Comment by mkl | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mkl | Hacker News Reader

The actual data [1] doesn't seem to agree with the article. There's also usually a huge range of ROI for the same subject from different universities, and it doesn't give numbers of students, so (1) I suspect small sample sizes are skewing the data, and (2) it's impossible to find the percentage of students in negative-ROI fields of study or institutions.

> For bachelor's degrees, fine arts, education, and biology programs had the lowest median ROI, while engineering, computer science, and nursing degrees gave students the highest long-term rewards.

That doesn't seem to match the data. Based on average (over institutions, not students) ROI from the completed-on-time column, the worst are: Drama/Theatre Arts and Stagecraft, Library and Archives Assisting, Alternative and Complementary Medicine and Medical Systems, Theological and Ministerial Studies, Movement and Mind-Body Therapies and Education, Dance, Personal and Culinary Services, Other, Pastoral Counseling and Specialized Ministries, Mason/Masonry, Zoology/Animal Biology. Not too surprising except maybe the last one.

The top ROI are Biomathematics, Bioinformatics, and Computational Biology, Operations Research, Advanced/Graduate Dentistry and Oral Sciences, Mathematics and Computer Science, Systems Engineering, Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering, Computer Engineering, Nuclear Engineering Technologies/Technicians, Marine Transportation, Petroleum Engineering. Again not too surprising.

Only 45/338 = 13% of fields of study have a negative average ROI graduated-on-time (17% including not-graduated-on-time).

[1] https://freopp.wpengine.com/roi-undergraduate/

You're comparing medians to means. The means are much lower due to the average being skewed upwards by the wealthy.

Edit: the averages are much higher than the median of course

Fair point. Excel's pivot tables can't easily do medians.

Edit: Actually, it's pretty similar with medians (via Python now).

The bottom 10 are: Drama/Theatre Arts and Stagecraft, Library and Archives Assisting, Movement and Mind-Body Therapies and Education, Dance, Alternative and Complementary Medicine and Medical Systems, Theological and Ministerial Studies, Film/Video and Photographic Arts, Personal and Culinary Services, Other, Music, Mason/Masonry

The top 10 are: Advanced/Graduate Dentistry and Oral Sciences, Nuclear Engineering Technologies/Technicians, Biomathematics, Bioinformatics, and Computational Biology, Operations Research, Personal Awareness and Self-Improvement, Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering, Marine Transportation, Systems Engineering, Mining and Mineral Engineering, Computer Engineering.

One can enable the Power Pivot addin, add the data into a semantic model and define a DAX measure for the median on it.

Do you think that graduate dentistry is a bachelor's?

The people who collected the data categorised it that way for some reason.

Do you think they included that category in the analysis of bachelor's ROI, which is what you are doing, comparing it to their results for bachelor's.

Like sure, a professional degree in dentistry probably does have a better average return than a 4 year degree in engineering, but that isn't the comparison they made.

I'd also like to know what the ROI is for countries other than the US, particularly ones in Europe, where getting a bachelor degree is significantly cheaper and cost of living (in many places) hasn't risen as much as it has in the US.

Look at the source. It's a Republican activist group supported by Avik Roy with multiple members of the Bush family listed as fellows.

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