Is College Worth It?(pewresearch.org)
pewresearch.org
Is College Worth It?
https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2024/05/23/is-college-worth-it-2/
38 comments
I think that college and secondary schooling are worth what you invest into them. The cost of attendance is not an investment in either case. If you cannot afford the cost of attendance, which is significant, then you should not consider attendance in either at all.
Your personal effortful reading and learning, and demonstrated efforts to apply that learning make up the investment so to speak. Ultimately, internet repositories, professional mentors, and public libraries are worth more than college degrees in and of themselves, but not everyone can access and leverage these resources properly, due to lack of information literacy or professional and academic preparation.
Simply put, college is not worth it—-you are what’s worth it. Invest in yourself, through paid or free human resource development, and you will reap rewards. If you attend college without applying yourself properly, you will have made zero progress and also face a financial deficit. If you do not attend college but manage to apply yourself and be resourceful, you will have certainly made significant progress and you will have avoided debt.
I think college is still the best preparation to become an educator, which I am (Ph.D. with 15y experience in academia).
Your personal effortful reading and learning, and demonstrated efforts to apply that learning make up the investment so to speak. Ultimately, internet repositories, professional mentors, and public libraries are worth more than college degrees in and of themselves, but not everyone can access and leverage these resources properly, due to lack of information literacy or professional and academic preparation.
Simply put, college is not worth it—-you are what’s worth it. Invest in yourself, through paid or free human resource development, and you will reap rewards. If you attend college without applying yourself properly, you will have made zero progress and also face a financial deficit. If you do not attend college but manage to apply yourself and be resourceful, you will have certainly made significant progress and you will have avoided debt.
I think college is still the best preparation to become an educator, which I am (Ph.D. with 15y experience in academia).
Unfortunately, humans are tribal creatures and having certain tribe markers still makes your life a helluva lot easier.
I went to a T20 school in the USA with name brand recognition. I often hang out with close friends who did not. Let me tell you: school discrimination is real. People (including those who gatekeep the first 5 years of your career) treat me differently than my friends once they find out where I'm from. All of a sudden I'm much more interesting. I get told I'm smarter.
Hell, job interviewers softball my questions. My first big-boy job interview's final round went something like this.
Hiring Manager: "So, [T20 School] huh? You had a good time there?"
Me: "Yup, I say it was a great experience."
HM: "That's awesome. I love the campus so beautiful. My kid plays in their afterschool soccer program. You like soccer?"
Me: "Oh yeah I like following Premier League"
HM: "Awesome. How 'bout them Aresnal's right? Anyways, look you seem like a smart kid. You'll probably get the job -- we'll call you next week with details."
And I got the job.
(My second job's phone screen literally started off with "Oh my husband went to [T20 School]. He was two years ahead of you ever run into him? No? That's fine it's a big school. Anyways!)
And I pale in comparison to the kids who went to the Ivies.
Unfortunate. But there's a reason why many dedicate tens of thousands of hours of their youth to beat the competition and break-in.
I went to a T20 school in the USA with name brand recognition. I often hang out with close friends who did not. Let me tell you: school discrimination is real. People (including those who gatekeep the first 5 years of your career) treat me differently than my friends once they find out where I'm from. All of a sudden I'm much more interesting. I get told I'm smarter.
Hell, job interviewers softball my questions. My first big-boy job interview's final round went something like this.
Hiring Manager: "So, [T20 School] huh? You had a good time there?"
Me: "Yup, I say it was a great experience."
HM: "That's awesome. I love the campus so beautiful. My kid plays in their afterschool soccer program. You like soccer?"
Me: "Oh yeah I like following Premier League"
HM: "Awesome. How 'bout them Aresnal's right? Anyways, look you seem like a smart kid. You'll probably get the job -- we'll call you next week with details."
And I got the job.
(My second job's phone screen literally started off with "Oh my husband went to [T20 School]. He was two years ahead of you ever run into him? No? That's fine it's a big school. Anyways!)
And I pale in comparison to the kids who went to the Ivies.
Unfortunate. But there's a reason why many dedicate tens of thousands of hours of their youth to beat the competition and break-in.
It sounds unfair until you look at all this from a different angle.
Lots of companies pay head hunters good money to get valuable candidates. You can think of the Ivies and the other top tier schools as 4-year head-hunting agencies. They first do a selection to see which kids have the most potential. Some of the kids have potential in the fact that they are very hard working, or extremely smart, or both. And some have potential in the fact they have a strong personal network (the legacies). On top of this selection, these universities also provide training. But that's secondary.
Lots of companies pay head hunters good money to get valuable candidates. You can think of the Ivies and the other top tier schools as 4-year head-hunting agencies. They first do a selection to see which kids have the most potential. Some of the kids have potential in the fact that they are very hard working, or extremely smart, or both. And some have potential in the fact they have a strong personal network (the legacies). On top of this selection, these universities also provide training. But that's secondary.
> On top of this selection, these universities also provide training. But that's secondary
I’m not sure. The variation is less among the top schools. I may not get an ace, but I won’t get the kid who just doesn’t show up one day or couldn’t write an e-mail without half a dozen typos to save their own life.
I’m not sure. The variation is less among the top schools. I may not get an ace, but I won’t get the kid who just doesn’t show up one day or couldn’t write an e-mail without half a dozen typos to save their own life.
Graduate level jobs still require you to have recently graduated from something.
In my field that means "a degree in computer science or equivalent". It's still the path of least resistance for getting through the door. Yes, there are often other routes, but they all involve working harder than everyone else.
Apprenticeships don't really scale for corporate roles, there are too many candidates, and it requires too much investment from employers. College outsources parts of this, it's one last filter to weed out "the weirdos" - the graduates come prepackaged, indebted and pliable, ready to be slotted in and adsorbed by the system.
In my field that means "a degree in computer science or equivalent". It's still the path of least resistance for getting through the door. Yes, there are often other routes, but they all involve working harder than everyone else.
Apprenticeships don't really scale for corporate roles, there are too many candidates, and it requires too much investment from employers. College outsources parts of this, it's one last filter to weed out "the weirdos" - the graduates come prepackaged, indebted and pliable, ready to be slotted in and adsorbed by the system.
Sure if you think of it strictly as binary as in degree vs. no degree.
A better consideration is spending a significant amount of time and money going to one college versus spending significantly less money going to a community college which might also require a smaller time investment. Unless you're attending a top 5 college then I don't think going to an expensive college is worth it. Find a cheaper place where you can still leverage networking opportunities and put your time and money to a more productive use.
A better consideration is spending a significant amount of time and money going to one college versus spending significantly less money going to a community college which might also require a smaller time investment. Unless you're attending a top 5 college then I don't think going to an expensive college is worth it. Find a cheaper place where you can still leverage networking opportunities and put your time and money to a more productive use.
>College outsources parts of this, it's one last filter to weed out "the weirdos" - the graduates come prepackaged, indebted and pliable, ready to be slotted in and adsorbed by the system.
As counterintuitive as it may sound, but the entire point of college is to commoditize labor according to a specialization.
As counterintuitive as it may sound, but the entire point of college is to commoditize labor according to a specialization.
Yeah that last bit is important. Businesses are operated by a certain class of people. How you speak, act, make connections, socialize -- if you want to work white-collar, professional jobs (or Grey-Collar ones managing blue-collar ones), you need to have all the appropriate markers and cues. College + the road to college is how those get instilled in you. That piece of paper indicates you have a high probability of correctly displaying all the right traits. Further resume items solidify that.
And yes, for certain technical fields, you will need 4 years of rigorous education in the basics of that field to be basically competent.
For other fields, networks + connections + opportunities is what you will glean (on top of the socialization). And the location matters! I'm sorry, but if you're doing marketing/communication at a state school in Nebraska, you will have a much harder time than the kid going to USC/UCLA/LMU or NYU/Columbia on the same degree. Because those kids will be quickly snapped up for jobs at marketing firms that make enough money to pay them enough money to make the degree worth it.
And yes, for certain technical fields, you will need 4 years of rigorous education in the basics of that field to be basically competent.
For other fields, networks + connections + opportunities is what you will glean (on top of the socialization). And the location matters! I'm sorry, but if you're doing marketing/communication at a state school in Nebraska, you will have a much harder time than the kid going to USC/UCLA/LMU or NYU/Columbia on the same degree. Because those kids will be quickly snapped up for jobs at marketing firms that make enough money to pay them enough money to make the degree worth it.
College can be immensely valuable for those pursuing fields that require formal credentials and rigorous training. However, with the raise of blended/bootcamp education and significant financial burden of traditional degrees, it's critical to weigh the costs against the potential benefits.
The traditional 5-6 years of studying one core subject makes me a bit worried these days due to the speed of change in the current job market.
Ultimately, education should be a strategic choice, not an automatic one.
The traditional 5-6 years of studying one core subject makes me a bit worried these days due to the speed of change in the current job market.
Ultimately, education should be a strategic choice, not an automatic one.
Are bootcamps still having success getting people employed in tech?
As recently as 10 months ago, my brother did a boot camp with no prior experience and landed a job as a junior dev with a ~$100k package. His class had a placement rate of maybe 2 in 3.
Seems like the job market has only gotten worse since then however.
Seems like the job market has only gotten worse since then however.
which bootcamp was this?
He ended up choosing Tech Elevator based on placement rate, online reviews, and location.
Thanks. There are so many out there that I have no idea of what to recommend to friends that ask.
I didn’t go through it myself, but for him placement rate was the #1 thing he made his decision on. TE was about 75% coding and 25% interview skills from what I was told. He liked it and was successful.
It really does sound like now is a historically bad time to try breaking into coding, sadly.
It really does sound like now is a historically bad time to try breaking into coding, sadly.
He managed to get placed tho. Now's a bad time, given the layoffs putting very senior folk on the market at competitive rates but unfortunately, I don't know of other careers paths with that same kind of opportunity that can also be done remotely. Healthcare is usually onsite. If there's something solid that's not coding that it's a good time to break into for, I'm all ears!
Not exactly in tech, but some other industries might work pretty well.
I've recently stumbled upon a Supply Chain online course at MIT that takes 1.5 years with really decent content. This is obviously less than getting a traditional bachelor's degree.
I've recently stumbled upon a Supply Chain online course at MIT that takes 1.5 years with really decent content. This is obviously less than getting a traditional bachelor's degree.
Do you know what impact having an MIT MicroMasters certificate has, or if anyone cares about it? I'm not sure just citing its existence really answers the question here. It's nice that there are some pathways to converting it to credits in a full degree though.
No. Bachelor's only if you're getting a paid ride. Anything else make sure it's than 2 years, and it's a program that proves industry placement and strong connections. You will be stuck with a useless bachelor's in most programs today.
I have 30 years of industry experience, but I am obviously not as useful as someone who read a book about things other people have done and took a multiple choice quiz about it.
I don't think there's a need to denigrate school like this. There are things I learned through experience but there's also a lot of things I learned when I went back for my masters.
I've been thinking about the disdain that the industry seems to have with respect to education. People are largely expected to train themselves and learn through school, or outside of work. It feels like there's no time set aside during the work day to dive deep on new stuff or things you don't know about. If it's not "useful work", it doesn't get time and attention.
I've been thinking about the disdain that the industry seems to have with respect to education. People are largely expected to train themselves and learn through school, or outside of work. It feels like there's no time set aside during the work day to dive deep on new stuff or things you don't know about. If it's not "useful work", it doesn't get time and attention.
That would be a valid comparison if 30 years of industry experience was something high school students could choose to get instead of spending a few years in college
I find that people who haven't gone to university have no clue how much they don't know.
The best part of university is realizing how dumb you are and that you are ignorant in every way.
The best part of university is realizing how dumb you are and that you are ignorant in every way.
> The best part of university is realizing how dumb you are and that you are ignorant in every way.
Realizing how ignorant you are and still thinking that you know more than people skipping university.
Realizing how ignorant you are and still thinking that you know more than people skipping university.
if you are learning a skill sure. i got my degree in business/marketing and it was a complete waste of time.
Surprising, common sentiment among current college-aged zoomers currently advocates the opposite.
I frequently see posts convinced CS/Art jobs will be completely automated by AI in just a few years, and the only way to be safe is to get a business degree and go into management.
I think a lot of it is overblown, but I've already seen a few friends switch their degrees over it.
I frequently see posts convinced CS/Art jobs will be completely automated by AI in just a few years, and the only way to be safe is to get a business degree and go into management.
I think a lot of it is overblown, but I've already seen a few friends switch their degrees over it.
I do kind of agree with Jensen Huangs statement about this recently where he says don't learn to code but instead learn a domain deeply. Actually I think you should do both. Understanding how to "computationalize" a domain problem is a very valuable skill.
This seems huge if you can do it. I'm guessing a company like Intuit pays top dollar for job candidates with a double major in finance and computer science.
Those people must be stupid. First of all, CS does have programming classes to get you started, but they expect you to just be able to do it past the fourth semester. The classes without any programming are just as relevant as before. Finally, you also get to build the thing that is supposedly taking your job away, so you are just replacing one thing to do with another.
There are management and business focused CS degrees in Germany with significant overlap in the courses.
There are management and business focused CS degrees in Germany with significant overlap in the courses.
You don’t go take a management job out of college
That's not strictly true. When I worked at IBM, they had a graduate program which quite literally fast tracked very high achieving college graduates straight into management ranks.
It was also the only time I've worked with recent college graduates that actually had a clue, instead of being complete morons needing a few years of experience in order to be useful.
It changed my opinion of college graduates, to "maybe they're not all idiots after all...". ;)
It was also the only time I've worked with recent college graduates that actually had a clue, instead of being complete morons needing a few years of experience in order to be useful.
It changed my opinion of college graduates, to "maybe they're not all idiots after all...". ;)
College grads still make on average roughly 2x what high school grads make, so yes, so college is worth it in an economic sense. Yes, some majors are more lucrative than others, yes you can screw up anything, but in aggregate and on average, it will ~double your income.
But economics/capitalism is only one lens through which to look at this. College is NOT vocational training. You don't go to college to become more useful to your overlords. Ideally, after college you would be useless to overlords.
But economics/capitalism is only one lens through which to look at this. College is NOT vocational training. You don't go to college to become more useful to your overlords. Ideally, after college you would be useless to overlords.
If you get a high paying job? Yes. If you get a low paying job? No.
College is notoriously survivor biased, and the metrics that nearly all studies use to justify whatever they happen to be selling that day is horseshit. There are a lot of malevolent parasites that make their way into forever jobs like these.
What I would personally like to see is a study of class section pass-rates that properly segment first-attempt students from re-attempt students in the metrics. The Administration doesn't collect these because it would shine visibility on a decades old problem, showing they have a conflict of interest (they want a forever student, and to take your federally subsidized money).
There is a lot of fraud that happens in various different forms within these systems, that is undisclosed upfront.
Physics had the notorious 3 question fail test, where questions were dependent on getting the correct answers from all previous questions, along with undisclosed rules that contradict curricula taught rules (significant digits). If you rounded at each problem you failed, if you rounded at just the last problem you failed. In other words it embeds a causality property biasing the pass distribution greatly (only the top ~10-15% would pass).
Material may not be covered, but still tested on, and this may come in many different forms. Some are very tricky indeed to spot.
Answering inferential questions, for them to be valid they require that there be a signal that is easily differentiable from the material taught (SNR) which allows comparison between two similar answers but one correct straightforward answer, this signal is usually attenuated to the point of denial of service (jamming), or the wording used is ambiguous (having two contradictory meanings, one of which must be guessed).
The amount of time required to succeed may be non-standard (i.e. 3 hours / week per 1 unit is typical, but some classes are as high as 7-9). There are finite hours in the day, and to receive federal funding one must get 12 units. This may range from 34 hours/week for 16 weeks to 70+ depending on the hidden variables for the class.
Worse, the tools that are marketed to teachers for these classes use dark patterns, or do not disclose the effect (to induce additional failures). Pearson did this as recently as 2022, where they embedded per-student randomized exam pools and the teacher couldn't access the questions on the test (and you can't rely on a signal from the class because each test is unique), and other psychological patterns such as forcing you to confirm that you got the answer wrong before you can continue (with big red text), whereas correct answers just continue on. Almost like beating a mallet on the student every time they get it wrong, while tossing invectives their way. You think that won't have an impact on performance?
You can literally spend 20 years going to school and never actually complete a degree (same area of study), and not from a matter of not knowing the material.
Normally someone would mention that if there were problems there are routes you can take to address them but that's not actually true either. They do have feedback systems, but those feedback systems are broken feedback systems.
There is no duty to investigate a complaint. Any investigation is viewed by the faculty as creating a hostile work environment. They are all peers, from the Chair, to the Dean, to the Board of Trustees. Its all about social standing, and students have none.
I would be ineffably better off today if I had never gone to college just from the financial toll its taken over the years, and the health toll (in hours worked for a pipedream).
What I would personally like to see is a study of class section pass-rates that properly segment first-attempt students from re-attempt students in the metrics. The Administration doesn't collect these because it would shine visibility on a decades old problem, showing they have a conflict of interest (they want a forever student, and to take your federally subsidized money).
There is a lot of fraud that happens in various different forms within these systems, that is undisclosed upfront.
Physics had the notorious 3 question fail test, where questions were dependent on getting the correct answers from all previous questions, along with undisclosed rules that contradict curricula taught rules (significant digits). If you rounded at each problem you failed, if you rounded at just the last problem you failed. In other words it embeds a causality property biasing the pass distribution greatly (only the top ~10-15% would pass).
Material may not be covered, but still tested on, and this may come in many different forms. Some are very tricky indeed to spot.
Answering inferential questions, for them to be valid they require that there be a signal that is easily differentiable from the material taught (SNR) which allows comparison between two similar answers but one correct straightforward answer, this signal is usually attenuated to the point of denial of service (jamming), or the wording used is ambiguous (having two contradictory meanings, one of which must be guessed).
The amount of time required to succeed may be non-standard (i.e. 3 hours / week per 1 unit is typical, but some classes are as high as 7-9). There are finite hours in the day, and to receive federal funding one must get 12 units. This may range from 34 hours/week for 16 weeks to 70+ depending on the hidden variables for the class.
Worse, the tools that are marketed to teachers for these classes use dark patterns, or do not disclose the effect (to induce additional failures). Pearson did this as recently as 2022, where they embedded per-student randomized exam pools and the teacher couldn't access the questions on the test (and you can't rely on a signal from the class because each test is unique), and other psychological patterns such as forcing you to confirm that you got the answer wrong before you can continue (with big red text), whereas correct answers just continue on. Almost like beating a mallet on the student every time they get it wrong, while tossing invectives their way. You think that won't have an impact on performance?
You can literally spend 20 years going to school and never actually complete a degree (same area of study), and not from a matter of not knowing the material.
Normally someone would mention that if there were problems there are routes you can take to address them but that's not actually true either. They do have feedback systems, but those feedback systems are broken feedback systems.
There is no duty to investigate a complaint. Any investigation is viewed by the faculty as creating a hostile work environment. They are all peers, from the Chair, to the Dean, to the Board of Trustees. Its all about social standing, and students have none.
I would be ineffably better off today if I had never gone to college just from the financial toll its taken over the years, and the health toll (in hours worked for a pipedream).
I majored in Statistics and Probability. By the mid 1980s, departments were starting to look at the distribution of grades. This lead to teachers giving really difficult tests and then having a large 'curve'. The problem with matching a grade distribution to the Normal Curve, is that by definition the Normal Curve is the absolute wrong goal for grades distribution. A normal distribution requires multiple inputs where none is deterministic. That is the opposite of how a class with a standardized curriculum should fall. Yes there should be variation but the use of the Normal Curve with needlessly difficult tests has caused many departments to be proud of their burn rate with incoming freshmen. In engineering then they routinely pushed out nearly half the freshmen, and had the burn continue into second year. The issue is these engineering students were also part of several 'colleges' who at the time had different policies about grades. One college didn't allow any redos, if you took a class a second time you'd get the two grades. Where another college would allow retaking the class and erasing the old grade. That school eventually merged the colleges and standardized the grading policies but I'm not sure they have any kind of redress to the engineering throwaways. These departments who have high facilities and equipment costs are what I saw pulled that the most often, they used those students whom they were actively harming more than half to subsidize their academic department.
Advice I got when I was in the search for college, "Go to the best school you can get the best grades in".
Unfortunately, the best school doesn't advertise, and like the elusive unicorn doesn't seem to exist because the incentives only seem to promote perverse incentives.
Bad options have crowded out good options, eventually like any lawn that has plastic sheeting blacking it out, the organisms underneath die leaving barren soil.
That may just be my personal geography I did try every college in my area in a 200 mile radius aside from the private ones which I couldn't afford, and the ones that wouldn't let me in, so this wasn't a lack of trying.
That burn rate continues churning forever on the blood of past students that were told lies with no other choice, and the tests are scheduled just after the full refund deadline.
I'd taken physics 9 times by the time I gave up on Aerospace Engineering. They used to do a lab contest among the colleges (same college district) in my area for physics and I directing my group repeatedly won.
Kind of farcical when your students flunk the course repeatedly but are the only ones in the contest to complete a proper egg drop with limited material selection from 6 stories where the egg survives without a crack.
I'm 90% sure they stopped the contest because it looked bad.
Bad options have crowded out good options, eventually like any lawn that has plastic sheeting blacking it out, the organisms underneath die leaving barren soil.
That may just be my personal geography I did try every college in my area in a 200 mile radius aside from the private ones which I couldn't afford, and the ones that wouldn't let me in, so this wasn't a lack of trying.
That burn rate continues churning forever on the blood of past students that were told lies with no other choice, and the tests are scheduled just after the full refund deadline.
I'd taken physics 9 times by the time I gave up on Aerospace Engineering. They used to do a lab contest among the colleges (same college district) in my area for physics and I directing my group repeatedly won.
Kind of farcical when your students flunk the course repeatedly but are the only ones in the contest to complete a proper egg drop with limited material selection from 6 stories where the egg survives without a crack.
I'm 90% sure they stopped the contest because it looked bad.
Of course, it’s possible to eschew these opportunities, but if you ever have a moment of clarity to try and live life a little better, the opportunities are there within reach. At any later point in life, these things can be hard to come by serendipitously, and they tend to require a relatively steep active effort.
In general, upfront life investment is exceptionally valuable, and the (all encompassing) human gestation period easily extends through college age in modern society. I think the issue of its worth is typically for people that were underserved in their grade school years, which is probably a decently large percentage of the country.