Well that's an 18% "chance", I'm guessing a large number of those 18% will be people who either graduated doing something useless or had some other reason they could not/did not work a high paying job. Such as starting a family and only working part time, or some medical reason. So not quite rolling the dice.
I would still be reasonably confident that if you have a chance to do a good degree from a good school your outlook is a heck of a lot better than that.
Of course the future is never clear, but that is as much a risk for people who don't go to college to those who do.
Nope, you're living in a bubble. Not everyone went to a "good" school. This is one of the things that cracks me up about the HN community. It seems like everyone went to Stanford or MIT and the dumb kids went to CMU.
The vast, vast majority of people do not go to prestigious schools (if they did, those schools would no longer be prestigious, in some sense).
Additionally, these same people often lack social connections that, regardless of what people claim, are often key to getting into a good career track.
The whole "useful degree" argument also fails to hold water. Not everyone has the predisposition or personality to be an engineer. Those people have to do something. Most of the things they are able to do pay very little. So for these people, the chance to make $40k per year for a few years might be quite appealing.
So yes, if you just graduated from MIT with a technical degree and/or your parents are reasonably well-connected, then you are probably doing OK. Everyone else is struggling.
Stop pretending this isn't the case, entitlement isn't an attractive personality trait.
> that is as much a risk for people who don't go to college to those who do.
Statistically, you see a correlation of less risk by going to college because only people who fit a certain mould are able to go to college at all. For example, those with certain disabilities will be unable to study in school, and will also struggle in the workplace, which skews interpretations of the data in interesting ways.
Keep in mind that the college educated make up about 20-25% of the population. The unemployment rate is around 7%. That means that the vast majority of the population are employed just fine without degrees, and many are making decent incomes at that.
If they have the aptitude and skill necessary to complete a degree, they likely also have the smarts to turn their career into more later in life. Maybe they intend to take that quick and easy money and use it to bootstrap a million dollar business in a few years?
I get the feeling that you feel they have no road ahead without a degree, which I don't quite understand.
Not really, the issue is that having the right sort of experience to get ahead.
I would wager that you are more likely to get a job as a graduate that will provide you with useful experience.
A huge number of non grad jobs don't pay too bad by the standards of a younger person but really don't give the sorts of experience that help one get ahead.
I know smart people who skipped college to work retail and 10 years on are still pulling not much more than minimum wage. With a reasonable degree they would certainly have had more options open to them.
I know people with degrees who have the same struggle, and people without degrees making six figure salaries. Of course anecdotes are just that.
I have never been able to find evidence that the 25% of the population made up of those with degrees fare better than the top 25% of the population without degrees. But since we are going on gut feelings here, my gut tells me that you will find no discernible difference between the two groups.
Well any figures would be old and from the UK (where I am) but I remember £100K in lifetime earnings being banded around (bear in mind that education is cheaper here and the debt is less of an issue since you only have to pay it when you are earning above a threshold).
In my experience in the UK it really depends on what you are applying for, here the biggest companies tend to pay the best salaries and the biggest companies don't tend to like (for example) self taught developers.
If you look at job listings here for programmers a degree will be a requirement for more than 50% and they won't waive this because you have an impressive github.
Another big plus for having a degree is that it makes getting a VISA easier thus giving more options. Also there is also the advantage that by being in college/uni you will meet people who have the "right background" which can help in job search.
For example the father of one student in our CS class asked his son to tell him who the best 10 programmers in that year were and more or less hired them on the spot at graduation.
What I am saying in essence though is not "get a degree" vs "don't get a degree" but rather that saying "don't get a degree because you will be $X richer in 4 years time" seems like a rather weak argument.
The UK must be fairly unique in this regard, because in North America companies are just happy to hire anyone who can open a text editor for programming jobs. Not even Google, who once was quite vocal about hiring only graduates of top universities, can concern themselves about your education anymore. There are just not enough people to even start to be choosy.
Since I am not familiar with the employment landscape in the UK, I am going to have to take your word for the satiation there. However, since this article is US-based, I do not feel that your picture paints the employment situation in the US in the proper light. Formal education does not have that kind of relevance on the western side of the pond.
Which only raises the question, if all other considerations are equal, why do some obtain degrees and others do not? Could it be those factor(s) that results in better employment opportunities rather than the degree itself?
A few points come to mind: (1) Access to money makes going to school and finding work easier. (2) A "go-getting" attitude makes successful completion of college and finding work easier. (3) Living in the right location (namely cities) makes going to college and finding work easier. (4) Simply being lucky makes the successful competition of college and finding work easier.
If you could find two people who are exactly equal in every single way, except the piece of paper in hand, would you find any employability differences between them? I'm highly skeptical that you would.
I would still be reasonably confident that if you have a chance to do a good degree from a good school your outlook is a heck of a lot better than that.
Of course the future is never clear, but that is as much a risk for people who don't go to college to those who do.