
Quantifying The Value Of A College Degree (By Major) - patio11
http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/01/05/quantifying-the-value-of-a-college-degree-by-major/
======
patio11
Folks have told me on HN several times they wanted to hear about some number
crunching/SEO work/etc that I did regarding the worth of particular college
degrees. I just got the OK from my client to share results, so here you go.

Search tool: <http://www.onlinedegrees.org/calculator/> Summary article:
[http://www.onlinedegrees.org/calculator/salary/engineering-d...](http://www.onlinedegrees.org/calculator/salary/engineering-
degrees-pay-best)

Short version: get an engineering degree.

The client has generously permitted me to talk about the business case for
this project in broad strokes, and I think it is potentially very interesting
for the average HNer startup. The general gist is that the government has
terabytes of very interesting data and very limited resources for publicizing
it. The NYT knows this and they totally kill it by turning CSV files of
population statistics into compelling, actionable presentations that tell a
story. _You can do this, too_.

With a little creativity, 1 GB of Bureau of Labor Statistics data becomes
several hundred pages of rather interesting content for the client's niche.
Google doesn't particularly love raw data in terms of rankings, though, so the
graphs got beefed up a bit with content written by TextBroker writers, stock
photos, and the like.

The business goal is that eventually most of these pages will rank for, e.g.,
[computer science degree average salary], and that some portion of searchers
will request an application packet through the website. The CPA for that is
between $10 and $100 (I'm not familiar with exactly how it is set).

This project took a few thousand dollars of outsourced work plus the
equivalent of about three weeks of full time work from myself. The client and
I anticipate that it will be very successful for them.

You can do something fairly similar for your startup -- I've never seen one
that can't combine engineering expertise plus writing to generate fairly
compelling content at scale, and the SEO gains for it are _considerable_. I
recommend trying it.

~~~
rubyrescue
This is fascinating and I want to respond on two levels - technical/SEO and
moral/emotional. I consulted for the main competitor to these guys until a few
months ago so I can speak only generally but I know the subject with some
authority.

1\. Anyone reading this post is not the target market for this. The real
target market are the suckers that they can convince to take out $40,000 in
unforgivable government student loans when they enroll at University of
Phoenix. Your client is a vehicle for UofP to find these people. It's a very
lucrative business for both companies BUT IT IS FOR MOST OF THEIR CLIENTS A
SCAM. The people they need are low-income, not tech-savvy, and IRONICALLY, not
savvy about the true value of the degree that Online Degrees is selling.

2\. Please read the reviews (for instance for Ashford University)
[http://www.guidetoonlineschools.com/online-
reviews/ashford-u...](http://www.guidetoonlineschools.com/online-
reviews/ashford-university) and note that, with rare exceptions, the only
positive reviewers are sock puppets.

3\. Yet one of the things I don't get is how there could be so many bad
reviews and yet people keep signing up. Unfortunately it's probably _because_
of content like this, where the "value" of the degree is shown as "millions of
dollars" and not "a slightly higher than minimum wage job (that is not much
better than the one i had before) with $40,000 of debt I can't escape even in
bankruptcy". I'm NOT exaggerating - please watch the Frontline special on
these schools - <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/collegeinc/view/>

4\. I don't want to pick on you. It's a massive US Government federal student
loan subsidy system - handing out essentially free money - that makes this
system such a mess and makes the prospective students $30-50k "marks" for the
"schools". I personally couldn't take direct part in it anymore but I don't
begrudge anyone because it's a system that's broken, some small % of students
find it valuable, and these adults are not being forced to go to these
schools.

Putting emotion aside for a second and talking about the SEO:

1\. The SEO technique you're describing - take public data, build it out with
cheaply hired content, and stock photos, is great. That works well and
everyone serious (particularly this space, because there is so much data) is
doing similar stuff to stay at the top.

2\. HNers doing SEO should note that you always have two target markets when
you build content - SEO content for people who will backlink to and tweet
about that content, and content for the actual users of the site. People
looking for an online degree or buying insurance don't tweet and blog (with
no-nofollowed links) about it - so you need to put content that SOMEONE ELSE
will write about. That doesn't mean the people who link to that content may
ever consider using the products your site is selling.

In technology often those two groups are the same; in almost every other area
of the web, they're not. Tech guys often don't realize this because their only
experience with online content is reading HN and TechCrunch and they see all
the consumers of the site's main content tweeting about it. _But when was the
last time you tweeted about your car insurance?_

3\. In my SEO consulting, every project is surprisingly, 80% technology and
about 20% content. Tech guys are building systems to make massive creation of
"useful" content possible, writers are getting paid small amounts to crank out
the articles. This trend is accelerating, which ironically makes it a great
time for a tech person to be in SEO - the opportunities to crunch data are
only growing.

~~~
cantbecool
I've watched that particular Frontline special before, and I must say, as a
current college undergrad, it is eyeopening. Although, I must applaud the
University of Phoenix investor, Michael K. Clifford. He is at least doing some
form of philanthropy with all the money he's is making from for profit
universities.

I wish I had a mentor of some sort as a teenager, who would have convinced me
to attend a public institution or a junior college first, which would
ultimately lower my student loan debt. I was suckered in by all my advisers
and and the media that the only way to succeed is going to college.

I'm currently going to be somewhere in the ball park of $100,000 in debt after
my 5 year BSIS degree at Drexel University in Philadelphia. I do not even live
on campus; I commute from my childhood home. All I've had after 4 years there
is horrible professors and teaching assistants from another planet. I wanted
to learn how to program and create things, but all that I've learned is that I
could have received a better education from my local public library.

~~~
sp4rki
_I could have received a better education from my local public library._

\- How'd you like them apples? Sorry couldn't resist some good will punning.

Anyways, I've always said (even when I was in high-school) that I'd just get a
bachelors degree from the most reputable University I can afford without going
into debt. These days I'm still missing one year of a Financial Engineering
degree, but I'm earning almost twice (and quite a bit more in some cases) what
most of my high-school graduating classmates are making after getting their
Bachelors and Masters, and I just took a new job paying 22% more with an awful
lot of benefits as a Lead UX/Systems Developer (yeah I have a weird mix of
responsibilities, but they're exactly the responsibilities I wanted to have,
as I quite enjoy both sides of the equation) for a big software company in my
country. Take in account that I went to a recognized private school, so you
could say my classmates where predestined to at least make a modest living
without having to resort to flipping burgers at McDonalds.

So there. I learnt everything I know by reading, programming, and designing on
my own. I was able to secure my first job pretty easily (I was 19 at the time)
since I was one of the three persons out of a pool of 85 people who passed a
simple test for a job working for a company that made shopping cart and
merchant software. They hired me because even though the other two had
degrees, I had done significantly better than they had on the test and trust
me, I wasn't/am not a genius or anything or that sort.

I guess my point is that a degree is a must have because it's a great thing to
fall back on if you ever need it and it can help your formation and tune your
thought process, but it is by no means a silver bullet for actually achieving
a great education nor does it make it a given that you'll do better in the job
market. Make sure you learn what you need to learn, regardless of where you
learn it, and make sure that you really learn to sell yourself instead of
letting a piece of paper dictate how you do in life.

Oh and by the way... bachelor degrees are so passe this days. If you want
offers based on your degrees more then your proven experience, opt for a
masters degree as fast as you can.

~~~
hessenwolf
And as a vision of the future, Germans often don't leave university until
after 30...

~~~
barry-cotter
True but misleading. Germany has some of the lowest university enrolment
figures in the EU. There are a couple of reasons for this but the most
important are

1\. They stream early (10 years old) and savagely. Only those who go to
grammar school (Gymnasium) are eligible to go to a classic university. That's
less than 40% of the population.

2\. They have an absolutely excellent apprenticeship system. All businesses
pay taxes to their local Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and these
coordinate training at a state and national level. Apprenticeships last 2-3
years, you spend a third to a half of your time at a trade school and the rest
working for your employer.

~~~
3pt14159
I love the German system. Here in Canada half my friends got absolutely
_nothing_ out of grades 9 through 12. The one non-university geared guy that
actually made something out of his life noted that working hard at "applied"
(here applied means "dumb" rather than actually applicable) courses was a
waste of time because all he really needed was to graduate. He ended up
working 40 hours a week during high school. Only now am I finally catching up
with his net worth. Compounding interest is really working in his favour and
he should be retired at 50 or 55 if he keeps it up.

Also, he is earning about 50% more than his other "applied" friends because
his years of experience put him into middle management, rather than front
line. Anyways, streaming early is good, especially if it is self directed.

~~~
hessenwolf
Sounds slightly more like an argument against dumb education (and I couldn't
agree more) rather than streaming.

Personally, I would have preferred to have been working between 13 and 18 -
except for maths class, and possibly science and physics, technical drawing,
French, art, could have skipped Irish, but would have replaced English with a
more modern curriculum, ... okay... school was not as bad as I remember.

------
samd
If I'm understanding your methods correctly, you only have data for earnings
by occupation. So when you say "Computer Science majors earn x." it actually
means "People who do the same jobs that computer science majors tend to do
earn x."

If that's the case then the data is not really actionable unless we also know
the probability of getting a job with and without some degree.

For example, if computer science majors all tend to get job A, but having a
computer science degree makes you no more likely than people without computer
science degrees to get job A, then the value of the computer science degree is
0.

Of course having a degree does usually provide some advantage at getting a
job, and in some fields it's impossible to get a job without a degree.

But still, for this data to be truly meaningful and actionable you must
multiply the value of each degree by the amount that the degree aids you in
getting a job, which is a hard value to determine.

Edit:

Here's an example of why this is important. Let's compare physical therapy and
programming.

According to the data, a Doctorate in Physical Therapy has a value of about
$1.2 million, while a Bachelors in Computer Science has a value of around $1.5
million.

You might conclude that the computer science degree is a better value,
especially since it costs less than the doctorate.

However, you cannot be a physical therapist without the degree. So the value
of the P.T. degree is $1.2m * 100%, or $1.2 million, because without the
degree you have a 0% chance of getting the job (and assuming that having a
P.T. degree guarantees you a job).

You can be a programmer without a computer science degree. So the value of the
degree is going to be $1.5m times some percentage less than 100. In order for
the C.S. degree to be more valuable than the P.T. degree you'd have to be 80%
more likely to get a job than a programmer without a C.S. degree. (1.5 * .8 =
1.2)

It doesn't seem like people with C.S. degrees are 80% more likely to get jobs.
Especially when you factor in the opportunity cost of going to school. That's
a lot of time you could spend working on open-source projects, building
websites and businesses, etc. which are all things that count more than a
degree.

So the value of a C.S. degree could very easily be less than the value of a
P.T. degree.

~~~
patio11
I think this data is a _lot_ more accurate and actionable than "All degrees
are equally valuable, honey", which is the advice I'm most concerned with
competing with.

~~~
nowarninglabel
I have to agree with the parent poster, especially given that I have a degree
in International Relations but earn a high 'computer science degree' salary
since I work in the field. Anecdotally, quite a few coworkers over the years
at different positions have also revealed that their degrees are not in the
field, but since, like me, they had the skills in it and the experience, they
chose to do that kind of work, despite the degree being in a different
subject.

------
niels_olson
A cursory review of the numbers makes me think this is a scam.

> Hard sciences such as Physics and Biology pay rather less well than I would
> have expected.

Interestingly, when I used the calculator to search for a BS in Physics, it
says "No Statistics for that Degree".

I also find it a bit hard to believe that optometrists and lawyers make out
better than doctors, or that the lifetime value of a Physician's Assistant
masters is $300,000 more than the lifetime value of an MD.

Finally, having perused the Occupational Outlook Handbook more than a few
times, this reeks of blatant plagiarism. The text appears to be heavily
rewritten, but all the facts come from the OOH and even the outline of each
article is identical to the OOH.

This exercise casts a dim light on SEO as a profession. Scams on top of scams.

~~~
patio11
The numbers/graphs were very definitely not taken from the OOH. They're from
the same underlying data source as the OOH, the BLS national salary study, and
they're both calculated differently and substantially broader in scope than
the numbers presented on the OOH. It should not be surprising that the OOH and
this site have the same number for e.g. median salary of accountants, since
they both use the BLS data set and presumably have the same understanding of
the word "median", but the point of the site is to get a generalizable numbers
for the _degrees_ , where the OOH hsa 100% focus on the job categories and
generates no statistics whatsoever for degrees.

There may well be rewriting of OOH facts on some of the pages. I likewise
haven't read the several hundred pages in detail (I wrote the CMS but wasn't
in charge of the freelancers who filled it out).

------
nowarninglabel
It's really starting to anger me that blogs posts such as this don't do a
better job of equating the differences between the for-profit and non-profit
universities. The post mentions the value of a in-state degree almost as an
aside. This should be way more up front about the fact that, in the U.S.
alone:

>For-profit colleges enroll 12 percent of U.S. undergraduates

 _Only 12%_

[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-12-29/plunge-of-for-
profi...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-12-29/plunge-of-for-profit-
college-stock-makes-sperling-rail-at-obama.html)

------
jacques_chester
I know it's a cliché to complain about this, but the article is a bit
Amerocentric (is that a word? It is now!).

The Australian Government, for example, gathers a very large pool of
statistics from the publicly funded universities, down to the level of having
students grade their professors and courses.

~~~
TeHCrAzY
We are also very lucky here that we don't take out student loans, and make
repayments (we get HECS[1], and the repayments are automatic, like tax, once
you cross a certain income threshold), so I'm guessing there wouldn't be a
large enough number of people interested to make Australian centric data
profitable.

[1]
[http://www.goingtouni.gov.au/Main/Quickfind/PayingForYourStu...](http://www.goingtouni.gov.au/Main/Quickfind/PayingForYourStudiesHELPLoans/HECSHELP.htm)

~~~
jacques_chester
HECS has been a pretty good compromise between private and public education.
The major flaw is that course place supply is centrally dictated by Canberra
and the ALP removed the main pressure valve (full-fee places).

------
FluidDjango
A very interesting use of data. But there's something strange.

1) Looking a Psychology (my major) the "life time value" comes out exactly
same ($794,...) whether I choose "doctorate" "bachelor" or "associate" degree.
And... the results page does not indicate for _which_ degree its data apply.

2) What _does_ change depending on the degree for which I request data... is
the other fields presented for comparison.

3) Requesting data on "doctorate / psychology" compares results for degrees in
Real Estate and Cosmetology. Are there really enough people with doctorates in
those fields to compute reliable stats? [Note that searching for "doctorate /
real estate" _does_ show numbers (albeit low) for Real Estate.

If allowed by the hiring company, can you explain what's going on better than
the results pages does?

~~~
klbarry
It seems like the "magic search" feature has plenty of glitches, but the data
is there; for instance, Marketing didn't appear at first, but after clicking
to the full list and then going back, it appeared just fine.

------
wittgenstein
"No college will actually do this because transparency goes directly against
their interests"

This is simply false. Plenty of universities publish employment surveys with
salaries by major. For an example, see the University of Pennsylvania's Career
Services Web site. The fact that the author makes this statement lightly says
a lot about how careful he is.

------
jtbigwoo
Things that I actually heard from fellow students when I went to college over
a decade ago:

"The most important thing is to get a degree, I don't worry about what major
I'm going to choose."

"I want to make the big money so I'm going to major in business and start out
as the boss rather than the engineer." (I also heard something similar
substituting communications for business.)

"They may not make as much as others, but elementary school teachers can
always find work."

I was fortunate to have professors and older friends who were up front about
the differing opportunities provided by different fields. Many of my
classmates seemed to feel that the world owed them a six figure job in
whatever field they chose.

~~~
klbarry
To be fair, majoring in Marketing looks like it will easily net you six
figures if you're in the top 25% (which most people here probably are)

------
tjsnyder
I think we're going to see the next generation of kids taking a much closer
look at what they will be studying and the cost/benefits of those studies.

College tuition has gone up so much and people are in so much debt now that
2nd generation college students will likely have better advice from their
parents.

All I ever got my whole life was, "go to school." Luckily I majored in
engineering, but I know too many people with half a mortgage in student loans
making $12/hour now.

~~~
jerf
Next generation nothing, barring a major and sudden economic turnaround I
expect this to happen next _year_ , by which I mean, this next fall school
year. Somewhere in March I expect a few little nervous merpings to trickle out
about how college applications seem to be a bit down this year but we're
talking ourselves into believing they'll pick back up by the start of the
school year, and somewhere in June or July for this to break as a major
national news story/obsession after it doesn't pick back up. The obsession
will center on how this is yet more proof of the inevitable decline and
dumbening of the US and how important it is for high school graduates to apply
anyhow. And it will all be wrong, because a return to some cold, hard
cost/benefit and affordability analysis is not merely what we need, but in
fact will be utterly unavoidable, and this will simply be another consequence
of that broad (but quiet) trend.

I think I'm going out on a limb a bit here, but it's plausible. I feel much
less like I'm going out on a limb to say that if the economy is still
sputtering along in 2012 that this is almost certain to happen. (To avoid this
we must not merely tread water but see noticeable improvements in our economic
outlook.) I'm also curious as to how the bubble pop in higher ed will
manifest, because none of the historical precedents for bubbles like this have
the college admission cycle to contend with, and most of them involved
resellable goods, even if the value did tank. The housing market can collapse
overnight because anybody can sell a house any time, college can't be sold and
can only be entered at certain times. Still, fireworks will occur somewhere
and sometime, for better and for worse.

~~~
nowarninglabel
The data, at least for California universities, couldn't show you further from
the truth. Enrollments are at all time highs (especially in California):
<http://www.csuohio.edu/news/releases/2010/09/14840.html>
<http://www.today.colostate.edu/story.aspx?id=4432>
[http://www20.csueastbay.edu/news/2010/08/fall2010-enrollment...](http://www20.csueastbay.edu/news/2010/08/fall2010-enrollment-081810.html)

Furthermore, you mention an economic turnaround, so you seem to be under the
impression that a bad economy means less enrollments/applications. It is
actually the inverse: [http://www.usnews.com/articles/education/best-graduate-
schoo...](http://www.usnews.com/articles/education/best-graduate-
schools/2010/04/01/getting-into-graduate-school-made-tougher-by-the-
recession.html) Wish I had the graph from my graduate economics course for
this, it showed just how much an inverse the relationship is.

~~~
jerf
I know about that trend. It obviously happens because people think college
degrees are valuable, so if they're jobless but can get a degree, why not? I
did that myself in 2000 when I graduated with my Comp Sci bachelors degree,
looked around, decided the bubble was going to pop anytime now, and said,
well, might as well go for the masters. (It did in my first semester.)

If word continues to get around that college degrees aren't generically
valuable, and adding my personal assumption that many people either can not
just become engineers, and/or will realize in advance they can't just become
engineers, that trend will stop and reverse. I probably overestimate the
abruptness, but it will happen. Increasing enrollment in college during
downtimes isn't an immutable fact of the universe, it emerged from social
conditions and beliefs, conditions and beliefs that are changing.

That's not so much proof that I'm wrong as the reason why I'm predicting this
in the next year or two.

~~~
nowarninglabel
Ok fair enough, but it just as accurate as predicting the stock market then.
Granted, now that we know we are in a prediction scenario, I'd be happy to
take you up on a gentleman's bet that this won't happen in the next year or
two.

------
leppie
Wow, a Bachelors in Business and marketing aint so bad after all :) Now if
only I had a CS degree to match my 4th chosen career path ...

~~~
krschultz
Why would it? Good marketing guys get paid boatloads and are worth their
weight in gold. Far more startups fail for lack of good marketing (all of the
pillars, product/market fit, advertising, and PR, nut just advertising) than
for lack of good technical product.

------
protez
Let V_x be the value of a college degree x. V_x = \Sum_i{E(\pi_i) for all
degree x holders, where \pi is a degree relevant portion of "premium" net cash
flow from i th person's labor pertinent to degree x, discounted by the labor-
demand prospect of the degree x. If we're lucky, it may be possible to compute
such values of the less-than-fifty-years-old degrees.

------
DavidSJ
Say it with me:

 _Correlation ≠ Causality_

~~~
jazzhands
I'll add to this. When A and B are correlated, there are only three
possibilities regarding causality (which may work in combination):

1\. A causes B

2\. B causes A

3\. C causes both A and B

If we apply this where A is majoring in computer science and B is high
earnings, which answers are true? #2 isn't, obviously. #1 is plausible, since
perhaps employers are impressed by a computer science degree. But I think #3
is the most significant, where C is a strong desire to be a software
professional. Very few people complete a degree in computer science unless
they really want to work with software.

We all know English majors, psych majors, and history majors who became high-
earning software engineers. Those are the people who had C (the desire to work
with software) but not A (computer science degree). C is the thing that caused
them to have B.

~~~
3pt14159
Assuming that you have a sufficiently large sample set. :)

The key here, of course, is that we don't know what C is. It could be that
high IQ causes high wealth, regardless of degree. High IQ could also be a
prerequisite of completing a CS degree, so necessarily the two correlate.

My point is that you know what A is, and you know what B is, but without
measurement, you can't know what C is.

------
redthrowaway
> I paid Mechanical Turk workers for their two cents (quite literally)

Well there's your problem. Mechanical Turk is notoriously unreliable.

------
stevejohnson
What are some other sources of data about colleges? I'm interested in similar
(but not the same) data mining projects.

~~~
stefano
The official resource for Italian universities:
<http://www.almalaurea.it/en/universita/occupazione/>

Situation 1 year after graduation: [http://www2.almalaurea.it/cgi-
php/universita/statistiche/fra...](http://www2.almalaurea.it/cgi-
php/universita/statistiche/framescheda.php?anno=2009&corstipo=L&ateneo=tutti&facolta=tutti&gruppo=tutti&pa=tutti&classe=tutti&postcorso=tutti&annolau=1&disaggregazione=classe&LANG=en&CONFIG=occupazione)

