

In a recession, is college worth it? Fear of debt changes plans - edw519
http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/college/2009-08-30-college-costs-recession_N.htm?loc=interstitialskip

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Kirby
Well, in a very real way, delaying your entry to the job market by four years
right now is a very safe bet. It's brutal out there for people without in-
demand skills.

But what this article dances around, but doesn't quite realize, is that
college no longer confers in-demand skills a priori. A journalism major that
made six figures as a recruiter? That's a combination of personality and luck,
and very little element of 'college training'.

If you want to consider college an investment (which is not crazy), you can't
just think of it as a checkbox. College, done, now give me a job that pays
well! Not realistic. You need an actual skill that people want to pay for.
Science and engineering degrees always work well for this. Practical business
skills (like accounting), medicine and law, these are the things that pay off.

You know, the ones with _hard_ classes. :)

I don't want to dump on humanities - if you love it, do it. If you're one of
the best in your field, and if you're smart and passionate you should end up
there, you'll do okay. Some even more than that.

But if you aren't the kind of person whose eyes light up when someone else at
a party wants to talk about French Poets, don't study French Poetry and
complain about the job market. Passion is fantastic, following it is great -
and most people aged 18-22 don't have one. And if you don't, it's idiotic to
take classes in a low-job field where you'll get trounced by those that do
honestly care about the material above and beyond the grade.

If you aren't following your bliss (and that's okay), go into a hard field
that you don't absolutely hate. And you might not love your job until you
figure things out, but at least you won't be miserable _and_ broke. But for
the love of god, don't major in Philosophy and complain that you didn't get
your money's worth. (And I loved my philosophy classes in college.)

~~~
uihbvciwu
So you would take a bet on a science/engineering degree? And hope that after
4years of a degree, and another 3-5years to get the professional certification
your job won't just be off-shore?

Better to do the easiest humantities course and get that middle manager job so
you can earn the bonuses for cutting the number of engineers.

Or better still - skip college, learn to be a plumber. Invest the $40k tuition
in a van an some tools. get jobs, buy more vans, hire other plumbers - build
empire. It's like a startup except most of them make money.

~~~
mmt
_So you would take a bet on a science/engineering degree? And hope that after
4years of a degree, and another 3-5years to get the professional certification
your job won't just be off-shore?_

Yes, because the material is useful for something other than working for
someone else.

 _Or better still - skip college, learn to be a plumber._

No argument at all. I've always thought learning a trade to be a far more
respectable route than an impractical degree.

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rdtsc
It depends on the field. Some fields prefer 4 year degrees, some prefer
portfolios, some prefer graduate degrees. Computer science is probably more of
a 4 year + portfolio. Yeah, MS degrees are nice, but unless it was in the
topic a company is interested in, it is probably better to have some code
examples.

In general, it seems college education has been over-inflated and over-hyped.
It is the next bubble to burst probably. The more Uncle Sam was willing shell
out money for student loans, the more collages started increasing their
tuition. And one cannot just declare bancruptcy and wash away these loans.

My college, at least, increased the tuition every year since 2000 then started
building bigger stadiums, shopping malls, and recreation halls.

At the same time crusty old professors stuck in the 70s didn't teach anything
relevent to today world, while at the same time boasting how easy they
personally have it, how stable their job is, encouraging students to become
professors, so they can also get tenure and stop working and become a new
generation of crusty old professors ... Somehow I got a feel my college was
not unique in this respect.

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jswinghammer
I think that the value of a college education has been waning for years as
more and more people acquire college degrees. The recession just made it so
that if you get a degree that cannot directly lead you to a job it will
probably not pay off for you. A coworker of mine is paying 50k a year to send
his daughter to college to study social work. I cannot imagine allowing my
daughter to throw away that kind of money chasing a job that you can get with
a degree from a community college and will likely burn out from in a few
years. I think many people just assume that if it's college then it's a good
thing.

College has many merits but one of them isn't really the promised good job,
good career, good life that many people believe it to be. I think many
companies just use a college degree as a sign that you were capable of sitting
through something for awhile without giving up on it. I'm not sure a degree in
journalism says much more than that to most companies (outside of that field
of course).

I feel bad for the people who have tons of debt and virtually nothing to show
for it. I just hope their guide their children in another direction when they
get to that age.

~~~
mikeryan
"College has many merits but one of them isn't really the promised good job,
good career, good life that many people believe it to be."

I think its true that a degree will not get you a job.

But unless you can prove to be a complete superstar in your field you will
severely narrow your choices for getting a job without one. Having a BA/BS
even from a minor college is still a bar set by most HR groups. (the relevance
of the degree aside). Note the BA, an AA which you get at community colleges
generally aren't worth too much.

But in regards to your friend paying 50K a year for a social work degree. Sure
your friends daughter may not end up with a job where she can ever payback the
200K they're going to pay. But she sounds like someone who is going to try to
make a difference in the world. Perhaps that means more then the amount she'll
make in salary post-graduation.

~~~
antonovka
I've found that because the applicant market is so incredibly saturated with
applicants who have a degree, it's ceased to be an indicator of anything, and
HR departments (and hiring managers) have stopped caring.

You'll find quite a few job posts now days that explicitly say "... or
equivalent experience" in the education section, and many others that will
happily ignore the stated requirements.

~~~
mikeryan
My anecdotal experience has been different, in a saturated market it makes an
easy bar to implement.

But even then I should say, that the degree bar is likely a lot more relevant
for entry level jobs then for more experienced positions.

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cschick2317
College is worth it. I think the real question is "Is spending 30-50K a year
on your education instead of 10K a year worth it?". I think your average
person could do quite well for themselves if they go to a state school or some
other less expensive college. Most people aren't gunning to be the best in
their field. If there is any difference in education between "cheap" and
"expensive" schools I don't think it would make much of a difference to the
average person.

I majored in computer science at a state school and spent around 40K on my
education (room and board for 4 years). I feel I got a very solid education
and was able to easily find a well paying job after graduation even without
the shiny degree from Harvard (or some other fancy school).

~~~
Tamerlin
This is the most sensible argument yet.

One thing we should be considering rather than questioning the value of an
education is that we should be concerned about what ours are costing us. In
most other first world nations, a college education is there for anyone
willing to put in the effort to earn it... here, it's available to anyone
who's willing to pay for it.

The quality of our education is decreasing, while its cost is rising. Hence
the return on investment is decreasing, hardly a challenging leap of logic.

Why should one spend $50k per year on an education in any field? Will that get
you a better education? Having obtained a degree from a pretty prestigious
institution (Johns Hopkins), I would say no -- it gets you a school with a
bigger athletic club and more stipends for brainless athletes (I have nothing
against athletic scholarships -- provided that the athletes who get them are
there for the education; IMO being an athlete is a valid way to pay for an
education, but too often the sport is the goal, rather than the education).

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steveplace
I wrote a post about this subject ~2wks ago about how college (as an asset
class) could be in a bubble, and I showed the similarities between a college
degree and housing. The point made is that it would be much less feasible to
have so many college students if tuition were not financed and subsidized by
the US federal gov't.

[http://www.investingwithoptions.com/2009/08/college-is-a-
bub...](http://www.investingwithoptions.com/2009/08/college-is-a-bubble/)

Soon I will be analyzing the data behind income differences and overall
opportunity cost of various degrees as well as total amount financed over
time.

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jfoutz
Yes! best time ever. Earning potential is capped by the crappy market. If you
think things will get better _someday_ you can pay off your loan with boom
dollars, which are a lot easier to come by than our current bust dollars.

~~~
mmt
This is generally true for all fixed rate loans and highly variable inflation.

One would expect the market to react by moving toward variable rate from
fixed, which has already been reported for student loans.

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makecheck
It's hard to imagine recruiters giving up on the safety net of "minimum degree
in X, Y or Z", unfortunately. Even at companies where engineers may be willing
to dig deeper, résumés still have to clear these basic filters.

Of course, I would prefer if a person's actual experience and education were
assessed more carefully. These days, it's conceivable that someone has spent a
lot of time on OpenCourseWare, or been self-taught programming through
experience with open-source projects; there are a lot of ways to be
accomplished without a degree. It is becoming harder to do simple filtering of
applicants.

~~~
randallsquared
For technical work, contract jobs can let you avoid the filters, and end up
hired full-time in a position that has such a minimum degree filter. I did
this to get into my current position, and I have "some college" rather than
any degree.

For this, of course, you have to be good enough that they really _want_ to
hire you at the end of your contract.

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radley
Sorry, I think the problem has more to do with USA Today readers than fear of
debt.

When the first bubble burst, a lot of people went back to school to finish
their degree or get an upgrade. In essence they made money when there was a
lot of it around and went back to school when there wasn't.

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Kadin
> "…graduating in 2005 with a double major in journalism and anthropology…"

I think I see her problem right there.

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TFrancis
What if higher education were free?

~~~
mmt
TANSTAAFL, even if the price is opportunity cost.

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hamidp
I'm surprised that no one has mentioned college and education in the context
of signaling: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_(economics)>

A degree from a Tier-1 school and high GPA is a signal to potential employers
that you are a hard worker and smart. This appears to hold well for "easy"
majors who don't really use anything learned in college at work (except
thinking and writing creatively) and less so for "hard" majors who do actually
need to know stuff about biology, math, whatever to do well.

~~~
antonovka
_A degree from a Tier-1 school and high GPA is a signal to potential employers
that you are a hard worker and smart._

The only things it signals to me is that you have:

\- Considerable financial support from your parents and/or considerable
student loan debt.

\- A strong ability to pass tests.

What it doesn't tell me is whether you'll actually be able to do the job, and
do it well.

~~~
steveplace
But you're probably not a potential employer at a Fortune 500 company.

~~~
antonovka
No, I'm not. Are you? I can't argue against an invented hypothetical.

~~~
steveplace
Invented hypotheticals work so well with sarcasm.

Point was, yes, I completely agree with you, the brand name of a degree means
less than what it is assigned in society-- but our opinion will most likely
diverges from a potential employer.

~~~
antonovka
I am a potential employer (and have been responsible for hiring technical
candidates for years), but I'm not a hiring manager at Fortune 500 company.

