But is this casuation or correlation? Clearly if you can afford to go to college instead of working on low-level job then you in a better position to get better job just because you can probably...
The big-picture numbers tell a very different story: College graduates are more likely to have jobs, become wealthy, be healthy, get married, stay married, and be on the right side of virtually any measure of prosperity and stability one can name.
But is this casuation or correlation? Clearly if you can afford to go to college instead of working on low-level job then you in a better position to get better job just because you can probably afford waiting for better job, courses to prepare for better job, etc. etc.?
I'm sure having financial support from family helps, and maybe the kind of person who could complete a degree is more likely to be the kind of person who would succeed in life, but this is...
I'm sure having financial support from family helps, and maybe the kind of person who could complete a degree is more likely to be the kind of person who would succeed in life, but this is probably mostly causation. Having a bachelor's degree helps a ton with finding a better job with growth potential. A better job is good for all the things listed.
I had to take some time off from school with only a few units left to complete. Finding a job was really hard. I eventually got a manufacturing job through a temp agency, which sucked, but paid the bills. There's no future in manufacturing though, some people had been in the same position for over a decade without advancement, and any significantly higher position required at least a bachelor's degree. I eventually went back to finish my degree, which was about half a year of courses. After graduating, it still took a few months to find a job, but so many more doors were open to me. The first job I took actually paid less than the manufacturing job, but now I'm working at a decent job that depends a lot on the education I received in undergrad.
I'm pretty sure that it was college that lead to me getting a job with a future, weather some health issues due to having insurance from that better job, have the money to go out and meet people like my wife, then later have the money to buy a house, etc. So while there is obviously some survivorship bias, a college degree is definitely a useful threshold to pass.
This is kind of an uplifting article. In addition to general stats, the author follows up on some people who were featured in doom and gloom articles of the past.
A bachelor’s degree continues to be a great investment. Why do the media keep suggesting otherwise?
This is kind of an uplifting article. In addition to general stats, the author follows up on some people who were featured in doom and gloom articles of the past.
The big-picture numbers tell a very different story: College graduates are more likely to have jobs, become wealthy, be healthy, get married, stay married, and be on the right side of virtually any measure of prosperity and stability one can name. We can even see the enduring value of college in the lives of the very people the Post and the Times chose to portray the struggles of betrayed and despairing collegians—people such as Benjamin Shore, whom the Times found in 2011 sitting in “a windowless room in a Baltimore row house,” where he’d moved because his parents were charging rent on his childhood bedroom. At the time, Shore “made beans and rice at home and drove slowly to save gas.” Today, he is employed as a surgeon, and he can presumably afford a more varied diet.
I had to read the full article to see if they elaborated and they did not. The first line is about how bachelor degrees are good value and two of the "where are they nows" are graduate level? A...
Today, he is employed as a surgeon, and he can presumably afford a more varied diet.
I had to read the full article to see if they elaborated and they did not. The first line is about how bachelor degrees are good value and two of the "where are they nows" are graduate level? A surgeon has a bachelor's, sure, but they kind of need a bit more schooling after that. Same with Dunn claiming she was offered $28k with a graduate degree.
Sarah Dunn remembers a New York City firm offering her $28,000 a year for an entry-level job in advertising during the mid-2010s, even though by then she had a graduate degree.
Bachelor's degrees alone are out of reach for a lot of people these days but if Dunn had her master's in 2010 she paid considerably less for it than anyone she's now managing.
The issue is that we care too much about making the lives of college grads work out and too little about the lives of high school grads working out. Employers have no reason to trust that a high...
The issue is that we care too much about making the lives of college grads work out and too little about the lives of high school grads working out. Employers have no reason to trust that a high school degree means anything for a long list of reasons, including that it's become commonplace to pass failing students that in some extreme cases literally don't know arithmetic or how to read for the sake of funding.
…and that situation is coming soon to an undergraduate degree near you, as colleges will be forced to accept tuition money from unknowledgeable high school "graduates" in order to keep the lights on.
…and that situation is coming soon to an undergraduate degree near you, as colleges will be forced to accept tuition money from unknowledgeable high school "graduates" in order to keep the lights on.
Honestly, I don't like or fully agree with this article. No one worth listening to has been honestly saying "college degrees are bad, and no one should do it". What has been becoming clear is that...
Honestly, I don't like or fully agree with this article. No one worth listening to has been honestly saying "college degrees are bad, and no one should do it". What has been becoming clear is that a bachelor's degree is an order of magnitude more expensive than it was twenty years ago and wages have not increased anywhere close to that. For many professions that require a bachelor's or higher (teachers,social workers, librarians), the earning potential has gone from not great to terrible considering the debt the student may get saddled with. The take away is that going off to a University is no longer a near guaranteed path to financial success that it used to seem like and people are becoming very aware of it.
I mean, my job depends on people entering higher education. I 100% believe that it provides a valuable, broader and deeper education that childhood education does not. The world would undoubtedly...
I mean, my job depends on people entering higher education. I 100% believe that it provides a valuable, broader and deeper education that childhood education does not. The world would undoubtedly be a better place if everyone attended college. Blue collar work benefits immensely from college education, but the college <-> trade pipeline needs work.
However. It is not necessarily worth going $150k or more into debt for. It's a thing we need to work out as a society.
No one convinced me to not finish college. Life did that for me through various challenges that cropped up when I was trying to work myself through community college after high school. It is...
No one convinced me to not finish college. Life did that for me through various challenges that cropped up when I was trying to work myself through community college after high school.
It is expensive, if you're working class, even with FAFSA. Those loans don't go away and followed me for years until I was able to pay them off - with my tax returns, once I wasn't making poverty level wages because the government ended up just garnishing my returns for a couple years in a row. I wasn't ever in a position to pay on them prior to that point.
I'd love to go to college, or rather - I'd love to go to college about a decade or fifteen years ago when it was marginally more affordable if you graduated and got a job with your newly minted degree.
These days, I'm less inclined to want to go, not because I dislike higher education but because it's even more expensive than it used to be, and there's no way in hell short of winning the lottery that I'd be able to return and finish anything I'm interested in pursuing.
For a given level of demand, if there's more applicants per position then each applicant has less bargaining power, as there aren't enough positions for the number of people applying. Given that...
For a given level of demand, if there's more applicants per position then each applicant has less bargaining power, as there aren't enough positions for the number of people applying. Given that at the moment the unemployment rate is at near-historical lows, it's much harder for businesses to haggle aggressively with employees. If the employee doesn't like it, it's much more likely they can get another job elsewhere.
So yeah, an oversupply of people with university degrees is better for businesses. It means they can fill positions faster and more cheaply.
It’s the Atlantic writing this. End of story. There is no other narrative they’re going to publish because it’s a conservative rag. Okay- not end of story. Real data analysis of the issue to...
It’s the Atlantic writing this. End of story. There is no other narrative they’re going to publish because it’s a conservative rag.
Okay- not end of story. Real data analysis of the issue to properly establish value and cost would include lots of charts and graphs, would adjust for costs over time, take averages for the differing fields of study, would break out differences between quality of schools, etc etc.
This stupid article is little more than a back-of-napkin SWAG. I believe a true real sophisticated education, income, job placement, and career field analysis would result in an eye-opening reinforcement of the idea that there are a shitload of bachelor-having-debt-paying-near-poverty-level people that went to mediocre schools.
If you want to have a successful corporate career (e.g. in a law firm, bank, insurance company, commidities trading, etc) a degree is a pretty necessary condition. I think there are a lot of...
If you want to have a successful corporate career (e.g. in a law firm, bank, insurance company, commidities trading, etc) a degree is a pretty necessary condition. I think there are a lot of duplicitious people with degrees out there telling people "don't go to college" because they want to employ them as cheap labour.
I would say "Don't go to college" unless you know exactly how your intended degree will impact your job opportunities. Obviously, there are about a billion different variations there. Sometimes...
I would say "Don't go to college" unless you know exactly how your intended degree will impact your job opportunities.
Obviously, there are about a billion different variations there. Sometimes you just need a degree, other times you actually need the specialized knowledge, other times you don't need the degree at all and are just spending money. That's the big ticket.
I wish we lived in a world where working class people without degrees could afford a comfortable life, food, and shelter without working multiple jobs. We do not. A degree isn't a shortcut to easy money though.
In my personal experience, employers weigh experience much more heavily than a degree but will almost always require a degree in anything to even consider you for the job. So, basically if you can...
In my personal experience, employers weigh experience much more heavily than a degree but will almost always require a degree in anything to even consider you for the job.
So, basically if you can get an entry level job in the career field you want and then earn a bachelor's while doing that job you should be good. Getting the degree won't get you a job but it will likely get you into consideration for it.
But is this casuation or correlation? Clearly if you can afford to go to college instead of working on low-level job then you in a better position to get better job just because you can probably afford waiting for better job, courses to prepare for better job, etc. etc.?
I'm sure having financial support from family helps, and maybe the kind of person who could complete a degree is more likely to be the kind of person who would succeed in life, but this is probably mostly causation. Having a bachelor's degree helps a ton with finding a better job with growth potential. A better job is good for all the things listed.
I had to take some time off from school with only a few units left to complete. Finding a job was really hard. I eventually got a manufacturing job through a temp agency, which sucked, but paid the bills. There's no future in manufacturing though, some people had been in the same position for over a decade without advancement, and any significantly higher position required at least a bachelor's degree. I eventually went back to finish my degree, which was about half a year of courses. After graduating, it still took a few months to find a job, but so many more doors were open to me. The first job I took actually paid less than the manufacturing job, but now I'm working at a decent job that depends a lot on the education I received in undergrad.
I'm pretty sure that it was college that lead to me getting a job with a future, weather some health issues due to having insurance from that better job, have the money to go out and meet people like my wife, then later have the money to buy a house, etc. So while there is obviously some survivorship bias, a college degree is definitely a useful threshold to pass.
This is kind of an uplifting article. In addition to general stats, the author follows up on some people who were featured in doom and gloom articles of the past.
I had to read the full article to see if they elaborated and they did not. The first line is about how bachelor degrees are good value and two of the "where are they nows" are graduate level? A surgeon has a bachelor's, sure, but they kind of need a bit more schooling after that. Same with Dunn claiming she was offered $28k with a graduate degree.
Bachelor's degrees alone are out of reach for a lot of people these days but if Dunn had her master's in 2010 she paid considerably less for it than anyone she's now managing.
The issue is that we care too much about making the lives of college grads work out and too little about the lives of high school grads working out. Employers have no reason to trust that a high school degree means anything for a long list of reasons, including that it's become commonplace to pass failing students that in some extreme cases literally don't know arithmetic or how to read for the sake of funding.
…and that situation is coming soon to an undergraduate degree near you, as colleges will be forced to accept tuition money from unknowledgeable high school "graduates" in order to keep the lights on.
The only thing I took away from this is that the Post apparently should have interviewed me instead. Hahaha.
Honestly, I don't like or fully agree with this article. No one worth listening to has been honestly saying "college degrees are bad, and no one should do it". What has been becoming clear is that a bachelor's degree is an order of magnitude more expensive than it was twenty years ago and wages have not increased anywhere close to that. For many professions that require a bachelor's or higher (teachers,social workers, librarians), the earning potential has gone from not great to terrible considering the debt the student may get saddled with. The take away is that going off to a University is no longer a near guaranteed path to financial success that it used to seem like and people are becoming very aware of it.
Big business always needs low-wage workers, it's in their best interest to convince people that higher education isn't worth it.
I mean, my job depends on people entering higher education. I 100% believe that it provides a valuable, broader and deeper education that childhood education does not. The world would undoubtedly be a better place if everyone attended college. Blue collar work benefits immensely from college education, but the college <-> trade pipeline needs work.
However. It is not necessarily worth going $150k or more into debt for. It's a thing we need to work out as a society.
No one convinced me to not finish college. Life did that for me through various challenges that cropped up when I was trying to work myself through community college after high school.
It is expensive, if you're working class, even with FAFSA. Those loans don't go away and followed me for years until I was able to pay them off - with my tax returns, once I wasn't making poverty level wages because the government ended up just garnishing my returns for a couple years in a row. I wasn't ever in a position to pay on them prior to that point.
I'd love to go to college, or rather - I'd love to go to college about a decade or fifteen years ago when it was marginally more affordable if you graduated and got a job with your newly minted degree.
These days, I'm less inclined to want to go, not because I dislike higher education but because it's even more expensive than it used to be, and there's no way in hell short of winning the lottery that I'd be able to return and finish anything I'm interested in pursuing.
I'd say it's the opposite. Big business tends to push for more education to bring down the bargaining power of skilled labor.
I don't quite understand. More people entering the workforce with university degrees means they have less bargaining power as employees?
For a given level of demand, if there's more applicants per position then each applicant has less bargaining power, as there aren't enough positions for the number of people applying. Given that at the moment the unemployment rate is at near-historical lows, it's much harder for businesses to haggle aggressively with employees. If the employee doesn't like it, it's much more likely they can get another job elsewhere.
So yeah, an oversupply of people with university degrees is better for businesses. It means they can fill positions faster and more cheaply.
It’s the Atlantic writing this. End of story. There is no other narrative they’re going to publish because it’s a conservative rag.
Okay- not end of story. Real data analysis of the issue to properly establish value and cost would include lots of charts and graphs, would adjust for costs over time, take averages for the differing fields of study, would break out differences between quality of schools, etc etc.
This stupid article is little more than a back-of-napkin SWAG. I believe a true real sophisticated education, income, job placement, and career field analysis would result in an eye-opening reinforcement of the idea that there are a shitload of bachelor-having-debt-paying-near-poverty-level people that went to mediocre schools.
It just can’t be said in print.
If you want to have a successful corporate career (e.g. in a law firm, bank, insurance company, commidities trading, etc) a degree is a pretty necessary condition. I think there are a lot of duplicitious people with degrees out there telling people "don't go to college" because they want to employ them as cheap labour.
I would say "Don't go to college" unless you know exactly how your intended degree will impact your job opportunities.
Obviously, there are about a billion different variations there. Sometimes you just need a degree, other times you actually need the specialized knowledge, other times you don't need the degree at all and are just spending money. That's the big ticket.
I wish we lived in a world where working class people without degrees could afford a comfortable life, food, and shelter without working multiple jobs. We do not. A degree isn't a shortcut to easy money though.
I agree, but I also think that it certainly makes it a lot easier to earn money.
In my personal experience, employers weigh experience much more heavily than a degree but will almost always require a degree in anything to even consider you for the job.
So, basically if you can get an entry level job in the career field you want and then earn a bachelor's while doing that job you should be good. Getting the degree won't get you a job but it will likely get you into consideration for it.