Yes! Thank you for helping me illustrate. Even in the impossibly unlikely scenario of taking that amount of loans to get a bachelor degree, and then ending up in a job for your entire career paying as little as $10/hour, you STILL pay off your college loans in less than half of your working years. So even in that impossible worse-than-worst-case scenario you still get back more than double your investment in dollars alone, not to mention the other benefits of being educated. Even in a fantasy where we imagine every single terrible metric, it's still worth it by double. For all likely scenarios, it's many many times better than that.
It's true, costs have continued to go up. (I remember my last year costing $39,900 but whatever.) Keep in mind that only rich students pay sticker price at Dartmouth, which is "needs blind" so most (more than half) students pay less. Still, it's a lot. Still, it's worth it. (Actually, not at Dartmouth, I don't recommend that particular school, although the cost isn't the reason.) Also, people worried about money don't need to choose a $60,000 school, they can choose a $12,000 school and have a degree worth just about the same.
You're lying to yourself by not doing the math. There's a reason we have student loans. If you borrow 100% of tuition and go to an inexpensive school, you will still be able to pay back those loans in a few years, and after that you'll look back and wonder why the hell you were treading water instead of taking a little loan to learn how to swim. If you work your way through school, you'll borrow less than 100%. Look for need scholarships. Look for other scholarships. Do what you can, but even if you have to borrow 100% it's still worth it.
I'm not really clear about your story generally but the answer to the complaint "I can't afford it" is "you're wrong". People with zero dollars can afford college. Make sure to get a degree that will put you into a career, and if you are still worried about cost then pick an inexpensive school. Don't get a useless degree. Don't spend seven years in a four-year program. If general liberal education isn't your bag then get a career-specific degree.
About 95% of the population is not capable of applying themselves to a goal without teaching by force.
Thank you, I appreciate you supporting my point. I think the number is higher than that -- it's more like 99.99% of people benefit from college. It's awesome that you are in that little fraction remaining, though. Good for you. We dumb lazy schmucks are totally jealous of you.
It is totally clear that superstars don't need an education to be superstar, although it doesn't seem to hurt. Eminem didn't go to college, but Kanye West did. I just haven't met them. The guy I knew wasn't a superstar, he was average like me. We average folks benefit greatly from education.
Associate degrees, by the way, are college degrees and they contribute a lot to earning potential, though less than bachelor degrees. Also, "some college" is a lot different than "no college" which is why a lot of questionnaires distinguish those.
Oh, damn, are we talking about toilet cleaners? Sorry about that, I mistakenly thought we were talking about "positions like dental hygienists, cargo agents, clerks and claims adjusters" like the article said.
Nah, toilet cleaners don't need a college education. Do you know of janitor jobs which require a BA from applicants? Again, totally my mistake here, I thought we were talking about dental hygienists, who certainly benefit from a college education, or clerks and claims adjusters, who also benefit from a college education. Cargo agents? I don't know what that means, is that a baggage handler? I'm not sure about that one but given the choice between a flunky and a person willing to plod through school, I'll take the plodder.
The point of the article is that "a BA is the new high school diploma", and that exactly means that, as you said, the significance of a BA is watered down. What you could previously do with a high school diploma, now you need a BA. That's exactly right and it is exactly the same as the generation before, which needed a diploma instead of nothing at all.
First of all, $70,000 income for two people is well above poverty. The national median income for a family of four is fifty-some thousand and the poverty line is below twenty thousand. $70k might not be rich but don't cry too much in your milk because you are doing okay.
Second of all, an entry-level accountant makes about $45,000 per year. That means you make about $25,000 a year so I assume you are a doing unskilled labor. The $20,000 difference in your salaries is the value of her education, so she'll earn enough to pay for her degree in 3.5 years. For the 48 years after that, her higher salary is gravy.
If she can scratch up from entry-level accountant to slightly higher rank accountant then she'll get there even faster than three and a half years.
If you are complaining about this, try to imagine what it would be like if you were both doing unskilled labor. That's real poverty. You're living okay on that education of your wife's. Treat her well, she's your meal ticket with that education of hers.
Every year of education after high school is worth 8% salary, every year for the rest of your life, on average in this country [citation Steven Levitt]. If you did even better than that with even less, then that strengthens the argument, it doesn't make it weaker. Even if it did, the average is what it is. Education pays, literally and figuratively; it is exactly the opposite of worthless.
It's true. Having bad parents is a weight that almost nothing can take off of your shoulders. It's grand that you shucked that weight by your mid-20s, that's better than most people with bad parents. I only had a custodial mother but she was great and definitely contributed to my success with education. Luckily we live in a country which provides ways for even the poorest people to get a college education. It's still harder if you have a broken family but at the very least we do our best to remove the up-front costs of an education. It's not a perfect system but it's better than it would be without all that support.
So, you did end up going to college, do you now regret it? That's the real question. Was it worth your time and money? Do you wish you could have gone sooner? It sounds like that is so.
Awesome! Yeah it must be sweet to be in the tiny minority of superstars. Only the other 99.995% of us schmucks needs stupid things like education. Demigods like you can have us little people suck your dick while you stuff Benjamins in our asscracks. And in fact yes, they did teach us how to suck dick in college. I mean, not the college itself, but a little club near campus did that. Yes, really. I didn't go, though, I had to learn how to suck dick from your sister. Say hi to her for me and tell her I'm sorry for that rash.
The best way I think an economist thinks about the value of education is tries to figure out how the market rewards it and what other benefits come with it. And one thing is clear is that the market puts a tremendous reward on education. So the best estimates that economists have are that each extra year of education that you get is worth about maybe an eight percent increment to your earnings each year for the rest of your life. So it turns out for most people buying a lot of education, or at least for the average person let me say, buying a lot of education is a really good deal.
I would say that returns are even higher now because of the recession. People aren’t thinking about it right. So they notice that somebody who graduates from college is having a bit of hard time getting a job, or they notice that the unemployment rate for college grads has gone up a little bit. But if you do the right counterfactual and say, “Well, what if I didn’t have a college degree,” it’s much worse. The rise in unemployment was much higher for people with just a high school diploma. As has always been true in every recession, the recession is always worse for less educated people.
Just so you know, you referenced a Time article which was about a survey done by an organization with a 404 website. So, what I'm saying is, citation needed. I checked your references and the references weren't there.
Also, hey you might not have heard but there has been a recession the last few years. It's been a real shitstorm and it's caused some people to live with their families longer than they wanted to. I only took one economics course in college but my guess is that the recession has something to do with that.
Yeah, that's about right in today's dollars. Back then the numbers were a little lower: $40,000 per year x4 = $160,000 divided by my entry salary $50,000 is ~3 years of earnings.
Of course, to pay the full tuition I'd have to be the child of a millionaire because no expensive colleges charge full price to needy students. My parents would have to refuse to contribute and also refuse to legally abandon me, to put me in that situation. Also, I'd have to not work at any student jobs during school. So yeah, a millionaire's kid who refuses to work through college -- the absolute worst case scenario -- could find himself in debt to as much as three years of earnings, or maybe a decade of marginal earnings. That makes college a great, great investment.
Yes. Thank you for helping me illustrate the point. Cheers.
I defined my terms: a top-cost four-year Ivy League education cost me nine months of marginal earnings, preparing me for a fifty-year career. It is easy to owe less, or nothing, by going to a less stupidly expensive school, or to end up in a better-paying career, but nine months of marginal earnings is, in my opinion, incredibly cheap.
Your move, if you want to argue that that is expensive.
Bullshit. Community college costs thousands per year, public uni (in state) is tens of thousands. The only way to get to $100k is to go for a decade, or get a PhD on loans alone, or to go to law school or med school. Lawyers and doctors do have a high debt load; that's what it costs to get such a sweet gig, and it's popular because it's still well worth it.
But let's say you weren't lying, which you are. Still, $100,000 represents maybe five to ten years of marginal earnings, so for the last four fifths of your working life you'll still be ahead, and for the whole time you will have a job you enjoy more. ($100,000 was four years of my marginal earnings a decade ago and would have been worth it four times over.)
Yes, really, even more than electricity or indoor plumbing. Germ theory isn't a "valuable good", but if you mean "medicine" then yes, even more than medicine. No I don't work for a Uni.
You sort of missed the point of the article. The point is "a bachelor's degree is the new high school diploma". What that means is that a person today needs a bachelor's degree to do what people two generations ago did with a high school diploma -- such as be an ignorant twit, as you point out we are surrounded by.
We do live in a golden age of leisure and thinking. Look around. When, since the days of roaming the savannah, do you think we had more leisure? We work hard today to enjoy vastly more wealth than people who worked equally hard in the past. Never since the dawn of agriculture have we had so much free time and education is a cornerstone of that.
It doesn't take two incomes to have the same house and car as your parents, but it might take two incomes to have a much much nicer house and a much much nicer car both filled with much much more and nicer belongings. Or did your parents' car have a CD player and GPS unit and anti-lock brakes? Did their house have a programmable thermostat and a Roomba and a 55" television? Let me ask you an honest question -- do you seriously not know that the standard of living has increased since your parent's day?
No, that's not how a cult works in fact it's not even very similar. I know, because I studied cults... in college. Try it, you might learn something.
Yawn. You are obviously either too stupid or too lazy to look up the numbers to know how valuable college is to the average educated person. I won't do it for you, but believe me the truth bears out my totally representative anecdote. Oh fuck it I'll do it not for you but for others who might not realize how fucking retarded you are: here it is, the truth.
I am a prick, by the way, a real asshole. But that doesn't change how right I am.
Awesome! Did you know Bill Gates and Eminem also didn't go to college? Yeah, it's awesome to live in a land of opportunity where exceptionally rarely talented individuals can do well for themselves without having to kowtow to a preset program.
For those of us who are less awesome than you obviously are, we have to settle for the humdrum life of four sweet years partying with co-eds, followed by the lackluster existence of above-average wages in easy jobs. But you, man, you are totally rad! Way more rad than most of us, we little people, the dum-dums. Way to be you, man! Gosh, you can't imagine the jealousy I feel for you.
Really nice. I'm thankful every day. The world provided a very nice beaten path for me to follow and the path leads to vast wealth (American middle class). That's why I get upset when I hear people give the advice to stop going down that path and sit down and suck your thumb. Thumb suckers don't get this vast wealth.
Of course I'm including those things. Those things are part of the cost of college. Where else do you think the room-and-board costs go? Lost wages are also in there because your wages would have been paying for you to live.
Is that your response to "explain why a high school degree is a reasonable threshold, but a college degree isn't"? If so, why doesn't your response actually address the threshold question?
If you think $20 an hour is great wages, then you deserve to be underpaid for your whole life. Please never change. Come mow my lawn some time.
I went from $11.50 an hour before college to $25 an hour the day I graduated (in 2002). That's more than 100% increase. I graduated from Dartmouth, which is as expensive as any college in the country, with $20,000 in loans, which is 1,400 hours of marginal pay, meaning I earned all of what I made before PLUS enough to pay for college in less than a year after leaving college. At the same time, I enjoyed a more satisfying job and had a great time in college for four years. Today I earn $44 an hour -- 400% my pre-college income. Many people in my field make make up to double what I make. At your current pay you would net $5 an hour which would pay back an Ivy League education in two years and if you don't go to an expensive Ivy League school you can pay back your college expenses even faster than that.
My guess is that your high school education didn't teach you enough to run the numbers like that, or else you would have gotten up early to be first in line on college registration day.
A college education is the single greatest value in the modern world. Nothing else even comes close. Dollar-for-dollar, nothing else delivers more quality of life to the individual -- nothing. People who complain about its cost have no idea what they are talking about.
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Yes! Thank you for helping me illustrate. Even in the impossibly unlikely scenario of taking that amount of loans to get a bachelor degree, and then ending up in a job for your entire career paying as little as $10/hour, you STILL pay off your college loans in less than half of your working years. So even in that impossible worse-than-worst-case scenario you still get back more than double your investment in dollars alone, not to mention the other benefits of being educated. Even in a fantasy where we imagine every single terrible metric, it's still worth it by double. For all likely scenarios, it's many many times better than that.
Thank you.
It's true, costs have continued to go up. (I remember my last year costing $39,900 but whatever.) Keep in mind that only rich students pay sticker price at Dartmouth, which is "needs blind" so most (more than half) students pay less. Still, it's a lot. Still, it's worth it. (Actually, not at Dartmouth, I don't recommend that particular school, although the cost isn't the reason.) Also, people worried about money don't need to choose a $60,000 school, they can choose a $12,000 school and have a degree worth just about the same.
You're lying to yourself by not doing the math. There's a reason we have student loans. If you borrow 100% of tuition and go to an inexpensive school, you will still be able to pay back those loans in a few years, and after that you'll look back and wonder why the hell you were treading water instead of taking a little loan to learn how to swim. If you work your way through school, you'll borrow less than 100%. Look for need scholarships. Look for other scholarships. Do what you can, but even if you have to borrow 100% it's still worth it.
I'm not really clear about your story generally but the answer to the complaint "I can't afford it" is "you're wrong". People with zero dollars can afford college. Make sure to get a degree that will put you into a career, and if you are still worried about cost then pick an inexpensive school. Don't get a useless degree. Don't spend seven years in a four-year program. If general liberal education isn't your bag then get a career-specific degree.
Good luck.
About 95% of the population is not capable of applying themselves to a goal without teaching by force.
Thank you, I appreciate you supporting my point. I think the number is higher than that -- it's more like 99.99% of people benefit from college. It's awesome that you are in that little fraction remaining, though. Good for you. We dumb lazy schmucks are totally jealous of you.
It is totally clear that superstars don't need an education to be superstar, although it doesn't seem to hurt. Eminem didn't go to college, but Kanye West did. I just haven't met them. The guy I knew wasn't a superstar, he was average like me. We average folks benefit greatly from education.
Associate degrees, by the way, are college degrees and they contribute a lot to earning potential, though less than bachelor degrees. Also, "some college" is a lot different than "no college" which is why a lot of questionnaires distinguish those.
Sounds good to me. What you just suggested is "more education for people". I also suggest that.
Whatever you do, don't make the mistake of thinking that a college degree represents only the material taught in the classes on the transcript.
Oh, damn, are we talking about toilet cleaners? Sorry about that, I mistakenly thought we were talking about "positions like dental hygienists, cargo agents, clerks and claims adjusters" like the article said.
Nah, toilet cleaners don't need a college education. Do you know of janitor jobs which require a BA from applicants? Again, totally my mistake here, I thought we were talking about dental hygienists, who certainly benefit from a college education, or clerks and claims adjusters, who also benefit from a college education. Cargo agents? I don't know what that means, is that a baggage handler? I'm not sure about that one but given the choice between a flunky and a person willing to plod through school, I'll take the plodder.
The point of the article is that "a BA is the new high school diploma", and that exactly means that, as you said, the significance of a BA is watered down. What you could previously do with a high school diploma, now you need a BA. That's exactly right and it is exactly the same as the generation before, which needed a diploma instead of nothing at all.
First of all, $70,000 income for two people is well above poverty. The national median income for a family of four is fifty-some thousand and the poverty line is below twenty thousand. $70k might not be rich but don't cry too much in your milk because you are doing okay.
Second of all, an entry-level accountant makes about $45,000 per year. That means you make about $25,000 a year so I assume you are a doing unskilled labor. The $20,000 difference in your salaries is the value of her education, so she'll earn enough to pay for her degree in 3.5 years. For the 48 years after that, her higher salary is gravy.
If she can scratch up from entry-level accountant to slightly higher rank accountant then she'll get there even faster than three and a half years.
If you are complaining about this, try to imagine what it would be like if you were both doing unskilled labor. That's real poverty. You're living okay on that education of your wife's. Treat her well, she's your meal ticket with that education of hers.
Every year of education after high school is worth 8% salary, every year for the rest of your life, on average in this country [citation Steven Levitt]. If you did even better than that with even less, then that strengthens the argument, it doesn't make it weaker. Even if it did, the average is what it is. Education pays, literally and figuratively; it is exactly the opposite of worthless.
It's true. Having bad parents is a weight that almost nothing can take off of your shoulders. It's grand that you shucked that weight by your mid-20s, that's better than most people with bad parents. I only had a custodial mother but she was great and definitely contributed to my success with education. Luckily we live in a country which provides ways for even the poorest people to get a college education. It's still harder if you have a broken family but at the very least we do our best to remove the up-front costs of an education. It's not a perfect system but it's better than it would be without all that support.
So, you did end up going to college, do you now regret it? That's the real question. Was it worth your time and money? Do you wish you could have gone sooner? It sounds like that is so.
Awesome! Yeah it must be sweet to be in the tiny minority of superstars. Only the other 99.995% of us schmucks needs stupid things like education. Demigods like you can have us little people suck your dick while you stuff Benjamins in our asscracks. And in fact yes, they did teach us how to suck dick in college. I mean, not the college itself, but a little club near campus did that. Yes, really. I didn't go, though, I had to learn how to suck dick from your sister. Say hi to her for me and tell her I'm sorry for that rash.
I'm confident that my anecdote is representative. I refer you to the Stevens who are a lot better at economics than you or I are. Here are the choice quotes:
The best way I think an economist thinks about the value of education is tries to figure out how the market rewards it and what other benefits come with it. And one thing is clear is that the market puts a tremendous reward on education. So the best estimates that economists have are that each extra year of education that you get is worth about maybe an eight percent increment to your earnings each year for the rest of your life. So it turns out for most people buying a lot of education, or at least for the average person let me say, buying a lot of education is a really good deal.
I would say that returns are even higher now because of the recession. People aren’t thinking about it right. So they notice that somebody who graduates from college is having a bit of hard time getting a job, or they notice that the unemployment rate for college grads has gone up a little bit. But if you do the right counterfactual and say, “Well, what if I didn’t have a college degree,” it’s much worse. The rise in unemployment was much higher for people with just a high school diploma. As has always been true in every recession, the recession is always worse for less educated people.
Just so you know, you referenced a Time article which was about a survey done by an organization with a 404 website. So, what I'm saying is, citation needed. I checked your references and the references weren't there.
Also, hey you might not have heard but there has been a recession the last few years. It's been a real shitstorm and it's caused some people to live with their families longer than they wanted to. I only took one economics course in college but my guess is that the recession has something to do with that.
Yeah, that's about right in today's dollars. Back then the numbers were a little lower: $40,000 per year x4 = $160,000 divided by my entry salary $50,000 is ~3 years of earnings.
Of course, to pay the full tuition I'd have to be the child of a millionaire because no expensive colleges charge full price to needy students. My parents would have to refuse to contribute and also refuse to legally abandon me, to put me in that situation. Also, I'd have to not work at any student jobs during school. So yeah, a millionaire's kid who refuses to work through college -- the absolute worst case scenario -- could find himself in debt to as much as three years of earnings, or maybe a decade of marginal earnings. That makes college a great, great investment.
Yes. Thank you for helping me illustrate the point. Cheers.
I defined my terms: a top-cost four-year Ivy League education cost me nine months of marginal earnings, preparing me for a fifty-year career. It is easy to owe less, or nothing, by going to a less stupidly expensive school, or to end up in a better-paying career, but nine months of marginal earnings is, in my opinion, incredibly cheap.
Your move, if you want to argue that that is expensive.
Bullshit. Community college costs thousands per year, public uni (in state) is tens of thousands. The only way to get to $100k is to go for a decade, or get a PhD on loans alone, or to go to law school or med school. Lawyers and doctors do have a high debt load; that's what it costs to get such a sweet gig, and it's popular because it's still well worth it.
But let's say you weren't lying, which you are. Still, $100,000 represents maybe five to ten years of marginal earnings, so for the last four fifths of your working life you'll still be ahead, and for the whole time you will have a job you enjoy more. ($100,000 was four years of my marginal earnings a decade ago and would have been worth it four times over.)
Yes, really, even more than electricity or indoor plumbing. Germ theory isn't a "valuable good", but if you mean "medicine" then yes, even more than medicine. No I don't work for a Uni.
You sort of missed the point of the article. The point is "a bachelor's degree is the new high school diploma". What that means is that a person today needs a bachelor's degree to do what people two generations ago did with a high school diploma -- such as be an ignorant twit, as you point out we are surrounded by.
We do live in a golden age of leisure and thinking. Look around. When, since the days of roaming the savannah, do you think we had more leisure? We work hard today to enjoy vastly more wealth than people who worked equally hard in the past. Never since the dawn of agriculture have we had so much free time and education is a cornerstone of that.
It doesn't take two incomes to have the same house and car as your parents, but it might take two incomes to have a much much nicer house and a much much nicer car both filled with much much more and nicer belongings. Or did your parents' car have a CD player and GPS unit and anti-lock brakes? Did their house have a programmable thermostat and a Roomba and a 55" television? Let me ask you an honest question -- do you seriously not know that the standard of living has increased since your parent's day?
No, that's not how a cult works in fact it's not even very similar. I know, because I studied cults... in college. Try it, you might learn something.
Yawn. You are obviously either too stupid or too lazy to look up the numbers to know how valuable college is to the average educated person. I won't do it for you, but believe me the truth bears out my totally representative anecdote. Oh fuck it I'll do it not for you but for others who might not realize how fucking retarded you are: here it is, the truth.
I am a prick, by the way, a real asshole. But that doesn't change how right I am.
Awesome! Did you know Bill Gates and Eminem also didn't go to college? Yeah, it's awesome to live in a land of opportunity where exceptionally rarely talented individuals can do well for themselves without having to kowtow to a preset program.
For those of us who are less awesome than you obviously are, we have to settle for the humdrum life of four sweet years partying with co-eds, followed by the lackluster existence of above-average wages in easy jobs. But you, man, you are totally rad! Way more rad than most of us, we little people, the dum-dums. Way to be you, man! Gosh, you can't imagine the jealousy I feel for you.
Really nice. I'm thankful every day. The world provided a very nice beaten path for me to follow and the path leads to vast wealth (American middle class). That's why I get upset when I hear people give the advice to stop going down that path and sit down and suck your thumb. Thumb suckers don't get this vast wealth.
Some do fine. Others get left in the dust by those who prepared better before getting started.
I agree. "Some" are about one in ten thousand. "Others" are the rest.
If you are Bill Gates or Eminem then no, you don't need college. If you are less great than one-in-ten-thousand, then get that degree.
Of course I'm including those things. Those things are part of the cost of college. Where else do you think the room-and-board costs go? Lost wages are also in there because your wages would have been paying for you to live.
Is that your response to "explain why a high school degree is a reasonable threshold, but a college degree isn't"? If so, why doesn't your response actually address the threshold question?
If you think $20 an hour is great wages, then you deserve to be underpaid for your whole life. Please never change. Come mow my lawn some time.
I went from $11.50 an hour before college to $25 an hour the day I graduated (in 2002). That's more than 100% increase. I graduated from Dartmouth, which is as expensive as any college in the country, with $20,000 in loans, which is 1,400 hours of marginal pay, meaning I earned all of what I made before PLUS enough to pay for college in less than a year after leaving college. At the same time, I enjoyed a more satisfying job and had a great time in college for four years. Today I earn $44 an hour -- 400% my pre-college income. Many people in my field make make up to double what I make. At your current pay you would net $5 an hour which would pay back an Ivy League education in two years and if you don't go to an expensive Ivy League school you can pay back your college expenses even faster than that.
My guess is that your high school education didn't teach you enough to run the numbers like that, or else you would have gotten up early to be first in line on college registration day.
A college education is the single greatest value in the modern world. Nothing else even comes close. Dollar-for-dollar, nothing else delivers more quality of life to the individual -- nothing. People who complain about its cost have no idea what they are talking about.