't a good idea as it's subject to all sorts of personal decisions. 3. This is really cool not because the tool is perfect, but because the government is releasing an API to go along with this - a number of private companies and non-profits have already integrated the data into their tools. This data, which hasn't been possible to get before, can now be integrated into the tools that were helpful to you (the ones that calculate in-state tuition, and ask you for sat/act scores). The underlying API also has many more data fields than the tool exposes. If fact, you can build one yourself! (https://api.data.gov/signup https://api.data.gov/signup and https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/data/documentation/ https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/data/documentation/)
- wslack 11y ago
  > as far as I can tell, the data isn't sliced by major In reading some of the surrounding commentary (as an 18F'er who was only tangentially involved with this project as it also posting personally), it looks like data by major isn't available. Same thing applies to data for all students (vs only those who get aid). And ditto that you should file an issue on GitHub! PS: Hi!
- nickysielicki 11y ago
  I typed this comment up as a quick break from work, and rereading my comment I can say I did not have enough editing. I didn't mean to come across so critical. It's just so close to being a great idea that can solve what I see as a huge problem-- why are people taking out loans for a bullshit University of Phoenix degree? Because they don't know what their options are, and they don't know what it's going to cost, and they have some feeling in the back of their head that college is always a worthwhile investment. That's how we nationally end up with more student debt loan than credit card debt. With a little more data and a bit more prodding, this could genuinely fix that. No longer will people be getting their primary source of information from 2:00AM University of Phoenix commercials. When I said the execution was poor it was not to say that this is somehow botched, it's just that it's so damn close. I think 18F is really cool, and I hope it continues to have cool projects. At the same time, the tool genuinely wouldn't have helped me, and on HN I feel like that type of criticism is useful. Not just for the poster, but for people who are interested in solving problems in this realm and want to get in the head of someone who would use it. PS: I signed up for an API key. Thanks for the comment. I'll poke around this weekend.
Retra 11y ago
I disagree with your first point. You can't view education as simply financial investment vs 'experience.' It's also a personal investment. By that I mean one of the most important things that happens to people in this group is that they grow up and you want to have an environment that allows this to happen without getting in the way of your education. Will going to this school allow you to be a leader? Will you be supported in your choices without being punished for failure? This is as much determined by your peers as the faculty, and it's pretty important. And I don't think 17-year-olds are mature enough to understand this; if they did, they wouldn't need to go to school to learn it.

0942v8653 11y ago

> How do you run a site like this and not ask what their SAT / ACT scores are? This is most certainly the most predictive factor for where you'll go. Unfortunately the actual data (at least that the govt has) on this is terribly incomplete. With a quick look (this may be off a bit) 6422/7598 colleges from their set are missing this data. I agree with most everything you said, though.

liyanchang 11y ago

Hi Nick, Agreed! There are lots of places where this tool could be improved! (Disclaimer: I work with people at 18F, Dept. Of Ed, USDS who built this tool, but I wasn't involved and don't have any privileged information and so here are some of my personal thoughts) If I can add a bit of color: 1. This was developed open-source on GitHub. That means you're welcome to file an issue or comment at https://github.com/18F/college-choice/issues https://github.com/18F/college-choice/issues (Given the interest and number of issues filed so far, I'll probably take this opportunity to say that it might be a while before the team gets back to you and appreciate your help and patience!). This shouldn't impress you, but it is, because it's a complete paradigm shift from how government typically works. 2. Average salary is not a great metric and unfortunately, as far as I can tell, the data isn't sliced by major. You're right in your analysis of how it skews the data. I actually think loan repayment is probably the more interesting metric - have others in your income class been able to repay their debts? You're also right that this tool doesn't help people see that choosing college A over B because of a $X,000 delta in average salary isn't a good idea as it's subject to all sorts of personal decisions. 3. This is really cool not because the tool is perfect, but because the government is releasing an API to go along with this - a number of private companies and non-profits have already integrated the data into their tools. This data, which hasn't been possible to get before, can now be integrated into the tools that were helpful to you (the ones that calculate in-state tuition, and ask you for sat/act scores). The underlying API also has many more data fields than the tool exposes. If fact, you can build one yourself! (https://api.data.gov/signup https://api.data.gov/signup and https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/data/documentation/ https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/data/documentation/)

wslack 11y ago
> as far as I can tell, the data isn't sliced by major In reading some of the surrounding commentary (as an 18F'er who was only tangentially involved with this project as it also posting personally), it looks like data by major isn't available. Same thing applies to data for all students (vs only those who get aid). And ditto that you should file an issue on GitHub! PS: Hi!
nickysielicki 11y ago
I typed this comment up as a quick break from work, and rereading my comment I can say I did not have enough editing. I didn't mean to come across so critical. It's just so close to being a great idea that can solve what I see as a huge problem-- why are people taking out loans for a bullshit University of Phoenix degree? Because they don't know what their options are, and they don't know what it's going to cost, and they have some feeling in the back of their head that college is always a worthwhile investment. That's how we nationally end up with more student debt loan than credit card debt. With a little more data and a bit more prodding, this could genuinely fix that. No longer will people be getting their primary source of information from 2:00AM University of Phoenix commercials. When I said the execution was poor it was not to say that this is somehow botched, it's just that it's so damn close. I think 18F is really cool, and I hope it continues to have cool projects. At the same time, the tool genuinely wouldn't have helped me, and on HN I feel like that type of criticism is useful. Not just for the poster, but for people who are interested in solving problems in this realm and want to get in the head of someone who would use it. PS: I signed up for an API key. Thanks for the comment. I'll poke around this weekend.

Retra 11y ago

I disagree with your first point. You can't view education as simply financial investment vs 'experience.' It's also a personal investment. By that I mean one of the most important things that happens to people in this group is that they grow up and you want to have an environment that allows this to happen without getting in the way of your education. Will going to this school allow you to be a leader? Will you be supported in your choices without being punished for failure? This is as much determined by your peers as the faculty, and it's pretty important. And I don't think 17-year-olds are mature enough to understand this; if they did, they wouldn't need to go to school to learn it.