Some wise advice about college
This WSJ article may be more than a year old, but it contains valuable advice about college. For example:
Consider this: Opting for the lowest price, or working excessive hours to avoid debt, increases the odds that a student will drop out. Students who go to a lesser college when they’ve qualified for a highly selective one are 20% less likely to graduate, our research shows. Is it really worth the risk?
That’s a rather interesting statistic. I bet a lot of my readers may have assumed the opposite, that the student would be more likely to drop out by going to the selective college where he may be overwhelmed by the more difficult material.
But I have two possible explanations for the actual observed phenomenon:
(1) Going to a lesser college may expose the student to a bunch of losers, and the student picks up their loser attitudes towards school.
(2) Parents who would let their kid attend a lesser college don’t value education that much, so they don’t provide their children with the proper support and expectations for becoming college graduates.
And then I really enjoyed reading this observation:
The last major bias is putting too much weight on examples one has heard about recently, or seen close at hand. When people read news articles about students who borrowed $100,000 for undergraduate education and have been unemployed since graduating, they tend to believe that this will happen to them (and that it will last forever). Likewise, people put lots of stock in the recurring (and misleading) warnings that college is a bubble or that it isn’t worth the money in the long run.
These stories make for captivating headlines, but all the evidence is that college pays off better than ever. And, of course, virtually all the people who issue the warnings have sent their own children to college.
Conservatives who talk about a “college bubble” remind me of liberals who promote certain policies with respect to public education, but who send their own children to private school.
I believe that
1) Too many people are going to college, and
2) My kids should go to college.
Am I a hypocrite? No, for the obvious reason that I care more about my own kids than I do about other people. There is a big difference between wanting to spend your own money looking out for your kids versus proposing that the government spend money on everybody.
There are 3 reasons why people who go graduate from college make more money than people who don’t:
1) They have higher IQs and are more conscientious. College didn’t make them that way; the college degree simply demonstrates it.
2) Many jobs require a college degree to take advantage of this filtering effect. This is partly why people who have degrees make more than people of similar backgrounds and IQs than people who don’t. It’s why parents should encourage their kids to go to college.
3) Depending on the major and your IQ, you really can learn things in college that are useful on the job.
College doesn’t make you smarter, and only people in the top roughly 15% can really benefit from a college-level education. Those are the people who it is in society’s interest to go to college. But, under our current system, anyone in the top half can get a degree from somewhere. As long as reason #2 holds, individuals are rational to get a degree.
John
February 8, 2013 at 11:38 pm
It is not that college is inherently bad. It is that too many DUMB people are going to college.
AsianDude
February 9, 2013 at 1:09 am
What should these dumb people be doing instead? Would they be dumber had they not go? I think so.
Just Speculating
February 9, 2013 at 12:16 pm
I disagree. They would be equally dumb, they would just get student loan debt with some ego boost.
If fewer people went to college, jobs that require a college degree would simply convert to hiring high school grads. Of course, from an individual’s perspective, it makes sense to go to college. I was speaking from a societal perspective.
AsianDude
February 9, 2013 at 2:50 pm
Societal Perspective:
Certain civil servant positions (working class jobs) are now requiring applicants to have a college degree or preferably have some college experience. A cop, fireman and postal carrier w/ a college degree trumps one w/o. People with college degrees generally work more efficiently and smarter, not to mention they are easier to communicate with.
Just Speculating
February 9, 2013 at 10:34 pm
Further note: Lion did mentioned that college grads in the IT field were better technicians than those without, and he’s in the IT field.
Just Speculating
February 9, 2013 at 10:39 pm
I think I may have said that the best computer programmers have non-STEM degrees. Although there is not much demand for humanist computer programmers any more. Employers want code monkeys.
Lion of the Blogosphere
February 10, 2013 at 12:10 am
Of course a college graduate is going to perform better in just about everything. They were selected for enough intelligence and dilligence to make it through college. What I would like to suggest is that the same person is unlikely to have been a substantially worse worker had he not gone to college. For folks with medium or below medium intelligence, college doesn’t do much to increase their human capital.
AsianDude
February 10, 2013 at 12:47 pm
There is surely something about the kids who chose a lesser college other than the mere fact they chose a lesser college that explains their lower graduation rate.
Dr. Baum is Senior Fellow at the George Washington University School of Education and Human Development and an independent higher education policy analyst.
Ha. The guy who teaches a bogus subject at a notoriously expensive school with low bang-for-the-buck (has never been in the top 50) says don’t get fixated on college debt and the prospects of post-graduation employment. Come to GWU and major in something stupid, and damn the expense!
On the other hand, if the parents’ savings have been depleted by stock-market fluctuations, a bigger loan may be a sensible course, since they are likely to recoup some of their losses over time.
Huh? If you don’t have cash then your only choice is a loan, regardless of whether or not this is “sensible”. And what does the kid taking out a loan have to do with the parents recouping their stock market losses?
many experts hope and expect the economy to look quite different by the time today’s high school students finish college.
I will bet you right now that the economy will not be better in September 2015 (four years from the article’s publication) than it is now. Although “quite different” includes “much worse”, so he could still be right, heh heh.
Tarl
February 9, 2013 at 1:33 am
I didn’t say that everything in the article was wise, or that the authors weren’t serving their own interests.
Lion of the Blogosphere
February 9, 2013 at 9:01 am
“But I have two possible explanations for the actual observed phenomenon:”
I have a third possible explanation: elite schools (with the exception of STEM schools like MIT or Cal Tech) grade easier than less elite schools. State schools, in particular, are much less beholden to private donors, have bigger classes and so use more objective tests, and don’t coddle their students. They also let in more marginal students, so they assume some percentage will fail out as a matter of course.
There’s definitely a college bubble. That doesn’t mean that some smart kids won’t benefit from going to college. Just like there being a housing bubble a few years ago didn’t mean people wouldn’t benefit from living in houses.
DaveinHackensack
February 9, 2013 at 1:42 am
Yep, public universities definitely grade harder than private, and the material is only a tiny bit easier.
T
February 9, 2013 at 12:58 pm
+1
MC
February 9, 2013 at 1:53 pm
College is not, and has never been, even in the old days, about acquiring knowledge for the sake of it.
Knowledge does not make you happier, does not make you more successful with women, improves your chances of survival only marginally, and does not bring you satisfaction, as solved questions always open new ones. If anything, knowledge actually makes you on the long run far more likely to be a dysfunctional and childless individual. Greek philosophers offer a striking example of this.
It is not either about “getting a job” in the sense “being able to eat”. If you want just the bare financial minimum to get by, a manual or “low” (policeman, plumber, mechanic, farmer…) job will do that. Most inhabitants of the Earth are satisfied to just “get by”, for the record.
For humanist types, college is about acquiring the knowledge necessary to “make a difference” and “help people”; it indeed makes sense for medics and researchers, for example, to be knowledgeable about their field.
But for most people, people who are not especially religious or altruistic, college is about a single thing: dominating others. Rising socially in a State-approved manner. Being able to tell people that you have earned the right to dominate them. To have more than what they have: a bigger house, more freedom, more responsibilities, more authority.
If you go to a low-tier college, the social ascension part disappears. And so does your motivation.
It is surprising that you forgot this point.
Thomas
February 9, 2013 at 1:43 am
a.The ruling class wants kids to continue to rack up huge student loan debts without even thinking about it, and doesn’t want kids to work during college where they might actually develop useful skills. Typical. Take everything printed in the WSJ with a grain of salt. They are just another left-liberal outlet, but they very cleverly have an establishment-right editorial board, so conservatives are tricked into reading highly left wing viewpoints in the rest of the paper and accepting them without much thought.
b. I don’t think that 20% figure tells us anything useful about regular middle class (dog whistle) students. I would like to see the methodology that went into it. I frankly think they made it up. If it has any connection to reality, I suspect it’s getting skewed on the one end by people who shouldn’t really be at any college at all because they aren’t smart or hard working enough, on the other end by people who didn’t really need college to succeed and figured it out, and in the middle by high achieving minorities whose families (intentionally or unintentionally) sabotage their academic efforts (see education realist’s post on this). I’m picturing high IQ kids from the ghetto who get a diversity is real great scholarships to HYP but whose families convince them to stay closer to home, where they get dragged down by various ghetto problems and are forced to drop out. Point being, I don’t think it tells us anything
c. College still makes sense because of the credential/signal it provides –but– one should not choose a college based on the wall street journal or any other ruling class publication (especially not the US news and world report rankings). If you are a middle class white, you should be comparing on cost and looking for ways to reduce cost. I would agree with the authorMy state has a program where if you do two years at a community college with a certain GPA (which should be easy given the low standards and low competition) then you can transfer automatically to any public university, including pseudo-elite UVA. Our author won’t like this option because it’s prole (when I was a high school senior I thought this option was way too prole for me, and I regret it) but, it’s a great great deal. No employer will ever know that you did 2 years at a CC, your degree looks just like everyone else’s. It is a legitimate concern that kids might pick up the bad habits of their community college classmates, but good parenting can do a lot to prevent this (ie, tell your kids directly that there are a lot of losers at community college and not to act like them).
d. “Am I a hypocrite? No, for the obvious reason that I care more about my own kids than I do about other people.” That doesn’t mean you’re not a hypocrite…
e. Upper-middle class striver parents need to stop thinking like our highest goal should be to get our kids an analyst job at Goldman Sachs. “Climbing the ladder” to a stable high paying job with a firm is going to be a damn near unwinnable game going forward. If you have $100k saved up for your kid’s college expenses, you should consider giving the kid some or all of that money to start their own business instead. Alternatively, consider giving it to them for a downpayment on a house. Ideally all of the above. Parents need to stop with the “kids need to support themselves, it’s good for them” nonsense. Help your kids out as much as you can, in every way you can. Throwing your kid to the wolves is not good for their development or any of that crap. Good parenting is good for a kid’s development.
f. Bottom line to high schoolers: ask yourself- “Are my parents fuck-you rich?” If the answer is no, then you cannot treat college like summer camp and expect to succeed afterwards. You have to think good and hard about what you want to get out of college. You have to evaluate colleges based on how likely they are to get you what you want at a price you can afford. Not whether they have a rock climbing wall. If you don’t know what you want out of college, DON’T GO YET. Take a gap year.
gap year
February 9, 2013 at 2:03 am
It only makes serious financial sense to get a degree if the kid KNOWS and is dedicated to staying ON TRACK to go to med school, law school, or business school. Otherwise, forget about it.
fakeemail
February 9, 2013 at 3:00 am
Why rule out getting a job in Wall St., Sillicon Valley, or Top Consulting?
AsianDude
February 9, 2013 at 11:40 am
“Small wonder: It’s always difficult to pay now, or soon, for benefits we won’t enjoy until years in the future. What’s more, monthly payments are precise, while the numbers attached to a better career in the future are vague and uncertain. Psychologically, it’s hard to give them proper weight in the decision.
The result is that even people who think they’re looking long term often focus on what a student will earn at that first job out of college, and use the neighbor who just graduated into a tough economy as a benchmark.”
This part is very true. As a high school student, I had a shot — not much of one, but a decent shot: no hooks or connections, but an SAT in the upper 1400s back when that meant something — of getting into a top-class university. But while breaking my back busing tables for minimum wage, seeing what an Ivy League education would cost was absolutely terrifying. My family was able to contribute to my education, but while they could cover most of the costs if I went to my state school (where I had a $1k scholarship), attending an Ivy — about $25-30k back then — would have left me over $80,000 in debt when I graduated. To my young self, that was 20,000 hours of labor!
At age 16 or so, I had no idea that my wage would nearly triple the day I walked into my first job ($25k per year) out of school, and that number might have been much higher had I had a more prestigious degree and the networking opportunities that come with a Princeton or Harvard education.
College is worth the money, and even at the outrageous prices the Ivies charge, it’s probably still worth it to go to the best school you can get accepted into. What do they charge these days? $40k? If you can snag a good job after getting a degree from there, you might well earn enough to save $40k in a single year if you live frugally.
Several years after graduating and entering the working world, I had the chance to go to a foreign “ivy” for grad school and pursue my master’s and PhD while working. Tuition was cheap enough that working full-time easily enabled me to pay it, and I’m now in the PhD course. The prestige of this school impresses people to no end and opens all kinds of doors. Imagine if I could have had this in my home country at age 21!
High schoolers reading this: if you have the remotest chance of getting into an Ivy League school, and you plan to study something useful, do it. The costs look scary now, but a decade from now they won’t!
Kyo
February 9, 2013 at 3:32 am
“College is worth the money”
No it isn’t, on average.
“I had no idea that my wage would nearly triple the day I walked into my first job”
This no longer happens for the vast majority of graduates. If you could go back in time and give your advice to your younger self it would be very useful. However your advice would damage the earnings potential of young people today. New graduates get paid about the same as semi-skilled laborers, because the supply of new graduates and semi-skilled laborers are both far higher than the market can bear.
” If you can snag a good job after getting a degree from there, you might well earn enough to save $40k in a single year if you live frugally.”
This only happens to a very, very small number of students. It certainly doesn’t happen to the average student at Harvard, where the median starting salary is $54100
T
February 9, 2013 at 1:25 pm
Well, I was doing a little rounding with the “triple the wages” part; I in fact went from the minimum wage ($5.05 at the time; turn of the millennium), which is $10k for a two-thousand-hour year, to $28k, which works out to 2.8 times what was bestowed on me while slinging hash at the cafeteria as an undergrad. A new grad would have to make $42k today for this to be true. That’s a little high in today’s economy, but is still reachable.
Someone who came out one level above that $54k-earning Harvard grad is the kind of example I’m talking about. Lots — well, it *feels* like “lots” — of people at investment banks and in finance are making $60-70k right out of school, and $100k before they’re 30. I know people living at home who are getting their student loans paid off pretty quick this way. That would have been shameful until about 2009-2010, but not so much now.
Kyo
February 9, 2013 at 4:03 pm
It’s worth it to go to an ivy league school at a high cost. It’s not worth it to go to the #33 school at a high cost compared to the #65 school at low cost.
gap year
February 9, 2013 at 1:30 pm
Exactly. To use T’s data above, I don’t yet make what an *average* Harvard grad gets paid right out of college, and I’m in my mid-30s (and had SAT scores that would have been acceptable, though below average, had I entered Harvard). The Harvard degree would long ago have paid for itself.
Kyo
February 9, 2013 at 4:05 pm
HYPS and a few of the other super elite schools now have very generous financial aid programs that significantly reduce the cost of attendance for everyone but the upper-middle/upper class. Households with income greater than 180K are the only ones that pay full sticker. If your household income is less than 100K, these schools may end up being cheaper than your local state school.
This only applies to the super elite schools. Lower-Ivy’s and their counterparts are not so generous.
Asian of Reason
February 9, 2013 at 2:30 pm
There is a third factor. Motivation to compete. At the less competitive school winning means less.
The harder the competition the better I did grade wise.
Nicolai Yezhov
February 9, 2013 at 6:24 am
“The harder the competition the better I did grade wise.”
That does not make much sense. If the competition is easier, then you will work less, but since standards are relaxed, then that would compensate for your lack of effort.
Black_Rose
February 9, 2013 at 3:56 pm
“Parents who would let their kid attend a lesser college don’t value education that much, so they don’t provide their children with the proper support and expectations for becoming college graduates.”
Even though my Dad graduated Harvard and his Dad Stonyhurst and Princeton and my Mom earned an MA in English that’s my parents.
Excuses, excuses.
Nicolai Yezhov
February 9, 2013 at 6:28 am
Maybe LOB can blog on the nouveau pauvre, like taxi driving peers. These people’s story is NOT regression to the mean. Their story is not fitting into the industrial age.
Nicolai Yezhov
February 9, 2013 at 6:35 am
Less selective colleges are usually state schools with a lot of commuters who work part or full-time or people who go there but transfer out. That’s why the graduation rate is so low. If you’re actually college-material it won’t matter where you go, you’ll finish.
Chris
February 9, 2013 at 8:26 am
College is a great investment for smart people. Unfortunately, the current mantra is that everyone should go to college and almost everyone buys into this. So you have lots of marginal students arriving on campuses where they aren’t even qualified to take regular classes. So they enroll in “remedial” classes to bring their skills up to regular standards; a majority never earn a degree. To make matters worse, dull people are unable to understand what a poor investment schools such as the University of Phoenix are. All of the debts piled up by low ability students seeking college degree cannot be discharged in bankruptcy.
I think people who attend a selective school are more likely to graduate because they value it more; sort of like taking better care of an expensive sports car than the old beater you bought off Craigslist. In addition, school is likely to more enjoyable and one is likely to perceive greater value when one is amongst one’s peers rather than a bunch of yahoos.
I pointed this out in a comment on another thread, but there are now quite a number of public university honors colleges that are buying better students with scholarships. The admission standards in the programs is quite high. It depends on what you want, but some of these schools offer a pretty good deal in my view.
ColRebSez
February 9, 2013 at 9:16 am
Another possible explanation is a commitment effect, if you (or your family) have paid a lot of money to attend college you will feel worse about dropping out.
James B. Shearer
February 9, 2013 at 9:25 am
I think the difference is that degree in economics or communications from a tier one school may actually lead to a job and students will stick with it. However, a degree in economics or communications from a third tier university is a waste of time. Thus, students drop out of third tier universities where they would stick it out at tier one.
superdestroyer
February 9, 2013 at 4:26 pm
College doesn’t make you smarter, and only people in the top roughly 15% can really benefit from a college-level education.”
Which is why top colleges are no less than 50% male. As you go down the quality scale, the percentage of females rises. Men of limited ability more willing realize the benefit doesn’t justify the cost because of competition once they get out. Women of limited ability are less willing to believe they are not special snowflakes who will be in demand even though the market for the jobs is flooded with more qualified applicants.
not too late
February 9, 2013 at 10:03 am
The college graduate “wage premium” is very frustrating to me because it helps schools justify what I think are unjustified tuition levels. Tuition is out of control due to lax student loan standards and something must be done. The fact that a high school graduate can now only get the shittiest McDonalds job for minimum wage doesn’t justify what is going on.
Steven
February 9, 2013 at 10:49 am
Radical egalitarianism just turns everything into a prisoner’s dilemma. All parties defect, and everyone is worse off.
chucho
February 9, 2013 at 11:31 am
Those kids are probably dropping out for financial reasons, not because the slackerdom of their peers has worn off on them. Also dropping out does not necessarily equal a fate of being a loser. There have been studies showing people who are accepted to elite colleges, but attend less selective colleges, are not out earned by their blue stocking peers. In fact even those rejected, but who had equal SAT scores to those accepted, will not be out earned.
“In the study, the better predictor of earnings was the average SAT scores of the most selective school a teenager applied to and not the typical scores of the institution the student attended.”
from
http://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/the-college-solution/2011/03/01/the-ivy-league-earnings-myth
And back to the dropouts, it could be that some of those accepted, but who opted to attend elsewhere, were considered under lax standards due to their background (the disparity of SAT benchmarks for asians VS some other races is considerable at elite schools) which could imply they were not fully qualified to begin with.
islandmommy
February 9, 2013 at 12:26 pm
College serves no purpose other than this: You want to become a scholar (enter Academia), or for most people, become a boring consumer droid when one graduates by getting a well paying job.
In today’s society, very few people are starving and most people have a roof over their heads. You either want knowledge or money to have a meaningful life.
Just Speculating
February 9, 2013 at 12:27 pm
I think the answer is that most people want to earn enough money to avoid living around poor people.
superdestroyer
February 9, 2013 at 4:24 pm
Understandable, and verifiably true
stephen c
February 12, 2013 at 12:41 am
Everyone who worries about too many people in college is overlooking one thing: how many people enrolled in college are actually in decent schools? Most people attend college at po-dunk commuter schools. A substantial portion go online. These people are not really competition for networking purposes. It is a rip-off to attend a commuter school unless you are in a major featuring hard skills, i.e engineering.
Anonyia
February 9, 2013 at 12:56 pm
“But for most people, people who are not especially religious or altruistic, college is about a single thing: dominating others. Rising socially in a State-approved manner. Being able to tell people that you have earned the right to dominate them. To have more than what they have: a bigger house, more freedom, more responsibilities, more authority.”
Go outside, Patrick Bateman.
Chris
February 9, 2013 at 2:29 pm
He’s 100% correct. College = earning/purchasing prestige to dominate others.
Conquistador
February 10, 2013 at 12:59 am
If you are Gordon Gecko, than yes. If you are like the other 99% of the population that isn’t a psychopath, no.
Chris
February 10, 2013 at 10:33 am
This applies mostly to the Ivy League types. Professors who have ivy degrees tend to be more domineering and standoffdish than the non-ivy degrees.
Just Speculating
February 10, 2013 at 12:03 pm
@ Chris
In an argument with my sister she said directly that I was socially inferior because she was a college graduate who attended good schools. I suggest you stop being so naive about human nature. When you go beyond the fake niceties of everyday life there is an undercurrent of contempt among people.
Conquistador
February 10, 2013 at 3:48 pm
A sample size of one! Way to go
Chris
February 10, 2013 at 8:48 pm
More than one person here has said basically the same thing. Take your head out of your ass sometime. Humans are a hierarchical species but you probably weren’t taught that at any point during your “education”.
Conquistador
February 10, 2013 at 9:01 pm
Now you’re not even trying…making scientific statements without any empirical evidence (other than your blind assertion), good for you
Chris
February 11, 2013 at 5:01 am
An opinionated blog has opinionated commentary apparently this is a shock to Chris.
Conquistador
February 11, 2013 at 5:31 pm
Why is it that you associate “dominating others” with “being an asshole”? The two are not synonymous at all. Words have a meaning.
Thomas
February 11, 2013 at 3:04 am
“Radical egalitarianism just turns everything into a prisoner’s dilemma. All parties defect, and everyone is worse off.”
Could you clarify? In prisoner’s dilemma, everyone will be equal if everyone defects or if everyone cooperates.
Alex
February 9, 2013 at 2:36 pm
College is a good investment if you are going to an Ivy League school such as Harvard but not such a great use of your money if you are going to less prestigious ones.
diversityischaos
February 9, 2013 at 3:52 pm
Well, it depends. Let’s say you prefer to work as an accountant even though you could make as much money working as an electrician. This only can be true if you are smart enough to move up as an electrician. So, it is a good investment for that guy, because he doesn’t want to work a manual job even though he has enough intelligence, diligence and energy to make as much even as an electrician. Basically, college can be a consumer good that a person chooses to buy, kind of like a house. You buy the kind you like because for the same price, you can get different kinds.
not too late
February 9, 2013 at 6:10 pm
A lot of really dull urban educators are getting master’s and doctorates from incredibly lousy universities. There is some “college” in Florida that offers online degrees that is really bad. But once they get the degree they have their doctorate or master’s and immediately draw higher pay pursuant to the state pay tables. And believe it or not, in these urban districts the cheapo doctorates carry a little bit of weight. Likewise these “worthless” degrees can come in handy for other government jobs.
ColRebSez
February 9, 2013 at 8:29 pm
When I went to college in the late 1960s the thing that surprised me was the number of students who just totally flaked out and didn’t even try. I went to a high status state school. Students had to be in the top 10-12% of their high school classes to get into the school. The students had obviously done well in high school. At college, without their parents their to nag them to study, they just did not study and flunked out. Some were actually incredibly smart. They may have gotten through high school without ever working very hard. The smartest guy I ever met flunked out because he could not remember to come to class, turn in his homework on time, or study for tests. In one class I took with him, he flunked the midterm because he had not been coming to class and had not studied. The night before the final he came over and spent and an hour reading my lecture notes. He got a 100% on the final.
I always thought that the big thing about a college graduate was that they were self motivated enough to work on their own with no one looking over their shoulder all the time. Those who don’t go to college or who flunk out, may not be able to work without close supervision.
mikeca
February 9, 2013 at 5:08 pm
“Going to a lesser college may expose the student to a bunch of losers, and the student picks up their loser attitudes towards school.”
It’s worth noting that these folks may not be “losers” in the context of the school… frat boys who party and get laid a lot, for instance.
John
February 9, 2013 at 11:45 pm
The primary reason people fail is because they lack college preparation. Prole kids don’t get access to AP courses. In my experience AP was a club for middle/upper middle class kids. Instead they attend community college which is still 10X more demanding than high school. Since all they know is how to recite liberal platitudes without the work ethic and academic rigor their higher class counterparts possess they flunk out, work at Starbucks, vote Obama, and join Occupy Wall Street.
Conquistador
February 10, 2013 at 1:11 am
The upper ranks of the OWS crowd was full of obnoxious upper middle class morons. These people are just as bad as the folks they were protesting about.
Just Speculating
February 10, 2013 at 11:57 am
Peer pressure is a part of it too. There’s still somewhat of a stigma to dropping out an elite school, whereas it’s practically the norm at the less prestigious ones.
Anonymous
February 10, 2013 at 8:24 pm