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The biggest problem I have with this article is that it lumps every single major into "college" and makes the blanket statement that it is worth it. Ok, so the

The biggest problem I have with this article is that it lumps every single major into "college" and makes the blanket statement that it is worth it. Ok, so the average 'cost' of college is negative $500,000, how does that break down by major? What is the average 'cost' of an Art degree? An engineering degree? "Is college worth it?" is the wrong question because there are so many variations that there isn't just one single answer. "Is my major at this specific college worth it?" is a more valuable discussion.

DanielBMarkham 12y ago
Better yet, is this major at this university given my personality and skills worth it? Cars may be "worth it", but that doesn't mean everybody needs to be driving around in a Lamborghini. There is a vast, vast difference between a person who has committed themselves to being a neurosurgeon no matter what the hardship and one who has no idea what they want in life or whether a college education would help them out or not. Lumping it all together doesn't help either of those two figure out what's best for them.
- toyg 12y ago
  >is this major [worth it] at this university given my personality and skills ... and social background. I know a lot of people who graduated in subject X and then happily went on to join or manage the completely-unrelated family business. They make good money, but they would have made exactly the same money had they joined the business four years earlier. For them, attending college had nothing to do with money, and they clearly skew this sort of statistics.
  - VLM 12y ago
    The ironic part is this "outlier" was originally the purpose of higher education... provide a lifetime of interesting things to think about for the kids of the local nobility. Then it morphed into a proxy for social class, where a degree meant the odds are the applicant was of a higher social class. Then it morphed into way to make employees desperate to pay their loan, much as managers are always glad to hear an employee got a house loan or a car loan, there's someone easier to take advantage of. (edited to add, also an indication of a strong conformity streak, which in some corporate environments is highly prized, at least at the line employee level) In the era where blue collar jobs were being eliminated but white collar jobs hadn't yet been eliminated, it became a mere daycare / votech job training facility. Liberal arts, why would I want those, I want a job! Later it turned into a financialization scheme where the government will socialize the loan losses while the banks will privatize the loan profits, and the institutions can charge any amount of money they feel like because .gov will just print some more. Finally it becomes an unusual noteworthy outlier to consider going to higher ed to become ... educated. If this cycle perpetuates, as seems likely, we can make testable falsifiable predictions about the future, such as the number of students collapsing and higher ed attendance becoming a proxy for social class. To some extent we already have this, with ivy's being "real degrees" for "real jobs" and everything else not mattering much, where a liberal arts degree from Yale means you might be employed in the field not just bartending or sales like grads from lesser schools, the point is everything else will be going away, not just not mattering as much. As typical in the fast paced world of today you'll have some people preaching the gospel of step #7 when most of the world is on step #8 and some of the leaders are already operating in step #9, #10, or even #11. This linked article is pretty much like the old timer preaching the values of the past, as if they still matter today.
    - thaumasiotes 12y ago
      I would say higher ed attendance is an element of social class right now. Calling it a proxy gives it a level if indirectness that I don't think is really there, sort of like calling noble titles a "proxy" for social class. They are the thing itself! Socialization is one of the things college does, and is an extremely traditional function of schooling. Going to college is definitely an indicator for social class, and often shapes it.
RussianCow 12y ago
But then you're getting too specific for any useful answer. I personally would be interested in seeing the pay difference between those who graduated college and those who did not in the same job. For instance, how much more does the average software developer with a CS degree make than an equivalent dev without a degree?
- davidcbc 12y ago
  For something like software development this could be useful, but probably not for most technical majors. There aren't nuclear engineers or rocket scientists with only a high school education
  - z3phyr 12y ago
    John Carmack?
    - davidcbc 12y ago
      I think it is safe to assume that John Carmack is an exception and the vast majority of non college graduates shouldn't expect to recreate his results.
    - Brashman 12y ago
      ... who is in software development?
      - angersock 12y ago
        http://www.armadilloaerospace.com http://www.armadilloaerospace.com Try again. EDIT: To be fair, I'm not sure they're active anymore, but for like six-eight years they very much were.
        Brashman 12y ago
        Ah, right. id is the first thing I think of with Carmack. I'd forgotten about Armadillo.
dublinben 12y ago
You can find salary medians and ranges for every different major. I don't think it's possible to calculate "is this major from this school worth it to me." If it were, someone would have figured it out by now.
- davidcbc 12y ago
  It might not be possible to calculate "is it worth it for me", but it should be possible to calculate it on average. I can look at the average income of a high school graduate ($29,950 according to http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=77 http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=77) and then the average salary of a graduate from a particular university with a specific major and see what the difference is for the average person. It's not a perfect comparison since I'm not perfectly average, but it gives a better guideline than comparing the average of a generic college graudate to a high school graduate. It would be even more useful comparing salaries of specific jobs that don't require a college degree to specific salaries of jobs that do and the specific major required for those jobs.
dorkrawk 12y ago
Yes, thank you. I think that lumping all majors at all colleges together and encouraging people to "just go to college" is a huge problem. College is a weird mix of academic pursuit and vocational training. Sometimes those things overlap sometimes not and understanding that balance is important. Not all investments in higher education are the same and not understanding what sort of investment you can make given your current financial situation is causing a lot of people to pick up a lot of bad debt.

DanielBMarkham 12y ago

Better yet, is this major at this university given my personality and skills worth it? Cars may be "worth it", but that doesn't mean everybody needs to be driving around in a Lamborghini. There is a vast, vast difference between a person who has committed themselves to being a neurosurgeon no matter what the hardship and one who has no idea what they want in life or whether a college education would help them out or not. Lumping it all together doesn't help either of those two figure out what's best for them.

toyg 12y ago
>is this major [worth it] at this university given my personality and skills ... and social background. I know a lot of people who graduated in subject X and then happily went on to join or manage the completely-unrelated family business. They make good money, but they would have made exactly the same money had they joined the business four years earlier. For them, attending college had nothing to do with money, and they clearly skew this sort of statistics.
- VLM 12y ago
  The ironic part is this "outlier" was originally the purpose of higher education... provide a lifetime of interesting things to think about for the kids of the local nobility. Then it morphed into a proxy for social class, where a degree meant the odds are the applicant was of a higher social class. Then it morphed into way to make employees desperate to pay their loan, much as managers are always glad to hear an employee got a house loan or a car loan, there's someone easier to take advantage of. (edited to add, also an indication of a strong conformity streak, which in some corporate environments is highly prized, at least at the line employee level) In the era where blue collar jobs were being eliminated but white collar jobs hadn't yet been eliminated, it became a mere daycare / votech job training facility. Liberal arts, why would I want those, I want a job! Later it turned into a financialization scheme where the government will socialize the loan losses while the banks will privatize the loan profits, and the institutions can charge any amount of money they feel like because .gov will just print some more. Finally it becomes an unusual noteworthy outlier to consider going to higher ed to become ... educated. If this cycle perpetuates, as seems likely, we can make testable falsifiable predictions about the future, such as the number of students collapsing and higher ed attendance becoming a proxy for social class. To some extent we already have this, with ivy's being "real degrees" for "real jobs" and everything else not mattering much, where a liberal arts degree from Yale means you might be employed in the field not just bartending or sales like grads from lesser schools, the point is everything else will be going away, not just not mattering as much. As typical in the fast paced world of today you'll have some people preaching the gospel of step #7 when most of the world is on step #8 and some of the leaders are already operating in step #9, #10, or even #11. This linked article is pretty much like the old timer preaching the values of the past, as if they still matter today.
  - thaumasiotes 12y ago
    I would say higher ed attendance is an element of social class right now. Calling it a proxy gives it a level if indirectness that I don't think is really there, sort of like calling noble titles a "proxy" for social class. They are the thing itself! Socialization is one of the things college does, and is an extremely traditional function of schooling. Going to college is definitely an indicator for social class, and often shapes it.

RussianCow 12y ago

But then you're getting too specific for any useful answer. I personally would be interested in seeing the pay difference between those who graduated college and those who did not in the same job. For instance, how much more does the average software developer with a CS degree make than an equivalent dev without a degree?

davidcbc 12y ago
For something like software development this could be useful, but probably not for most technical majors. There aren't nuclear engineers or rocket scientists with only a high school education
- z3phyr 12y ago
  John Carmack?
  - davidcbc 12y ago
    I think it is safe to assume that John Carmack is an exception and the vast majority of non college graduates shouldn't expect to recreate his results.
  - Brashman 12y ago
    ... who is in software development?
    - angersock 12y ago
      http://www.armadilloaerospace.com http://www.armadilloaerospace.com Try again. EDIT: To be fair, I'm not sure they're active anymore, but for like six-eight years they very much were.
      - Brashman 12y ago
        Ah, right. id is the first thing I think of with Carmack. I'd forgotten about Armadillo.

dublinben 12y ago

You can find salary medians and ranges for every different major. I don't think it's possible to calculate "is this major from this school worth it to me." If it were, someone would have figured it out by now.

davidcbc 12y ago
It might not be possible to calculate "is it worth it for me", but it should be possible to calculate it on average. I can look at the average income of a high school graduate ($29,950 according to http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=77 http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=77) and then the average salary of a graduate from a particular university with a specific major and see what the difference is for the average person. It's not a perfect comparison since I'm not perfectly average, but it gives a better guideline than comparing the average of a generic college graudate to a high school graduate. It would be even more useful comparing salaries of specific jobs that don't require a college degree to specific salaries of jobs that do and the specific major required for those jobs.

dorkrawk 12y ago

Yes, thank you. I think that lumping all majors at all colleges together and encouraging people to "just go to college" is a huge problem. College is a weird mix of academic pursuit and vocational training. Sometimes those things overlap sometimes not and understanding that balance is important. Not all investments in higher education are the same and not understanding what sort of investment you can make given your current financial situation is causing a lot of people to pick up a lot of bad debt.