patrick.net

PRIME says

The title implies college is a good investment for cashiers. What?! If I drop $200K to go to college and then work at 7-11, college is a good investment?

That's not exactly what the article said. It said that you can go to public college for $2000/year, when you consider federal aid, and gave a cite. No one suggested going to Schools for the Dumb Rich if you're a cashier.

PRIME says

Maybe the high income plumbers are just better at following society’s orders and would make just as much without college. Classic example of confusing correlation with causation.

Yes, I agree with this. Maybe the plumbers who go to college are smarter, more intellectually curious, better at creative problem-solving, better at business, better at retaining customers, etc.

PRIME says

Part of the reason college graduates make more is because employers favor college graduates. For example, my uncle took a really hard test to become a fire department chief recently. After he passed the hard test, he needed to go back to college to finish his degree to get the title (city rules), even though he was already qualified in my book. So, when he got his raise he is in the college degree bucket, even though the raise had nothing to do with the degree.

Yes, however, this point doesn't actually contradict the article. If ANYTHING causes college graduates to make more money, the article is correct.

The article is bullshit.

College is good and all, but only if you can land a job that will justify its expense, and its expense is high. Working as a cahsier does not justify going to college. Nor does being a plumber. It is flat out stupid to spend $10K or more for a college degree and then go and do a job like that.

Becoming say a mechanical engineer, OK NOW you're talking. The problem is those jobs aren't exactly growing on trees and the free internships that you'd typically use to get your foot in the door are scarce now days. This means that these days its normal for people to leave college with a degree and 10's of thousands in debt and not find a decent level entry job that they studied for.

They are stuck with huge amounts of debt that is usually undischargeable, because its a government loan, and the jobs they can get leave them with almost nothing to live on. Hence all the late 20 somethings and now 30 somethings who are still living at home now. Used to be that was rare, 10 years ago you'd be a loser if you did that, now its the "new norm". Meanwhile everything they learned in college either slips away or becomes even more outdated and useless. After a couple of years of not working the field you went to college for you end up being shunned by employers for being a "loser".

There are some who still say that you should go to college no matter what, that its for learning and it'll help you grow as a person and bla bla bla. These people are full of shit and living in the past. 30 years, maybe 20 years ago this was true. College is too damn expensive to go just for this reason and now there are other far cheaper and convienent sources of info. available. These days though with the internet people are far more aware of what is happening around them in the country and world and exposed to far more things outside their normal cultural comfort levels than they had been back then.

Personally I think we need to get college costs waaay the heck down and bring back vocational schools for those who just don't want to go which is perfectly valid IMO since there is no reason you should HAVE to go to college and for some people its just not the best learning environment. Giving people undischargable loans is a horrible idea that just drives the cost of college up over time too, that has to stop.

I can now connect this to housing. From the Atlantic, the ROI on college is far better than stocks and bonds, and any of those is better than housing:

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/What-Best-Investment-Stocks-atlantic-4214432520.html

shrekgrinch says

The folks involved in the article have a vested interest in maintaining and even expanding the education debt bubble.

Are you talking about the Hamilton Project run by the Brookings Institution? Why would they have a vested interest in expanding the education debt bubble?

We need to invest in education in order to advance our economy. I agree that what we need to do is find a way to reduce education debt, not increase it, but I'm not convinced the Brookings Institution feels differently about that.

It's also a false comparison to compare college graduates to all high school graduates.

I'm sure the high school grads who could have graduated college but didn't go are generally doing OK. They are certainly doing better than the shocking number of functional illiterates who get the same high school degree.

Where would Silicon Valley be if Bill Gates or Steve Jobs had graduated from college?

C Boy says

Where would Silicon Valley be if Bill Gates or Steve Jobs had graduated from college?

Jobs ripped off Xerox to make their OS, while Bill Gates ripped off Gary Kildall to create their DOS-OS and later Apple to create a DOS-GUI. And Gary was years ahead of both of them. But very few even know who he is.

If there was no Microsoft we would still have far more software apps companies which MS killed off over the years. Digital Research, Inc would be as large as MS today located in the Pacific Grove, Ca.

C Boy says

Where would Silicon Valley be if Bill Gates or Steve Jobs had graduated from college?

Haha. Gates, Jobs, Zuckerburg...they just stole their way to the top. Yes, where would Silicon Valley be without these innovators of crime?

As for the article, a $2000/semester college is fine for anyone, considering a lot of jobs just want to see a degree on your resume. College is worthless anyway from a learning standpoint, job experience is all that matters and anyone can learn on the job.

StoutFiles says

College is worthless anyway from a learning standpoint, job experience is all that matters and anyone can learn on the job.

A college degree is one of the things that show you're able to work within the system.

Much like wearing a suit.

College is good if you can't learn to do something on your own. And of course if you plan to go to elite financial institutions than without you going to Yale/Stanford or some other prestige school those doors will be closed, since those places are a club.

With the way information is shared on the internet now, colleges seem a bit like an outdated way to learn. It's good for socializing perhaps and frat parties, but not for education. I graduated long ago, biggest waste of my time and money. Four years of my life I will not get back.

tts says

Becoming say a mechanical engineer, OK NOW you’re talking. The problem is those jobs aren’t exactly growing on trees and the free internships that you’d typically use to get your foot in the door are scarce now days.

I suspect that they are not scarce if you are willing to relocate to China.

Something to consider:

We used to have a golden rule that housing should not cost more than X=3 times gross income.

We should have a similar rule that college should not cost more than Y=? times the expected INCREASE in income due to the specific knowledge and qualifications acquired.

Somebody must have worked out what Y should be. Of course, the real hard part is to make the incoming potential freshmen properly estimate what kind of major and degree and associated knowledge they will acquire, before having started.

College Value Calculator, anyone?

shrekgrinch says

Just because they have done great work in other fields where they didn’t have this conflict of interest doesn’t somehow automagically negate it in this case.

Actually it does. :)

Reading your other posts here, I should probably agree to disagree. The real answer is somewhere between ideological anti-credentialism and the people who have a stake in the education debt bubble. The Brookings Institution is certainly somewhere in the middle.

zzyzzx says

I suspect that they are not scarce if you are willing to relocate to China.

They've got plenty over there already who will work for less and speak the local language without issue. There are only a few jobs these days where its really worth it to try and immigrate to another country. No one makes immigration easy.

There has been a bit of anti college rhetoric lately. I think that the placement of it should be more against FAFSA than anything else. When we subsidize student loans it makes them easier to get and it fills classes. But this just leads to prices going up.

Not all students end up in debt. Many schools have payment plans that make it simpler rather than paying it all at once. Go to public instead of private, buy used instead of new books (ebooks are growing anyway), go to a two year first before a four year (that way after two years you have a degree instead of just credits) Educational debt cannot be removed in bankruptcy so saving money in it does make sense.

From an employer point of view it is much easier to confirm a degree than someones experience. A century ago employers might have taught people skills but these days they are proprietary (outside of government compliance). It makes little sense for say IBM to each something that has a value to AT&T. I have seen companies that use generic software that looks like say..Excel but it isn't because they don't want people to learn a skill that has a use somewhere else. With education one can see transcripts showing classes, grades, who the professor was etc. With experience there's no real incentive for companies to provide information on prior employees.

Employers want more and more. In the 1980's this started with drug tests, later in the 90s it was background checks and now some are even doing credit checks. The argument is if you can connect a job to finances then you shouldn't have people in debt around it.

Vocational schools are nice as a concept but unfortunately much of them were simply tied to housing. Carpentry, plumbing, electrical..it's not the same market. I remember my high school had a vocational wing and during a tour a teach there told us "You don't need to learn any foreign languages, any math or science...ALL you need to know is..." sweet lord. I personally know mechanics that state not to become one because it is a thankless job. He was even in a union and frankly it didn't help (no strike fund, no pay raises unless ironically he gets a degree). You also have a fair amount that cannot fix cars due to the OBE-II systems (check engine lights) and have to go to a dealership.

"There are only a few jobs these days where its really worth it to try and immigrate to another country"

Depends. Teaching English as a foreign language is a large field. They often can give dirt cheap if not free housing. This is if you have a bachelors or higher though.

As for silicon valley and ripping people off it happens all the time. Steve Jobs originally worked for Nolan Bushnell at Atari. If they had more money the Apple 1 would have been Atari. They didn't have enough funds so Jobs left. But yet there are also companies that buy out companies not to use their material but to make sure others don't. Be was bought by Palm and then Palm was bought by HP. Apple could have bought be back in '96 instead of Next but stupidly chose not to.

Lastly is that there is a growing field companies that might slap a degree as a requirement for top management. If you are working 50 hours a week it will take a long time to get a degree. In the northeast you pretty much have to have a degree to get a job. When over a third of people have degree and the numbers keep increasing eventually it will cross 50% and if you don't have one then you are sol.

Actually, I don't have any problem with promoting the $2000 per semester JUCO or Trade school. These are awesome programs with a proven track record of success. They are value bets.

They're much better than droppping $10000 per semester for a state University.

Nomograph says

The anti-education crowd here are the same folks who complain because they can’t afford housing.

Interesting.

I'm just out of college with a good job after finishing a four year school. I'd say 5% of what I learned is relevant, and it isn't anything I couldn't have taught myself. College is just used to help define a class structure. I'm not anti-education, but colleges fill the course load with so much waste to keep you there 4 years, not to mention it's really an excuse to party for most.

I can't afford a house yet, but by afford I mean pay for a house in full. I could go out tomorrow and get a big bank loan, but that's not me affording to buy a house, it's just me being in debt to the bank for 30 years. I want at least 50% down on a house that's only 2x times my yearly salary. Almost there.