Almost any degree yields positive ROI

[jimbogumbo]

Study done in one large public state system: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/students/careers/2023/11/21/data-show-strong-return-investment-unc-graduates

[Hibush]

This is another comparison of people who get degrees with people who don't. Those are very different pools with very different lifetime earning potential. The true benefit is going to be less.

Nevertheless, I like to put the value of college in the opposite direction. What would be the loss of lifetime earnings of those who needed a college education but didn't get one? What would be the loss to the state economy if there were only private universities, and those now getting public degrees got no secondary education? More narrowly, what if all the young people with college potential left the state for college and didn't come back?

[dismalist]

This is another comparison of people who get degrees with people who don't. Those are very different pools with very different lifetime earning potential. The true benefit is going to be less.

Nevertheless, I like to put the value of college in the opposite direction. What would be the loss of lifetime earnings of those who needed a college education but didn't get one? What would be the loss to the state economy if there were only private universities, and those now getting public degrees got no secondary education? More narrowly, what if all the young people with college potential left the state for college and didn't come back?

The first statement is well taken.

The rest is way too pessimistic, however. There is no reason that someone qualified to get through college cannot get such an education. Borrow -- iff its worth it. And if there were no longer any public universities watch private ones sprout like mushrooms. And if all the qualified graduates left the state they'd take their tax payments with them and also their use of public services. Remaining residents are no worse off.

[jimbogumbo]

Hibush, I disagree a bit with the first point. There are plenty of people arguing that there is simply no economic need to attend college. This study demonstrates that going to a public and getting a degree is good for you financially even if you study something in the liberal arts. That concept has bee under attack of quite some time as being of no financial benefit.

I actually attended a well regraded SLAC ( yes, many years ago). For the first three years I commuted, worked and had good scholarships. Graduated with no debt, and well prepared to go into business or grad school. It was an exceptional experience.

My sisters went to a public R1 flagship, and did the same except for the commuting part. The important parts were being well prepared academically (duh), being frugal and making smart choice about the cost.

and dismalist, I'd argue that going into deep debt is virtually never worth it except for the options at a really elite university. I wouldn't advise it if a student was considering an average or below LAC, or even a relatively low cost public.

[Wahoo Redux]

This is another comparison of people who get degrees with people who don't. Those are very different pools with very different lifetime earning potential. The true benefit is going to be less.

Nevertheless, I like to put the value of college in the opposite direction. What would be the loss of lifetime earnings of those who needed a college education but didn't get one? What would be the loss to the state economy if there were only private universities, and those now getting public degrees got no secondary education? More narrowly, what if all the young people with college potential left the state for college and didn't come back?

The first statement is well taken.

The rest is way too pessimistic, however. There is no reason that someone qualified to get through college cannot get such an education. Borrow -- iff its worth it. And if there were no longer any public universities watch private ones sprout like mushrooms. And if all the qualified graduates left the state they'd take their tax payments with them and also their use of public services. Remaining residents are no worse off.

You live in a very simple, balanced, and predictable world, Big-D.

Where is this place?

[dismalist]

Hibush, I disagree a bit with the first point. There are plenty of people arguing that there is simply no economic need to attend college. This study demonstrates that going to a public and getting a degree is good for you financially even if you study something in the liberal arts. That concept has bee under attack of quite some time as being of no financial benefit.

I actually attended a well regraded SLAC ( yes, many years ago). For the first three years I commuted, worked and had good scholarships. Graduated with no debt, and well prepared to go into business or grad school. It was an exceptional experience.

My sisters went to a public R1 flagship, and did the same except for the commuting part. The important parts were being well prepared academically (duh), being frugal and making smart choice about the cost.

and dismalist, I'd argue that going into deep debt is virtually never worth it except for the options at a really elite university. I wouldn't advise it if a student was considering an average or below LAC, or even a relatively low cost public.

Of course, we also have to consider how much of the average college wage premium is due to signalling. This is privately beneficial but socially wasteful. We all stand up at the concert to get a better view, and we don't get a better view!

The guy who propagates this -- Bryan Caplan -- thinks college is about 80% signalling and 20% useful stuff. I'd settle on 50%. That gets broken down by majors. Engineering is undoubtedly useful in not having bridges fall down. But that's only about five percent of undergraduates. At the other extreme, there's the foreign language question. [There's even a thread about it here.] How much of Latin do we remember after five years? Must be signalling, at least for most students.

Higher ed is not the holy grail.

[Hibush]

There are plenty of people arguing that there is simply no economic need to attend college.

If they argue that there is no need for anybody to attend college, they are obviously wrong. Perhaps maliciously so. Good counterarguments are important

This study demonstrates that going to a public and getting a degree is good for you financially even if you study something in the liberal arts.

My complaint with the study is that it does not support (or refute) that conclusion. It is not designed to.

It does show that people who go to college and study the liberal arts do just fine financially. That conclusion strikes me as sufficient for encouraging those inclined to study the liberal arts to do so, and for public universities to offer as many of those courses and majors as the students want.

Back to picking at the nits...  The study does not address how well those who want to study the liberal arts do if they are coerced into majoring in science or technology. (I suspect they do worse than if they got to study what motivates them.) The study does not address how well those who don't want to go to college would have done if they are coerced to study liberal arts or science. (I suspect they do worse than if they got to do work that motivates them.)

Are our suspicions aligned?

[Wahoo Redux]

Higher ed is not the holy grail.

Nobody every said it was.  Don't get frustrated. 

People have said it is very good for intellect, culture, and civically minded people.

And it looks like the facts substantiate the notion that college has a good ROI, which, as we know, is the one that counts.

[jimbogumbo]

There are plenty of people arguing that there is simply no economic need to attend college.

If they argue that there is no need for anybody to attend college, they are obviously wrong. Perhaps maliciously so. Good counterarguments are important

This study demonstrates that going to a public and getting a degree is good for you financially even if you study something in the liberal arts.

My complaint with the study is that it does not support (or refute) that conclusion. It is not designed to.

It does show that people who go to college and study the liberal arts do just fine financially. That conclusion strikes me as sufficient for encouraging those inclined to study the liberal arts to do so, and for public universities to offer as many of those courses and majors as the students want.

Back to picking at the nits...  The study does not address how well those who want to study the liberal arts do if they are coerced into majoring in science or technology. (I suspect they do worse than if they got to study what motivates them.) The study does not address how well those who don't want to go to college would have done if they are coerced to study liberal arts or science. (I suspect they do worse than if they got to do work that motivates them.)

Are our suspicions aligned?

I am in complete agreement with your first point, and your nits.

dismalist: I really don't care how much is due to signaling. You seem to me to always be arguing for a "better" world. I'm just talking about best strategies under current rules and conditions.

[marshwiggle]

Study done in one large public state system: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/students/careers/2023/11/21/data-show-strong-return-investment-unc-graduates

From the actual report:

Liberal arts/non-professionally focused CIP codes have been excluded from the Program of Study to Employment Alignment metric. These excluded CIP
codes include Communications, Journalism, and Related Programs: Foreign Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics; English Language and Literature/Letters;
Liberal Arts and Sciences, General Studies, and Humanities; Multi/Interdisciplinary Studies; Philosophy and Religious Studies; and Social Sciences and History

A strange omission?

[dismalist]

dismalist: I really don't care how much is due to signaling. You seem to me to always be arguing for a "better" world. I'm just talking about best strategies under current rules and conditions.

Almost all people are like that, Jimbo, and for good evolutionary reason. Looking exclusively at oneself, it is indeed best to only consider "the best strategies under current rules and conditions". Heartily agreed. It's efficient in the short run. But there's a difference between optimally adapting to existing institutions and designing optimal institutions.

The difficulty arises when individual rationality is counter to group rationality. To follow the logic of signalling, sticking with higher ed, everybody agrees higher ed is financially beneficial. OK, so let's do more. Everybody goes to higher ed, perhaps because the government pays for it. Everybody has now stood up at the concert. To get ahead of the crowd, get a Master's. Then everybody gets a Masters. Now to get ahead you need a PhD, or, well, doctor of something. Then everybody gets a PhD, or doctor of something. At the end of all this, we all have PhD's and produce very little because our working lives are now so short. Poverty beckons. I'm sure higher degrees can easily be instituted. There's the Habilitation in many European and non-English-speaking countries already, from the 17th century, flowering from the 19th.

There are of course beneficiaries to this process -- us, at least for a while.

That's why it's important to think about these things.

[dismalist]

Study done in one large public state system: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/students/careers/2023/11/21/data-show-strong-return-investment-unc-graduates

From the actual report:

Liberal arts/non-professionally focused CIP codes have been excluded from the Program of Study to Employment Alignment metric. These excluded CIP
codes include Communications, Journalism, and Related Programs: Foreign Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics; English Language and Literature/Letters;
Liberal Arts and Sciences, General Studies, and Humanities; Multi/Interdisciplinary Studies; Philosophy and Religious Studies; and Social Sciences and History

A strange omission?

This actually opens room for an interesting experiment. The excluded CIP codes seem to me to be relatively useless on the labor market for providing the job skills required. If we had the lifetime earnings of those graduates and compared them to people who studied relatively useful subjects, we could get an estimate of how much of the college wage premium is due to signalling and how much due to learning relatively useful stuff.

[marshwiggle]

Study done in one large public state system: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/students/careers/2023/11/21/data-show-strong-return-investment-unc-graduates

From the actual report:

Liberal arts/non-professionally focused CIP codes have been excluded from the Program of Study to Employment Alignment metric. These excluded CIP
codes include Communications, Journalism, and Related Programs: Foreign Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics; English Language and Literature/Letters;
Liberal Arts and Sciences, General Studies, and Humanities; Multi/Interdisciplinary Studies; Philosophy and Religious Studies; and Social Sciences and History

A strange omission?

This actually opens room for an interesting experiment. The excluded CIP codes seem to me to be relatively useless on the labor market for providing the job skills required. If we had the lifetime earnings of those graduates and compared them to people who studied relatively useful subjects, we could get an estimate of how much of the college wage premium is due to signalling and how much due to learning relatively useful stuff.

If you do a search of the article, many of the terms in that footnote only come up in that footnote. ( for example, "literature". "English comes up there, and as the last name of one of the governance group members.

So, the study only looks at what some would refer to as "job training". That's kind of underwhelming, especially to lead people to make the claim that "it doesn't matter what you study". In fact, what it proves is that "It doesn't matter which professional program you choose." The question of whether studying anything at all has ROI is still open.

[Hibush]

Study done in one large public state system: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/students/careers/2023/11/21/data-show-strong-return-investment-unc-graduates

From the actual report:

Liberal arts/non-professionally focused CIP codes have been excluded from the Program of Study to Employment Alignment metric. These excluded CIP
codes include Communications, Journalism, and Related Programs: Foreign Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics; English Language and Literature/Letters;
Liberal Arts and Sciences, General Studies, and Humanities; Multi/Interdisciplinary Studies; Philosophy and Religious Studies; and Social Sciences and History

It is worth analyzing the data yourself to find the distribution you think is meanginful. (https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/naics2_62.htm)

The mean wages can be very misleading.

I just took a look at the health industry sector. The bifurcation is huge. There are 11 million workers on the helping end (health aides, janitors, secretaries) who make about $35k per year. Then there are 8 million doctors, nurses and executives who average a little over $100k per year.  In between those two extremes of income are fewer than 2 million (social services, business operations, building trades). The mean for the industry is $63k, but very few  people make that amount. The mean is a consequence of the ratio of professionals to helpers.

For graduates going into fields with similarly bimodal income, the average for a particular major is also likely to be determined by the proportion who go into a professional career versus a low-paid helper career. The difference a college education makes won't be that an individual makes $5k or $10k more per year than they would have otherwise. It will be that more of them get high paying jobs. Humanities students who get high paying jobs make out the same as the other majors in the same jobs.

[Puget]

Humanities students who get high paying jobs make out the same as the other majors in the same jobs.

Maybe this is the point you are already making, but this is a classic example of selection bias + restriction of range in statistics. 

There is also a third variable problem, as students from higher SES families are more likely to choose humanities majors, and are much more likely to benefit from the types of social networks that help them get high paying jobs in fields that don't require a particular degree. I would like to see outcomes stratified by family SES (surely someone has looked at this?).