Is A College Degree Worth It?
5 September 2006The conventional answer is to say yes, always – that everyone should be pushed to get a college degree because of the extra value it gives you in terms of earnings potential. There are these statistics, that say that people with a college degree average a salary of $51,000 a year versus people who have a high school diploma only averaging $28,000. But I ran across this paper arguing against the conventional wisdom, taking the position that for many people, it’s really just not worth it to go get a college degree. Be warned – it’s a PDF document and it’s about 50 pages long. But if you’re someone debating about whether to go to college or not, I think it’s a good read. It makes several basic claims:
1) In many cases, students don’t learn much in college because professors have dumbed down the standards. True – certainly in my experience even at a school that had a reputation for forcing you to work hard, it was pretty easy to game the system and take classes where you didn’t really learn much at all. This may be more or less true depending on the school – but grade inflation has been reported even at places like Harvard, where 90% of the class now graduates with honors.
I’m not sure this is a good argument against getting a degree, though. That leaves whether you learn anything in your own hands – just because a professor may hand out easy A’s doesn’t mean someone who actually wants to learn can’t take advantage of the class. It is, however, a good point – if you’re just going to go and party, you’re wasting an opportunity to build up your skills, which can be as important in your job as your credentials.
2) The government subsidizing college education means that people buy it when it’s not valuable because they pay less than the real value. Maybe that’s got merit as an argument about our government’s policies – but for an individual, it means you’d be a sucker not to get something that is artificially cheap. If someone else is paying for your education, that’s a good reason to go ahead and do it.
3) The average earnings statistics referred to above are flawed. Here’s the basic logic:
Instead of looking at average earnings for each group — which inflates the
earnings of the college-educated by including many fabulously wealthy professionals and business executives, while depressing the earnings of those without college degrees by including many individuals who are scarcely literate — it is more sensible to focus on the workers at the margin. The right question to ask is this: For high school graduates who might have gone to college but did not, is it the case that their earnings would be significantly higher if they had instead enrolled in college?
The paper points out that there are many good jobs out there that pay a lot and hire people without college diplomas – from mechanics to office clerks to court reporters. Often the option is not just going without a college degree, but getting vocational training instead. And as the paper points out, many of the people “pushed” into college degrees end up as marginal students who don’t benefit from the degree all that much.
I think this is a fair point, and probably the most important to bear in mind. Averages include all those Princeton graduates and all the top students at the other schools. If you’re going to go to college and be at the bottom of your class, you may not earn that average salary. Many college students go and end up making less than they would have with vocational training. So if you’re deciding not to go, compare going to college with getting training in a career that pays well but doesn’t require a degree.
4) Most job growth is in fields that don’t require a degree, such as nursing, health care, teaching, and many lower quality jobs. That’s true, but again not decisive in my opinion. It’s true that you’ll have another option if you don’t go to college – the view that you’ll get shut out of the workforce is what the paper is trying to rebut. But as an individual, you only need one job. So if you can get a better paying one with a degree, then you should go. And because many of the jobs the paper lists are things like waiters or retail workers, if you can go to college and do well enough to get a better job, you should.
5) It’s mainly about credentialing, rather than showing any real value in the worker. Again, true – but an individual can’t change the system. You may not like it, but if you want to work in a business or in management, you need that degree.
6) Many college graduates work “high school” jobs such as pizza delivery or warehouse work. Some of the statistics in here are disturbing – such as that 1/3 of Washington, D.C. Domino’s delivery drivers have a bachelor’s degree – or that 20% of people with a college degree will work these “high school” jobs after graduating. That doesn’t say much for the prospects of people who are just going in for the easy A. On the other hand, for anyone willing to work hard, college is a great chance to rack up some achievements, build your resume, and actually learn some useful skills that you’d never learn in high school. I think it’s important to look at these numbers and remember that while it’s certainly possible to go to college and waste your time, to a large degree it is within your control whether that happens or not.
I think the article is definitely worth a read. Not everyone needs to go to college. But I also think that it is ALWAYS a good idea to try to keep learning. If you’re asking yourself whether to go to college or keep working in your retail store job after you graduate high school, you’re asking the wrong question. You should be asking something like: “Should I go to college or take a 2-year study course to be an electrician?”
Going through life unskilled is what is going to keep you without a good job. There are lots of jobs where you don’t need to go to college that will pay well. There are lots of jobs where you won’t get in the door without a degree. It’s also very easy to get a degree without much work if you’re just worried about the credential factor. Your life isn’t going to be ruined or worthless if you don’t go to college. But you can fritter it away by never doing or learning anything – just as you can waste your years at that expensive university.
Discuss this in the Free the Drones Career Forums.
4 Responses to “Is A College Degree Worth It?”
September 13th, 2006 at 12:11 am
[...] Free the Drones asks: Is A College Degree Worth It? I’ve decided that mine was, even though it makes me exactly zero extra dollars these days, but YMMV, of course, which is why it’s not a bad idea to give this post a read. Nice look at the pros and cons of going to college. [...]
October 14th, 2006 at 5:26 pm
There are lots of jobs that pay well without a college degree. I think the stats showed 60% of the fastest growing jobs are non-degress, and there less likely to be outsourced too.
October 27th, 2006 at 1:54 am
There are good paying jobs out there such as police officer, firefighters and other government/civil service positions that do not require a degree. I have a degree and I’m working in a position that doesn’t require one. For me a college degree was more about an accomplishment not reaching a certain salary.
May 20th, 2008 at 2:12 pm
well i think that anybody that want togo college should