7 ms·

Is a college degree still worth it?

15 points by edw519 16y ago

patio11 16y ago
A client is currently paying me a rather substantial amount of money to come up with an authoritatively presented answer to this question, using BLS data and some programming. (It figures that the number crunching would take one week and the presentation layer would take three. sigh) Spoiler: College degrees are still worth it. Some are rather substantially more worth it than others. If you feel yours isn't, you almost certainly aren't majored in engineering or (certain flavors of) geology.
- jerf 16y ago
  If it is possible to share the results with us, I'd like to see it when you are done. I recognize that may not be possible. I think I have a good bead on the general results, but specifics are nice, and concrete charts could even be helpful for talking to college-bound seniors about what it is they need to be doing in a way that "here, let me share my intuitions" aren't.
  - patio11 16y ago
    Thanks Jerf. They've previously indicated that they'd be thrilled to have me show it off, and I'd be happy to write a "how I built this" or something for my blog linking to the results. Fair warning: it is marketing material, in much the same sense that one of the NYT's data visualizations is marketing, except they have a business model which benefits in a more direct fashion than the NYT does.
- carbocation 16y ago
  I agree with you based on my intuition. I want to make a point that's not even a quibble with what you're doing (since you're working within fixed constraints) but I feel is worth raising anyways. The BLS data that I'm familiar with are not granular enough to decisively reach the conclusion that a college degree is still worth it. For example, the BLS data do not allow you to even begin to guess if colleges are merely admitting people who could have directly entered High Paying Job X even had they not attended college. Take Princeton, for example. Does a Princeton degree add income potential, or is it simply the case that people who get into Princeton are so smart that they have lots of income potential? The only way to conclusively know this is to identify people who were admitted to Princeton (and thus met their entry criteria) but decided not to go to college at all. (Even then, there would be selection bias here, since those choosing not to attend probably differ qualitatively from those who attended.) Then, look at standardized lifetime earnings of both cohorts. Do Princeton grads do better than Princeton admits who decided to forgo college? The best test would be a randomized controlled trial but... heh... that's just not going to happen since there's likely harm without likely benefit if you're in the no-college cohort.
  - euroclydon 16y ago
    Good points, but your just speaking about innate talent regardless of a college degree. You're forgetting family and social connections regardless of talent or a degree.
    - carbocation 16y ago
      True! Although the methods I'm proposing would capture those, too. (Without quantifying connections and family, the reason why wouldn't be captured, but the difference itself would be.)
- InclinedPlane 16y ago
  This runs into a correlation/causation problem though. The sort of people who are interested and dedicated enough in a subject to dedicate N years of their life and a significant amount of money to pursue a college degree in that major may also have the drive to succeed in their chosen field regardless of degree (or to pursue education in other ways). I doubt this is entirely true, but it's an important effect to keep in mind.
vaksel 16y ago
the way I see it, is if you are doing engineering or any other technical major, then yes it still is. but humanities etc is a waste of money unfortunately our culture has made getting a degree a prerequisite(everyone got one), so now you need a college degree for jobs you wouldn't have needed one in the past. before, having a college degree was a means to increase your income substantially, now it's just a checkmark that you got $40-160K in debt for.
- _delirium 16y ago
  I think your second point actually points to why the first might be wrong. There are huge ranges of jobs that a humanities degree qualifies you for that you can't get without one--- even a bunch of stuff that's unrelated to the degree, like HR or various secretarial jobs. In engineering, if you have no degree, you at least have a chance of convincing someone that you're a great engineer by doing independent work, and even large companies like Microsoft and Google do hire people without degrees. In the humanities, though, it's very hard without a degree to convince someone that you're "just as good" as other applicants who have degrees; you generally won't even get a second look. So I'd almost say the opposite: that if you aren't going to do engineering, a degree is definitely worth it, but if you are, it might be more questionable, and depends on what exactly you want to do, and what your outside-out-school credentials are.
  - vecter 16y ago
    I find it hard to believe that a person could get the same engineering education on their own than at a good engineering university. From a practical point of view, I see what you mean, in that, an HR department weighing two candidates would probably prefer the one with a(ny) college degree. Frankly, that almost goes without saying. However, I think the same is much more true in engineering. I'm not only talking about programming shops. After all, computer science/computer engineering isn't the only form of engineering. There's material science, mechanical engineering, civil engineering, aerospace engineering, etc., and I simply can't believe that a place like Boeing would seriously consider you for an engineering position unless you have at least a bachelors in the relevant field. Software is a rare field in that one can become competent without having a "related" college degree. You can certainly ship products without majoring in CS. On the other hand, I don't think you can build planes or bridges without a degree in aerospace or mechanical engineering.
bradleyland 16y ago
Is a Hitachi EC25E compressor with NV45AB2S nailgun worth it? That would depend upon whether or not I intend to be a roofer. I was always suspicious of the assumption that a college degree was a default requirement for success in the professional world. That is -- in part -- why I rejected the notion and decided to drop out of college after year one. A college degree is a means to an end, not an end in and of itself. Too many educators assume that if you are "smart", you must go to college. As if the degree you receive is some sort of product that stands alone. The fact is, you can't sell a degree on an open market, because the knowledge you gain isn't transferrable. Circle back to the old argument of whether $50k would be better spent on a 4-year degree or some form of traditional investment. The only factual answer is "it depends". When you go to college, you buy experience, knowledge, and a certificate that says, "I know how to see something through to the end." In my view, the significance of the latter has diminished significantly in recent years. When college becomes something you do by default, the effort is no longer superlative; it is average. This puts the emphasis more on the knowledge aspect, and sure enough, knowledge heavy degrees deliver more value. I once had dinner with a client where one of the VPs asked me where I went to college. When I replied that I had attended for one year, then decided my efforts were better spent elsewhere, she replied with, "Oh, you seemed smarter than that." It stung a little, but in the conversation that followed, the majority of the executives with which I was meeting came down in favor of my decision, rather than against it. This conversation taught me a valuable lesson. Doing what everyone tells you is the "right thing to do" isn't always the best answer. There are no one-size-fits-all answers to life. You have to evaluate each scenario objectively based on the circumstances at that moment, then reach your own conclusions.
- spotter 16y ago
  > asked me where I went to college Political protip: Answer his question. "I went to X University". Because... you did, didn't you? And if he asks you what you majored in: "I studied Y. But somehow I ended up in this job! hearty laugh". I have a degree but it amazes me that people who didn't go to college are never able to glide past this one. It seems like the only people who really ever bring up dropping out is the dropout. Only a very special kind of asshole will continue to press you about graduation dates etc. Having said that,... I have a sneaking suspicion that people who dropped out like bringing it up just to say that they dropped out. You like bringing it up and debating it and then having people "agree" with you eventually, because you seek validation for the decisions you made. It's called having a chip on your shoulder and the guy who said "oh you seemed smarter than that" was clearly fucking with you cause he's seen it a million times before.
robojamie 16y ago
Why is this such a consistent meme with the Hacker News/Slashdot crowd? Do you think Eric Schmidt regrets his decision to pursue a Ph.D.?
- euroclydon 16y ago
  How's college going?
- SkyMarshal 16y ago
  Think we're taking undergrad only here, not graduate degrees. Though I suspect the general finding probably still applies - science/engineering/math type grad degrees pay off more than others.
  - swernli 16y ago
    Funny, because this particular article seems to argue the opposite. Two places in particular stand out to me where the article raised the specter of automation and outsourcing to scare people away from engineering-type jobs: >Meanwhile, well-paying white-collar jobs such as computer programming have become vulnerable to outsourcing to foreign countries. and >But he offers this advice: "Don't train yourself or your children [in work] that a computer can do or a smart kid in China or India can do. Because that's ferocious competition." Why the gloom and doom over science/engineering/math fields, when it's those fields that other articles have pointed to as the few with strong job prospects? There is some serious inconsistency between this article and other articles that have been posted around here lately, and the general tone leads me to believe this was a last minute fluff piece put together by someone who wasn't really paying very close attention.
socksy 16y ago
It's interesting that the value of a degree is measured in increases in income later on in your life. The traditional role of universities was as a place of learning and for the advancement of knowledge through academia, not as a social engineering tool.
- hga 16y ago
  Well, as long as universities still do that (and they do, by and large), what's wrong with them extending their mission to prepare people for our current more complicated world where a lot of people need to learn more stuff than any normal high school will teach? My Silent Generation father got a business degree at the University of Missouri in the mid-50s and that made a big difference in the '60s (and beyond) after he did his service in the Navy. E.g. he was able to take a company public and make it more successful, where in an extreme and unusual counter example, some quasi-competitors status wise he'd gone to high school with didn't have the skills needed to keep their company afloat and tried pulling tricks that ended with them getting some vacation time in Club Fed.
naz 16y ago
If you want to emigrate it makes life a little easier.
vecter 16y ago
Yes.
glen 16y ago
Yes, until it is disrupted.
T_S_ 16y ago
If you of education as teaching you how to get what you want, then go ahead and run the numbers to decide. I believe it's better to think of it as helping you learn what to want. In that case the numbers won't help you much and that the humanities are probably undervalued. Case in point. What is the value of studying history? Nobody is going to pay you to vote to avoid the mistakes of the past. So it will never show up in a study.
phreanix 16y ago
There is a difference between a college degree and a college education. While I can say with a degree of confidence that experience has given me enough of a skillset to hold my own against most college grads, there are things that I wish I'd learned in an academic setting.

15 points by edw519 16y ago

A client is currently paying me a rather substantial amount of money to come up with an authoritatively presented answer to this question, using BLS data and some programming. (It figures that the number crunching would take one week and the presentation layer would take three. sigh) Spoiler: College degrees are still worth it. Some are rather substantially more worth it than others. If you feel yours isn't, you almost certainly aren't majored in engineering or (certain flavors of) geology.

jerf 16y ago
If it is possible to share the results with us, I'd like to see it when you are done. I recognize that may not be possible. I think I have a good bead on the general results, but specifics are nice, and concrete charts could even be helpful for talking to college-bound seniors about what it is they need to be doing in a way that "here, let me share my intuitions" aren't.
- patio11 16y ago
  Thanks Jerf. They've previously indicated that they'd be thrilled to have me show it off, and I'd be happy to write a "how I built this" or something for my blog linking to the results. Fair warning: it is marketing material, in much the same sense that one of the NYT's data visualizations is marketing, except they have a business model which benefits in a more direct fashion than the NYT does.
carbocation 16y ago
I agree with you based on my intuition. I want to make a point that's not even a quibble with what you're doing (since you're working within fixed constraints) but I feel is worth raising anyways. The BLS data that I'm familiar with are not granular enough to decisively reach the conclusion that a college degree is still worth it. For example, the BLS data do not allow you to even begin to guess if colleges are merely admitting people who could have directly entered High Paying Job X even had they not attended college. Take Princeton, for example. Does a Princeton degree add income potential, or is it simply the case that people who get into Princeton are so smart that they have lots of income potential? The only way to conclusively know this is to identify people who were admitted to Princeton (and thus met their entry criteria) but decided not to go to college at all. (Even then, there would be selection bias here, since those choosing not to attend probably differ qualitatively from those who attended.) Then, look at standardized lifetime earnings of both cohorts. Do Princeton grads do better than Princeton admits who decided to forgo college? The best test would be a randomized controlled trial but... heh... that's just not going to happen since there's likely harm without likely benefit if you're in the no-college cohort.
- euroclydon 16y ago
  Good points, but your just speaking about innate talent regardless of a college degree. You're forgetting family and social connections regardless of talent or a degree.
  - carbocation 16y ago
    True! Although the methods I'm proposing would capture those, too. (Without quantifying connections and family, the reason why wouldn't be captured, but the difference itself would be.)
InclinedPlane 16y ago
This runs into a correlation/causation problem though. The sort of people who are interested and dedicated enough in a subject to dedicate N years of their life and a significant amount of money to pursue a college degree in that major may also have the drive to succeed in their chosen field regardless of degree (or to pursue education in other ways). I doubt this is entirely true, but it's an important effect to keep in mind.

vaksel 16y ago

the way I see it, is if you are doing engineering or any other technical major, then yes it still is. but humanities etc is a waste of money unfortunately our culture has made getting a degree a prerequisite(everyone got one), so now you need a college degree for jobs you wouldn't have needed one in the past. before, having a college degree was a means to increase your income substantially, now it's just a checkmark that you got $40-160K in debt for.

_delirium 16y ago
I think your second point actually points to why the first might be wrong. There are huge ranges of jobs that a humanities degree qualifies you for that you can't get without one--- even a bunch of stuff that's unrelated to the degree, like HR or various secretarial jobs. In engineering, if you have no degree, you at least have a chance of convincing someone that you're a great engineer by doing independent work, and even large companies like Microsoft and Google do hire people without degrees. In the humanities, though, it's very hard without a degree to convince someone that you're "just as good" as other applicants who have degrees; you generally won't even get a second look. So I'd almost say the opposite: that if you aren't going to do engineering, a degree is definitely worth it, but if you are, it might be more questionable, and depends on what exactly you want to do, and what your outside-out-school credentials are.
- vecter 16y ago
  I find it hard to believe that a person could get the same engineering education on their own than at a good engineering university. From a practical point of view, I see what you mean, in that, an HR department weighing two candidates would probably prefer the one with a(ny) college degree. Frankly, that almost goes without saying. However, I think the same is much more true in engineering. I'm not only talking about programming shops. After all, computer science/computer engineering isn't the only form of engineering. There's material science, mechanical engineering, civil engineering, aerospace engineering, etc., and I simply can't believe that a place like Boeing would seriously consider you for an engineering position unless you have at least a bachelors in the relevant field. Software is a rare field in that one can become competent without having a "related" college degree. You can certainly ship products without majoring in CS. On the other hand, I don't think you can build planes or bridges without a degree in aerospace or mechanical engineering.

bradleyland 16y ago

Is a Hitachi EC25E compressor with NV45AB2S nailgun worth it? That would depend upon whether or not I intend to be a roofer. I was always suspicious of the assumption that a college degree was a default requirement for success in the professional world. That is -- in part -- why I rejected the notion and decided to drop out of college after year one. A college degree is a means to an end, not an end in and of itself. Too many educators assume that if you are "smart", you must go to college. As if the degree you receive is some sort of product that stands alone. The fact is, you can't sell a degree on an open market, because the knowledge you gain isn't transferrable. Circle back to the old argument of whether $50k would be better spent on a 4-year degree or some form of traditional investment. The only factual answer is "it depends". When you go to college, you buy experience, knowledge, and a certificate that says, "I know how to see something through to the end." In my view, the significance of the latter has diminished significantly in recent years. When college becomes something you do by default, the effort is no longer superlative; it is average. This puts the emphasis more on the knowledge aspect, and sure enough, knowledge heavy degrees deliver more value. I once had dinner with a client where one of the VPs asked me where I went to college. When I replied that I had attended for one year, then decided my efforts were better spent elsewhere, she replied with, "Oh, you seemed smarter than that." It stung a little, but in the conversation that followed, the majority of the executives with which I was meeting came down in favor of my decision, rather than against it. This conversation taught me a valuable lesson. Doing what everyone tells you is the "right thing to do" isn't always the best answer. There are no one-size-fits-all answers to life. You have to evaluate each scenario objectively based on the circumstances at that moment, then reach your own conclusions.

spotter 16y ago
> asked me where I went to college Political protip: Answer his question. "I went to X University". Because... you did, didn't you? And if he asks you what you majored in: "I studied Y. But somehow I ended up in this job! hearty laugh". I have a degree but it amazes me that people who didn't go to college are never able to glide past this one. It seems like the only people who really ever bring up dropping out is the dropout. Only a very special kind of asshole will continue to press you about graduation dates etc. Having said that,... I have a sneaking suspicion that people who dropped out like bringing it up just to say that they dropped out. You like bringing it up and debating it and then having people "agree" with you eventually, because you seek validation for the decisions you made. It's called having a chip on your shoulder and the guy who said "oh you seemed smarter than that" was clearly fucking with you cause he's seen it a million times before.

robojamie 16y ago

Why is this such a consistent meme with the Hacker News/Slashdot crowd? Do you think Eric Schmidt regrets his decision to pursue a Ph.D.?

euroclydon 16y ago
How's college going?
SkyMarshal 16y ago
Think we're taking undergrad only here, not graduate degrees. Though I suspect the general finding probably still applies - science/engineering/math type grad degrees pay off more than others.
- swernli 16y ago
  Funny, because this particular article seems to argue the opposite. Two places in particular stand out to me where the article raised the specter of automation and outsourcing to scare people away from engineering-type jobs: >Meanwhile, well-paying white-collar jobs such as computer programming have become vulnerable to outsourcing to foreign countries. and >But he offers this advice: "Don't train yourself or your children [in work] that a computer can do or a smart kid in China or India can do. Because that's ferocious competition." Why the gloom and doom over science/engineering/math fields, when it's those fields that other articles have pointed to as the few with strong job prospects? There is some serious inconsistency between this article and other articles that have been posted around here lately, and the general tone leads me to believe this was a last minute fluff piece put together by someone who wasn't really paying very close attention.

socksy 16y ago

It's interesting that the value of a degree is measured in increases in income later on in your life. The traditional role of universities was as a place of learning and for the advancement of knowledge through academia, not as a social engineering tool.

hga 16y ago
Well, as long as universities still do that (and they do, by and large), what's wrong with them extending their mission to prepare people for our current more complicated world where a lot of people need to learn more stuff than any normal high school will teach? My Silent Generation father got a business degree at the University of Missouri in the mid-50s and that made a big difference in the '60s (and beyond) after he did his service in the Navy. E.g. he was able to take a company public and make it more successful, where in an extreme and unusual counter example, some quasi-competitors status wise he'd gone to high school with didn't have the skills needed to keep their company afloat and tried pulling tricks that ended with them getting some vacation time in Club Fed.

naz 16y ago

If you want to emigrate it makes life a little easier.

vecter 16y ago

Yes.

glen 16y ago

Yes, until it is disrupted.

T_S_ 16y ago

If you of education as teaching you how to get what you want, then go ahead and run the numbers to decide. I believe it's better to think of it as helping you learn what to want. In that case the numbers won't help you much and that the humanities are probably undervalued. Case in point. What is the value of studying history? Nobody is going to pay you to vote to avoid the mistakes of the past. So it will never show up in a study.

phreanix 16y ago

There is a difference between a college degree and a college education. While I can say with a degree of confidence that experience has given me enough of a skillset to hold my own against most college grads, there are things that I wish I'd learned in an academic setting.