9 ms·

Private colleges are a waste of money for white, middle class kids

129 points by DLay 12y ago

michaelochurch 12y ago
I tend to wish this were true, because it would be better for the world even if neutral-to-negative for me. In truth, though: pedigree shouldn't matter, but it does. Among the top 100 offerings or so, the differences in quality of education are very small. The differences in quality of students are pretty small. But connections matter, and even if Harvard student's aren't all shockingly brilliant, the dumb ones are connected. If you go the #147 private college and pay $50k per year, you'd be better served by a state school. If you're talking about Harvard, though... no, it's not a waste of money. Perhaps surprisingly, the influence of pedigree increases later in one's career. These numbers are estimates, but an MIT CS grad might make $100k out of college while the state-school grad makes $85k-- not a huge difference. Ten years out, those numbers look more like $250k and $150k. Why? Connections tend to get stronger with time, even when not formally kept up. So much of the business world is run by nostalgia. That's why prep school connections are more powerful than college, and college connections are more powerful than grad-school connections... even though the elite high schools are less selective and meritocratic. Old connections suggest predestination ("born to lead") and, because of that, have a cachet that new connections (though carrying more signal) don't. The future may be (and most hope it will be) rich and abundant but the past is a scarce and eternally limited commodity; there will never be more pedigree. Where you went to school matters not at all, ten years out, if you're in the top or bottom 10%, relative to where you might be expected to go with your training, career-wise. If you do really well, no one cares where you went to school. Or if you make terrible choices and fail catastrophically, the Harvard degree just makes it more pathetic. For that middle 80%, those connections made early on are going to start throwing "Get Out Of Jail Free" cards and that's a major asset if you want to break the ceiling and become a player. I'd say that it generally works like this. From 22-25, pedigree matters a lot in an evaluative sense. (Make that 22-29 if you get a PhD.) From 25-30, it doesn't matter all that much because people have more recent data, when it comes to evaluation. From 30-40, it starts to matter again, not because people judge you based on it-- your record speaks for itself-- but because you're vying for leadership or coveted creative/architectural roles and that means politics, and you need "Get Out Of Jail Free" cards (which come from having connections) for when your risks blow up. After 40, it seems to stop mattering because that's an age at which you shouldn't need "Get Out Of Jail Free" cards at all.
- Zigurd 12y ago
  The examples you cite are highly selective elite universities where all the students are cream of the crop. That's not what the article is about. It's about state schools versus private schools with presumably comparable admission rates and SAT scores. That's the choice 90% of students at state schools are making. Some state schools, like UCB compete with elite private universities. If you want to make a comparison with MIT, you might want to ask if UCB grads make any less.
- _RPM 12y ago
  Let's see the research that supports your claims.
- hacknat 12y ago
  What a cute little story you've told. It sounds nice, but it just rings hollow with common experience. I consider myself a fairly social person, I went to one of the best Universities in the world. At least at this point, none of the people I still keep in touch with from my school (a fairly large group) would be helpful to my career in any way. I highly doubt they will be in the future. If, by some chance, in my 40s, a fellow alumni is helpful to my career by virtue of an arbitrary connection we have I would consider it remarkable, and a little bit of a personal failure. I would never make a favorable business decision for the person sitting across the table from just because we happen to share an alma mater. If anything, I would be guarded against it being an issue. I imagine the average person feels the same way that I do. I'm not saying there aren't politics as you make your way to a senior position, but don't count on any help to get there.
- hnnewguy 12y ago
  >Ten years out, those numbers look more like $250k and $150k. If there are managers willing to pay an employee 40% more based on an education received a decade prior, there's a huge economic advantage to be had hiring those of "lower pedigree".
  - michaelochurch 12y ago
    No one consciously cares, at that age, where people went to school. What happens is that the ones with pedigree are more likely to be selected for leadership positions early on, and appear "on merit" to be worth more, after several years of higher-quality work experience. In reality, they were just able to get themselves promoted faster. After ten years, though, they legitimately have a higher quality of work experience than those without the pedigree advantage. So you wouldn't be necessarily able to save $100k by hiring people without the pedigree, because even though many are just as talented, they're not going to have the highest quality of work experience. There are plenty of people who'd do just fine, even with the lack of good experience, but you have to be able to find them.
jreimers 12y ago
So 11% of people who attended public universities are "thriving", and 4% of people who attended private universities are thriving. That means somewhere between 89 and 96 percent of people who attended university are not thriving. This paints a pretty dismal picture of the utility of a university degree for those who want to thrive, white middle class kids or otherwise.
- colechristensen 12y ago
  This is a really shitty statistic and bad journalism. > It asked graduates how they were doing across five different metrics, including financially, physically and socially. Eleven percent of graduates of public universities and private universities said they were "thriving" across all five. Twelve percent of graduates of U.S. News & World Report's top 100 schools were thriving, essentially the same as the rest. It seems designed specifically to say negative things about the college experience. The article mentions three of five categories (does two extra words in a list really require that much more effort?). Relying on self-reporting of ambiguous self-determined "thriving" and making the strong implication that you have to think you're doing so across the board is just foolish.
  - PhantomGremlin 12y ago
    > This is a really shitty statistic and bad journalism. I think part of the explanation can be found at the end: Max Ehrenfreund is a blogger on the Financial desk I'm not really sure what standards the Washington Post applies to "bloggers" as opposed to their more mainstream news articles. But IMO at some other sites (Forbes comes to mind) bloggers aren't held to very high standards at all.
    - ghaff 12y ago
      Sure they are. They need to bring in pageviews :-)
- jws 12y ago
  That 4% number is private, for profit. Private, non-profit is still 11%.
windlep 12y ago
The more elite the school, the more elite the ppl you meet. The financial outcomes can be easily explained solely on the networking effects of meeting ppl from more powerful sectors of society. No one sends their kids to an Ivy league school to get "Super smart", its to hang around the "right group" for later influence and networking with the "right people".
- jerf 12y ago
  If you are going to send your kid to one of those, be sure to clearly explain to them that is the point, lest they fall into the trap of studying and getting good grades at the expense of networking. (I leave it as an exercise for the reader to decide which parts of that are sarcastic, and how much. Frankly I'm not sure myself.)
  - btown 12y ago
    Just make sure your kid studies just enough so the geeks don't think he's a completely good-for-nothing party bro. Because he's going to need to hire them as the developers for his next-big-thing startups. After all, every head-buried-in-the-sand developer needs a well-connected idea guy to part the clouds and let the sun shine through, right? (I, too, leave it as an exercise for the reader to decide which parts of that are sarcastic, and how much. Frankly I'm not sure myself.)
  - meddlepal 12y ago
    It would actually be incredibly practical advice, but it's also some truly depressing advice. "Kid, nobody cares how smart you are. Just smile and nod and you'll go further than you can imagine."
  - dap 12y ago
    FWIW, in my experience, those goals weren't at all exclusive of each other. I went to one of those schools, studied hard, and did well. The CS program had a strong feeling of community, particularly among undergraduates who worked as TAs, and from that I developed a network of smart people (including people several years older and younger than me) who also studied hard and did well. There's no doubt I've benefited from that. But the network I'm talking about isn't a prototypical "old boys" network, and it wasn't developed by shmoozing at networking events. I feel very lucky for the opportunity to have the experience.
loganadams_ 12y ago
I have a tough time with this article. I understand what it is trying to say. The costs are ridiculous. But what I see among my friends is that those who went to large public flagship schools got lost, and had a much tougher time. However, those who went to smaller private schools on scholarships built better connections with professors, and tended to do better long run.
- bottled_poe 12y ago
  It is no surprise that the students on scholarships are typically more successful in the long run. But the reason for the success is not only the college.
  - jordanb 12y ago
    > It is no surprise that the students on scholarships are typically more successful in the long run. But the reason for the success is not only the college. Private colleges give out scholarships like candy. It's a form of price discrimination.
    - crpatino 12y ago
      A hundred times yes! You know you have a true scholarship when it pays (not lends) at least 90% of total costs.
- benesch 12y ago
  Interesting. That's directly opposite what I've seen. My close high school friends nearly all went to Ivy League-quality schools: Yale, Penn, MIT, Caltech, etc. Some of us are happy. Most of us are succeeding. A few of us are excelling. (Personally, I'm struggling. I have this irrepressible notion that liberal arts are a waste of my time, no matter how hard I try to subscribe to the learning-for-learning's-sake theory, which is not great for grades.) We're all stressed out of our minds. Three of my equally, if not more, intelligent friends ended up at public institutions or "second-" or "third-tier" schools. Unequivocally, they're happier. They're thriving, as the article puts it. Student council presidents, top of their class, balanced social life, good job or graduate school prospects. Of course, this is all anecdata. Me as much as you. The article at least has some semblance of data. In the end, it's an optimization problem. What is higher education optimizing for? Salary? That seems myopic. Happiness? That seems overly hedonistic. Maturity? Impact upon the world? Good luck measuring that. College is only not worth it if you don't get out of it what you want. Most of us go to college because society tells us it leads to a "better life"--which is an inherently unquantifiable notion.
hacknat 12y ago
Everyone talks about the great network-effect from going to a good school. As someone who went to one of these supposedly great "network-effect-ey" schools I say it's bullshit. As a thought experiment, think of your own college experience. Do you really keep in touch with that many people? Of the people you do keep in touch with, can any of them open opportunities for you that are at all relevant to your field? People who go to Harvard, Ivies, Stanford, Berkley, et al, have the same basic "College-Experience"(TM) as everyone else. No one wants to admit it, but it's not the network-effect that helps. It's the branding! Harvard, the Ivies, et al, have brand recognition, and brand recognition helps...a lot! If you're hiring someone, don't you think that the person with a brand that you recognize is going to at least get that person a phone-screen or an expedited interview? You're desperate to hire someone and they went to Stanford, so they must be good, right? Ivy league degrees are simply the best door-openers out of all the door openers you can get. Once you're in the door they're as useless as the other degrees are.
- benesch 12y ago
  Door-opening is the biggest network effect, no? You climb the corporate ladder or close the deal [largely] based on your merit, but it's the network that gets you the job interview or investor pitch. It's the friend who graduated two years ago at that consulting firm who puts in a good word for you after your interview; it's the final club grad council member who makes a few calls on your behalf; it's the other students in B school who are already successful venture capitalists and are actively looking for projects to fund. I'll agree the branding is powerful. But, to be blunt, I'm skeptical that your lack of connections means that the network effect theory is bullshit. I'd be curious to see the results of your thought experience on some other folks who went to "network-effect-ey" schools! I'm still mustering my way through higher education myself, but I feel like I've made some incredibly valuable connections.
- spc476 12y ago
  I'm thinking on my own collect experience, and yes, the past few jobs I've had came because of friends I met in college, and I attended a public state university (back in the early 90s). I got a job at IBM as a co-op during college. My third on-campus job was programming related due to a conversation I had with a masters student in Psychology (programming Myer-Briggs personality type tests plus some other more esoteric simulations); some other small programming jobs because of local companies posting on the bulletin board at college. Once I got out of college, a friend and fellow school-mate hired me for the web-hosting company he started (which transformed three times). My current job is due to a another school-mate.
niklasni1 12y ago
Not a fan of this way of thinking about university, as though it's some power-up in the competition to make the most money. It's all very American. What about learning and being in an environment that inspires you?
- moron4hire 12y ago
  Learning and being in an environment that inspires you is great, but has nothing to do with the vast majority of people's college experience. For most people, it's just a job credentialing service.
  - jimhefferon 12y ago
    And don't forget football.
- Dewie 12y ago
  Going to college/university with the primary motivation of getting a job/career in some field seems like the more pragmatic attitude[1]. Going to college/university solely in order to learn and broaden your horizons seems like an upper class mentality. Which is fine, if you actually are upper class or have the equivalent funds. If you don't, it might be less than ideal. [1] Of course this can be taken to its extreme, i.e. greed and overt status seeking.
- methehack 12y ago
  I agree but the cost in the US has gone so crazy that even the biggest believers in its inherent value (myself included) end up having questions about comparative worth.
  - niklasni1 12y ago
    In my country we're paid to go to study, so it's a different proposition I suppose.
- humanrebar 12y ago
  > What about learning and being in an environment that inspires you? Why do you need to go to college for that? Especially in the internet age, there's all kinds of awesome learning resources to consume and projects to join. Want to build a solar car? Form a club, publicize on meetup.com, and do it. Or form a business and figure out how to get paid to do it.
interesting_att 12y ago
1) Network generation is weak, but still there. Does it justify 150k + 150k opportunity cost? The data says no. 2) Colleges are, however, great at identity generation. People who come from top tier schools feel and act like they are awesome. This dramatically helps when it comes to asking for a higher salary, better position, etc. I have met a number of people who didn't go to college, and a lot of them feel they need to prove that they are just as smart as college alums (which they are). 3) Colleges shouldn't be viewed as an economic investment. It is also an intellectual investment. It helps change your world view into something larger and more interesting. I benefited dramatically from reading Plato under the tutelage of Ancient Greek scholars. 4) Lastly, colleges are FUN. Colleges are filled with parties and friends. You have to include this in the costs.
- JoeAltmaier 12y ago
  Most of that. But some of us didn't enjoy parties. Still, the friends I made (20 years ago) are still friends so that part is definitely true. On the other hand, if I had been digging ditches maybe I would have met and kept friends in the dirt business. Not as lucrative maybe; but the lifelong friend part would still be true. So its maybe not 'college' that yields 'friends' but rather 'being young and in some group'
- humanrebar 12y ago
  > You have to include [FUN] in the costs. That's part of the problem. There's no "hold the fun" option if you're price sensitive or if you want to invest your fun budget in something else. This is a really important point because it's really an age and lifestyle discrimination. If you're in your forties and want to get a degree (or a different one), you're still funding late night movies on the quad and disc golf even if you need to be home with the kids. That being said, I'm sure the fun line items aren't the bulk of education expenses, but other frivolous things certainly are: new rec centers, impressive fountains, micromanaging administrators, etc.
bane 12y ago
I'm about 20 years in on my career and can maybe provide a few observations: - Outside of very few jobs, this article is absolutely correct. The few jobs that it really matters are ones where they won't even look at your resume unless is has "Harvard" under "Education" on the resume for no set of reasons that have anything to do with the quality of the education. I leave it as an exercise to the reader as to if they really want to work in those kinds of places -- note: the burn-out rate on those places is usually around 2 years, then you're out in the market with the plebs and a pretentious work history you'll have to explain away for the rest of your life. - Very early in your career, maybe the first 2-3 years, if you went to a top-tier private school you might receive a slight pay or position stats buff over your state schooled peers. If you went to a private school that wasn't top-tier nobody will recognize it and it'll be a waste of your money. Rule of thumb, if the private school you fight your way to get into and pay out the nose to attend isn't immediately name recognizable, nobody will care in the slightest early in your career and it may as well have been the local commuter school later on. - This stats buff goes away very fast and hard as your movement up the corporate ladder start to be based on factors other than the school you went to. After your initial 2-3 years, you'll be expected to have learned the job and be able to perform at the working level. I've observed that there is almost no correlation between the best performers and the school they went to. If anything there might be a slight bias towards those that went to impersonal state schools since they're used to not having their hand held. This is the hard lesson that places like Google are learning. One of the difficult things with being data driven is that when the data shows your state school grads do as well or better than your top-tier grads in the workplace, you have to pay attention. And the data has shown conclusively that it really doesn't matter. - By 10 years in, employers look for degree level (M.S. over B.S.) and possible field (relevant like Computer Science vs. irrelevant like Anthropology) and completely don't care what school you went to in the slightest. Those that do, 10 years in on a career, are usually places you don't want to work long-term. - By 20 years in, you could have gone to the worst cow-poke state school in the country and nobody will care even in the slightest and your peers at that level will have educations from an impossibly diverse collection of schools. - Many of my peers who graduated from a top-tier/private school realize that they'll need to return for an M.A./M.S. or an M.B.A. at some point in their career to maintain upward momentum. Since they're working at the same time this inevitably means going to the local state school. A comment I've heard over and over again is that state schools often don't do as much hand holding and advising (degree counseling) as the privates and they often feel lost in the impersonal grind. Many of them drop out a year in because of this. If you end up here, don't drop out, it's not that hard, but state schools won't treat you like a special snowflake. - However, you can go to the wrong school. The big commercial for profit schools, like University of Phoenix or similar, can be a slight drag on your early career post-school and make it harder to hit career maximums. Companies like to fill up the "Leadership" page on their web site with people who went to well credentialed schools: state and private doesn't make a difference, exploitive for-profit does. - All of my peers with huge student debts went to private schools. 20 years in, I have peers still paying $200-500/mo to service their loans. That's a car payment. The people who are debt free, and get to take on expensive hobbies, travel a lot, etc. are the ones who went to an in-state State School. - People agonize over what school they're going to go to for their undergraduate education, usually over very minor reputation differences. By 5 years into your career it won't matter even in the slightest. - The only people I've ever met who introduce themselves as "I'm so and so and I went to <school>" or say "When I was at <school>" instead of "when I was in college" went to an Ivy. Most people stop saying this pretentious nonsense about 10-15 years in because they'll finally clue in on the social signal that it's not impressive to anybody. - If you have money to burn, and you want to carry cachet more than 10 years into your work, go to a well known overseas school like Oxford. You'll get name recognition, tales of the foreign, etc. However, if you have to explain that "I went to basically the Harvard of <insert country>" you won't get the same effect. Americans still think there's some secret sauce that well known top-European schools impart on a student. - If you went to school because of the great sportsball team, nobody gives two flying fannies about it when they're hiring you. On the things that are important about you as a candidate, it's at or near the absolute bottom of the list. - Your in-career social network will be far more meaningful for you than the one you get from school. - Spending the extra money to go to an out-of-state state school is almost always a complete waste of money. Just go to your local state school and use the difference to pay off your loans in a couple years or buy a car or something. It makes absolutely zero difference to your employer and slight reputation differences in programs won't make that much difference once you're out in the working world.
zamalek 12y ago
That obviously depends heavily on where you are situated and more specifically how [in]competent your public/government system is.
vince_refiti 12y ago
Similarly in Australia [1] [1]http://www.canberratimes.com.au/comment/private-school-no-golden-key-to-employment-20140815-1032d6.html http://www.canberratimes.com.au/comment/private-school-no-go...
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wooyi 12y ago
Variations between degree programs is bigger than variations between schools. It matters more what you major in vs what school you went to. For example, pretty much any CS degree from any school can get you a job. Whereas, even a degree from a selective school in say, Psychology or Business Admin will be hard for anyone. Edit: I work in an education tech company and read a decent amount of literature on the subject of school selection and outcomes.
- deleted 12y ago
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nwenzel 12y ago
"The biggest predictor of whether a graduate wasn't thriving was whether he or she had student loans. Fourteen percent of those without any debt said they were thriving, compared to 2 percent of those with more than $40,000 of debt. You can't draw iron-clad conclusions from that..." Maybe "you" can't draw any iron-clad conclusions from that observation, but I can. Debt is a multiplier. It's great when there's appreciation (ex: buying a house) but a heavy burden when there's no upside (credit cards, student loans) and an impossible crushing weight if there is depreciation (ex: buying a house that drops 20% in value). To all current and future students: good luck out there. Learning for learning's sake is fine. But don't forget to focus on outcomes, too.
- mason240 12y ago
  Student loan debt can be a multiplier if it increases your income. I started my CS degree at 27, working at a pizza restaurant manager. 4 years later (and 2 years into my new career) I am making twice what was then. My loans will be paid off in 10 years and will still have my career and will continue to out earn what I would have in my old life. While this clearly isn't the case for all degree earners, it certainly has upside in a lot of cases.
bowlich 12y ago
I only skimmed the article after the first couple of paragraphs. The whole $42,000 price tag for a private college is quite a misnomer. My sister went to Michigan Tech, I went to a private liberal arts college. After four years, she has more debt then me. Your public institution is about as stingy as it can come with it's funding. That $18,000 price tag is going to end up being your final price. If you are a good student, that private college will throw scholarships at you hand over fist. My college's price (starting at $26,000/yr) would typically get slashed by 50% at the start of each year just by the dividends off the school's endowment -- which it does not figure in to it's advertised costs since it various drastically from fiscal year to fiscal year. After that, load on a bunch of random scholarships and I would be down to around $9,000/yr. I had a couple friends whose parents took jobs at the college to get their kids a 90% discount on tuition. They actually ended up making money going to college.
- existencebox 12y ago
  I think that latter statement is very unfair. Myself, any many other "good students" I know still faced ~100-200k in expenses (both tuition and otherwise) at the end of 4 years. Even being offered essentially a 'half off' masters did little to lessen the overall impact; and that was all I got. Granted, I was well enough off financially to recover from this, but other close friends in less advantageous positions came out with 50k+ in debt, and they had "significant amounts" of assistance. I found my university at least to be just as stingy as the public universities you speak of.
- gmarx 12y ago
  My apologies in advance for being pedantic on the web but I think there is a chance a HackerNews reader would appreciate this: "Misnomer" means something is improperly named. It doesn't mean merely misleading.
  - bowlich 12y ago
    Thanks for the correction. I will note it for my future use.

129 points by DLay 12y ago

I tend to wish this were true, because it would be better for the world even if neutral-to-negative for me. In truth, though: pedigree shouldn't matter, but it does. Among the top 100 offerings or so, the differences in quality of education are very small. The differences in quality of students are pretty small. But connections matter, and even if Harvard student's aren't all shockingly brilliant, the dumb ones are connected. If you go the #147 private college and pay $50k per year, you'd be better served by a state school. If you're talking about Harvard, though... no, it's not a waste of money. Perhaps surprisingly, the influence of pedigree increases later in one's career. These numbers are estimates, but an MIT CS grad might make $100k out of college while the state-school grad makes $85k-- not a huge difference. Ten years out, those numbers look more like $250k and $150k. Why? Connections tend to get stronger with time, even when not formally kept up. So much of the business world is run by nostalgia. That's why prep school connections are more powerful than college, and college connections are more powerful than grad-school connections... even though the elite high schools are less selective and meritocratic. Old connections suggest predestination ("born to lead") and, because of that, have a cachet that new connections (though carrying more signal) don't. The future may be (and most hope it will be) rich and abundant but the past is a scarce and eternally limited commodity; there will never be more pedigree. Where you went to school matters not at all, ten years out, if you're in the top or bottom 10%, relative to where you might be expected to go with your training, career-wise. If you do really well, no one cares where you went to school. Or if you make terrible choices and fail catastrophically, the Harvard degree just makes it more pathetic. For that middle 80%, those connections made early on are going to start throwing "Get Out Of Jail Free" cards and that's a major asset if you want to break the ceiling and become a player. I'd say that it generally works like this. From 22-25, pedigree matters a lot in an evaluative sense. (Make that 22-29 if you get a PhD.) From 25-30, it doesn't matter all that much because people have more recent data, when it comes to evaluation. From 30-40, it starts to matter again, not because people judge you based on it-- your record speaks for itself-- but because you're vying for leadership or coveted creative/architectural roles and that means politics, and you need "Get Out Of Jail Free" cards (which come from having connections) for when your risks blow up. After 40, it seems to stop mattering because that's an age at which you shouldn't need "Get Out Of Jail Free" cards at all.

Zigurd 12y ago
The examples you cite are highly selective elite universities where all the students are cream of the crop. That's not what the article is about. It's about state schools versus private schools with presumably comparable admission rates and SAT scores. That's the choice 90% of students at state schools are making. Some state schools, like UCB compete with elite private universities. If you want to make a comparison with MIT, you might want to ask if UCB grads make any less.
_RPM 12y ago
Let's see the research that supports your claims.
hacknat 12y ago
What a cute little story you've told. It sounds nice, but it just rings hollow with common experience. I consider myself a fairly social person, I went to one of the best Universities in the world. At least at this point, none of the people I still keep in touch with from my school (a fairly large group) would be helpful to my career in any way. I highly doubt they will be in the future. If, by some chance, in my 40s, a fellow alumni is helpful to my career by virtue of an arbitrary connection we have I would consider it remarkable, and a little bit of a personal failure. I would never make a favorable business decision for the person sitting across the table from just because we happen to share an alma mater. If anything, I would be guarded against it being an issue. I imagine the average person feels the same way that I do. I'm not saying there aren't politics as you make your way to a senior position, but don't count on any help to get there.
hnnewguy 12y ago
>Ten years out, those numbers look more like $250k and $150k. If there are managers willing to pay an employee 40% more based on an education received a decade prior, there's a huge economic advantage to be had hiring those of "lower pedigree".
- michaelochurch 12y ago
  No one consciously cares, at that age, where people went to school. What happens is that the ones with pedigree are more likely to be selected for leadership positions early on, and appear "on merit" to be worth more, after several years of higher-quality work experience. In reality, they were just able to get themselves promoted faster. After ten years, though, they legitimately have a higher quality of work experience than those without the pedigree advantage. So you wouldn't be necessarily able to save $100k by hiring people without the pedigree, because even though many are just as talented, they're not going to have the highest quality of work experience. There are plenty of people who'd do just fine, even with the lack of good experience, but you have to be able to find them.

jreimers 12y ago

So 11% of people who attended public universities are "thriving", and 4% of people who attended private universities are thriving. That means somewhere between 89 and 96 percent of people who attended university are not thriving. This paints a pretty dismal picture of the utility of a university degree for those who want to thrive, white middle class kids or otherwise.

colechristensen 12y ago
This is a really shitty statistic and bad journalism. > It asked graduates how they were doing across five different metrics, including financially, physically and socially. Eleven percent of graduates of public universities and private universities said they were "thriving" across all five. Twelve percent of graduates of U.S. News & World Report's top 100 schools were thriving, essentially the same as the rest. It seems designed specifically to say negative things about the college experience. The article mentions three of five categories (does two extra words in a list really require that much more effort?). Relying on self-reporting of ambiguous self-determined "thriving" and making the strong implication that you have to think you're doing so across the board is just foolish.
- PhantomGremlin 12y ago
  > This is a really shitty statistic and bad journalism. I think part of the explanation can be found at the end: Max Ehrenfreund is a blogger on the Financial desk I'm not really sure what standards the Washington Post applies to "bloggers" as opposed to their more mainstream news articles. But IMO at some other sites (Forbes comes to mind) bloggers aren't held to very high standards at all.
  - ghaff 12y ago
    Sure they are. They need to bring in pageviews :-)
jws 12y ago
That 4% number is private, for profit. Private, non-profit is still 11%.

windlep 12y ago

The more elite the school, the more elite the ppl you meet. The financial outcomes can be easily explained solely on the networking effects of meeting ppl from more powerful sectors of society. No one sends their kids to an Ivy league school to get "Super smart", its to hang around the "right group" for later influence and networking with the "right people".

jerf 12y ago
If you are going to send your kid to one of those, be sure to clearly explain to them that is the point, lest they fall into the trap of studying and getting good grades at the expense of networking. (I leave it as an exercise for the reader to decide which parts of that are sarcastic, and how much. Frankly I'm not sure myself.)
- btown 12y ago
  Just make sure your kid studies just enough so the geeks don't think he's a completely good-for-nothing party bro. Because he's going to need to hire them as the developers for his next-big-thing startups. After all, every head-buried-in-the-sand developer needs a well-connected idea guy to part the clouds and let the sun shine through, right? (I, too, leave it as an exercise for the reader to decide which parts of that are sarcastic, and how much. Frankly I'm not sure myself.)
- meddlepal 12y ago
  It would actually be incredibly practical advice, but it's also some truly depressing advice. "Kid, nobody cares how smart you are. Just smile and nod and you'll go further than you can imagine."
- dap 12y ago
  FWIW, in my experience, those goals weren't at all exclusive of each other. I went to one of those schools, studied hard, and did well. The CS program had a strong feeling of community, particularly among undergraduates who worked as TAs, and from that I developed a network of smart people (including people several years older and younger than me) who also studied hard and did well. There's no doubt I've benefited from that. But the network I'm talking about isn't a prototypical "old boys" network, and it wasn't developed by shmoozing at networking events. I feel very lucky for the opportunity to have the experience.

loganadams_ 12y ago

I have a tough time with this article. I understand what it is trying to say. The costs are ridiculous. But what I see among my friends is that those who went to large public flagship schools got lost, and had a much tougher time. However, those who went to smaller private schools on scholarships built better connections with professors, and tended to do better long run.

bottled_poe 12y ago
It is no surprise that the students on scholarships are typically more successful in the long run. But the reason for the success is not only the college.
- jordanb 12y ago
  > It is no surprise that the students on scholarships are typically more successful in the long run. But the reason for the success is not only the college. Private colleges give out scholarships like candy. It's a form of price discrimination.
  - crpatino 12y ago
    A hundred times yes! You know you have a true scholarship when it pays (not lends) at least 90% of total costs.
benesch 12y ago
Interesting. That's directly opposite what I've seen. My close high school friends nearly all went to Ivy League-quality schools: Yale, Penn, MIT, Caltech, etc. Some of us are happy. Most of us are succeeding. A few of us are excelling. (Personally, I'm struggling. I have this irrepressible notion that liberal arts are a waste of my time, no matter how hard I try to subscribe to the learning-for-learning's-sake theory, which is not great for grades.) We're all stressed out of our minds. Three of my equally, if not more, intelligent friends ended up at public institutions or "second-" or "third-tier" schools. Unequivocally, they're happier. They're thriving, as the article puts it. Student council presidents, top of their class, balanced social life, good job or graduate school prospects. Of course, this is all anecdata. Me as much as you. The article at least has some semblance of data. In the end, it's an optimization problem. What is higher education optimizing for? Salary? That seems myopic. Happiness? That seems overly hedonistic. Maturity? Impact upon the world? Good luck measuring that. College is only not worth it if you don't get out of it what you want. Most of us go to college because society tells us it leads to a "better life"--which is an inherently unquantifiable notion.

hacknat 12y ago

Everyone talks about the great network-effect from going to a good school. As someone who went to one of these supposedly great "network-effect-ey" schools I say it's bullshit. As a thought experiment, think of your own college experience. Do you really keep in touch with that many people? Of the people you do keep in touch with, can any of them open opportunities for you that are at all relevant to your field? People who go to Harvard, Ivies, Stanford, Berkley, et al, have the same basic "College-Experience"(TM) as everyone else. No one wants to admit it, but it's not the network-effect that helps. It's the branding! Harvard, the Ivies, et al, have brand recognition, and brand recognition helps...a lot! If you're hiring someone, don't you think that the person with a brand that you recognize is going to at least get that person a phone-screen or an expedited interview? You're desperate to hire someone and they went to Stanford, so they must be good, right? Ivy league degrees are simply the best door-openers out of all the door openers you can get. Once you're in the door they're as useless as the other degrees are.

benesch 12y ago
Door-opening is the biggest network effect, no? You climb the corporate ladder or close the deal [largely] based on your merit, but it's the network that gets you the job interview or investor pitch. It's the friend who graduated two years ago at that consulting firm who puts in a good word for you after your interview; it's the final club grad council member who makes a few calls on your behalf; it's the other students in B school who are already successful venture capitalists and are actively looking for projects to fund. I'll agree the branding is powerful. But, to be blunt, I'm skeptical that your lack of connections means that the network effect theory is bullshit. I'd be curious to see the results of your thought experience on some other folks who went to "network-effect-ey" schools! I'm still mustering my way through higher education myself, but I feel like I've made some incredibly valuable connections.
spc476 12y ago
I'm thinking on my own collect experience, and yes, the past few jobs I've had came because of friends I met in college, and I attended a public state university (back in the early 90s). I got a job at IBM as a co-op during college. My third on-campus job was programming related due to a conversation I had with a masters student in Psychology (programming Myer-Briggs personality type tests plus some other more esoteric simulations); some other small programming jobs because of local companies posting on the bulletin board at college. Once I got out of college, a friend and fellow school-mate hired me for the web-hosting company he started (which transformed three times). My current job is due to a another school-mate.

niklasni1 12y ago

Not a fan of this way of thinking about university, as though it's some power-up in the competition to make the most money. It's all very American. What about learning and being in an environment that inspires you?

moron4hire 12y ago
Learning and being in an environment that inspires you is great, but has nothing to do with the vast majority of people's college experience. For most people, it's just a job credentialing service.
- jimhefferon 12y ago
  And don't forget football.
Dewie 12y ago
Going to college/university with the primary motivation of getting a job/career in some field seems like the more pragmatic attitude[1]. Going to college/university solely in order to learn and broaden your horizons seems like an upper class mentality. Which is fine, if you actually are upper class or have the equivalent funds. If you don't, it might be less than ideal. [1] Of course this can be taken to its extreme, i.e. greed and overt status seeking.
methehack 12y ago
I agree but the cost in the US has gone so crazy that even the biggest believers in its inherent value (myself included) end up having questions about comparative worth.
- niklasni1 12y ago
  In my country we're paid to go to study, so it's a different proposition I suppose.
humanrebar 12y ago
> What about learning and being in an environment that inspires you? Why do you need to go to college for that? Especially in the internet age, there's all kinds of awesome learning resources to consume and projects to join. Want to build a solar car? Form a club, publicize on meetup.com, and do it. Or form a business and figure out how to get paid to do it.

interesting_att 12y ago

1) Network generation is weak, but still there. Does it justify 150k + 150k opportunity cost? The data says no. 2) Colleges are, however, great at identity generation. People who come from top tier schools feel and act like they are awesome. This dramatically helps when it comes to asking for a higher salary, better position, etc. I have met a number of people who didn't go to college, and a lot of them feel they need to prove that they are just as smart as college alums (which they are). 3) Colleges shouldn't be viewed as an economic investment. It is also an intellectual investment. It helps change your world view into something larger and more interesting. I benefited dramatically from reading Plato under the tutelage of Ancient Greek scholars. 4) Lastly, colleges are FUN. Colleges are filled with parties and friends. You have to include this in the costs.

JoeAltmaier 12y ago
Most of that. But some of us didn't enjoy parties. Still, the friends I made (20 years ago) are still friends so that part is definitely true. On the other hand, if I had been digging ditches maybe I would have met and kept friends in the dirt business. Not as lucrative maybe; but the lifelong friend part would still be true. So its maybe not 'college' that yields 'friends' but rather 'being young and in some group'
humanrebar 12y ago
> You have to include [FUN] in the costs. That's part of the problem. There's no "hold the fun" option if you're price sensitive or if you want to invest your fun budget in something else. This is a really important point because it's really an age and lifestyle discrimination. If you're in your forties and want to get a degree (or a different one), you're still funding late night movies on the quad and disc golf even if you need to be home with the kids. That being said, I'm sure the fun line items aren't the bulk of education expenses, but other frivolous things certainly are: new rec centers, impressive fountains, micromanaging administrators, etc.

bane 12y ago

I'm about 20 years in on my career and can maybe provide a few observations: - Outside of very few jobs, this article is absolutely correct. The few jobs that it really matters are ones where they won't even look at your resume unless is has "Harvard" under "Education" on the resume for no set of reasons that have anything to do with the quality of the education. I leave it as an exercise to the reader as to if they really want to work in those kinds of places -- note: the burn-out rate on those places is usually around 2 years, then you're out in the market with the plebs and a pretentious work history you'll have to explain away for the rest of your life. - Very early in your career, maybe the first 2-3 years, if you went to a top-tier private school you might receive a slight pay or position stats buff over your state schooled peers. If you went to a private school that wasn't top-tier nobody will recognize it and it'll be a waste of your money. Rule of thumb, if the private school you fight your way to get into and pay out the nose to attend isn't immediately name recognizable, nobody will care in the slightest early in your career and it may as well have been the local commuter school later on. - This stats buff goes away very fast and hard as your movement up the corporate ladder start to be based on factors other than the school you went to. After your initial 2-3 years, you'll be expected to have learned the job and be able to perform at the working level. I've observed that there is almost no correlation between the best performers and the school they went to. If anything there might be a slight bias towards those that went to impersonal state schools since they're used to not having their hand held. This is the hard lesson that places like Google are learning. One of the difficult things with being data driven is that when the data shows your state school grads do as well or better than your top-tier grads in the workplace, you have to pay attention. And the data has shown conclusively that it really doesn't matter. - By 10 years in, employers look for degree level (M.S. over B.S.) and possible field (relevant like Computer Science vs. irrelevant like Anthropology) and completely don't care what school you went to in the slightest. Those that do, 10 years in on a career, are usually places you don't want to work long-term. - By 20 years in, you could have gone to the worst cow-poke state school in the country and nobody will care even in the slightest and your peers at that level will have educations from an impossibly diverse collection of schools. - Many of my peers who graduated from a top-tier/private school realize that they'll need to return for an M.A./M.S. or an M.B.A. at some point in their career to maintain upward momentum. Since they're working at the same time this inevitably means going to the local state school. A comment I've heard over and over again is that state schools often don't do as much hand holding and advising (degree counseling) as the privates and they often feel lost in the impersonal grind. Many of them drop out a year in because of this. If you end up here, don't drop out, it's not that hard, but state schools won't treat you like a special snowflake. - However, you can go to the wrong school. The big commercial for profit schools, like University of Phoenix or similar, can be a slight drag on your early career post-school and make it harder to hit career maximums. Companies like to fill up the "Leadership" page on their web site with people who went to well credentialed schools: state and private doesn't make a difference, exploitive for-profit does. - All of my peers with huge student debts went to private schools. 20 years in, I have peers still paying $200-500/mo to service their loans. That's a car payment. The people who are debt free, and get to take on expensive hobbies, travel a lot, etc. are the ones who went to an in-state State School. - People agonize over what school they're going to go to for their undergraduate education, usually over very minor reputation differences. By 5 years into your career it won't matter even in the slightest. - The only people I've ever met who introduce themselves as "I'm so and so and I went to <school>" or say "When I was at <school>" instead of "when I was in college" went to an Ivy. Most people stop saying this pretentious nonsense about 10-15 years in because they'll finally clue in on the social signal that it's not impressive to anybody. - If you have money to burn, and you want to carry cachet more than 10 years into your work, go to a well known overseas school like Oxford. You'll get name recognition, tales of the foreign, etc. However, if you have to explain that "I went to basically the Harvard of <insert country>" you won't get the same effect. Americans still think there's some secret sauce that well known top-European schools impart on a student. - If you went to school because of the great sportsball team, nobody gives two flying fannies about it when they're hiring you. On the things that are important about you as a candidate, it's at or near the absolute bottom of the list. - Your in-career social network will be far more meaningful for you than the one you get from school. - Spending the extra money to go to an out-of-state state school is almost always a complete waste of money. Just go to your local state school and use the difference to pay off your loans in a couple years or buy a car or something. It makes absolutely zero difference to your employer and slight reputation differences in programs won't make that much difference once you're out in the working world.

zamalek 12y ago

That obviously depends heavily on where you are situated and more specifically how [in]competent your public/government system is.

vince_refiti 12y ago

Similarly in Australia [1] [1]http://www.canberratimes.com.au/comment/private-school-no-golden-key-to-employment-20140815-1032d6.html http://www.canberratimes.com.au/comment/private-school-no-go...

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wooyi 12y ago

Variations between degree programs is bigger than variations between schools. It matters more what you major in vs what school you went to. For example, pretty much any CS degree from any school can get you a job. Whereas, even a degree from a selective school in say, Psychology or Business Admin will be hard for anyone. Edit: I work in an education tech company and read a decent amount of literature on the subject of school selection and outcomes.

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nwenzel 12y ago

"The biggest predictor of whether a graduate wasn't thriving was whether he or she had student loans. Fourteen percent of those without any debt said they were thriving, compared to 2 percent of those with more than $40,000 of debt. You can't draw iron-clad conclusions from that..." Maybe "you" can't draw any iron-clad conclusions from that observation, but I can. Debt is a multiplier. It's great when there's appreciation (ex: buying a house) but a heavy burden when there's no upside (credit cards, student loans) and an impossible crushing weight if there is depreciation (ex: buying a house that drops 20% in value). To all current and future students: good luck out there. Learning for learning's sake is fine. But don't forget to focus on outcomes, too.

mason240 12y ago
Student loan debt can be a multiplier if it increases your income. I started my CS degree at 27, working at a pizza restaurant manager. 4 years later (and 2 years into my new career) I am making twice what was then. My loans will be paid off in 10 years and will still have my career and will continue to out earn what I would have in my old life. While this clearly isn't the case for all degree earners, it certainly has upside in a lot of cases.

bowlich 12y ago

I only skimmed the article after the first couple of paragraphs. The whole $42,000 price tag for a private college is quite a misnomer. My sister went to Michigan Tech, I went to a private liberal arts college. After four years, she has more debt then me. Your public institution is about as stingy as it can come with it's funding. That $18,000 price tag is going to end up being your final price. If you are a good student, that private college will throw scholarships at you hand over fist. My college's price (starting at $26,000/yr) would typically get slashed by 50% at the start of each year just by the dividends off the school's endowment -- which it does not figure in to it's advertised costs since it various drastically from fiscal year to fiscal year. After that, load on a bunch of random scholarships and I would be down to around $9,000/yr. I had a couple friends whose parents took jobs at the college to get their kids a 90% discount on tuition. They actually ended up making money going to college.

existencebox 12y ago
I think that latter statement is very unfair. Myself, any many other "good students" I know still faced ~100-200k in expenses (both tuition and otherwise) at the end of 4 years. Even being offered essentially a 'half off' masters did little to lessen the overall impact; and that was all I got. Granted, I was well enough off financially to recover from this, but other close friends in less advantageous positions came out with 50k+ in debt, and they had "significant amounts" of assistance. I found my university at least to be just as stingy as the public universities you speak of.
gmarx 12y ago
My apologies in advance for being pedantic on the web but I think there is a chance a HackerNews reader would appreciate this: "Misnomer" means something is improperly named. It doesn't mean merely misleading.
- bowlich 12y ago
  Thanks for the correction. I will note it for my future use.