6 ms·

This is kind of a weird mix of points. Ignoring his political axe-grinding, I think the value of a college degree is increasingly in question for many fields be

This is kind of a weird mix of points. Ignoring his political axe-grinding, I think the value of a college degree is increasingly in question for many fields because the price has risen wildly for decades without a corresponding increase in market value. (Except perhaps for elite-institution degrees, which are more about the brand and the network than what people actually learn.) I think we haven't seen at least a partial collapse only because most American companies are bad at hiring, bad at investing in workers, and bad at keeping them. But imagine a company where programmers are happy and tend to say for years. That company might do just as well, or perhaps better, running an in-house boot camp and apprenticeship program as by hiring new grads.

zdragnar 5y ago
Price and value are decoupled for college degrees. STEM students are subsidized by liberal arts students, and many liberal arts degrees are not, by themselves, economically valuable (I said this as someone with just such a degree).
- itake 5y ago
  > STEM students are subsidized by liberal arts students Can you provide more context for this? How is the cost of teaching a STEM student higher than the cost of a liberal arts student? The classrooms are roughly the same. STEM student labs might be more expensive to manage, but that equipment is/(can be?) funded by research grants.
  - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
    STEM professors have to be paid a lot more than liberal arts professors (due to competition for STEM talent). Equipment for teaching isn’t covered under research grants, but might come from overhead on those grants, but more likely from donations (from big corps), grants, or tuition.
    - google234123 5y ago
      Business professors are paid even more.
    - itake 5y ago
      The national center for labor statistics says labor costs are about 30% of the spend [0]. STEM programs also include Liberal Arts courses, so only a fraction of the 30% goes to STEM professors pockets. AFAIK, STEM professors justify their value by generating money for the university via patents and grants. While there are a massive number of private liberal arts schools, there are relatively few private STEM schools. Most STEM degrees come from public university that are significantly cheaper than private universities. [0] - https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=75 https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=75
    - ceeplusplus 5y ago
      STEM professors bring in billions of dollars in research grants, of which the university takes over 50% for "administration". If you aren't aware labs have to pay a big cut of any grant income they get to the school. It used to be that in exchange the school would maintain buildings, fund build outs of equipment, etc. but nowadays it's wasted on DEIABCDXYZ vice chancellors of provosts.
      - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
        > of which the university takes over 50% for "administration". Hence why I said "overhead from research grants."
  - ThrowawayR2 5y ago
    Research grants pay for research equipment. They do not cover student labs in any way.
    - blagie 5y ago
      Yes, they do. (1) Many grants have a mentorship / training / giving-back component. This is one of the merit-based criteria NSF reviews on. (2) Research grants have overhead which feeds back into general budgets. At elite schools, this is about 2/3 of the money. A typical split might be 1/3 to the department, 1/3 to the school, and 1/3 to the project. It's kind of a financial scam. Nominally, these cover buildings and admin time. Practically, these feed into general budgets which do include labs and teaching. Corruptly, a lot of the money gets funnelled in creative ways to improve professor's lives through fancy faculty clubs, get-aways, and in some cases, creative (but legal) embezzlement with money ending in people's pockets.
  - zdragnar 5y ago
    It is largely anecdotal based on some inquiries made at my school. Different schools will vary- is it a research school? What types of STEM degrees are offered? Etc. Others likely have more concrete insight than I do. One conversation that stuck was the me: Back when I was in school, one of my mandarin teachers wanted to offer a "business mandarin" course outside of the general language program geared towards business students who might need basic fluency in a corporate setting. The school denied him because there wasn't a budget for it, which struck me as asinine at the time as it wasn't like there would be students who weren't paying tuition for the course anyway. The school had rooms available, and students have to buy all the materials the class would need anyway.
    - bell-cot 5y ago
      Would offering that course have spread the same n students across m + 1 courses? (Hence an increase in instructional costs, but no increase in tuition revenue.)
  - shinjitsu 5y ago
    This works fine for research universities, but in teaching universities (couldn't find the statistics, but there are a lot of them out there) someone has to subsidize the new STEM programs until the alumni start giving grants. In my experience, a lot more STEM alumni give large donations than humanities and social sciences. But that does mean a bigger initial outlay by someone.
jameshart 5y ago
Question: do elite institution degrees confer any addition to market value commensurate with their cost, or do they simply select for people who already have high market value?
- gumby 5y ago
  Good question. This has been studied a lot and the answer is…unclear. I think the kind of longitudinal studies needed combined with a small “treatment” group make this kind of investigation as hard to do as a nutritional study.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  It is not the degree that is valuable, it is the network it allows you to access that is valuable. The classmates you have at certain institutions will increase the probability of you achieving certain goals.
  - nostrademons 5y ago
    The thing is that you frequently end making connections with alumni of those institutions in your first few corporate jobs, since they all recruit out of the same pool of elite universities. So even if you didn't go to Stanford or MIT, if you work at Google (well, in the 00s - it doesn't focus nearly so much on elite universities now) you will know people who went to those schools, and if you need to make a connection with another alumnus of them you can reach out to your friends and say "Hey, can you connect me to your classmate?"
- GrumpyYoungMan 5y ago
  > "Question: do elite institution degrees confer any addition to market value commensurate with their cost, or do they simply select for people who already have high market value?" Speaking only for STEM, an elite STEM program gives the student access to a bigger variety of upperclassman courses; compare the available course list for a community college vs a large university and the difference is quite noticeable. The better programs also provide access to better equipment and advising; e.g., various University of California campuses have their own on-site chip fabrication labs. If the career trajectory you're planning benefits from those advanced courses, going to the better STEM programs is going to help tremendously. If not, well, they don't but that's hardly the institution's fault; they aren't choosing who to send your resume to, you are. (As an aside, I use the word "access" very intentionally; educational institutions don't "confer" anything. Students get access to resources and opportunities and they choose which to take. It's entirely possible to do the minimum to fulfill requirements; for example, I chose easy courses to do the minimum fulfill my humanities requirements because it wasn't where my interests lay.)
gumby 5y ago
> Except perhaps for elite-institution degrees, which are more about the brand and the network than what people actually learn. Even for a place like MIT/Caltech?
- drewcoo 5y ago
  Yes. Even the way you ask the question shows that you consider them somehow different. Probably better. Which presumably means that "better" people go there or teach there. So that's better networking. And the fact that you know them by name as better places shows better brand.
okaram 5y ago
Maybe ... I think IBM, for example did, and others might. OTOH, it may be easier and cheaper to make an agreement with their local community college. I think what makes the discussion hard is that people say 'college' and mean wildly different things. The author seemed to mean elite colleges in some comments, overall statistics in others, and for-profits in others. I think there are very different problems in different sectors.
abecedarius 5y ago
A degree doesn't cost the company. An in-house bootcamp and apprenticeship program does. Once the less-legibly-promising new hires are equally productive, they now have a resume making them legibly good to the company's competitors in the job market, so it can't make up its investment by underpaying. ("Programmers are happy and tend to stay" is something the competitors can do too.) I'm not saying don't do it, or that the status quo is good. But I don't think your suggestion really addresses the problem that got us here, the problem that we've subsidized an expensive signaling game (cf Bryan Caplan's The case against education). > Ignoring his political axe-grinding This was gratuitous. I didn't even see any politics in the thread.
- wpietri 5y ago
  > A degree doesn't cost the company. Degrees cost companies through increased wages. Student loans get paid somehow, after all. > This was gratuitous. I didn't even see any politics in the thread. You not seeing things is not the same as things not existing. I do see it, and wanted to focus this bit of discussion on the question of degree value, not the assorted other stuff there.
  - abecedarius 5y ago
    > Degrees cost companies through increased wages. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_(economics)#Job-market_signalling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_(economics)#Job-mar... for the model behind my comment. You’re a hiring manager choosing between Alice and Bob. Alice has a degree, Bob doesn’t; you estimate they’ll be equally productive, and it’s common knowledge that your competitors will judge them the same. Do you offer Bob less, since he doesn’t have student loans to pay off? You can if you like, but then Bob will go work for your competitor. > You not seeing things is not the same as things not existing. I do see it, and wanted to focus this bit of discussion on the question of degree value, not the assorted other stuff there. You can mention having further disagreements without making it a gratuitous diss.
    - wpietri 5y ago
kuraudo 5y ago
I'm increasingly loathe to hire a new college grad for enterprise software positions due to four years of terrible instruction that we have to deplorable. What are they even learning in modern day institutions? Meanwhile, I have zero qualms about hiring high school grads with a github who can talk about the base language intelligently, let alone frameworks like spring.

zdragnar 5y ago

Price and value are decoupled for college degrees. STEM students are subsidized by liberal arts students, and many liberal arts degrees are not, by themselves, economically valuable (I said this as someone with just such a degree).

itake 5y ago
> STEM students are subsidized by liberal arts students Can you provide more context for this? How is the cost of teaching a STEM student higher than the cost of a liberal arts student? The classrooms are roughly the same. STEM student labs might be more expensive to manage, but that equipment is/(can be?) funded by research grants.
- seanmcdirmid 5y ago
  STEM professors have to be paid a lot more than liberal arts professors (due to competition for STEM talent). Equipment for teaching isn’t covered under research grants, but might come from overhead on those grants, but more likely from donations (from big corps), grants, or tuition.
  - google234123 5y ago
    Business professors are paid even more.
  - itake 5y ago
    The national center for labor statistics says labor costs are about 30% of the spend [0]. STEM programs also include Liberal Arts courses, so only a fraction of the 30% goes to STEM professors pockets. AFAIK, STEM professors justify their value by generating money for the university via patents and grants. While there are a massive number of private liberal arts schools, there are relatively few private STEM schools. Most STEM degrees come from public university that are significantly cheaper than private universities. [0] - https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=75 https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=75
  - ceeplusplus 5y ago
    STEM professors bring in billions of dollars in research grants, of which the university takes over 50% for "administration". If you aren't aware labs have to pay a big cut of any grant income they get to the school. It used to be that in exchange the school would maintain buildings, fund build outs of equipment, etc. but nowadays it's wasted on DEIABCDXYZ vice chancellors of provosts.
    - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
      > of which the university takes over 50% for "administration". Hence why I said "overhead from research grants."
- ThrowawayR2 5y ago
  Research grants pay for research equipment. They do not cover student labs in any way.
  - blagie 5y ago
    Yes, they do. (1) Many grants have a mentorship / training / giving-back component. This is one of the merit-based criteria NSF reviews on. (2) Research grants have overhead which feeds back into general budgets. At elite schools, this is about 2/3 of the money. A typical split might be 1/3 to the department, 1/3 to the school, and 1/3 to the project. It's kind of a financial scam. Nominally, these cover buildings and admin time. Practically, these feed into general budgets which do include labs and teaching. Corruptly, a lot of the money gets funnelled in creative ways to improve professor's lives through fancy faculty clubs, get-aways, and in some cases, creative (but legal) embezzlement with money ending in people's pockets.
- zdragnar 5y ago
  It is largely anecdotal based on some inquiries made at my school. Different schools will vary- is it a research school? What types of STEM degrees are offered? Etc. Others likely have more concrete insight than I do. One conversation that stuck was the me: Back when I was in school, one of my mandarin teachers wanted to offer a "business mandarin" course outside of the general language program geared towards business students who might need basic fluency in a corporate setting. The school denied him because there wasn't a budget for it, which struck me as asinine at the time as it wasn't like there would be students who weren't paying tuition for the course anyway. The school had rooms available, and students have to buy all the materials the class would need anyway.
  - bell-cot 5y ago
    Would offering that course have spread the same n students across m + 1 courses? (Hence an increase in instructional costs, but no increase in tuition revenue.)
- shinjitsu 5y ago
  This works fine for research universities, but in teaching universities (couldn't find the statistics, but there are a lot of them out there) someone has to subsidize the new STEM programs until the alumni start giving grants. In my experience, a lot more STEM alumni give large donations than humanities and social sciences. But that does mean a bigger initial outlay by someone.

jameshart 5y ago

Question: do elite institution degrees confer any addition to market value commensurate with their cost, or do they simply select for people who already have high market value?

gumby 5y ago
Good question. This has been studied a lot and the answer is…unclear. I think the kind of longitudinal studies needed combined with a small “treatment” group make this kind of investigation as hard to do as a nutritional study.
lotsofpulp 5y ago
It is not the degree that is valuable, it is the network it allows you to access that is valuable. The classmates you have at certain institutions will increase the probability of you achieving certain goals.
- nostrademons 5y ago
  The thing is that you frequently end making connections with alumni of those institutions in your first few corporate jobs, since they all recruit out of the same pool of elite universities. So even if you didn't go to Stanford or MIT, if you work at Google (well, in the 00s - it doesn't focus nearly so much on elite universities now) you will know people who went to those schools, and if you need to make a connection with another alumnus of them you can reach out to your friends and say "Hey, can you connect me to your classmate?"
GrumpyYoungMan 5y ago
> "Question: do elite institution degrees confer any addition to market value commensurate with their cost, or do they simply select for people who already have high market value?" Speaking only for STEM, an elite STEM program gives the student access to a bigger variety of upperclassman courses; compare the available course list for a community college vs a large university and the difference is quite noticeable. The better programs also provide access to better equipment and advising; e.g., various University of California campuses have their own on-site chip fabrication labs. If the career trajectory you're planning benefits from those advanced courses, going to the better STEM programs is going to help tremendously. If not, well, they don't but that's hardly the institution's fault; they aren't choosing who to send your resume to, you are. (As an aside, I use the word "access" very intentionally; educational institutions don't "confer" anything. Students get access to resources and opportunities and they choose which to take. It's entirely possible to do the minimum to fulfill requirements; for example, I chose easy courses to do the minimum fulfill my humanities requirements because it wasn't where my interests lay.)

gumby 5y ago

> Except perhaps for elite-institution degrees, which are more about the brand and the network than what people actually learn. Even for a place like MIT/Caltech?

drewcoo 5y ago
Yes. Even the way you ask the question shows that you consider them somehow different. Probably better. Which presumably means that "better" people go there or teach there. So that's better networking. And the fact that you know them by name as better places shows better brand.

okaram 5y ago

Maybe ... I think IBM, for example did, and others might. OTOH, it may be easier and cheaper to make an agreement with their local community college. I think what makes the discussion hard is that people say 'college' and mean wildly different things. The author seemed to mean elite colleges in some comments, overall statistics in others, and for-profits in others. I think there are very different problems in different sectors.

abecedarius 5y ago

A degree doesn't cost the company. An in-house bootcamp and apprenticeship program does. Once the less-legibly-promising new hires are equally productive, they now have a resume making them legibly good to the company's competitors in the job market, so it can't make up its investment by underpaying. ("Programmers are happy and tend to stay" is something the competitors can do too.) I'm not saying don't do it, or that the status quo is good. But I don't think your suggestion really addresses the problem that got us here, the problem that we've subsidized an expensive signaling game (cf Bryan Caplan's The case against education). > Ignoring his political axe-grinding This was gratuitous. I didn't even see any politics in the thread.

wpietri 5y ago
> A degree doesn't cost the company. Degrees cost companies through increased wages. Student loans get paid somehow, after all. > This was gratuitous. I didn't even see any politics in the thread. You not seeing things is not the same as things not existing. I do see it, and wanted to focus this bit of discussion on the question of degree value, not the assorted other stuff there.
- abecedarius 5y ago
  > Degrees cost companies through increased wages. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_(economics)#Job-market_signalling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_(economics)#Job-mar... for the model behind my comment. You’re a hiring manager choosing between Alice and Bob. Alice has a degree, Bob doesn’t; you estimate they’ll be equally productive, and it’s common knowledge that your competitors will judge them the same. Do you offer Bob less, since he doesn’t have student loans to pay off? You can if you like, but then Bob will go work for your competitor. > You not seeing things is not the same as things not existing. I do see it, and wanted to focus this bit of discussion on the question of degree value, not the assorted other stuff there. You can mention having further disagreements without making it a gratuitous diss.
  - wpietri 5y ago

kuraudo 5y ago

I'm increasingly loathe to hire a new college grad for enterprise software positions due to four years of terrible instruction that we have to deplorable. What are they even learning in modern day institutions? Meanwhile, I have zero qualms about hiring high school grads with a github who can talk about the base language intelligently, let alone frameworks like spring.