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What's Your STEM Degree Worth?
Jim_Austin writes A recent study by economist Douglas Webber calculates the lifetime earnings premium of college degrees in various broad areas, accounting for selection bias--that is, for the fact that people who already are likely to do well are also more likely to go to college. These premiums are not small. Science Careers got exclusive access to major-specific data, and published an article that tells how much more you can expect to earn because you got that college degree--for engineering, physics, computer science, chemistry, and biology majors.
More than I paid for it - zero dollars.
and it wasn't worth a damn thing. A lab tech was the only job avabilabe and it paid sub $30k. Gave up and went to pharmacy school.
I was hoping it would show the fields and the difference, such as between CompSci with and without degree. Not. It is CompSci degree vs Burger King? Well, duh...
At the risk of using an ad hominem fallacy, a university professor personally benefits when people choose to attend college. An economist at a university should recuse himself from issuing reports that encourage people to contribute to his pension fund.
Nothing, because I never got one. I didn't qualify for student aid and would have had to taken out loans or pay for school myself. I dropped out after almost 2 years going full time to school and working full time as well. 160K a year self taught.
Even for those in the bottom quartile of 'ability' (people that just limp into college).
A quick calculation based on this data says that the break-even point in opportunity costs (include any foregone earnings over 30k) is $215k for an undergrad in the humanities and 320k for the social sciences, and $460k if you do anything in a STEM fields.
So there you go: if your opportunity cost is less than 50K a year any under-grad degree, even if you are are not all that bright, may well pay off.
We're kind of assuming that if you are in the bottom quartile graduate school is a bit out of your league; though I'm sure there are a LOT of bottom quartile business majors who get reasonable MBAs and totally throw off our expectations about income and smarts.
He only looks at cohorts in decades following 1955, 65 and 75. Relevance to today's graduates could be zero because the labour market has changed a lot in the last 30 years. Since 1975 average wages haven't even tracked productivity growth.
As for less income by women, a study in Australia recently found a >10% difference, but correcting for occupation, time in the force and hours worked the difference was reduced to 4.4%.
It gives me a paycheck every two weeks but the work is utterly devoid of personal fulfillment. If I had known fifteen years ago what to expect from a career in software I would have spent my time getting a completely different degree.
Love sees no species.
Our politicians (Obama included) continue to say we need more STEM education. They also continue to expand H1-B visas. What does this mean? It means a hypersaturation of the workforce. This merely reduces the value of the most passionate and educated people in the country. We don't need more STEM. We need more reasons for STEM educated people to exist.
Assuming "lifetime earnings" has the obvious meaning (the actual article is paywalled), the small advantage STEM degrees have in this study is probably more than made up for the loss of a decade of investment and compound interest; it's even worse if you have taken on debt while getting your degree.
Other studies also concluded that both college and advanced degrees are probably largely break-even financially overall.
Take note that the study only looked at undergraduate degrees. Getting a Bachelor's degree in a STEM field opens up a lot of doors for you. However, getting a STEM Ph.D. closes nearly all doors except becoming a researcher or teacher in your field.
Industry research jobs can pay well, but they tend to be rare relative to the number of Ph.Ds competing for them, not to mention they are often subject to geographic constraints.
Academic jobs these days require a lifelong vow of poverty.
Attempts to find a job that doesn't involve being surrounded by other Ph.Ds will typically be turned down and met with the standard "overqualified" line.
Regardless of what job you wind up with after getting a Ph.D., you will have wasted the better part of a decade earning low pay and practically zero work experience that will be recognized outside of academia. That's a large opportunity cost.
Go ahead and get that STEM Bachelor's degree if you are so inclined. But take it and run straight into the job market after graduating. Don't let your college professors talk you into grad school unless you are already independently wealthy.
tl;dr: Bachelor's degress in STEM, if nothing else, show employers that you are highly intelligent and trainable. A Ph.D. in STEM, however, closes more doors than it opens and usually costs far more than it is worth.
IANAL, I am however a statistician. This exact study has long been considered impossible because there is no good was to quantify the selection bias. The linked article does not explain why this is suddenly possible. I give an 80% chance that the result is bullshit.
Is the article available anywhere? I would be very interested in whether the author attempts to distinguish between possession of a STEM degree, and possession of a STEM education. It's the difference between having a doctor who has passed advanced organic chemistry, and having a doctor who is smart enough and dedicated enough to pass advanced organic chemistry.
I wish there were licensed software engineers who had to sign off on certain types of software projects. Similar to other engineering disciplines. People wouldn't push shit through if their license/career was on the line vs upsetting the next level of management which would only place their current job on the line.
I often wish I'd pursued EE or another of the engineering disciplines rather than CS due to the complete lack of apparent ethics, etc. in many dev shops.
It's worth about $238/mo to the bank ...
If you're smart enough to get the degree you're also smart enough to realize it isn't about the earnings once you hit "financially secure."
It bugs me that so many articles about STEM fields leave off mathematics majors.
And the geology majors get dissed again...
But hey... It's a great major for getting your conservative parents to pay for you to go co-ed camping every weekend...
3.98 GPA and a more awards than you can shake a stick at.... And the only job I could find is with a shitty timeshare marketing company. No degree required for this job.
Lol.
FML.
They should either remove the "M" from STEM or stop telling gullible young smart guys that a STEM degree will lead to a higher paying job.
http://www9.georgetown.edu/grad/gppi/hpi/cew/pdfs/whatsitworth-complete.pdf
see also
http://news.slashdot.org/story/11/05/30/1554235/Whats-Your-College-Major-Worth
"The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that with tuition rising and a weak job market everyone seems to be debating the value of a college degree. Anthony P. Carnevale, director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, says talking about the bachelor's degree in general doesn't make a whole lot of sense, because its financial payoff is heavily affected by what that degree is in and which college it is from.
For the first time, researchers analyzed earnings based on 171 college majors and the differences are striking: For workers whose highest degree is a bachelor's, median incomes ranged from $29,000 for counseling-psychology majors to $120,000 for petroleum-engineering majors but the data also revealed earnings differences within groups of similar majors. Within the category of business majors, for instance, business-economics majors had the highest median pay, $75,000 while business-hospitality management earned $50,000.
The study concludes that while there is a lot of variation in earnings over a lifetime, all undergraduate majors are worth it, even taking into account the cost of college and lost earnings with the lifetime advantage ranging from $1,090,000 for Engineering majors to $241,000 for Education majors. 'The bottom line is that getting a degree matters, but what you take matters more,' concludes Carnevale."
I personally found, if you have ability, managers don't want you. They are concerned more about their ability to rise in the corporate ladder then building a team capable of building a good product. They are scared of individuals who know what they are doing.
Seen this way too many times for this not to be the norm.
I went to my Social Security statement and added up my income since I graduated (Electronics Engineering degree (BSEE), 35 yrs. in my career until I retired). I stayed in the technical field (avoided management). The number: $2,727,247 I went to a community college and obtained my general education, later transferring to a state university. I'd estimate my total education cost at around $3K maximum (tuition was a whopping $59.65/qtr. when I graduated in '77). Starting salary was about $1.2k/month. Ending salary was about $10k/month. YMMV
I don't have one. Just two liberal arts undergrad degrees and an MBA. Doesn't stop me knowing a lot about STEM. E.g. teaching myself how to code. Or how to fix circuitboards and replace capacitors.
When I hire, sure I look at the degree. But I first look at if they love what they do, and what they've built. Credentials are the third on my list because I don't care what Harvard, Stanford, or West Virginia College for the "Gifted" said you were capable of doing when you were 22. I'm more interested in what you've done since then.
Show me products on shelves. Research papers written. Discoveries made. And don't forget to show me the 1000 ways you failed before making the invention/discovery/breakthrough. How you handle, process and adapt to failure is far more important than any degree. In fact... your degree after a few years of work is worth bumpkiss.
Will dumping $80,000 into an educational institution for a piece of paper let me get any sort of semi-stable career?
For most people, regularized employment beats self-employment and all forms of indirect employment due to economies of scale encountered by an employer.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
He says he accounted for selection bias,
but completing college well is a strong selection mechanism.
Clearly you have to have skills someone is willing to pay for.
Or better yet, skills you can use to make your own business.
The college degree may be a part of this.
It is a great selector for getting a job interview which can get that first job.
It shows you have the ability to choose between work and play.
It may show you learned something useful, but showing persistance and brains is the big thing.
Also, college may provide some connections that turn out to be more important than the degree.
Clearly, some jobs require some specific knowledge,
but for success, all of the above may be less than half of the equation.
Attitude and luck are also useful parts.
I've always wondered how a plumber would fit into this old story.
Stem degrees when your female become worthless when your in your 30's because in IT standards your judged to be over the hill and therefore not employable despite having a set of top of the range IT skills. However saying that most women come out of university with decent degrees and can do the same job at the same or better standard as the male dinosaurs that work in the industry and allowed to hire based on womens bra sizes, or who all go one the same gaming site as other IT males and only hire there friends.
Why are there so few women in IT with stem degrees?
Perhaps that's because of misogynist dionosaurs eh?
Wow, I really hate looking at life in purely monetary terms. I didn't really think (much) about money when I decided to go to college. I was looking forward to the life experiences; the learning, the discussions with the professors, the companionship, last but not least, the parties.
It's important to have enough money to get by, beyond that, it's the life experiences that matter, not if your college degree was "worth it" in terms of money lost vs. money gained.
"What's Your STEM Degree Worth?"
About $250,000 per year.
So was it worth it? Damn straight....
110K back each year in IT adjusted for inflation, more or less, each year
Very worth it.
I wonder if the $120,000 for petroleum-engineering is not due more to the fact that the jobs tend to be located in harsh climates and remote locations. Yes, the waitresses working in a North Dakota boom town might not be pulling in big bucks, but might in fact be a guy as few women feel safe in these towns. I hear that these rough neck natural gas sites tend to be lawless and full of hidden surprises & toxic spills and fire hazards. I don't know if you will find the girl you want to marry there, if you are interested. Your wife might worry about getting raped going out for groceries. Housing is made up of used FEMA trailers and living amongst people who will rob you at night. The locals know that you have a petroleum degree, so they will charge you more for services.
Petroleum-engineering work tends to be in the Middle east. I have a friend who worked in Abi Dhabi, who said that his wife could not stand to live there, despite the affluence. Maybe the Middle Eastern women learned to put up with outright sexist shit, but she could not. The cops were there to shake you down, not to help you.
and I ain't no damned loch ness monster!
Well played.
I got through about 2.5 years of college before I was too poor to continue. I lucked out, got a job doing exactly the type of programming I wanted to do (custom automation control systems) but making next to nothing doing it (about $15k/year). Eventually being poor got old and I took a job with a "real" company making $60k. Six months in they bumped me to $68k and took me on as a full time employee.
Eventually I went back and finished my degree (BS in Comp Sci). I lost my job at almost the same time I finished the degree (I wasn't willing to move then the company did). That's why I know that the degree gave me a 10-15% bump in pay.
I learned almost nothing in college about programming. To this day I am of the belief that it is a certificate attesting that when told to do something silly you have the fortitude to actually get it done. Oh, and maybe you have the ability to learn new things...maybe. In the end I'm glad I got it, but only because of what it means to other people. Directly to me it means almost nothing.
But do these numbers account for peaks in career fields? Software development (computer science) earnings peaked in the last decade and has been on a downward slide for some time. Someone starting out in the past few years would have a lifetime earning much lower than someone who started in the 1990s and worked at higher-paying jobs. As outsourcing increases, pay decreases. ( don't just mean offshoring. I mean a company firing its employees and outsourcing functions. The outsourcers do it cheaper because they pay less.
I started in the mid-1990s, for example, and had many good years, but my high-paying job was eliminated. Most jobs now pay about half what I was making. This is a general trend I've seen that's been building.
You can't just take historical numbers and extrapolate into the future as far as you want to go. The world doesn't work in that nice linear way.
I've seen college grads dumber than a rocks IQ. A degree isn't worth crap if you aren't educated across many subjects, whether it's self taught or at an institution. I'm only a HS grad, and made (legally and honorably) twice the "HS" amount in the article. Oh yeah, retired at 50 with a paid off mortgage and happily comfortable where I'm at. Get an education because you want to, not for a better job that pays more at a f'd up company.
My degree in Mechanical Engineering harmed me in so many ways.
9 years of undergrad hell, driving me insane, pushed me to severe alcoholism. Lost touch with most of my family, friends threw their hands up and walked away.
I'm 32 and have 10k in student loan debt, despite paying every free cent I've made for over 6 years.
I'm fat now, never was before.
My work, while more interesting than most, is also MUCH more difficult than most jobs.
I make 20k per year less than the Salary.com average for my job in my area. My income is laughable.
STEM has made my life a real fucking hell. I would probably be happy without it.
with probable bankruptcy to boot.
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From:
http://100rsns.blogspot.com/20...
Another issue with the job markets for STEM and engineering degrees is that there is a lot of involuntary retirement from about age 35-40, in aggregate based primarily on age. Any gains realized up to that point tend to get thwacked pretty hard in the process of readjusting and finding other employment. The point being that majoring in STEM or engineering, and even performing well in STEM or engineering, is no guarantee of anything.
Many employers really don't know what they are hiring for and frequently have hiring practices counter to their stated wants. In fact, most people making hiring decisions have little to no actual knowledge of the disciplines they are hiring in.
As for what constitutes 'public support' - we've already voted with our taxpayer dollars for zombie studies. There is no greater form of express support than subsidy. Furthermore I guarantee you that there are at least three industries outside academia that will consume the products of 'zombie studies' - publishing, film/TV, and internet-based media - and it is no doubt pursuit of income from these sources that will enable 'zombie studies' to flourish. Like I said before, one does not buck the public purse with impunity.
H-1B workers are not "trained by the government," at least not through any kind of formally established program.
They are not paid "premium salaries," at least not according to the US Department of Labor: "...the Department's regulations require that the wages offered to a foreign worker must be the *prevailing wage rate* for the occupational classification in the area of employment.
The prevailing wage rate is defined as the *average wage* paid to similarly employed workers in a specific occupation in the area of intended employment...
The requirement to pay prevailing wages as a minimum is true of most employment based visa programs involving the Department of Labor. In addition, the H-1B, H-1B1, and E-3 programs require the employer to pay the prevailing wage or the actual wage paid by the employer to workers with similar skills and qualifications, whichever is higher." In short, they are supposed to be paid "prevailing wage" or going rate for that position with that employer. In many cases these minima are not met by the employer.
Let's read about that "crying demand for engineers" from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers:
Anio, Monica "Are Engineers Really In Demand," IEEE Roundup, 2/10/12 ... and from senior editor Patrick Thibodeau of Computerworld, who has reported on IT and engineering employment issues for over a decade:
Thibodeau, Patrick "What STEM Shortage? Electrical Engineering Lost 35,000 Jobs Last Year" Computerworld, 01/16/14.
As for "lies" about "domestic staff being displaced," the displacement of US citizen engineers has been documented for well over a decade by Dr. Norm Matloff, Professor of Computer Science at UC Davis. Distillations of his research on visa programs have appeared at Bloomberg.com ("How Foreign Students Hurt U.S. Innovation," 2/11/2013) and Barron's ("Where Are the Best and Brightest," June 8, 2013).
In these articles he takes the current president to task for his support of expanding green card giveaways as well as California Democrat Zoe Lofgren for her support of the H-1B program. The "people who hate the Koch Brothers" reflexively vote Democrat and don't go after the party faithful in op-ed pieces.
New Economic Perspectives