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I have a degree from a no-name university in New Zealand. I'd do it again for a few pragmatic reasons. 1: Lots of companies will reject you on sight without a

I have a degree from a no-name university in New Zealand. I'd do it again for a few pragmatic reasons. 1: Lots of companies will reject you on sight without a degree. I don't think it's a good thing, but it is reality. 2: With a degree your ability to move overseas dramatically improves. I moved to America after graduating. I flat out couldn't have done that without a degree. Points based systems immigration systems like New Zealand have dramatic bonuses for people with degrees. 3: You don't have to jump through the hoops and explain why you don't have a degree all the time. Stupid reason I know, but it's something I've seen friends without degrees have to do constantly - and not just in career situations. As I mentioned, I went to a no-name university. If you live in NZ, you'll know it. If you're an American, chances are, you've never heard of it. But because I have a degree, it doesn't ever really come up. 4: The cost isn't that bad, when you spread it out over a career. My degree & living costs cost about $60k NZD (~$40k USD). That's $1k USD / year, or $.50 per hour. Considering how my income has multiplied in the few years since I've graduated (SF wages help tremendously here), the actual cost is barely anything, even when you control for the opportunity cost of studying. Where I think College returns make a lot less sense • Paying out of state tuition for lifestyle reasons, when you're going into a relatively low paid field afterwards (e.g. teaching). • Paying private school tuition at a school without a strong reputation • Grad school, in general, seems to be a rip off

jhoechtl 7y ago
What you are portraing is your exploitation of your countries education system for your own benefit. The NZ tax payer invested in yours for your future ROI into NZ and you put this ROI in your sack.
- barry-cotter 7y ago
  The possibility of migrating to richer countries causes greater investment in education. https://appam.confex.com/appam/2018/webprogram/Paper27374.html https://appam.confex.com/appam/2018/webprogram/Paper27374.ht... > Using a new administrative dataset combining the universe of permanent migrant departures from the Philippines with the universe of institution-level post-secondary enrollment and graduation, we show that enrollment and graduation in nursing programs increased in response to demand from abroad for nurses. The supply of nursing programs increased to accommodate this. The increase in nursing enrollment and graduation during the period was much larger than the increase in nurse migration and contributed to a brain gain
  - redis_mlc 7y ago
    Uh, that's the Philippines. Their economy runs on remittances, and the population is mostly under 18, so the government wants graduates to emigrate and send money home. They even have the OFW department to monitor treatment of their emigrant workers, and provide a parallel immigration office. Possibly the worst citation ever. :)
- seem_2211 7y ago
  And I'm not going to feel bad about it either!
  - JshWright 7y ago
    It definitely changes the "is it worth it" math though, so it's not as relevant to the original article.
anonymoushn 7y ago
For knowledge workers who could have begun a similar career without college, the cost of the degree should also include the money they would have made by working 4 additional years at the end of their career (probably one of the highest points?)
- tome 7y ago
  > For intelligence workers You probably mean "knowledge workers" :)
  - anonymoushn 7y ago
    sure fixed
- mygo 7y ago
  The Opportunity Cost would have been incurred while they were in college, not 30+ years after. There are too many variables in play when projecting that far out in the future, but you can make good estimates as to what would have happened in the past as an alternative to the 4 years spent in college.
  - anonymoushn 7y ago
    I didn't get compensated as if I had 4 YoE when I had 0.
- seem_2211 7y ago
  I've done the math on the opportunity cost of how much I would have made if I hadn't gone to university. It was about $120k over 4 years, and raised the opportunity cost to about $160k (I borrowed $60k, but some of that money was for living expenses, that would have been covered by working full time). I was earning about $16/$17 per hour at the time. It increased the jump I needed to make from $.50 per hour to $2 per hour.
  - anonymoushn 7y ago
    Alright. I probably would have taken a similar job to the one I actually took 3 years earlier and followed a similar career path the whole time. That is, I wouldn't add 3 additional years of entry level IC work, I would add 3 additional years of senior IC work or better. Right now I'm working for half of prevailing wages for senior ICs in exchange for living in a civilized country, so half of prevailing wages * 3 years - taxes is around $400,000. If I ever move back to the US or get promoted it will be pretty easy to get to an opportunity cost of seven figures of post-tax money for 3 years of math degree.
IkmoIkmo 7y ago
I'd say this is spot on, particularly the part about going to college for lifestyle reasons, combined with a field that is low-paying, and a choice of uni that isn't particularly cheap, is a bad combination. I'm not sure I agree on grad school, perhaps you could elaborate? It's true that it's very much hit or miss. But my experience is that there's plenty of grad schools which offer 1 - 1.5 year Masters' and tuition fees that aren't abnormal. Here too your second point rings true, either you pay a lot of money for a good rep (e.g. if you go into BigLaw, assuming you don't burn out, it gives a high return rate), or you pay little for a no-name university, and then I feel grad school absolutely does come at a premium. Compared to a 3-4 year Bachelor's degree, it's usually a relatively quick program with potentially bigger upside, especially if paid for by your employer. I think what most students underestimate is just how many of them fail to finish the standard path. Almost half of students don't finish their bachelor's within six years due to delays and changing paths, and a lot of them quit entirely. I think college makes sense if you know what you're looking to study, why, are dedicated to completing it, and able to. A lot of students go into fields of study as a teenager, literally never having had a 5 minute conversation with a person actually working in the field, having spent no time looking at the income tables, or indeed not actually considering the field at all, but just wanting to become a college student. It's these students who probably drag down the stats quite a lot. I've seen fairly unimpressive people go into a business course, work their ass off, do various internships, and land high-paying jobs. And I've seen smart kids start the same business course, muck around, graduate after 6-7 years and land a mediocre job that doesn't really require any particular degree. At the end of the day the student is still the most important factor here, and by the time they head to college, it's often already 'too late' for institutions to turn an B student into an A student, without the intrinsic motivation. There's lots more room in primary/secondary school for that, that's really where it's at. What college you head to after is less important in my opinion.
- seem_2211 7y ago
  Rolling deep into anecdotal avenue, but my thoughts on grad school • Lucrative fields like medicine & dentistry saddle you with enormous debts (often in the mid six figures) that take multiple years to pay off. The ROI is probably worth it if you work to 65, but you're locked in for easily twenty years, and such high debt levels make taking risks very difficult. • Lucrative, but more populated fields like law & business also often saddle you with enormous debt, and for these degrees you need a school with a strong brand name to get a look in anywhere (if you do an MBA and you aren't at Harvard/Stanford/Wharton, and a very few others, what's the point?). • In a lot of fields (liberal arts/social sciences) what's the point of getting a masters? Do you get an earning premium? Is the earning premium worth the opportunity cost? I'd be surprised if the answer is often yes. I have a friend who was a teacher and is now studying to be a families therapist. Lovely person, but absolutely terrible choice. Years of additional study and debt, and no hope of a future earning substantially more money to show for it all. I agree completely with your points about teenagers not doing enough due diligence before they study.
bobcostas55 7y ago
>4: The cost isn't that bad, when you spread it out over a career. My degree & living costs cost about $60k NZD (~$40k USD). That's $1k USD / year, or $.50 per hour. Considering how my income has multiplied in the few years since I've graduated (SF wages help tremendously here), the actual cost is barely anything, even when you control for the opportunity cost of studying. You also need to take into account the opportunity cost. You could have been working at the time, earning $XXk/year.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- seem_2211 7y ago
  Yep, I was giving up about $30k a year ($120k / 4 years). I was working in a supermarket. $2 more an hour needed over the course of my career to make the juice worth the squeeze. Nothing to write home about.
dominotw 7y ago
> • Grad school, in general, seems to be a rip off In usa they are used as a path to immigration. 90% of grad students are foreigners.
- jacquesm 7y ago
  > 90% of grad students are foreigners. Nowhere near that in total over all fields and even in STEM where the percentage is the highest it is about 80%. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/03/education/edlife/american-graduate-student-stem.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/03/education/edlife/american...
xenihn 7y ago
Moving overseas is the top benefit of having a relevant (not just any) degree IMO. I'm grateful that American cities are still the best places in the world to work as a software engineer, but that could always change. I'm hoping a non-STEM degree combined with 6+ years of experience will still let me move around easily.
walleeee 7y ago
Grad school is often funded in the U.S. (PhD at least, masters not so much)
- seem_2211 7y ago
  Good point, I was more thinking Med school / Law school / MBA / masters level study.
- magicsmoke 7y ago
  Even then, depending on your speciality the economic return from a PhD is iffy since you're losing 5+ years of industry wages and experience.
  - sgt101 7y ago
    I did my Ph.D. to get access to the interesting work that I wanted to do. This work was / is actually less well paid than a standard CS career (in the UK this is IT contracting in the City of London/Finance sector - rapidly £600 a day, often much more). But, if I had done that I think I would probably have had to quit after 10 years, and I would probably have ended up doing something like teaching. This would arguably have been a social good (depending on how good a teacher I might have been) but in terms of pay back I think that the fact that I've managed more than 20 years and am still going is clearly a good bet financially. The seniority that I have in the industry now means that I am able to command good remuneration and the work is as interesting as ever, but more stressful!
  - orange3xchicken 7y ago
    Few people pursuing PhDs are doing so to maximize earning potential. Disregarding the mental toll of a PhD (one problem being that too many people want to be paid to think than there are available positions), I totally disagree with the parent poster's claim that graduate school is a rip-off. Just being in an an academic environment, being able to take classes, & studying around really smart people and doing research at the highest academic level is a really great experience & makes the stress worth it.
amiga_500 7y ago
You didn't go to uni in the USA and the paper is by the St Louis Fed on USA grads. You took your degree in a country with far lower inequality and better inward education investment, and then jumped over to work in a country that doesn't tax people enough to support USA students. I'd imagine that is pretty good value.
- rayiner 7y ago
  You are incorrect about your assessment of US education expenditure. Governments in the US spend a similar percentage of GDP on tertiary education as New Zealand: https://jobmarketmonitor.com/2016/09/23/tertiary-education-countries-are-finding-other-ways-besides-public-spending-to-fund-it-oecd-finds https://jobmarketmonitor.com/2016/09/23/tertiary-education-c.... Both spend in the 4-5% range of GDP in terms of public money. (We spend a higher percentage of GDP, again just public money, than countries with “free” education like Germany.) Additionally, because US GDP per capita is 65% higher than New Zealand adjusted for cost of living, we spend far more than New Zealand per person in absolute terms.
- rb808 7y ago
  The good thing too is if you get really sick you can go back home for the free healthcare. The US really benefits from immigrants that were trained by poorer countries. I too moved here, my chronically ill relative is still at home.
- seem_2211 7y ago
  I went to university in a country with a Gini coefficient of .35, and now live in a country with a Gini coefficient of .39 (See OECD link below) The funny thing is, my student loan is one of the highest out of my American friend group† (although very normal amongst my NZ peers). Unlike the US, there was a lot less much in the way of financial aid/scholarships available, so sticker price was what people actually paid. https://data.oecd.org/inequality/income-inequality.htm https://data.oecd.org/inequality/income-inequality.htm † For people with undergraduate degrees
  - amiga_500 7y ago
toast0 7y ago
> Grad school, in general, seems to be a rip off Grad school is often much better for immigration scoring than a bachelors. Especially if you can manage to do the graduate degree in the country you want to immigrate to.
tfigment 7y ago
Agree with most of this comment (couldn't read article due to blocking or something). Can confirm the blacklist on no degree. I had one that had like 10 years experience in and perfect fit. When HR found out that he did not finish his degree it was over with no recourse. Also Masters (MBA is different) is useless in most fields unless used to get a visa or something. Usually you are foregoing wages with few additional benefits. Might be slightly easier to get first job. Not sure source of degree matters as long as accredited. Certainly there can be upside like same alma mater but I rarely care but will admit to negative bias to Univ of Phoenix but interview and work history trump everything. Having said that BS or BE have merit if the student actually takes it seriously. I learned a whole lot that I'm not sure I would have learned through self study alone (a least around that time).
- mantap 7y ago
  You can look at it as a positive too. Having no degree as a programmer means that overly bureaucratic workplaces are filtered out and your chances of ending up at a workplace that has a minimum of BS are increased. Only works for programmers though. Everybody else should obviously get degrees.
soperj 7y ago
What are you talking about? Otago is what dreams are made of!
- seem_2211 7y ago
  Haha, especially if you like burning couches! I went to Waikato.
  - 2sk21 7y ago
    Actually, thanks to Weka, I knew about Waikato University :-)
- te_chris 7y ago
  Otaaaaaaaagoooooo! Wouldn’t change it for the world. Local undergrad is way more sensible. If you want to be elite, kill it locally then do a masters at Oxbridge or whatever.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]

jhoechtl 7y ago

What you are portraing is your exploitation of your countries education system for your own benefit. The NZ tax payer invested in yours for your future ROI into NZ and you put this ROI in your sack.

barry-cotter 7y ago
The possibility of migrating to richer countries causes greater investment in education. https://appam.confex.com/appam/2018/webprogram/Paper27374.html https://appam.confex.com/appam/2018/webprogram/Paper27374.ht... > Using a new administrative dataset combining the universe of permanent migrant departures from the Philippines with the universe of institution-level post-secondary enrollment and graduation, we show that enrollment and graduation in nursing programs increased in response to demand from abroad for nurses. The supply of nursing programs increased to accommodate this. The increase in nursing enrollment and graduation during the period was much larger than the increase in nurse migration and contributed to a brain gain
- redis_mlc 7y ago
  Uh, that's the Philippines. Their economy runs on remittances, and the population is mostly under 18, so the government wants graduates to emigrate and send money home. They even have the OFW department to monitor treatment of their emigrant workers, and provide a parallel immigration office. Possibly the worst citation ever. :)
seem_2211 7y ago
And I'm not going to feel bad about it either!
- JshWright 7y ago
  It definitely changes the "is it worth it" math though, so it's not as relevant to the original article.

anonymoushn 7y ago

For knowledge workers who could have begun a similar career without college, the cost of the degree should also include the money they would have made by working 4 additional years at the end of their career (probably one of the highest points?)

tome 7y ago
> For intelligence workers You probably mean "knowledge workers" :)
- anonymoushn 7y ago
  sure fixed
mygo 7y ago
The Opportunity Cost would have been incurred while they were in college, not 30+ years after. There are too many variables in play when projecting that far out in the future, but you can make good estimates as to what would have happened in the past as an alternative to the 4 years spent in college.
- anonymoushn 7y ago
  I didn't get compensated as if I had 4 YoE when I had 0.
seem_2211 7y ago
I've done the math on the opportunity cost of how much I would have made if I hadn't gone to university. It was about $120k over 4 years, and raised the opportunity cost to about $160k (I borrowed $60k, but some of that money was for living expenses, that would have been covered by working full time). I was earning about $16/$17 per hour at the time. It increased the jump I needed to make from $.50 per hour to $2 per hour.
- anonymoushn 7y ago
  Alright. I probably would have taken a similar job to the one I actually took 3 years earlier and followed a similar career path the whole time. That is, I wouldn't add 3 additional years of entry level IC work, I would add 3 additional years of senior IC work or better. Right now I'm working for half of prevailing wages for senior ICs in exchange for living in a civilized country, so half of prevailing wages * 3 years - taxes is around $400,000. If I ever move back to the US or get promoted it will be pretty easy to get to an opportunity cost of seven figures of post-tax money for 3 years of math degree.

IkmoIkmo 7y ago

I'd say this is spot on, particularly the part about going to college for lifestyle reasons, combined with a field that is low-paying, and a choice of uni that isn't particularly cheap, is a bad combination. I'm not sure I agree on grad school, perhaps you could elaborate? It's true that it's very much hit or miss. But my experience is that there's plenty of grad schools which offer 1 - 1.5 year Masters' and tuition fees that aren't abnormal. Here too your second point rings true, either you pay a lot of money for a good rep (e.g. if you go into BigLaw, assuming you don't burn out, it gives a high return rate), or you pay little for a no-name university, and then I feel grad school absolutely does come at a premium. Compared to a 3-4 year Bachelor's degree, it's usually a relatively quick program with potentially bigger upside, especially if paid for by your employer. I think what most students underestimate is just how many of them fail to finish the standard path. Almost half of students don't finish their bachelor's within six years due to delays and changing paths, and a lot of them quit entirely. I think college makes sense if you know what you're looking to study, why, are dedicated to completing it, and able to. A lot of students go into fields of study as a teenager, literally never having had a 5 minute conversation with a person actually working in the field, having spent no time looking at the income tables, or indeed not actually considering the field at all, but just wanting to become a college student. It's these students who probably drag down the stats quite a lot. I've seen fairly unimpressive people go into a business course, work their ass off, do various internships, and land high-paying jobs. And I've seen smart kids start the same business course, muck around, graduate after 6-7 years and land a mediocre job that doesn't really require any particular degree. At the end of the day the student is still the most important factor here, and by the time they head to college, it's often already 'too late' for institutions to turn an B student into an A student, without the intrinsic motivation. There's lots more room in primary/secondary school for that, that's really where it's at. What college you head to after is less important in my opinion.

seem_2211 7y ago
Rolling deep into anecdotal avenue, but my thoughts on grad school • Lucrative fields like medicine & dentistry saddle you with enormous debts (often in the mid six figures) that take multiple years to pay off. The ROI is probably worth it if you work to 65, but you're locked in for easily twenty years, and such high debt levels make taking risks very difficult. • Lucrative, but more populated fields like law & business also often saddle you with enormous debt, and for these degrees you need a school with a strong brand name to get a look in anywhere (if you do an MBA and you aren't at Harvard/Stanford/Wharton, and a very few others, what's the point?). • In a lot of fields (liberal arts/social sciences) what's the point of getting a masters? Do you get an earning premium? Is the earning premium worth the opportunity cost? I'd be surprised if the answer is often yes. I have a friend who was a teacher and is now studying to be a families therapist. Lovely person, but absolutely terrible choice. Years of additional study and debt, and no hope of a future earning substantially more money to show for it all. I agree completely with your points about teenagers not doing enough due diligence before they study.

bobcostas55 7y ago

>4: The cost isn't that bad, when you spread it out over a career. My degree & living costs cost about $60k NZD (~$40k USD). That's $1k USD / year, or $.50 per hour. Considering how my income has multiplied in the few years since I've graduated (SF wages help tremendously here), the actual cost is barely anything, even when you control for the opportunity cost of studying. You also need to take into account the opportunity cost. You could have been working at the time, earning $XXk/year.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
seem_2211 7y ago
Yep, I was giving up about $30k a year ($120k / 4 years). I was working in a supermarket. $2 more an hour needed over the course of my career to make the juice worth the squeeze. Nothing to write home about.

dominotw 7y ago

> • Grad school, in general, seems to be a rip off In usa they are used as a path to immigration. 90% of grad students are foreigners.

jacquesm 7y ago
> 90% of grad students are foreigners. Nowhere near that in total over all fields and even in STEM where the percentage is the highest it is about 80%. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/03/education/edlife/american-graduate-student-stem.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/03/education/edlife/american...

xenihn 7y ago

Moving overseas is the top benefit of having a relevant (not just any) degree IMO. I'm grateful that American cities are still the best places in the world to work as a software engineer, but that could always change. I'm hoping a non-STEM degree combined with 6+ years of experience will still let me move around easily.

walleeee 7y ago

Grad school is often funded in the U.S. (PhD at least, masters not so much)

seem_2211 7y ago
Good point, I was more thinking Med school / Law school / MBA / masters level study.
magicsmoke 7y ago
Even then, depending on your speciality the economic return from a PhD is iffy since you're losing 5+ years of industry wages and experience.
- sgt101 7y ago
  I did my Ph.D. to get access to the interesting work that I wanted to do. This work was / is actually less well paid than a standard CS career (in the UK this is IT contracting in the City of London/Finance sector - rapidly £600 a day, often much more). But, if I had done that I think I would probably have had to quit after 10 years, and I would probably have ended up doing something like teaching. This would arguably have been a social good (depending on how good a teacher I might have been) but in terms of pay back I think that the fact that I've managed more than 20 years and am still going is clearly a good bet financially. The seniority that I have in the industry now means that I am able to command good remuneration and the work is as interesting as ever, but more stressful!
- orange3xchicken 7y ago
  Few people pursuing PhDs are doing so to maximize earning potential. Disregarding the mental toll of a PhD (one problem being that too many people want to be paid to think than there are available positions), I totally disagree with the parent poster's claim that graduate school is a rip-off. Just being in an an academic environment, being able to take classes, & studying around really smart people and doing research at the highest academic level is a really great experience & makes the stress worth it.

amiga_500 7y ago

You didn't go to uni in the USA and the paper is by the St Louis Fed on USA grads. You took your degree in a country with far lower inequality and better inward education investment, and then jumped over to work in a country that doesn't tax people enough to support USA students. I'd imagine that is pretty good value.

rayiner 7y ago
You are incorrect about your assessment of US education expenditure. Governments in the US spend a similar percentage of GDP on tertiary education as New Zealand: https://jobmarketmonitor.com/2016/09/23/tertiary-education-countries-are-finding-other-ways-besides-public-spending-to-fund-it-oecd-finds https://jobmarketmonitor.com/2016/09/23/tertiary-education-c.... Both spend in the 4-5% range of GDP in terms of public money. (We spend a higher percentage of GDP, again just public money, than countries with “free” education like Germany.) Additionally, because US GDP per capita is 65% higher than New Zealand adjusted for cost of living, we spend far more than New Zealand per person in absolute terms.
rb808 7y ago
The good thing too is if you get really sick you can go back home for the free healthcare. The US really benefits from immigrants that were trained by poorer countries. I too moved here, my chronically ill relative is still at home.
seem_2211 7y ago
I went to university in a country with a Gini coefficient of .35, and now live in a country with a Gini coefficient of .39 (See OECD link below) The funny thing is, my student loan is one of the highest out of my American friend group† (although very normal amongst my NZ peers). Unlike the US, there was a lot less much in the way of financial aid/scholarships available, so sticker price was what people actually paid. https://data.oecd.org/inequality/income-inequality.htm https://data.oecd.org/inequality/income-inequality.htm † For people with undergraduate degrees
- amiga_500 7y ago

toast0 7y ago

> Grad school, in general, seems to be a rip off Grad school is often much better for immigration scoring than a bachelors. Especially if you can manage to do the graduate degree in the country you want to immigrate to.

tfigment 7y ago

Agree with most of this comment (couldn't read article due to blocking or something). Can confirm the blacklist on no degree. I had one that had like 10 years experience in and perfect fit. When HR found out that he did not finish his degree it was over with no recourse. Also Masters (MBA is different) is useless in most fields unless used to get a visa or something. Usually you are foregoing wages with few additional benefits. Might be slightly easier to get first job. Not sure source of degree matters as long as accredited. Certainly there can be upside like same alma mater but I rarely care but will admit to negative bias to Univ of Phoenix but interview and work history trump everything. Having said that BS or BE have merit if the student actually takes it seriously. I learned a whole lot that I'm not sure I would have learned through self study alone (a least around that time).

mantap 7y ago
You can look at it as a positive too. Having no degree as a programmer means that overly bureaucratic workplaces are filtered out and your chances of ending up at a workplace that has a minimum of BS are increased. Only works for programmers though. Everybody else should obviously get degrees.

soperj 7y ago

What are you talking about? Otago is what dreams are made of!

seem_2211 7y ago
Haha, especially if you like burning couches! I went to Waikato.
- 2sk21 7y ago
  Actually, thanks to Weka, I knew about Waikato University :-)
te_chris 7y ago
Otaaaaaaaagoooooo! Wouldn’t change it for the world. Local undergrad is way more sensible. If you want to be elite, kill it locally then do a masters at Oxbridge or whatever.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]