So phucking what? How much is that degree really worth when you factor in the lost opportunity cost of years of higher education, in addition to the actual expense, when someone with an 8th grade education owns this: <img src="http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/attachment.php?s=&postid=2886789"> Creative Commons license: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cindy47452/2676368775/sizes/s/in/set-960767/
Going to college is never about the degree but belonging to an educated group of people, getting into and intellectual environment where there is a much better chance to succeed in life in general rather than doing business with your colleagues in the coal mine⦠( no offense coal miners, thank you)
From the article cited in the OP, the top school is: 1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Rank: 1 School Type: Private City, State: Cambridge, Massachusetts Graduation Rate (%): 94 Total Cost to Graduate ($): 189,300 30-Year Net Return for Investment ($): 1,688,000 30-Year Net Return for Graduates ($): 1,796,000 Annualized Net ROI (%): 12.6 Suppose you're 18 years old, just graduated from high school, and you have $189,300. Do you spend the $189,300 on four years of college, graduate, and go straight to the cubicle as a computer programmer? Or is there a better use for the money? You can get MIT lectures for free online at http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/ I watched a couple of the lectures from here: http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/physics/8-01-physics-i-classical-mechanics-fall-1999/ In the photo, the professor is demonstrating the principle of conservation of energy. He has rigged a pendulum with a 15.5 kg weight at the end and let it swing. He is demonstrating that due to conservation of energy, the weight will not return to a height greater from what it was released and therefore will not smash him in the face. What is the purpose of college? Is it because people are so lazy they will not learn unless they are threatened with receiving a bad grade in a course?
When I graduated from college in 1982, I tried to get a job with my chemistry degree. My best offer was a job testing horse urine for drugs at a racetrack. The pay they offered me was so low, it was less than what I was already making as a cook at a hotel. So I just kept working at the hotel until I started grad school. Horse piss, for crying out loud. Not sure if that recession was worse than this one or not. Does anyone have a perspective on that?
I think this one is worse. In 1982, there wasn't the problem with unaffordable health insurance. If you were unemployed, self-employment was an option. Currently, if you're unemployed, self-employment is possible, but you can't afford health insurance. So the tendency is to hunker down, conserve every dollar, and do nothing. As a consequence, there is very little job creation by small businesses. This is more like 1932 than 1982.
Not sure if anyone mentioned it, but one flaw in the college vs. no college debate is that it does not control for intelligence. The average IQ of college graduates is substantially higher than non-graduates. When you look at the IQ of elite school graduates, it is leaps and bounds above those who do not go to college. So a real study on the value of college would need to control for this. If you look at the examples the media loves to trot out (look at bill gates! look at michael dell! look at steve jobs!) they forget to mention that all these individuals (and anyone else who succeeds even to a lesser degree in a similar fashion) have overwhelming talent and intelligence that vastly swamps what most people are capable of, making the "example value" for the average joe considering college useless. Few people understand that the high income professions or even a successful business career are by nature shut off to a large portion of the population. College is to some extent just a filter that removes a large portion of the "not capable" from the selection pool. It is a heuristic that most everyone uses with full knowledge that it is not universally true.
From the CEO of Zoho: http://blogs.zoho.com/general/how-we-recruit-on-formal-credentials-vs-experience-based-education
good post, but the hypothetical study you mention would have to control for all variables, not just intelligence & drive, in order to be valid. you'd have to control for everything from learning ability to motivation to ethnicity, heck even your height and weight. in reality such a study is practically impossible, so the best they can do is compare two very large population samples (one with degrees and one without). the large samples tend to average out the variables.
A degree is only worth what someone is willing to pay you, for what they think your education is worth. Not much different from the price of a stock from day to day. I found this article I thought was interesting --> http://finance.yahoo.com/college-ed...nt-paltry-return?mod=edu-continuing_education Kon