Forget Harvard and Stanford. It doesn't really matter where you go to college
Jeffrey J. Selingo
March 16, 2015
Washington Post

The newly released book is Where You Go Is Not Who You'll Be, by Frank Bruni.

Two quick thoughts on that (haven't read the book or the link) - if you looked at the resumes of the people who have risen to the top of the field I'm in over the years, you'd find a spectrum of educational backgrounds - people with degrees from the universities that are considered top-in-the-field and people who went to what I would have considered (when I was applying to college) very easy-to-get-into universities with not the most highly regarded programs. (Note - the people I'm talking about are all roughly the same age as I am, so we're not talking about changes in higher ed over time.)

I went to a university that was considered to be at the top of my field, and it did help - it helped when interviewing for that first job out of school - all the top-paying companies came to campus and placed a bit of a premium on students from our school. For me personally, it made a difference because we were really well-educated and really well-prepared starting off in the work force - we learned things at our school that young people starting out from other schools had to learn on the job. We did get paid slightly higher salaries coming into the work force. Through the years, if mention of where I went to school came up in conversation I did get "name recognition" and it sometimes impressed people.

BUT - at the end of the day - it didn't factor into where you landed long-term in your career. The things that mattered were the effort you put into your career, the intelligence you had in making decisions about upward career moves, networking, selling yourself, staying on top of what was happening in the field, etc. And a little bit of luck in terms of good fortune too.

polarbear

Polarbear, thanks for weighing in on this.

Another article introducing this book -

Your college is not your destiny
Katherine Long
March 17, 2015
The Seattle Times

This reminds me of a bit of Colleges That Change Lives and the book of the same name, subtitled 40 schools you should know about even if you're not a straight-A student, from 15 years ago.

There are late-bloomers, and there are also people who never bloom. Success tends to lead to success and failure to failure.

Your lifetime earnings are probably determined in your 20s
By Danielle Paquette
Washington Post
February 10, 2015

And *this* is why it's critically important to be successful (and just perfect enough, but not too perfect).

Nobody wants to wander lost down the broken road of the failed people because of the permanence and totality of failure.

Is this the point in the thread where I say that EARNINGS are not the only indicator of "success"? Yes, I do believe it's that point in the thread.

I thought this was possibly true for women on a mommy-track, as priorities shifted from career to family well-being, caring for children and elderly parents. But I have not previously considered that it may be true throughout the population, and for both genders.

Not so glum, chum! Think of resilience, "failure" as a regular part of learning, and top it off with growth mindset.

Agreed. Success or well-being can be a hallmark of positive growth in many directions/dimensions, of which financial well-being (or financial success) is just one.

You need enough money to not to be a chronically broken failure, silly.

Nobody wants to be trapped in the prisonhouse of the middle class.

Law firms have up or out, so if you aren't relevant, you are often thrown onto the associate scrapheap.

I keep track of marked dead ones (they don't know they are already dead) at the law firm I used to work.

What better way to get there, than college loan debt?

The middle-class used to frequently be termed "upwardly mobile middle class".

dead man walking

Anecdotally, in your observation, does this happen equally for ivy grads as for others?

But if you can get into one of the magic institutions, you can potentially get the Golden Ticket and possibly rise into the 1% with the beautiful people.

My prisonhouse has teevee and hi-speed Internets, so I'm good.

This is *very* law firm specific, so it does not transfer to other law firms or the legal industry generally.

Work hard, play hard: I'm familiar with a large firm which seemed to operate in a similar manner; however the competition did not end when an individual would choose to leave the up-or-out organization, forsaking the stress/prestige for a better quality of life. Insiders learned that if they ever left the firm they'd be wise to avoid the "alumni" get-togethers of former associates, hosted by that firm. These functions were often hosted when business was slow at the firm. Enough information could be gathered from colleagues and former co-workers during casual conversation at "alumni" gatherings, for the firm to subsequently make sales calls which seemed anything but "cold calls"... with the end-goal being a bit of cannibalizing to establish new business within the institutions at which the past associates of the firm had continued their careers.

Outcomes did not seem to vary by pedigree of an individual's degree-granting institution, but rather by the individual's ratio of listening to speaking. There is an old saying, "We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak" (attributed to Greek philosopher Epictetus).

Frank Bruni is wrong about Ivy League schools
by Jonathan Wai
Quartz
March 22, 2015
Wai is affiliated with Duke TIP and has written about success and IQ http://tip.duke.edu/node/960 .

This "opening doors" thingy works best for law schools because law operates on the "elite credential" system.

I'm still waiting for my advantages in life and enormous benefits that comes with elitehood.

However, I have great hope that my children will be able to escape the prisonhouse of the middle class and rise to greater glory.

I have a friend who does freelance contract work (not law) who says her ivy branded education opens doors all the time. She would prefer her kids have a better education than is on offer there, but she fully admits to having doubts, that maybe if they went there they too would have that immediate advantage.

You're making me smile this morning JonLaw. And I didn't think that was going to happen.

Thanks much - Sue

I just read this article of his:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanmac...amining-techs-richest-on-the-forbes-400/

What was the point of that? Can anyone tell me? Wealthy techies went to pretty good schools? Is this a deeply surprising insight? We don't have any proof about the IQs anyway at all.

Where you go does affect your chances of getting a job on Wall Street (which of course does not matter if you are not interested such jobs).

How 300 Emails Led to a Summer Job on Wall Street
Wall Street Journal
by LINDSAY GELLMAN
April 1, 2015

Much as I want to believe that it won't be true when DD goes to college I rather suspect that it still will and that I'll have to keep on saving like a demon.

If anything, I can see weaker colleges failing entirely over the next 8 years or so and supply and demand being what it is that elite colleges becoming even more expensive.

People tend to be irrational and put an undue premium on expensive goods - this I expect to get worse not better.

Except that we hit peak finance in 2008.

So there's that issue, too.

uhuh, but consulting is positively booming baby!

AWESOME!

Now there is officially a prize for Winning The Game of College Entry Frenzy.



Yay!

Maybe it's more like a sweepstakes than a strategy game, though. Let's bear in mind that there are a LOT of Stanford-capable students out west, and there are a very, very limited number of openings for them. This past year, Stanford's rejection rate was an eye-watering 95%. Now, sure, some of those applicants probably had NO shot of getting into Stanford or anywhere like it, but I'm certainly thinking that the majority of them thought that they had a reasonable shot at it.

The other really awesome thing is that all of the stuff that you have to DO to get into the non-throw-away pile of applicants also costs a pretty penny for most families. So the lower-income kids aren't even REMOTELY competitive with higher SES applicants who have a busload of extracurriculars, community service hours spread over the globe, music lessons, etc. etc. etc.

Seriously, then?

My guess is that this probably only matters to about 20% of entering Stanford students (at most) to begin with, because MANY of their successful applicants are at incomes well over this to start with. 120K isn't that high if you live in many urban areas, or anywhere on the western coast.

They could afford to make it just plain FREE, free-- for everyone. So could the other top-10 endowment institutions.

I just have to question the wisdom of encouraging people to take these jobs.

I mean, sure, you earn piles of cash. I did that once...but my brain ossified. Really. Plus, on a personal level, you work an insane number of hours and burn out while getting addicted to MORE MONEY! And on a larger level, there is that whole silly issue of being at high risk for destroying the global economy and stuff.

But I am just a silly quixotic person who thinks that maybe things might improve if people stopped focusing so much on more, more, MORE! money (or at least focused on it less). Like, maybe the colleges could stop the tuition arms race, drain the lazy rivers, and maybe stop handing out A++++++s with garlands to every other student. That might help.

You only think this way because you don't have the mostest money.

If you had actually WON! and truly achieved MORE!, instead of becoming financially irrelevant, you would not be so willing to prevent the younger, stronger, betterer, MORE-ER! people from competing in the global financial hypereconomy and truly experiencing life to it's fullest.

It is people like you who wish to chain the leaders of tomorrow with lead weights, preventing them from ever escaping the prisonhouse of the middle class.

If you had your way, we would never again have great philanthropists, people who direct their hard-earned megafortunes to solving the Great Problems of Mankind, and our great civilization would fall into ruin.

No truly incredible amazing awesome greatness ever came from mediocrity. And what is the middle class, if not mediocre?

Harvard! Harvard forever!

Someday, I would really like to see your revision of "Oh the Places You'll Go"...

Silly Jon. Harvard is merely second best in terms of the mostest rejection letters to applicants, anyway. Stanford is number one now. I'm sure that they can do even BETTER next year, though. I think that they are determined to stay number one, which is probably why they are encouraging more "low income" students to apply.

If it has become more important to work for a top firm, and if top firms prefer to hire from certain schools, the importance of graduating from those schools increases.

If You Want to Be Part of the Top 1 Percent, You'd Better Be Working For a Top 1 Percent Firm
By Kevin Drum
Mother Jones
May 29, 2015

The paper is

Firming Up Inequality
Jae Song, David J. Price, Fatih Guvenen, Nicholas Bloom
NBER Working Paper No. 21199
Issued in May 2015

Here is the abstract.

How much money you make is who you are?

No-- but it is how much you are worth.

Well - not to nit pick - it's how many DOLLARS you are worth. Not how much you are worth. That's a much more complicated analysis. But maybe that's what you meant anyway. I need more coffee.

Really? That is something I did not know.

Someone thinking in dynastic terms would prefer the metric

net worth + expected net worth of one's offspring.

Silly Sue. Your income is obviously what you are worth as an individual. This is why university administrators must earn so much: they are worthy. Faculty are not. If the faculty were more worthy, they would earn more. It is that simple. And of course, in that case there would be no adjuncts, who have even less intrinsic value, because if they had more, they wouldn't be adjuncts earning peanuts. It is simply their fault.

The bankers clearly have high intrinsic value, which is why they get big bonuses. As for bringing down the world economy, that's okay, because the 99.99% of people who suffered didn't earn much anyway, which means that they have less value. So really, when you look at the issue in the right way, the great recession is their fault for destroying innovation, not the bankers.

Do you understand now?

/snark

Exactly. It was really a sort of cosmic justice at work, viewed correctly.

All of those misanthropic little people* should be nominated for Darwin Awards, when you get right down to it.



*albeit collectively, for none of them is even worthy of this much attention on their own measly ant-like behalf

No, they're both the same thing, because if you're not contributing to the global hyper-economy by acquiring expensive baubles to make your neighbors feel bad about how little they're contributing to the global hyper-economy, what good are you?

Did I do it right, Jon?

Almost.

It's the global financial hyper-economy.

You really need to stress the importance of the financial sector because talent.

Right. Some people are so amazing, they should have stars upon thars.

Maybe they do. Maybe that's how they recognize each other during job interviews for Important Positions --- the "interview" is really just an identification exercise.

If you've none upon yours, don't waste your time applying (or theirs, because their time so much more valuable than your time).

Ohhhh, okay.

Apart from being a close observer of the housing apocalypse, I work in the finance industry, and my observation is that the industry is extremely talented at hiding their talent, which means they're really, really talented, and definitely deserving of as much money as we can shovel at them.

In all seriousness, though, you have to be impressed by people who can get so wealthy by doing their jobs so badly. Physics dictates that a parachute of gold would perform badly, but those cats land ever so softly with them.

Policies intended to help those at the bottom can hurt them and society in general. The "college for everyone" crusade may hurt the bottom half of the IQ distribution, as has been discussed here before. The housing bubble and associated financial crisis was caused in part by a "homeownership for everyone" crusade, which necessitated lowering mortgage underwriting standards.

Wall Street played a role in the housing bubble and financial crisis, but so did politicians who pushed for easy credit, quasi-governmental entities such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac who purchased low-quality mortgages, off-Wall-Street mortgage brokers who encouraged people to borrow too much, and home buyers who borrowed too much and lied on their mortgage applications. Blaming Wall Street alone makes for a tidy morality play but is not accurate.

My apologies for inserting a serious thought, but this video on the value/not of college-for-all is worth viewing (Citrus College, "Success in the New Economy"):

https://vimeo.com/67277269

Yes, well-- all of them are far too important for things like Garden Variety Blame, Introspection about Consequences, or Responsibility to be applicable, anyway.


It's not personal responsibility anyway when it is just a policy decision. Personal responsibility doesn't apply to corporate people. Er-- or anyone of any Real Importance.


(Snark again, in case it wasn't obvious).

You've got it.

In the 1980s, Leona Helmsley told us that taxes were for little people. Nowadays, we're learning that personal responsibility is, too.

In fact, the ones who are exempt from personal responsibility have the job of ensuring that the little people are bound by it, as in, "You chose your actions and you have to suffer the consequences."

Clearly, being one of the little people is a personal choice, and one of the consequences is the requirement for personal responsibility. For example, "You signed those 32 documents written at a 24th grade level in 3-point font giving you a home loan you didn't really qualify for, and it's YOUR fault that the mortgage company lied to you and misled you about what was in those documents. It is also your fault that your toxic loan, along with a few million others, was packaged and sold to organizations who should have seen through the lies the analysts were telling them."

Is it clear now?

You have reaffirmed the critical importance of Going to HYP.

There are so few places where you can develop talent sufficient to actually *drive* the global financial hyper-economy.

And, as you illustrated in your post, the complexity of the global financial hyper-economy is overwhelming to those without talent.

Aggressively speculating in toxic paper, while levered 100-1, to achieve competitive profitability vis-a-vis peer firms in order to achieve permanent dynastic relevance is certainly not for the faint of mind.

Well, sure, there were others that "had a role" in the disaster, just like there are passengers who would "have a role" in a bus flying off the overpass... but there's only one driver.

First of all, there's almost no difference between Wall Street and the federal government anymore, because they all went to the same schools, they're constantly exchanging employees, and the latter owes its job entirely to the campaign financing of the former. So pretending they're different entities is a waste of time... they're both privileged members of the top 1% financially. This is not to be confused with the top 1% IQ... a Venn diagram of the two groups would look not unlike the view through poorly-focused binoculars.

Also, by "quasi-government entities," you mean, "private companies which enjoy a legislative guarantee to privatize their profits and socialize their losses."

By "off-Wall Street" you mean mortgage servicing firms, who were being doggedly pursued by Wall Street to produce more product, being paid lavishly by Wall Street to do so, and were assured that, since the mortgages were being sold upstream, the servicing companies would have no skin in the game.

Then these same Wall Street analysts who cooked up this pyramid scheme began repackaging loans, trading default options and buying insurance amongst themselves, while making absurd guarantees to their investors, buying favorable investment ratings that had no basis in reality, and overall creating such a fantastically elaborate fiction that they even started believing it themselves... because... talent?

Good grief. I attend to my job for a few hours and look where we've gone. But thanks all for helping me reset. My thinking had gone astray.

Now I must get back to adding to my worth by …taking excellent care of myself and my family including our pg/2e child.... No that's not it. Volunteering in our local public school.... Nooooo, not that one. Developing my professional skills.... Meh. Making More Money. Ahhhhh, there it is.

But wait! First I’ll Zillow my home value to make myself feel elite-ish because housing prices in Silicon Valley are definitely not completely irrational and my skyrocketing home price is solely a result of my … talent …. and there definitely won’t be another housing bubble because … Regulatory agencies (noooo)... Wall Street (noooo again)... Financial institutions (nuh-uh)... we pathetic little people (that's it!) have definitely learned our lesson. Right?

I love you (little) people!

Sue

And thanks aeh for the actually relevant link! Very interesting.

Even though I work in the financial industry, I normally stay out of financial discussions and let people vent about what they think happened. But since Dude says he works in the industry as well, my opinions differ from him in some ways.

Who was this single bus driver? Was it the "independent" ratings agencies that were bought off by the companies that paid them to rate their products? Was it the money management firms (my field) that knew the ratings were a joke but where some people ignored them because of the fees they could generate? Was it the mortgage brokers that encouraged the liar loans? Was it the quasi-governmental Fannie & Freddie that accepted these loans knowing that they had a government backstop? Was it the guys at AIG that priced credit default swaps like it was car accident risk (claims occur mostly randomly, and costs are well understood) rather than hurricane risk (claims are all tied to a single event--the hurricane, and upper bounds of damages not easy to estimate).

In other words, there is plenty of blame to go around. And a key part of the blame rests with people that lied through their teeth in order to get the loans in the first place. A contributing factor is populist support for home ownership. Stopping any part of this chain would have stopped or limited this crisis.

Sure you can find some people in government at high levels that are privileged. But most are not. There are two kinds of "talent" in finance. Some people really have a gift of making money. But others have a talent of knowing the weak spots in regulation and pushing those limits without necessarily breaking them, because that is where money can be made. Invariably the people with either of these talents end up in industry for most of their careers, not the government, because that is where they money is.

Case in point is Bernie Madoff. The SEC couldn't pin anything on him for years, despite someone in the industry, Harry Markopolos, describing to the SEC in minute detail what Bernie Madoff did and why it could not possibly be realistic. Another example is high-frequency trading. Now in reality the costs to long-term investors of high frequency trading are minuscule, but a very good argument can be made that it is front running. The reason it exists is that the guys in the trading firms are smarter than the guys in government. There are some fairly simple ways to get the benefits of high frequency trading (yes, there are some) while discouraging front running, but don't look to the government to figure it out.

I actually don't blame the Wall Street trading firms much at all. Anyone who has been in the financial industry for more than a week knows that they are sharks that would sell out their own mothers if it would help them profit. Trading firms serve a useful function in that they make a market (selling when others are buying and buying when others are selling), but why would you possibly believe what they said about an investment?

Also a bit of perspective. Before I worked in the financial industry, I worked in the telecom industry in the late 1990s at a fairly high level. Worldcom was a customer of ours, and I have presented to Bernie Ebbers a few times (another Bernie!). Bernie helped fuel the Dot-Com boom by making false claims about Internet growth. These numbers were used to justify the valuations of Worldcom, and that of other dot-com companies as well. I knew these were false because our company provided Worldcom with the accurate growth numbers--the traffic was measured by our equipment. So while there are dishonest people in every profession, the vast majority of people in finance, like telecom, are decent, hard-working and honest people. Just watch out for those traders. :-)

I won't say anything more about this topic, because it's unrelated to gifted education, except this: If the Wall Street ratings firms were giving fraudulent ratings to Wall Street investment products made of loans issued by quasi-governmental Wall Street companies (who, by the way, were actually late-comers to the subprime party, which is always a surprise given how much primary blame they get, at their peak Countrywide owned 20% of the mortgage market, mostly junk) backstopped by a government with an incestuous relationship to Wall Street, then it isn't too hard to identify the driver.

Or maybe we're just dealing with a difference of terminology, because I consider Countrywide and Fannie Mae to be part of Wall Street, even though they weren't headquartered in New York (at the time under discussion, both were listed on the NYSE), so let's just say Big Finance instead.

Didn't want this to get lost here.

It really is worth a look.

I disagree. I don't know where Fleming (the video author) gets his numbers, but they look wrong. At 1:18 he says that 2/3 of high school graduates enroll in higher education right after high school, and "only a quarter of those that enroll will finish a bachelor's degree". According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the college graduation rate is much higher for such students:

Around 3:37 Fleming says the ratio of jobs requiring master's, bachelor's, and associate degrees in *all* industries is 1:2:7, and that "it was the same in 1950, the same in 1990, and will be the same in 2030". Someone who opines with such certainty about the future should be laughed at, not listened to.

As much as it pains me ;), I'm going to have to agree with Bostonian here. The "only 25%" figure is incorrect; the 60% figure--note that this is in SIX years, NOT four--is generally cited as accurate for students at 4-year colleges starting right after HS. If we prefer to look at "students finishing in 4 years," that's only 40%, which is NOT great, but it's not 25%.

I didn't watch the video, but I'd be concerned about its general accuracy based on this claim.

Um-- "higher education" would also include other post-secondary institutions such as for-profits, and community colleges, which have notoriously awful rates of completion.

I do agree that the jobs ratio is laughable-- unless one examines this as a matter of jobs which actually require (as opposed to using it as a ridiculous screening tool) higher education.

Because of College-4-All, many skilled labor jobs now nominally have "college" as a gatekeeping mechanism, though why such positions actually require that level of education is a thing to wonder upon.

As to where he gets his numbers...
The video description states that the transcript is available on the college website. transcript: Success in the New Economy

As to whether this is opinion...
The transcript cites a reference for this:
A book twice cited, Other Ways to Win: Creating Alternatives for High School Graduates, is found on Amazon.

The fixed ratio is baseless. He's implicitly assuming two things, both incorrect:

1. A fixed capital-labour ratio in all sectors and professions over time.

2. Constant total factor productivity (a proxy for technical change and the efficiency of use of factors of production-- capital, labour, natural resources, institutions, etc.) universally across industries and geographies.

As a counter example on the first, do we believe that the capital intensity of the development of biologics by doctoral biochemists requires the same capital intensity as the work of university professors of literature with doctorates, always and everywhere?

On the latter, should we believe that productivity changes in the automotive industry in New Dehli are the same as in the southern US, and eternally so?

Would you explain how capital, natural resources, institutions, etc are implied/assumed in the 1:2:7 ratio of employment by type post-secondary degree?

Meanwhile, here is another book with a similar theme to "Where You Go is Not Who You'll Be": Self-Directed Learning: Documentation and Life Stories (May, 2015)

Sure. If I'm understanding your question, you want to know how these variables are included in the assumptions of fixed ratios, right?

Economic output (GDP) is a function of factors of production, or inputs, that create economic value, as well as a residual factor called "total factor productivity", which measures how effectively the other inputs are used to generate output. The level of any input employed in an economy is dictated by its productivity, which determines its contribution to output.

So to add some structure to this description, we can look at a generic model of the economy (you can use any of many forms, as applicable).

Y = A* f{K, L, N, I, etc.}, where

Y = GDP
A = Total factor productivity
F = Generic production function
K = Capital stock
L = Labour stock (Which can be a vector comprising different levels of skilled human capital, Li = [L1, L2, ... , Ln], s.t. (l1 >= l2 >= ... >= ln)
N = Natural resources
I = Institutions, etc.

The fixed ratio of Li assumes an economy in general equilibrium. K, N, and I must then exist in fixed proportions to Li, with A constant, to maintain a uniform labour productivity for all Li across sectors, regions, and time.

Not exactly. To clarify, I understand that you may disagree with the video which aeh posted. I'm trying to understand your basis for introducing the list of factors you mentioned, as a means of discrediting the author of the video (and/or discrediting the list of sources cited by the author), as "baseless". How are the factors you mentioned implied/assumed by the author and/or his cited sources?

I do not see that you've related this to ratio of post-secondary degrees.
You are discussing productivity, which is a different topic.

I refer you to Li, the elements of which were defined in fixed proportions by the speaker in the video. I left their definitions deliberately general to be defined in any way desired. You could easily say l1 = 1, l2 = 2, l3 = 7 in a unit level economy.

The point being, nobody should assume fixed labour proportions in making future decisions because productivity isn't static, particularly not as a universal constant.

Economics is the study of the allocation of scarce resources, one of which is labour. I am using a standard model from basic economic theory to disprove the author's underlying assumptions about how labour looks in equilibrium, particularly the idea that post-secondary credentialing will exist in fixed ratios across industries, regions, and time. If we are to believe he is advocating educational programming be tailored to his prescribed ratio, then students will be trained in a way that is inappropriate to the opportunities that exist for them upon completion of their studies.

I hope this answers your question. If not, I'd be happy to refer you to some resources in PM that might explain the underlying models in more detail. I'd rather not write a textbook on the thread, as that is tangential to its purpose.

Not seeing applicability to the post-secondary degrees, sorry.

What would you offer as an alternative foundation for advice in making future decisions about colleges/degrees?

Li is a vector of factor endowments of different types of human capital; a head count, if you will, of the different levels of employees with each type of credential.

My recommendation? Assume general equilibrium is unique to the region, industry, and time in which economic activity is generated. Let labour be assigned as much capital as it needs as merited by its marginal productivity (i.e. let that level fluctuate according to demand) and let enrollment levels in post-secondary programs be as market-linked as possible, with intervention only when there is a strong public policy argument.

Sorry, I get jargony quickly and forget my audience sometimes!

Yes, however there is not a scarcity of labor... this is the raison d'être for the video. Helping the new generation of students begin planning now to increase the odds that they will not be unemployed/underemployed or invest time and money in "any" degree which they may learn after-the-fact is not applicable to their strengths and/or to positions available in the job market.

Mathematical models change over time, and may not be a good "fit" for every situation. I have questioned whether it is a good "fit" here.
Not that post-secondary credentialing will exist in fixed ratios (as though the production of degrees is being limited/controlled), but that the job market calls for skills in a ratio of 1:2:7. Regions were not discussed, and the time span discussed was 80 years.

If we could see that the model was a good "fit" for the video, the model would be on-topic.
The 1:2:7 ratio (whose source he cited) may not be correct, but the model you've introduced does not seem to prove it false.

I do not believe that he has advocated for educational programming to be tailored to a ratio (ie: limit/control the number of each type of degree which can be conferred), rather he has suggested what course of action consumers in a free market may most benefit from personally. He has clearly advocated for empowering consumers with information so that their enrollment choices in post-secondary programs are as market-linked as possible. Some may say you agree, at least in part, with his recommendations.

Indigo, several of those are reasonable questions. Short of turning this thread into a second year macroeconomics lecture, which I'm sure won't earn me any friends (they don't call us dismal scientists for nothing ), I'm happy to point you in the direction of this book: it discusses the broad tools required to answer them at a high level. I highly recommend it; it's succinct and well written (I have a copy on my shelf).

http://www.amazon.ca/Macroeconomic-Theory-A-Short-Course/dp/0765611422

For an empirical validation of my first post and initial explanation to you, I'd recommend searching the Federal Reserve site for research on labour market dynamics. They'll have current numbers published across industries with forward-looking estimates and their rationale. You don't have to trust any models to see that different industries and professions have different productivities, requiring a different labour mix, counter to the opinions offered in the linked video.

The video mentioned industries, not professions. Industries are different than professions. Industries contain a large cross-section of professions, a broad array of qualifications and post-secondary education.

Some may say there is continuous scope creep with you introducing regions, professions, and other items which were not a part the video, rather than discussing what was actually said in the video.

Hooda thunk UPenn, huh?

From the linked article
Where do billionaires go to university?
By Sean Coughlan
BBC News education correspondent
29 October 2014

At most Ivies you cannot major in "business", only "economics". U Penn has an undergraduate business school, Wharton, which may attract aspiring investors. Cornell has a program in Applied Economics and Management. Princeton offers a major in Operations Research and Financial Engineering.

Interesting article, I wish it would've linked to the studies as reading the article may have raised more questions in my mind than it answered. Some may say it had a bit of a time warp or suffered from chicken-or-egg syndrome, for in one line we read that a US university created billionaires, immediately followed by a sentence that a large number of foreign billionaires attended US universities. That, plus the title, "Where do billionaires go to university?" raise the question - Did these families already have billions, prior to sending their offspring to US colleges?


Another interesting note about the timing and applicability of the studies, to providing current advice regarding choice of college:
Because they largely made their money in finance, possibly they were recipients of interest on loans.

That situation is a little more complicated than I used to think, though, if you read about it...

Anyway. Again, I have to insert the huge caveat that I did not watch the video. However, it sounded like it said that "2/3 of high school graduates enroll in higher education right after high school" followed by and "only a quarter of those that enroll will finish a bachelor's degree." This is a misleading way to present the facts (for one thing, many of "those who enroll" have no intention of receiving a BACHELOR'S degree) and I am instantly annoyed by anyone who would do it this way. The statistic of about 50-60% of students graduating in 6 years from 4-year colleges is widely known in education circles. To cut this to 25% is dishonest. (He might say "Well, I didn't mean 4-year colleges" but when you say "bachelor's degree"...Say what you mean and be accurate, even if it takes longer.)

I agree with ultramarina's observations, and as she has noted, this is not always the case . Furthermore, someone advising people whether or not to attend college should tell them to evaluate their own chances of graduating, rather than relying on averages (which the author misstated). A research-based tool for this is the Expected Graduation Rate Calculator, from the UCLA Higher Education Research Institute, which asks for SAT/ACT scores, high school GPA, and demographic information.

Not misleading if one reads the transcript and sees the sentences in context, not in isolation. Preceding paragraphs spoke of correlation of earnings with 4-year degree. Paragraph began with reference to 4-year degree. While students may begin at various types of institutions, only a fraction persist through to a 4-year degree (the type of degree under discussion at that point). Elsewhere the video suggests layering one's education... technical degree... bachelors... higher degrees.

It is helpful to familiarize one's self with the video or transcript prior to discussing it or disagreeing with it.

Regarding the advice given...

I understand that you may disagree with the college completion statistic which he included in his 2012 paper. However you may be making an apples-and-oranges comparison. He cites all who began post-secondary education... and persisted through to a 4-year degree, using sources dated 2005, 2006, 2011. You cite those who began seeking a bachelor's degree, at a particular institution, using a source dated 2012.

This isn't related to college completion, but it is related to how poverty affects enrollment in college.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...ects-childrens-college-chances.html?_r=0

Thanks for this interesting link. I took into account that this was based on college enrollment for children born in the early 1980's, and my participation was evaluated to be in the 93rd percentile, with feedback that there was more equality than I guessed.

Kids going off to college today were born about 15 years later and times have changed. The economy has tanked, with a recession starting in 2008, largely affecting the "middle class". Those with lower SES are said to receive substantial subsidy and those of higher SES may have been somewhat inconvenienced. Combining this information with personal anecdotes, I would draw a very different shape to reflect current college enrollment.

I would be highly interested in seeing an updated version of this tool, utilizing current students' enrollment.

Personally, I find the 50-60% in 6 years stat rather shocking, so why embellish?

Here is what really happens:

--66% of HS graduates OVERALL enroll in some form of higher education
--37% of HS graduates enroll in 4-year colleges. Of those, 60% graduate in 6 years.
--29% of HS graduates enroll in 2-year colleges. Of those, 30% receive a certificate or associate's degree within 150% of the expected time to complete (eg, within 3 year for a 2-year program) Source: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cva.asp

The community college stats are fuzzy and dissatisfying by everyone's admission, though (hard to take non-degree-seekers and those who move on to 4-year schools into account).

ETA: Okay, I see that the author is focusing on the value of a bachelor's degree vs others, saying that a 4-year degree is seen as the end-all when not that many students can actually achieve it. I am not opposed to that message necessarily, but present your stats accurately, please. This is still a misleading way to make your point and very bad journalism. It is not the case that only a quarter of those who try to get a BA succeed.

Relevant: http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2014/11/19/u_s_college_dropouts_rates_explained_in_4_charts.html

I understand that you may disagree with his sources, however that does not mean that he "embellished."

These stats refer to 2012-2013, with the webpage stating it was last updated in May 2015. This postdates his 2012 paper; These stats did not exist at the time.

1) Sorry you found his paper misleading, for some it was clear from the first reading, this may depend, in part, on one's knowledge base and lived experiences. It may also depend on watching the video and/or reading his paper, rather than commenting prior to seeing what he has said.
2) Does he claim to be a journalist?

Nor was that stated. Apples and oranges.

Thank you for this interesting link, summarizing college graduation rates in 6 years, for part-time and full-time, traditional and non-traditional students who enrolled in college in 2007, 2008.

Since that time, six more classes of students have enrolled, and times have changed: The economy has tanked, with a recession starting in 2008, largely affecting the "middle class". As companies close, older "non-traditional" students may be seeking degrees and/or studying for a second career.

Additionally, a portion of the middle class with well-prepared children may be seeking financial subsidy for their children's college education (as discussed on the forums, including several posts in the recent thread on College choices).

"Redistribution" has been a part of the political platform of the president 2008-2016.

All these factors may impact college persistence and retention rates. College enrollment and completion seem to be based on educational preparedness, financial preparedness, and personality/motivation.

I would be interested to see the trends over time.

You're wrong, as HowlerKarma pointed out. Webster's dictionary defines higher education as post-secondary (after high school) and the Wikipedia entry on higher education specifically lists community colleges as being part of that class. You can decide that a sophomore at UC Davis is in "higher education" but that a sophomore at the local community college isn't, but that doesn't make you correct.

In addition, the statistic from the video said that a quarter of those that enroll in "higher education" after high school will get a bachelor's degree. This number was actually an overestimate:



Many, many students start higher education at a community college, because the costs are so much lower. Many of them fail because they don't possess the skills and knowledge necessary to succeed in college. For educators as a group to claim that they don't count as being in "higher education" and that the real graduation rate is 60% is, IMO, simply claiming that the education emperor is wearing lovely new clothes. But of course, that is what American educators do.

This is interesting to a California native, because you can make an argument about Berkeley and Stanford being quite close to each other in terms of being "elite," though it makes sense that people who get richer would go to Stanford, given Berkeley's reputation as a left-leaning institution. (ETA: Hey! There's Berkeley right underneath Stanford if you read the article and get the full list. All seems right with the world there.)

On the southern end of the state, though neither of these institutions enjoy what would be considered "elite" status, you can't make a very good argument of institutional quality of UCLA versus USC. UCLA enjoys a far better educational reputation, and it's not even close. Furthermore, USC is located in a bad part of Los Angeles, while UCLA is in the tony western part of the city, where most of the city's elites live, so you'd think the wealthy residents would send their kids there. UCLA does not have a left-leaning reputation like Berkeley does. So how on earth are so many wealthy people coming from USC?

Where USC is truly elite, however, is sticker price (hence the common moniker "University of Spoiled Children"). They're an outrageously expensive private college. This is a trait they share, incidentally, with Stanford... and Penn... and rest of the Ivies on the list. Coincidence??

No, of course community college is higher ed. However, I don't think we should consider all CC students who don't get a 4-year degree (and instead receive a certificate or AA) to be failures! That rather goes against this guy's point, does it not?

I consider the fact that so many kids enroll in college intending to get a BA, only to drop out, to be a monumental failure of our education system (and our society at large). This, I believe, was also video guy's point: kids need to know what their options are, many don't, and they drop out (in debt).

You said:


It sounds to me like you were excluding CC students.

If people in education circles quote the 60% figure, they're the ones being dishonest. You can't ignore community college students --- an overwhelming majority of whom, in contrast to your claim, start out intending to get a BA.

This instantly annoys me because I see it as a way of sweeping the truth under the rug, and ignoring inconvenient truths about our education system is something I perceive as being a big problem among educators.

They quote the 60% figure about students intending to get a bachelor's and starting at an institution that grants them.

I think it's questionable to include CC students who said they wanted a 4-year degree when talking about the drop-out rate. I would never include a CC student who obtained a AA degree or certificate but who said they wanted, but did not yet have, a BA in drop-out stats. Would you?

BTW, I actually don't disagree with any of this. In fact, I agree with it. It just really, really bothers me when people overstate their case or play ring-around-the-rosy to make a mnore dramatic point.

Of course I would if they set a BA as a goal and didn't reach it 6 years later (remember, 81% of incoming CC students said they wanted to get a BA).

Finishing your sophomore year at a 4-year-college is the rough equivalent of an AA. By your logic, would you then not count students dropping out in their junior or senior years?

And either way, many or most CC students saying that they want a BA end up not even getting an AA. That same site I linked to said that only 39% of students entering higher ed get an AA or a BA in 6 years.

Throwing in the "getting an AA" thing just muddies the water anyway. The point is this: fewer than 20% of students who enter higher ed end up with a BA. Fewer than 40% end up with an AA. This is bad, and the students are not the only ones who are responsible for the problem.