I can't believe how even well educated and highly respected economists always get this concept wrong.
Taking a sample of people who go to college (including those who don't graduate) and comparing that sample to the general population is biased.
Why? Because the people who go to college tend to be motivated, have better connections and are well educated.
It's not a fair comparison. It's a sample bias combined with a correlation error.
The question shouldn't be "Are the people who go to college making more money than the people who don't?" The question should be "Are highly motivated and educated people better off if they go to college instead of doing something else?"
And the answer to that is often "No, they aren't."
There are only a few categories of people who should go to college:
1) If it's free and you want to do it.
2) If your preferred field requires it (Doctor, Lawyer)
3) If it's cheap enough and you don't know what you want to do with your life, so you take a class or two to get an idea of what is out there.
Other than those instances. I can't see why we cram college down almost every 18 year old out there.
It just drives me crazy how many economists make this even simple mistake.
I can't find the study right now, but economists are not stupid, and there are experiment design to combat sampling bias.
One study I remember followed students who barely made the admission cut, and who barely didn't make the cut. To illustrate, let's say people who go to college average 1800 in SAT score, and general population average 1200. This indeed causes sampling bias. So you compare two groups with average 1610 and 1590 instead. The first group went to the college, the second group didn't. This should minimize sampling bias. You get the idea.
I agree that they should do this, but I don't think SAT scores would be a good measure.
And I don't think they could find a large enough sample of the population that wouldn't be biased in some other way.
Why? Because the only reason a smart and motivated person doesn't go to college is because they either have a great opportunity that would delay it (like a highly ranked chess player) or they some other outlying condition.
This would really be biased because it would show how highly talented people really don't need college at all.
I just don't see how you can get around this problem because it is so heavily ingrained in our culture that you have to go to college, so almost everyone that can, does.
"... the only reason a smart and motivated person doesn't go to college ..."
You seem to think being smart and motivated is binary, which of course they aren't. They are continuous. You compare people who are barely smart enough and barely motivated enough to go to college, against people who are barely not smart enough and barely not motivated enough to go to college, to reduce bias.
On the other hand, this does raise an interesting issue of inhomogeneous return to education. It is possible (even probable) that return to education is not same for groups with different abilities. It may be the case going to college is a very good deal if you are not very smart, but not a good deal if you are very smart. I think economists are actively researching this area.
College helps teach critical thinking skills, which is very important.
A lot of people seem to have the notion that college is "job/career training", well, it isn't (and if you are in college thinking that, you're in for an unpleasant surprise). No CS student graduates and is capable of engineering large-scale projects without at least several years as being a junior to someone and learning "how to do it in the real world". Most CS students graduate and don't even know what source control is.
No, but college is about learning to think critically, and independently. You learn some cool topics along the way (and some not-so-cool topics), which stretch your brain and challenge those critical thinking skills.
I think people view college wrong. Everyone should go to college. We want a more educated, more critically and independently thinking society. And that's what college provides.
I actually went to an interesting talk on this subject.
The speaker was a classicist and the subject was the debate which happened in the 1860's about what the focus of education should be: technical training (ag & engineering) or the classical education, which was more focused on "well-roundedness".
The technical training camp won. Most of the universities founded at the time (including schools like the Midwest Big Ten, MIT, and Cornell) focused on agriculture and engineering and still do to this day. The classical education was tacked on the side.
I think there is a huge swath of the population which isn't represented on Hacker News whom this technical education still serves quite well. The gentleman farmer still benefits from learning about soil chemistry and how crop rotation affects it, and the biology of the livestock he raises. Engineers (real engineers, who use differential equations) and technicians still learn the foundations of their craft needed to start the modern day apprenticeship.
How are you "not convinced"? There is nothing to convince.
College teaches you to write better (critical thinking skills in practice), interpret better (more critical thinking), implement better (yet more critical thinking), etc. Even your major courses teach you critical thinking.
Of course you can teach yourself all the material you would learn during major courses. That stuff is largely irrelevant outside of college. If the argument is then "college teaches nothing", well then, I can't argue with you because this is nonsense. Get a degree from a reputable 4 year university and then come tell me it was a total absolute waste of 4 years. You may think that while attending college, but it's wasted effort.
The true value of a college education is intangible.
This has an extremely wide variation between colleges, the vast majority of schools my friends went to did more to beat out original/critical/creative thought then they did to encourage it... the few friends that did get the kind of education you're talking about went to very small (5k or less), very expensive ($40k or more), private, liberal arts schools where they majored in something very specific and had motivated and inspired mentoring professors. It's much harder to find these schools (the Ivy's aren't locks for this kind of education) than people realize; it more or less comes down to a flash of intuition while touring a campus.
Agreed, it's amazing how pervasive this myth is despite the glaring flaw you mentioned.
The last time there was a suitable control group was during the Vietnam war, when people flocked to colleges based on their draft number rather than their career ambitions [1]. Unfortunately, that was over 40 years ago.
Your point #2 implies that there is a short list of fields that require a degree. I think you have that backward. I'd be interested in seeing a list of middle class career track jobs that don't require a degree to get in the door. Web developer? "Entrepreneur"? As far as I can tell, the economy is largely divided between service jobs and jobs that require a college degree.
I think a lot of college grads get jobs now not because of their degree, but because of their connections via friends and family or an internship.
I think we push kids into college who have really no idea what they want to do with their lives and end up in debt and still with no idea after they get out.
It sounds to me like you know people who have above-average connections. It seems to me that family connections (the job-getting kind) highly correlate with wealth, and I think we can agree that wealthy kids are gonna be just fine, college or no (they'll probably go to college eventually, even if they don't right away). Internships definitely matter, but then most internships go to college students, so not exactly an argument against being a college student...
I agree 100% with your last paragraph, but that doesn't change the reality that businesses prefer to hire employees with degrees. I hate the massive debt too (trust me, I have a bunch of it), but in the US as it currently stands, it's easier to pay off that debt than to punch through the earning potential wall without receiving the certification it pays for (assuming, again, that you aren't wealthy and can't just pay outright).
4) If you want a good theoretical grounding in computer science/software engineering
Yes, you can become a programmer without it. A very few of the good ones I know are autodidacts to the extent they didn't need it. But the vast majority of the best people I know did do a degree and will tell you the structured, deep learning benefitted them and their careers immensely.
And yeah, as others have stated - engineers of all stripes need a degree. I don't want people 'hacking' a bridge or building.
> The question shouldn't be "Are the people who go to college making more money than the people who don't?" The question should be "Are highly motivated and educated people better off if they go to college instead of doing something else?"
> And the answer to that is often "No, they aren't."
It's certainly possible to get a job in some fields (notably tech) without a degree. And if you work long enough, you'll probably get to the same point you would have with one. On the other hand, I'm quite willing to bet that the average salary of a 22 year old with a 4-year CS degree vastly exceeds the average salary of a 22 year old with 4 years of work experience.
The same goes for graduate degrees, especially for tech companies that have a technical job ladder (those where you can get promoted without becoming a manager): take a look at the starting point for new hires with various degrees, then take a look at the average work experience of people who worked up to those starting points.
When I first started considering graduate school, I actually ran the numbers for whether it made economic sense to pursue a graduate degree, and it most definitely did, by a huge margin.
I do, however, agree with the concept of selection bias here: college is as much a signal of who you already were when you entered as what you learned.
I think we push 18 year olds into spending thousands of dollars on a degree they may or may not need and probably don't care much about.
If an 18 year old decides he wants to get into programming and then realizes he wants a deeper understanding of computer science, then he should look into a college degree or classes.
We have it backwards. College should be for people who know exactly what they want to study/do, not for people who have no idea what they want to do.
> I think we push 18 year olds into spending thousands of dollars on a degree they may or may not need and probably don't care much about.
Perhaps we (folks who went to college/uni) also push it down 18 year old throats because of an unconscious need and desire to feel that our college education was and is in fact important and valuable. Think about all those ever increasing number of doctorates and advanced degrees that NEED students to justify their expense obtaining...
> not for people who have no idea what they want to do.
Most people just want to make "more" money so they can afford more
EDIT: BTW, I believe everyone really needs to evaluate whether college makes sense or not. It doesn't make sense for a lot/majority of people IMHO.
The irony is I went to college basically because I was expected to. I remember it very clearly sitting in AP Calc my senior year of highschool in January and thought to myself "I should probably apply to some colleges. I'm kind of expected to go." I'm not disappointed I went but I don't believe it was necessary.
> We have it backwards. College should be for people who know exactly what they want to study/do, not for people who have no idea what they want to do.
That much I agree with: you should know exactly what degree you want to get before you enroll. College is far too late to explore your options.
> On the other hand, I'm quite willing to bet that the average salary of a 22 year old with a 4-year CS degree vastly exceeds the average salary of a 22 year old with 4 years of work experience.
Based on my own experience, I disagree entirely. All the employers I've talked to would rather hire and pay more to the guy with 4 years of experience, hands down. I'm sure it depends on the job and the type of company, but 4 years is a huge head start. When the college student graduates, the guy who didn't go to college will be his boss.
Now, of course, the ideal scenario is to do both: get work experience and complete college at the same time. You might finish school a year later if you're taking fewer classes, but then you have the best of both worlds.
> Based on my own experience, I disagree entirely. All the employers I've talked to would rather hire and pay more to the guy with 4 years of experience, hands down. I'm sure it depends on the job and the type of company, but 4 years is a huge head start. When the college student graduates, the guy who didn't go to college will be his boss.
Ah, but that's not the question. You won't have 4 years of experience during the hiring process; you'll have 0, and no degree. In that situation, 4 years after getting hired, where will that put you relative to someone who gets a degree?
I don't think that's true. Plenty of companies hire interns right out of high school. If you start there at 18 instead of 22, you'll be much more desirable than the guy fresh out of college who hasn't had a job yet. Now, if we assume that you weren't doing anything useful with your life during the would-be college years, then sure, you're right, but I don't think that's relevant.
This reeks of limited world-view. While in tech people may be able to hack it and get hired with a degree, that is not the case in other most(all?) other engineering disciplines, finance, education, etc. "2) If your preferred field requires it (Doctor, Lawyer)" understates the situation massively.
I am claiming that highly motivated people don't need college to be successful. I don't think I need data to accept that. The business world is full of such people.
I am not an economist (thank god), but I don't need to prove the opposite, that college is bad.
The threshold is on the people (economists) who make the claim that college is generally "a good investment".
If I can find a fault in their study (which I did), then their hypothesis is invalid.
Too many economists feel the need to publish papers that fit a simple narrative or correlation.
You did no such thing. "Return to education" is number one topic in labor economics, and labor economists work hard to remove bias. The issue you raised is called "ability bias". Ability bias exists, and is important. But you didn't prove ability bias completely offset measured return to education.
Here is one example study trying to control ability bias. Given the same motivation, if you live closer to college, you are more likely to go to college. So you can use distance to college to erase the effect of motivation.
This is the kind of stuffs economists publish papers about. It is not about fitting a simple narrative. If you could show ability bias completely offsets measured return to education, you would be famous in no time.
If you have an example of a study that removes ability AND motivation bias from it's assessment of whether a college education is worth it, then I would love to look at it.
Until then, I am highly skeptical of a "correlation" between college degrees and success/wealth.
Like I said before, I don't have to prove anything. The economists have to prove there is a correlation, I am assuming that there isn't a correlation until there is a study that takes out these biases.
The sad part is that economists have published so many bad studies about this "correlation" that the media narrative is that a college education is almost always worth the price.
You mean as in studying genetically identical twins raised in the same family?
It would maybe be a step in the right direction, but motivation is going to be different between twins, often vastly different.
And I know how difficult it is to quantify "motivation", but really, I don't know a way around it.
But getting back to the issue: Is a college education worth the time, money and opportunity cost that we put into it?
And is it possible to design a study that could confirm or deny it?
The problem is that almost all motivated and/or smart 18 year olds go to college.
Is there a sample size large enough to find the ones that don't?
And even if you did, you would run into the opposite effect, motivated and smart 18 year olds that don't go college usually are outliers that have something else to do, like getting into a special program, a good job or being a professional chess player.
So, when you find these people, they would be the opposite sort of bias. Their circumstances would be so unique that they would prejudice the study against college.
Right now, college is the default option for people who can get in, so by its very nature, it biases the population.
I don't see a way around it, but I am open to ideas.
Sometimes it's just an investment. Many $80-100k entry level jobs do require very specific education. I bet those high-paying entry level jobs are fairly impossible to get without the right degree.
Student costs certainly have gone up. Back in 1983-84 school year, tuition and fees for CSU (California) system was just under $500 for the year. Now, I think it is a bit under $7000. (UC system is now about twice that, but I don't know what it was back in the 80s, as I opted not to leave town to go to Berkeley)
By comparison, minimum wage has just a bit more than doubled. It's a lot harder to put yourself through school.
I also feel like even if you were being charged the tuition of 30+ years ago, you wouldn't be getting nearly as much for your money. I looked through the introductory Russian textbook for my state university and was kind of blown away by how verbose and obnoxious it was. This same school cut operating systems and anything related to low-level programming (people complain that they just want to learn Java or .NET so they can get a job, so I guess they got their way), and rearranged basic English to make it easier to pass. 100 years ago, learning Greek and/or Latin was standard - it seems like there's a noticeable trend towards "dumbing down", or maybe I'm viewing a time period I didn't live in with rose-colored glasses...
100 years ago, learning Greek and/or Latin was a large part of all there was to study. Now we have multitudes of fields and subfields regularly generating actual demonstrable progress in the capabilities of humanity, few of which require knowing anything about Thermistocles.
Knowledge has gotten so complex and siloed that one of the most useful things for the inter-disciplinary academic project I observed turned out to be a facilitator with no subject-area expertise in any of the fields, who undertook the task of building glossaries to translate jargon and storyboard concepts people in different departments were trying to explain past each other.
The chain of conceptual courses necessary to reach a level where one understands papers that have recently been published advancing a particular subfield, has grown longer and longer in STEM. At some point, your program decided to compromise on the things that weren't necessary to reach the advanced levels, so that they had room to get people there at all during their undergrad. There are fields and universities where this isn't the case, where an undergrad only qualifies you to take a master's degree. Some revision of the standard unit of 'the four-year degree' is probably a reasonable thing to examine at this point.
100 years ago, learning Greek and/or Latin was a large part of all there was to study. Now we have multitudes of fields and subfields regularly generating actual demonstrable progress in the capabilities of humanity, few of which require knowing anything about Thermistocles.
Learning Greek and/or Latin was done as a) a mental exercise and b) a way to access an ancient body of knowledge that was basically considered something any educated person should know. Your statement that there was nothing else to learn is highly ignorant.
At some point, your program decided to compromise on the things that weren't necessary to reach the advanced levels, so that they had room to get people there at all during their undergrad.
Yeah, to reach advanced levels where the bulk of their graduates don't have to understand the English language well, and the CS grads don't know what a pointer is or how memory works.
I'm going to assume for my own mental health that you're a troll.
For motivated students, getting tuition assistance, and sometimes even free tuition is not difficult. There are so many scholarships available, FASFA, free grant money, and at worse, loans which are very low interest and you don't start making payments on it for several years.
Tuition today may be inflated a little, I'll give you that. But I believe it more accurately reflects what it costs to provide said education. Who pays for the lights? Water? Building maintenance? It's not sustainable (as has been proven) to subsidize college education so significantly for everyone. So instead, the subsidies have been moved to scholarships, grants, loans, etc. It's a perspective thing.
I'm a firm believer that college should not be free. You have to have some of your own "skin in the game", otherwise it's taken for granted. Your education, and accomplishments thereafter will be much more tangible if it was achieved by you for you.
Concerning the relative importance of the diploma and what you learn in college, following experiment design comes to mind.
Measure wage premium for (1) not enrolled to college (2) enrolled to college for 1 year and dropped out (3) 2 years and dropped out (4) 3 years and dropped out (5) graduated.
One hypothesis suggests linear improvement from 1 to 5, the other hypothesis suggests discontinuity between 1~4 and 5. I don't have this data, but this seems very doable, so it probably was already done. Can you help with literature search?
These sorts of articles always conflate the most basic premise of success- the quality of the people.
Sure, you can point to statistics about how people who graduate from college earn more over a lifetime, but does that really tell you having a degree accounts for their success?
If, tomorrow, we took away all diploma's from people who had graduated from college and gave them to people who hadn't, do you really believe wages would follow?
Education definitely plays a role in creating high quality successful people. I agree that there's some fundamental aspects of people which will strongly influence their success in life, but it's disingenuous to suggest that quality people aren't created in part by their education (which is strongly influenced by their upbringing and their families economic situation.)
Quality is ambiguous here--some portion of what you call quality I'd define as "born in the right zip code." I'd settle for "ability", providing we remember what goes into rendering one able to do this or that.
This article could be a case study in misinterpreting data.
Americans from "advantaged backgrounds" are enrolling way more in schools, graduating more, and making more money afterwards. Is this evidence of college being worth it? Maybe having parents who can invest six figures in your college education for you, and put you in contact with potential employers is a bit of a confounding variable here?
Economists are not stupid. Studies do control for confounding variables. For example, to control for influence of parents, there are twin studies. And you would have known if you followed links.
"Economists aren't stupid" is a "stupid" thing to say. The study makes clear mistakes, and how stupid or smart the economist is is completely irrelevant.
Anyway, trying to control for variables like the influence of parents is a fool's errand. The population that goes to college is self-selecting. There's almost certainly a direct correlation between aiming to earn a lot of money and going to college. It is a fact that colleges select what they consider to be the best of the applicants they see. These people are clearly likely to earn more money than the ones who are not accepted. etc. etc. etc.
I don't think the question is whether or not college is worth it. Because that's a generalization. I also don't think the question is whether or not college is worth it to some people. Because that's exclusionary. The question is, can college make a reasonably positive impact on a persons quality of life, given all of their life choices. It's exactly the same as a gym membership. Lots of recent research shows that you lose more weight through diet than through exercise. But gyms have more benefits than just helping you to lose weight. Also, you have to actually use the gym to get those benefits, simply paying the fee and showing up once in a while will do nothing. It's the same with college, it's a tool. And you can choose to use it or you can choose to not use it. There is no right or wrong answer.
You are wrong. The question whether college is worth it is asked in context of informing public policy decision. Namely, if college is worth it but people don't go to college, shouldn't we subsidize people to go to college, by tax? You can choose to use college or not, but you can't choose to pay tax or not.
That's two different questions. Is college worth it to any specific individual vs is college worth it to the nation as a whole. As far as the nation goes, it's obvious that the answer is yes. Should we have entirely subsidized higher education, of course. But even if it were free, not everyone would benefit from going to college. Some people have no interest and some people learn differently and some people are simply too lazy. So, college was a great choice for me, but some of my friends came out with debt and no jobs so it didn't do much for them.
I hope you are aware not everybody would agree to "we should entirely subsidize higher education". It is a topic of debate.
I also hope you are aware not everybody would agree to "not everyone would benefit from going to college". Actually, isn't it precisely the thing being discussed here?
Sure, subsidizing public higher education is a matter of debate. So: in my opinion, we should entirely subsidize higher education.
I don't think that anyone should disagree with the statement that everyone would benefit from going to college. Do not mistake my intention, I am 100% pro-higher education. I wish everyone wanted to go to college, and I wish everyone wanted to learn and expand their world-view and to experience the new and wonderful things that college can expose you to. But, the problem is that the majority of people are simply too afraid to learn new things, too worried that they might find out that they were wrong about something, or that their parents were wrong about something. And then you have kids coming to college who think that simply because they spent the money they should be handed a degree and a job. So, what I'm saying, is that there are a great many people, and unfortunately a lot of them are policy makers, who have unrealistic demands of public education. These people think that there should be a hard ratio of dollars spent vs. dollars earned by graduates. And that's unrealistic. These are often the people who talk about the uselessness of any track other than STEM disciplines.
I would say that you seem to have a bizarre misunderstanding of what college (and education) is about. The point of college is to teach stuff, not to separate people into "success" and "failure" bins. It is quite possible to increase graduation rates without lowering academic standards, by helping students stay motivated, removing distractions and ensuring that they only enroll for subjects they are motivated and talented enough to finish.
The point of college is to teach stuff, not to separate people into "success" and "failure" bins.
We don't actually know that. A lot of college degree is the signalling factor. How much is up for debate.
If it's really about learning stuff and not about signalling, though, here is an experiment: hide educational status from employers, the same way we hide family status or any of the other things employers are not supposed to discriminate on. Would people still go to college for the education if the signalling aspect was stripped out? (You could have third-party assessment tests, of course.)
1) I should bother to better myself and learn more, show motivation and ambition; I can always be better.
2) I shouldn't bother to better myself and learn more, show motivation nor ambition; I'm good enough right now.
Cost of education is largely irrelevant if you pursue scholarships and grants, or even low interest loans. Majority of a student's "school expenses" are not tuition, but rather in large part are living expenses -- which the student would incur even if not attending college.
"they’re an argument for programs aimed at improving graduation rates."
which will end up making a college degree worth a lot less.
Most employers require a college degree not because they need the specific training, but because a college degree is a piece of paper that says that the holder has at least a bare minimum level of intelligence and self-discipline.
A grade 12 education used to say that, but efforts to improve graduation rates have removed that filtering indication.
I'm so happy I did a degree in the UK in the 1980s when the fees were paid by the taxpayers and as my parents weren't very well off I got a full grant as well. As far as investments go that investment in me by the UK taxpayers paid off pretty well....
I live in the US and paid my loans off in one paycheck after graduating. The way I did it was by going to a cheap community college for the first two years to get my associates degree. I got government student aid which paid for the entire tuition/books with some extra to live on.
Since I did well at community college, I was able to transfer to a larger university in-state and get some decent scholarships (A transfer scholarship offered by the University as well as a SMART grant offered by the government).
Keep in mind I lived with family which might might not be possible for some. I also worked low paying jobs over some of the summers, but not throughout the academic year.
It depends on if you are going to actively take advantage of the resources you are paying for or if you are just going to passively get spoon fed information and coast through the whole experience for a nominal piece of paper that said you jumped through hoops for 4 years.
How does this follow? Wage premium data support that it is a nominal piece of paper that said you jumped through hoops for 4 years, not actively taking advantage of the resources you are paying for, that benefits your wage. Do you have data to the contrary?
I wasn't referring to salaries. The practical rewards of higher education is obviously important, but I also think learning and growing as a person is also important. So in context of the "worth" of a college education, I was talking about personal growth.
Whether we can attribute higher wages to the nominal piece of paper or personal growth is a question I can't answer. Do employers only see potential employees on paper? Or do this personal growth get reflected in the interview? Do they even care. Not sure if there are any data to support either case.
I want to say that actively participating in your education can potentially make you better equipped for the rest of your life, which can be more important than that nominal piece of paper. However, I can only attest to that with anecdotal evidence.
Higher education is a large investment, so while personal growth is all good and fine, economic concern is paramount.
As the article states, "most of the benefits of college come from graduating, not enrolling". This data do seem to be in favor of the hypothesis that the paper matters. More data on this would be very welcome.
It also intuitively makes sense to me, as the paper is easy to verify, but personal growth is not. While I suspect measure of personal growth provides better information to employers compared to the paper, the cost of acquiring that information may make the paper more valuable in the net.
Also you seem to underestimate the value the paper provides to employers: jumping through hoops correlates with conscientiousness personality trait, which is a good predictor of workplace performance.
My favourite example of how University can be a lot more than courses and exams is Stephen Fry - he hardly went to any lectures, came up with an amazing "hack" that meant he aced the exams yet still worked fantastically hard at what he wanted to do. I can recommend The Fry Chronicles for the details:
What about taking advantage of free time to pursue your own interests on the side by passively going through college.
I’ve received plenty of Bs and even Cs for classes that I was incredibly proud of because they came from hardly no time spent at all. Time that I could then spend on reading my own curriculum, starting my own projects, and running my own businesses. - DHH
Taking a sample of people who go to college (including those who don't graduate) and comparing that sample to the general population is biased.
Why? Because the people who go to college tend to be motivated, have better connections and are well educated.
It's not a fair comparison. It's a sample bias combined with a correlation error.
The question shouldn't be "Are the people who go to college making more money than the people who don't?" The question should be "Are highly motivated and educated people better off if they go to college instead of doing something else?"
And the answer to that is often "No, they aren't."
There are only a few categories of people who should go to college:
1) If it's free and you want to do it.
2) If your preferred field requires it (Doctor, Lawyer)
3) If it's cheap enough and you don't know what you want to do with your life, so you take a class or two to get an idea of what is out there.
Other than those instances. I can't see why we cram college down almost every 18 year old out there.
It just drives me crazy how many economists make this even simple mistake.