Last updated on April 16, 2015
Commenter GP writes:
Great post. Further thoughts:
1. Signalling and the sheepskin effect. It would appear that the importance of college in the US is, to a large extent, the signal given by being admitted to a selective university, and the signal given by successfully completing four years of coursework. This might explain why Goldman Sachs would hire a Harvard anthropology major.
2. I believe I read (proof needed) that the proportion of college enrollments in “soft” fields has been consistently increasing over time. Signalling aside, your major matters for employability. Not to mention basic writing and communication skills, which I found severely lacking in students at a flagship public university in the US.
3. There is indeed evidence that when you enter the job market (boom or recession) can affect your lifetime income. Getting a Master’s degree to delay job market entry until after a recession might be a good move, unless everyone reasons the same way.
4. The discussion is often framed as “yes, college at any cost” vs. “no college is ever worthwhile.” This is absurd. Cost matters, and a simple tool like Net Present Value can help get a ballpark estimate of the value of a particular college degree.
5. Gates, Zuckerberg, Jobs… the media never discuss survivorship bias…
I agree with all points. I have seen many people with non-STEM degrees get jobs in investment banking or in management consulting–not necessarily because they were smarter than others, but because of where they went to college.
As for the debate being “all of one” versus “all of the other,” that is hardly surprising, and dumbing down and eliminating the subtleties of policy debates appears to be a distinct specialty of the US media, and I think students should be trained in the use of net present value, future worth, etc. formulas as early as middle school, as such financial literacy skills are way too useful not to be taught to young people.
Finally, I agree regarding survivorship bias. Gates, Jobs, Zuck… They are all hailed as examples of super successful college dropouts, yet you never hear of the many college dropouts who are working jobs they hate and are extremely far from being billionaires…
Commenter Geo1 then writes:
As you noted so well, there is a typical construction in articles on “Is College Worth It?” You were spot on regarding how they are presented. I would add they almost always have the attention getting title that you also used. Problems with the typical story. First, when mentioning skyrocketing student debt, they fail to address why so much of this is attributable to the rise of for-profit colleges and who this industry lobbies and gives campaign donations to. Second, they may go on to discuss the Baumol hypothesis: that the cost problem lies in the fact that we still teach in the same way we did decades ago. I have never seen evidence presented to support this. Faculty salaries certainly are not rising at the rate of tuition prices. Further, regular faculty are being replaced by part-time adjuncts. So there HAS been a change in technology — reliance on different, cheaper labor force. I say different, not necessarily inferior. This also something for-profits rely even more heavily on. Third, little more than a mention is usually given to administration, except to say that this has been growing. Then we are off to vignettes about rock climbing walls and gourmet doom food that university administrators say they need to attract students. Notice we fast forwarded past administration costs. Here is where the cost increases end up. It is not so much in administrator salaries, but in the sheer growth in number. Someone should really look into the growth in the number of deanlettes (associate dean for — fill in the blank). These deanlettes in turn have a growing number of minions. What do all these deanlettes and minions do? Excellent question. If universities are supposedly run in the same way as the distant past (Baumol’s disease) what new functions are being done that require so much more administration? Another excellent question?