<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/04/business/college-graduates-fare-well-in-jobs-market-even-through-recession.html?hpw&_r=0%5B/url%5D">http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/04/business/college-graduates-fare-well-in-jobs-market-even-through-recession.html?hpw&_r=0</a></p>
<p>"So, despite the painful upfront cost, the return on investment on a college degree remains high. An analysis from the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution in Washington estimated that the benefits of a four-year college degree were equivalent to an investment that returns 15.2 percent a year, even after factoring in the earnings students forgo while in school.</p>
<p>This is more than double the average return to stock market investments since 1950, the report said, and more than five times the returns to corporate bonds, gold, long-term government bonds, or homeownership.</p>
<p>Whether “college” is a good investment is like asking whether a “stock” is a good investment. It all depends. College and kid is like stock and investor. What are the Kid’s needs? What can the college provide? What are the investor’s needs? What can the stock provide? Nothing is a sure bet. Some combinations are horrible bets. Some bets are better than others.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t recommend a risk adverse investor buying the latest startup stock, just like I wouldn’t send an accounting major to a nursing school.</p>
<p>Also $ ROI isn’t everything. In economics, it is maximizing Utility, not money. Sure the kid could have more money in the end if he became an auto mechanic and avoided college. But he may be happier being the engineer designing the car.</p>
<p>Wow. You’d think currency was like, worth everything.</p>
<p>Studies or analyses like this are so manipulative and such propaganda.</p>
<p>Not all colleges are equal and not all majors are equal and neither are all students. Reports like this set a straw an utopian society with all things being equal then come to their conclusions when they can obviously select for test subjects that will produce any desired outcome.</p>
<p>The term college can refer to community college or Harvard University. The data could be weighted to engineering majors or art history majors. The data is very selective. How many kids report back to their schools when they get that engineering job they worked hard studying for vs a job at a chicken shack?</p>
<p>The only thing a person needs to know is if college is a good investment of time and money for themselves.</p>
<p>The article is basically saying that people with college degrees are pushing lower-skilled workers out. If you want to get a college degree to work in food-service, that may not be a particularly good investment. There are no details on the analysis of a 15.2% return either so one can’t make a judgment as to whether or not it’s garbage from the article.</p>
<p>“That has left those who have spent some time in college but have not received a bachelor’s degree to scramble for what is left. Employment for them fell during the recession and is now back to exactly where it began. There were 34,992,000 workers with some college employed in December 2007, and there are 34,992,000 today.”</p>
<p>I think that the percentage that go to college is around 50%. Their stats say that about 33% get their degree. What are the financial returns like for those that go deep into debt but don’t get their degree?</p>
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<p>Yup.</p>
<p>Well, that’s where the somewhat-idiotic correlation between financial investments and spending for your offspring’s college education ends.</p>
<p>When a stock is bought, it has a certain value. The holder of the stock does not lose most of the value if he only owns it for two years instead of four, stock price fluctuation notwithstanding. But that’s basically what happens when a student drops out after two years of college–without the diploma, the value drops precipitously, which more than offsets only paying half the cost. To a certain extent, it’s money out the window.</p>
<p>Taking it a step further, one could posit then that a 4-year degree in a supposed ‘non-useful’ field could be even a MORE foolish exercise. But…here’s where the correlation falls apart. The student with a (for example ONLY! :)) B.A. in Philosophy may be the type of kid that is driven but does what he wants, and ends up very profitable using those philosophical tenets as a baseline. BTW, I happen to know at least a couple of colleagues that majored in philosophy that are extremely business-savvy & successful. In those instances (I guess), good return on investment.</p>
<p>Let’s now turn this argument on its head, shall we? What if the cost of higher education was BASED retroactively on success in the job market, and fluctuated as such?! Some governing body or overmind would render a decision that “…XYZ University, because of the fact that between 2009-2011, the employed graduate percentage dropped by 15% & corresponding salaries of those employed graduates decreased by 10%, has hereby been ordered to slash tuition charges by 12.5% for the next two years, at which time it will be re-evaluated.” Ay-yi-yi, can you imagine?</p>
<p>All kidding aside, though, you are starting to see an organic shake-out of sorts from colleges that have charged too dang much over the years, without enough successful graduates to justify the high costs. And parents–especially those here on CC–are more informed than ever, and will increasing seek better value for their child’s education, leaving the ‘bad value’ colleges out of the mix. So maybe, in its own way, it IS happening.</p>