12 ms·

23% of bachelor's degrees and 43% of master's degrees have a negative ROI

• sandworm101 2y ago
  There is more to having an education than earning a higher salary. An educated population is more resilient and more flexible. Want to solve the worlds problems, the big ones like extreemism or climate change? Start will a better-educated population.
  • bratwurst3000 2y ago
    How are they more resilient as someone without 100k debts ?
  • NolF 2y ago
    There is certainly an economic utility to a more educated populous, but should that cost 30k+ in debt? If the ROI isn't there and the purpose is a general one for the economic benefit of the nation, shouldn't the taxpayer bear the cost of that?
    • icoder 2y ago
      This is actually the case where I live (the Netherlands). It has pros and cons of course, balancing of which has over time put some restrictions on the usage of the system (both subsidized college fees and separate study funding).
  • gadflyinyoureye 2y ago
    I’ve heard this before, but would like evidence. While I agree that education helps for I don’t want to live in a simple hunter gatherer society, does having everyone trained in worthless degrees like a feminist perspective on underwater basket weaving really make for a more robust and flexible society? One thing I saw during the pandemic was appeals to authority. Seems like as we get more and more degrees, we box out what people are allowed to say because it’s in the wrong thing. This doesn’t seem more flexible.
  • TheGreatCabbage 2y ago
    Most degrees do not create an educated person. An educated person needs a grounding in science, history, philosophy, literature, and - especially in our new age of disinformation - critical thinking and psychology. I studied one of the hard sciences, and while educated in this field, I was sorely lacking in many areas. Even with my training around scientific thinking, I was unable to clearly see the biases that were injurious to my clarity of thought. Look at universities and you see students with unhinged political beliefs, based on wild emotion tethered to neither evidence nor reason. These are not educated people, and it almost seems like some of them may have been wiser had they not pursued higher education at all. Regarding climate change, most university graduates are frustratingly ignorant and unwilling to think clearly about the solutions. It is imperative that schools teach critical thinking and provide a desperately needed grounding in various subjects, rather than pursuing the sole purpose of ensuring their students tick the correct boxes to pass their exams. If this system were present, few would benefit from university and the profit-seeking motives of these institutions could be brought back in hand.
    • Avicebron 2y ago
      (disclaimer: haven't been in university for almost a decade now so I don't know whats happening on campus right now) >Look at universities and you see students with unhinged political beliefs, based on wild emotion tethered to neither evidence nor reason. Examples of which are? Genuinely curious and don't inherently disagree, but what are they and why are the unhinged? >It is imperative that schools teach critical thinking and provide a desperately needed grounding in various subjects, agreed, I think we have to remember that the education establishment is really just composed by people, so you have to be specific by what you mean by "grounding", if it means "they believe what I believe because I'm right and everyone else is uneducated" that doesn't sound like grounding, grounding is introducing ideas and allowing them to go into whichever direction that leads to, it's not called "guiding" it's called "grounding" EDIT: quick thought, If by "grounding" you mean "normalization" in the statistical sense around a core set of beliefs, I would argue that's missing the point of education, educated people buy into beliefs from first principles, people shouldn't be buying beliefs through education
      • 2y ago
• preommr 2y ago
  But you're missing the real point of university, which is to broaden your mind for the low price of 30-120k - and by that I mean pay to do the same thing as free courses online and then regurgitate exactly what your professor tells you for non-stem subjects.
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  • heap_perms 2y ago
    > low price of 30-120k Couldn't help but chuckle.
  • smrtinsert 2y ago
    Edgy take, citation needed
    • DaSHacka 2y ago
      Ask any current college student whether they think the content of their courses are actually worth the cost, or if they're just there to get the piece of paper at the end. In my anecdotal experience, I would say about 25% of my courses are actually worthwhile and not total busywork. Even then, all of the information is readily available online anyway Honestly, its hard to not see college like an obstacle course at times. Just arbitrary requirements with little relation to the real world you gotta complete just to show to employers that you could.
    • VancouverMan 2y ago
      What's "edgy" about that comment? That comment is a concise and literal description of what the North American college/university experience has been for decades now, if not much longer. It does cost a relatively large sum of money to attend college/university in North America. Student loans, scholarships/bursaries, tax shelters like RESPs, and government subsidies wouldn't be so necessary and so prevalent if college/university was something that most students could easily afford. Regurgitating information is literally the core of the North American college/university experience. The students attend class to hear what the professor/lecturer wants them to hear. The students then do assignments and mid-term exams to practice regurgitating that information. The students finish it off with a final exam that once again involves regurgitating that information yet again. Any student who puts in independent thought, or who doesn't repeat what they were told, will not do well. As for a "citation", pretty much anyone who has gone to college/university in North America will know just how true that comment is.
• SebFender 2y ago
  Education is a process - let's stop making it an RoI.
  • karmasimida 2y ago
    I disagree, especially in cases, where it costs you 100k dollars, and leads to years of debt. If it is free, it is a different story, but not here in US.
    • LudwigNagasena 2y ago
      In no place university education is “free”. There are different ways it’s funded, but someone pays for it one way or another.
      • HarHarVeryFunny 2y ago
        Maybe, but paying your taxes doesn't put you in debt for decades.
      • willcipriano 2y ago
        This argument is old and outdated, In the US we pay high taxes similar to places with "free" services. The US just spends it on foreign governments as opposed to its own citizens like Europe does.
        • icoder 2y ago
          And then lets the services like health care, prison and education be butchered for profit (that doesn't come back to the public good but feeds inequality)
          • deleted 2y ago
            [deleted]
        • School-Cotton 2y ago
          The U.S. doesn’t spend most of its budget on “foreign governments”. The reason public services in the U.S. are so bad despite such high taxes is extreme inefficiency.
• timmg 2y ago
  One thing that I think doesn't get enough attention in these types of discussions -- not just this article about ROI, but also earnings disparities between (e.g.) genders and other groups -- is that income isn't the only measure of happiness. Many people would take less money to do a job they enjoyed more. My older sister "gave up" a sales "career" to become a fiction writer. It's enough to pay the bills, but pays less than she could have had at a corporate job. She got an English degree and couldn't be happier with her choice. My younger sister got a Theater degree and is a "struggling actress". Same deal: she's happy with her choice. ROI is important for some aspects of the discussion. But it is not the whole story.
  • AlecSchueler 2y ago
    > earnings disparities between (e.g.) genders and other groups When people talk about the gender wage gap they're not usually talking about the overall average, but rather doing like for like comparisons. It feels like you're suggesting your sister chose to give up sales for fiction because there were other factors at play such as quality of life, that that is a decision men would be less likely to make, save therefore her actions have tipped the scale towards "women earn less." But when people are talking about the gender pay gap they usually mean within a specific field or job title. So the comparison would be made between your sister and other men in sales, or between her and other men who left that career to go into fiction writing. In most cases the woman still earns less despite doing the same work and having the same work life balance (in theory; in effect she'll almost certainly be doing more additional domestic and other unpaid labour).
    • IdiocyInAction 2y ago
      At least the version I hear most often about is a gross disparity between the genders without taking anything into account. IIRC if you look into it it's mostly a maternity penalty anyway.
      • bobthepanda 2y ago
        Which is also why a lot of the latest policies are to provide equal maternity and paternity leave. Which is pretty good anyways, why shouldn’t fathers be able to take as much time off?
• twojobsoneboss 2y ago
  Honestly thought it would be worse
• selfmodruntime 2y ago
  What RoI misses is that an available, stable income is far more important than getting paid more than it was worth to spend. A master's degree may not be an advantage in an employee's economy, but when the table turns and possible employers get hundreds of applications, you may have a better chance making it past their filter with a degree. You can currently see this being the case. Among the people I know that were laid off, ex-bootcampers and self-thought developers have worse chances getting application replies than those with degrees.
  • imtringued 2y ago
    Negative ROI means you end up paying for the privilege of having your job vs not having the degree at all. A negative ROI bachelor means you could work as a cashier and earn more in net than someone who gets an expensive degree and a job that is not paying enough to offset the student loan. A negative return master means that you would earn more in net if you stopped studying after your bachelor. In other words, you are sacrificing your bachelor earnings edge to get a masters, which is why it is more common for a master to have a negative ROI. You're already "rich" after the bachelor.
    • selfmodruntime 2y ago
      In term's of crisis, life doesn't care about about averages.
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• djaouen 2y ago
  Reasonable: "Let's therefore reduce the cost of education." Stupid: "Let's stop educating people."
  • swasheck 2y ago
    agreed. as with most statistical analyses, the conclusions drawn can differ in some interesting ways, which is what should lead to further inquiries for research and hypotheses. where one set of eyes sees higher education as unnecessary due to “low ROI”, another set of eyes may wonder if/how/why the cost of higher education has outpaced salaries of those whom it’s supposed to have served. my sense (and its all intuition and not information based) is that we’ve had about 2 decades of rapidly increasing educational costs while support funding (grants, scholarships, state subsidization) has remained stagnant (or decreased), and incomes of graduates have not increased at the same rate relative to the cost of acquiring that degree. these trendlines would be pretty informative if someone created them. then we could ask why …
  • Fredkin 2y ago
    I think 'Let's stop educating people' might be reasonable in many cases. Not all degrees have the same chance of producing useful results and some non-stem education is just anti-education or worse ideological brainwashing. Subjects like psychology, journalism, arts, history, English, and social sciences are heavily over subscribed - these fields are saturated. It's very obvious to me that today's problems are overwhelmingly technological, biological, mathematical, scientific, industrial etc. Even within these subjects, there's a mismatch between the concrete problems seen in industrial practice and the abstract and simplified ones seen in academia. I hear the 'but any degree will give you a well rounded perspective' kind of hand wavy arguments, but these are presented without evidence, and are unfalsifiable 'runaway arguments' that have no finish line - at what point do you stop and say we're pouring resources into the wrong areas and neglecting others?
    • pokerface_86 2y ago
      i mean honestly STEM is pretty over saturated too, at least at the junior level, which is what fresh college grads would be at. it’s tough to get any non lab job with a chem/bio undergrad. shit, a close friend of mine had a 3.9+ gpa, honors, did good research for 3 years in undergrad, did a bunch of other crazy shit and he still got denied from every grad school he applied to in bio, including the school we got the undergrad from. i did a degree in math and i was able to get a job but i also did two minors to be employable.
• hayertjez 2y ago
  I’m curious for countries like mine (Netherlands) where a bachelor cost you €12k inc. books etc. (if you pay the maximum without studyfunding) As some vocational education profession is high in demand right now compared to some bachelor degrees.
  • mettamage 2y ago
    Or countries where education is actually cheap. Wasn't Germany doing that for a while?
    • RGamma 2y ago
      Studying most things in most places is free of charge in Germany. Generally there'll be a mandatory fee that includes a public transport ticket and some administrative overhead (~300-400€/6 months).
      • ongy 2y ago
        Where do you get those numbers from? When I studied (2014-2018) I paid 100-150€/semester Slight trend upwards, might be 200€ now And that was in Munich, which tends to be expensive.
        • RGamma 2y ago
          At least in Cologne they're regularly hitting 300 (https://verwaltung.uni-koeln.de/studsek/content/studium/rueckmeldung__semesterbeitrag/uebersicht_semesterbeitraege_seit_2010/index_ger.html https://verwaltung.uni-koeln.de/studsek/content/studium/ruec...). Dortmund was about ~340 last summer semester (https://www.tu-dortmund.de/storages/tu_website/Dezernat_4/Dez._4.2/Vordrucke/Im_Studium/SoSe23_Semesterbeitrag_Merkblatt_Stand_23-01-2023.pdf https://www.tu-dortmund.de/storages/tu_website/Dezernat_4/De...). The 400 was just an uneducated guess for more expensive regions.
          • ongy 2y ago
            Oh https://www.lmu.de/de/workspace-fuer-studierende/1x1-des-studiums/rueckmeldung/#:~:text=Was%20sind%20die%20f%C3%A4lligen%20Beitr%C3%A4ge,85%2C00%20Euro%20zu%20bezahlen https://www.lmu.de/de/workspace-fuer-studierende/1x1-des-stu.... LMU down to 85 for Munich While that doesn't include a full Semesterticket, it's cheaper than Dortmund without
• endisneigh 2y ago
  The government should make it illegal to require degrees to apply IMHO. If an employer can’t create a sufficiently good screening process that would select those who would have degrees anyways, then maybe they aren’t necessary. They also need to stop gate keeping. Jobs like being an attorney inherently require some certification, which is fair. Some governments in the USA made it illegal to take the bar exam and become an attorney without going to law school. Same thing with doctors and Step 1/2. If someone can pass without going to school, good for them. Massachusetts in particular is in clear collusion with schools, requiring school teachers to have masters degrees in education.
  • qart 2y ago
    For some domains, like most software jobs, it might work. In India, you sometimes see children manning pharmacies. It's not because of child-labour, but because dad/mom is away and someone needs to look after the shop. India has laws against this, but so rarely enforced that in effect, one can run a pharmacy without a degree. I dread to think of how many clinics in small towns are run by people without degrees. Heck, we have even had lawyers and judges practicing without degrees. I know only about a handful of such cases because some scandals they got involved in made it into news media. But who knows how many such people are practicing even now!
  • glasss 2y ago
    I can generally agree with lowering barriers of entry, even if there would be some social stigma of having a doctor who didn't go to school. My reservation would be around ethics classes, but I guess I just don't know if any of the exams for lawyers or doctors have a set of questions surrounding ethics.
    • giaour 2y ago
      There's an ethics exam you generally need to pass to become a lawyer: https://www.ncbex.org/exams/mpre https://www.ncbex.org/exams/mpre
  • borgdefense 2y ago
    It is an interesting idea. The real problem though are the ridiculous cost of state run schools. As someone who has been out of college for 20 years, I can't believe what my state school charges now. When I graduated my school was a good value compared to private options. That was the whole point of a state school. Now the same school cost 4X what it does and I don't know if I could even get in when up against so many brilliant Indian and Chinese students. I assumed when I went the goal of the institution was for a more educated population in the state. That was the point of the huge difference in price for instate tuition. Now it seems like some kind of money making racket.
• mschuster91 2y ago
  Well of course. University degree requirements in most jobs outside of academia are nothing but a scam - employers save massively: way lower training costs, you weed out people that can't hold a deadline or work under insane stress even before they ever become a financial risk for your company, and you can get around anti-discrimination and disability protection laws because academia acts as a very effective proxy to weed such people out as well. There used to be a time where "you have to pay upfront to work" was classified as a red flag for scams, it's time to do that again. Especially when your average academic degree can cost north of 100k $ these days - it's madness that we expect people not even old enough by law to chug a beer to take on debt that can't even be discharged in a bankruptcy that is larger than a fucking house costs outside of urban areas.
• j-bos 2y ago
  Saw comments about education being worth more than the paid price, or guarding against economic troubles. All good points, assuming the education was not one of the largest new debts for thw buyer.
• glasss 2y ago
  I think it's interesting that the post mentions a higher average ROI for "students who graduate on time". The reasons why that might be seem like something that quantitative data can't easily explain.
  • silverquiet 2y ago
    The effect mentioned did not seem hugely material based on the numbers given, but it seems like it could be explained quantitatively rather simply by just taking into account the extra time spent out of the job market.
    • glasss 2y ago
      That could very well explain it, I hadn't thought of that so thank you.
• 39896880 2y ago
  [flagged]
  • glasss 2y ago
    Some economists insist that everyone and every organization should only be prioritizing efficiency of gathering capital.
  • malfist 2y ago
    > having an educated population that can tell fact from fiction, engage in critical thinking, and resist fascism? That's contrary to Reason's (the publisher) goals
    • vundercind 2y ago
      I don’t think HN is as aware that Reason is basically a joke of a publication that’s so consistently and provably wrong you’d think that was their goal (and, in fact, in a way it is) the way some online spaces are. It’s not a source familiar to this crowd.
      • ungreased0675 2y ago
        That’s a textbook ad homenim attack. Do you have an issue with the article specifically? The methodology?
        • malfist 2y ago
          Sure it's an ad homenim fallacy, but it the real world, sometimes you have to make judgement calls on them to just keep moving on. You can't spend all your days proving Batboy doesn't exist just because Weekly World News published a new article about how he was spotted
        • vundercind 2y ago
          It’s basic media literacy. Even if Sean Hannity says the sky’s blue, I’m not gonna cite him. Again: HN’s not very familiar with this source, as other crowds would be.
• sethammons 2y ago
  > However, where college students were enrolled also mattered when it came to ROI. For example, an English degree from the University of Virginia has a $581,925 positive return on investment—climbing to over $600,000 when only including students who graduated on time. In contrast, students at Virginia Commonwealth University—another public university—who majored in English have a negative $30,000 ROI, with just a $3,624 benefit for those who end up graduating on time. Getting a good (first) job is key for igniting upward progression, and, as they say, it is not what you know, it is who you know (maybe outside of college grads going straight to FAANG by grinding leetcode). Being unfamiliar with either institution, I'd suppose the former exposes one to a better network. 20 years ago, a kid I graduated with when I got my BS in business administration went straight to an $80/yr job through his network. I was not aware enough nor lucky enough to make a network and I barely broke $30k on my first job and it took ten years for me to make $80k, and that took me switching careers to software development, where I've double that a couple times.
  • alistairSH 2y ago
    UVA is a nationally ranked, well known school, with extremely selective admissions. VCU is an average school. It has some very good programs, but overall, it’s in the second or third tier of public schools in VA (UVA, VT, W&M at the top, followed by JMU, GMU). Really all this study tells me is college is too damn expensive.
  • firesteelrain 2y ago
    Was the ROI reflective of people producing English-degree work or some other industry? I can imagine an English teacher does not have that kind of ROI.
  • ryandrake 2y ago
    Plus, the opportunities to double your salary or even get a +20% bump plateau pretty quickly. You might be able to do it early in your career, but let's say you're 15 years into your career making a great $200K/yr salary. You're not going to just suddenly find a company willing to pay you $400K/yr. My last job hop was for +0.5%. Even assuming an average year-on-year bump of 5% (taking into account job hops) is ridiculously optimistic. The key is that first job. Compare someone whose first job pays $50k/yr to someone whose first job pays $80k/yr. Assuming both average that 5% compensation increase every year, their outcomes will be totally different. After 30 years, the first person will be making ~$200K/yr and the second one ~$1.2M/yr, and their lifetime earnings will be $3.3M/$12.6M respectively.
• Marciplan 2y ago
  maybe ROI shouldn’t just be measured by salary? lol
• RecycledEle 2y ago
  Some degrees let you earn more money. Some degrees let you have more fun. As a teacher I would have made more money never going to college and working in cars instead, but I live teaching. I hear that doctorates in particular are fun degrees, not money making degrees. The problem is when a college can lie to students or cut staff. They usually lie.
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
• hgyjnbdet 2y ago
  As an adult who got nothing from school, drifted into jobs I didn't like, and eventually started a degree (long boring story) to try and get a better job, ROI is extremely important. I wanted a better life for me and my family. As the father of a child about to head to university ROI for them is extremely important to me. ROI for my child however is not even a consideration because they want to do what they want to do and what do I know anyway, they already know everything. I hope they've chosen something that's useful though! I also would have preferred a full list of courses to avoid if ROI was important.
  • t_mann 2y ago
    > I also would have preferred a full list of courses to avoid if ROI was important. Here you go, just sort by ROI: https://freopp.wpengine.com/roi-undergraduate/ https://freopp.wpengine.com/roi-undergraduate/
• lapcat 2y ago
  Many academic programs in the humanities don't even admit Masters degree students. They admit only PhD students, and a Masters degree is simply a certificate you get for satisfying the pre-dissertation requirements on the way to the PhD. There's no independent value to the Masters, and anyone in those programs who leaves school with a Masters is essentially a "failure", because they didn't complete their doctorate, the true goal. So it would be no surprise that these have a negative ROI. In these cases, you can't even get a non-tenure-track teaching position with a Masters degree, because there are already plenty of PhD graduates to fill the positions. (It would be interesting to see the ROI of PhDs, by the way.)
• lumb63 2y ago
  Something that has bothered me for a while is the cost structure of college. At least at my school, everyone paid the same amount, plus or minus three or four thousand dollars. Meanwhile, a computer science major will earn on the order of double what a psychology major might earn, both as a starting salary, and that will compound over their careers. This is also true of loans. There is one flat interest rate for (federal) student loans. That rate does not reflect the creditworthiness of the borrower at all. It doesn’t consider their major at all. Any intelligent lender would never operate this way; who would give both a computer science major and basket weaving major the same amount of money and claim (via interest rate) that both loans are equally risky? We have the concept of prices to serve as tools to encourage or discourage people from pursuing ventures society needs (or, really, is willing to pay for) more or less. It seems to me that in the context of higher education the economics are fundamentally broken. This causes a lot of grief for a lot of people, who then claim socialized higher education is the answer. It might be better than what we have; I’m not sure. That said, I’m inclined to think the free market would solve a lot of the problems seen in the current student loan situation in the US. There would be no kids with low-value degrees in $250k of debt graduating with a job paying $30k/yr. That simply shouldn’t happen.
  • mdnahas 2y ago
    As an economist, I totally agree. Funding of high-return majors by good students should have rock-bottom interest rates. The govt should only be stepping into the loan market if the market isn’t happening. (Not that the market is doing loans wonderfully, but there are some new innovators.) The govt should be helping the poor and investing in strategic capabilities. But the whole loan market and helping school rob parents of as much as they can pay? No.
  • skhunted 2y ago
    It seems to me that in the context of higher education the economics are fundamentally broken. There are lots of examples of this type of situation in the U.S. Suburbia is subsidized through the road system. Gas taxes and vehicle registration aren’t enough to pay for the road system. K-12 education is subsidized by non parents. Police services are subsidized. There’s a ton of corporate welfare too. There are some things for which a free market solution is advisable and some things for which it not advisable. I think education falls into the “not advisable” group.
• giantg2 2y ago
  My masters was a waste of time. My employer paid for it though. I would have gotten farther in my career by using those school hours to just work extra hours.
  • sanderjd 2y ago
    My take is that they are useful in two cases: 1. Careers where there is an explicit barrier to further advancement otherwise. The typical example here is the MBA, but this is also often the case in engineering, education, and nursing, of the fields I know people in, and I'm sure there are more. 2. In order to get your foot in the door in a different field. I think this is more effective than it's often given credit for. It's really difficult to switch careers, and an academic program is a good way to both make initial connections and have a credential at the end that helps get past initial screening. This may well not show up as positive ROI in a quantitative sense, but I think that's because the calculation is failing to capture the (very high) value of choosing what you do with a very large portion of your time on the earth. I think bachelor degrees can also be seen as a form of this career switching. The kinds of careers you can do without a college degree are different than those you can do with them. That difference is about a lot more than the level of pay. I also think optionality is valuable, and never seems to be analyzed in these kinds of papers. My impression is that any college degree opens up a bunch of options that are simply closed to those without a degree, and doesn't close any existing options. I'd like to see an effort to incorporate the value of that increased optionality into these kinds of discussions.
• jusssi 2y ago
  > analysis looked at how much students were earning immediately after graduation, as well as how much they were making 10 years later The observation window might be too short to capture the full effect of education. IIRC the earnings curve peaks later for higher education.
  • sanderjd 2y ago
    100%! The immediately after graduation sample is particularly useless; it's not surprising that entry level jobs do not pay well. But the bulk of the ladder climbing that is made available to people with college degrees and not to those without happens after more than ten years. (I think this disparity is bad and ludicrous, but I also think that it's real.)
• aczerepinski 2y ago
  The government should require that colleges track and post details about their grads. What percentage are able to sustain careers related to their degree and how much do both groups (in and out of the field) earn? I really think transparency here might help restrain future tuition increases because only so many students are going to sign up for a six figure a year school where the grads earn half that amount.
  • paulcole 2y ago
    > What percentage are able to sustain careers related to their degree What does “related to their degree” mean? My degree is in English (Creative Non-Fiction) and I think, read, write, give/receive direct criticism, and finish things on a deadline every day — all key components of my degree program. I’m in a leadership role at a marketing agency. If you say that’s not related to my degree program, then I’d say that’s neither good nor bad. I graduated 20 years ago. How many people’s interests and abilities are the same at 45 as they were at 25?
    • aczerepinski 2y ago
      It’s just useful information to prospective students. I went to music conservatories and I have at least four classmates who (like me) are software engineers. Others are lawyers or doctors and plenty teach music. Only a small handful of students at the elite conservatories really do the thing they went there for, whether that be playing in one or the major symphonies or touring as a jazz musician. When tuition + room and board nears six figures I think young people and their parents should have easier access to the average salaries of grads and what careers they really end up in. My code bootcamp from 10 years ago had way more transparency around this than colleges do.
• keiferski 2y ago
  As a gainfully employed person with a philosophy degree, I’m glad I chose a degree without obvious “career prospects” and wouldn’t exchange it for anything. Education is supposed to be about learning, not getting a return on investment. The desire to financialize every decision is so tiresome. Not everything needs to be about economics, and the co-opting of the university system for job placement is really the root issue here. Job training should be separate from a liberal arts education. That said, the absurd costs of attending university need to come down. Hopefully as alternatives to university become more viable, the cost of doing an English, philosophy, arts, etc. degree will come down to more reasonable levels.
  • gadflyinyoureye 2y ago
    Historically two things happened in the US to make public colleges affordable. The first the State paid a much larger chunk of the tuition than they do now. The second is they had higher standards for attendance than they do now. Those who were good enough go into college. Those who weren’t paid for the their betters’ education.
    • lapcat 2y ago
      > The second is they had higher standards for attendance than they do now. Citation needed.
• mcmoor 2y ago
  One thing that these kind of studies usually haven't counted is comparison of graduate income with their parents' income, which usually are highly correlated. This is why there are some claim that philosophy or art major have some of the highest incomes, people who take that major usually are high class already. If this study is somehow able to eliminate that bias, I bet even more majors will have negative ROI.
  • firesteelrain 2y ago
    Which means more people should go into vocational style degrees or engineering if they want to have a positive ROI
  • t_mann 2y ago
    > One thing that these kind of studies usually haven't counted is comparison of graduate income with their parents' income This particular study actually does try to take that into account: > I estimate counterfactual earnings for each program’s typical students, based on their demographics, socioeconomic status, academic ability, family background, and geographic location. [https://freopp.org/does-college-pay-off-a-comprehensive-return-on-investment-analysis-563b9cb6ddc5 https://freopp.org/does-college-pay-off-a-comprehensive-retu...]
    • mcmoor 2y ago
      Ah, one really needs to read the referred article directly to know this. Nice to know that it's actually already accounted. Still, I don't actually get how he counts the socioeconomic factor and get the "without-degree income"?
      • t_mann 2y ago
        I couldn't find an explanation either. They mention a paper somewhere, but all the links just point to that Medium article which doesn't explain the methodology in enough detail to replicate.
• im3w1l 2y ago
  Analyzing ROI is interesting for a theoretical discussion but I think it doesn't make as much sense for the prospective student. Any analysis of education must take into account the opportunity cost. But what is the opportunity cost? What would you have done instead? Maybe you would have worked. Maybe you would have gotten a different degree? Maybe a bootcamp? Maybe odd jobs while travelling the world? It's highly individual and variable. So yeah I think the right perspective is to consider some scenarios - including how likely getting a job in the field is and what the pay would be if you got one - and then use that to make a decision.
• _yb2s 2y ago
  My friends and family constantly shared articles like this when I was getting my BS and PhD, telling me I was making a big mistake and would be in debt I could never pay off. If they really wouldn’t leave me alone, I explained that I was already working in labs as a paid researcher, and winning paid grants and fellowships- I was making more money as a student than they were in regular full time jobs, and took on zero debt. In general, grad students at research focused universities are paid for research and teaching, and have all tuition waived. The path of making money as a student researcher in science and engineering is available to anyone that is interested and able to learn: as an academic PI now, I help a lot of students do this.
  • sanderjd 2y ago
    Yeah, unfortunately I think I see a whiplash effect happening here. I do think it's good that there is increased recognition that college is very expensive and might not be a no-brainer financially. I do think it's generally right that parents had been oversold the "golden ticket" thinking about college for a long time. But now I see a certain part of our culture swinging this pendulum way too far, to whatever the opposite of "golden ticket" is. And maybe that could have even been a useful realignment, maybe if upper class and upper middle class kids were the ones buying into "your college degree will be useless", then this might bend the trend toward evening out the balance of power in society. But no, of course that's not how this is working out. Instead, I see smart working class kids being turned off of higher education, making good money early in their careers, but then hitting walls at their organizations, which they can't advance past without a degree.
    • _yb2s 2y ago
      Agreed, college shouldn’t be seen as a no brainer- but, like most things in life, if you have a realistic plan, and clear goals it does make sense. Almost none of the value in college is from classes- but from the opportunity to work directly with experts in what you are interested in. You have to take the initiative to make that happen, it’s not automatically part of the curriculum at most schools.
• coldtea 2y ago
  Not for the universities getting the sweet tuition money though
• mkl 2y ago
  The actual data [1] doesn't seem to agree with the article. There's also usually a huge range of ROI for the same subject from different universities, and it doesn't give numbers of students, so (1) I suspect small sample sizes are skewing the data, and (2) it's impossible to find the percentage of students in negative-ROI fields of study or institutions. > For bachelor's degrees, fine arts, education, and biology programs had the lowest median ROI, while engineering, computer science, and nursing degrees gave students the highest long-term rewards. That doesn't seem to match the data. Based on average (over institutions, not students) ROI from the completed-on-time column, the worst are: Drama/Theatre Arts and Stagecraft, Library and Archives Assisting, Alternative and Complementary Medicine and Medical Systems, Theological and Ministerial Studies, Movement and Mind-Body Therapies and Education, Dance, Personal and Culinary Services, Other, Pastoral Counseling and Specialized Ministries, Mason/Masonry, Zoology/Animal Biology. Not too surprising except maybe the last one. The top ROI are Biomathematics, Bioinformatics, and Computational Biology, Operations Research, Advanced/Graduate Dentistry and Oral Sciences, Mathematics and Computer Science, Systems Engineering, Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering, Computer Engineering, Nuclear Engineering Technologies/Technicians, Marine Transportation, Petroleum Engineering. Again not too surprising. Only 45/338 = 13% of fields of study have a negative average ROI graduated-on-time (17% including not-graduated-on-time). [1] https://freopp.wpengine.com/roi-undergraduate/ https://freopp.wpengine.com/roi-undergraduate/
  • GartzenDeHaes 2y ago
    You're comparing medians to means. The means are much lower due to the average being skewed upwards by the wealthy. Edit: the averages are much higher than the median of course
    • mkl 2y ago
      Fair point. Excel's pivot tables can't easily do medians. Edit: Actually, it's pretty similar with medians (via Python now). The bottom 10 are: Drama/Theatre Arts and Stagecraft, Library and Archives Assisting, Movement and Mind-Body Therapies and Education, Dance, Alternative and Complementary Medicine and Medical Systems, Theological and Ministerial Studies, Film/Video and Photographic Arts, Personal and Culinary Services, Other, Music, Mason/Masonry The top 10 are: Advanced/Graduate Dentistry and Oral Sciences, Nuclear Engineering Technologies/Technicians, Biomathematics, Bioinformatics, and Computational Biology, Operations Research, Personal Awareness and Self-Improvement, Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering, Marine Transportation, Systems Engineering, Mining and Mineral Engineering, Computer Engineering.
• skywhopper 2y ago
  I mean, the stat, particularly for bachelor’s degrees, is pretty good. 77% net out positively. And if the degree is the price of entry to a field, then it can be “worth it” if you want to be in that field, even if the ROI isn’t worth it. Thankfully most people don’t go around making every decision in their life based on ROI.
• chiefalchemist 2y ago
  I'm no fan of the Higher Edu Industrial Complex but this is correlation, or at best blaming the messenger. - Different people have different ambitions and motivations. Perhaps some degrees attract ppl who don't see money as a key motivator? Yeah, given the cost of edu perhaps they should, but we all do things we shouldn't and shun what we should. The point is, we need more analysis before we start making new decisions on actions to take. - Supply and demand. It's not the degrees themselves that are the problem but market assigning value to them. Hear me out. That is, we can't collectively brag about the number of college degress and masters degrees as a key metric of our edu success, and then turn around and say "Oh shit. There are too many of too many of these." Put another way, even if you shift all the negative ROI degree people into positive ROI degrees the value of the positive ROI degrees will then degraded (and the negative will climb). - Let's finally admit that the experiment of (politically driven) cheap & easy student loans was in many ways a failure; another classic example of what happens when the heavy thumbs of politicians manipulate markets. It's funny (read: silly) how to make homes more affordable the POTUS is canceling student debt. Dear Mr/Ms President...what happens to price when demand increases? That is, cancel debt will eventually increase prices of other things. Classic political balloon grab, classically missed by the media.
• tiffanyh 2y ago
  CPA skewing data? To become a CPA, you typically need enough hours that college offer a “5th year undergrad” program where you get a Masters in Accounting with just an extra 1-2 semesters. I wonder if this is skewing the data either more positive or negative ROI
• tootie 2y ago
  FREOPP is a conservative activist group not actually academic.
• snakeyjake 2y ago
  Non-libertarian-ghoul take: "77% of bachelor's degrees and over half of master's cost nothing".
• noitpmeder 2y ago
  The actual data: https://freopp.wpengine.com/roi-undergraduate/ https://freopp.wpengine.com/roi-undergraduate/
• brettcvz 2y ago
  For those interested in this topic, I’d strongly recommend Bryan Caplan’s “The Case Against Education”: https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691174655/the-case-against-education https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691174655/th.... He does a much more thorough analysis of the value of a college degree than any other I’ve seen, including factoring in dropout rate, majors, meeting potential spouses, opportunity cost, university prestige, etc. The summary aligns with common sense: college degrees are typically valuable, especially in in-demand fields and from prestigious universities. But the college dropout rate is around 50%, so many people incur the cost of college with little of the benefit. If you’re a high schooler considering college, it’s worth it if you are “good at school” and so confident you can finish in four years and are going to a high quality state school or better. Otherwise, you’re better off going directly into the workforce.
  • mettamage 2y ago
    Not just meeting potential spouses. Having studied psychology has helped my romantic relationships in odd and intangible ways. For 1, talking to women I didn't know was easier because while they couldn't relate to my programming interest, they could relate to my psychology interest. For 2, it was just easier to find someone given that you were in an environment were 80% of your students were female (me being male). But what also really helped was knowledge on anxious/avoidant attachment styles or how intuition is works (I read a lot about Kahneman's research papers - not his pop science books). By understanding how intuition works, I was able to train it through meditation (I could get the academic sources but this would become a lecture). When I got a stronger intuition I could relate better to people in general that use their intuition as their default mode (something I never did as a kid). Psychology also has helped me with some mental health issues long after I graduated from it. I was surprised because I wasn't that interested in the mental health aspect when I was studying it (I liked neuroscience and statistics). I recognize mental issues with myself early so I can start acting on it early as well. This is the tip of the iceberg. My point is: I never expected these benefits. But they are very very real. Moreover, for some these benefits do not pan out this way. A friend of my also studied psychology and would've loved to have a girlfriend at the time but it didn't work out for him. In my case, it helped that I was a bit socially bold. I was socially insecure as well but it doesn't matter that one is insecure when they are socially bold (I can say that with hindsight, haha).
• credit_guy 2y ago
  > In all, Cooper found that 31 percent of students are enrolled in a program with a negative ROI—meaning that "the earnings benefits of the degree are unlikely to fully compensate students for the cost and risk of pursuing post-secondary education." So, "cost and risk". In finance there is a concept of RAROC = risk adjusted return on capital. To adjust for risk you obviously need to first be able to measure it. The more standardized the measure, the better. How exactly do you adjust for career risk? You can put forward a reasonably looking definition and get any result you want out of your analysis. It will look like rigorous scientific analysis, but it's basically a number plucked out of thin air.
• gitfan86 2y ago
  Very few non profits are run by people who do not want to increase their own income and career prospects. The end result of that is the organization as a whole is primarily focused in increasing revenue. Anyone who says "should we cancel this program due to the low job prospects for current graduates "will be ignored or fired by the people who would make less money in that scenario.
• PUSH_AX 2y ago
  Should the “return” on education be purely monetary?
• qwerty456127 2y ago
  This probably is the case when you only expect money as a direct return on your investment. The proportions probably would be different (I have no idea what would they actually be though) if we considered other things you get in return. E.g. development of your personality, social connections you make etc. You still have to do some work to convert these into money and happiness though. I even believe educational institutions like colleges and universities are a waste of time if all you want is new knowledge you can apply - most of it already is available online either for free or for much less than what tuition actually costs. A university/college is a tool for social integration (through getting your knowledge formally recognized and through meeting new resourceful people) and the art of using this tool right is another skill most of the people lack and don't even know of.
• verteu 2y ago
  So 77% of bachelor's degrees have positive ROI (considering individual salary alone)? Sounds like a very positive result, especially since public education is widely regarded as a long-term investment that benefits society as a whole.
• Steuard 2y ago
  It's fascinating how much of this reflects societal priorities in what to reward. That's made entirely obvious by "education" being one of the low ROI degree programs: teaching effectively genuinely does require a college degree, and society genuinely does need effective teachers! (The more students grow up with poor teachers, the more we waste our human potential.) But US society has chosen to pay teachers a low enough salary that it doesn't end up working out financially. Absolutely none of this is about "students making poor choices"! Or at least, if every student made "smart" choices, we'd be left without anyone to teach our kids. (And in fact, that's happening, to some degree. My local school system has struggled to fill some vacancies for the past few years. And Florida, for example, has had such a teacher shortage that they've decided that military veterans and their spouses are mysteriously automatically skilled teachers even if they've had no training or college education at all. Paying higher wages doesn't seem to be considered an option.) I suspect that some of the other "low ROI" fields suffer in similar ways.
• fastaguy88 2y ago
  ROI of whose investment?? The parents? The federal loan forgiveness program that puts social workers in poor neighborhoods? In general, the student is not providing most of the investment, and the investors (parents, government) are probably happy with their choice.
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• nunez 2y ago
  This isn't surprising. College was, historically, an outlet for the wealthy to pursue knowledge and understanding of the world. It only became a (very) expensive and virtually mandatory vocational program after World War II or so.
• bloqs 2y ago
  They were never supposed to be a financial investment. Modern American capitalism has ensured that green tint is all anyone ever sees
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• Eddy_Viscosity2 2y ago
  For decades now politicians and others have brought up the correlation of higher education degrees with incomes and then making the claim that if everyone got a degree then everyone would get a high paying job. But that isn't how it works. There are a finite number of these high paying jobs and they tended to be assigned to those with higher education degrees. But if the market is flooded with people with these degrees, it doesn't make the number of high paying jobs go up. It fact it may even make some of them pay less. But mostly they will just fill up and a bunch of people with degrees are left over. The more degreed people, the less likely they'll be to get one of the high paying jobs. Another similar fallacy I also see and hate is the one about lower mortgage rates or easier financing making housing more affordable. It does the opposite! Because more people will be enabled to buy, they will bid on the finite number of houses and prices go up until they are unaffordable again.
  • achenet 2y ago
    I disagree about the "finite number of high paying jobs", and the "finite number of houses". You can always build more houses. As for jobs... have you noticed that thing where programmers tend to create work for other programmers? The creation of a database engine means now you need db admins. The creation of an open-source OS means now you have sys-admin jobs. Docker/Kube get created, now DevOps jobs are a thing. LLMs get invented, people become 'prompt engineers'... in a post-industrial society, where you have an entire country being fed by like 5% of the population working in agriculture, the majority of work isn't 'necessary' - if all Rolex advertising executives were to disappear tomorrow, life would go on just fine. But somehow, people are willing to pay for these jobs, which creates a demand for jobs that help the Rolex ad execs live better lives (high end sports coaches, fancy TVs/electronics, annoying smartphone apps...), and then you have demand for those newly created jobs to have their own set of 'useless' luxury goods and services... so long you have enough people handling the 'basic' jobs - food, construction/trades, clothing, there's no reason I see that would prevent the rest of the society from engaging in self-indulgent, overpaid intellectual work.
• geor9e 2y ago
  I was surprised that "Engineering" makes ~35% MORE money than "Computer Science" https://i.imgur.com/xOu1qt0.png https://i.imgur.com/xOu1qt0.png I work at a giant Silicon Valley company surrounded in Computer Science coworkers. I do the Mechanical Engineering for the team. Most of them make at least double what I get paid. But, there's probably heavy selection bias in this area.
• tennisflyi 2y ago
  Degree has no bearing on interview skills and companies hire those that interview best - not the best fit