
Gaps in Alumni Earnings Stand Out in Release of College Data - jeo1234
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/14/upshot/gaps-in-alumni-earnings-stand-out-in-release-of-college-data.html
======
brandmeyer
Its hard to take the conclusions of such an article seriously, especially with
regards to the gender pay gaps, when they aren't normalized for degree
program. Unless you are comparing Engineering women versus Engineering men, or
College of Eng. in school A versus CoE in school B, it is utterly impossible
to meaningfully compare schools A and B as well.

~~~
matthewaveryusa
MIT PhD authored article may float your boat a little more:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/11/upshot/new-data-gives-
clea...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/11/upshot/new-data-gives-clearer-
picture-of-student-debt.html?rref=upshot) Or
[http://www.brookings.edu/about/projects/bpea/papers/2015/loo...](http://www.brookings.edu/about/projects/bpea/papers/2015/looney-
yannelis-student-loan-defaults)

For those visual people like myself, this is the most telling:
[http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Projects/BPEA/Fall-2015_emb...](http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Projects/BPEA/Fall-2015_embargoed/Chart_LooneyYannelis_StudentLoanDefaults.PNG?la=en)

~~~
douche
It's terrifying to see so many online degree-mills sucking up that much money.

~~~
matthewaveryusa
The sinister in me asks "Well, who tends to make shitty decisions?" The
innocent asks "How is this legal?" The realist middle-classer I am asks "Are
my tax dollars going to be used to fix this shit again?" The Democrat in me
says "well we should definitely introduce legislation to fix this." The
Republican alter-ego laughs and says "we already fixed it because you can't
get rid of that shit, even in chapter 7 and 13 bankruptcy."

~~~
ams6110
None of your personalities are quite seeing the problem. The problem is that
student loans are too easy to get. This creates the demand for the shit.

~~~
slackson
Why are they too easy to get?

~~~
cmsmith
For any other type of loan, if you have more current/future income, you can
get a larger loan. For student loans, you get a larger loan for having LESS
current income. This is reasonable since the loans are government-subsidized,
but it might help to have some correlation between the loan and your ability
to pay it off (i.e. future expected earnings due to your education).

~~~
aianus
This sounds like an excellent arbitrage opportunity for a startup. Find
mispriced student loans (say, some honor roll student in MIT Computer Science
paying the same 7% as some fine arts student at University of Phoenix) and
refinance them at 4%.

You could even securitize the debt and sell it to alumni! I know I'd buy
Waterloo CS Class of 2018 Honour Roll debt at even 3%.

~~~
roel_v
This happens already. There was an article linked here some time about it. The
twist was that the article scolded those companies, because it meant that the
rates for government loans would have to go up, because their portfolios now
consisted of worse borrowers.

Found it:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9695568](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9695568)
.

~~~
aianus
Good. The interest rates should go up (and/or the tuition should go down) for
these mispriced programs until they reach fair market value.

------
dang
The data is at
[https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/data/](https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/data/),
which was posted as
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10211838](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10211838).
We merged that thread into this one since they are the same story from two
angles.

It's rather arbitrary which thread of the two to pick as primary. Arguably it
should be the original source, but then the article gives more background, and
people have linked to the original source in the thread. We can change it if
people feel strongly about it.

------
tstactplsignore
I think you must take these concepts into account if you're going to think
about how to "fix" or "disrupt" education.

1\. Most students who go to elite colleges pay for what they can afford. While
there are exceptions and financial aid is not perfect, the college bubble and
loan crisis is largely occurring at for-profit colleges, 3rd tier
universities, and the smaller liberal arts college.

2\. Most students who go to elite colleges are not attempting to optimize
their future salary, but are positioning themselves to succeed and obtain
prestige in science, law, medicine, politics, or academia. Many graduates of
South Dakota School of Mines earn more than the POTUS, and salary optimization
is not what many college applicants value.

3\. You do not and should not go to college primarily to sit and learn in
classrooms. You go for the peer connections, professor mentorship,
intellectual resources, and industry connections.

4\. Outside of technology, it is almost impossible to correctly learn and
succeed in most intellectual fields without attending college. See: science,
medicine, law, politics, literature, the arts. In technology, students who go
to adequate universities and take advantage of the resources and connections
offered there are merely at an enormous advantage.

5\. It is impossible to talk about (a) elite universities (top ~20 schools),
(b) "top 100" universities, (c) small elite liberal arts colleges and
conservatories, (d) lower ranked state schools, and (e) for-profit and/or
trade schools under the same umbrella of "education" and have a productive
conversation. There are all widely different environments where widely
different rules apply and different policies should be considered.

~~~
hueving
>salary optimization is not what many college applicants value.

Is there any source for this? It's always something I've wondered about but
haven't seen anything concrete indicating one way or another.

~~~
superuser2
The words you're looking for are "liberal arts education." The liberal arts
are (roughly) fields concerned with the search for truth and the study of
human life: math, philosophy, physics, biology, chemistry, anthropology,
psychology, literature, etc. Some computer science programs should arguably be
counted among the liberal arts, insofar as they're about something deeper than
contemporary software engineering practice. Liberal is meant as in freedom:
the objects of study worthy of a free person, particularly if you put a
Marxist lens on it and consider wage slavery unfree.

The liberal arts do not have salary optimization or the production of skilled
workers of any kind as their mission, though it may be a side effect in some
cases. Finance, business, management, engineering, communications, etc. do not
count, and a proponent of liberal arts education (like myself) would say they
do not belong in an undergrad program.

Many people believe that the primary value of undergrad is a coming-of-age
ritual where students develop as intellectuals and learn to be informed and
rational citizens of the world. The best way to do this is with mandatory and
rigorous breadth in the entirety of the liberal arts [0], and a particularly
rigorous specialization in one. Those professions that require additional
formal training ought to be studied in graduate and/or professional school, as
is the case with law and medicine.

This was a mainstream view until sometime in the late 20th century when the
"college as job training and investment in future salary" narrative took off.
Many people now (coincidentally almost all are liberals) believe this was a
mistake. These are the people you'll find letting their children study non-
salary-optimizing fields and lending political support to taxpayer-funded
higher education, including in not-necessarily-economically-useful fields.

Start here:
[http://www.ditext.com/pippin/aims2000.html](http://www.ditext.com/pippin/aims2000.html)

[0] This belief is responsible for most gen-ed requirements and core
curricula.

~~~
hueving
Not relevant. I wanted hard numbers for students that don't take salary into
account. I don't care about your apologetics for a field that pretends to take
credit for granting the ability to think.

People from engineering fields and hard sciencies are much more rational
citizens of the world than someone who spent all of their time on art history
because they were required to rigorously think logically.

~~~
superuser2
To the extent that we can infer desire for salary optimization by choice of
major, I'd exclude humanities, social sciences, math and physical sciences
(research is not particularly lucrative), and education. Those, taken
together, are 46.4% of undergraduate degrees in 2011-12. CS, engineering, and
business, on the other side, are 28.6% of undergraduate degrees [1].

Consider how arrogant it is to look at the history and present of human
civilization, its institutions and customs and art and languages, what it
claimed to know and how, what it fought for and why, who held power and how
people thought about its legitimacy, what it valued and worshipped, and think
"Nope, nothing there could possibly be interesting or important here beyond
what engineers can discover in their spare time. Nobody should bother studying
any of this." I'm glad there are people who disagree with you.

[1]
[https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d13/tables/dt13_318.20.a...](https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d13/tables/dt13_318.20.asp)

~~~
hueving
I never said it wasn't worth studying. Consider how arrogant it is to say that
liberal arts are for teaching people how to think critically, implying that
hard sciences, math, and engineering are just producing thoughtless drones for
work.

------
jdmaurer
I think the worth of a college education varies so much from person to person,
as well as field to field. If you are becoming a doctor, going to college is
100% necessary for obvious reasons. But for a programmer, it may not be,
depending on the person.

More than helping you learn how to code, a college education helps you learn
HOW to learn how to to code. You won't get much useful experience until you
are in an internship or doing actual work in the field learning from people
that are better than you. You can spend forever on theories, but it will never
actually get you anywhere unless you put it to use. For the people that need
to learn how to learn, the price of college can be worth it. For others, it
can be a waste of time and a LOT of money.

~~~
ZanyProgrammer
I think it depends on the circumstances of your self learning. In general I
think its harder to get a programming/software engineering job nowadays than
it was 15-20 years ago without a degree. I mean, if you were self taught on
PHP/Perl/Linux in the 90s, then you could've gotten yourself in on the ground
floor without a CS degree. Likewise for any new tech stack that gets
introduced, immersing yourself in it can certainly make up for not having a CS
degree.

~~~
Futurebot
I'm not sure if it's true or not (and I was one of those self-taught in the
late 1990s devs) that it's harder now, but I can tell you that even back then
it had challenges even beyond getting a foot in the door:
[https://medium.com/@opirmusic/why-software-developers-
should...](https://medium.com/@opirmusic/why-software-developers-should-still-
choose-to-go-to-university-if-someone-else-is-paying-45091d22acc1)

It was possible then, and it's possible now; it is definitely a lot more work
than with the degree, though.

~~~
jdmaurer
Interesting article. If you can go to university on a full-ride scholarship
without getting yourself into debt, then by all means, you don't have anything
to lose. But when you say that self-learning is a lot more work than a degree,
I have to disagree with that. Getting a bachelors in CS is no cake walk, and
after you graduate, you'll have to spend years getting actual experience with
a company anyway. Either way, to be successful in a field, you'll have to work
extremely hard. For some, paying for a college degree can be self-motivation
to work harder, but in the end, everyone will have to work hard to make it.

~~~
mikekchar
I have several friends without university degrees that are software devs. The
difficulty seems really variable. If you get that first job and can stay there
for a couple of years, I would say it is often easier than going to
University. Personally, I didn't consider comp sci to be a particularly
difficult degree (in comparison to physics or pure math for example), but
exams and assignments are definitely more stressful than what you normally run
into in a job.

There is a lot of risk with going without a degree, though. Take the example
of the person who posted a few days ago about working as an intern for 8
months, getting into a fight with his boss over money and finding himself
without a job. I'll take the stress of an exam over that any day. Trying to
find a junior position without an academic background often means putting
yourself at the mercy of unscrupulous people :-(

I got a free ride through school, but I went through in the 80's when it was
also comparatively cheap. At that time, I don't think there was much of a
downside to getting a degree. If I were to do it again (on my own dime),
though, I would seriously think about trying to get an apprenticeship at 18
instead. If you can work for those 4 years, I think you would be considerably
ahead financially.

------
rawnlq
Carnegie Mellon has salary information for each major. For example, computer
science majors: [http://www.cmu.edu/career/salaries-and-
destinations/2015-sur...](http://www.cmu.edu/career/salaries-and-
destinations/2015-survey/scs.html) have a mean starting salary of $103,608 and
median of $105,000. This doesn't include any stock, stock options or bonuses
yet. Out of 192 students, 32 joined Google, 19 joined Facebook and 12 joined
Microsoft.

The data for MIT is very similar (even same median starting salary of $105,000
for EECS):
[https://gecd.mit.edu/sites/default/files/about/files/2014-gs...](https://gecd.mit.edu/sites/default/files/about/files/2014-gss-
survey.pdf)

So if you can just graduate in the top half of your class in at a good CS
school you start with a 6 figure salary.

~~~
mahyarm
Or you can go to a normal college (like San Jose State), intern at apple or
similar and make that six figure starting salary fairly quickly.

~~~
rawnlq
Yep, of course. Looking at SJSU's data
[http://www.sjsu.edu/careercenter/employers/salary-
data/2014S...](http://www.sjsu.edu/careercenter/employers/salary-
data/2014SalarySurveyReport2.pdf) it seems like their average starting salary
for CS is 85k which isn't far off.

EDIT: Since you mentioned internships, CMU also publish internship stats:
[http://www.cmu.edu/career/salaries-and-
destinations/2014-sur...](http://www.cmu.edu/career/salaries-and-
destinations/2014-survey/SCS%20One%20Pager%20Internships%202014.pdf)

------
minimaxir
Important notes regarding earnings from the dataset documentation
([https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/assets/FullDataDocumentation...](https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/assets/FullDataDocumentation.pdf)):

> _There are two notable limitations that researchers should keep in mind for
> all of these metrics. First, the data are not yet available to produce
> program-level earnings data. Research suggests that the variation across
> programs within a school may be even greater than aggregate earnings across
> schools; for instance, STEM and health majors frequently earn more than
> students who study in other fields. Second, the data include only Title IV-
> receiving students, so figures may not be representative of schools with a
> low proportion of Title IV-eligible students. Additionally, the data are
> restricted to students who are not enrolled (enrolled means having an in-
> school deferment status for at least 30 days of the measurement year), so
> students who are currently enrolled in graduate school at the time of
> measurement are excluded._

Although, looking at the data, the real problem is that half the colleges have
PrivacySurpressed values for those fields.

~~~
droopyEyelids
Can anyone understand the logic of the NYT releasing this article, then going
into the wage gap aspect, without mentioning that the data can't be quantified
by major?

It also doesn't mention any steps taken to account for the willingly
unemployed/underemployed- assuming both partners in a marriage will desire to
work full time to maximize their earning potential seems like it's worth a
disclaimer.

~~~
TickleMeHellNo
>Can anyone understand the logic of the NYT releasing this article, then going
into the wage gap aspect, without mentioning that the data can't be quantified
by major?

It fits a narrative that NYT has been pushing for years.

------
solidangle
I really do wonder how much of these gaps can be attributed to the
universities themselves. Elite universities are more likely to attract
successful and motivated and thus will "produce" more successful graduates
than other universities. No name state colleges are more likely to attract the
less successful high school students and thus they will likely produce less
successful graduates. I bet there is nearly as much correlation between SAT
scores and pay as the eliteness of the attended university and pay.

~~~
dovereconomics
Not necessarily.

Many talented students can't afford or avoid debt in elite universities.

At the same time, less competitive students may get accepted because of
donations/connections/preparatory schools.

~~~
morgante
> Many talented students can't afford or avoid debt in elite universities.

That's actually very very rare. Elite universities will give grants which
cover the vast majority of costs for low-income students.

There's a reason the average indebtedness at graduation for Ivies is only a
few thousand dollars (and that's not even including the majority who have no
debt).

~~~
kom107
While this is true, many disadvantaged students don't even know this, because
they don't even look at these schools in the first place, as they assume they
cannot afford to attend. Selection bias.

------
rglovejoy
> At Bennington College in Vermont, over 48 percent of former students were
> earning less than $25,000 per year. A quarter were earning less than $10,600
> per year.

Bennington always impressed me as as rich kids' school. I have to wonder how
many of these former students are living off of trust funds.

~~~
bwilliams18
I went to Bennington for two years, and while it has that reputation, and
there are some rich kids running around (myself included), there are a
surprising number of working and middle class kids going there, and then
coming out of school with no prospects.

Anecdotally, there are a surprising number of waiters, baristas, and other
people doing jobs that are in no way informed by their years of study.

~~~
ranman
FWIW my good friend went to Bennington and nothing she studied in school is
remotely applicable to life... Let alone work. That said she had a really good
time.

------
schwabacher
This is really exciting, and I think this shows that the government is
starting to 'get' software development after the healthcare.gov fiasco.

They released the data under an open source license and have the source of the
website on github! It's built w/ Jekyll!

[https://github.com/18F/college-choice](https://github.com/18F/college-choice)

If you asked me a year ago how likely I thought this was, I would have guessed
something like 1%.

------
Uroboric
I feel like a tremendous factor behind the numbers for middle-tier schools is
simple geography. For example, I make more than double what many of my college
friends who I consider at least equally as smart and motivated as I make, and
it's pretty clear that the only reason is I chose to move to California
whereas they stayed in Nevada.

Colleges in sparsely populated areas will probably always have dramatically
lower numbers given the tendency of graduates to stay close to home,
regardless of the actual quality of education. The salary numbers should take
the region of a former student's job into account in some way.

~~~
kspaans
Does your comparison with your friends take location into account? E.g. if
you're in SF and they're in Reno, then expatistan[0] claims your costs are 57%
higher.

0 - [http://www.expatistan.com/cost-of-
living/comparison/reno/san...](http://www.expatistan.com/cost-of-
living/comparison/reno/san-francisco)?

~~~
CydeWeys
Cost of living is hard to account for; it's definitely not just some
percentage multiplier. For instance, my cost of living went up by about
$5K/year to move to Manhattan (rent went up by a lot, which was partially
offset by no longer having transportation costs). But my salary went up by
over $100K. Yet a cost of living calculator says that Manhattan is
significantly more expensive, and that an, e.g., $200K salary is only "worth"
$114K in low-cost areas like Reno, which practically speaking, isn't true for
me at all. I'm saving more money per year than what my post-tax salary in Reno
would be in its entirety, which itself is an unlikely situation because the
Big 4 don't have offices in Reno and I suspect there aren't a huge number of
well-compensated developer jobs there, even at the $160K or so level that
would yield the same savings left over as a $200K job in NYC.

You're always better off making a given salary in a higher CoL area than the
equivalent salary in a lower CoL area, because not everything scales linearly
with CoL (e.g. ordering goods off Amazon, or going on vacations), and your
higher salary thus gets you more purchasing power on lots of goods and
services.

~~~
hueving
>even at the $160K or so level that would yield the same savings left over as
a $200K job in NYC.

200k in NYC has an estimated 82.7K tax burden and 160k in Reno has an
estimated 50.3k tax burden.[1] That means that you only have about 18k more in
NYC. So something is messed up for your calculation unless you are living on
<=18k in NYC.

1\. [https://smartasset.com/taxes/income-
taxes](https://smartasset.com/taxes/income-taxes)

------
andyidsinga
wow! -- the 10 year earnings for 2 yr college "Los Angeles County College of
Nursing and Allied Health" is almost as high as harvard.

see: [http://www.ed.gov/blog/2015/09/colleges-where-students-
earn-...](http://www.ed.gov/blog/2015/09/colleges-where-students-earn-high-
salaries/) and [http://www.ed.gov/blog/2015/09/schools-with-low-costs-and-
hi...](http://www.ed.gov/blog/2015/09/schools-with-low-costs-and-high-
incomes/)

~~~
plonh
It is pretty obvious what most of LACCN grads are doing 10 years later.
Harvard has a more economically diverse bunch of academics, authors,
engineers, homemakers, and CEOs. Harvard's mean is higher than its medianm

------
Namrog84
Anyone else find that 5 page slider of text just awful. I can only ask but
WHY?

Do people who make websites nowadays hate people and want to see the
world(wide web) burn?

~~~
jdmaurer
Well it is a .gov... they have never been known for their beautiful UX :P

~~~
wslack
We are trying to change that; I'm curious what else would have been a better
choice for presenting that info: [https://medium.com/@USDigitalService/under-
the-hood-building...](https://medium.com/@USDigitalService/under-the-hood-
building-a-new-college-scorecard-with-students-cbcf21a745fc)

~~~
jdmaurer
They have gotten a LOT better in the past few years, that's for sure.

------
dvt
Interesting article. I graduated from (and interned) at UCLA while the need-
based financial aid initiative was rolling out[1]. Obviously, it's the primary
factor in minimizing student debt (it's obvious to see that students with
well-to-do families have more financial support than poor ones).

An issue I take is conflating public institutions with private ones. I
remember UCLA & Berkeley admissions people always struggling to poach students
that might attend Stanford/Caltech, but the issue is very complex. Huge
endowments are just part of the story.

It makes sense that a wealthy private school (Harvard/Princeton/etc.) has more
extra-academic connections that help students get better jobs. Smaller class
sizes also make a difference. I just think the article tries to talk about too
many things and doesn't end up doing any of them justice. The gender stuff
shoehorned at the end is a prime example.

[1]
[http://www.ucla.edu/admission/affordability](http://www.ucla.edu/admission/affordability)

------
dreamdu5t
> "students at private for-profit two-year and four-year institutions have
> high rates of borrowing and their graduates often have large amounts of
> debt."

Isn't that expected? Students who go to for-profit schools by definition have
to pay their way through so it would make sense they have higher levels of
borrowing and debt.

~~~
minimaxir
There's nothing wrong with restating obvious conclusions. At the least, it
ensures the data is valid.

------
mkhpalm
Are people finally starting to ask where the DoE got its earnings numbers to
increase student loan tuition caps, the resulting tuition hikes across the
board, explosion in the private education market, and the zero risk (except to
the tax payers) student loan interest income keg party?

------
superuser2
How is grad school factored in? At my school, a very large portion (~40%) of
students go on to masters/PhD/law/MD right after graduation. This could
deflate salary numbers compared to what those students make when they actually
enter the workforce.

------
minimaxir
The data is not particularly uniform, with NULLs and PrivacySurpressed values
everywhere.

I wanted to play around with SAT/ACT data and create correlations with other
variables...but the only values reported are 25% quantile and 75% quantile for
accepted students (they derive a midpoint between the two...by averaging them,
which is wrong). Hmrph.

------
learc83
I love that to support their headline, the article states that at hundreds of
colleges many students aren't earning more than high school graduates 10 years
after graduation. Then in the next sentence says that those hundreds of
"colleges" include barber academies, cosmetology schools, and for-profit
colleges.

~~~
snegu
There are still plenty of traditional liberal arts colleges in that group. For
my alma mater (Oberlin College) only 52% of students are earning more than
high school graduates. Pretty sad.

~~~
learc83
That's true, but that's exactly the rhetorical trick they used to make their
point seem stronger than it is.

They grouped barber colleges with 4 year schools to make the overall
statistics look worse. Then they combine that with anecdotes about a few
poorly performing 4 year schools.

To you're point about Oberlin--the data isn't separated by major, and from
Oberlin's website they emphasize college and conservatory of music. It's not
surprising that musicians aren't making a lot of money.

~~~
snegu
The Conservatory makes up only 20% of the students, so I don't think that's
the bulk of the issue.

Of the College students, most major in literature, art or social sciences. And
there's a strong tendency to work in non-profits or academia after graduation.

This would all be fine if it weren't so damn expensive to attend. While I had
a great time there and learned a lot, I wouldn't recommend the same path to my
kids.

~~~
learc83
20% is a pretty big number, add to that music, art, theater, dance, and cinema
studies and you likely have a pretty big chunk of the total population.

Saying that only 52% of Oberlin graduates make more than the average high
school graduate is pretty close to saying that the performing arts don't tend
to pay well.

------
jeffdavis
We believe that we should cram as many people in the country as possible
through our current conception of a university.

There are several reasons people want to believe that's a good idea:

* They believe that someone with a B.A., B.S., etc. is a higher class person than one without

* They believe that putting everyone through the system will bring everyone up to that higher class, thus removing the negative effects of classes in society

* They believe that it's the only path to education

* They believe it's somehow immune from various biases, corruption, infighting, trend-following, etc.

* They believe it's a diverse forum for the free exchange of ideas, and that all reasonable ideas are given their due consideration

* They believe that "good colleges" are good and lead to success because of the quality of the education and the insight of the professors

Unfortunately, none of those are true. Until we admit that, we can't fix the
problem.

When we do admit those things, we can acknowledge that:

* A person who reads a lot of books and participates in discussions with others who have different opinions has as much claim on "good citizenship" as anyone else (college or not), and it doesn't take tens of thousands of dollars

* Language, history, and art classes can be quite effective by teaching language, history, and art; and not spending the entire time on politics

* Vocational schools are probably the right place for a lot of things, including programming and software engineering (though a university might be the right place for Comp. Sci.). When we figure out software engineering, perhaps it belongs in the university, but for now it's not an established discipline.

* If we really want people to get a more academic education, giving them a loan and demanding them to pay it back regardless of bankruptcy makes little sense. Maybe that makes sense for vocational school, where it's more of a straight investment. But for a purely academic education, it's probably a lot cheaper to provide it anyway, so lots of financial approaches could work.

* "Good colleges" are good because of the kind and quality of _students_ that they concentrate in one place -- in other words, a social club built around an academic theme. (This is really the one that makes it obvious that bringing more people into the university system won't have the same results as the ones who are in it now.)

------
djabatt
College isn't the only method to become educated. Going in debt for on College
lark is a social acceptable way to spend money, but it isn't the only way to
win. If you know what you want to do chase then chase all methods to get
trained. Otherwise spend some time traveling the world to figure your life and
then consider spending $200K ~ $400K on college education. Don't waster your
time on these for profit degree mills. Their product sucks and no employer
cares you got a purchased a degree from Phoenix College

------
jongraehl
"Mrs. degree" assortative mating (+ field of study preferences) make the
'females in college X' implication muddier, but overall it's good to encourage
people to look at expected outcomes before opting into $100k debt.

That is, a rational woman would look at expected earnings including child
support + alimony, and insist on figures stratified by field of study (so she
can choose where + what to study).

------
plg
This assumes college is what determines salary after college... Sure it might
have some effect but I bet other factors are also v important e.g. Parent's
income, family wealth, social network, personality, life goals, etc.

Also perpetuates the myth that college is for job training. It's not. It's for
education.

~~~
adevine
> Also perpetuates the myth that college is for job training. It's not. It's
> for education.

While I agree, the sheer cost of college, and the huge loans many take out to
attend, mean that the vast majority are expecting a decent return on their
sizable investment. After all, if you're really just concerned about getting
an education, there are a lot cheaper ways to do it than college.

------
azinman2
Given the point about program : tuition I wonder if different majors should be
asked different tuitions. Bio/cs/things that cost more and have more earning
potential could charge a higher price than the English lit majors.

------
Tycho
Has there been any sort of Marxist analysis about the middle class using the
higher education system to entrench their advantage over the poor and
therefore willingly going along with ridiculous tuition fees?

~~~
imchillyb
[http://www.nbcnews.com/feature/in-plain-sight/great-
unequali...](http://www.nbcnews.com/feature/in-plain-sight/great-unequalizer-
higher-education-policy-making-inequality-worse-n107651)

------
racketracer
Is there a data source link? Can't find it anywhere and I'm just jumping from
article to article when it highlights their data source -_-

~~~
bsilvereagle
[https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/data/](https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/data/)

It's climbing the front page right now.

------
Kinnard
I think this industry is bound for massive disruption. It's one of the social
pillars so . . . what happens when one of those gets moved?

~~~
matthewaveryusa
You work at a startup don't you?

~~~
dang
Please don't post snarky personal comments to HN.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

------
linkydinkandyou
This wouldn't be a concern of the Federal Government at all if they'd just
stop funding student loans. And there would be a side-benefit of college costs
dropping sharply. A win-win for everyone!

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
That would lock poorer students out of higher education.

~~~
linkydinkandyou
No it wouldn't. Tuitions would plummet. And we can certainly make sure we have
a good, inexpensive (or free!) community college system with wide access so
everyone can get a start with higher education.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
> No it wouldn't. Tuitions would plummet.

To whatever the "middle class" can afford.

------
dovereconomics
Beyond questionable gaps, like gender gaps, it's blatant we're living under a
modern caste system.

------
1971genocide
University is a scam.

I feel so bitter. I just graduated 1 month ago. I could have continued with my
masters by I am done. I hated every second of being in university.

Not because of any other reason but because of how bleak my financial prospect
was. I consider myself lucky that my parents bankrolled me - but looking at
the aggregate amount I spent on it - 60,000 pounds.

I paid 60,000 pounds literally to read a bunch of books and write some code
that could run on a computer from the 1980s, which I could have done on my own
from my parent's basement.

Every-time a lecturer gave a low-effort lecture I felt like punching them in
the face, I could feel the the negative acceleration of my net worth everyday
I woke up from sleep. How was I to recover it ? Is it even possible ?

Meanwhile there is so much opportunities, so much data to explore, so much
work to done. Its a crime that so many young minds are made to waste their
time on meaningless stuff while they would start with small apprenticeship and
allowed to grow.

~~~
JustSomeNobody
1) I don't think you'll get too many bites after talking about hitting people.

2) If you hated it so much, why in the world would you allow your parents to
bankroll it? That seems so disrespectful to me.

~~~
1971genocide
Its a thought - I am sure many other students who were taking actual loans
would have much more terrible thoughts.

Yes, I realize it was a mistake. When I was 18 I was fed the same garbage
about going to university as everyone else and took it without much reasoning
- It was my fault, I was an idiot.

There are many other people who are in much more worse situation then I am, A
lot of my friends are in much more stressful situation then me.

Yes its disrespectful to my parents and that is why I quit. I felt terribly
guilty since it was after all not my hard earned money but my parent's. They
also brought into the whole university scam as a road to middle class life.

I have never felt more relieved. Now I can go do some real studying in a much
more relaxed fashion.

~~~
droithomme
Don't listen to that guy.

