This piece is almost entirely about the cost of college. There is little about the benefits.<p>As far as I can tell, all the statements about benefits are:<p>> According to repeated analyses by economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, a four-year degree generates an annual return of 14 percent over a 40-year career.<p>> ...a weakening job market for new grads (true, but better than the market for non-grads)...<p>The first quote links to a much better analysis:<p><a href="https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2019/06/despite-rising-costs-college-is-still-a-good-investment/" rel="nofollow">https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2019/06/despit...</a><p>As someone who works with statistics, this is the oldest trick in the book: talk about the average when it tells the story you want to tell as opposed to the distribution. Given the massive variability in total cost to attend, the average loses meaning.
> According to repeated analyses by economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, a four-year degree generates an annual return of 14 percent over a 40-year career.<p>I fail to see how this statistic can be calculated in a scientifically rigorous way.<p>The only method would be to pick a pool of people, randomly divide the pool in two, and then <i>force</i> half to go to college, while you <i>force</i> the other half not to.<p>Any other approach suffers from sampling bias - the smart motivated ones find a way to go to college, while the rest stay home and stack shelves at walmart for a lifetime.<p>And now you're saying that being smart and motivated earns you more... Well no surprise there!
I feel like these analysis don't take into account how societies change. Past performance is not entirely predictors of future gains. Especially when talking about 40 year windows. People who participate in these experiments, probably started their education in 1970s/early 80s. They were probably born in late 60s/early 70s. Can someone, with a straight face, tell me society is remotely similar today than it was then?
I had a flight of fancy recently where I thought I might try lecturing. I saw the below as required 'Qualifications' on a CUNY [0] posting for "Distinguished Lecturer - Curriculum & Teaching, Computer Science Education" [1]. I will leave it to you to determine if the qualifications they seek would lead you to believe your child would benefit from being under the instruction of such a person.
Edit: See comment below, this particular institution has specific goals.<p><pre><code> MA Degree in Computer Science, Educational Technology, Education, or a closely related field; earned doctorate preferred but not required
Expertise in computer science educational pedagogies
Experience with outreach and community engagement
Demonstrated commitment to social justice, multimodal learning, anti-racist pedagogies, multilingualism, and culturally and linguistically responsive and sustaining pedagogy
Ability to collaborate in recruiting students for graduate programs
Demonstrated ability to effectively teach adults in college level education programs in various modalities including in person, hybrid, synchronous and asynchronous modalities
Experience with outreach and community engagement which are seen as important for developing the Computer Science Education Program at Hunter College.
Demonstrated knowledge of computer science K-12 learning standards and curricula
Experience integrating issues of diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility in teaching, scholarship, and service
Experience teaching in classrooms, educational settings and communities with culturally diverse populations including multilingual learners
Evidence of excellent written, oral, organizational, and interpersonal communication skills
</code></pre>
0: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_University_of_New_York" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_University_of_New_York</a><p>> The City University of New York is the public university system of New York City. It is the largest urban university system in the United States<p>1: <a href="https://cuny.jobs/new-york-ny/distinguished-lecturer-curriculum-teaching-computer-science-education/252659E7642E4ADDA14C8E9C37BB0E2F/job/" rel="nofollow">https://cuny.jobs/new-york-ny/distinguished-lecturer-curricu...</a>
> <i>Christopher Eisgruber is president of Princeton University</i><p>Completely ignoring the contents of the opinion article, what do you expect this guy to say?
A better title would be that some college degrees are worth their cost. Those averages hide a heavily skewed income distribution with arts majors living off government money or working a job their degree didn’t help them get, whereas STEM/medicine graduates quickly earn back their degree’s cost. Go to college if you want to be an engineer, if you want to write books you’d be wasting other people’s money as much as your own.
I strongly believe that going to college in the US is a good financial investment and that this will become increasingly true over time. I don’t believe that it’s just, but there are fewer decent jobs for people without a degree every day.<p>That said, everyone should also read this post explaining why college costs so much. It’s probably not what you think: <a href="https://www.conradbastable.com/essays/the-uncharity-of-college-the-big-business-nobody-understands" rel="nofollow">https://www.conradbastable.com/essays/the-uncharity-of-colle...</a>
It is absolutely worth the cost, but not for the education. A college degree is a class filter in this country, and nothing more. It's a ticket that says "I'm one of you" or not to the hiring manager. Us without are seen as inferior people, plain and simple.
Doctors make a lot of money, therefore going to med school is worth the cost. So in order to increase economic prosperity we made more and more med schools until EVERYONE went to med school. Would doctors still make lots of money in this case?<p>The general case for college is similar. Graduates only make more (and not all of them too by the way) because they are of limited number and companies use degrees as a metric of competence. It bothers me when I hear politicians and the like saying that everyone should go to collage and get a degree because then everyone will have a highly paid job. It doesn't work like that.
> Christopher Eisgruber is president of Princeton University.<p>Wow that's a massive conflict of interest in this "opinion" piece.<p>Please, please, keep coming to my obscenely expensive institution, which pays my bloated salary!
The value of a degree seemed to have a stepping function, where up until about the late '80's, it was a luxury, but by the 90's it was almost instantaneously necessary for basic jobs, then the dotcom boom reduced its necessity to where by the mid'00's, a generation of young men eschewed them went into tech or trades instead while young women went to school, and then the last decade of the '10's, if you didn't have a degree you were among the left behind.<p>The economic downturn we are in now will mean "safe jobs" based on government spending will mostly go to the degreed, but any economic growth will come from people who are good enough at what they do to make things others want and build new firms, imo. The value is sort of polarized, where if your future is rural, trades oriented, or entrepreneurial, school is neither sufficient or necessary, but if you want to participate in the urban(e), managerial, and career oriented economy, there is not a single other qualification.<p>If you are thinking about school, do it. If you didn't do it, maintain no illusions about your opportuntities, but if you didn't go and still think you're somehow equal or on a level field to people who did, know that they don't.
Ok, maybe college is typically "worth it" in the sense of typically paying for itself.<p>But ... costs for American schools have gotten a bit out of control, and I think it's entirely appropriate to view them critically, ask what their purpose is, and how they can achieve that purpose more efficiently.<p>- colleges and universities have seen a large increase in the number of administrators, over a period of decades<p>- simultaneously, an increasing share of instruction is shifted to adjuncts<p>- we're now at the point where a year of private school tuition is less than the salary of an adjunct professor in many cases<p>So while students are paying more for education, they're getting less (or at least less instruction from actual faculty). If the point of colleges is education, I think we should begin tracking the fraction of schools' budgets which go to teaching costs (faculty who actually teach, facilities costs for instruction buildings) vs everything else, and only institutions that spend more than k% of their budget on teaching should be eligible for loans and grants. k can be brought down over time.<p>As a very distant alternative, perhaps we're now at the point where we should offer a way to track, recognize and acknowledge work done with a private instructor. Suppose we normalized the practice of one to five students pooling funds to hire a different instructor every semester for intensive and personalized instruction with virtually no administration costs, or a small pool of instructors convening a short-lived "school" on a topic. If we were willing to recognize students demonstrating the same amount of proficiency in their chosen area gained outside of a "college", perhaps we could strip away the less useful parts of colleges as institutions.
It feels really hard to pull apart that those who would get a degree are probably folks who'd push themselves higher up market anyways.<p>Going to college is a self-selection towards achievement. Of course those who self select towards elite achievement will do better. I don't think we can, but if we could ask this question of are self selecters - college or no - making more money, I don't think college would be as clear a win. But it's near impossible to split up & categorize the non-college bound would be elite achievers from the rest of non-college bound.<p>Also college is just so the default path...
I find the requirement for having a college degree is similar to the pre-covid world where you had to work from an office. Some jobs absolutely require a person to be on site. And some jobs absolutely require a college degree.<p>But unlike work from home I don't see a revolution coming where its ok to not have a degree. It would not benefit those that have already invested in getting one. Where work from home is beneficial to many.
The biggest value of college is <i>exposure</i>. Just as travel exposes you to different ways of living, college exposes you to different ways of thinking.