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This is a very poor article. College is, on average, worth it [1]. What the article tries to articulate is that we're not seeing a comparable return on investme

This is a very poor article. College is, on average, worth it [1]. What the article tries to articulate is that we're not seeing a comparable return on investment for students from lower-income families. This is tied to worse graduation rates. As one example, community college students graduate at abysmal rates [2]. This is actually no big secret to schools. There is a big focus on trying to improve retention rates. What might be interesting to the HN crowd is that there are many startups trying to improve the situation in different ways, like using analytics to identify at-risk students earlier [3] or getting students engaged in campus events [4]. It's a tough problem, but colleges are incentivized to fix it - higher retention leads to collecting more tuition. [1] https://cew.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/collegepayoff-complete.pdf https://cew.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/colleg... [2] https://nscresearchcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/SignatureReport13.pdf https://nscresearchcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/SignatureRe... [3] https://www.civitaslearning.com/ https://www.civitaslearning.com/ [4] https://www.oohlalamobile.com/ https://www.oohlalamobile.com/

seem_2211 8y ago
College is completely worth it^, in that it opens a ton of opportunities that tend to be closed without it. College is more about social signaling and entering into the professional class than it is about learning and scholarship etc. I'm not a fan of community colleges, in that they substantially increase your likelihood of not graduating, or at best, not graduating on time (only 39% of Community College students graduate in SIX years, which is shocking) [1]. I know it's a broadly popular point on the internet to suggest going to a CC to save money, but the risk factor is never mentioned. I didn't go to University in America (although I now live in SF). If I were 17 again, and growing up in the US, I'd go to the best college I was able to get into, regardless of the cost. As an employee, Silicon Valley is sort of a meritocracy, but a degree is the price of admission, unless you're very very good (and even then, you've made it harder to job change). Go through this week's funding announcements on TechCrunch and check where the founders went from, and I'll bet you my last dollar, you'll see a couple from Stanford, a couple from Harvard, and then maybe one or two from somewhere else. ^provided you graduate on time, and take advantage of networking opportunities while you're studying. [1] http://hechingerreport.org/new-book-addresses-low-community-college-graduation-rates/ http://hechingerreport.org/new-book-addresses-low-community-...

seem_2211 8y ago

College is completely worth it^, in that it opens a ton of opportunities that tend to be closed without it. College is more about social signaling and entering into the professional class than it is about learning and scholarship etc. I'm not a fan of community colleges, in that they substantially increase your likelihood of not graduating, or at best, not graduating on time (only 39% of Community College students graduate in SIX years, which is shocking) [1]. I know it's a broadly popular point on the internet to suggest going to a CC to save money, but the risk factor is never mentioned. I didn't go to University in America (although I now live in SF). If I were 17 again, and growing up in the US, I'd go to the best college I was able to get into, regardless of the cost. As an employee, Silicon Valley is sort of a meritocracy, but a degree is the price of admission, unless you're very very good (and even then, you've made it harder to job change). Go through this week's funding announcements on TechCrunch and check where the founders went from, and I'll bet you my last dollar, you'll see a couple from Stanford, a couple from Harvard, and then maybe one or two from somewhere else. ^provided you graduate on time, and take advantage of networking opportunities while you're studying. [1] http://hechingerreport.org/new-book-addresses-low-community-college-graduation-rates/ http://hechingerreport.org/new-book-addresses-low-community-...