Bottom line, a college degree is worth the cost and then some

26 points by null0ranje 2 years ago | 80 comments
  • djoldman 2 years ago
    This piece is almost entirely about the cost of college. There is little about the benefits.

    As far as I can tell, all the statements about benefits are:

    > According to repeated analyses by economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, a four-year degree generates an annual return of 14 percent over a 40-year career.

    > ...a weakening job market for new grads (true, but better than the market for non-grads)...

    The first quote links to a much better analysis:

    https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2019/06/despit...

    As someone who works with statistics, this is the oldest trick in the book: talk about the average when it tells the story you want to tell as opposed to the distribution. Given the massive variability in total cost to attend, the average loses meaning.

    • ttul 2 years ago
      And what about causality? People who go to college are likely the smartest, wealthiest, and best supported people to begin with. How do you find a matched control group of people who didn’t go to college but who could have? What were their outcomes in life?

      I think college is overrated. By all means, go to college if you’d like to learn at the highest level academically. But also consider not going to college and achieving great things without burning 4-5 years of opportunity cost.

      • dahart 2 years ago
        > what about causality?

        A bunch of researchers have asked that question and tried to answer it the best they can, by using statistical methods to discount for things like high family income, race, family history of college attendance.

        From what I’ve seen (and I’ll try to dig up links in a minute if I can) papers often conclude that the causality is definitely not 100% responsible for the income difference between grads and non-grads, but they also generally find the number is much higher than 0% too. It’s somewhere in the middle.

        It’s not really a stretch to suggest that something happens during college, right? People do learn things when they spend their time learning, and we have plenty of data to show that people who get an elementary and secondary education are better off than people who get no education… or take it a step further and look at basic literacy. Why is it hard to believe there’s value in college when it’s not hard to believe that literacy and pre-college education has value?

        > consider not going to college and achieving great things without burning 4-5 years of opportunity cost

        While that can be true for a few naturally motivated and smart (or lucky) people, the aggregate stats don’t really support that view. Most people end up better off going to school, and opening the door to the many higher paying jobs that require a degree.

        * edit: here’s an example: https://www.stlouisfed.org/-/media/project/frbstl/stlouisfed...

        See “Section III: “The True (Causal) Return on a College Education: Evidence from the 2016 SCF”

        The conclusion: “In order to examine the effect of these variables in accounting for some of the relationship between education, income and wealth, we utilized multiple regression. All variables, including age variables, own education, parents’ education, and financial acumen, were regressed onto income and wealth. This model was compared to the simple model of only lifecycle and own education. Results are in Tables 6 and 7. (See Tables B1-B6 for black, Hispanic and other race results).

        “Clearly, parents’ education and financial acumen were important variables previously omitted in estimations of the college and post-graduate premiums (see Table 8). Together, these variables reduced the income premium by 32 percent for white terminal bachelor’s degree holders and by 29 percent for white postgraduate degree holders. The reductions of the wealth premium were even starker, with this premium being reduced by over half for graduates and postgraduates (54.4 percent and 60.4 percent, respectively).”

        • than3 2 years ago
          Well none of those studies take into account US-style weed-out classes where there may be a 12% pass rate for a bottleneck transfer class, and the class is structured to fail students.

          Any value-based research that neglects these is just junk science.

      • dahart 2 years ago
        > this is the oldest trick in the book: talk about the average when it tells the story you want to tell as opposed to the distribution.

        That’s a little bit of FUD though; use of an average does not imply it’s being misused. All statistics can be misused when not cross-checked with other statistics, but just because it can be does not imply it is. And to be fair, citing emotional anecdotes and failing to look at the average or any other stats seems to be abused in reporting a lot more often than trying to be tricky with numbers.

        The St. Louis Fed published a paper a few years ago [1] showing the distributions of earnings of college degree holders compared to non-degree-holders (called the “income premium”), and it backs up the story of the average here. The average graduate in the U.S. earns approximately double what people that stop at a high school education earn. I was very surprised by that stat, I had no idea the income premium was that big. Even though this Fed paper is arguing that the relative savings (“wealth premium”) is going down for college grads, it’s also pointing out that the income premium is not really going down, and on top of that they’re a little quiet about the absolute number of dollars people have in savings. When grads and non-grads have the same savings rate but one has twice the income, then that one also has twice the money at the end of the day, and the Fed paper argues that’s actually a break-even. (This is another old statistics trick…)

        [1] https://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/review/2019/10/...

        • theGnuMe 2 years ago
          Ok so talk about the median that should be sufficient. I think average is appropriate here because the outliers are rare. Not many people rack up 200k in debt with nothing to show for it. Apart from extremely pricey art institute degrees (whose absolute numbers are low) I don't see an issue.

          Median debt is $20k. Avg debt is $37k. The college wage premium is about 30k. A new car is $45k.

          • lapcat 2 years ago
            > outliers are rare. Not many people rack up 200k in debt with nothing to show for it.

            Citation needed. Numerically, what does "rare" and "Not many" mean?

          • AwaAwa 2 years ago
            If you need to speak about averages, doesn't that imply a net loss? Unless the average is overwhelmingly made up of folk with college degrees, which I don't believe holds water.
          • londons_explore 2 years ago
            > According to repeated analyses by economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, a four-year degree generates an annual return of 14 percent over a 40-year career.

            I fail to see how this statistic can be calculated in a scientifically rigorous way.

            The only method would be to pick a pool of people, randomly divide the pool in two, and then force half to go to college, while you force the other half not to.

            Any other approach suffers from sampling bias - the smart motivated ones find a way to go to college, while the rest stay home and stack shelves at walmart for a lifetime.

            And now you're saying that being smart and motivated earns you more... Well no surprise there!

            • verteu 2 years ago
              One of the linked papers [1] describes several approaches to this problem (known as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causal_inference). They generally agree with the 10-15% ROI result.

              For example:

              - Regression discontinuity (find a college that accepts people who score >=X on a test, then compare people who scored X vs people who scored X-epsilon)

              - Instrumental variables (find something that would nudge people to go to college, like living close to a college)

              - Natural experiments (find an event that 'forced' many people to suddenly sign up, like 'avoiding the Vietnam war draft').

              [1] Section 4 of https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-economics...

              • marktangotango 2 years ago
                Even that methodology is flawed. Walmart has a lot of store manager/assistant managers that do quite well with high school diplomas or GEDs. Smart motivated people also do well starting businesses or working in trades. The incessant narrative that a college degree as the path to prosperity is tired and worn and rightly perceived as bogus imo.

                University is now a business, and the product is degrees and "college experience", the customers are students. The product has suffered; degrees are no longer rigorous. Teaching faculty have suffered; tenure tracks has disappeared in favor of adjunct part time faculty. Students suffer under mountains of debt. The only winners are the legions of administrators. Some schools have as many as 1 administrator per 1 student. It's absurd.

                • shanebellone 2 years ago
                  "Walmart has a lot of store manager/assistant managers that do quite well with high school diplomas or GEDs. Smart motivated people also do well starting businesses or working in trades. The incessant narrative that a college degree as the path to prosperity is tired and worn and rightly perceived as bogus imo."

                  I am both a graduate school and high school dropout. A motivated individual could replace university with a library and Internet connection. However, proving one's knowledge can be more difficult than acquiring it. A degree makes it easier to communicate and demonstrate skill.

                • huitzitziltzin 2 years ago
                  Congratulations you’ve identified exactly the problem which concerns literally every economist who has ever worked on this question. Education Econ people work very hard to get around exactly your worry.

                  Education is not my field but there are ways to identify causal effects outside of experiments.

                  So: you are wrong when you say “the only way to do this is…”

                  • metalspot 2 years ago
                    > smart motivated ones find a way to go to college

                    the bigger sample bias is that wealthy people almost universally send their children to college and their children are always going to earn above average wages.

                    it is pretty obvious that people who graduate college are going to earn more because large numbers of high paying jobs require a college degree, but that is a bad thing.

                    jobs that require specific skills should have objective skills tests to qualify for the job. requiring a degree for a job should be prohibited by law because it is blatantly discriminatory.

                    • black_13 2 years ago
                      [dead]
                    • newswasboring 2 years ago
                      I feel like these analysis don't take into account how societies change. Past performance is not entirely predictors of future gains. Especially when talking about 40 year windows. People who participate in these experiments, probably started their education in 1970s/early 80s. They were probably born in late 60s/early 70s. Can someone, with a straight face, tell me society is remotely similar today than it was then?
                      • linuxftw 2 years ago
                        Of course they can tell you with a straight face, they're sociopaths. The higher education ponzi scheme needs new blood every year. The value exists solely in the fact that it's a mechanism of exclusion by those who hold degrees.
                        • newswasboring 2 years ago
                          Is this just hyperbole or you actually believe this literally? I have never met an American University administrator or education economist, but from what I have read in pop science I don't think my point is lost on them. Economists, at least the ones I regularly read from, spend a lot of time fighting this kind of thing.
                      • anotherhue 2 years ago
                        I had a flight of fancy recently where I thought I might try lecturing. I saw the below as required 'Qualifications' on a CUNY [0] posting for "Distinguished Lecturer - Curriculum & Teaching, Computer Science Education" [1]. I will leave it to you to determine if the qualifications they seek would lead you to believe your child would benefit from being under the instruction of such a person. Edit: See comment below, this particular institution has specific goals.

                          MA Degree in Computer Science, Educational Technology, Education, or a closely related field; earned doctorate preferred but not required

  Expertise in computer science educational pedagogies

  Experience with outreach and community engagement

  Demonstrated commitment to social justice, multimodal learning, anti-racist pedagogies, multilingualism, and culturally and linguistically responsive and sustaining pedagogy

  Ability to collaborate in recruiting students for graduate programs

  Demonstrated ability to effectively teach adults in college level education programs in various modalities including in person, hybrid, synchronous and asynchronous modalities

  Experience with outreach and community engagement which are seen as important for developing the Computer Science Education Program at Hunter College.

  Demonstrated knowledge of computer science K-12 learning standards and curricula

  Experience integrating issues of diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility in teaching, scholarship, and service

  Experience teaching in classrooms, educational settings and communities with culturally diverse populations including multilingual learners

  Evidence of excellent written, oral, organizational, and interpersonal communication skills
                        0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_University_of_New_York

                        > The City University of New York is the public university system of New York City. It is the largest urban university system in the United States

                        1: https://cuny.jobs/new-york-ny/distinguished-lecturer-curricu...

                        • alistairSH 2 years ago
                          I take it you find something wrong with these requirements? They look roughly "correct" to my eye.

                          Experience in field... Can't teach something you don't know yourself]

                          Experience with educational pedagogies... Some background in education is good

                          Recruiting for graduate programs... sure, sounds like a thing a uni would want

                          Teaching diverse student body... this is an urban uni with a large non-white population (25% Black, 30% Hispanic) and massive number of first-generation college students (45%).

                          Experience teaching remote, hybrid, etc.... that's a requirement in 2023

                          • anotherhue 2 years ago
                            To be clear, I'm broadly supportive of inclusion, but my surprise was at the balance of 'actual technical knowledge and ability' and 'community outreach / admin / political agenda fulfilment'.

                            If I think about university choice as 'hiring' a professor to teach my child, I would review their qualifications, and this isn't what I personally would want to see -- though as others have pointed out this is not a technical college so maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree.

                            • alistairSH 2 years ago
                              That's fair enough - this list is unsurprising at CUNY, given its mission and student body. The same list at BigStateU could be a little off-putting, though I tend to believe most of the "woke" requirements are made in good faith. I've read plenty of accounts of minority students who attended top-notch unis (some Ivies, some premier state schools) and felt completely out-of-place for myriad reasons. Colleges should put guardrails in place to ensure these students are successful.
                            • jimbokun 2 years ago
                              Is there evidence that the techniques used for effectively teaching white students, are not effective for teaching non-white students?

                              Are the brains of people from different races really that different?

                            • hgsgm 2 years ago
                              Looks like impossibly excellent qualifications, except maybe one of them if you are "anti-woke".

                              CUNY is a haven for low-wealth non-white people who appreciate being included in opportunities for advancement.

                              • ethbr0 2 years ago
                                Agreed. It's a bit ridiculous to pull a qualifications list from a college that's declared purpose since before 1900 has been mass education, irrespective of sex, race, religion, or ethnic background.

                                If parent wants to make the point I think they're trying to make: pull a collection of * Institutes of Technology's hiring policies.

                                Using Hunter College/CUNY is like pointing to Kentucky Fried Chicken as an example of how restaurants are serving too much fried food.

                                Maybe. But the mission is advertised -- if you choose to walk through that particular door, what you get shouldn't be a surprise.

                                https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_College

                                • anotherhue 2 years ago
                                  I didn't actually know that, thank you for highlighting it.
                                  • zmgsabst 2 years ago
                                    Sounds tragic.

                                    They went from promoting equality for a hundred years to promoting fashionable anti-Asian racism and misandry.

                                    I hope they find their way again.

                                  • galangalalgol 2 years ago
                                    I suspect anti-wokeness is probably part of the complaint, but completely apart from that I find it odd they have teaching staff responsible for some of these tasks. I would want my professors to be a bit more outgoing than the point at the board and tap foot until they get to go back to researching types, but having them go recruit people is a full time job (or should be) and so is making good tests and lessons. Grading tests is also ridiculously time consuming if you use good tests. My reaction to those qualifications is "do you have any other employees or only teachers? How much time do you expect me to spend on all these jobs?".

                                    If it is just a weed out for teachers that don't care about their students success or understand the variety of challenges some of them face, I think they could have done that in a better way than suggesting "if you really care you'll do three full time jobs to help these young adults".

                                    • anotherhue 2 years ago
                                      The faculty/administrative numbers are startling to me, but I expect typical in most institutions.

                                        Academic staff 19,568

  Administrative staff 33,099

  Students 275,000
                                      From their wikipedia page
                                    • Dig1t 2 years ago
                                      “Anti-racism” specifically is the most racist idea ever. The guy who coined it (Kendi) regularly says that current racism is the only way to make up for past racism.

                                      “The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.” -Kendi

                                      So yeah if being anti-woke means you don’t want to participate in a culture of hateful discrimination, then yeah anti-woke sounds normal here.

                                      • newswasboring 2 years ago
                                        I think I am at least an average participant in woke culture. I spend at least a third of my life online (outside remote work etc). I have never heard anti-racism defined like that. Are we sure this is a widely accepted meaning? Maybe it is on college campuses.
                                        • ethbr0 2 years ago
                                          As an engineer who generally supports anti-racism (and -sexism) ideas, I figured it was broadly understood that anti-racism (as a goal) was racist (as a definition).

                                          You can't add 0 to -5 enough times and get back to 0.

                                      • anonymousDan 2 years ago
                                        I don't really understand what your issue is. This is specifically looking for someone interested in CS Education/Pedagogy (i.e. the science of teaching Computer Science), as opposed to a specialist/researcher in a particular CS topic (e.g. distributed systems, mchine learning etc).
                                        • dsfyu404ed 2 years ago
                                          Sounds like they're looking for a career academic who happens to have a CS undergrad and not a CS professional who can teach and work in an academic environment.
                                          • anotherhue 2 years ago
                                            Based on the salary range, you're probably right.
                                        • monero-xmr 2 years ago
                                          > Christopher Eisgruber is president of Princeton University

                                          Completely ignoring the contents of the opinion article, what do you expect this guy to say?

                                          • CoastalCoder 2 years ago
                                            Fair point, but IMHO that's just a reason to double check his reasoning, not to discard his conclusion.
                                          • alphanullmeric 2 years ago
                                            A better title would be that some college degrees are worth their cost. Those averages hide a heavily skewed income distribution with arts majors living off government money or working a job their degree didn’t help them get, whereas STEM/medicine graduates quickly earn back their degree’s cost. Go to college if you want to be an engineer, if you want to write books you’d be wasting other people’s money as much as your own.
                                            • dahart 2 years ago
                                              While there certainly is variation in the outcomes of people by degree, you would want to compare arts majors with degrees to artists without degrees, not compare artists to engineers. You might still find that the degree-holding artists are quite a bit better off than the artists who stopped formal education after high school.

                                              > arts majors living off government money

                                              What does this have to do with anything? There are lots of scientists, engineers, lawyers, construction workers, and basically every job under the sun being paid by government money. If you’re talking about financial outcomes, a job is a job, and govt vs private is irrelevant, right?

                                              • alphanullmeric 2 years ago
                                                Scientists, engineers, lawyers and construction workers get paid for providing a useful service to the government. The government is not contracting artists to make paintings, it’s paying them with no strings attached because nobody else will.
                                              • ethbr0 2 years ago
                                                Eh. I'd look at it a little differently.

                                                We need both engineering and arts/culture in society. And it behooves us that those who produce arts and culture are educated to a higher level in their disciplines.

                                                The Western capitalist system isn't set up to compensate arts/culture (at least outside of lowest-denominator, mass-market stuff).

                                                Consequently, we explicitly create government transfer systems to fund these. Hard economic activity -> profit -> taxes -> funding for arts/culture

                                                If we want to live in a capitalist society, that seems like a fair setup. There are alternative economic systems that fund arts/culture in different ways, which generally aren't as successful on the whole as capitalism.

                                                Are there excesses and easy dead-horse majors to beat in arts/culture? Absolutely.

                                                But part of progress is exploring ideas that seem silly, crazy, or anathema to people at one point. Individual rights and land ownership? Democracy? Universal sufferage?

                                                Everything seems preordained, looking backwards through history. Looking forward, it often seems radical or stupid.

                                                • logicchains 2 years ago
                                                  >We need both engineering and arts/culture in society. And it behooves us that those who produce arts and culture are educated to a higher level in their disciplines

                                                  You don't learn how to make good art/literature in college, you learn it from doing. Most of history's greatest writers and artists didn't go to college.

                                                  • ethbr0 2 years ago
                                                    > Most of history's greatest writers and artists didn't go to college.

                                                    Citation needed.

                                              • habosa 2 years ago
                                                I strongly believe that going to college in the US is a good financial investment and that this will become increasingly true over time. I don’t believe that it’s just, but there are fewer decent jobs for people without a degree every day.

                                                That said, everyone should also read this post explaining why college costs so much. It’s probably not what you think: https://www.conradbastable.com/essays/the-uncharity-of-colle...

                                                • ramesh31 2 years ago
                                                  It is absolutely worth the cost, but not for the education. A college degree is a class filter in this country, and nothing more. It's a ticket that says "I'm one of you" or not to the hiring manager. Us without are seen as inferior people, plain and simple.
                                                  • Eddy_Viscosity2 2 years ago
                                                    Doctors make a lot of money, therefore going to med school is worth the cost. So in order to increase economic prosperity we made more and more med schools until EVERYONE went to med school. Would doctors still make lots of money in this case?

                                                    The general case for college is similar. Graduates only make more (and not all of them too by the way) because they are of limited number and companies use degrees as a metric of competence. It bothers me when I hear politicians and the like saying that everyone should go to collage and get a degree because then everyone will have a highly paid job. It doesn't work like that.

                                                    • lapcat 2 years ago
                                                      > Christopher Eisgruber is president of Princeton University.

                                                      Wow that's a massive conflict of interest in this "opinion" piece.

                                                      Please, please, keep coming to my obscenely expensive institution, which pays my bloated salary!

                                                      • efields 2 years ago
                                                        How do we reconcile this with the increased demand for trade skills?
                                                        • alistairSH 2 years ago
                                                          What is there to reconcile?

                                                          Nobody is claiming you can't make good money running a small plumbing company or finding a niche trade.

                                                          The claim is "on average, those with college degrees out-earn those without college degrees." The existence of skilled tradesmen who earn good incomes doesn't discredit the analysis. They just contribute to average.

                                                          More specifically, the path to making good money in the trades can be long and arduous (relative to college and a desk job). Years as an electrician's apprentice earning low wages. A journeyman electrician makes reasonable money, but it's not until you either strike out on your own (with the risk that entails) OR specialize in something in high demand (time to acquire that skill) that the income really goes up into the range most of us would consider high/good.

                                                          Welding is one trade I see mentioned a lot. Skilled welders (food-grade, off-shore, underwater) can make excelling money. But, the job is still pretty crap compared to many desk jobs. The food-grade jobs are hot, long-hours, on-call, and wages are only good, not great. The off-shore stuff is dangerous and requires weeks/months away from home.

                                                          • pasttense01 2 years ago
                                                            The claim is "on average, those with college degrees out-earn those without college degrees."

                                                            No it's not: instead it's the prescriptive advice that high school graduates should go to college. But if you follow up one of the references:

                                                            "However, when we look at wages for the 25th percentile of college graduates, the picture is not quite so rosy. In fact, there is almost no difference in the wages for this percentile ranking of college graduates and the median wage for high school graduates throughout the entire period. This means that the wages for a sizable share of college graduates below the 25th percentile are actually less than the wages earned by a typical worker with a high school diploma."

                                                            https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2014/09/colleg...

                                                            • dahart 2 years ago
                                                              > No it’s not

                                                              Why do you think that? The claim in the article was clear: “According to repeated analyses by economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, a four-year degree generates an annual return of 14 percent over a 40-year career.”

                                                              There are many many other sources that back up this claim too. I linked to other Fed data above that shows an average ~2x income premium for grads. It’s actually true that college grads, statistically speaking, earn more than non-grads in the U.S.

                                                              > there is almost no difference in the wages for this [25th] percentile ranking of college graduates and the median wage for high school graduates throughout the entire period.

                                                              This quote ironically and hilariously supports the claim that college grads earn more. It’s comparing the 25th percentile of grads to the 50th percentile of non-grads. Hahaha!

                                                          • jimbokun 2 years ago
                                                            Wages for blue collar wages are finally increasing, but white collar wages are raising just as fast.
                                                          • motohagiography 2 years ago
                                                            The value of a degree seemed to have a stepping function, where up until about the late '80's, it was a luxury, but by the 90's it was almost instantaneously necessary for basic jobs, then the dotcom boom reduced its necessity to where by the mid'00's, a generation of young men eschewed them went into tech or trades instead while young women went to school, and then the last decade of the '10's, if you didn't have a degree you were among the left behind.

                                                            The economic downturn we are in now will mean "safe jobs" based on government spending will mostly go to the degreed, but any economic growth will come from people who are good enough at what they do to make things others want and build new firms, imo. The value is sort of polarized, where if your future is rural, trades oriented, or entrepreneurial, school is neither sufficient or necessary, but if you want to participate in the urban(e), managerial, and career oriented economy, there is not a single other qualification.

                                                            If you are thinking about school, do it. If you didn't do it, maintain no illusions about your opportuntities, but if you didn't go and still think you're somehow equal or on a level field to people who did, know that they don't.

                                                            • abeppu 2 years ago
                                                              Ok, maybe college is typically "worth it" in the sense of typically paying for itself.

                                                              But ... costs for American schools have gotten a bit out of control, and I think it's entirely appropriate to view them critically, ask what their purpose is, and how they can achieve that purpose more efficiently.

                                                              - colleges and universities have seen a large increase in the number of administrators, over a period of decades

                                                              - simultaneously, an increasing share of instruction is shifted to adjuncts

                                                              - we're now at the point where a year of private school tuition is less than the salary of an adjunct professor in many cases

                                                              So while students are paying more for education, they're getting less (or at least less instruction from actual faculty). If the point of colleges is education, I think we should begin tracking the fraction of schools' budgets which go to teaching costs (faculty who actually teach, facilities costs for instruction buildings) vs everything else, and only institutions that spend more than k% of their budget on teaching should be eligible for loans and grants. k can be brought down over time.

                                                              As a very distant alternative, perhaps we're now at the point where we should offer a way to track, recognize and acknowledge work done with a private instructor. Suppose we normalized the practice of one to five students pooling funds to hire a different instructor every semester for intensive and personalized instruction with virtually no administration costs, or a small pool of instructors convening a short-lived "school" on a topic. If we were willing to recognize students demonstrating the same amount of proficiency in their chosen area gained outside of a "college", perhaps we could strip away the less useful parts of colleges as institutions.

                                                              • rektide 2 years ago
                                                                It feels really hard to pull apart that those who would get a degree are probably folks who'd push themselves higher up market anyways.

                                                                Going to college is a self-selection towards achievement. Of course those who self select towards elite achievement will do better. I don't think we can, but if we could ask this question of are self selecters - college or no - making more money, I don't think college would be as clear a win. But it's near impossible to split up & categorize the non-college bound would be elite achievers from the rest of non-college bound.

                                                                Also college is just so the default path...

                                                                • 2 years ago
                                                                  • treespace8 2 years ago
                                                                    I find the requirement for having a college degree is similar to the pre-covid world where you had to work from an office. Some jobs absolutely require a person to be on site. And some jobs absolutely require a college degree.

                                                                    But unlike work from home I don't see a revolution coming where its ok to not have a degree. It would not benefit those that have already invested in getting one. Where work from home is beneficial to many.

                                                                    • glitchc 2 years ago
                                                                      The biggest value of college is exposure. Just as travel exposes you to different ways of living, college exposes you to different ways of thinking.
                                                                      • TigeriusKirk 2 years ago
                                                                        Awesome. So student loan forgiveness is a wealth transfer to the more successful and therefore undesirable.
                                                                        • Workaccount2 2 years ago
                                                                          It's blatantly regressive, but it worked for getting young dems out to vote and likely a quite a few young centrists too.
                                                                        • FooBarBizBazz 2 years ago
                                                                          Arms races are rational for each individual, but they impoverish their participants as a group.
                                                                          • Scubabear68 2 years ago
                                                                            The author: “Christopher Eisgruber is president of Princeton University”.
                                                                            • whitemary 2 years ago
                                                                              In the aggregate, sure, but this sort of nonsense diminishes the risk and liability involved. These people belong in Hell.
                                                                              • Lacerda69 2 years ago
                                                                                Bottom line, a college degree is massively overrated and expensive and then some.

                                                                                Source: Im not the president of Princeton.

                                                                                • jdkee 2 years ago
                                                                                  Endowments need to be taxed out of existence.
                                                                                  • huitzitziltzin 2 years ago
                                                                                    Because if we did that then the missing revenue that schools currently get from their endowments would instead come from…

                                                                                    1.) thin air

                                                                                    2.) the government (??? No.)

                                                                                    3.) higher tuition -> hint: pick this option!

                                                                                    The better question is why Harvard and Princeton charge tuition at all! (The answer to that question is not that hard either.)

                                                                                    • bell-cot 2 years ago
                                                                                      How about: 4.) Cutting their massive bureaucracies so far back that the actual students once again outnumber the administrators?
                                                                                      • bradfa 2 years ago
                                                                                        To be fair to Harvard and Princeton, neither actually costs very much to attend if you get accepted but come from a lower/middle income family. The hard part is getting accepted.

                                                                                        Princeton has quite large aid packages outlined here: https://admission.princeton.edu/cost-aid

                                                                                        Harvard has different but also quite amazingly large aid packages for lower and middle-income students: https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/why-harvard/affordabi...

                                                                                        • hgsgm 2 years ago
                                                                                          > Harvard and Princeton charge tuition at all!

                                                                                          Wealth redistribution / market segmentation.

                                                                                        • onlyrealcuzzo 2 years ago
                                                                                          Why?
                                                                                        • Throw389 2 years ago
                                                                                          There is 20% chance person gets raped at college. No degree is worth that!