Even for Cashiers, College Pays Off
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
The worst fallacy is the poisoned well ad hominem at the end where he claims that those who advise against college have degrees and therefore are selfish meanie "elitists" who are trying to stomp down the poor collegeless masses and keep them from advancing. It goes without saying that those who haven't been to college likewise are not allowed to advise against it, since they haven't been, how would they know? Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Whether you have been to college or not, you are not allowed to have an opinion or advice others that one should consider carefully whether they want to go into significant debt in return for college. Regarding the fallacy it can easily be turned around to argue that the author is not qualified to argue for college because he has been and therefore has been brainwashed into the cult. Just as absurd an argument and the same reasoning.
He also claims that the average current cost of attending 4 year public colleges in the US is $2000. This is complete nonsense.
As others have pointed out here, the reason degreed people are better plumbers is because they were smarter to begin with, not because they learned plumbing in college.
There was a study a couple years ago (sorry, no citation, can't find it) that compared people who were accepted into college but didn't go to those who were accepted and did go. He found that there was no difference in their earnings. The study showed that earnings differences are not due to "learning advanced skills" or such in college, but due to the fact that people who were already more capable to begin with were the ones that got accepted in the first place. Duh.
I think the author is correct, but you're largely misquoting him.
The author actually said this: "First, many colleges are not very expensive, once financial aid is taken into account. Average net tuition and fees at public four-year colleges this past year were only about $2,000 (though Congress may soon cut federal financial aid). "
And if you read the cited article it points out that over the five years from 2004 to 2009 (when the cited article was written), while the "sticker price" of college has gone up dramatically, the actual amount paid by students has actually declined (for tuition and fees):
"Yes. At public four-year colleges, the sticker price rose by 20 percent over the past five years (these are inflation-adjusted dollars, as are all historical comparisons I’m making), but the average net price fell $400 — from about $2,000 to $1,600. At private four-year colleges the sticker price rose by 15 percent, but the average net price fell 9 percent, or about $1,100.
It is important to note that these figures are just for tuition and fees. Students also have to live, eat, buy books, and cover other expenses while they are in school. "
"The net prices I mentioned don’t take loans into account. We consider loans to be part of the students’ contribution. The students have to pay them back eventually."
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/19/q-a-the-real-co...
Actually she said the opposite. :-)
She says, "The net prices I mentioned don’t take loans into account. We consider loans to be part of the students’ contribution. The students have to pay them back eventually."
Net price is the price the student pays. It is reduced by financial aid, but she says that they do NOT take loans into account (whereas they do take Pell Grants into account). That is because students have to pay the loan eventually.
So if you have a college tution that is $10,000/year. The sticker price is $10,000. If you have $2,000 in grants and $4,000 in loans then your net price is $8,000. They don't take loans into account when computing the net price.
By that logic, I asserted that my home's "net price" is $16,000. A figure equally opaque and equally useful.
They provide the data, a report (which you can read at http://trends.collegeboard.org/downloads/College_Pricing_201...), and have better access than anyone else on this outside of the gov't itself (although they're much better organized). Furthermore, this has also been reviewed by chancellors and college presidents.
I just find it hard to believe that in the battle between one of the most high profile publications that the College Board does and Duff -- anyone would go with Duff.
Truth. The lion's share of income variation is explained by IQ. That is, statistical studies have shown that for a given IQ level, income is only weakly correlated to race, socioeconomic background, educational attainment, and so forth.
When all those TV Shows, Newspapers and Blogs are having this debate the question they are asking is whether the environment that requires a degree should exist. So arguing that people with a degree make more money in the current environment is irrelevant to the debate itself.
(He does set up a straw man of parents on the edge deciding not to send their kids to college but I see that as unrealistic. No parent who is going to send their kid to college changes their mind based on what Katie Couric says or what they read on a blog)
Public schools utterly fail at helping students achieve this. 99% of 18 year olds should be able to interpret a train schedule or read and understand a big-city newspaper. 99% of 18 year olds should be capable of doing long division and computing percentages without tools. The reality is far less.
Getting through college is essentially a filter that eliminates the folks who are not appropriately literate or capable of doing math.
As an extreme anecdotal example, I worked with an illiterate retail computer salesman in his 30's while I was in college. He was a good salesman who relied on memorization and mastery of the legacy, AS/400 terminal based system. He was an intelligent, driven man -- but he couldn't advance, and struggled when the company introduced a browser based configure to order system.
> Getting through college is essentially a filter that eliminates the folks who are not appropriately literate or capable of doing math. What a ridiculously wasteful filter.
> Public schools utterly fail at helping students achieve this. 99% of 18 year olds should be able to interpret a train schedule or read and understand a big-city newspaper. 99% of 18 year olds should be capable of doing long division and computing percentages without tools. The reality is far less. Are you sure about that? Long division is admittedly rapidly becoming a lost art (calculators, cell phones, anything electronic has a way to divide!) However, I'd be surprised if nearly everyone wasn't capable of the rest.
Plumbing isn't just unclogging toilets. You need to be capable of measuring, computing distances, reading manuals for boilers and pumps, etc. Not rocket science, but beyond the capabilities of 40-60% of the graduates of many high schools.
In my mind, the problem is that 30 years ago, a high school degree was sufficient to assume that you can perform basic skills (skills that most successful programmers probably can demonstrate around age 12).
Is long division archaic in the age of the smartphone? Perhaps -- I've found it to be a fantastic screening device for high school interns. Print out a few Amtrak Northeast Corridor train schedules and ask questions about getting between various points between various points as a second level screen.
I think the problem with high school education being insufficient now is a cultural mindset that academic success before college is not important. I could be wrong on that, but I don't think what is being taught is insufficient, just what is learned.
I don't have the link handy, but the examples he mentions (train catalogue/newspaper) are the same explicitly mentioned in the Federal government's reports on the subject, and a significant portion of the population is not capable, according to those reports.
Do individuals benefit financially from a college degree, given certain assumptions about degree and institution? Yes. But a more interesting question is to what extent those degrees provide increased human capital, and to what extent it is a signal of existing quality.
For instance, if the value of certain college degrees is only as a method to differentiate between good and bad employees, universal higher education accomplishes nothing but to destroy that signal, without adding value. This provides an example scenario under which it is sensible for individuals to obtain higher education, but universal higher education is nevertheless inferior as a policy to limited higher education.
Thus the author errs in providing the individual benefit as a justification for universal higher education.
I would argue they earn more simply because of the signalling dynamics of possessing the degree, not that a college grad can do higher skilled work than a similarly situated non-grad. The question is is it fair/efficient to saddle young people with exorbitant debt and four extra years of classroom lecturing just to be able to competitively signal.
A scientist is testing a "success" pill. He picks 2 groups filtered by standardized test scores. He gives the pill to the high scoring group and a placebo to the low scoring group. Those in the group receiving the non-placebo are found to be more successful and the scientist concludes that the "success" pill is effective. Preposterous? Yes. The scientist is not randomly selecting groups. This is precisely what happens in stories linking college and success. The filtering or selection bias is not addressed and would occur even if the signalling advantages were ruled out.
Successfully completing a degree requires a significant amount of motivation and determination. Finding a good, high paying, job also requires a signifiant amount of motivation and determination. Perhaps motivated and determined people will earn more on average?
People in higher class families are more likely to further their education. People in higher class families are more likely to have more business connections. Perhaps people from higher class families earn more on average?
People who are good at and enjoy learning are more likely to go to college. People who are good at and enjoy learning are highly valued on the job. Perhaps people who learn quickly earn more?
When all you have is correlation, an infinite number of conclusions can be reached. Why is it assumed that the degree is what makes the difference? It seems more likely to me that the attributes one is born with are much greater indicators of success.
If human capital is the important factor then being 6 credits short of a 140 credit degree shouldn't affect outcomes. If signalling matters, it should have a rather large effect.
It it matters, I'm a CS dropout from an an Eastern European country which is also part of the European Union. Let's say I've got 125 out of 140 credits (so I got pretty close to actually finishing it).
Anyway, I have a pretty good job and all, but once in a while I receive a job offer that actually sounds interesting. It did happen to me to actually get rejected from such a job "because as you don't have a degree, and as we work with an European Union agency, and as said EU Agency requires that all our employees should have a CS degree, we're sorry to announce to you etc", as they elegantly put it. Some other guys said no to my salary requirement "because you don't have a CS degree, we won't receive the tax breaks given by the Government to us for hiring people with CS degrees, so we're going to pay you less". Fuck them, I said :)
I don't know what the moral of the story should be. What I got out of it all is that I should always work in an environment very close to a meritocracy (and small startups seem to be the closest thing to this), and maybe later down the road open my own shop.
I hope I'm being honest, why would I lie? Anyway, said company had a contract with a European Union Agency, and, as mentioned, said Agency was putting a major emphasis (as in more points awarded as part of the tender process) on sub-contractors that had only CS-graduates as programmers.
And the "tax-deductions for companies hiring CS-graduates part" I'll admit, it's not an EU-wide, EU-mandated policy (hence my mention that the tax was collected by my country's Government), but my suspicion is that my country is not the only one adopting this particular tax treatment. I think the people that came up with this policy thought that this would somehow create an IT bonanza. It might achieve that, who knows? But you'll have to admit it has some perverse effects, such as non-graduates like myself being at a disadvantage compared to degree-holding programmers.
http://www.irs.princeton.edu/pubs/pdfs/311.pdf
Quote of interest:
"We generally continue to find positive and significant coefficients on numbers of credits completed, as each year's worth of credits was associated with a 3-5% increase in both hourly wages and annual earnings. Perhaps surprisingly, the estimated 'sheepskin effects' of degree completion over and above the value of the credits completed were often small when studying wages and earnings."
http://www.openeducation.net/2008/08/20/charles-murray-%E2%8...
that what employers need is a signal of competence, but a four-year college degree is a very costly signal for a job-seeker to obtain. Many poor, hard-working people are locked out of the job market by the price of a college degree.
Isn't it possible that college degree holders are at an advantage in seeking employment by comparison to persons without college degrees simply because of the signaling effect of possessing a degree? The current job market seems to say that possessing a college degree is an advantage even if students are learning very little during their four years of college.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/01/18/106949/study-many-coll...
The problem with these studies is that what they actually say and the spin are two very different things. For example, from your link:
"After four years, 36 percent showed no significant gains in these so-called "higher order" thinking skills."
So 64% of students showed significant gains in higher order thinkings skills? That's non-trivial. This says to me that a good majority of college students are much stronger than when they left high school. And I suspect, much to the chagrin of many on HN, that many of those in the 64% are also top students. And for those that aren't top students, they're obvious in other ways.
The other thing the article seems to point out is that you can get through college with minimal effort if you choose to, but if you do put in the effort you reap the rewards.
While college is too expensive, I'm not sure its failing as an institution of learning. Its biggest problem appears to be making it too easy on those who want to take the easy way out.
More evidence needed. IMHO, the Nazis and their craziness did a lot more for creating "the American century" than US schools. First, by forcing to emigrate all the smart Jewish University professors in the 1930s, and then by getting defeated in WW2 and allowing both the Americans and the Soviets to take advantage of their research in rocket-related fields.
Could it be that plumbers living in Boston are more likely to have college degrees than plumbers living in Salem?
The selection process will obviously skew any results in favor of colleges. It's the same as trying to argue that playing for the San Francisco Giants automatically makes you better at baseball. Is that really the case, or did they just do a good job of picking players who were already the best?