Obviously prices vary.
I can make a living with a trade skill, but data shows I’m more likely to make a lot more with a college degree. You have billionaire dropouts and baristas with phds. But on average, degree nets you a lot of lifetime income.
Maybe that will change.
Aside from those 2 examples there are plenty of colleges with a business model of selling overpriced useless degrees to people who can't be bothered to do some due diligence before getting a loan. Those degrees won't pay off and despite sharing the "college" name, I wouldn't average between the 2 groups.
I've got a few friends who work in science, and it seems to be a pretty poorly paying field, with a real lack of job prospects, unless you secure a job at a government research department.
I ended up getting a microbiology degree and an EE, went to medical school (MD PhD) but dropped out. I was able to get a great job doing programming, so Im relatively sure they were right.
With my kids Im using the same approach.
With regards to grad school, my parents' philosophy was if you could not get grad school funded by an RA or TA, then you had no business going.
I try to use reliable data sets [0] to help understand because anecdotes are hard for me to make decisions. The data are almost always a few years old so they aren’t perfect and could miss a new trend. But it’s the best I know how to use.
[0] figure 4 shows stem 3rd highest after health and management https://www2.ed.gov/policy/highered/reg/hearulemaking/2011/c...
More seriously, anecdotes are terrible when giving advice to fresh high school seniors on their way to graduation. When people think of degrees in certain fields, they gravitate to the successful people (“I’ll study acting and make millions like the famous actors I know”, etc). They don’t think of and aren’t even aware of how many people get those degrees and fail hard.
That’s why they need to see the placement and salary stats to understand what their up against. Once they understand a French Comparative Literature degree has approximately no economic value, then they can make that decision knowingly. Papering over that by pointing out the one leader that happens to have that degree does more harm than good.
I think there's a world of difference between "I want to study acting and I'll end up successful like Brad Pitt" and "Hmm, my cousin is in marketing, and seems to have created a great career there, I should talk to them about that."
Anecdotes about people you don't know, and career stories you don't fully understand aren't helpful, but frankly I don't think massive data sets on how much the average graduate earns within two years of graduation (for example) are all that helpful either, except as a broad way to compare yourself. It's such a large number of people, you don't really anything particularly useful at an individual level (even though there are plenty of good uses for data like that).
At the end of the day, people hire you. Not data. After all, who says that a teenager can tell apart badly interpreted data any better than poor anecdotes?
Teenagers should be able to understand data by the time they pick a college or career.
The sciences degrees are only obviously worth it if you then go on to become a doctor, but that's more schooling and the undergrad degree isn't a strict requirement anyway.
Most of my friends with degrees in math, physics, etc., just ended up being software engineers anyway. So the degree "paid off" for them in the same way a CS degree would, but they would've been better served just going CS.
In fact, funding for scientific research was cut by the Obama administration, leading to the closure of all but two of our branches and displacing dozen of workers amidst a recession.
When I transferred to academia, I took on an underpaying role, and found that the same shenanigans were afoot there. Now, we are approaching the end of the 2000s population boom, and in five years, universities will have many fewer prospective applicants for the following decade at least. The ripples of the contraction caused by the gambling of a few spoiled bankers will be felt again in another 20 years with a much smaller and resource-constrained workforce, still reeling from the burdens of loan debt and overpriced housing.
Unless Sanders gets his way, that is.
It's probably best I plan my exit in advance this go-round.
I’m talking about averages as there are certainly schools that suck. I would take my statement to mean that every single college is a net benefit. But as a general guidance, no other information available, a degree will net me more money over my lifetime.
If I were giving advice to someone thinking about schools, I would have them review the particular school, keep costs low, and study with a particular career in mind, stem/medicine a good target.
[0] https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/research-summaries/education...
What do you mean by that? Zuckerberg and Gates are indisputably elite because they're two of the richest people in the world.
But I wouldn't call them elite beforehand, and definitely not if they didn't work a day in their lives. Their parents' money seems to come from being a lawyer, a dentist, and a psychiatrist. That's not "elite", that's something any family can achieve in two generations.
You could argue a much lower threshold for elite, which is fine, but then it's quite a bait and switch to lead with Zuckerberg and Gates for that category.
Perhaps it's just me, but in the Zuckerberg case specifically, I'd think quite a bit of luck and timing had to do with it. If Zuckerberg had been born 10 years later after the obvious social network ideas were already created? Or if he had gone to a no-name college (or none whatsoever) and Facebook had never taken off the way it did at Harvard?
Or maybe you meant they were born elite, in which case, I don't know anything about that.
This is the big idea here - being born in the right situation gives you the ability to bear risk where a lower middle class kid can’t bear that risk because if things don’t work out, that kid is going to be homeless. When you can take a lot of risk with little downside, it almost always pays off in the long run.
I think the main value add - looking back on how I perceived FB when it came out and why a lot of us started using it - was branding and a cleaner, fresh design. And the newsfeed was a new concept...
That means they show up for $95. No work right? When they actually do something there is another charge right? Where you are? So confused.
The Guys doing the work make a fraction of the hourly rate, anywhere from 15 to 35 percent (not counting benefits). The rest goes to the house.
You brought up a 30 minute job. So I shared what it costs for me for a 30 minute (or more) job. And that it’s easy to get someone to come quickly for such a job.
I’m saying that if the problem can be solved in an hour, it’s $95. This is called a “service call.” Basically coming out and fixing what can be fixed without buying parts.
Any extra labor would cost more. This is a much better situation than yours since you can’t even get a plumber to help you flush a toilet for $300. That’s unfortunate.
Thus my suggestion from me that you could get better contractors. I think it’s reasonable that you should be able to pay $100 for a 30 minute job and be satisfied. Rather than be willing to pay $300 and being unsatisfied.