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Brushing over individual experience with aggregate statistics. How utilitarian. Much of the article is about the author's experience of being lifted out of her

Brushing over individual experience with aggregate statistics. How utilitarian. Much of the article is about the author's experience of being lifted out of her family's social level, only to find herself not belonging to any class. Her family mocks her, and the saddled debt makes it harder to keep up with her debt free peers. Also, before cherry picking convenient statistics, it's important to control for other correlation, such as income compared to parents income, and college attendance compared to parents income. Here are some more liberal facts: https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2021/05/18/first-generation-college-graduates-lag-behind-their-peers-on-key-economic-outcomes/ https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2021/05/18/first-g... Given that median income of first generation college graduates is 27% lower than their peers, I think it is indeed likely that there is greater issue here. To plug the numbers into your above math, we're now looking at $2.05m vs $1.60m. Not bad, but frankly in real terms over 40 years they'd probably be better off putting the $120k against the s&p500. Which is probably what the author's debt free peers will be doing. I still think for this individual college was likely the right choice and will lead to a fulfilling life. I also still think loading up teenagers with $120k of debt is utter bullshit.

mytailorisrich 3y ago
> Brushing over individual experience with aggregate statistics That's the only way to discuss such issues. There'll always be good and bad experiences so wee need to look at aggregates, not individual data points. This is indeed utilitarian: yes tuition may be expensive and yes a student loan may be a significant amount as a consequence but this is an investment decision and if the return is indeed worthwhile so what? And if it's not then it's also one's decision. Or the complaint is on the political/ideological aspect of paying for education (this is The Guardian after all), not the practical, utilitarian aspect.
- medvezhenok 3y ago
  I think what GP is getting at is that you have to separate selection effects of university admissions from actual effects of the university. The people who don't attend university are not in aggregate equivalent to the people who do - I think I remember seeing a study once that people who were admitted to MIT but chose not to attend had similar career outcomes (and incomes) to people who did end up attending MIT (as one example). In that case the signal was the selection effect of being admitted to MIT, not anything that MIT specifically did to help people make more money over the long term. So attending University might look good on average and lead to higher career earnings, but it could just be a selection effect of people who would have made more money either way.
  - robocat 3y ago
    Absolutely: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36644126 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36644126 You also need to be careful of averages when people like Gates and Zuckerberg drop out of Harvard - the opposite skew! https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/why-match-school-and-student-rank https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/why-match-school-and-studen... links to a study showing it might not be worth it: An oft-cited paper, Dale and Krueger, appears to find that, controlling for applicant characteristics, people who attend more selective college don’t earn more money later in life.
catlover76 3y ago
> Her family mocks her, and the saddled debt makes it harder to keep up with her debt free peers. Her choice of career is a nontrivial factor in her continuing to lag behind financially. It basically accounts for most of the problem, really. > I also still think loading up teenagers with $120k of debt is utter bullshit. Maybe, but even assuming that's so, there are career paths where, in the end, that doesn't matter because one makes enough money to overcome that in the long run. edit: also, her family mocking her just means her family is shit lol; unlike the economic issues raised by her story, it's not a societal problem that merits consideration.
- EA-3167 3y ago
  It's not just that her career was a bad choice, it's that she went into $120,000 in the name of that career. If you spend a few years chasing your dreams without going into six figures of debt, it's a lot more sensible than just ignoring all advice we deem to be unpleasant and ending up like the author. Going to an ivy league school and taking on that debt without any plan to pay it off is just careless. That isn't about systemic poverty, it's the poor choices individuals make and assume "it will all work out later." Her talent is examining heartbreak she says, and my response is, "Did you think honing that talent is worth $120,000? Could you have honed it by spending half that amount somewhere else?"
  - catlover76 3y ago
    Certainly. Granted, I also did this lol: > Going to an ivy league school and taking on that debt without any plan to pay it off is just careless. Luckily, I can be a software engineer--but that's just luck, at this point (I didn't major in CS)

mytailorisrich 3y ago

> Brushing over individual experience with aggregate statistics That's the only way to discuss such issues. There'll always be good and bad experiences so wee need to look at aggregates, not individual data points. This is indeed utilitarian: yes tuition may be expensive and yes a student loan may be a significant amount as a consequence but this is an investment decision and if the return is indeed worthwhile so what? And if it's not then it's also one's decision. Or the complaint is on the political/ideological aspect of paying for education (this is The Guardian after all), not the practical, utilitarian aspect.

medvezhenok 3y ago
I think what GP is getting at is that you have to separate selection effects of university admissions from actual effects of the university. The people who don't attend university are not in aggregate equivalent to the people who do - I think I remember seeing a study once that people who were admitted to MIT but chose not to attend had similar career outcomes (and incomes) to people who did end up attending MIT (as one example). In that case the signal was the selection effect of being admitted to MIT, not anything that MIT specifically did to help people make more money over the long term. So attending University might look good on average and lead to higher career earnings, but it could just be a selection effect of people who would have made more money either way.
- robocat 3y ago
  Absolutely: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36644126 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36644126 You also need to be careful of averages when people like Gates and Zuckerberg drop out of Harvard - the opposite skew! https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/why-match-school-and-student-rank https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/why-match-school-and-studen... links to a study showing it might not be worth it: An oft-cited paper, Dale and Krueger, appears to find that, controlling for applicant characteristics, people who attend more selective college don’t earn more money later in life.

catlover76 3y ago

> Her family mocks her, and the saddled debt makes it harder to keep up with her debt free peers. Her choice of career is a nontrivial factor in her continuing to lag behind financially. It basically accounts for most of the problem, really. > I also still think loading up teenagers with $120k of debt is utter bullshit. Maybe, but even assuming that's so, there are career paths where, in the end, that doesn't matter because one makes enough money to overcome that in the long run. edit: also, her family mocking her just means her family is shit lol; unlike the economic issues raised by her story, it's not a societal problem that merits consideration.

EA-3167 3y ago
It's not just that her career was a bad choice, it's that she went into $120,000 in the name of that career. If you spend a few years chasing your dreams without going into six figures of debt, it's a lot more sensible than just ignoring all advice we deem to be unpleasant and ending up like the author. Going to an ivy league school and taking on that debt without any plan to pay it off is just careless. That isn't about systemic poverty, it's the poor choices individuals make and assume "it will all work out later." Her talent is examining heartbreak she says, and my response is, "Did you think honing that talent is worth $120,000? Could you have honed it by spending half that amount somewhere else?"
- catlover76 3y ago
  Certainly. Granted, I also did this lol: > Going to an ivy league school and taking on that debt without any plan to pay it off is just careless. Luckily, I can be a software engineer--but that's just luck, at this point (I didn't major in CS)