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The timing of this post is impeccable. A very exhaustive new study came out showing that the value of a college degree is higher than ever. http://www.nytimes.

The timing of this post is impeccable. A very exhaustive new study came out showing that the value of a college degree is higher than ever. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/27/upshot/is-college-worth-it-clearly-new-data-say.html?action=click&contentCollection=N.Y.%20%2F%20Region&module=MostEmailed&version=Full&region=Marginalia&src=me&pgtype=article&_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/27/upshot/is-college-worth-it... Basically, you go to college in America or you risk being poor for the rest of the your life. Sure, some coders / entrepreneurs can do it without college. And maybe college is the selection process for these success traits. But with this size of differential on a very large sample size, I think its pretty hard to say, at least in earnings power, universities are not fulfilling the myth.

VLM 12y ago
On a stats blog I just saw that article cited as a classic example of mean vs median propaganda. The average is ridiculously high because a very small percentage of people get most of the income in our society, and all of them do higher ed and send their kids to higher ed. So all the Doctors, lawyers, MBA exec types, pro (post college) athletes, engineers... WRT the median, its a lottery ticket purchase. It turns out that the lifetime financial value of a PHD Divinity degree is negative in the pool of potential seminary students, and its not a terribly high number for most students in general. If you (or your parents) win the lottery ticket of life, you probably went to university, but the vast majority of people not only aren't going to win, but are going to take on enormous debt. This is probably not a wise long term societal policy. The point is there exists a pro football player who earned $100M thus the average "value of a degree" for him and 99 philosophy grads is $1M on average, but that doesn't mean a philosophy degree is automatically a ticket to unlock uncountable piles of gold coins. It merely means rich people (and this is almost certainly not going to be you) did get a degree. Necessary but not sufficient.

VLM 12y ago

On a stats blog I just saw that article cited as a classic example of mean vs median propaganda. The average is ridiculously high because a very small percentage of people get most of the income in our society, and all of them do higher ed and send their kids to higher ed. So all the Doctors, lawyers, MBA exec types, pro (post college) athletes, engineers... WRT the median, its a lottery ticket purchase. It turns out that the lifetime financial value of a PHD Divinity degree is negative in the pool of potential seminary students, and its not a terribly high number for most students in general. If you (or your parents) win the lottery ticket of life, you probably went to university, but the vast majority of people not only aren't going to win, but are going to take on enormous debt. This is probably not a wise long term societal policy. The point is there exists a pro football player who earned $100M thus the average "value of a degree" for him and 99 philosophy grads is $1M on average, but that doesn't mean a philosophy degree is automatically a ticket to unlock uncountable piles of gold coins. It merely means rich people (and this is almost certainly not going to be you) did get a degree. Necessary but not sufficient.