
The benefits of a college degree in one graph - jacquesm
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/08/the_benefits_of_a_college_degr.html
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win_ini
"Virtually every single member of congress, every senator, every Capitol Hill
staffer, every White House advisor, every Fed governor, and every major
political reporter is a college graduate."

Who cares? Notice that they didn't mention Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Mary
Kay, Richard Branson, Michael Dell, Walt Disney, Henry Ford, Frank Lloyd
Wright - who arguably have all contributed more to this country than our
established political leaders recently. Clearly this is the washington post -
but the myopic view of looking at the political arena, if anything - shows
what is wrong with associating college with "smart, capable, and adding value
to our country." I'm just saying that many people in the US are not proud of
legislators - and saying that they all went to college hardly proves a good
point.

Hard work, natural curiosity, caring about your community, a desire to learn
and being in the right place at the right time has more to do with being
successful and adding value to our society than becoming part of the "College
club" that is Washington.

~~~
LSalin
What about the people who dropped out of college hoping to be the next Bill
Gates or Richard Branson and failed? These guys are now part of the statistics
shown on the graph.

Bill Gates was successful and dropped out of college. He was also hard working
and curious. Does that mean that everybody else who's hard working and curious
will be as successful without a diploma? I wouldn't bet on it.

Also, having a desire to be in the right place at the right time doesn't
guarantee that you'll do just that.

I agree that having a diploma is not what is going to make you successful. But
at least, it gives you better odds to beat economic troubles, which is the
point of the article.

~~~
jacquesm
> These guys are now part of the statistics shown on the graph.

Most likely they're in the negative space though, the part of the 'employed'.

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tokenadult
Economists of education (Mark Blaug is one whose writings on this subject I
have read) point out that college students start out as young people who come
from higher socioeconomic status families, all over the world. Those young
people thus have better social connections to succeed in paid employment and
more capital to found businesses and invest and do other things that lead to
high income in the next generation than do young people who are unable to
afford college. Moreover, college attendance, even though it costs money to
the students, is heavily subsidized by general taxation all over the world,
and college subsidies operate as a wealth transfer from working non-college-
attending young people to studying college-attending young people. It's not
clear at all that there is any added value from the educational operations of
a college

<http://www.paulgraham.com/colleges.html>

and that college-educated people can look at a cross-sectional chart like the
one jacquesm kindly submitted here and believe that it shows a longitudinal
causation relationship is a demonstration of how badly colleges fail at
teaching statistics.

~~~
jacquesm
Going to college allows you to tap in to that network of social connections
though, which in turn will increase your chances a bit.

No guarantees there though, on an individual level.

Now, what would be more surprising is to show that an increase in education
level would show a decreased chance of being employed. So in that sense this
graph should really not surprise anybody.

~~~
yummyfajitas
_Now, what would be more surprising is to show that an increase in education
level would show a decreased chance of being employed._

Extend the graph to the PhD level.

~~~
jacquesm
I've done something else (no access to PhD employment stats, maybe someone
else does?), I've changed it in to an 'employment' graph, instead of an
unemployment graph:

<http://ww.com/employment.png>

Same data, same conclusions?

~~~
etal
Did you just subtract the values in the original chart from 100%? If so,
that's not the actual employment level. Unemployment means seeking work but
not finding it; it excludes everyone who is disabled, discouraged, or simply
not looking for work (e.g. full-time moms).

The overall unemployment level in the U.S. is a little under 10%, but the
employment level is somewhere around 65-70% (iirc). So 20-25% of the
population is still unaccounted for in this figure. A chart breaking that down
by education might be interesting, too.

~~~
jacquesm
> disabled, discouraged, or simply not looking for work (e.g. full-time moms).

Ah ok, I wasn't aware of that distinction (I figured they'd been taken out).
Still, the larger point stands, the difference looks huge when you look at
this graph, but it is 'upside down', we're talking about the tops here, not
about a base 0 reaching to 15%, but a base 0 reaching to 100% where this is
the remnant between the tops and the maximum.

What you're saying is that the maximum should have been 80% or 75% instead of
100%.

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baddox
All the arguments over the value of college always seem to ignore one obvious
element—some of us go to college because we will learn things we could not or
would not otherwise learn. I'm a Computer Science senior right now, and sure,
I could have learned all the stuff I learned from buying my own books, but I
never would have. Also, the awesome professors, though rare and littered among
terrible ones, completely make it worth it.

~~~
jcnnghm
_some of us go to college because we will learn things we could not or would
not otherwise learn._

And some of us went to college because we had to prove to HR people that we
know what we know with very expensive pieces of paper. I stopped going to
college after I didn't attend classes or buy books for a semester, and got
substantially the same grades. I didn't attend classes or buy books because I
wasn't extracting value congruent to the time and money it cost to attend
class. I ultimately made the decision to not go at all because the amount of
money I was making running my business exceeded the amount I could make with a
degree working for someone else.

Computer science is probably one of the easiest fields to learn without formal
instruction because deliberate practice is so easy and information is so
accessible. The absolute most I learned in a college course was in a digital
logic course. After the first class, the professor, whom I had before, took me
to his office, told me I wouldn't learn anything in the class, gave me an FPGA
development board (similar to
[http://www.altera.com/products/devkits/altera/kit-
cyc2-2C20N...](http://www.altera.com/products/devkits/altera/kit-
cyc2-2C20N.html#contents), fpga, ethernet, usb, flash card reader), told me to
read about Verilog, build something interesting, and to not attend class, he'd
just give me a grade on whatever I built. I implemented a basic computer that
would read and execute instructions off the memory card. Almost everything in
computer science came together once I implemented jump instructions. I got
almost nothing out of most classes, but an incredible amount out of that one.
College is tedious if you already know a lot about a subject.

If I could go back and was really interested in learning, I would have moved
close to a college, and paid professors for short duration one-on-one
instruction and guidance, probably just an hour or two a week, with
independent study. It would have been substantially less expensive and more
effective. You can't get a degree that way, but you can learn. I find the
pacing of college courses to be too slow, if I am interested in learning about
a new subject now, I'll get course videos and speed them up a bit, and skip
ahead liberally. I can usually get through a semesters worth of lectures in a
day.

~~~
jchonphoenix
You're mixing up computer science and programming. Programming is easy to
learn without formal instruction. Theory on the other hand, can and does
become quite complex. Sure, its still possible to learn theory on your own,
but the professor with the Turing award makes things much easier.

~~~
jcnnghm
Actually, I'm not mixing them up. There are incredible amounts of information
readily available that will enable you to learn theory. If you are smart and
motivated, you can learn theory without instruction.

~~~
jchonphoenix
That can be said about any field. You stated that computer science was one of
the EASIEST fields to learn without formal instruction. My claim is that
learning theoretical ideas, discrete mathematics, automata theory, and formal
languages without formal instruction is not any easier than any other
scientific field, such as chem, physics, or mathematics.

~~~
jcnnghm
I would argue that because of the computer savviness of computer scientists,
documents and tutorials about computer science are more likely to be easily
located and properly formatted for display on the internet.

~~~
jchonphoenix
That again is a false assumption. I have professors who are great theorists
but can't use a computer very well. It doesn't take computer savvy to be able
to do computer science well. Hence my statement that you are confusing
computer science and computer programming. The tutorials you see online are
for practical applications. What you're seeing isn't computer science at all.
Just a byproduct of it.

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tommynazareth
I can't speak to the validity of this graph, but my immediate response is to
think of all of the other factors that go into getting a job. I know people
with the personality and intelligence to get jobs they are unqualified for,
quickly earn promotions, and never go a week or two without being employed. I
also know people who cannot hold down a job painting doors.

College degrees are handed out like candy to anyone who pays enough money and
jumps through enough hoops. Relying on education level as a signal of ability
is ridiculous, and the existence of this graph shows why: we emphasize
education for the sake of financial gain.

People who truly crave knowledge and training are lumped in with people who
thrive on doing what they're told and avoiding independent thought. There is
more to a person than their education level, and when it comes down to being
truly valuable in a business, some of the motivations for education are
probably a detriment.

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stellar678
What's conveniently left out of all the graphs and articles I've seen showing
this....is whether they bothered to establish any causation.

Why shouldn't we just presume that people who have access to college also have
better access to employment?

~~~
gvb
I cannot prove causation, but all the job applications I recall seeing ask for
the applicant's educational level. Companies use that as one of their
qualifiers for choosing whom to hire. In other words, _those that have access
to college have better access to employment._

~~~
j_baker
Yeah, but I also can say that there are a lot of jobs out there that _ask_ for
a college degree, but are more than willing to drop that requirement for the
right person.

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lisper
> among college graduates, there simply isn’t an economic crisis in the United
> States

Tell that to the guy who recently graduated with a bachelor's in business and
accounting who was waiting our table last night.

~~~
nanairo
You can find such people now and before the economic crisis. For the quote to
be correct, the rate of employment among graduates before or during the crisis
should be the same.

I am not saying that he is correct (I don't know, I don't have the stats). But
your point is not valid evidence for this discussion.

------
madair
(Since we're playing the dumb correlation equals causation game I'm going to
play too:)

This is a graph of the inequality with which college graduates treat non-
graduates.

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pmorici
I'd be interested to know if it is really the amount of schooling that effects
employability or if having less education is indicative of some other innate
characteristic of a person. ie: low IQ or unmotivated etc...

~~~
philwelch
Not innate, but social. A college degree is a very middle class, upper middle
class thing to have. Not having a college degree is lower middle class,
working class. It's faux pas to say "there's no unemployment crisis facing the
upper middle class" though, so it's couched in cargo-cultish terms: "follow
the early-adulthood formal-education rituals of the middle class and share in
their good fortune".

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jmg
As pointed out in one of the comments, this doesn't hold for recent college
grads. I know a lot of very smart people who graduated in the past 2-3 years
and cannot find jobs.

~~~
jacquesm
What kind of fields?

I know plenty of people that graduated, some of them can't find jobs but
they're mostly in the 'soft' sciences.

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csomar
So the non-diplomaed one is currently studying, working with dad without being
registered as a worker or doing some stuff on-line or off-line that may be
bringing some bucks for him??

Another thing the graph doesn't take in consideration is that as a non-
diplomaed, you can afford to be jobless or work pretty much anything; however,
as a college graduate with loans, you probably can't.

I think this is a larger topic/problem is to be just shortened in one graph.

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j_baker
I don't understand this graph. Wouldn't "no diploma" also include "no college"
and "some college"? And wouldn't that mean that the line would be in between
those two rather than being longer? Or is this referring to no _high school_
diploma?

I'm also curious what the graph would look like if you included people who
have Masters and PhDs.

~~~
ido
No high school diploma.

------
iamdave
_And among college graduates, there simply isn’t an economic crisis in the
United States._

With a family member having a masters degree in education, and recently being
laid off with about 700 other graduate degree holding teachers in an entire
school district, I'm not buying this.

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rb2k_
I personally go to university because I think it is a lot of fun. It's not
really stressful, I still have some time to do little side projects (most of
the time, I am able to find a type of lecture that allows me to do that stuff
on the side).

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nevinera
I recommend a basic understanding of statistics. It will help you to
understand just how little useful information is encoded in graphs like this
one.

~~~
jacquesm
Would you care to elaborate?

~~~
mseebach
That fact that there's a correlation between education and employment doesn't
tell us if there's a causation. What's very likely is that the kind of people
who will prioritise getting a degree is also the kind of people who can and
will adjust and pivot to a new type of employment environment.

If you're trying to decide to go to college, you're already very likely to be
employable. Telling a 50 year unemployed old blue collar worker that he should
have gone to college is a "let them eat cake" response.

~~~
maukdaddy
Ok the typical correlation/causation argument doesn't apply here. There have
been MANY studies on degree vs. employment and the results always look like
this.

Second, stop using the word pivot when it doesn't apply. Not only is it a
stupid buzzword, people aren't even using it correctly!

~~~
dieterrams
'Pivot' is the new 'leverage'. We're just leveraging it in different ways. You
should pivot into this new verbal environment.

~~~
jacquesm
New rule: you can't do that while I'm drinking hot tea.

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zandorg
Great unless you're in the 5% of holders of bachelor degree's without a job...

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pkulak
correlation != causation

~~~
JamisonM
Yes, it is true that correlation is not causation but the article is not
claiming causation. It is observing that the correlation between the
unemployment rate and the education level of those in power means that they
are out of touch with the problems of those suffering. It is the correlation
that is the basis for the argument, the fact that lower education levels might
be causing the higher unemployment for the specific populations is not
relevant and is never claimed by the article.

