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Education pays ...
- lukeholder 15y agoyes, having education might mean you can get the job that pays more but this does take into account the unemployed into the median.
- antimora 15y agoI hope this data is normalized and other contributing factors such age are removed. It is better to see a regration model than pure stat graphs.
- gjm11 15y agoEducation pays. Or being clever gets you more education, and also pays. Or being willing to work hard does those things. Or coming from a family with more money, or with a particular kind of attitude (curiosity? go-getting? ...), does those things. Or there's a lot of prejudice out there (on the basis of sex, skin colour, or whatever) that affects both how a person's education goes and how their later career does. Or any combination of those. Or any number of other possibilities. All together, now: Correlation is not the same thing as causation.
- danteembermage 15y agoI'd love to see Wages = b0 + b1 * Bachelor's degree dummy + b2 * parents income + b3 * IQ + b4 * [thing I can't say] + b5 * [other thing I can't say] + b5 * work ethic measure (HS GPA?) + e There are a million things wrong with doing it this way but it would be an interesting addition to looking at that graph by itself. I half-heartedly tried to Google a decent paper but didn't have much luck with anything newer than the 70's
- daniel-cussen 15y agoI propose a businessman whose output cannot be measured very well earns p/r+log(e)+k, where p is the profit the company makes, r is his rank within the company (CEO is 1, CFO/CMO is 2, etc), e is the number of employees beneath him, and k is the base salary at that firm. The idea here is that upper management at certain companies effectively own the firm and distribute profit accordingly, while middle management usually advances in income by increasing empire. Edit: variable name.
- semuelf 15y agoI don't see an 's' in your equation
- msellout 15y agoMeasuring the effect of education is one of the most difficult econometrics tasks due to the way that most societies pursue education -- one year at a time until you're done with it. There's not enough variation.... I was about to launch into a detailed technical explanation, but I think I'll just leave it at the intuitive one.
- feralchimp 15y agoIt's much worse than that. The linked article is about the 'median wage' at each of those education levels. I can't imagine a metric less interesting to HN than 'median performance.' Show me the top 10% of earners, then give me the breakdown of how much traditional education those people consumed. Hustlers aren't getting by on their credentials.
- dredmorbius 15y agoWhat's wrong with using median in this instance? Other than knocking off a few obvious outliers: Mssrs. Gates, Jobs, Ellison, and Zuckerberg, I believe.
- william42 15y agoIn fact, median is very very explicitly what you want to use, because outliers are just that and the vast majority of people aren't. One study on UNC-Chapel Hill graduates in the 1980s said that the best-paying major was geography. Why? Michael Jordan majored in geography.
- dredmorbius 15y agoYeah, that's my sense of it. Median as opposed to mean. I'm just not sure what OP's "opposed to" / preferred measure is.
- bad_user 15y agoIt's wrong because average people are more likely to do average things in their life, like pursuing a college degree because that's the common thing to do. Outliers on the other hand sometimes choose their own path. Sometimes they drop out of college because of financial problems, but still attend courses that interest them. Sometimes they choose to learn on the job, by making mistakes and fixing them, by screwing around disassembling stuff, by learning from mentors they admire, by trying out new things and so on and so forth. Saying that Gates, Jobs, Zuckerberg are college dropouts really ignores that these people are/were more educated than the hordes of people coming out with master degrees. And this I think is the biggest problem with our educational system, the fact that these alternate paths aren't properly recognized. Disclaimer: I'm also a college dropout, I regret it and intend to finish college, on the other hand I have a monthly revenue at least 3 times bigger than the software industry's medium salary in my city for senior developers.
- nobody314159265 15y agoThat is current averages ie. historical data. What it says is that somebody who got a medical/law degree 20-30 years ago, did very well over the last 20-30 years. It says nothing about whether somebody leaving school today will do better in 20-30 years having spent 10x as much as their parents generation on college - rather than becoming a plumber or electrician or founding a startup
- nobody314159265 15y agoAnd it's even worse than that - 20/30 years ago most of those none law/medicine degrees would have got somebody a VP type job. Now a non-professional degree gets you an entry level secretary job. If you compare the lifetime earnings of a rare graduate 30years ago with those of a new 'social studies' type grad today it will be a lot worse
- epicureanideal 15y agoLooks like the benefits of a bachelors are shrinking
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- meterplech 15y agoThis topic reaches the frontpage on HN at least once a week. Can we avoid rehashing the same arguments? Maybe just vote these up when something original comes up.
- ivankirigin 15y agoIt is irresponsible to show these graphs that average different degrees together. The top 5 majors earn 2X the bottom 5: http://www.payscale.com/best-colleges/degrees.asp http://www.payscale.com/best-colleges/degrees.asp
- suivix 15y agoPerhaps it's too much data for just a few graphs but it would also be interesting to see race, gender, and so on.
- cmagahern 15y agoInteresting that doctoral degrees do not pay more on average than professional ones! Perhaps it is because most PhD's enter the field of research as opposed to industry? I haven't met that many PhD's in industry but there are a few.
- nobody314159265 15y agoMy undergrad university sends me begging letters - the place I did my Phd doesn't. They don't consider it worth the postage cost given what Phds earn!
- alttag 15y agoIt doesn't say "PhDs", it says "Doctoral degrees", which may mean (it isn't clear), that EdD (Doctor of Education, a common degree for public school administrators), DBA (Doctor of Business Administration, usually from Harvard), EDB (Executive Doctor of Business, typically offered to already successful business people) and other similar specialized but not necessarily "professional" degrees (which I interpret to mean MD, JD, DDS, chiropractic, etc.) would be in this group.
- mhartl 15y agoAll such studies suffer from the same debilitating flaw—there are almost certainly confounding variables at work. To reach any firm conclusion, you would need to compare degree recipients with a cohort of statistically equivalent people who could have earned degree X but did something else instead. All these "education pays" charts show is that people who earn advanced degrees earn more money. But such people are also probably smarter and more determined than average. You don't need a Ph.D. to know that correlation doesn't imply causation. P.S. This is not sour grapes. I have degrees in physics from Harvard (A.B.) and Caltech (M.S., Ph.D.), and I make well more than the median earnings for Ph.D.s. P.P.S. I know the real reason these sorts of studies proliferate, but this comment is too small to contain it.
- ObjectiveSub 15y agoI am interested to know your opinion on why these studies proliferate. Can you please explain why?
- gcb 15y agopeople need data to validate their preconceptions
- gbog 15y agoYou say this in way that seem to mean that for you education do not "pay". But I really don't know how one could affirm that education do not "pay". Heavy focus on deep, large, long and high-quality education to their offspring is the most important reason, if not the only one, for elite people to stay in the elite. It is also the most rational explanation to why some people are often perceived as more successful than other, eg Chinese and Jewish. It is easy to come up with counter examples of some guy who did not have the best traditional education cursus and did manage to be successful despite this. But exceptions are not the rule. The mainstream, average rule is that people in power have had good or excellent education. So this little chart about "education pays" is just a confirmation, among others, to a well-known fact. It has a lot of shortcomings, and shortcuts (like using the income as a measure for success) but it is some value, at least as a reminder. NB: I may seem hot on the topic. Yes, I am hot on this. Why? Maybe because I live in China, where I see everyday a lot of people who struggle extremely hard, save each yuan they can, in order to push their offspring to the best universities.
- Maven911 15y agoDoes either an engineering degree or mba or CS degree count as a professional degree for BLS ?
- yardie 15y agoI believe a professional degree is MD, DDS, etc. A BSN is an undergraduate professional degree so I'm not sure where it falls in that list. Edit: Engineering and accounting are professional degress, computer science is not.
- arethuza 15y agoSo they are "professional" because the are part of the standard career track that eventually leads to someone getting a formal "professional" qualification? That would suggest that an MBA is not a professional degree, although it is a vocational degree, because MBA graduates don't typically go on to become formally professionally qualified (e.g. unlike lawyers, medical doctors, etc.). [NB I'm in the UK and while I know plenty lawyers/chartered engineers etc. I've never heard anyone talk about a "professional degree"].
- yardie 15y agoNo they are professional because they are required* as part of the license in that profession. To be an RN you have have to have a Bachelors of Science in Nursing. A CS major couldn't become an RN but an RN can become a software developer. It is the same for accountants, doctors, surgeons, etc. Professional degrees are very specific and single focused. An MBA is just an MBA, no career requires it, but it is a nice to have. It is not considered a professional degree although many professionals do have it. [*] and when I say required it is a felony to work in that field without the proper degree or license.
- arethuza 15y agoI didn't think UK CAs have to have a degree in accounting, I'm also pretty sure that you can become a CEng without an engineering degree, it's just very difficult. I know that in law in Scotland you need two academic qualifications (a law degree, and a postgrad diploma in legal practise) then two years training before you qualify as a solicitor. However, if you want to go to the bar you only need a law degree - but then you have to do a specialised training course and then devil for a year before you can be called.
- naughtysriram 15y agoEducation Pays.. right.. Who will pay for education??
- rooshdi 15y ago...the educated?
- naughtysriram 15y agoOr to call them the paid / rich?
- rooshdi 15y agoHow about the educated / rich?
- suivix 15y agoHas anyone considered that maybe the types of people who become educated are also more motivated? People who floss their teeth have a 7 year higher life expectancy. Obviously, flossing your teeth doesn't increase it.
- georgemcbay 15y agoI agree with your primary point, but your follow-up example isn't the greatest... Flossing your teeth can have a real impact on health -- gum disease (which flossing is an excellent preventative agent against) can cause all sorts of serious health problems like increased risk of heart attack and stroke. People with periodontal disease have a 2x greater chance of coronary artery disease than people without periodontal disease. That's a pretty big deal.
- roel_v 15y agoThe first point (gum disease can cause health problems) is most likely true, even if just intuitively, but they would have to be pretty serious to reduce life expectancy by 7 years - even smoking reduces it by 'only' 14 years, and I'd be hard pressed to believe that not flossing is half as dangerous as smoking. The second argument is a classical cause/effect thing. I can't imagine that tooth diseases increase heart diseases by 100%, but I can very easily imagine that people with certain habits (eating lots of cheap unhealthy food with much fat and sugar) suffer from both. Then again I don't know anything about this field, if there is any research that confirms your arguments I'd be surprised but interested.
- justin_vanw 15y agoSo, does education make you better at your job? My experience says that there is very little correlation between having a MS vs a BS vs no degree in the quality of work people get done, at least as a professional coder. In fact, to me, a Masters is a red flag, it causes me to give a person additional scrutiny, because of the huge glut of awful coders with Masters that I have run into. So, in my experience, having a more advanced degree could only lead to higher income because of big companies with big HR departments, the government, and other clueless employers giving a pay differential. I would love to see the numbers comparing someone with a PHD from Shit State, compared to a person with a BS from Princeton, compared to a person with a genius level IQ who dropped out of Berkley. Or a PHD in History vs a BS in Math. I'm always suspicious of PHD's in industry. You don't get a PHD to go work for GE, you go work for GE when you have a piece of paper with PHD on it but can't get an academic position. So, what I'm saying is, while education level may be correlated with income, it's not a cause, except where employers are clueless.
- _dps 15y agoI occasionally run into this "I'm suspicious of Ph.D.s in industry" phenomenon and frankly it's baffling. (disclosure: I am obviously biased by having a Ph.D. and no longer being an academic) Ph.Ds. in industry create lots of amazing things: UNIX, 747s, airbags, wireless protocols, manufacturing robots, search engines, and logistics optimization systems are just a few that almost everyone depends on every single day (indirectly in some cases). These are not systems that can be designed without a large amount of focused domain knowledge, which is precisely what the Ph.D. entails. Sure, there are some people with Ph.D.s who are impractical and unsuited for front-line "get things done" work. I can assure you that is an intrinsic personality trait and not something created by intensely focused study on interesting ideas, which is the defining characteristic of the doctorate.
- blackhole 15y agoThere is a big, big, big problem when comparing degrees: People with PhD's are older and therefore have more experience. Everything in this entire chart could theoretically be attributed entirely to experience and not education. Of course, it could also all be education, but as they say, Correlation does not imply Causation.
- dereg 15y agoThis is a specious argument by the bls. The question isn't whether education pays or not; the real question is whether or not education increases a person's productivity. I'd argue not. It all depends on the degree. College is a form of job training for people like engineers, in which case it has a high return on investment. However, many [if not most] degrees have no relevance to their college degrees. As many as 63% of college graduates occupy jobs that don't require a college degree! (Uncited, lazy, sorry.) So does college "pay"? Sure. Does it increase one's skills and productivity? Factoring the opportunity costs, it's hard to tell. I'm in the camp of people who argue that the returns to higher education are due to what's called a "sheepskin", or "signalling", effect in economics.
- tryitnow 15y agoI still get a kick out of people who talk about how education pays but don't the whole correlation/causation thing. Apparently, education for them does not include basic stats.