
Is a college education worth the money? - dwynings
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2010/06/07/100607taco_talk_mead
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philwelch
I said in another thread around here, "if you're going to get a liberal arts
degree, either have enough money to afford it, or be so intensely interested
in the liberal arts that you're willing to pay back your damn loans." But
really, what I mean by that is a slight bit more direct (yet subtle) than it
seems.

It's quite possible that the study of purely academic subjects--subjects which
have little chance of improving one's employment prospects--will enrich
someone's life tremendously, and that the university is the best place to
study some of these subjects. I'm not interested in boring arguments about
what those subjects might be, or whether any such subjects may exist, but
let's entertain at least the possibility that some do. Isn't lifelong
enrichment worth a decade or so of loan payments?

Engineers see the cost of college as a variable in a purely financial cost-
benefit analysis, and don't understand why philosophers would even bother
because it fails that analysis. But philosophers get something fundamentally
different out of college. Is it worth the money? That's a personal question.

~~~
mechanician
I am an engineer. Being five years removed from undergrad, the most valuable
parts of college were not electives in mechanics or control theory. They were
the professors I interacted with, the football games I attended in the student
section, the liberal arts and writing classes I was required to take, and the
friends I made.

~~~
krakensden
Really? I never would have learned the math on my own, and liberal arts could
cost you $1.50 in library fees. I grew up reading for fun though, perhaps that
facet of education is harder for some people?

~~~
potatolicious
> _"and liberal arts could cost you $1.50 in library fees."_

Many subjects cannot really be learned from books. Regardless of how many
history books you may read, for example, it will not shed the same insight as
a profound discussion with a highly-experienced academic in the field. This is
true for many aspects of the humanities.

Which isn't to say self-study is worthless, but rather that it is a poor
substitute for interaction with your professors. IMHO to claim that liberal
arts can be just as well studied by oneself is myopic and tunnel-visioned, and
about equivalent to me claiming that aspiring nuclear engineers should pick up
some textbooks instead of going to school.

IMHO the whole topic of the monetary worth of schooling is an interesting and
worthwhile one - but discussions on it on forums such as this one is
invariably tainted by the fact that many people in our field have incredibly
arrogant and misguided superiority complexes about technical degrees over the
arts. I personally tend to think that one ought to be responsible for their
own academic spending, and that studies of the arts is a luxury that not
everyone can afford - but I hesitate to voice this often, since many of my
engineering peers hold this opinion out of disdain and trivialization of the
humanities, and I really don't want to be associated with that kind of
ignorance.

~~~
rsheridan6
>Many subjects cannot really be learned from books. Regardless of how many
history books you may read, for example, it will not shed the same insight as
a profound discussion with a highly-experienced academic in the field. This is
true for many aspects of the humanities.

My undergrad humanities courses were 100+ students packed into a giant lecture
hall listening to a professor talk. There was essentially no interaction.

~~~
potatolicious
I've taken those courses also - they are still valuable. Take the same book
home, or hell, take ten books home on that subject and you will still miss
many salient points that only prolonged formal study of the subject will
bring.

That's the trick with the humanities - they are not hard sciences, there is no
canonical body of knowledge to be passed on; This isn't a straight download.
Many things are a matter of perspective, of experience, and of particular
schools of thoughts - all of the above poorly communicated via mere books.

That's the difference between a history book vs. a good history professor.
Even without the (invaluable) ability to interact directly, it's the
difference between a dry recounting of facts vs. more profound linkages into
other areas of the field, or entirely other fields of study altogether. Sure,
by reading books you will make some of these connections yourself, but it's
hardly as good as what you'd get in classes.

That being said, there are certainly bad profs who _do_ just do the dry
recounting of facts, in which case you _are_ basically better off reading the
textbook at home. The presence of these should in no way discount the enormous
positive influence of college educations done right.

~~~
rsheridan6
How is going to a lecture with no interaction different from taking a
transcript of the lecture and binding it in a book?

~~~
foldr
It's not, but you have to go to the lecture to get the transcript, right? The
professor may be saying things that don't appear in any book. This is
especially so if you're going to a good school and the professor is a leading
researcher in his field.

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adbge
The author sidesteps the issue and answers with (roughly) "education is never
a bad thing." That's true enough, but that doesn't answer the question of
whether or not a degree is worth the cost. Not a very informative article.

One thing I've never understood about the whole degree v no degree debate is:
don't people learn on the job? That is to say: I think the educational value
of things other than college are often overlooked. It's the information age!
You don't have to go to a university to learn.

~~~
tjr
A lot of my work is on avionics software. As far as programming knowledge
goes, I've learned most of what I need to do my job before college, or at
least outside of college. As far as avionics goes, I've learned most of it on
the job. My college education has been at best marginal with respect to the
work I actually do.

 _However_ , it would have been at best very difficult for me to cut through
the red tape to _get_ the work I have without a college degree. The sorts of
people who do hiring in this industry seem to really want to see that.

The degree itself is valuable if you are endeavoring to work in an environment
whose administrators expect you to have one. The education itself you can get
on your own. Though, I personally find it helpful to be "forced" to learn some
topics more deeply or broadly than I would have on my own (and this is
something that I probably wouldn't have really understood until experiencing
it in college).

~~~
jseliger
_However, it would have been at best very difficult for me to cut through the
red tape to get the work I have without a college degree. The sorts of people
who do hiring in this industry seem to really want to see that._

Put yourself in the place of a hiring manager, or, better still, the person
setting hiring policies for large companies. You have hundreds or thousands of
people competing for jobs, sending you resumes, and the like. You only need to
make one decision: hire or no hire. When you're weaning down those resumes,
you're probably looking for shortcuts, and one way to get there is to filter
out a college degree -- which isn't _that_ high a bar, especially for hyper
competent technical people. If you're setting hiring policies, you want to
stop people from hiring their incompetent brother-in-laws or wastrel friends.
And so on.

PG actually wrote an essay about this kind of thing in Two Kinds of Judgment:
<http://www.paulgraham.com/judgement.html> :

 _But in fact there is a second much larger class of judgements where judging
you is only a means to something else. These include college admissions,
hiring and investment decisions, and of course the judgements made in dating.
This kind of judgement is not really about you._

Anyway, this isn't an attack on the parent poster, but it is an attack of the
thoughts I often see on HN and other tech sites about the lack of importance
of a college degree. If you start your own company or can get others to pay
you... great. But degrees are often there not only to show that you've learned
and provide learning, but also as a heuristic for people who are hiring. False
positives and false negatives exist, but not so much as to abrogate the
usefulness of the entire system.

~~~
rsheridan6
If a degree is just intended to show that you're not an idiot, there could be
cheaper and less time consuming ways to do that.

~~~
billswift
See Griggs Vs Duke Power. The courts essentially made less expensive means, eg
testing, illegal in an attempt at "fairness".

~~~
rsheridan6
There's a legal way around that. You could set race quotas that would keep you
out of court, have the test, and hire the top people from each race.

------
bpm140
So many people look back and say college was the "best four years of their
life." This is usually due to a sense of nostalgia, often aptly described as
"a longing for simpler times."

I hated college when I was there. Sure there were fun parts, but there was
also loads more pressure and a much greater opportunity to fail than I had
experienced in high school. However, now that I'm pushing 40, I look back at
college with a sense of fondness, thinking how much easier life was without a
mortgage, two kids and the incredible cost of health insurance.

As a result, I think that most people look back at college and consider the
money well spent because it was money spent pushing off the pressures of
adulthood. So while the college education might not be worth the money, the
college experience often is.

------
julius_geezer
It is probably fair to say that a large percentage of the enrollment at almost
any college anywhere is there because that is what one does after high school.
Henry Adams says of the Harvard of the 1850s "All went there because their
friends went there, and the College was their ideal of self-respect."

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aufreak3
You can't get a reliable answer from _anybody_ for this question. Academics
might tend to say "absolutely!" while those who skipped it would say "who
cares?" or something like that.

They key is to figure out what directions you want to grow in and seek out the
opportunities that align with them. Acads, biz-world all offer a wonderful
palette of such opportunities to pick from.

I work part-time and am a part-time Ph.D. student. I'm enjoying both their
contributions to my growth.

------
perlpimp
1\. Education should be good & free(in both ways) . This is essential to a
democratic and efficient populous.

2\. Whatever you get, you have to make it work for you. Education is no
exception - you drift through school - expect it, to make almost no
substantial difference to your quality of life.

3\. Posing question with so many broad implications from different angle is
bating. Listing who gets jobs more is narrowing use of a degree to
establishing a career. Degree, as in piece of paper is good for just that.

But education is so much more then just ability to earn on a slightly higher
pay scale. Its a tool to change the world, make it better. It is sickening to
see all these 'repeat' articles pepper various syndicated publications.

Education is essential and yes it is worth it, if you want to get it to better
yourself.

Go to a technical school if you need a paper to get a job. With a piece of
paper and a bit of networking you will get a job.

Education is beyond that - its what you can give to your kids. How can you put
a price tag on that?

But I digress.

------
timcederman
I'm still amazed at the cost of a college education in the US. My computer
engineering degree in Australia cost $15k total, then a PhD was free (with
many, including myself, getting a scholarship to pay for living expenses).

~~~
GVRV
Only because of HECS. I'm a full fee paying computer science student, and
it'll cost me upwards of $60K

~~~
maigret
Then compare the US to Europe. There education is viewed as public good,
though it's slowly changing.

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philk
On a somewhat peripheral note I found this a bit disappointing:

 _According to the Times, eight out of the ten job categories that will add
the most employees during the next decade—including home-health aide,
customer-service representative, and store clerk—can be performed by someone
without a college degree._

I was kind of hoping we'd be able to use advancing technology to reduce our
need for people in the customer service/store clerk fields.

~~~
billswift
Those kinds of fields require human interaction or flexibility or, more often,
both that is incredibly hard to automate. For an entertaining fictional
explanation, see Heinlein's _Door Into Summer_ where the inventor of the
robots explains why housework is harder to teach a robot than, for example,
bricklaying. (I don't know of as short and clear nonfiction example.)

------
ajushi
Yes. The people you meet, the connections you make, the overall experience is
all worth it. As with everything in life it's relative.

------
Alex3917
Theology is a science now?

~~~
philwelch
You're probably referring to this quote:

"Particular congratulations are due to aerospace engineers, who top the list,
with a starting salary of just under sixty thousand dollars—a figure that, if
it is not exactly stratospheric, is twenty-five thousand dollars higher than
the average starting salary of a graduate in that other science of the
heavens, theology."

The author doesn't mean "science" in the literal sense that implies the
scientific method, he's using it in a far looser sense that only implies "the
study of a subject". It _is_ the New Yorker--there's some degree of poetic
license involved here.

~~~
Alex3917
"The author doesn't mean 'science' in the literal sense that implies the
scientific method, he's using it in a far looser sense that only implies 'the
study of a subject'."

But theology isn't the study of the heavens, it's the study of religious
doctrine. I get that the author is trying to use poetic license, but
describing theology as a science of the heavens is kind of alarming. Maybe I'm
just a little on edge because three different people tried to convert me to
their religion tonight.

