
Beyond college rankings: A value-added approach - SQL2219
http://www.brookings.edu/research/reports2/2015/04/29-beyond-college-rankings-rothwell-kulkarni
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iraphael
I'm not sure monetary value is the only type of value college can (or should)
provide.

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nmrm2
Furthermore, the obsession with mid-career salaries is misplaced. Four
problems:

1\. Focusing on the mid-career salaries can over-value college. Without
longer-running longitudinal data, you're essentially just measuring whether
colleges / universities provide people with skills that are in high demand in
the decade or so following graduation. That says absolutely nothing about the
critical back half of people's careers, when they should be earning more than
ever and putting a lot of it away for retirement and/or funding the higher
education (or business ventures etc.) of their children and/or investing in or
starting new businesses.

2\. It reeks of (bad) central planning. Is it any surprise that Software
Engineers are in such short supply and Lawyers in such over-supply? People
were just making "rational" choices when shying away from CS following the dot
com bubble burst, and now we have a massive under-supply of skilled software
engineers (and, conversely, an over-supply of other types of professions that
were supposed to be highly paid). And in X years, everyone's going to shut up
about STEM when there's a dip and it's hard to find a high paying job in
software. And then we'll be asking why all these idiots are taking out loans
to get degrees in CS.

3\. Focusing on the mid-career under-values college. Many of the benefits of a
well-rounded education -- improved writing, increased awareness of one's own
culture and others' cultures, familiarity with different fields, interaction
with people who have varying interests, deep connections to people who go into
other industries -- are skills that pay dividents _especially_ long after the
mid-point in a career. The last one or two decades of a career are when
employees are being paid for their insight, discipline, awareness of both the
big picture and details, and ability to communicate in addition or even
instead of rote technical skills that came from their major.

4\. Salary is a poor indicator for the value-add of college at the societal
level. If we're going to go down this (ill-advised) route, we should also be
measuring things like health of family life, degree to which people contribute
back to their community (by taking on voluntary leadership roles), etc.

