Higher Education: Too many degrees are a waste of money.
economist.com
economist.com
Side story related to higher education: My friend's counselor suggested she apply to school in this manner: Apply to 3 Ivy leagues, then 3 reputable out of state schools, then 1 in state school.
What kind of advice is that to give to an 18-year old who only has an inkling of what they'd like to do after college? I swear this guy misguided many students.
My brother has also just started university and he told me he's seen exactly the same thing. Of the 9 close friends that went off to university at the same time as him, only 2 are still on their courses. A few dropped out, most changed courses but won't be able to start the new courses until the next academic year.
Very few people know what they want to do at 18, and many don't know what studying their chosen subject will really be like.
I was really surprised by this because I knew what course I wanted to do at university when I was 13, I thought it was Electronic Engineering, until I found out that Computer Science existed, at which point I immediately recognised that as what I wanted to do. I assumed everyone was like that, but I have friends who at 21-23 are still trying to work out what they want to do.
Exactly - my wife and I were having a discussion about our son going to University and the general conclusion we came to was that if he isn't really clear on why he wants to go to University then we'll advise him to do something else first. The University course I did in the UK was, oddly, traditionally half-full of Norwegians who were all in their mid 20s - didn't seem to do them any harm!
Absolutely! But middle/upper class families aren't helping the situation. We have people who start saving for college for fetuses. When you are 18 and you know you've got some hunk of change for college and people are telling you "college," than it doesn't seem like you'd be likely to go to trade school. It seems like you'd be betraying your family's expectations of you. There's also a cultural expectation that if you don't go to college you're nothing or stupid.
See Mike Rowe (of the show Dirty Jobs) for his opinion on the matter:
if he told kids not to go to college he'd probably hear from angry parents and school administrator
I imagine he's never heard from an angry ex student who he told to go to college
But any naive ex-student might be frustrated that he made some bad decisions with questionable advice. It's not fair to blame the counselor completely I guess. You'd think that the student seeks other resources to make informed decisions.
Oh come on. He apologized? Nobody can stick to what they say anymore?
Of course you aren't going to get a well paying job with a Spanish degree unless perhaps you wanted to teach Spanish. That should be obvious, but for some reason it isn't for kids these days.
For the last 20ish years all you hear is "you have to go to college." In college you can study almost anything, so some people will pick useless degrees because they are just checking off the box "college" without any forethought whatsoever.
I am telling you, the cost of college scared me off so much that there would be no way I'd go unless I was pretty sure that it would pay off. I did go, and it did pay off, and I am now debt free, but while I was there I was constantly thinking about all the debt I was accumulating without (at the time) any way to pay off. It was a huge gamble on the future. It was heavy on my shoulders. I don't know why other kids don't feel that way.
I knew an English major who didn't know the difference between you're and your...
It just occurred to me how nonsensical a similar title would be: "Too many families are a waste of money".
Maybe it's ok to not consider what we are calling "education" a purely financial investment.
My major (finance) has almost nothing to do with my day to day work. But I became best friends with my cofounder our freshman year, met his high school friend and our third cofounder my sophomore year, met my wife my senior year, and utilized our university network to hire our 4th cofounder & CTO after graduation.
I've done two startups with the first two cofounders and by tapping into my wife's network found our first angel investors.
Majors and degrees are important (I'd be in a different position if I'd gone through with the switch to engineering sophomore year), but I met my wife in my final finance credit senior year. I'll take the relationships - along with a semi-practical degree.
[that is if you insist on going to school - definitely not for everyone or necessary]
its not obvious what the replacement value of those relationships are
but you can probably meet and matain relationships with people without paying tuition dollars to do so
in different words: "I met a great cofounder and wife at college" doesn't seem to logically follow to "you have to go to college to meet a great cofounder and wife"
so is seems like a stretch to really give the college (full? much?) credit for those relationships
It sure helps. Where else in your life are you going to be surrounded by thousands of other young people that you can date, or classes full of like-minded individuals who you might start a business with?
similarly there are many many social organizations you can meet young people to date, there are also establishments that sell food and beverages where young people tend to congregate 2-3 nights a week
if all that fails, there are websites that let you contact people for both purposes (albeit the signal to noise for those might be poor)
college is obviously convient for both purposes, but its a mistake, both on a societal level and a personal level, to give college monopoly pricing power if that's what you're in the market for
that's how real discussions are supposed to happen
How many of them have entrance standards as stringent as the Ivy League? The hardest part isn't what you do while you're there, it's getting in. And how else are parents going to pay for their children to spend so much time around the best class of plausible mates they can find for their children?
is it so that you don't have to spend resources maintaining a network with those that don't meet them?
for what its worth, any professional and hobbyist club with close proximity to a prestigous school will probably put you in contact with a number of people in that school
you don't have to go to Harvard, MIT, Stanford wherever, to meet/ socialize with students from that school
you probably have to be doing something of interest, to make yourself an attractive socialization member from the other side of that equation, but that probably true (though obviously to a lesser extent) even if your a student of one of those schools
obviously I feel I received some value from college (in my case, the soft value outweighs the hard values).
like I said, I don't necessarily think college is the best place to spend 4 years of life and many thousands of dollars if you are not gaining any type of skill, earning a value-add level of expertise in a field, or great general skill set improvements. It had a significant impact on me, although most of the skills I learned there were improvements on traits/ skills I already possessed.
I would whole heartedly agree that coursework can be dramatically optimized to better prepare students for a variety of careers [which I think will be the future case as trade schools, crash course programming schools and various workshops appear, and colleges continue to get pushback from those who have not been snapped up into the workforce]
but as bluedino mentioned, university life allows for a fairly unique set of circumstances: most young people, densely populated by people in relatively similar circumstances, rapidly maturing as people, learning a wide variety of new/ interesting things. >> for me from 18-22 this experience held quite a bit of value.
Also. There are a lot of studies here I feel shouldn't even be university level. However we must not forget that just being 4 years in college and learning whatever you like has. We should never discourage learning. We might want to encourage studies/trades that provide more benefits for our society and economy as a whole. How about free tuition for such studies?
On the other hand, master's degree programs tend to require a bachelor's degree that has sufficient overlap in terms of courses. So to start a Computer Science master's degree, you'd probably need some bachelor's degree in engineering, math or physics. If you for instance got a bachelor's degree in Psychology, you'd probably need to attend several courses in order to be allowed to join.
Well, three of them came in getting my PhD in physics. Along the way, I got an MA and some degree called a Master of Philosophy (M. Phil. for short). So for three of them I got paid with a stipend, though you could argue my opportunity costs were greater than the roughly $27,000 per year I got paid.
Then I went back for an MBA. I'm still paying it off, but I've used it to improve my quality of life more than I think I would have without that degree. I work fewer hours than most people and consider myself consistently happier and more effective than most people I know, in particular than I was before the leadership classes I took.
Incidentally, they're all from Columbia, so they all happen to be Ivy League degrees too.
Could be...
With the job market the way it is and stagnant wages and rising cost of living, I know quite a few people who would love to make $27,000 a year and would consider that a good income.
Some college graduates....
I believe in the future higher education will focus on developing soft skills like leadership, negotiation or majoring in a very specific topic through PhDs.
Clayton Christensen has expanded a lot on the topic and provides very good food for thoughts: http://www.businessinsider.com/clay-christensen-higher-educa...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-11136511
[NB I'm not implying that this is a bad, or indeed a good, thing - just I've started paying much more attention to university courses now that my son is in his mid teens!]
(Where are you from? To my (US English) ears, a "course" is a class, the kind of thing that might happen every mon/wed/fri in the afternoons, but the article you link is clearly talking about a "major" (as in "I majored in politics & economics"). They refer to it as a "degree", which is also, to me, completely normal use ("my degree was in politics & economics").)
In this context, 'degree' and 'course' are often used interchangeably. 'Degree Course' in UK English is perhaps equivalent to 'Degree Program' in US.
To be perhaps more pedantic, your 'degree' might be the subject ('I have a Degree in Computer Science'), whereas your course would be the particular program ('I took the University of Bristol's Computer Science course'). In this instance, the commentor is referring to not just any PPE Degree qualification, but the PPE Course at Oxford.
My main point is that it's not even mildly surprising that students from Oxford should be disproportionately present in the UK government or anywhere else of significance. I have a feeling that, as important as the effect of a PPE degree may be, the effect of an Oxford degree is much stronger.
My minor point was that even after considering Oxford vs. no-name, it's not particularly surprising to see people with politics degrees going into politics.
Historically we had a bit more diversity.
People need to be given enough information to actually conclude that it might not actually be a good idea for them. Of course, as with all manner of high-value products getting sensible advice can be very difficult.
I fear that might be going too far in the opposite direction - I went to University in the UK in the 1980s and because my parents weren't very well off I didn't pay a penny (fees were paid and I got a grant to live off during term time). In terms of the amount I've paid back in taxes this was a very good investment (e.g. going to University meant I went on to do post-grad study where I met the co-founder of the company I started and met the guy who was an angel investor).
I find this highly ironic when my alma mater keeps raising the prices, yet this year they somehow had a $9.7 Million shortfall:
http://bangordailynews.com/2014/03/28/education/university-o...
I simply don't understand where the vast amount of tuition money is going.
EDIT: I suppose these "costs" are probably just a drop in the bucket compared to other expenses. Doctor's salaries are higher do to competing for the "best" doctors (similar to the situation in SV with Apple/Google/etc.) and I'm guessing it's "wasteful" to have two or each machine (one at each clinic/hospital) if they aren't currently being utilized "enough".
Even though its a lesser known college most of us in STEM majors easily found jobs with small-large companies in Atlanta.
Its all about your what your degree is in, not how many you have.