NY Times and Pew tell us that college degrees are still good
There’s a NY Times article about a Pew Study which proclaims “Recent College Graduates Well-Protected Against Worst Effects of Recession.”
- Although all 21–24 year olds experienced declines in employment and wages during the recession, the decline was considerably more severe for those with only high school or associate degrees.
- Before the recession, just over half of young adults with a high school degree (HS) were employed, compared to almost two-thirds of those with an associate degree (AA) and nearly three-fourths of those with a bachelor’s degree (BA).
- Job losses during the recession made existing employment gaps even worse. The employment declines for those with HS and AA degrees were 16 and 11 percent, respectively, compared with 7 percent for those with a BA degree. …
- Out-of-work college graduates were able to find jobs during the downturn with more success than their less-educated counterparts.
There has been talk on some conservative blogs that maybe young people shouldn’t go to college, that it’s a waste of time and money, and they could make more money as plumbers or working in the oil fields.
I think that skipping college is pretty bad advice if the person doing the skipping does not have some other career lined up, and it’s very rare that 18-year-olds have some quality career waiting for them.
College graduates think that non-college graduates are losers, and no one wants to hire a loser for any job if they have the option to hire a non-loser college graduate instead.
However, because colleges below the top-twenty or so are pretty interchangeable, it’s a very bad idea for lesser qualified college students to attend an expensive program if there’s a low-priced local option available.
* * *
I should mention that the problem with the linked-to articles is that they treat all college degrees the same, making no distinction between prestige of the school or major.
People are failing to make a distinction between individual benefits and societal benefits. For an individual, going to college is absolutely necessary for a good career. That does not mean that society will have more individuals with good careers if more individuals go to college.
Alex
January 10, 2013 at 11:57 am
If you don’t have a career in mind, and can’t go to one of the top-30 schools cheaply, there’s nothing lost by working a few years first, especially if it’s something high-paying. Outside the top 20, “re-entry” students are not discriminated against, and if you can show you supported yourself, your financial aid will be based on *your* income, not your parents.
Successfully completing (4-year) college requires about a 105 IQ and about a 105 CQ (conscientiousness quotient, scaled same way as IQ). So if you’re in the 60-70% that doesn’t meet both of those requirements, going to a 4-year college may not benefit you that much, for several reasons: There’s a good chance you won’t finish. Starting college and not finishing is worse than not going at all – you’ve spent a lot of money, and you worked less (and for less pay) for several years, and you’re basically stuck where you were, but worse off. Even if you do get a degree, it’s likely not going to be one which helps your career a lot – you could have had 4 years more experience, which might count for as much.
Incidentally, it takes less to complete a 2-year degree or shorter vocational training program, so if you’re marginal as a 4-year-college student, you should try one of those, but it should be something which doesn’t cost too much, and which directly applies to a job. No AA in “General studies”.
There are lots of jobs which don’t require a 4-year college degree out there, and some of them are better than what you can get with a crappy degree from a crappy school. And there’s not a lot of loss to delaying college a year or three, so long as you’re really working, and the college you’re putting off isn’t a top-30 STEM program or HYPS. Which for 98% of 18-year-olds, it isn’t.
Anthony
January 10, 2013 at 12:14 pm
“especially if it’s something high-paying”
High paying jobs for 18-year-olds who aren’t college material? Not likely.
The danger in delaying college is that people will just put it off forever.
Nope, this is really bad advice suggesting that people hold off on college. Bad advice for the individual anyway.
Lion of the Blogosphere
January 10, 2013 at 12:41 pm
If he is willing to work with retards or non-Asian minorities and is not status conscious, working and saving everything by living with his parents might be better.
When doing something useful becomes a luxury the mostly useless sectors like education hypertophy to maintain equilibrium.
Nicolai Yezhov
January 10, 2013 at 1:53 pm
Some – many – people are better off putting off college forever. They’re going to start college, spend a bunch of money, not be able to handle the work, and end up without a degree and with a lot more debt. Four years living with one’s parents, working entry-level office or warehouse work, will leave them at 22 with less debt and better job prospects than a bunch of unconnected classes in which they got Cs and Ds and no degree or work experience to show for their time.
While the construction industry got hammered in the current recession, there’s still a bunch of work for young men who are willing to work in the cold and mud or in 100-degree weather, and actually show up at 7am. Or at 11pm, if that’s when the shift starts. Hell – actually showing up on time and not doing drugs makes a 19-year-old with no college a better prospect than a lot of guys who already have jobs. There are lots of jobs for guys with a reasonably clean driving record who can pass a drug test in all sorts of fields, where the employer doesn’t give a shit about college, as long as the guy can read a warning label enough to not kill himself or other people. For the girls (and some of the guys), there’s plenty of work for someone who can be pleasant on the phone to retards and assholes and/or can put stuff in alphabetical order and correctly transcribe handwritten stuff. It doesn’t pay great, but 4 years of it is a better recommendation for more responsible work than is a bullshit degree from a bullshit college and no work experience.
Anthony
January 10, 2013 at 4:27 pm
“there’s still a bunch of work for young men who are willing to work in the cold and mud or in 100-degree weather, and actually show up at 7am. Or at 11pm, if that’s when the shift starts”
And why is this better than going to college?
Lion of the Blogosphere
January 10, 2013 at 5:48 pm
Because college costs money whether you borrow it or your parents pay and it has opportunity costs. If in 4 years he can accumulate more than most 50+ college grads have in their 401(k) the only reason to go is if he wants to be rich or he can’t stand working with the wrong sort of people.
Nicolai Yezhov
January 10, 2013 at 8:08 pm
“High paying jobs for 18-year-olds who aren’t college material?”
Apprentice plumber or electrician?
Tarl
January 11, 2013 at 10:09 am
You need to get out of NYC more often. There are lots of guys who prefer to work with their backs and not have to sit and read a lot to get through school. Guys have told me this, total hatred of classrooms after their k-12 ordeal.
And I know people working in trades, driving, nurshing, heavy equipment, who are perfectly happy where they are, making good money for flyover, and who never wanted to go to college. In fact I feel pretty stupid for making such a big deal about going back to school myself. It’s as if I had nothing better to do that paid anything. But then I like reading and all that.
caroljm36
January 11, 2013 at 12:58 pm
“Successfully completing (4-year) college requires about a 105 IQ and about a 105 CQ (conscientiousness quotient, scaled same way as IQ). So if you’re in the 60-70% that doesn’t meet both of those requirements, going to a 4-year college may not benefit you that much, for several reasons: There’s a good chance you won’t finish.”
I did not meet both of those requirements since my CQ (during the last years of college) was about 85 since my work ethic was probably in the lowest 10% at my college since I rarely studied nor did I devote much time to academics besides attending classes. I mostly used the university library to explore extracurricular domains outside of my declared major (cell molecular biology) such as psychology, political philosophy, ethics, and economics and turned in term papers inadequately completed (to my and the rubric’s satisfaction due to my dilatory attitude) and homework assignments were turned in about 60% of the time. I got my estimate of 85 (about 16th percentile of the general population as opposed to being around the 10th) by adjusting upward since those who attend college have a mean work ethic higher than the general population.
Nevertheless, due to my 1400 intellect, I graduated with a BS in cell molecular biology without needing much maturity and work ethic to perform minimally as I graduated with a 3.0 GPA (fairly average, not an impressive number) in upper division courses (a period of time, unlike my freshman year, when my passion for science has waned except for some instances when I felt compelled to get the highest grade in my class on examinations which I succeed in accomplishing).Due to my personal experience and analysis of Steve Hsu’s University of Oregon data, I often claim that it is practically impossible for a 1400 to flunk out of most colleges unless he/she manages to neglect basic responsibilities such as attending class for examinations and doing a small amount of coursework.
There was an occasion when i mentioned to a Catholic priest that I was a cell-molecular biology major, and he replied I must be “smart” (assuming that he was basing the judgment from only knowing my major, not my conscientiousness or GPA). I was bewildered since I did not know how to interpret his remark as a complement or flattery. If he knew I was the consummate slacker then, maybe I would be amused, but from my perspective, the coursework did not seem intellectually overwhelming to me.
Black_Rose
January 11, 2013 at 12:03 am
College is increasingly valuable relative to not going and decreasingly valuable relative to having gone in the past. So the correct private response is to go to college and the correct public response is to lower tuition.
SP
January 10, 2013 at 12:23 pm
NY Times and Pew tell us that college degrees are still good
The Times & Pew left out important variables because A) Liberals and especially journalists are stupid and B) they have a partisan interest in propping up the college bubble which may be deflating. According to the WSJ, a survey from Moody’s shows half of all colleges are experiencing enrollment declines.
Some factors the Times and Pew left out were:
* Whether college still come out ahead after factoring in tuition.
* Failing to control for race and the fact many of the HS school only or HS dropout students are chronically low IQ.
* Breaking out the value of degree by major. Girls with liberal arts degree working in HR or marketing for $35-50,000 a year don’t get the same long-term income payoff as a computer engineering grad from any decent program.
And even for the highest paid college graduates in the best paying majors, they are still being ripped off because the universities artificially keep them in school too long by saddling undergrads with waste-of-time basic courses and overcharge students in tuition. An undergrad degree in any major should be finished in two or three years with only 60-90 credits, not the unnecessary 120. There’s no reason for college to be this long and drawn out.
Dartmouth just voted to screw their undergrads by no longer accepting AP credits to prevent Dartmouth undergrads from graduating early and with less debt:
Registrar to restrict AP, IB credits
http://thedartmouth.com/2013/01/09/news/credits
The College’s new policy to stop accepting pre-matriculation credits for incoming students may impact students who wish to save on tuition by graduating early. The change, voted upon by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences on Nov. 12, will take effect beginning with the Class of 2018, according to Registrar Meredith Braz.
The Undiscovered Jew
January 10, 2013 at 12:51 pm
Only 5% of college degrees are in engineering, and EE, ME, and ChE jobs are projected by the BLS to grow more slowly than employment in general. Graduates in “math and science” not engineering have ZERO prospect of degree related employtment. It’s medical school, dental school, or PhD program for the science grads and only a small minority of them can get into these.
The accounting degree is only “factitiously” useful. Four f—— years to learn auditing, reporting regs, and tax law. It’s RETARDED. And what do finance people have? It’s useless if they don’t know someone.
The BIG problem is people who’ve never worked in the real world, professors, are entrusted by selfish businessmen to do “training” businesses used to do themeselves.
Nicolai Yezhov
January 10, 2013 at 2:04 pm
Believe or not. Accounting is one of these disciplines that can be self taught, just by reading and studying textbook examples.
A lot of computer science majors aren’t able find work in the Tech industry, simply because the IT field is about knowing a specific technology, which isn’t usually taught in the colleges, but in technical schools. What good is it, if you only know computing theory, but can’t operate a network server with a Microsoft operating system.
Just Speculating
January 10, 2013 at 2:31 pm
Only 5% of college degrees are in engineering, and EE, ME, and ChE jobs are projected by the BLS to grow more slowly than employment in general.
Even if the BLS projections are accurate, slower-than-average job growth in those fields is scarcely an issue if the number of degree holders also grows slowly. Because only a small minority of college students have high enough I.Q. scores to study engineering, the danger of oversaturation is minimal. It’s not like law school, which is easy enough to be within the grasp of anyone with an I.Q. in excess of maybe 110 or even 105.
Peter
ironrailsironweights
January 10, 2013 at 4:47 pm
In order to take the CPA exam one must have the equivalent of a masters in accounting in most jurisdictions. OBVIOUSLY one can teach himself accounting. College is a rip off, and it has been since paper and printing.
This idea that a JD doesn’t require the IQ of a BS in engineering keeps resurfacing. The diff isn’t IQ, it’s supply and demand. There is such a thing as verbal IQ, and the most g-loaded and most reliable subtest of the Wechler is vocab.
The 5% of college grads with eng degrees are not even close to all being in the 95th percentile of college grads in IQ.
Nicolai Yezhov
January 10, 2013 at 7:20 pm
Accounting is a good major if you want a guarantee of a job out of college. Go to a good state school, major in accounting, and you will probably land a job with Big 4 or a slightly less prestigious firm for 50-60K out of college.
The problem is that many people do not understand accounting. Intro and Intermediate level accounting courses at my university always have the lowest average GPA. Keep in mind that these are pretty smart kids who scored 1200-1350 on their SAT, yet many of them have incredible difficulty understanding the concepts. I’m not really sure why this is because accounting isn’t rocket science. I have tutored for the courses and some people just don’t get it even with help. I guess you have to have a certain type of mind to be good at accounting.
To the poster below, so what if accounting can be self-taught? You can teach yourself a lot of things if you are smart, but without actually going to college and getting the degree/credit hours (plus having career opportunities from school), you are going to be SOL in terms of jobs. Plus, as a lot of fairly smart people can’t understand accounting with a teacher, I can’t see them teaching themselves. I don’t think I could have taught myself accounting–and I am pretty damn good at it.
James
January 10, 2013 at 10:04 pm
“Even if the BLS projections are accurate, slower-than-average job growth in those fields is scarcely an issue if the number of degree holders also grows slowly. Because only a small minority of college students have high enough I.Q. scores to study engineering, the danger of oversaturation is minimal. It’s not like law school, which is easy enough to be within the grasp of anyone with an I.Q. in excess of maybe 110 or even 105.”
Law school is pretty generally harder than engineering. Engineering probably requires an IQ of 115-120, law is probably a bit higher.
“A lot of computer science majors aren’t able find work in the Tech industry, simply because the IT field is about knowing a specific technology, which isn’t usually taught in the colleges, but in technical schools. What good is it, if you only know computing theory, but can’t operate a network server with a Microsoft operating system.”
Computer Science is not the same thing as IT, software engineering, or computer programming. There are lots of people who work in computer science and are hired based on their creativity and thinking skills, not their understanding of specific technologies. For example: Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon…
If I were hiring a software engineer / computer scientist, I would take a physicist or a mathematician with NO programming experience without reservation.
Alex
January 11, 2013 at 4:38 am
Law school is pretty generally harder than engineering. Engineering probably requires an IQ of 115-120, law is probably a bit higher.
I wish people would stop assuming you need a high IQ to enter graduate/professional schools. This assertion is as old as IQ testing, but where is the evidence? 72 white South African engineering students were given the advanced Raven and their raw scores ranged from 16 to 35 (out of 36).
http://psychology.uwo.ca/faculty/rushtonpdfs/RavensIVb.pdf
The study states that a raw score of 29 (the mean of the white engineering students) equates to an IQ of 118 and a raw score of 23 equates to IQ 103, so assuming linear extrapolation (which might be invalid at the extremes), the IQ’s of the white engineering students ranged from 86 to 133.
When it comes to attorneys, page 4 of the following link shows that a colossal 25% have IQ’s below 110:
http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/reprints/2005g-jobs-life.pdf
Some have criticized this study on the grounds that they were tested on the Wonderlic IQ test (which takes only 12 minutes) however the Wonderlic has 50 questions, giving it a colossal reliability of 0.94 according to Wikipedia. It’s unclear if the attorneys in this study passed the bar exam but seeing as almost all law students eventually do, it’s unlikely that would changes the numbers much.
You don’t even necessarily need a high IQ to get into the best university in the world (though obviously it helps). A sample eighty-six Harvard undergraduates (33 men, 53 women), with a mean age of 20.7 years (SD = 3.3) participated in a study on creativity which recruited them from sign-up sheets posted on campus, and their IQ’s (on an abbreviated version of the WAIS-R) ranged from 97 to 148 with a mean of 128:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14498785
Now it’s true that the AVERAGE IQ in all of these studies is high which means IQ plays an important role, but it’s a myth that high IQ is ESSENTIAL. It just helps a lot, but so does conscientiousness, so does coming from a well connected family that can get you into grad school or Harvard, so does willingness to cheat on exams, plagiarize essays, sleep with the professor and hog credit in group assignments etc.
The Legendary Linda
January 11, 2013 at 12:08 pm
There is such a thing as verbal IQ, and the most g-loaded and most reliable subtest of the Wechler is vocab.
The Wechsler vocab is highly reliable (most because there are so many items, since it;s so easy for test designers to think up words to ask people to define) however it’s no longer the most g loaded. On the WAIS-IV, both Figure Weights and Arithmetic are now more g loaded than vocab. Arithmetic has been increasing in g loading because people no longer practice it as much (thanks to calculators) and thus must rely on reasoning. Vocabulary is decreasing in g loading because society is becoming increasingly stratified into different subcultures who watch different cable channels and read different blogs, each with our own distinct vocabularies (words like “SWPL” and “Bobos”).
The Legendary Linda
January 11, 2013 at 12:20 pm
One of my co-worker’s son went out to North Dakota to work in the oil fields and he ended up going to community college up there instead in a two-year degree in oil equipment welding or something. So even if you want to get your hands dirty, you’ll likely still end up going to college anyway.
albert magnus
January 10, 2013 at 1:42 pm
I am very curious as to what the hiring situation in North Dakota is really like. You hear claims that anyone who applies, even with no experience at all, will get hired right on the spot as a $50K roustabout. Maybe that’s true, but I have my doubts. If it were THAT easy there’s be a huge influx of job-seeker and getting hired would be a challenge.
Peter
ironrailsironweights
January 10, 2013 at 1:49 pm
Maybe, but there’s nowhere to live. So it’s sleep in your car or spend your whole paycheck on rent or live in a “man camp” and get raped?
Nicolai Yezhov
January 10, 2013 at 1:56 pm
Some people will risk rape for a good paycheck.
Blog Raju
January 10, 2013 at 4:39 pm
I very much doubt that homosexual rape is a common occurrence in the oil workers’ trailer camps. If it has ever happened at all.
Peter
ironrailsironweights
January 10, 2013 at 4:42 pm
My 19-year-old brother is making about that there, though he’s working more than 40 hours a week.
It’s shitty work for most people though. Cold and wet and dirty. It should probably pay more, but the price of manual labor has been destroyed by mass immigration.
JPG
January 10, 2013 at 11:36 pm
Shocking news: College graduates are more likely to be employed!
Those researchers at Pew are smart; they probably went to college.
Blog Raju
January 10, 2013 at 4:47 pm
Another good option is to get an entry level job right out of high school in some corporation or state/local agency and take advantage of tuition reimbursement. By the time someone in this situation earns a 4-year degree or even a 2-year degree, they will have had time to prove themselves on the job and make internal connections and will be an attractive internal candidate for promotions.
By entry level job, I mean even something as entry level as the mail room or clerical, or even some type of facilities maintenance staff or basic assembler. I’ve seen it happen many times.
Or one could always join active duty military or the reserves or National Guard and take advantage of their tuition reimbursements.
E. Rekshun
January 10, 2013 at 6:36 pm
“There has been talk on some conservative blogs that maybe young people shouldn’t go to college, that it’s a waste of time and money, and they could make more money as plumbers or working in the oil fields.”
This seems to be prolish sentiment, since upper-middle class people tend to avoid careers that are “hands-on” and concrete, not theoretical and abstract.
I think that perpetuates a negative stereotype of conservatives being too “practical” and narrow intellectually while failing to appreciate aesthetic value and undervaluing a broad foundation of cultural and scientific knowledge that does not have any immediate and obvious economic application.
Black_Rose
January 11, 2013 at 12:27 am
The Republicans should go a bit populist and target college for next election. “It’s good that our offspring get an excellent education, but clearly the current system has severe problems that lead to tragic outcomes. If we can heal the planet and slow the rise of the oceans, why can’t we reform higher education?”
Go for what UJ has proposed: lose the gen ed requirement, student loans can be discharged in bankruptcy, and/or — why not — things like setting hard limits to tuition, requiring zero tuition for universities with endowments past, say, $1bn, and so on. There’s plenty of government whip if they need it.
Since you’ve harangued us for it, how about some big government, guys?
Students would switch their allegiance in a heartbeat. And what’s the downside? Annoying the faculty?
Glengarry
January 13, 2013 at 5:09 pm
The Republicans should go a bit populist and target college for next election.
These ideas may be gaining steam with GOP governors like Rick Scott in Florida, Rick Perry of Texas, and Wisconsin’s Scott Walker. Walker in particular has given a way for regular four year degree undergrads to test out of the gened via online testing. This should be much more popular than CLEP exams because they can be taken via a computer from anywhere and will save students tuition dollars on a per credit basis and by allowing them to graduate sooner.
For both fun and to build more momentum, I suggest changing your cybernames and, without mentioning HBD, listing those reforms on mainstream GOP watering holes such as Ace of Spades and Breitbart. The mainstreamers are too focused on electoral politics and could use some advice about how to defund the Cathedral. Beating Democrat politicians would be easy if the Cathedral apparatus is unplugged.
Tell Republican commenters about both the financial benefits to students and the partisan benefits of these reforms, which, purely coincidentally, would lead to mass layoffs of the most of the tenured professors in the country.
On a more neutral platform, such as Facebook, only mention the financial benefits. Any resulting layoffs of our magnificent liberal arts professoriate are, again, purely coincidental.
The Undiscovered Jew
January 13, 2013 at 8:01 pm