
Private colleges are a waste of money for white, middle class kids - DLay
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/12/18/private-colleges-are-a-waste-of-money-for-white-middle-class-kids/
======
hacknat
Everyone talks about the great network-effect from going to a good school. As
someone who went to one of these supposedly great "network-effect-ey" schools
I say it's bullshit.

As a thought experiment, think of your own college experience. Do you really
keep in touch with that many people? Of the people you do keep in touch with,
can any of them open opportunities for you that are at all relevant to your
field?

People who go to Harvard, Ivies, Stanford, Berkley, et al, have the same basic
"College-Experience"(TM) as everyone else. No one wants to admit it, but it's
not the network-effect that helps. It's the branding!

Harvard, the Ivies, et al, have brand recognition, and brand recognition
helps...a lot!

If you're hiring someone, don't you think that the person with a brand that
you recognize is going to at least get that person a phone-screen or an
expedited interview? You're desperate to hire someone and they went to
Stanford, so they must be good, right?

Ivy league degrees are simply the best door-openers out of all the door
openers you can get. Once you're in the door they're as useless as the other
degrees are.

~~~
modoc
It depends on the person. I can't comment on Ivys, however I attended a very
prestigious East coast prep school. At the time I was a terrible "networker"
and I left there with zero long term friends and useful connections.

A good friend of mine went to a similar prep school, but he's more a naturally
social guy, and he's maintained leverage connections with probably 100 people
who have gone on to positions of power and prestige. He has been able to call
on those acquaintances very successfully in his career to open doors and get
introductions that simply aren't available to most people.

So just because I wasn't personally able to capitalize on the networking
opportunity doesn't mean that the opportunity wasn't there.

~~~
hnnewguy
> _So just because I wasn 't personally able to capitalize on the networking
> opportunity doesn't mean that the opportunity wasn't there._

It sounds to me that you reinforce the OPs argument: social people will make
connections regardless.

~~~
pm90
I don't see how you got there. Being social is important yes, but you can't
just meet the diverse number of people that its possible to in university:
future lawyers, engineers, doctors, artists, bureaucrats etc. all in the same
campus. College is the best time to make connections, and an Ivy League
College is even better.

~~~
hnnewguy
> _I don 't see how you got there._

Well, I started with the fact that he said he isn't social and made few
connections, while his sociable friend made many connections. From there, it
wasn't hard to conclude that "college" had little to do with generating
connections.

> _but you can 't just meet the diverse number of people that its possible to
> in university_

Completely untrue.

First of all, you know where you can find diversity? Almost anywhere. Join a
club or a team sport and you're likely to encounter people of all shapes,
colours, ages and occupations.

Second, the University isn't as diverse as you proclaim. The average person
you will meet in college in America or the Commonwealth will be globally
wealthy, speak English and probably be a WASP, somewhere between ages 18 and
24. You surround yourself with like-minded people in your courses, many of
whom will not graduate, and even fewer who will go on to careers related to
their education.

Don't get me wrong; I love the college experience, and am a firm believer in
education. I've already spent more time there than is optimal for my career.

> _College is the best time to make connections_

And what do you base this argument on? I didn't have a clue who I was at 20.

~~~
modoc
it's not that "college" would make a huge difference, it's that an Ivy league
(or similar school) would allow a person like my friend to make connections
that are helpful. The high-end prep school he went to means he has connections
at global banks and financial firms, connections to families with 100s of
millions of dollars of wealth, people in national level politics,
international connections, etc... that wouldn't have been possible at a normal
high school.

------
loganadams_
I have a tough time with this article. I understand what it is trying to say.
The costs are ridiculous. But what I see among my friends is that those who
went to large public flagship schools got lost, and had a much tougher time.
However, those who went to smaller private schools on scholarships built
better connections with professors, and tended to do better long run.

~~~
benesch
Interesting. That's directly opposite what I've seen. My close high school
friends nearly all went to Ivy League-quality schools: Yale, Penn, MIT,
Caltech, etc. Some of us are happy. Most of us are succeeding. A few of us are
excelling. (Personally, I'm struggling. I have this irrepressible notion that
liberal arts are a waste of my time, no matter how hard I try to subscribe to
the learning-for-learning's-sake theory, which is not great for grades.) We're
all stressed out of our minds.

Three of my equally, if not more, intelligent friends ended up at public
institutions or "second-" or "third-tier" schools. Unequivocally, they're
happier. They're _thriving_ , as the article puts it. Student council
presidents, top of their class, balanced social life, good job or graduate
school prospects.

Of course, this is all anecdata. Me as much as you. The article at least has
some semblance of data.

In the end, it's an optimization problem. What is higher education optimizing
for? Salary? That seems myopic. Happiness? That seems overly hedonistic.
Maturity? Impact upon the world? Good luck measuring that.

College is only not worth it if you don't get out of it what you want. Most of
us go to college because society tells us it leads to a "better life"\--which
is an inherently unquantifiable notion.

~~~
pfisch
You can't assess anything until college is over and you are actually in the
real world. Good Grades does not mean you will succeed in real life. It mostly
means you are good at following orders.

~~~
hueving
>It mostly means you are good at following orders.

Maybe if you went to a terrible school. In any decent school it means you were
able to come up with a solution to a problem presented to you. This is
especially true for upper-level classes where the majority of the grade is
based on a personal project.

~~~
crpatino
As someone who has been on and off of lecturing for the last 10 years, I think
you overestimate the size of the Decent Schools Set.

------
interesting_att
1) Network generation is weak, but still there. Does it justify 150k + 150k
opportunity cost? The data says no.

2) Colleges are, however, great at identity generation. People who come from
top tier schools feel and act like they are awesome. This dramatically helps
when it comes to asking for a higher salary, better position, etc. I have met
a number of people who didn't go to college, and a lot of them feel they need
to prove that they are just as smart as college alums (which they are).

3) Colleges shouldn't be viewed as an economic investment. It is also an
intellectual investment. It helps change your world view into something larger
and more interesting. I benefited dramatically from reading Plato under the
tutelage of Ancient Greek scholars.

4) Lastly, colleges are FUN. Colleges are filled with parties and friends. You
have to include this in the costs.

~~~
humanrebar
> You have to include [FUN] in the costs.

That's part of the problem. There's no "hold the fun" option if you're price
sensitive or if you want to invest your fun budget in something else.

This is a really important point because it's really an age and lifestyle
discrimination. If you're in your forties and want to get a degree (or a
different one), you're still funding late night movies on the quad and disc
golf even if you need to be home with the kids.

That being said, I'm sure the fun line items aren't the bulk of education
expenses, but other frivolous things certainly are: new rec centers,
impressive fountains, micromanaging administrators, etc.

------
bowlich
I only skimmed the article after the first couple of paragraphs. The whole
$42,000 price tag for a private college is quite a misnomer. My sister went to
Michigan Tech, I went to a private liberal arts college. After four years, she
has more debt then me.

Your public institution is about as stingy as it can come with it's funding.
That $18,000 price tag is going to end up being your final price. If you are a
good student, that private college will throw scholarships at you hand over
fist. My college's price (starting at $26,000/yr) would typically get slashed
by 50% at the start of each year just by the dividends off the school's
endowment -- which it does not figure in to it's advertised costs since it
various drastically from fiscal year to fiscal year. After that, load on a
bunch of random scholarships and I would be down to around $9,000/yr. I had a
couple friends whose parents took jobs at the college to get their kids a 90%
discount on tuition. They actually ended up making money going to college.

~~~
gmarx
My apologies in advance for being pedantic on the web but I think there is a
chance a HackerNews reader would appreciate this: "Misnomer" means something
is improperly named. It doesn't mean merely misleading.

~~~
bowlich
Thanks for the correction. I will note it for my future use.

~~~
gmarx
You're welcome

------
jreimers
So 11% of people who attended public universities are "thriving", and 4% of
people who attended private universities are thriving. That means somewhere
between 89 and 96 percent of people who attended university are not thriving.
This paints a pretty dismal picture of the utility of a university degree for
those who want to thrive, white middle class kids or otherwise.

~~~
imgabe
It doesn't tell you anything about whether people who didn't go to college are
thriving, though.

~~~
VLM
It did carefully not discuss the trades.

------
niklasni1
Not a fan of this way of thinking about university, as though it's some power-
up in the competition to make the most money. It's all very American. What
about learning and being in an environment that inspires you?

~~~
moron4hire
Learning and being in an environment that inspires you is great, but has
nothing to do with the vast majority of people's college experience. For most
people, it's just a job credentialing service.

~~~
jimhefferon
And don't forget football.

------
wooyi
Variations between degree programs is bigger than variations between schools.
It matters more what you major in vs what school you went to. For example,
pretty much any CS degree from any school can get you a job. Whereas, even a
degree from a selective school in say, Psychology or Business Admin will be
hard for anyone.

Edit: I work in an education tech company and read a decent amount of
literature on the subject of school selection and outcomes.

------
windlep
The more elite the school, the more elite the ppl you meet. The financial
outcomes can be easily explained solely on the networking effects of meeting
ppl from more powerful sectors of society. No one sends their kids to an Ivy
league school to get "Super smart", its to hang around the "right group" for
later influence and networking with the "right people".

~~~
jerf
If you are going to send your kid to one of those, be sure to _clearly
explain_ to them that is the point, lest they fall into the trap of studying
and getting good grades at the expense of networking.

(I leave it as an exercise for the reader to decide which parts of that are
sarcastic, and how much. Frankly I'm not sure myself.)

~~~
mbesto
Pretty much every job I know of outside of our little SV tech bubble will
reward you based on your college GPA. Unless something has changed in the last
8 years, a majority of my accounting/finance friends all were vetted on
interviews and GPA when applying to E&Y, KPMG, Goldman and the like. Also,
it's all about who you know. These type of people represent the majority of
white-collar, white college graduate jobs out there - not tech.

Note - that being said, I've interviewed quite a few young graduates recently
and for the life of me, I don't remember a single time I looked at someone's
GPA. But that's because in tech I'm trying my best to hire young people based
on merit. All that matters is whether you can ship code.

------
nwenzel
"The biggest predictor of whether a graduate wasn't thriving was whether he or
she had student loans. Fourteen percent of those without any debt said they
were thriving, compared to 2 percent of those with more than $40,000 of debt.
You can't draw iron-clad conclusions from that..."

Maybe "you" can't draw any iron-clad conclusions from that observation, but I
can. Debt is a multiplier. It's great when there's appreciation (ex: buying a
house) but a heavy burden when there's no upside (credit cards, student loans)
and an impossible crushing weight if there is depreciation (ex: buying a house
that drops 20% in value).

To all current and future students: good luck out there. Learning for
learning's sake is fine. But don't forget to focus on outcomes, too.

~~~
mason240
Student loan debt can be a multiplier if it increases your income. I started
my CS degree at 27, working at a pizza restaurant manager. 4 years later (and
2 years into my new career) I am making twice what was then. My loans will be
paid off in 10 years and will still have my career and will continue to out
earn what I would have in my old life.

While this clearly isn't the case for all degree earners, it certainly has
upside in a lot of cases.

------
bane
I'm about 20 years in on my career and can maybe provide a few observations:

\- Outside of _very_ few jobs, this article is absolutely correct. The few
jobs that it really matters are ones where they won't even look at your resume
unless is has "Harvard" under "Education" on the resume for no set of reasons
that have anything to do with the quality of the education. I leave it as an
exercise to the reader as to if they really want to work in those kinds of
places -- note: the burn-out rate on those places is usually around 2 years,
then you're out in the market with the plebs and a pretentious work history
you'll have to explain away for the rest of your life.

\- Very early in your career, maybe the first 2-3 years, if you went to a top-
tier private school you might receive a slight pay or position stats buff over
your state schooled peers. If you went to a private school that wasn't top-
tier nobody will recognize it and it'll be a waste of your money. Rule of
thumb, if the private school you fight your way to get into and pay out the
nose to attend isn't immediately name recognizable, nobody will care in the
slightest early in your career and it may as well have been the local commuter
school later on.

\- This stats buff goes away very fast and _hard_ as your movement up the
corporate ladder start to be based on factors other than the school you went
to. After your initial 2-3 years, you'll be expected to have learned the job
and be able to perform at the working level. I've observed that there is
almost no correlation between the best performers and the school they went to.
If anything there might be a slight bias towards those that went to impersonal
state schools since they're used to not having their hand held. This is the
hard lesson that places like Google are learning. One of the difficult things
with being data driven is that when the data shows your state school grads do
as well or better than your top-tier grads in the workplace, you have to pay
attention. And the data has shown conclusively that it really doesn't matter.

\- By 10 years in, employers look for degree level (M.S. over B.S.) and
possible field (relevant like Computer Science vs. irrelevant like
Anthropology) and completely don't care what school you went to in the
slightest. Those that do, 10 years in on a career, are usually places you
don't want to work long-term.

\- By 20 years in, you could have gone to the worst cow-poke state school in
the country and nobody will care even in the slightest and your peers at that
level will have educations from an impossibly diverse collection of schools.

\- Many of my peers who graduated from a top-tier/private school realize that
they'll need to return for an M.A./M.S. or an M.B.A. at some point in their
career to maintain upward momentum. Since they're working at the same time
this inevitably means going to the local state school. A comment I've heard
over and over again is that state schools often don't do as much hand holding
and advising (degree counseling) as the privates and they often feel lost in
the impersonal grind. Many of them drop out a year in because of this. If you
end up here, don't drop out, it's not that hard, but state schools won't treat
you like a special snowflake.

\- However, you can go to the _wrong_ school. The big commercial for profit
schools, like University of Phoenix or similar, _can_ be a slight drag on your
early career post-school and make it harder to hit career maximums. Companies
like to fill up the "Leadership" page on their web site with people who went
to well credentialed schools: state and private doesn't make a difference,
exploitive for-profit does.

\- All of my peers with huge student debts went to private schools. 20 years
in, I have peers _still_ paying $200-500/mo to service their loans. That's a
car payment. The people who are debt free, and get to take on expensive
hobbies, travel a lot, etc. are the ones who went to an in-state State School.

\- People _agonize_ over what school they're going to go to for their
undergraduate education, usually over _very_ minor reputation differences. By
5 years into your career it won't matter even in the slightest.

\- The only people I've ever met who introduce themselves as "I'm so and so
and I went to <school>" or say "When I was at <school>" instead of "when I was
in college" went to an Ivy. Most people stop saying this pretentious nonsense
about 10-15 years in because they'll finally clue in on the social signal that
it's not impressive to anybody.

\- If you have money to burn, and you want to carry cachet more than 10 years
into your work, go to a well known overseas school like Oxford. You'll get
name recognition, tales of the foreign, etc. However, if you have to explain
that "I went to basically the Harvard of <insert country>" you won't get the
same effect. Americans still think there's some secret sauce that well known
top-European schools impart on a student.

\- If you went to school because of the great sportsball team, nobody gives
two flying fannies about it when they're hiring you. On the things that are
important about you as a candidate, it's at or near the absolute bottom of the
list.

\- Your in-career social network will be far more meaningful for you than the
one you get from school.

\- Spending the extra money to go to an out-of-state state school is almost
always a complete waste of money. Just go to your local state school and use
the difference to pay off your loans in a couple years or buy a car or
something. It makes absolutely zero difference to your employer and slight
reputation differences in programs won't make that much difference once you're
out in the working world.

------
vince_refiti
Similarly in Australia [1]

[1][http://www.canberratimes.com.au/comment/private-school-no-
go...](http://www.canberratimes.com.au/comment/private-school-no-golden-key-
to-employment-20140815-1032d6.html)

------
zamalek
That obviously depends heavily on where you are situated and more specifically
how [in]competent your public/government system is.

------
michaelochurch
I tend to wish this were true, because it would be better for the world even
if neutral-to-negative for me. In truth, though: pedigree shouldn't matter,
but it does.

Among the top 100 offerings or so, the differences in quality of education are
very small. The differences in quality of _students_ are pretty small. But
connections matter, and even if Harvard student's aren't all shockingly
brilliant, the dumb ones are _connected_.

If you go the #147 private college and pay $50k per year, you'd be better
served by a state school. If you're talking about Harvard, though... no, it's
not a waste of money.

Perhaps surprisingly, the influence of pedigree _increases_ later in one's
career. These numbers are estimates, but an MIT CS grad might make $100k out
of college while the state-school grad makes $85k-- not a huge difference. Ten
years out, those numbers look more like $250k and $150k. Why? Connections tend
to get _stronger_ with time, even when not formally kept up. So much of the
business world is run by nostalgia. That's why prep school connections are
more powerful than college, and college connections are more powerful than
grad-school connections... even though the elite high schools are less
selective and meritocratic. _Old_ connections suggest predestination ("born to
lead") and, because of that, have a cachet that new connections (though
carrying more signal) don't. The future may be (and most hope it will be) rich
and abundant but the past is a scarce and eternally limited commodity; there
will never be more pedigree.

Where you went to school matters not at all, ten years out, if you're in the
top or bottom 10%, relative to where you might be expected to go with your
training, career-wise. If you do really well, no one cares where you went to
school. Or if you make terrible choices and fail catastrophically, the Harvard
degree just makes it more pathetic. For that middle 80%, those connections
made early on are going to start throwing "Get Out Of Jail Free" cards and
that's a major asset if you want to break the ceiling and become a player.

I'd say that it generally works like this. From 22-25, pedigree matters a lot
in an evaluative sense. (Make that 22-29 if you get a PhD.) From 25-30, it
doesn't matter all that much because people have more recent data, when it
comes to evaluation. From 30-40, it starts to matter again, not because people
judge you based on it-- your record speaks for itself-- but because you're
vying for leadership or coveted creative/architectural roles and that means
politics, and you need "Get Out Of Jail Free" cards (which come from having
connections) for when your risks blow up. After 40, it seems to stop mattering
because that's an age at which you shouldn't need "Get Out Of Jail Free" cards
at all.

~~~
hnnewguy
> _Ten years out, those numbers look more like $250k and $150k._

If there are managers willing to pay an employee 40% more based on an
education received a decade prior, there's a huge economic advantage to be had
hiring those of "lower pedigree".

~~~
michaelochurch
No one consciously cares, at that age, where people went to school. What
happens is that the ones with pedigree are more likely to be selected for
leadership positions early on, and appear "on merit" to be worth more, after
several years of higher-quality work experience. In reality, they were just
able to get themselves promoted faster. After ten years, though, they
legitimately have a higher quality of work experience than those without the
pedigree advantage.

So you wouldn't be _necessarily_ able to save $100k by hiring people without
the pedigree, because even though many are just as talented, they're not going
to have the highest quality of work experience. There are plenty of people
who'd do just fine, even with the lack of good experience, but you have to be
able to find them.

~~~
nostrademons
I agree that you've basically nailed the dynamic in the career-development
market, but I'll point out that there are a number of career resets you can
use to escape it. Grad school. Founding a startup. Independent projects.
Moving into a different field entirely.

These often aren't objectively worth it under the value system of your old
career, but they essentially throw a monkey wrench into your career and make
anyone reading it go "Huh? Why did they do that, and what does it mean for me
and my company if I hire them?" And that, in turn, gives you an ability to
reframe your story on your own terms. If you're behind in somebody else's
value system, it makes no sense to continue molding your career to their value
system. Instead, pick _your_ value system and then seek out positions that
play to your strengths.

