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The real absurdity here is that we can have a discussion about student loans and not discuss the fact that non-STEM degrees offer, in nearly all cases, a poor R

The real absurdity here is that we can have a discussion about student loans and not discuss the fact that non-STEM degrees offer, in nearly all cases, a poor ROI. This completely boggles my mind. It's insanity.

whorleater 11y ago
That's assuming college degrees are simply worth the monetary value later on, which isn't true at all. May of the students in my class happily know that their non-STEM degree is worth very little when going into a job, but they value their education very highly and have planned out routes for when they finish college. The value of education isn't something that you can quantify by picking an ROI.
- GVIrish 11y ago
  Sure there's a non-monetary component to the value of a college education. But if the monetary component is so low that you'll be paying off your college loans until you're retirement age, maybe that means you need to re-evaluate your choices and priorities. More students need to start choosing the cheaper public institution for that degree because that private school is not providing enough extra value to offset the enormous cost.
  - skewart 11y ago
    Why? It's a luxury purchase like any other. There's nothing wrong with that. As long as people know what theyre signing up for let them do their thing! If I get a loan to buy a Ferrari I've made a very bad decision from a purely financial perspective. But if that car brings me enjoyment and makes my life more fulfilling then I'm perfectly happy. Of course, if the Ferrari dealer lied to me and said that the car's value would go up by 40% as soon as I drove it off the lot then thats a different story. It is probably true that ple ty of college students don't really know what they're really signing up for. And incredibly misleading statistics about the income of people who went to college vs those who didnt certainly don't help. Pretty much every art history and anthropology major that I've known has been acutely aware that their degree isn't really increasing their earning potential much and are perfectly okay with that.
    - humanrebar 11y ago
      > Why? It's a luxury purchase like any other. There's nothing wrong with that. Because it's heavily subsidized and regulated. If it these were unsubsidized private transactions subject to the same bankruptcy laws as any other, I'd agree with your sentiment.
      - skewart 11y ago
        Fair enough. That's a good point. At the same time though, we do subsidize a lot of potentially dangerous, and arguably luxurious amenities because a critical mass of people enjoyusing them responsibly. National parks, highways, even medical procedures are all far from safe if you don't understand the risks involved in what you're doing. Most people do understand those risks and safely use these resources, just like most literature majors understand the risks involved in racking up debt to study literature. Of course, as tuition goes up - and its gone up a lot even since I was in college not that long ago - the relative risk goes up. Maybe there is a lag in really appreciating the magnitude of that risk and we should be more careful.
    - GVIrish 11y ago
      > Why? It's a luxury purchase like any other. There's nothing wrong with that. As long as people know what theyre signing up for let them do their thing! If that's what people view it as, and they're ok with how much debt they're going to incur and all of the stipulations that come with that debt, then more power to them. Can't argue with that. But I think many people are not really doing that value calculation thoroughly or at all. There are a lot of students who sign up for college because that's what they "should" do and they don't necessarily properly evaluate whether the cost is worth it in lifetime earning potential or personal fulfillment. It's kind of like the housing market before the bubble. Most Americans believed that they "should" own a house and believed that real estate is always a good investment. We all see how that turned out.
- hnamazon123 11y ago
  That's really just something you tell yourself to feel good about the dire financial situation your students are in. I mean, yes, spending 4 years with minimal responsibility, partying, and studying great literature and arts is certainly enriching. However, I'm sure most of your students feel entitled to that experience and would demand a system which would take money from me to pay for it. Having recently graduated from college, I strongly disagree with the idea that your students offer much to society to the point where I should be paying their way through college. They're free to live in virtual debt slavery. That's their right to decide that the college experience they got was worth it.
jonlucc 11y ago
My field is research biology (in Pharma, not academia where the pay situation is truly dismal), and the jobs are severely lacking. Even STEM is becoming saturated and will soon just be Engineering and Applied Math.
- dalke 11y ago
  STEM is a pretty meaningless term. Most of those who say there should be more people with STEM training don't really want more people trained in general relativity, paleontology, deep-sea biology, etc. I suspect it mostly means they want the government to pay for the types of problem solvers that businesses want, and enough of them to keep the wages low. I think that's implicit in how hnamazon123 refers to ROI. Who gets the return - the student, businesses, and/or the country - for investing in someone's education?
- dikdik 11y ago
  There's a comment above talking about a sociology degree making 30k. I knew lots of Biology and Chemistry majors who were making that or less right out of undergrad in industry. But we did it wrong! It's our fault. I guess in a couple decades when there's a total of 2 majors that will actually return your investment we will actually be able to have a productive talk about college costs. Until then, those at the bottom will continue to be told it's their fault.
bradleyjg 11y ago
The data for lifetime earnings for those with and without a college degree suggests otherwise. The most important distinction isn't between STEM and non-STEM (though it is a distinction) but rather between those who graduate and don't graduate, with the second most important being the type of institution -- selective > non selective state > non selective private > for profit.
- hiram112 11y ago
  I've heard this claim being made for as long as I've been alive, and I'd agree that it was probably true 10, 20 years ago. Since college prices have risen so fast, while wages have gone down, there's a good argument for forgoing school. The average 18 year old paying $150K for a Sociology degree at some expensive non-ivy private school is going to be making $30K a year with or without his degree, for many years. Besides the loss of 4 years of income, the $150K (which will end up costing 2.5x-3x after interest) would have earned a lot of money invested in the market.
  - bradleyjg 11y ago
    As of 2013, the median earnings for full time workers 25-32 with just a high school diploma was $28,000 and they had a 12.2% unemployment rate. For those with a bachelor's degree, it was $45,500 and the unemployment rate was 3.8%. Those are medians, not averages. Things are only getting worse for high school diploma holders. It's all well and good to be pissed off at rent seeking credential granting institutions and the employers that lazily rely on them, but that's no excuse for repeating false information that only leads kids astray.
    - hiram112 11y ago
      First of all, I'm not so much interested in raw salary as I am with net worth. If Sociologist Jane at 45 years old makes $50K, and pays $10K in loans each year, is she better off than Plumber Joe who makes $35K a year, owns his house, and earns $10K in dividends. How bout 20 years later? Your statistics are also assuming that it is the college degree itself that is producing the difference in income, and not the individual. As politically incorrect as it is to say, a good portion of the non-bachelor degree population would not earn much anyway - 'urban' with minimal basic education, immigrants without language skills, low IQ, disabled, etc. Find me a study based on IQ - one in which similarly intelligent persons are matched on income (not salary) at varying ages, and I'm guessing that in the future, many in the middle IQ range will not benefit from their liberal arts degree.
bonoboTP 11y ago
Depends on how much the acquired knowledge (explicit and implicit), new contacts, friends etc. are valuable to you. People don't just go to college as an investment, to have well-paying jobs in the future. Of course not everyone can afford to do it simply for the knowledge and experience, but colleges aren't just supposed to manufacture white-collar workers, it is a way to have knowledgeable, informed, thinking citizens, in all areas of knowledge.
- hnamazon123 11y ago
  I'm not sure how you can look at the insanity rife among the student bodies at college campuses today and say that colleges are creating informed, thinking citizens.
blktiger 11y ago
It seems like the general advice for many years has been to just get _any_ college degree. If you have a college degree you are supposed to be able to get a good job. I think the main problem with that advice is that it was good advice when a college degree was relatively rare. These days, everyone is expected to get a college degree so the degree itself becomes worthless. Instead students should focus on acquiring some kind of skill in their post-secondary education. For example, a history degree doesn't actually give you any useful skills while a computer science degree gives you skill in writing software which is a high-demand job right now. Actually, many students who get a college degree would be better off going to a vocational school to learn welding or some other skill. They'd probably actually earn _more_ money than whatever job they can get with a generic 4-year degree.
- dalke 11y ago
  "relatively rare" It was also relatively cheap. People work for a summer, at minimum wage, and afford college for the rest of the year.
- hnamazon123 11y ago
  I got that advice all my life and it never made sense to me. You have to demonstrate value to employers; to anyone with whome you desire to exchange goods or services for money. Simply having a college degree is a very weak signal for value.
  - dalke 11y ago
    I believe blktiger's point is that it was a good signal for value but is no longer. I'll guess that most of the people who gave you that advice probably learned it some 30-40 years ago, when it was more applicable.
- invalidOrTaken 11y ago
  >Actually, many students who get a college degree would be better off going to a vocational school to learn welding or some other skill. They'd probably actually earn _more_ money than whatever job they can get with a generic 4-year degree. The reason they don't is simple: class. A librarian making $40K/yr is treated better than a welder making $80K/yr. A lot of people (self included, until a moment ago) imagine this whole thing crashing down when companies realize they can get good candidates without requiring a college degree. But I think that will be a secondary marker. The real tipping point will be when young tradesmen build a cool (as in, expensive) frat-like house, and a few sororities start hanging out with them.
randomgyatwork 11y ago
My original STEM degree (Biology) was pretty unless, my second STEM degree (Web Dev) has paid off much better.

whorleater 11y ago

That's assuming college degrees are simply worth the monetary value later on, which isn't true at all. May of the students in my class happily know that their non-STEM degree is worth very little when going into a job, but they value their education very highly and have planned out routes for when they finish college. The value of education isn't something that you can quantify by picking an ROI.

GVIrish 11y ago
Sure there's a non-monetary component to the value of a college education. But if the monetary component is so low that you'll be paying off your college loans until you're retirement age, maybe that means you need to re-evaluate your choices and priorities. More students need to start choosing the cheaper public institution for that degree because that private school is not providing enough extra value to offset the enormous cost.
- skewart 11y ago
  Why? It's a luxury purchase like any other. There's nothing wrong with that. As long as people know what theyre signing up for let them do their thing! If I get a loan to buy a Ferrari I've made a very bad decision from a purely financial perspective. But if that car brings me enjoyment and makes my life more fulfilling then I'm perfectly happy. Of course, if the Ferrari dealer lied to me and said that the car's value would go up by 40% as soon as I drove it off the lot then thats a different story. It is probably true that ple ty of college students don't really know what they're really signing up for. And incredibly misleading statistics about the income of people who went to college vs those who didnt certainly don't help. Pretty much every art history and anthropology major that I've known has been acutely aware that their degree isn't really increasing their earning potential much and are perfectly okay with that.
  - humanrebar 11y ago
    > Why? It's a luxury purchase like any other. There's nothing wrong with that. Because it's heavily subsidized and regulated. If it these were unsubsidized private transactions subject to the same bankruptcy laws as any other, I'd agree with your sentiment.
    - skewart 11y ago
      Fair enough. That's a good point. At the same time though, we do subsidize a lot of potentially dangerous, and arguably luxurious amenities because a critical mass of people enjoyusing them responsibly. National parks, highways, even medical procedures are all far from safe if you don't understand the risks involved in what you're doing. Most people do understand those risks and safely use these resources, just like most literature majors understand the risks involved in racking up debt to study literature. Of course, as tuition goes up - and its gone up a lot even since I was in college not that long ago - the relative risk goes up. Maybe there is a lag in really appreciating the magnitude of that risk and we should be more careful.
  - GVIrish 11y ago
    > Why? It's a luxury purchase like any other. There's nothing wrong with that. As long as people know what theyre signing up for let them do their thing! If that's what people view it as, and they're ok with how much debt they're going to incur and all of the stipulations that come with that debt, then more power to them. Can't argue with that. But I think many people are not really doing that value calculation thoroughly or at all. There are a lot of students who sign up for college because that's what they "should" do and they don't necessarily properly evaluate whether the cost is worth it in lifetime earning potential or personal fulfillment. It's kind of like the housing market before the bubble. Most Americans believed that they "should" own a house and believed that real estate is always a good investment. We all see how that turned out.
hnamazon123 11y ago
That's really just something you tell yourself to feel good about the dire financial situation your students are in. I mean, yes, spending 4 years with minimal responsibility, partying, and studying great literature and arts is certainly enriching. However, I'm sure most of your students feel entitled to that experience and would demand a system which would take money from me to pay for it. Having recently graduated from college, I strongly disagree with the idea that your students offer much to society to the point where I should be paying their way through college. They're free to live in virtual debt slavery. That's their right to decide that the college experience they got was worth it.

jonlucc 11y ago

My field is research biology (in Pharma, not academia where the pay situation is truly dismal), and the jobs are severely lacking. Even STEM is becoming saturated and will soon just be Engineering and Applied Math.

dalke 11y ago
STEM is a pretty meaningless term. Most of those who say there should be more people with STEM training don't really want more people trained in general relativity, paleontology, deep-sea biology, etc. I suspect it mostly means they want the government to pay for the types of problem solvers that businesses want, and enough of them to keep the wages low. I think that's implicit in how hnamazon123 refers to ROI. Who gets the return - the student, businesses, and/or the country - for investing in someone's education?
dikdik 11y ago
There's a comment above talking about a sociology degree making 30k. I knew lots of Biology and Chemistry majors who were making that or less right out of undergrad in industry. But we did it wrong! It's our fault. I guess in a couple decades when there's a total of 2 majors that will actually return your investment we will actually be able to have a productive talk about college costs. Until then, those at the bottom will continue to be told it's their fault.

bradleyjg 11y ago

The data for lifetime earnings for those with and without a college degree suggests otherwise. The most important distinction isn't between STEM and non-STEM (though it is a distinction) but rather between those who graduate and don't graduate, with the second most important being the type of institution -- selective > non selective state > non selective private > for profit.

hiram112 11y ago
I've heard this claim being made for as long as I've been alive, and I'd agree that it was probably true 10, 20 years ago. Since college prices have risen so fast, while wages have gone down, there's a good argument for forgoing school. The average 18 year old paying $150K for a Sociology degree at some expensive non-ivy private school is going to be making $30K a year with or without his degree, for many years. Besides the loss of 4 years of income, the $150K (which will end up costing 2.5x-3x after interest) would have earned a lot of money invested in the market.
- bradleyjg 11y ago
  As of 2013, the median earnings for full time workers 25-32 with just a high school diploma was $28,000 and they had a 12.2% unemployment rate. For those with a bachelor's degree, it was $45,500 and the unemployment rate was 3.8%. Those are medians, not averages. Things are only getting worse for high school diploma holders. It's all well and good to be pissed off at rent seeking credential granting institutions and the employers that lazily rely on them, but that's no excuse for repeating false information that only leads kids astray.
  - hiram112 11y ago
    First of all, I'm not so much interested in raw salary as I am with net worth. If Sociologist Jane at 45 years old makes $50K, and pays $10K in loans each year, is she better off than Plumber Joe who makes $35K a year, owns his house, and earns $10K in dividends. How bout 20 years later? Your statistics are also assuming that it is the college degree itself that is producing the difference in income, and not the individual. As politically incorrect as it is to say, a good portion of the non-bachelor degree population would not earn much anyway - 'urban' with minimal basic education, immigrants without language skills, low IQ, disabled, etc. Find me a study based on IQ - one in which similarly intelligent persons are matched on income (not salary) at varying ages, and I'm guessing that in the future, many in the middle IQ range will not benefit from their liberal arts degree.

bonoboTP 11y ago

Depends on how much the acquired knowledge (explicit and implicit), new contacts, friends etc. are valuable to you. People don't just go to college as an investment, to have well-paying jobs in the future. Of course not everyone can afford to do it simply for the knowledge and experience, but colleges aren't just supposed to manufacture white-collar workers, it is a way to have knowledgeable, informed, thinking citizens, in all areas of knowledge.

hnamazon123 11y ago
I'm not sure how you can look at the insanity rife among the student bodies at college campuses today and say that colleges are creating informed, thinking citizens.

blktiger 11y ago

It seems like the general advice for many years has been to just get _any_ college degree. If you have a college degree you are supposed to be able to get a good job. I think the main problem with that advice is that it was good advice when a college degree was relatively rare. These days, everyone is expected to get a college degree so the degree itself becomes worthless. Instead students should focus on acquiring some kind of skill in their post-secondary education. For example, a history degree doesn't actually give you any useful skills while a computer science degree gives you skill in writing software which is a high-demand job right now. Actually, many students who get a college degree would be better off going to a vocational school to learn welding or some other skill. They'd probably actually earn _more_ money than whatever job they can get with a generic 4-year degree.

dalke 11y ago
"relatively rare" It was also relatively cheap. People work for a summer, at minimum wage, and afford college for the rest of the year.
hnamazon123 11y ago
I got that advice all my life and it never made sense to me. You have to demonstrate value to employers; to anyone with whome you desire to exchange goods or services for money. Simply having a college degree is a very weak signal for value.
- dalke 11y ago
  I believe blktiger's point is that it was a good signal for value but is no longer. I'll guess that most of the people who gave you that advice probably learned it some 30-40 years ago, when it was more applicable.
invalidOrTaken 11y ago
>Actually, many students who get a college degree would be better off going to a vocational school to learn welding or some other skill. They'd probably actually earn _more_ money than whatever job they can get with a generic 4-year degree. The reason they don't is simple: class. A librarian making $40K/yr is treated better than a welder making $80K/yr. A lot of people (self included, until a moment ago) imagine this whole thing crashing down when companies realize they can get good candidates without requiring a college degree. But I think that will be a secondary marker. The real tipping point will be when young tradesmen build a cool (as in, expensive) frat-like house, and a few sororities start hanging out with them.

randomgyatwork 11y ago

My original STEM degree (Biology) was pretty unless, my second STEM degree (Web Dev) has paid off much better.