Is college worth the cost?
finance.yahoo.com
finance.yahoo.com
There are many confounding factors: People who are more intelligent, have parent(s) who pursued higher education, have parents with higher income, or are white are both more likely to receive a bachelor's degree AND on average earn more than other people with the same amount of education. (In the past, being male was a predictor for both higher education and higher earnings, but this is not a significant factor for people born after 1980.)
In addition, the statistic ignores the fact that pursuing higher education shortens one's career -- people who spend 4-5 years in college on average work for 2-3 years less than those who started their careers immediately after high school. As a result, comparing "40-year careers" is bogus -- the only reasonable comparison is between the total careers of individuals, including the time when one person is at college while the other is working.
Finally, even if the statistic were computed correctly and reflected causation, it would be misleading: Different careers are not influenced equally by education. Generally speaking, people don't finish their education before they start thinking about what career the will pursue; someone who was planning on becoming a plumber isn't likely to suddenly decide that he wants to become a brain surgeon just because he finds that he has a bachelor's degree.
Decide what you want to do (either as a single career, or more likely thinking of a number of careers which seem interesting), and look at what qualifications are needed for those. And never forget what Benjamin Disraeli said: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics".
The best traditional studies show that GPA accounts for about 3% of job performance, as measured by income and performance reviews among other things. (IIRC Alfie Kohn cites this study in his book What Does It Mean To Be Well Educated?) It will be interesting to see whether or not running the study backwards yields similar results.
There was an interesting study a few years back that looked at the "outcomes" of a cohort of people who had all been admitted to an Ivy League school. Part of the study group attended and graduated from the Ivy League school they were admitted to. The control group ended up matriculating elsewhere for whatever reason.
Past studies showed at a significant improvement in earning potential for Ivy League grads, but they didn't have a distinguished control group. What this recent study found was that for most students of similar qualification (all judged to be Ivy League material by the admissions boards at Ivy Leage schools), attending an Ivy conferred no obvious advantage compared to attending a non-Ivy.
The only difference was for students who came from more challenging backgrounds, those whose families may have flirted with poverty and/or didn't have significant educational attainment. In those cases, attending an Ivy conferred some advantage over going elsewhere.
Getting a degree is a sign that you are smart enough to get a degree. Getting one from a good school is that much better. The biggest loss if you learned the exact same material on your own outside a university is that others aren't signaled that you've received that education.
If you build something good, it doesn't matter where you are. People know you're smart from what you've done.
There are millions of people paying for a credential that means less as more people get it. Companies treat college degrees as a sign that you're not a total failure.
It would be nice if there were better tests for ability. They work for things like the SAT II, but I can't imagine an accurate test for post-graduate ability besides a review of what you've made.
But companies are lazy. They don't have the time or money to really look at the quality of most candidates, so they use signaling tools as filters.
I went to a community college paid for entirely by scholarships, so the cost to me as far as money goes was only that of the books. The largest cost to me, though, was the time invested in classes where I learned very little.
Back to money though, my pay jumped $2.75/hr at my day job as a direct result of getting my two associates degrees.
Of course, the majority of people will never consider even performing at this potential. But could it be different if college as we know it wasn't so severely required?
That's the first cost that came to mind when I read the title. On the other hand, there were some good parties and women.
I hear that worked out great for hans reiser.
Good god you're friends dream small...
Public, especially an in-state school if your state is fortunate enough have a quality one, definitely yes.
College: still the best four years of your life. (Then again, I've yet to live the four years one would experience after selling a startup for big money. Maybe we could get input from pg or that Broadcom guy who built the underground party den)
Need based financial aid grants are often available (ie not loans) and sometimes they are substantial. I've known people who have paid less for a private school than they would have at a state school.
Secondly, the government should run the loan program themselves for public universities, since it's a lot cheaper for it to offer loans than to subsidize banks to do the same.
Name one other place where the law basically doesn't apply and you are basically encouraged to take huge risks with your friendships, your learning, and your life (sometimes).
Sure, college is expensive. Sure, you have to do a lot of things you don't want to do. But, you also don't have many opportunities to learn things that are totally impractical from true experts in the field. Take advantage. Love every minute. Get out of there and do something amazing.
Last, a lot of the people I met in college are incredibly smart and amazingly successful. Some of them work on the most innovative software around. Some write for world-renowned publications. And some of them just have really rich parents. No matter what, if you go to a good university, you will meet people that will help you someday later. Yah, privilege is a bitch, but if you have the opportunity to have it, why not?
I find the feelings of guilt and responsibility are very much intertwined. It seems the best-adjusted people don't feel either.
For technical and engineering pursuits, a good college is a great place to get a fast and wide overview of theory, competing technologies (or philosophies), and different specializations/tech aspects (database, programmer, ...). (I think this is why I'm more of a generalist as opposed to java or php master...)
More importantly, (a good) college puts a lot of smart, driven people in the same place and time. Going to college allows you to form important relationships with these people that can strongly affect both your personal and professional life both now and in the future. I think both Apple and Microsoft are great examples of my last point.
Finally (assuming you got a useful degree), in case all your entreprenuerial endeavors fail in the short term; a degree can net you a high paying job with a lot of free cycles to relax/regroup and get ready to start that next idea you have =)
Now, suppose you don't go to college but instead you start working at 18. You apply yourself to your job, learn what you can on your own time, and by age 22 you've got four years experience and you've been promoted the point that you can sock away $1161.08 per month in savings. Say you do this for 10 years and keep the money in a conservative mutual fund that earns an average return of 7% per year. After the 10 years are over you've got $200,965 in savings. At this point, you stop investing. Even with no additional money, by the time you're 65 (33 years later) you'll have $2,011,064.27 or roughly $1 million more than the guy who invested his money in college.
Of course these are just some made up numbers. A lot of people who aren't motivated to go to college are probably also not motivated to save that much money and live that frugally. If college costs you less than $25,000 per year it might be worth it, or you might go into a profession that allows you to earn way more than $1.2 million more than the average high school grad. On the other hand, lots of colleges cost a good deal more than $25k/year. Also, the high school grad might invest his money more aggressively and earn more than 7% interest. It would be interesting to see where the crossover point is in terms of college cost, loan interest rate, investment interest rate, and so on. The point remains that a return of 1.2 million over 43 years on a $100,000 investment is pretty crappy (around 5.8% compounded monthly, slightly better than an online savings account)
And yes, I learned this in an economics class... in college.
In the US, someone can spend all of high school in auto shop, and still have a chance of changing directions and ending up with a successful career at 33 that some bureaucrat never would never have predicted 20 years earlier. If may take him longer than the kid whose parents and teachers were guiding them towards medicine or business from age 13, but the doors are open.
I think this is a strength of the US, both economically, and with respect to various liberal, democratic, egalitarian ideals. It isn't perfect though. There are certainly people would be happier and better off if they started learning a trade at an earlier age.
I think it's simply a matter of human nature; given too much leisure, or too high a quality of life, our brains will still be physiologically unable to feel a proportional level of happiness. At the chemical level, there are only so many neurotransmitters to go around.
Anyway, the point of all this is that I would have been thrilled to get a "real" job at that age, but I'm not sure that was right. I was always very much in a hurry to finish school, and now that I have a job and am in college early, I keep wondering if, and feeling like, I've made a terrible mistake.
And a separate point about the article: The cost of college is almost entirely the fact that it uses up the four most productive years of your life. That most people choose college almost on instinct surprises me. Forget buying a house or a car - this decision is orders of magnitude more expensive. If you want to have an extraordinary life, you're going to be on that path by the time you're 22, or you're not. It's worth noting that Einstein made his contributions to physics at the age of 25, and even that was somewhat old to develop something so innovative. At the same time, while he stayed influential and productive in physics, he never published anything as revolutionary. At a certain age - I'm inclined to think it's usually in the early to mid twenties, based on anecdotal evidence only - you just lose that ability. If you go to college, you're basically saying "I'll trade my ability to change the world for a predictable life." And honestly, right now that's a trade I would like to make, but I'm just not doing it, and I don't know why.
And besides, every time I put this in writing I am struck by the incredible level of arrogance and hubris in my words (I'm no freaking Einstein!) and I really don't feel like writing again for a long time.
But... I strongly believe that a reasonably bright and literate high school sophomore could absolutely begin law school. On average, they probably wouldn't do as well as they would after college, because your writing, reading comprehension, and exam taking skills do improve in college.
But I actually think people would be very surprised with how strong a performance smart 15 year olds would show. I'm not talking genuises here, just pretty smart kids.