by NewYork44M 22 Replies latest jw friends
YES!
A new set of income statistics answers those questions quite clearly: Yes, college is worth it, and it’s not even close. For all the struggles that many young college graduates face, a four-year degree has probably never been more valuable.
Here is the article from the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/27/upshot/is-college-worth-it-clearly-new-data-say.html?hp
yet this is the very thing which the Borg knocks is going to College and earning something and giving to the Community
NY,
Ditto. In additon, the personal ROI is immeasurable. And with higher education you would be less likely to annoy me on this site, which is by far the most important thing. LOL.
Good article .This has been on my mind .We just got back from celebrating our daughter in laws College graduation .
She was never given a primary education ,because her JW Mother thought she was protecting her children from 'the world ' by not sending them to school . The lack of education background meant my DIL has had to self teach herself everything ,it has taken long HARD work ,but she graduated with Honors !! She will now start in the fall at a University studying in a research program for cancer research .
When she called her Mother to tell her about the graduation ceremony ,her Mothers response was, " Well are you going to get a job at McDonalds now? ".......sadly the typical JW mindset that a college education is worthless ......
Is a College Degree Worth It?
Not Necessarily.
I still prefer the common sense Austrian method of analysis to the econometric approach. A good article on the subject can be found here:
http://mises.org/daily/6720/A-College-Degree-Does-Not-Make-You-a-Million-Dollars
Some of the interesting points raised:
1) The data in these studies is self-selecting. Intuitively we already know that "the more ambitious and talented go to college in greater proportion than their peers." It is not the piece of paper hanging up on the wall that makes these people successful -- it is their underlying character and motivation that makes them successful. These are the kinds of people that could start as a floor mopper at McDonalds and end up running the entire store within a few years. Everything they do they do seriously with the goal to be better than everyone else. It does not matter where these ones go, they bring success with them. It just so happens that most of them are drawn towards university today because that is the narrative that we drill into their heads from a young age: "you can't be successful unless you go to college." But that is simply not true.
Even the article's attempt to get around these truths I found unconvincing.
"Genetically identical twins raised in the same environment are likely to have very similar ability levels to start with, which enables one to isolate the effect of education."
It is not "ability" that matters, it is interests and the motivation to pursue them. Some of the most gifted and seemlingly intelligent people I knew through school ended up going nowhere in life simply because they were lazy or had no clearly defined goals or interests. And the ones we all thought were too stupid to succeed ended up clawing their way past everyone else with hard work alone.
And all of that is beside the point anyways, because even identical twins can differ radically in both raw ability and interests. How do the studies account for twins with differnent attitudes and motivations? How do they account for twins pursuing different fields with naturally different pay scales? What if one twin enjoys accounting while the other wants nothing more in life than to be a photographer? They both pursue their chosen careers, and the accountant naturally makes a lot more money. But can we really say he is more successful if they both are doing what they want to do? How are we really defining and measuring "success"?
2) The individual who forgoes college gets a 4 year head start on work experience and savings. If the non-college individual also spends those 4 years doing self-study and looking for cheaper education alternatives (such as part time tech schools, trade schools and online options), then all of a sudden that person has a huge advantage over the green horn new college grad who is dragging 100k in debt behind him and has little to no real world work experience. Perhaps that is part of the reason why such a HUGE proportion of new college grads end up either unemployed or not working in their field of study at all.
3) You also have to be careful of who exactly is being compared to who in these 'studies.' As the Mises article brings out:
"Indeed, who exactly are we comparing? We’re not only comparing Jane-Lawyer to Joe-Carpenter, but we’re also comparing financial analysts with the mentally disabled, medical doctors with welfare dependents, building engineers with drug addicts, architects with pan handlers, marketing directors with immigrants who can barely speak English, and university professors with career criminals (whose earnings, by the way, are rarely reported)."
4) The only truly good degrees are the STEM and Professional degrees. But once you venture outside of those, the average earnings for college grads plummets, far below the point of being worth the investment.
5) Alternatives to University are also always ignored or played down. Self study is far more viable now in the age of the internet than it was 100 years ago, where colleges were built up around physical libraries simply because of communication limitations. You now have online books, study courses, chat rooms, groups and associations devoted solely to your field of study, etc. There are also more and more Vocational Technology classes being offered to kids still in High School, as well as adults (I myself attended a Vo-Tech school during my Junior and Senior year in High School). There are apprenticeship programs and entrepreneurial programs galore for those who would look for them.
6) And lastly, a point I only partially touched on earlier: the often crushing and suffocating debt that comes along with long term University degrees. " Seven in 10 college seniors (71%) who graduated last year had student loan debt, with an average of $29,400 per borrower." Those figures can very easily skyrocket to 50-60-70-100k+ in debt for the longer term degrees. I've seen stories of many Law students with debts upwards of $250,000, and then they wind up stuck as a common clerk making $40,000 a year, or worse, they never find work in their field at all.
Teary, thank you for that information. I have some very strong opinions about education and while I understand that not all degrees are created equal, an education has the potential of transforming lives.
Even though I grew up a witness and remained one for much of my adult life I never bought into the no-education stance. I continued my education even as an elder.
My financial wellbeing is directly attributed to my education. No question.
An education is just like any other investment. If you invest wisely, you will end up ahead.
Just my two-cents.
Thank you for your reply NewYork44M.
I think one of the other common problems we run into is in actually defining this vague and overbroad term 'education.' A man can be staunchly anti-university and yet still be pro-education, because education is not limited to university.
Life itself is a constant state of "education." We learn things constantly all throughout our lives simply by living with and interacting with and empathizing with other human beings. I still consider my grandpa to be one of the smartest men I ever knew, and yet he never set foot inside a college or university. He gained wisdom from life.
It also depends heavily on what exacty you want to be educated "in" and why you want to be educated "in it." When we say that Witnesses are anti-education, what we really mean is that they are anti-"high intensity academic studies at the expense of spiritual study." They are not anti-'education,' they simply hold up a different form of education as the key to happiness and success. Instead of happiness through more money by means of more college degrees, they emphasize happiness through devoting time to knowing the Creator. For some people this does bring great happiness, and for some it apparently does not. I try not to judge either path -- let people do as they wish and they can judge for themselves at the end of their own lives how worth while their own choices were.
I also say, if a person has a interest or wants to learn a subject, then instead of sinking 50k-100k into a college, just go pick up a book and study in your spare time. I myself enjoy Austrian Economics and Political Philosophy, but I am not going to waste a lot of money on expensive classes and degrees. Instead, I've simply filled my bookshelf up with books and I read them and learn at my own leisure.
But that is just my couple of cents too. Take them as you will.
TO,
One thing you don't mention in your post is that recruiters, when presented two candidates otherwise 'equal' - one with a college degree and one without - will almost always choose the one with the degree. That factors into income statistics. If I were the college recruiter I would do the same thing. College also teaches analytical thinking (well they are supposed to), which also factors into income, as those moving up corporate ladders are more typically rational, analytical thinkers and planners. There are a lot of other reasons to get a college education that don't necessary factor into income, such as personal growth and being exposed to many different viewpoints, thoughts and ideas.
Additionally, unemployment rates in the US for college graduates are typically half those without a college degree, and that 'statistic' remains fairly constant during recessions and boom times. That also factors into income.
Dubs and ex-dubs: go to college. Professor DJS says so.
TO,
Society is set up in such a way that credentials are critical to your success. In your scenerio, I could learn as much as a Certified Public Accountant by reading to books. However, if I want to sign an audit report, or actually work as an auditor I need the CPA license. To sit for the CPA, I needed 150 hours of college credits. A CPA firm would never consider hiring a person with the book learning - but without the educational credentials. Sorry, I did not make the rules.
I actually disagree you you - education teaches a person to think critically - that is the last thing the Watchtower wants to happen. This is the reason they present college education as a bad thing.
troubled mind, no doubt your daughter-in-law has insulated herself from her mother's ignorance...but really? What a downer. Kudos to you for providing that reinforcement and support for her continued success.
