[gautambay]

Interesting to note that

(1) The cost of attending college has grown faster than inflation over the past few decades.

(2) Yet, it seems that the ROI on college is high (for those you graduate), as evidenced in this article.

(3) There's another statistic that gets bandied in education reform circles: 43% of college grads in 2013 were underemployed (working jobs that don't need a college degree).

I wonder how #3 reconciles with #1 and #2. Perhaps this is a case of averages lying, and the ROI data for top colleges might look very different from bottom colleges (to the point where there may even be no income disparity between attending a bad college vs. not attending college).

Has anyone seen a better / deeper analysis of this?

[cko]

Perhaps it's not the "going to college" that puts one at an advantage, but the "being able to go to college." In other words, the people who are able to make the choice to go and afford it were already at an advantageous position.

[seanflyon]

That makes sense, but I don't think it is as big of a factor as the actual value of education. Our economy is increasingly shifting to skilled labor. If you have the right skill set, opportunities abound.

[dllthomas]

To some degree that's still begging the question of whether "education" in the traditional sense is the best way to acquire those skills. In the case of (a good school, a typical person) I think the answer is yes for an important chunk of those skills (while other important chunks are not learned well in that setting). As you move further from that case, more questions are raised, and of course partisans in the pro/anti ("traditional") education camps tend to ignore one or the other of the chunks I mentioned.

[seanflyon]

I think that surrounding yourself with other smart people with a common interest in learning and where you are expected to learn is the best way to acquire those skills. I think that is harder to find outside of formal educational programs.

[dllthomas]

I mostly agree.

[seanflyon]

Yeah, I didn't mean to imply I disagreed with you. When I think about what makes traditional education so valuable I don't think its the traditional education part of it. When one thinks about what makes a college a college, you think about the quality of the professors and curriculum and while I think that's valuable, I don't that's the key part.

[tdeitch]

The Economist published a chart in April showing some of the (American) colleges with the highest and lowest rates of return on investment over twenty years. The article admits that the study "surely overstates the financial value of a college education" because it compares college graduates to non-attendees without trying to adjust for differences in intelligence, etc., so take it for what it's worth.

http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21600131-too-man...

[orangecat]

working jobs that don't need a college degree

The employers probably "need" employees with at least average intelligence and conscientiousness, for which a college degree (in anything) is a decent proxy.

[cowbell]

>Yet, it seems that the ROI on college is high (for those you graduate), as evidenced in this article.

The ROI of a college degree earned 30 years ago is high. Recent college graduates aren't faring so well. Those who do have jobs are frequently underemployed, living with their parents, and buried under school loans.

[Tycho]

Definitely seems like there's some hidden variables here that are not being modelled.