I always advise people to separate college into its components like you would everything else, than make a cost-benefit analysis.
The components of college are as follows:
1) Information you'd learn and the structured environment for learning it.
2) The degree you get at the end
3) The people you'd meet
4) The social events you'd attend (parties)
So the questions is - is this "college package" worth the time and money you'd invest? and "Is there another way to get these components for higher quality, less money, and less time investment?"
Since you say you can learn on your own, I think (1) The Information you'd learn, is not worth college. Especially in tech, you can learn all these things better online.
In web design and development, no one cares what school you went to - they only care about your portfolio and experience, so (2) is definitely NOT worthwhile.
You'll definitely meet cool and smart people in college, but you can meet even cooler and smarter peopler elsewhere I'd argue. Problem with college is that most people are just loafing around in a fantasy world with no consequences. In my personal experience, the people I've met in my post-college life have provided more value to me. And my college friends who are providing value now are only doing so because they are outside of that college bubble where you just drink beer and chase girls all day.
Finally for (4), if you really wanted to do the whole college social life - there's nothing stopping you from doing it for free. Just lookup the social events online and show up with a good story. Sounds weird to most people, but then again, most people go to college and live uninteresting lives. Entrepreneurs are NOT like most people, so who do you aspire to be?
College and "place-based education" as Bill Gates would call it is archaic. Information is extremely cheap and mostly free, and connecting with mentors and people you want to learn from is also much easier.
As someone who attended an elite university education for a bankrupting sum of money, I have a bitter view and am obviously biased, but I'm sure most entrepreurs agree that with this last point that learning and connecting is available for free to anyone who works hard to get it
As someone who went to three different colleges to end up with one unused degree, I have pretty mixed feelings on the worth-it factor. Financially, I don't think it really opened the door through which I now make money, and I think this is increasingly true, that the debt from college is a barrier to entrepreneurship more than the knowledge opens doors.
In terms of development and fulfillment, it's harder to say. But I don't think the social time I got was quality social time. Instead of just being around a bunch of 18-22 year olds, I think I would have gotten a lot more out of traveling the world and meeting people from diverse backgrounds and of diverse ages. College culture just modeled how to be stressed, procrastinate and abuse alcohol.
That being said, what I did study there (music), I would have had a very hard time pursuing to the degree I did without that environment, so depending on what one studies it may be worth it. All in all, I'm leery of the college experience and how heavily it is sold as a cure-all for a person's future. Kind of a sneaky debt-engine if you ask me.
I like where you are going with this. First, my friend and I were discussing this post earlier and he did as well, bring up that the idea that colleges are worth much more than just their functions as businesses. Granted they DO function as businesses, but as you bring up, they are unique in that they invest in cultural and societal advancement and inquiry, things that are quite intangible. So in a sense yes we do have to think about them in a unique light. Secondly, as a person that willingly choose not to go to college (I would have just graduated) I can tell you from experience that it is indeed not so much what you learn in college that is important, but it is the connections and influence if you will, that you get for being affiliated with a "recognized" entity. Truth be told, I have submitted a proposal to ycombinator and as an aspiring web developer IT IS PAINFULLY hard to attract and team up with like-minded individuals. So yes, you heard that right, I did not say it is hard to learn how to program, how to run a business (i currently do), hard to pay your bills, hard to grow up and mature, no no I said its hard simply to find people. So in that respect, I think that is colleges greatest reward. And don't get me wrong, civilization was built with TEAMS, so its a good reward.
You can see then how it all neatly comes to fit. The environment you are placed in contains a certain type of people. Colleges help you connect with these people in this environment. It's just so "structured" that way. You become connected with mentors (your professors and alumni) and you connect with peers, and you connect with protegees. It's the whole neat, clean package.
No it is not impossible to meet and connect with people and build something great (as many have done) but college just streamlines the process.
You don't pay to go to college to learn. Just as you pointed out the self-motivated will ALWAYS find a way to learn. And to add to that, think about just how much abstract and intangible things that are SO IMPORTANT to a good life that you can't learn in college, you can't learn anywhere. You have to learn them through your own conscious efforts toward self-improvement.
It certainly does have value, but considering how much people pay to go to college it seems wasteful not to take advantage of the classroom resources. Going to college is great for finding a co-founder, making friends, etc. Whether class time is well spent doing those things, however, is less clear.
Basically, you go to college in America or you risk being poor for the rest of the your life. Sure, some coders / entrepreneurs can do it without college. And maybe college is the selection process for these success traits. But with this size of differential on a very large sample size, I think its pretty hard to say, at least in earnings power, universities are not fulfilling the myth.
I'm sick and tired of people putting arbitrary dollar valuations on abstract things. College is not a financial investment. You can not only look at your debt and your income to make this decision. It might make for a good, sensational news article, but it's almost immoral how backwards this viewpoint is.
The real value in college, like just about any other pursuit, is network building. Like several commenters have said, if all you wanted out of school was to learn something, you could go to the library. The fees for college are for the intangible aspects, and are worth far more than a direct dollars-to-dollars comparison will show.
Think of college as an IDE for personal development. It sets up a ready-made environment for you to explore new relationships, indulge in a variety of pursuits, and learn about the world. There are thousands of other people using the same IDE, creating a lively place for discussion of issues you'd never otherwise think of. People introduce you to new features or mechanics which you never considered before; you naturally begin to collaborate and contribute to large scale projects. You might even lead a few. Could you get all of these experience by piecing different activities together? Of course. Would it be nearly as productive, successful, and transformational? Of course not.
Like an IDE though, sometimes college can get a little bulky; you're naturally going to be paying for some features you don't want or use. But most of us keep paying anyway, because there's a few killer features which make it all worthwhile, ones that you wouldn't dare put a pricetag on. Attending university altered the entire trajectory of my life, starting from how I saw myself to what I want to accomplish. It redefined what I thought was possible for human endurance and achievement. It restored my faith in the ability of small groups to enact large positive change. It cost a pretty penny, but it has provided an unquantifiably large return on investment.
My entire point is consistently that the point of college is a degree. It's completely sensible for the vast majority of people to go to college for the great economic benefits it provides in terms of job opportunities. This does not mean it offers any real learning benefit over self-education for a variety of fields.
Just take computer science, an easy one because of the abundant resources available through the Internet. There is absolutely zero gain, once again, for the moderately intelligent, motivated student, in terms of learning from going to a college vs. a motivated, well-thought self-study. Study plans are available online. Course syllabuses are available online. Textbooks are available online. Problem solutions are available online.
In my opinion, college is worthwhile ONLY if you attend a university that is worth the cost. In most situations, students attend a particular university wishing that it will guarantee them success at some point in their lives without researching the ranking, quality of education, etc. In terms of ROI, it is a safer option to attend a Top 50 university than a for-profit university nobody has ever heard of. The discussion shouldn't exactly revolve around whether college is worth it, but about how we can improve the quality of education across the board so that graduates are adequately prepared for the real-world.
I believe that going to college is worth it if you're being selectively taught by the top 1%. The rest of the 99%? Forget about it-- you can learn more with an internet connection.
I went to a 4-year college, but earned almost all of my money from self-taught programming and design skills.
It's hard to justify the ROI on college.
At $25k/year for a low-tier college, you'll spend $100k (if you don't need loans). If you take that $100k and put it in the market (avg. 7% annual returns) with 0 contributions for 45 years, you could spend every penny you make and retire at 63 with $2.1M.
At more expensive colleges ($50k/yr+) the math seems less and less in your favor.
the idea that literally everyone should go / would benefit from going to college is definitely wrong and harmful, but there are some special things about college for those who take advantage.
college is probably the only time in your life that an entire team of domain experts will be obligated to take time out of their day to meet with you and answer your questions, however silly or low-level they may be.
as a professor, college is one of the only places where you can get paid to work on things that not only have no near-term value, but likely will never have any practical value at all! (I guess this could also be an argument against college...)
I do think there is a problem with the way people understand college. outside of a couple majors (ie computer science), college should really be considered something like a luxury good. it isn't economic in the sense of dollars, cents, and balance sheets, but something that has it's own intrinsic value for those who take advantage of it (a distinct minority of undergrad students).
disclaimer: I think I am one of these people who college is mostly wasted on. I don't go to office hours, participate in clubs, or really do anything other than really good work on programming assignments and cramming for exams. I'm mostly in it for the piece of paper.
Education aside, I find that just the network of people I made from going to college was worth the cost.
While focusing on developing marketable skills should be the top priority of students, there are a lot of other values that a college experience provides.
I'm biased, because I went there, but I think people need to break down a college education into two parts: (1) the education you receive (the things you know at graduation minus everything you knew as a day 1 freshman) and (2) the people, friends, and connections you've formed.
Part 1 is quickly becoming a commodity for many study topics that are available online, for free or close to it, so it's hard to justify a $200k price tag for something you can teach yourself.
Part 2 is much more difficult to supplant with alternative education. The people I've met while at Stanford have been invaluable to me in starting my career, and I don't even consider myself great at networking. There's just such a huge brain trust there it's hard to even question the value of being there. I'm sure the same can be said of the top 20 schools, however that probably quickly drops off past that.
I'm not trying to say that's the only reason you should go to college -- meeting smart people is simply one of many reasons. There are a lot of valuable payoffs that come with minimal risk, like the degree itself. And there are plenty of good colleges you can go to that don't cost 100k.
If going to college was truly not worth it, then you'd see a lot more people not doing it. The fact that going to college is a such a common course of action says that people actually find value in it (or there's a giant inefficiency in the market -- which is the argument of this article, but I think it's worth considering the alternative as well).
And I don't think the lottery analogy works. Regardless of what you (legally) do, you can't influence the chance that a single lottery ticket of yours wins. But you can improve the chance that certain low-probability events happen to you (like founding a successful startup) by your actions. And I think going to a good college can be one of those actions for many people.
Community colleges don’t offer much value. Even a few hundred dollars is way over priced because the degree won’t open hiring doors except in an extremely narrow set of jobs, like nursing and related care-giving - which would be better off as a standalone trade school.
The value of a college degree is networking and the brand name recognition that the university has, which opens doors when your resume is churning through automated recruiting systems.
Nobody expects that you exit college with training, skill or knowledge to be an effective employee, beyond basic life skills and vague understanding of how to comply with professional standards.
Using college to actually learn stuff is down to a personal preference. You absolutely don’t need to spend time that way, but you can get extra value if you choose to.
But the bulk of the intended value is to give yourself branding and signaling for marketability in employment.
You can think of a college degree similar to a “certified organic” label on food. It doesn’t really mean anything, but you’d be a complete moron to misjudge the fact that everyone else will believe it does mean something and shift all kinds of economic facts of life around that entrenched, generational belief, and use lobbyists, regulatory capture and media to constantly reinforce that stranglehold.
The education that Kamenetz describes could be offered for free at wikipedia.org.
By removing research, extracurriculars, sports, and on-campus living, she is paring a university education down to a simple exchange of knowledge, which is free online. These things all add to the essence of college, a place to transition from a child to an adult. The value of college is not what you learn in classes, but the personal development you go through by taking leadership positions in student organizations and pursuing passions with other young thinkers.
University is expensive because it's an adult development camp in addition to a knowledge exchange. The most expensive camps produce well developed, open minded individuals who are generally better positioned to succeed. I'd be surprised if I'm using anything I learned in a classroom even 5 years out of college, but the lessons learned outside the classroom will stay with me for life.
The article takes an exclusively financial look at 'worth it' and completely ignores both education and human connection as an aspect of going to college. I get that the author is writing about money and money alone, but the headline is deceptive.
Additionally, I do understand that a lot of people go to college for the purposes of getting a job. But that's not all college is, and pretending that the only reason anyone values college is the salary level afterwords is missing the most interesting pieces of the discussion. Things like,
-the arts are important for a society regardless of the financial profit from it (i.e., it would be 'worth it' to a society to not force each individual person to earn a living wage for their whole working life).
-college as a mechanism for meeting people, making connections, and learning about the world. Yes, some college experiences can be closed-minded, but that is not the norm.
-many other things. This author is so focused on money, they are missing the forest for the trees.
I'm not going to pile on college, or defend it for that matter, but I will make a couple observations.
First, if you just spent many years of your life and tens of thousands of dollars on something, it's going to be a great thing. This is "mountain climber" syndrome, which says that after you spend all that time and pain climbing the mountain, it's going to be the best experience ever.
Second, if the cost of college is rising faster than the cost of inflation, the question isn't is college worth it, the question is is college worth it so far. Because at some point it's not going to be worth it. The only question is when.
I'm a huge fan of education. Personally I wish that everybody had the equivalent of a 4-year degree in liberal arts before even starting on the rest of their education careers. But I think it's painfully obvious that the idea of college as being a simple ticket out of anywhere has gotten a lot more complex than it used to be. Lots of factors to weigh. Hard-working people who self-educate do well with or without college. Other folks may be thinking that college is giving them something that it isn't.
Not only is the cost an issue, but technology is moving so quickly that having a little stamp of approval isn't going to hold weight like it did even back forty years ago. If you're in the technology field and your degree is more than ten years old? You've got an ancient history degree, sadly.
The point is there's nothing you get from college that you couldn't get for free somewhere else (Internet for info and Industry gatherings for social aspects). College puts it together in a nice, easy to digest package but they vastly over charge for it.
The college model is still based around a philosophy from the 1800s when they were the sole providers of information.
Very interesting experiment and I'm curious to see what comes out of it but I motivation for going to college isn't all about making money (which is what starting a business is all about).
Aside from education, College/University changes people in immeasurable ways. Usually it's where you meet friends you have for life, find the person you want to marry, discover your political and philosophical self, explore vastly different parts of your intellect from incredibly smart/talented people (anything from quantum physics to 18th century english literature), and, most importantly, mature.
These are things that you can't put a price on but will stay with you the rest of your life. Of course, one doesn't necessarily need college to mature but it's a great environment to do it in. I can't imagine trying to do that in a corporate environment.
The components of college are as follows: 1) Information you'd learn and the structured environment for learning it. 2) The degree you get at the end 3) The people you'd meet 4) The social events you'd attend (parties)
So the questions is - is this "college package" worth the time and money you'd invest? and "Is there another way to get these components for higher quality, less money, and less time investment?"
Since you say you can learn on your own, I think (1) The Information you'd learn, is not worth college. Especially in tech, you can learn all these things better online.
In web design and development, no one cares what school you went to - they only care about your portfolio and experience, so (2) is definitely NOT worthwhile.
You'll definitely meet cool and smart people in college, but you can meet even cooler and smarter peopler elsewhere I'd argue. Problem with college is that most people are just loafing around in a fantasy world with no consequences. In my personal experience, the people I've met in my post-college life have provided more value to me. And my college friends who are providing value now are only doing so because they are outside of that college bubble where you just drink beer and chase girls all day.
Finally for (4), if you really wanted to do the whole college social life - there's nothing stopping you from doing it for free. Just lookup the social events online and show up with a good story. Sounds weird to most people, but then again, most people go to college and live uninteresting lives. Entrepreneurs are NOT like most people, so who do you aspire to be?
College and "place-based education" as Bill Gates would call it is archaic. Information is extremely cheap and mostly free, and connecting with mentors and people you want to learn from is also much easier.
As someone who attended an elite university education for a bankrupting sum of money, I have a bitter view and am obviously biased, but I'm sure most entrepreurs agree that with this last point that learning and connecting is available for free to anyone who works hard to get it
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