6 ms·

Will that college degree pay off? You can see the numbers

42 points by insightcheck 4y ago

a9h74j 4y ago
> A bachelor’s degree in anthropology from Ithaca College costs $132,656, on average, and two years later, graduates are earning $19,227. That’s less than people in New York State earn with only a high school diploma and no college education. That's just one example, but in general I complement the article on emphasizing approaches using current, not longer-term historic data. One can overfit to a current bad economy, etc, but it seems insincere to promote college based upon 30-year past data, without acknowledging secular shifts in conditions.
- hinkley 4y ago
  The second line tells me there’s something else going on here: > That’s less than people in New York State earn with only a high school diploma and no college education. This tells me that the act of getting a degree in anthropology is correlated not with wanting to be an anthropologist but with either (or maybe both) blindly equating any degree with a better life, or a behavioral pattern of doing anything and everything to avoid getting shit done for as long as humanly possible. That a bullshit degree is not failing at life in its own right, but a sign that you already have been and will continue to do so. We all knew That Guy in college. Maybe it’s just more widespread than that.
  - a9h74j 4y ago
    Interesting twist. > people in New York State earn I assumed this was referring to age cohorts (assuming the statement is true in at least some sense).
pukexxr 4y ago
Just here to point out the time i was downvoted by a bunch of tech bros for saying i was homeless while employed in the area i went to school for (which was the truth at the time; fortunately managed to get out of that situation, but have resented HN ever since).
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
seahawks78 4y ago
Colleges and universities as institutions were never meant for commoners. Most people forget that barely a few centuries colleges and universities were places that primarily catered to two distinct classes of people: first, sons/daughters of rich aristocracies who had plenty of time in their leisure to pursue intellectual ideas; and second, were the clergy where it was considered a pre-requisite for the job. Colleges and universities were never meant to be a way to riches and fortunes. If interested a degree is worth pursuing just for knowledge's sake regardless of the material benefits it may bestow upon the owner at some later point in their life. Hence I find the "college is so expensive" argument to be quite disingenious honestly. What exactly were you expecting may I ask? Also, for people who want to learn something as a way to earn a living - may I humbly suggest vocational training instead?
- fezfight 4y ago
  Really? You wouldn't prefer that it was all free any everyone got access to it? I think it would be great to offer all these programs, for free, paid for by taxes.
  - RandomBK 4y ago
    Why should taxes subsidize the study of topics that have no economic value? Most "college should be free" proposals fail under scrutiny because degrees tend to fall into a spectrum of utility: On one end are degrees that impart skills that are needed and desired by the economy. By and large, graduates of these degrees _already_ enjoy sustainable wages, because the market recognizes and rewards those skills. Government subsidy for these degrees tend to have marginal benefits, because it is already a sound financial choice for students. On the other extreme are degrees that, like GP identified, were never meant to be economically sound. They focus on intellectual ideas and curiosities, rather than skills actively needed by the economy. Government subsidy here would be little more than subsidizing hobbies and other activity that do not provide economic returns. There _are_ specific degrees where there's a public policy interest in encouraging the study of topics not adequately compensated by market forces. Most of these are already covered by specific subsidies, such as scientific research grants.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
throwaway22032 4y ago
This sort of analysis fails because you're not the average person. Many people here on HN could have taken a degree in Egyptology and then landed a solid job in software because in their spare time they muck about with computers. I'm also sure that a lot of people here know many CS graduates who struggle to find work because they're just... not good software developers or can't market themselves.
- didgeoridoo 4y ago
  The only person I know who majored in Egyptology is now a pediatric oncologist making probably half a mill a year in Manhattan. I agree — it’s about the person, not the major.
  - brailsafe 4y ago
    Ya but wouldn't that be because in medicine, the initial degree is sort of arbitrary as long as you place very highly and cover some core subjects?
    - throwaway22032 4y ago
      Sure. The point is more that a person's choice of degree is _correlated_ to earnings, jobs, etc, but the job they take is causatively related. If you want to work on botany you might study botany and work as a botanist. It's not the degree that means you end up with a botanist's salary - it's the fact that you wanted to be a botanist!
      - brailsafe 4y ago
        > If you want to work on botany you might study botany and work as a botanist. It's not the degree that means you end up with a botanist's salary - it's the fact that you wanted to be a botanist! I suppose that's part of the nature of analyzing the numbers though isn't it? How likely it is, even with a botany degree and a goal to be a botanist, that you actually do become a botanist, and the salary outcome is one way to normalize different pathways and outcomes. For example, if the normalized salary range of people who studied botany ended up in the $300k range, it might mean that it was more likely that people who initially wanted to get into botany ended up instead becoming physicians, and then you could poke into the why of that and see if there's actually some other signal that stronger for people who actually get into professional botany, like having dabbled in weed growing and having connections in that industry
cloudsec9 4y ago
There seems to be a bit of narrative about "not burdening taxpayers" for a few years while students are in school. I have to ask, what happens once they finish school? Do they not join the legion of taxpayers? Is it only CURRENT taxpayers that have a say in this, and not say all voters? I do think there is a lot of upside in letting people pick what and where to study. It's a collective investment in our future generation.
- flyingfences 4y ago
  > Do they not join the legion of taxpayers? If they're only making $20k per year, no, not really.
  - cloudsec9 4y ago
    Oh? It seems one becomes a taxpayer at about $12k or so. It seems that someone at $20k is well over that. Do people on the low end of the tax scale not deserve to be educated?
tzs 4y ago
Are they taking into account graduate school? Something like 2/3 of anthropology majors go to to graduate school after getting their bachelor’s degree for example. If you just look at how much they are making two years after getting their bachelor’s degree the average is going to be pulled way down by those unless they are excluded.
- giaour 4y ago
  > Students who are unemployed two years after earning their degrees, including any who are in graduate or professional school, aren’t counted.
  - doktorhladnjak 4y ago
    So they’re getting underemployed dropouts of those fields? Doesn’t seem very representative
As_You_Wish 4y ago
For most of the 1900s, the income tax rate for the top tax bracket was from 70-90%. Take a look: https://spcfo.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Historical-Tax-Rates.png https://spcfo.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Historical-Tax-... In 1980, Ronald Reagan was elected and the top tax bracket dropped precipitously and has been that way ever since. Prior to this, the universities, and almost everything else, was a lot less expensive. Look what happened since 1980s when the top tax bracket was reduced: https://external-preview.redd.it/Fipe2yOlU1zHjIdNU9kJLI1idBXdPZAbmuU8VjfVCas.jpg?auto=webp&s=10c56d038e3e44230ef9ee797294cc6406c42970 https://external-preview.redd.it/Fipe2yOlU1zHjIdNU9kJLI1idBX... The rich started getting richer in the 1980s and continues through today. Pretty damn obvious. If we want to MAGA back to the 1950s, first thing we should do is raise the top tax bracket to 80%. This includes when the uber-wealthy use stock as collateral for purchases - they turned their collateral into income. Jeff Bezos bought a house for $150 million. He used stock as collateral, because his salary at Amazon was $80,000, not because he was egalitarian, but he only paid taxes on $80,000. Therefore at the 1950's top income tax rate, Bezos would pay $600,000,000 in income taxes in order to gain the $150,000,000 to buy the home. You say this would cause capital to fly overseas? No way, bullshlit. If they did that, we do what the USA has done to other countries and other people, especially during the Ukraine war - they freeze assets of individual people. Bezos made the money in the USA, using roads, banks, buildings, and everything else, then he does not get to just twirl away into another country and take his marbles. MAGA - go back to 80% tax for the wealthy. We did it then, we can do it now.
hinkley 4y ago
Numbers don’t tell the full tale. Yes an anthropology degree for the sake of having a degree is going to cost you, especially if you don’t go to a cheaper school to get it. Almost nobody is going to hire you in some fields without a degree, and if that’s the field you want, then a degree you will get. If your dream is to be the next Steve Irwin, then it doesn’t really matter if that degree in marine biology takes seven years to pay off or the rest of your life. You’re doing what you love with people you respect, which you aren’t going to find selling movie tickets or even managing the theater. Edit: I think it might be good if we tried to discourage people without means from pursuing degrees with little to no vocational value. Those programs and the loans attendant to them are somewhat predatory in nature.

42 points by insightcheck 4y ago

> A bachelor’s degree in anthropology from Ithaca College costs $132,656, on average, and two years later, graduates are earning $19,227. That’s less than people in New York State earn with only a high school diploma and no college education. That's just one example, but in general I complement the article on emphasizing approaches using current, not longer-term historic data. One can overfit to a current bad economy, etc, but it seems insincere to promote college based upon 30-year past data, without acknowledging secular shifts in conditions.

hinkley 4y ago
The second line tells me there’s something else going on here: > That’s less than people in New York State earn with only a high school diploma and no college education. This tells me that the act of getting a degree in anthropology is correlated not with wanting to be an anthropologist but with either (or maybe both) blindly equating any degree with a better life, or a behavioral pattern of doing anything and everything to avoid getting shit done for as long as humanly possible. That a bullshit degree is not failing at life in its own right, but a sign that you already have been and will continue to do so. We all knew That Guy in college. Maybe it’s just more widespread than that.
- a9h74j 4y ago
  Interesting twist. > people in New York State earn I assumed this was referring to age cohorts (assuming the statement is true in at least some sense).

pukexxr 4y ago

Just here to point out the time i was downvoted by a bunch of tech bros for saying i was homeless while employed in the area i went to school for (which was the truth at the time; fortunately managed to get out of that situation, but have resented HN ever since).

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

seahawks78 4y ago

Colleges and universities as institutions were never meant for commoners. Most people forget that barely a few centuries colleges and universities were places that primarily catered to two distinct classes of people: first, sons/daughters of rich aristocracies who had plenty of time in their leisure to pursue intellectual ideas; and second, were the clergy where it was considered a pre-requisite for the job. Colleges and universities were never meant to be a way to riches and fortunes. If interested a degree is worth pursuing just for knowledge's sake regardless of the material benefits it may bestow upon the owner at some later point in their life. Hence I find the "college is so expensive" argument to be quite disingenious honestly. What exactly were you expecting may I ask? Also, for people who want to learn something as a way to earn a living - may I humbly suggest vocational training instead?

fezfight 4y ago
Really? You wouldn't prefer that it was all free any everyone got access to it? I think it would be great to offer all these programs, for free, paid for by taxes.
- RandomBK 4y ago
  Why should taxes subsidize the study of topics that have no economic value? Most "college should be free" proposals fail under scrutiny because degrees tend to fall into a spectrum of utility: On one end are degrees that impart skills that are needed and desired by the economy. By and large, graduates of these degrees _already_ enjoy sustainable wages, because the market recognizes and rewards those skills. Government subsidy for these degrees tend to have marginal benefits, because it is already a sound financial choice for students. On the other extreme are degrees that, like GP identified, were never meant to be economically sound. They focus on intellectual ideas and curiosities, rather than skills actively needed by the economy. Government subsidy here would be little more than subsidizing hobbies and other activity that do not provide economic returns. There _are_ specific degrees where there's a public policy interest in encouraging the study of topics not adequately compensated by market forces. Most of these are already covered by specific subsidies, such as scientific research grants.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

throwaway22032 4y ago

This sort of analysis fails because you're not the average person. Many people here on HN could have taken a degree in Egyptology and then landed a solid job in software because in their spare time they muck about with computers. I'm also sure that a lot of people here know many CS graduates who struggle to find work because they're just... not good software developers or can't market themselves.

didgeoridoo 4y ago
The only person I know who majored in Egyptology is now a pediatric oncologist making probably half a mill a year in Manhattan. I agree — it’s about the person, not the major.
- brailsafe 4y ago
  Ya but wouldn't that be because in medicine, the initial degree is sort of arbitrary as long as you place very highly and cover some core subjects?
  - throwaway22032 4y ago
    Sure. The point is more that a person's choice of degree is _correlated_ to earnings, jobs, etc, but the job they take is causatively related. If you want to work on botany you might study botany and work as a botanist. It's not the degree that means you end up with a botanist's salary - it's the fact that you wanted to be a botanist!
    - brailsafe 4y ago
      > If you want to work on botany you might study botany and work as a botanist. It's not the degree that means you end up with a botanist's salary - it's the fact that you wanted to be a botanist! I suppose that's part of the nature of analyzing the numbers though isn't it? How likely it is, even with a botany degree and a goal to be a botanist, that you actually do become a botanist, and the salary outcome is one way to normalize different pathways and outcomes. For example, if the normalized salary range of people who studied botany ended up in the $300k range, it might mean that it was more likely that people who initially wanted to get into botany ended up instead becoming physicians, and then you could poke into the why of that and see if there's actually some other signal that stronger for people who actually get into professional botany, like having dabbled in weed growing and having connections in that industry

cloudsec9 4y ago

There seems to be a bit of narrative about "not burdening taxpayers" for a few years while students are in school. I have to ask, what happens once they finish school? Do they not join the legion of taxpayers? Is it only CURRENT taxpayers that have a say in this, and not say all voters? I do think there is a lot of upside in letting people pick what and where to study. It's a collective investment in our future generation.

flyingfences 4y ago
> Do they not join the legion of taxpayers? If they're only making $20k per year, no, not really.
- cloudsec9 4y ago
  Oh? It seems one becomes a taxpayer at about $12k or so. It seems that someone at $20k is well over that. Do people on the low end of the tax scale not deserve to be educated?

tzs 4y ago

Are they taking into account graduate school? Something like 2/3 of anthropology majors go to to graduate school after getting their bachelor’s degree for example. If you just look at how much they are making two years after getting their bachelor’s degree the average is going to be pulled way down by those unless they are excluded.

giaour 4y ago
> Students who are unemployed two years after earning their degrees, including any who are in graduate or professional school, aren’t counted.
- doktorhladnjak 4y ago
  So they’re getting underemployed dropouts of those fields? Doesn’t seem very representative

As_You_Wish 4y ago

For most of the 1900s, the income tax rate for the top tax bracket was from 70-90%. Take a look: https://spcfo.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Historical-Tax-Rates.png https://spcfo.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Historical-Tax-... In 1980, Ronald Reagan was elected and the top tax bracket dropped precipitously and has been that way ever since. Prior to this, the universities, and almost everything else, was a lot less expensive. Look what happened since 1980s when the top tax bracket was reduced: https://external-preview.redd.it/Fipe2yOlU1zHjIdNU9kJLI1idBXdPZAbmuU8VjfVCas.jpg?auto=webp&s=10c56d038e3e44230ef9ee797294cc6406c42970 https://external-preview.redd.it/Fipe2yOlU1zHjIdNU9kJLI1idBX... The rich started getting richer in the 1980s and continues through today. Pretty damn obvious. If we want to MAGA back to the 1950s, first thing we should do is raise the top tax bracket to 80%. This includes when the uber-wealthy use stock as collateral for purchases - they turned their collateral into income. Jeff Bezos bought a house for $150 million. He used stock as collateral, because his salary at Amazon was $80,000, not because he was egalitarian, but he only paid taxes on $80,000. Therefore at the 1950's top income tax rate, Bezos would pay $600,000,000 in income taxes in order to gain the $150,000,000 to buy the home. You say this would cause capital to fly overseas? No way, bullshlit. If they did that, we do what the USA has done to other countries and other people, especially during the Ukraine war - they freeze assets of individual people. Bezos made the money in the USA, using roads, banks, buildings, and everything else, then he does not get to just twirl away into another country and take his marbles. MAGA - go back to 80% tax for the wealthy. We did it then, we can do it now.

hinkley 4y ago

Numbers don’t tell the full tale. Yes an anthropology degree for the sake of having a degree is going to cost you, especially if you don’t go to a cheaper school to get it. Almost nobody is going to hire you in some fields without a degree, and if that’s the field you want, then a degree you will get. If your dream is to be the next Steve Irwin, then it doesn’t really matter if that degree in marine biology takes seven years to pay off or the rest of your life. You’re doing what you love with people you respect, which you aren’t going to find selling movie tickets or even managing the theater. Edit: I think it might be good if we tried to discourage people without means from pursuing degrees with little to no vocational value. Those programs and the loans attendant to them are somewhat predatory in nature.