
How the Great Recession Proved the Value of a College Degree - tokenadult
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/08/how-the-great-recession-proved-beyond-a-doubt-the-value-of-a-college-degree/261225/
======
Xcelerate
The value of a college degree is that it is _correlated_ with other things,
many of which are desirable to employers. That is all.

~~~
pron
No, the value of a college degree is that, at least when the graduate has
taken college seriously, it provides education. You can be smart, successful,
ambitious and curious and not go to college - but you probably won't be
educated.

The absolute best and easiest way to become educated - if you care about that
at all - is through college. This isn't some eternal mathematical truth. It's
just that as of today, there are very few ways of getting education without
going to college and learning from teachers who know the best way to approach
a subject, and who can direct you to things that you in particular might find
enlightening.

I think that's the real value of college, and unless you'd otherwise be
poverty stricken, this value far exceeds that of the material gains.

~~~
InclinedPlane
_"It's just that as of today, there are very few ways of getting education
without going to college"_

Easily the most outlandishly wrong statement I've heard in years. Except for a
very narrow set of STEM courses (such as analytical chemistry) the vast
majority of a college education comes about through nothing more than reading
books and writing papers. This is something that many folks are entirely
capable of doing on their own.

Edit: The strongest proof I have for this sort of thing being the case is the
prevalence of people with the "wrong" degrees. For example, one of the most
talented developers I worked with was a physicist by education. One of the
reasons why this sort of phenomenon is so hard to study in the developed world
is because pretty much any individual with the dedication to study any subject
is going to be able to get a 4-year degree in that subject in some way (the
cheapest way being 2-years of community college for a transfer degree then
another 2-years or less at a state school). Given the value of a college
degree as a credential there are very few people who wouldn't make that
choice.

~~~
neutronicus
Engineering degrees require access to expensive equipment and software.
Autodidacticism won't magically make a gamma-ray spectrometer appear in your
basement.

~~~
InclinedPlane
How many undergraduate college students ever interact with a gamma-ray
spectrometer? Indeed, how many ever come into contact with any equipment that
is outside the realm of access to an individual studying on their own? Many
perhaps, but as a percentage of all college graduates, not that much. Not even
all STEM majors require such specialty equipment, and STEM students are a
relative minority in college enrollments.

------
gavanwoolery
Possibly an invalid correlation. All of those people who went to college also
have more affluent families with better connections (I know many college grads
that are still working for their parents or friends of their parents...doing
paperwork jobs that their psych degree has nothing to do with). Also, a better
graph might be to show what a person's debt looks like after college, how long
it takes to pay off, etc.

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michaelpinto
I think a college degree has a huge amount of value, but the catch is getting
a college degree in 2012 is much more expensive than say 1992. I see kids and
parents going into huge amounts of debt and that's also a big issue which will
haunt us well after the Great Recession is over.

~~~
fallous
Amusingly, I have a polisci/philosophy with a minor in history and I make my
money in computer science. I never viewed college as a tech school, I viewed
it as an avenue to study things that expanded my mental frames of reference.

Perhaps that's why I'm not just a pure coder but also a biz dev, marketing,
and operations resource for the companies I've worked for.

Abstract thinking with an understanding of how it applies to multiple problem
sets is far more valuable than sheer technical knowledge.

edit: damnit, misfire. This was meant for another post.

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reader5000
This doesn't really prove the value of a degree, just the value of having been
"vetted" by a credible entity, and also having higher average intelligence.

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Apocryphon
What I'm really concerned about is if this ends up sparking an arms race for
more education for the sake of careers. A master's degree, depending on the
subject and the institution, may not necessarily be the biggest time
investment, but it's still a significant financial commitment. And where will
this end? Will PhD's end up being necessary for the great recession of 2038?

~~~
Evbn
The masters degree industry is already entirely propped up by unions and
governments and other employes with formulaic hiring rules and pay scales.

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jellicle
Those stats show that grads have stayed employed.

They don't show that those people have stayed employed by taking "do you want
fries with that" jobs from the non-grads. Receptionist? College degree.
Janitor? College degree. Walmart greeter? College degree.

Here's another chart from the same publication:

[http://www.theatlantic.com/business/print/2011/08/chart-
of-t...](http://www.theatlantic.com/business/print/2011/08/chart-of-the-day-
student-loans-have-grown-511-since-1999/243821/)

If you're in debt out the wazoo to work at a minimum wage job, then no, the
college degree is probably having a net negative effect on your life.

~~~
ryanackley
Do you have sources or is this pure speculation?

I live in a foreign country but when I come home to the USA to visit, I still
see mostly teenagers working at fast food restaurants.

The thing is, most managers at minimum wage jobs wouldn't want to hire a
college graduate. They would feel threatened since they probably don't have a
degree themselves.

~~~
hessenwolf
I have not really seen this attitude, and I've worked a few shitty jobs post
education. (I get a perverse satisfaction from shifting beer barrels)

------
patdennis
People who are motivated, who love learning, and who know how to create value
can be successful without a college degree.

The degree generally doesn't hurt, though.

~~~
rfugger
Exactly. Correlation != causation.

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humbyvaldes
I wonder how many of these jobs are government jobs?

~~~
patdennis
Overall public sector employment has dropped significantly over the last three
years.

Reuters: "The last three years of job losses at the state and local government
level has been the most dramatic since Labor Department records began in 1955"

[http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/08/usa-states-
employe...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/08/usa-states-employees-
idUSL2E8F39HE20120408)

~~~
eli_gottlieb
From what I heard, if we had retained existing public-sector jobs through the
recession, we'd be back at net job- _gain_ by now. Our apparent "job losses",
at this point, are solely due to cutting state and local government jobs.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Interesting - this looks like a huge missed opportunity.

According to Keynesians, job losses in recessions are caused by sticky nominal
wages and insufficient inflation. But in the case of government, nominal wages
can be reduced by fiat.

So why didn't we simply reduce the pay of government employees rather than
reducing their number?

~~~
patdennis
I assure you that - virtually always - layoffs are a last resort.

Furloughs, pay cuts, and reducing headcount through attrition have become
almost ubiquitous on the state and local level over the past few years.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Um, no.

<http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/ECIGVTWAG>

------
greenyoda
The article assumes that all four-year college degrees are equivalent, but if
I had to guess, people with computer science degrees had different outcomes in
this recession than people with philosophy degrees.

~~~
fallous
Amusingly, I have a polisci/philosophy with a minor in history and I make my
money in computer science. I never viewed college as a tech school, I viewed
it as an avenue to study things that expanded my mental frames of reference.

Perhaps that's why I'm not just a pure coder but also a biz dev, marketing,
and operations resource for the companies I've worked for.

Abstract thinking with an understanding of how it applies to multiple problem
sets is far more valuable than sheer technical knowledge.

~~~
tikhonj
It's a good thing, then, that a CS education also trains you in abstract
thinking applied to multiple domains. Subjects like mathematics (especially
more abstract branches) and CS (especially theoretical CS) are some of the
best options for expanding your mind and gaining new perspectives.

Despite the name, computer science isn't actually about computers or even
technology. At its core, it's the study of information--very much a dual to
certain branches of math and even certain branches of philosophy. "Computer"
is just the name given to essentially all the tools used to study information
and computation.

Having immediate practical applications does not mean CS doesn't also have
significant depth!

------
stevencorona
The facts are there, but, I believe, if you're a hustler, a self-starter, an
entrepreneur - You're going to make it work for yourself, one way or another,
with or without a college degree. Because it's all you know.

Likewise, if you don't have passion, you're going to have a much harder time
competing with other degree-holding passionless people. You know, the kind of
people that spend 8 hours/day blindly applying to shit on Monster.com instead
of doing something different and standing out.

~~~
nutjob123
I can't tell if your're serious with the first point. Either way I reject the
idea that a person can be successful simply by possessing a positive attitude.
Or that facts should be dismissed for anecdote.

~~~
randomdata
Having the right attitude doesn't always lead to success, but having the wrong
attitude always leads to failure. There is a positive correlation between
those who are strong willed and determined and those who complete college,
which most likely explains why college graduates tend to fare better in the
workforce – graduates generally all share that same attitude, whereas non-
graduates are a mixed bag.

~~~
pessimizer
I succeed a lot with a terrible attitude. Go figure.

------
pbreit
Is there a causation/correlation analysis missing here?

~~~
DavidSJ
Yes.

------
tokenadult
I think jellicle makes a good comment on this issue, as he usually does on
education policy issues. The chart shown in the submitted article does not
"prove" that college degrees have economic value, in and of themselves, up to
the present value of the lifetime difference in earnings between degree
holders and people who lack degrees.

The report underlying the chart

[http://www9.georgetown.edu/grad/gppi/hpi/cew/pdfs/CollegeAdv...](http://www9.georgetown.edu/grad/gppi/hpi/cew/pdfs/CollegeAdvantage.FullReport.081512.pdf)

goes into more details. I have followed the writings of one of the report co-
authors, Anthony Carnevale,

[http://chronicle.com/article/Minding-the-Midpoint-
Where/1288...](http://chronicle.com/article/Minding-the-Midpoint-
Where/128856/)

[http://www.nationalreview.com/phi-beta-
cons/302016/mellowing...](http://www.nationalreview.com/phi-beta-
cons/302016/mellowing-anthony-carnevale-jane-s-shaw)

for years, and his earlier writings include reports on college access for low-
income, high-ability students,

[http://tcf.org/publications/2010/9/how-increasing-college-
ac...](http://tcf.org/publications/2010/9/how-increasing-college-access-is-
increasing-inequality-and-what-to-do-about-it/get_pdf)

showing that colleges preferentially admit by ability to pay rather than by
intelligence or ability to gain from college studies (a finding consistent
with the advice given by consulting firms that advise colleges on admission
practices)

<http://www.maguireassoc.com/>

so that the job-market success of college graduates does not show so much that
college education as such improves the qualities of workers as it signals to
the job market which job applicants were most advantaged before college age.

Many college students are actually academically adrift,

[http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/17/academically-a...](http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/17/academically-
adrift/)

and Carnevale is a thoughtful writer about what both colleges and the students
who attend them have to do to gain the best benefit from college attendance.
So when I submitted this link (which was emailed to me by a local friend this
evening), I was hoping it would gain the several thoughtfully disagreeing
comments it has gained since I posted it, so that we can distinguish the
benefits of attending college as such (which still need to be enhanced in the
typical case) from the signaling effect of being admitted to college (which
indubitably has some strong benefits in the job market, varying by college
major and by industry).

~~~
vm
The OP's chart is meaningless because of selection bias. Presumably, the
college grads would be more employable because of higher intelligence, greater
access to resources or better habits, which led them to college (I know there
are many exceptions to this).

The real question is, what would many of those college grads have done
otherwise in those 4 years, with the money they would have saved?

FWIW I learned a ton about myself in college and wouldn't trade that
experience for anything.

------
technotony
Another problem with this data is that it doesn't show percentages of college
educated people, the total number of people in employment with college degrees
has also been growing. The right metric is to look at percentage unemployment
in each of these segments, not total numbers.

~~~
randomdata
About 50% of the working population have some kind of post-secondary
education, including community college diplomas and apprenticeships. Roughly
50% of that group (or 25% of the total working population) have a college
degree.

> The right metric is to look at percentage unemployment in each of these
> segments

I would take it even further and break up the high school or less demographic.
Someone who could obtain a degree, but chose not to/was unable to attend
college is not at all like someone who has no chance of graduating no matter
what the circumstances. They really shouldn't be lumped together if we are
trying to promote the business benefits of attending college.

If you have the opportunity to go to college, you have already demonstrated
characteristics that are appealing to employers that are not present in the
rest of the demographic. Due to the presentation, it is not clear in any way
if college actually add any additional value or if those people would have
achieved the same results regardless.

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sabalaba
I'd be curious to see how much of the job growth is coming from those with
Masters and above.

------
gojomo
So perhaps a neo-credentialist-Keynesian solution would be to have the
government print up college degrees for mailing to the 6 million un-degreed
unemployed?

~~~
Evbn
You joke, but that works if labor is under supplied because employees are
afraid to hire non grads. (Real world example: blacks were banned from
military combat roles, due to racism, until we an out of whits for cannon
fodder.)

But it doesn't work if demand is too low for supply already.

~~~
gojomo
If merely giving someone a degree-in-name, rather than actually educating
them, would result in happy employers and higher overall employment, then
there's something deeply wrong with (a) college educations; (b) employer
evaluation standards; or (c) both.

(I don't doubt that there are deep problems in both those areas, and my jest
was intended to suggest their character.)

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goggles99
LOL - This is true in non recession times also...

It is also not because of the degree - It is because these individuals have a
stronger work ethic and 'try harder' to succeed in life.

