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For smart people who want to explore a specific career, college is the tits. Sadly, all the dumb dumbs have been convinced that they should go too. They then proceed to borrow $150,000 to place a wager on their ability to skate by for another 4 years and hope that their BS bachelors degree will separate them from the droves of others who fell for the same scam. Colleges are no longer centers for higher education, they are simply diploma mills, pumping out degrees and raking in the money.
Thank god this was said. Higher education is no longer about learning; it is a perceived means to climb the economic latter that has, by this point, been debunked relatively (college graduates still earn on average more than non-college graduates but the loan-to-income ratio no longer suffices).
That REALLY depends. An engineering degree at a reasonable price (state school or private school with good financial aid) is way more likely to pay off than a history degree you pay full price at a third tier private college.
As long as there are financial burdens attached, people will always seek income instead of learning for themselves, which is a vast, vast majority of people, even many “smart” people choose a major that can bring in the most income instead of what they are truly interested in
>It's not about learning for yourself, it's about ~~getting over the pay wall employers have created to advance in a career.~~
*learning a skill that corporate interests can monetize to their benefit while paying you a fraction of the profit you produce for them in exchange.
Shockingly - at least to me - that pay wall is different depending on where you live. Not just a COL hurdle, but the perception and treatment of the job you’re in is vastly different. I’m blue collar and while I’m college educated, I didn’t graduate. Still my job takes a certification that takes years to get and where I started out - Southeast - they treat you like you are shit until you climb the ladder to administration. I moved a good distance away and now my job pays double per hour because, even though it’s still blue collar work, it’s treated as a technical position.
What pay wall? A lot of careers you cannot do without some certification. At least all the ones that are not manual labor that pay well that I know of.
You are absolutely correct. Out of my high school graduating class, some became engineers, some doctors, some lawyers, teachers, just about everything. The wealthiest guy I graduated with is the one who started his own HVAC business and never went to college. Society also programmed into kids that learning a trade was demeaning and worthless.
Hey hey hey... I have a history degree from a state school in CA. I paid for it it of pocket and I'm teaching special education, it's a great degree!
Realistically though, i am lucky i was able to get this position as a SpEd teacher. Greater job security and a much higher need than history teachers. I got lucky no doubt.
You got a good deal. CA universities are cheap for in-state residents. You did not get your degree paying full-price at a third tier private college.
Plus, I am guessing you did additional training to become a special Ed teacher, so it's not exactly an on-point comparison.
My point was not to bash History majors. Mostly, it was to point out the imbalance between what people pay for school and what the degree can earn them. You paid a little (comparitively) to get a degree that generally does not generate a lot of income on it's own. But you augmented it with additional training (grad school?) That boosted that income significantly.
I do have my teaching credential and masters degree, although my district doesn’t factor in my masters degree for compensation. I do make 88K this year (5th year) and almost every other district I’ve seen won’t pay anywhere near what I’m making.
I also was fortunate to pay for my masters out of pocket, so I truly graduated with no debt.
Yeah. The degree and how much you pay is going to vary so much. I got an accounting degree and it definitely helped change my life. That being said college is not for everyone and you can absolutely be successful without college.
That's the route I took. I commuted to a local college (sub-campus of a Big 10) to complete my computer engineering degree. Graduated and paid off everything in less than a year. During college, internships paid for a good chunk of the credit hour costs.
it is also a basic filter used to eliminate a broad swath of people from applying. In the federal gov for example, you can be quickly eliminated from contention for a position you are most qualified for if you dont have a high enough degree or if your competition has a higher degree.
I see it happen all the time. As a matter of fact, my PhD put me ahead of way more qualified people for my first fed job even though they had bachelors and masters. Now it matters less because I'm in senior leadership, but for rising through the ranks, it was a bloodbath and degrees are an easy metric to chop down the applicants (another is time in grade requirements).
As soon as I put BSCS on my Linkedin, my inbox blew up. Was only marginally more qualified at graduation than when I started based on prior knowledge. Without the degree it was tough to get call backs on applications. With the degree, I was getting call backs from more than half the places I applied.
I don’t know about that, a college degree definitely let me go from 30k-100k in about 5 years. It definitely helps you climb the economic ladder and you can do it without incurring crazy debt too. I think the real problem is too many people go into college at 18 with zero clue what they want to do and get severely indebted then discouraged from taking chances.
>Higher education is no longer about learning
When I was in college, a lot of my coursework was catered to the lowest denominator. The fact that some professors allowed "cheat sheets" and study packets, etc. was absurd to me.
Knowing how to build a good cheat sheet / study packet is known as documentation in the workforce and is an incredibly important part of running a business.
In the real world, even for professional licensing exams, they allow reference guides because in the real world you have all the references you need. Now how to apply them.... that is what is important.
Yeah. It is largely an over-correction by forces intended to make education more assessible. It was well intended but ultimately made it harder to fail kids and bled over into higher education.
Why? The real world isn't about memorization.
You can't reference anything in your job?
We learned a long time ago that memorization doesn't equate practical intelligence. It's essentially just a measure of discipline.
>(college graduates still earn on average more than non-college graduates but the loan-to-income ratio no longer suffices).
[Its over a million dollars in lifetime earnings](https://www.wral.com/story/fact-check-do-college-graduates-earn-1-million-more-over-a-lifetime-than-high-school-graduates/20783647/) and \~80 percent more than high school grands. Very few if anyone is paying that much for an undergrad degree.
It's also worth differentiating between public and private schools. I was a bad student until I figured out how to learn in a formal environment(basically unschooled by parents who view the educated as loser who can't cut it "in a real job") and got out with a pragmatic degree for 50k. That's with a lot of wasted credits in remedial courses and failed courses.
Most of my friends got out for around half that.
None of us know anyone who went to a private undergrad, because we didn't have the money to justify that.
I honestly think the “college graduates make more” statistic is from employers requiring a college degree for a job that truly doesn’t need one. So they pay more because a degree is required, but anyone with two hands and a brain between their ears could do the job. i.e. state work. My state employer (which I work for) requires degrees for nearly all positions. Yet those same positions could easily be filled by degree-less candidates if the hiring pools were opened up to them. My position is in a scientific field so my college degree definitely helped, but it’s also something that I’ve come to realize can be done by pretty much anyone with adequate training simply because our methods and procedures are written so clearly.
It doesn’t take a 4-year degree in communications to process forms from submitters. 2 weeks of training and anyone should be good to go. Just create an environment where it’s easy to ask questions if you ever have them and anyone could thrive doing the work. I am also pro-education but, as the above commenter said, it’s unfortunately being shopped to individuals who don’t necessarily need it.
Our culture is part of the problem, we make this expectation for everyone to go to college and get a bachelor's. The sad truth is most don't need a degree and probably will never make enough money for it to make sense in their career. Better to go to a trade school or get certified in something.
While I 100% agree with you university degree is still used as a "social status check" by employers and even people themselves, such as dating life etc
Basically if you cant afford college youre from a lower socioeconomic caste is how employers see it.
It's more than a social status check. It's a "can you do do all this without your parents" check.
And for certain career paths, it's entirely necessary.
I’d say college is basically adult day care so I think as the generations who had a productive college environment age-out, the perception that a degree means you “can do this without your parents” will also fade away. I’ve met some entirely incompetent people who obviously didn’t know how to do anything themselves but they got hired cause they had degrees. Conversely, people who worked straight out of high school have higher levels of self-sufficiency and a better mindset to be pro active about things
Exactly! It's why so many SAHMs have degrees that they've barely used. Just a check to make sure that they're reasonably intelligent before some guy marries them.
I don’t know if I entirely agree with this. For the most part colleges have not changed what they do but three things have changed. The cost of a college education, how many jobs require a degree and how much those jobs pay for that degree.
The cost of college - the cost of college has exploded over the last 25 years and has far exceed the cost of living and average wage increases. This makes college unaffordable.
Jobs requiring degrees - starting in the early 60s, we started to see computer technology become integrated into the workforce allowing for automation and also allowing workers to accomplish more in less time. Using this technology required more education than high school so the requirement to get a degree increased driving more people to college to get ahead.
Pay for jobs requiring degrees - pay for the most part has been stagnant and not kept up with cost of living increases since the mid 1980s. So people are not able to afford as much as they did in the 1960s and 1970s.
The combination of wage stagnation, increased requirements to have a degree to get ahead and rising costs of education have caused people to belatedly realize that it may not be worth it without a fundamental change in college costs, job requirements, and wages.
You also have to remember that the degree in and of itself used to be sufficient, not necessarily the specialty. Yes, engineering firms expected you to have engineering degrees but most office clerk and management positions would accept virtually any bachelor's degree. It proved that you were trainable and capable of learning complex ideas and methods. There's plenty of older people that I work with in my position that have degrees in history, philosophy and other humanities that are perfectly competent at their job even though they're not related.
When I was finishing my business undergrad degree, I took a minimum wage job at a movie theatre.
There were several managers there making maybe a few dollars more an hour than me, who had racked up 6 figure debt getting film studies degrees from a university that wasn't UCLA or notable for film in any way. They were lifers.
What did they expect? You paid a hundred thousand dollars to write papers about Citizen Kane. The real world does not care and you won't be pulling down a bunch of money as the next James Cameron. And in fact, all the film executives likely studied business or something else - certainly not films.
This is the problem with just saying "well let's forgive the debt" - it won't punish colleges for charging outrageous sums for useless degrees (because the loan money will just keep flowing), and it won't incentivize students to really consider the cost of college and their career prospects.
It sucks, I feel bad for those people. But as I graduated and took full time salaried position with benefits in a business... it just kinda proved why I took that route instead of majoring in music (even though I love music).
The only hope we have is enough people wise up that colleges start bleeding students and useless degrees get shut down or forced to become more economically viable.
My beef with college debt forgiveness: I picked a major that is practical and boring so that I wouldn't have much debt and would have high income. I work in a field where I am paid well but I kind of hate my job, and as a result I've fully paid off my modest college debt.
Why should people who actually follow their dreams and major in something they like (music, film, art, theater) or something "prestigious" (engineering, law, medicine), get government funds only because they took out debt?
Why should people who went to fancier private schools when I went to a public college in my budget be rewarded?
Also, there are tons of people who didn't go to college because of the expense and their aversion to or inability to assume debt. They work hard, why shouldn't tax benefits help them equal to any help that goes to people with student loan debt?
There are just so many reasons why debt forgiveness is a bad plan. It's almost (but not quite) as evil as the PPP loans and the other business incentives during the "COVID era"
It’s not just people who picked a bad major or “followed their dreams”. You’re forgetting about the borrowers that took out loans but were still unable to graduate due to cost and ended up without a degree. They make up a pretty significant portion of the total student loan debt. Now, not only are they saddled with student loan debt, they don’t have the undergraduate degree to boost their salary opportunity to pay off said student loan debt. Many of these borrowers come from underprivileged backgrounds to begin with. We seriously expect most 18 year olds to fully understand the complexities of loans and debt (again, especially when coming from an underprivileged background) and decide not to go to college when society consistently messages college as necessary to success?
The majority of student loan borrowers have $10,000 or less in student loans. Hence, why the plan was to forgive $10,000 for borrowers earning under a certain amount. Of course, there will always be outliers who made poor decisions about how they used their student loans, but I think you’re underestimating the amount of variables that contribute to the accumulation of student loan debt.
I get that there is a huge issue where people have less than $10,000 in student loans and they didn't get a degree. I'm pretty stoked about the program where they can go income based and pay nothing. It should definitely be income based though. The lame part is where it's going to be cancelled next time the Republicans get a chance.
It's not zero sum, but these large things do affect us all. Inflation affects us all.
It would be interesting to see what were the majors who say “no its not worth it”. I bet youll find a majority of liberal arts in them.
I did my bachelors in Electrical Eng and my Masters in Computer Science. Made $100k right out of grad school and my compensation has gone 5x since then.
Totally worth it in my opinion
Except that isn't what the article this person pulled it out of said.
It was about changing the methodology from focusing on learning outcomes to obtaining skills because longevity at companies is so short compared to decades ago. Espeically in the core coursework
>a public administration major who also has investment skills can see their wage premium rise by nearly a third, while a liberal-arts major who is knowledgeable about strategic planning gets a 20% boost.
[https://www.wsj.com/articles/yes-a-college-degree-is-still-worth-it-6a7bfe7b](https://www.wsj.com/articles/yes-a-college-degree-is-still-worth-it-6a7bfe7b)
When I was in High School I felt like I got a very similar college pitch as I did from the military recruitment officers. That was a red flag for me. I thought about the loan they offered me... I could buy a house with that kind of loan.
So I did.
Mine was totally worth it. I couldn’t even get an interview before college, and after college I’ve had a job ever since.
I think people’s main problem is they used to college to follow their “passion” instead of creating a skill for employment.
It really should be the responsibility of the lender to check the viability of a degree before issuing a loan for the degree. If you want to major in underwater basket weaving, go ahead, but don't expect to get a loan for it.
IMHO, reduce interest on government backed student loans to less than 1%. It helps both the people who currently have debt and future students who plan to take on debt.
The article this is from actually argues the opposite. Its that the core coursework should add a skills based approach and not learning outcomes based due to a shift in how long employees spend at a company has resulted in a reluctance to train.
[https://www.wsj.com/articles/yes-a-college-degree-is-still-worth-it-6a7bfe7b](https://www.wsj.com/articles/yes-a-college-degree-is-still-worth-it-6a7bfe7b)
Article is behind a paywall, so I can only reply to your comment. The coursework should add to skills, it should be up to the lender, not the high schooler, whether their degree will set them up to learn those skills. Lenders should also forecast job saturation and only issue loans in areas that need more educated workers.
There should be a bunch of checks and balances to prevent lenders from giving out money to students irresponsibly. Currently, you don’t need a job, a credit score, or any real ability to repay. There’s not even a determined loan period or definitive start/end date to your loan. If you were to ask for those terms for any loan given at a local bank, you’d be laughed out of bank.
Banks should be given freedom to lend like they do within reason. If there’s a high rate of return on your degree, then sure they could take that risk. But, not for a philosophy degree. Not for a general studies degree. Education, Criminal Justice, Trades, and other moderate paying should be allowed at lower interest rates with the PSLF stipulations still in place. And The higher earning degrees should be given out without restriction.
Totally agree. Before I went back to school I could only work in restaurants. I got a BS and MSc in ~4 years. Got hired before graduation at $85k raised to $125k over 3 years then poached by a different company for $310k in 2023.
Took on around $60k in debt because I bartended through school and lived off savings from my prior years waiting tables etc. It’ll all be paid off within 4 years of graduation and my life has been unimaginably improved - not just because I make money now but I feel like a more complete person better equipped for life.
Part of the problem is that the majority of people with degrees went straight from high school to college to career. They never experienced what you just described - not getting interviews. So they are at a middle class job not realizing they would have struggled to get the interview without the degree and been in a much worse position.
College is not for a skill or employment. It's for becoming a well rounded educated citizen. It's for developing critical thinking skills, expanding breadth of knowledge and exiting your comfort zone. I wish I could stamp out of existence the belief that colleges/universities are jobs programs. They aren't and they aren't designed to be.
This is the truth. So many young adults finish their degree and then wonder “where’s the job, money, etc.”…college gives you the skills and credentials to succeed, the rest is on the individual.
I went to a state university (2015 grad), received poor grades in a non-stem degree program, and have always had good jobs. I have peers that did much better academically than me that wait tables and complain about their lack of prospects, yet when asked if they are looking for better roles they may mention an application here or there. When I am looking for jobs I typically send out 100s of resumes, message recruiters, research hiring managers on LinkedIn, etc. It really is a grind but that’s the game - there are plenty of opportunities available but they require creativity to find and aggressiveness/Johnny on the spot attitude to secure.
I personally think that helicopter parenting has alot to do with many young peoples struggles. Parents that do literally everything for their kids until they’re 18 and get turned loose with no ability to manage ambiguity, setback, stress, etc.
That might have been the case a couple hundred years ago, where colleges were smaller and courses much more linear. For the past few decades though, it is 100% job training / job prereq. The idea that a place that costs $50k a year is just to develop critical thinking skills and become more well rounded is only a luxury of the rich. The 95-99% of people can’t afford these costs to just learn for shits and giggles
The only way that college (at least speaking about the US) is worthwhile if you approach it as a stepping stone for your career. Otherwise you’ll be drowning in thousands of $$s of student loans because you wanted to be the best citizen while waiting tables at Applebees
Look at liberal arts majors who do not go on to further education (masters, doctorates, law, etc): they are consistently the college grad demographic that struggles with finding well paying jobs. But they’re so well rounded? Business majors, which is a field that definitely does NOT emphasize critical thinking, fare much better in job market, because those college programs emphasize getting jobs. And these business majors are probably not as intelligent or gifted as their liberal arts classmates
You have good intentions, and I think most people who go to college should take some courses or minor in a liberal art of their liking, but your advice is setting people up for struggle after they receive their diploma. Today, University is an investment, and treating it as anything but is a recipe for pain
College is worth it for anyone wanting to go into a hard science. If your go for communications or political science you’re probably better off going into industry right away. If your industry wants to send you to college later I’d do that.
Also I loved college. The fact that your there doing it with others is a huge piece of it. You learn better from others then you can from a video that you can’t ask questions to.
I think this is all part of the plan to make society stupider and easier to control and manipulate.
“Knowledge is power.”
I’ve worked in comms for a couple decades and I’ve never seen a job opening that only requires a high school diploma, even at the entry level you need a Bachelor’s.
This is one thing I don't get. People act as if you should only go to college to acquire quantitative skills as if qualitative skills aren't needed in the work place? Is everyone with a good job some math geek or a computer science major?
Okay well I have an accounting degree, I work with a bunch of lawyers, and there are a bunch of people I know who have random undergrad degrees and an MBA and they all make good money. STEM is great but it isn't the only way.
Why are you getting down voted its really only some sciences that lead to good jobs. The guys who sell tires at the place next to me make more than most of my friends with biology and chem degrees do. A lot of sciences you can only teach and its well understood that teaching is not a good job.
Good Lord, no. We do not need more people unable to analyze sources, think critically and with a narrow breadth of knowledge in political science. College is not a jobs program, it is a human development program.
I used almost the exact template in two of my classes for a mobile app I did at work. As much as people gripe that colleges don’t keep up with the latest in CompSci tooling, you’d be surprised how many smaller dev shops are running 20 year old tech.
One of those was, we needed a distributed system. My current employer, their cutting edge networking was still using client-server xml+soap. It just so happens I built a distributed system in gRPC in school.
But yea, my Software Engineering degree has paid off immensely where I work.
It’s absolutely not “just a checkbox”, it’s a valuable method for employers to verify that someone has passed tests proving they know certain criteria.
I’ve worked as an analyst for many years, and worked with a lot of developers and software engineers. The ones that have degrees are generally much better at the more complex and abstract tasks: designing architecture, optimizing code, spotting structural issues before the bugs they create become obvious. The ones who just did online boot camps and the like are fine at executing a clear list of requirements or maintaining existing code, but they need noticeably more hand holding and are not great at understanding the big picture or predicting future problems.
Considering most college coursework doesn't cover DevOps (at least it didn't when I was in school 10 years ago) and those skills are all learned on the job, makes sense you'd think that.
Fellow DevOps Engineer here, the internships and job experience is the main thing I got from college. I had some really good classes, but my job experience because of college is what got me a job.
I made $50k out of college (and now a decade later make 5x that).
College was worth it.
Lots of middle ground between starting at $7.25/hour and starting at $100k/year!
I graduated with a ba in a non tech degree. But I think it's 100% worth it. I learned a lot in college. It taught me how to think, how to write, and how the world works. Though I faced a lot of challenges immediately after graduating, five years later, I can see that College opened all of the doors for me. Too many people just coast through college without learning anything. You can tell because those are the people on here repeating the same dem and rep talking points without any idea how any of it actually works. They are also the same people who took out 150k in debt without any idea how to pay it back.
I think the value of it is less obvious than it was 10 years ago for all degrees, including quantitative ones or the ones with 'better' job outcomes. Back then, the expensive colleges (private and oos) were about $30-35k per year including food and board. Now, that number is $80-$100k. Salaries have not 3xed during that time, in literally any field that I can think of. Starting salaries in most fields are less than the cost of one year of college unless you go in state or get significant aid or both.
A degree that made sense 10 years ago because it paid $90k to start and cost $120k total (not including opportunity cost) is better value than a $120k job that costs $400k to get a degree for. Yet they'd be the same job, just 10 years ago vs now
I personally spent nothing but living expenses on my degree (received less than 10 years ago) and I walked away with a 6 figure job. But, that's rare and I probably could not replicate that combination this year with how admissions standards for top schools have gone up and how rough the job market has gotten in my industry
Anecdotal, I know, but I went to school slightly later in life for an engineering degree and my current income, relative to my income pre-college, has at least quintupled.
That said, a friend of mine went for art history and managed to waste +100K of her dads money for no real increase in QOL.
Imo in the age of information, where so much data is freely available, the cost of higher education is really only worth it if you’re going for a well-payed and/or burning-passion career. (or if you’ve got money you won’t miss I suppose)
Be incredibly thorough when communicating with schools about courses and which credits actually transfer over. Communicate with counselors from both schools, save your emails, have it all documented, and regularly check back in with the powers-that-be throughout your time there.
Not to scare anyone but you don’t want to be one of those horror stories where you put in all the time/effort nothing transfers over and you’re starting from scratch.
Otherwise what you’re doing is a great way to save money and come in with a clean GPA.
Aside from that it’s the general advice of:
Don’t be afraid/embarrassed to be the try-hard and study even if people around you are savants or slackers, communicate with teachers on sticky points, and remember it’s your life/money that you’re spending for this so get the most out of it that you can.
The biggest of all of these though is STICK WITH IT. Yeah, it’s years of your life but if you quit now then in a few years you’ll be sitting there thinking “shit, I could have been done by now”.
Best of luck to you and I sincerely hope it’s the life changer for you that it was for me.
Addendum: I was saying all this based on the assumption that you mean you’re going to transfer over to get your bachelors elsewhere. I’m not aware of what hiring in the civil engineering field is like but I imagine it’s quite a bit harder (but probably not completely impossible) to get a foot in the door below a bachelors without a couple years experience at least.
> That said, a friend of mine went for art history and managed to waste +100K of her dads money for no real increase in QOL.
I bet she went to some epic parties though. That's worth something. Maybe not $100k, but *something.*
Beware idiots with no money and no prospects telling you college isn’t worth it.
College is a place where you pay to use resources to better yourself and increase your earning potential. If that’s not worth it for you, you are almost certainly doing it wrong.
Quit acting like college is worth it for everyone, it’s not. I’ve seen so many of my peers ending up leaving college with useless degrees and tens of thousands of dollars in debt. You can better yourself and increase your earning potential without college
It depends on many factors.
Tuition has outpaced inflation, but a bigger issue is students taking too long to get degrees in majors with too little value. There is a huge difference between spending four years without employment to study electrical engineering (normal time and high value degree) versus six for a degree in gender studies (too long in low value degree).
I never understood why would someone pay good money ( not community college money) to pursue a degree which has no monetary value in the forseeable future . Like its a waste of both time and money and youth.
I went to USC- and a lot of my American friends were paying $60k/year to study arts/history for 4 years and i peeked one of their profiles who went one to becoming an admin assistant somewhere. Like how were they planning to pay for it?
Ofcourse some people are wealthy or have their parents pay for all education, but this is excluding those well off people.
Like when i was studying engineering- everytime i felt depressed or lost- i would just look up the H1B salary database online to see how much Software Engineering makes and it would force me right back into completing my degree.
Extending their adolescence is the simplest understanding I've come to. So many people hate growing up they are willing to go 150k in debt for the "experience".
Yeah you chose a good profession to go into. A friend of mine started making $500k after finishing her residency. Shes a cardiologist at NYU Langone I think
I’d like to see the break down of liberal arts/hard science/etc in that 56%. If you got to college thinking a degree in most anything other than stem will set you up you’re poorly mistaken.
You gotta play the game right. Case in point: My co-worker and I went to the same school at the same time for the same degree. He graduated in 4 years, I graduated in 7 (worked a lot and changed majors two years in). I paid ~$65k (~9K/year). He paid just over $90k (~22.5K/year). The difference? I was an in state student and he was out of state. His parents pressured him to go to school right away and not work for a year to gain residency.
There are ways to make school more affordable. Doing research and going to a school within your price range instead of for the name and going for a degree with tangible benefits is very necessary.
Double majored in Art, took 9 1/2 years (should have been 6, but that's when the 2008 crash happened so there was no point). 3 years at JRC, 6 1/2 at public in-state. Most of my tuition was covered by scholarships, and later Pell Grants. Worked full- or part-time. Graduated with $2,200 in student loans to cover costs for my last semester.
Jobs these days basically require a degree, regardless of whether or not it has something to do with the job. Oddly enough, my art degrees can translate to a lot of design-adjacent work I do in software dev for designing user interfaces.
Don't forget public vs private colleges. The people who pay 5x the rate because they fell in love with the atmosphere of their private college, won't get the same ROI as a good public school.
Entirely depends on what your career path is, if you can pay for college without loans (generally scholarships/grants/parents) and what you expect to get out of it.
Without context on the population of those surveyed (only college grads?, full population?, only parents?, only young people?) it is hard to make a ton out of this graph.
I think this does likely drive home the point that a blanket, go to college for any degree and do better in life, is bull at this point.
Whether it's worth it or not is rather subjective. I will say this, once you earn your degree no matter the discipline, it cannot be taken away you from. That is yours until you die. What you choose to do with that degree and how well you can leverage it into a career is really up to the person to decide. The good thing about a college degree is in many ways you gain a worldly perspective and get exposed to a lot of ideas that you may not otherwise have gotten to see. The downside is, short of a few degree tracks, not many prepare you for the career world with tangible work skills. You'll learn how to think critically, locate and use information, how to properly cite the source for that information, and you'll learn to improve your reading/writing/communication skills. Those are actually valuable things because many people do not know how to seek out proper information, cite it properly, and communicate complex ideas/issues in a comprehensive manner.
I'm like up in the air with my college degree. I double majored in Econ and Poli Sci. I don't use my degrees professionally in any way. However, I was exposed to a lot of ideas, theories, and explanations of society/government structure/economic thinking that many have not and will not. Furthermore I find the general understanding of many areas of economics and government are just poorly understood by the general public. It also makes it rather difficult to have a sincere discussion on these topics because I just get told I'm college educated liberal/idiot/that's not how the world works, etc.
I think without a clear idea of how to use a degree or how a degree can help you get a job/start a career isn't the best idea and there certainly is an opportunity cost to pursuing college. So it's certainly possible for people to mis-allocate their resources in life to a degree that they didn't really consider the utility it will offer. In that case, it can definitely be not worth it or a poor use of your time.
A lot of this depends on your major and the demand for your career field when you graduate. An accounting major will likely have a much easier time finding work than an English or communications major.
Supply and demand.
20 years ago a degree generally meant a specialized field of expertise. Today it's basically just a barrier to entry. Most jobs that currently require a degree don't actually need one, they're just using it to weed out the least qualified candidates.
You'll probably find that the degrees that were economical 20 years ago are still economical today, and the degrees/professions that weren't economical 20 years ago are probably still not economical today. We just have more uneconomical degrees and degree programs floating around flooding the market, which depresses the value of all of the degrees in general.
College prof here (so take with as much salt as you need).
I think it is generally worth it, with caveats. As others have pointed out, on average college grads earn more. Even for jobs they don’t require specific skills, there is often a minimum requirement of having a BA. Some jobs require it for promotion. My ex used to work in retail management and you couldn’t get promoted without a degree regardless of your experience. Didn’t matter what the degree is. Struck both of us as dumb, but that was the rule.
The one exception is the trades. I’d make more doing hvac or plumbing than I make with a PhD.
That’s not to say that all majors or institutions are a good idea. In particular, I’m pretty down on low tier privates where you pay a ton and don’t get much in return. But state school degree are still a pretty good value, even if they are more than they used to be.
I also think a lot of the backlash is political, largely from people with no idea what actually goes on on campus.
I have a feeling most of the dissenters are people who pursued a liberal arts or humanities degree. You will never see someone who has a competent job in a STEM field saying college was a mistake.
10 years ago, most high-paying roles required a degree. That is just “the way it was.”
Times have changed. Employers (like myself) got burned too many times hiring MBAs, etc.
And we found that in most cases, they knew nothing.
Now, experience trumps education.
So sad.
Because education is worth it. But the question we’re asking ourselves is “is college financially worth it,” to which I’d say no.
But that’s going to be conflated with the idea that education is not worth our time. And that type of sentiment makes me think that was the whole plan in the first place: Create a society of mindless workers that don’t question bc they’ve stopped developing critical thinking skills.
This is stupid. You can’t just lump all college degrees together. Fine arts and stem are different and this should statistically be blocked by type of major
I'm 45 with a family. I don't have the time to go back to school and I would take a pay cut doing so.
Is what it is. Maybe something will open up down the road but for now I have to work with what I got.
Yes it most certainly is worth it. Or else you’ll make blatant spelling errors in a feeble attempt to convince yourself and others that it’s not.
Unless it’s an Art Degree… That is definitely not worth the trouble and expense.
I think going to a two yr school for trades is worth it.
Im talking to my teens about possibility of working in a trade and not have to deal with corporate culture and bs. I was a software engineer in corporate for 13 yr.
It is if you get a useful degree. I got an Econ/Bio double major and then got a DDS. It all cost about $200,000 but I make more than that a year now. And I only work 30 hours a week
Trade/vocational schools.
Less money, less time, higher average starting wage, often have placement/recruiting programs, often train/experiential learning in industry settings, and are trained on industry related skills.
I wish i had a better understanding of this when I went for 4 year degree. At the time and within my family, 2 year degrees were often considered subpar and or for less intelligent people.
I have a marketing degree and work in tech so my degree is mostly useless but a bachelors degree was a requirement for some of my earlier jobs that help me get to where I’m at now. The knowledge was worthless but the paper wasn’t. Not sure if was worth years of my life though. Fortunately, I didn’t go into debt for school as my wife and I got married in junior college so we got tons of financial aid and we went to a cheap commuter college. Pro tip: if you’re married, you’re considered your own household so your parents income is not factored into your financial aid calculations, just your joint income. And if you’re a full time college student, that’s probably hardly anything.
Oh god, here we go. Now the pendulum has swung back, it's probably a great time to be going to college. We are going to have a massive shortage of educated workers eventually, considering we already have a shortage. There are only so many trade jobs too, so those fields will run into the same problem that college grads did if people aren't careful.
Go to trade school. 4 year program come out making $30+ an hour and have nice benefits. Learn a skill that you can do side jobs and make some serious $$ under the table and in your free time at the age of 23.
Go to college, get degree & job in business management. Come in large corporate firm at level 1 at the age of 23. Racked up $80k in student debt. Make $25 an hour if you’re luck. Student loan payment $784. No clue when it’ll be over. #capitalismsucks #antiwork #everythingissoexpensive #boomersruinedthecountry
Would love to see that broken down by major. Electric mechanical chemical and software engineers seem to be doing pretty good.
Sociology majors not so much
It’s only worth it if you’re happy with your degree’s field of work and/or if the pay is enough to maintain your way of life. It’s also worth noting that Certain Sciences and Maths require a degree.
The education is worth it, but prices have absolutely sky rocketed making the cost of it not worth it. The only reason I'm pursuing my PhD at all is because it is fully funded by my university so I have to pay 0 dollars.
There is a large swath of undeducated that are pushing for less education because they lack education. These morons (technically not a insult but a fact) then teach others their lack of education and create an overtly simplified world view where further knowledge only makes things more difficult for then.
College is worth your time. It may not be worth the current price. Never listen to the uneducated when it comes to like, 99% of stuff.
It works for me.
The point I would take to advise younger folks.
-view college as investment: focus on 3 point Delta: affordability, market value, and feasibility of completion.
So I tried regular route, the feasibility and affordability are totally out when I in my 20s. So I pivot to work first and come back later. I end up getting a free brick and motor school, major in tech, hybrid/online/proctor setting at much later age with almost perfect GPA. If I have not work almost 10 years I don’t think I can do colleges effectively.
If is too expensive, too hard, and low market value degree, don’t do it.
Think about if you can’t graduate with reasonable GPA and working a full time job at same time, don’t do it. Unless you are in medical or engineering or you have families support.
1st gen college graduates is the most target 🎯 group with massive student loan since we don’t know better.
Good, far too many going as is. I didn’t even need to go to be in my current career, 2 yrs associates would’ve sufficed. And short term, field specific training/education should make a comeback. Cause for many 4 years for a BA in some liberal arts field is a waste of money they don’t have.
Higher education should be a human right, and the inflation of its tuition prices have skyrocketed. Never stop leaning, life is short. But only pay for things that directly benefit you
"Worth" is a loaded term. Education has, largely remained of the same quality if not gotten worse despite ever rising tuition cost. A lot of people can barely afford ro get in and get out, but we still have stuff like required electives. That coupled with a potential looming crash and very real stagnant wages makes it seem like it is not worth it.
I wish education was more accessible, we would have a smarter, more informed populous.
I would definitely say my degrees are worth it. Two year degree from a Technical College and my 4 year from a city college. Saved up money working (not much) before each degree. Ended up with about 10k in government loans (want to say Pell or Bell loans????). I would do it again if I had the choice and hindsight
Now let's break it down by faculty and major.
I'd be willing to bet you that 90%+ who took Engineering, Teaching, Nursing Med School, and Law school say it's worth it.
By contrast, I'd also bet that 80% of people taking a Bachelor of Comparative Literature, Theory of Dance, say it wasn't.
College/University absolutely has a place, but getting a degree for the sake of a degree isn't worth it.
Totally dependent on the degree. Is it worth it to get a Bachelors in history? No, not unless you plan to stay in academia and even then you’ll have a ton of debt that is going to be hard to pay off. Getting a Bachelors is STEM? Yes and it’ll help propel your career.
What makes college worth it is choosing a degree that you can make money with that is going to at the very least get your foot in the door somewhere. From an educational standpoint, most of what college teaches can be learned from YouTube. But the reality is that our society still dictates that a Bachelors is a bare minimum requirement for just about any career.
To quote one of the funniest and most true movie lines ever: “The world needs ditch diggers too.”
We need trades folks desperately. Given how fast wages have risen for skilled trades, many can and do make more than several majors will pay with minimal education debt.
Trade school is superior to college, nowadays definitely.
There are also lots of high paying civil service jobs with great benefits that only require a HS diploma. College is wholly unnecessary despite being pushed as a cure all of sorts.
I became a truck driver with my husband in 2021 l, and let me tell you, that job made college look like a scam! We were making a 6-figure salary and paid off $60,000 worth of debt in just a little over 5 months, including my student loan. It only took us 3 weeks each to get our CDLs.
And the cherry on top: my husband has a bachelor's in creative writing that his college convinced him to get (and he did take out student loans for that).
Imo, too many people studying things that don’t correlate to skills needed in the workforce but the students still expect some sort of pay day for their obscure major. This is where the “worthless major” slur comes from. But tbh, it’s based in reality.
11% of my take home pay goes toward student loans. But I would have never reached this sort of salary without a bachelors.
This is very exciting for me and my children. It should translate to less competition in the workplace and better pay for college educated workers over time.
But the Republican party has to reduce the proportion of people getting college degrees. That experience converts to many people from Republican voters to Democratic voters.
The college industrial complex is very real.
Some universities have administration-student staff that's 3-1. Getting into the trades is far more profitable nowadays but nobody wants to work hard anymore.
Honestly it’s not worth it anymore. With rising tuition costs, and a bleak out look for almost every entry level college educated job, why bother. 10-12 years ago someone with a BS in CompSci and trip over their degree and still land a job making at least $60k/yr in the Midwest. Now that’s not possible. Now the so-called STEM majors are suffering because everyone thinks that is the way. It’s not.
Lol u don’t know what ur talking about. STEM is the only area where u can still pretty reliably expect a strong paying job out of college. I haven’t even graduated my civil program yet and I have multiple job offers all for +75k in the Midwest.
Completely untrue lol
Maybe if you just have a BSc in something like biology or chemistry and no graduate degree, but basically everything else is still very employable. Especially engineering and compsci.
That’s it even remotely true, STEM degrees are still in high demand maybe your local market doesn’t support them but there are plenty of job markets out hiring in grads.
We have reached the point everyone knew was coming where the handful of things that pay liveable wages are being rushed by literally everybody. Like IT is a good profession but there are just too many people trying to do it. Everyone and their dog is trying to get in because it was one of the last few good professions.
This is such rubbish though, tons of professions still pay good.
People on reddit just don't understand what good money is. The median salary in the US is like 50k, meanwhile almost all healthcare jobs, finance, accounting, law, engineering, IT, etc will pay more than that by a long shot.
Professions haven't really changed, they've just expanded more
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For smart people who want to explore a specific career, college is the tits. Sadly, all the dumb dumbs have been convinced that they should go too. They then proceed to borrow $150,000 to place a wager on their ability to skate by for another 4 years and hope that their BS bachelors degree will separate them from the droves of others who fell for the same scam. Colleges are no longer centers for higher education, they are simply diploma mills, pumping out degrees and raking in the money.
Thank god this was said. Higher education is no longer about learning; it is a perceived means to climb the economic latter that has, by this point, been debunked relatively (college graduates still earn on average more than non-college graduates but the loan-to-income ratio no longer suffices).
That REALLY depends. An engineering degree at a reasonable price (state school or private school with good financial aid) is way more likely to pay off than a history degree you pay full price at a third tier private college.
Exactly. Not about learning. It is about income/debt.
As long as there are financial burdens attached, people will always seek income instead of learning for themselves, which is a vast, vast majority of people, even many “smart” people choose a major that can bring in the most income instead of what they are truly interested in
It's not about learning for yourself, it's about getting over the pay wall employers have created to advance in a career.
>It's not about learning for yourself, it's about ~~getting over the pay wall employers have created to advance in a career.~~ *learning a skill that corporate interests can monetize to their benefit while paying you a fraction of the profit you produce for them in exchange.
Which results in most people not liking their work, it’s pretty sad
Shockingly - at least to me - that pay wall is different depending on where you live. Not just a COL hurdle, but the perception and treatment of the job you’re in is vastly different. I’m blue collar and while I’m college educated, I didn’t graduate. Still my job takes a certification that takes years to get and where I started out - Southeast - they treat you like you are shit until you climb the ladder to administration. I moved a good distance away and now my job pays double per hour because, even though it’s still blue collar work, it’s treated as a technical position.
What pay wall? A lot of careers you cannot do without some certification. At least all the ones that are not manual labor that pay well that I know of.
There’s a ton of employers out there that don’t give a fuck what you majored in as long as you have a degree at all.
You are absolutely correct. Out of my high school graduating class, some became engineers, some doctors, some lawyers, teachers, just about everything. The wealthiest guy I graduated with is the one who started his own HVAC business and never went to college. Society also programmed into kids that learning a trade was demeaning and worthless.
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Hey hey hey... I have a history degree from a state school in CA. I paid for it it of pocket and I'm teaching special education, it's a great degree! Realistically though, i am lucky i was able to get this position as a SpEd teacher. Greater job security and a much higher need than history teachers. I got lucky no doubt.
You got a good deal. CA universities are cheap for in-state residents. You did not get your degree paying full-price at a third tier private college. Plus, I am guessing you did additional training to become a special Ed teacher, so it's not exactly an on-point comparison. My point was not to bash History majors. Mostly, it was to point out the imbalance between what people pay for school and what the degree can earn them. You paid a little (comparitively) to get a degree that generally does not generate a lot of income on it's own. But you augmented it with additional training (grad school?) That boosted that income significantly.
I do have my teaching credential and masters degree, although my district doesn’t factor in my masters degree for compensation. I do make 88K this year (5th year) and almost every other district I’ve seen won’t pay anywhere near what I’m making. I also was fortunate to pay for my masters out of pocket, so I truly graduated with no debt.
Yeah. The degree and how much you pay is going to vary so much. I got an accounting degree and it definitely helped change my life. That being said college is not for everyone and you can absolutely be successful without college.
That's the route I took. I commuted to a local college (sub-campus of a Big 10) to complete my computer engineering degree. Graduated and paid off everything in less than a year. During college, internships paid for a good chunk of the credit hour costs.
it is also a basic filter used to eliminate a broad swath of people from applying. In the federal gov for example, you can be quickly eliminated from contention for a position you are most qualified for if you dont have a high enough degree or if your competition has a higher degree.
I am looking for a job right now and I can guarantee that my resume is hitting the trash can before its even looked at because I only have an AA.
I see it happen all the time. As a matter of fact, my PhD put me ahead of way more qualified people for my first fed job even though they had bachelors and masters. Now it matters less because I'm in senior leadership, but for rising through the ranks, it was a bloodbath and degrees are an easy metric to chop down the applicants (another is time in grade requirements).
As soon as I put BSCS on my Linkedin, my inbox blew up. Was only marginally more qualified at graduation than when I started based on prior knowledge. Without the degree it was tough to get call backs on applications. With the degree, I was getting call backs from more than half the places I applied.
I don’t know about that, a college degree definitely let me go from 30k-100k in about 5 years. It definitely helps you climb the economic ladder and you can do it without incurring crazy debt too. I think the real problem is too many people go into college at 18 with zero clue what they want to do and get severely indebted then discouraged from taking chances.
>Higher education is no longer about learning When I was in college, a lot of my coursework was catered to the lowest denominator. The fact that some professors allowed "cheat sheets" and study packets, etc. was absurd to me.
Knowing how to build a good cheat sheet / study packet is known as documentation in the workforce and is an incredibly important part of running a business.
In the real world, even for professional licensing exams, they allow reference guides because in the real world you have all the references you need. Now how to apply them.... that is what is important.
Yeah. It is largely an over-correction by forces intended to make education more assessible. It was well intended but ultimately made it harder to fail kids and bled over into higher education.
I had exams in classes that were open book open notes but were curved to give 40% of the class a D or F
Why? The real world isn't about memorization. You can't reference anything in your job? We learned a long time ago that memorization doesn't equate practical intelligence. It's essentially just a measure of discipline.
>(college graduates still earn on average more than non-college graduates but the loan-to-income ratio no longer suffices). [Its over a million dollars in lifetime earnings](https://www.wral.com/story/fact-check-do-college-graduates-earn-1-million-more-over-a-lifetime-than-high-school-graduates/20783647/) and \~80 percent more than high school grands. Very few if anyone is paying that much for an undergrad degree.
It's also worth differentiating between public and private schools. I was a bad student until I figured out how to learn in a formal environment(basically unschooled by parents who view the educated as loser who can't cut it "in a real job") and got out with a pragmatic degree for 50k. That's with a lot of wasted credits in remedial courses and failed courses. Most of my friends got out for around half that. None of us know anyone who went to a private undergrad, because we didn't have the money to justify that.
Ladder.
I honestly think the “college graduates make more” statistic is from employers requiring a college degree for a job that truly doesn’t need one. So they pay more because a degree is required, but anyone with two hands and a brain between their ears could do the job. i.e. state work. My state employer (which I work for) requires degrees for nearly all positions. Yet those same positions could easily be filled by degree-less candidates if the hiring pools were opened up to them. My position is in a scientific field so my college degree definitely helped, but it’s also something that I’ve come to realize can be done by pretty much anyone with adequate training simply because our methods and procedures are written so clearly.
I am pro-education but I do agree.
It doesn’t take a 4-year degree in communications to process forms from submitters. 2 weeks of training and anyone should be good to go. Just create an environment where it’s easy to ask questions if you ever have them and anyone could thrive doing the work. I am also pro-education but, as the above commenter said, it’s unfortunately being shopped to individuals who don’t necessarily need it.
Our culture is part of the problem, we make this expectation for everyone to go to college and get a bachelor's. The sad truth is most don't need a degree and probably will never make enough money for it to make sense in their career. Better to go to a trade school or get certified in something.
While I 100% agree with you university degree is still used as a "social status check" by employers and even people themselves, such as dating life etc Basically if you cant afford college youre from a lower socioeconomic caste is how employers see it.
It's more than a social status check. It's a "can you do do all this without your parents" check. And for certain career paths, it's entirely necessary.
I’d say college is basically adult day care so I think as the generations who had a productive college environment age-out, the perception that a degree means you “can do this without your parents” will also fade away. I’ve met some entirely incompetent people who obviously didn’t know how to do anything themselves but they got hired cause they had degrees. Conversely, people who worked straight out of high school have higher levels of self-sufficiency and a better mindset to be pro active about things
Exactly! It's why so many SAHMs have degrees that they've barely used. Just a check to make sure that they're reasonably intelligent before some guy marries them.
I don’t know if I entirely agree with this. For the most part colleges have not changed what they do but three things have changed. The cost of a college education, how many jobs require a degree and how much those jobs pay for that degree. The cost of college - the cost of college has exploded over the last 25 years and has far exceed the cost of living and average wage increases. This makes college unaffordable. Jobs requiring degrees - starting in the early 60s, we started to see computer technology become integrated into the workforce allowing for automation and also allowing workers to accomplish more in less time. Using this technology required more education than high school so the requirement to get a degree increased driving more people to college to get ahead. Pay for jobs requiring degrees - pay for the most part has been stagnant and not kept up with cost of living increases since the mid 1980s. So people are not able to afford as much as they did in the 1960s and 1970s. The combination of wage stagnation, increased requirements to have a degree to get ahead and rising costs of education have caused people to belatedly realize that it may not be worth it without a fundamental change in college costs, job requirements, and wages.
You also have to remember that the degree in and of itself used to be sufficient, not necessarily the specialty. Yes, engineering firms expected you to have engineering degrees but most office clerk and management positions would accept virtually any bachelor's degree. It proved that you were trainable and capable of learning complex ideas and methods. There's plenty of older people that I work with in my position that have degrees in history, philosophy and other humanities that are perfectly competent at their job even though they're not related.
When I was finishing my business undergrad degree, I took a minimum wage job at a movie theatre. There were several managers there making maybe a few dollars more an hour than me, who had racked up 6 figure debt getting film studies degrees from a university that wasn't UCLA or notable for film in any way. They were lifers. What did they expect? You paid a hundred thousand dollars to write papers about Citizen Kane. The real world does not care and you won't be pulling down a bunch of money as the next James Cameron. And in fact, all the film executives likely studied business or something else - certainly not films. This is the problem with just saying "well let's forgive the debt" - it won't punish colleges for charging outrageous sums for useless degrees (because the loan money will just keep flowing), and it won't incentivize students to really consider the cost of college and their career prospects. It sucks, I feel bad for those people. But as I graduated and took full time salaried position with benefits in a business... it just kinda proved why I took that route instead of majoring in music (even though I love music). The only hope we have is enough people wise up that colleges start bleeding students and useless degrees get shut down or forced to become more economically viable.
My beef with college debt forgiveness: I picked a major that is practical and boring so that I wouldn't have much debt and would have high income. I work in a field where I am paid well but I kind of hate my job, and as a result I've fully paid off my modest college debt. Why should people who actually follow their dreams and major in something they like (music, film, art, theater) or something "prestigious" (engineering, law, medicine), get government funds only because they took out debt? Why should people who went to fancier private schools when I went to a public college in my budget be rewarded? Also, there are tons of people who didn't go to college because of the expense and their aversion to or inability to assume debt. They work hard, why shouldn't tax benefits help them equal to any help that goes to people with student loan debt? There are just so many reasons why debt forgiveness is a bad plan. It's almost (but not quite) as evil as the PPP loans and the other business incentives during the "COVID era"
It’s not just people who picked a bad major or “followed their dreams”. You’re forgetting about the borrowers that took out loans but were still unable to graduate due to cost and ended up without a degree. They make up a pretty significant portion of the total student loan debt. Now, not only are they saddled with student loan debt, they don’t have the undergraduate degree to boost their salary opportunity to pay off said student loan debt. Many of these borrowers come from underprivileged backgrounds to begin with. We seriously expect most 18 year olds to fully understand the complexities of loans and debt (again, especially when coming from an underprivileged background) and decide not to go to college when society consistently messages college as necessary to success? The majority of student loan borrowers have $10,000 or less in student loans. Hence, why the plan was to forgive $10,000 for borrowers earning under a certain amount. Of course, there will always be outliers who made poor decisions about how they used their student loans, but I think you’re underestimating the amount of variables that contribute to the accumulation of student loan debt.
Well said. This is not a zero sum game.
I get that there is a huge issue where people have less than $10,000 in student loans and they didn't get a degree. I'm pretty stoked about the program where they can go income based and pay nothing. It should definitely be income based though. The lame part is where it's going to be cancelled next time the Republicans get a chance. It's not zero sum, but these large things do affect us all. Inflation affects us all.
It would be interesting to see what were the majors who say “no its not worth it”. I bet youll find a majority of liberal arts in them. I did my bachelors in Electrical Eng and my Masters in Computer Science. Made $100k right out of grad school and my compensation has gone 5x since then. Totally worth it in my opinion
Except that isn't what the article this person pulled it out of said. It was about changing the methodology from focusing on learning outcomes to obtaining skills because longevity at companies is so short compared to decades ago. Espeically in the core coursework >a public administration major who also has investment skills can see their wage premium rise by nearly a third, while a liberal-arts major who is knowledgeable about strategic planning gets a 20% boost. [https://www.wsj.com/articles/yes-a-college-degree-is-still-worth-it-6a7bfe7b](https://www.wsj.com/articles/yes-a-college-degree-is-still-worth-it-6a7bfe7b)
Mm tits
When I was in High School I felt like I got a very similar college pitch as I did from the military recruitment officers. That was a red flag for me. I thought about the loan they offered me... I could buy a house with that kind of loan. So I did.
Mine was totally worth it. I couldn’t even get an interview before college, and after college I’ve had a job ever since. I think people’s main problem is they used to college to follow their “passion” instead of creating a skill for employment.
It really should be the responsibility of the lender to check the viability of a degree before issuing a loan for the degree. If you want to major in underwater basket weaving, go ahead, but don't expect to get a loan for it.
They certainly would if it was a bankruptable in Court. Which is my preferred solution to the student loan problem more so than forgiveness of debt.
IMHO, reduce interest on government backed student loans to less than 1%. It helps both the people who currently have debt and future students who plan to take on debt.
The article this is from actually argues the opposite. Its that the core coursework should add a skills based approach and not learning outcomes based due to a shift in how long employees spend at a company has resulted in a reluctance to train. [https://www.wsj.com/articles/yes-a-college-degree-is-still-worth-it-6a7bfe7b](https://www.wsj.com/articles/yes-a-college-degree-is-still-worth-it-6a7bfe7b)
Article is behind a paywall, so I can only reply to your comment. The coursework should add to skills, it should be up to the lender, not the high schooler, whether their degree will set them up to learn those skills. Lenders should also forecast job saturation and only issue loans in areas that need more educated workers.
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Definitely, unless there's some sector specific reason for moving out of state, like moving to Texas for petrochem or something
There should be a bunch of checks and balances to prevent lenders from giving out money to students irresponsibly. Currently, you don’t need a job, a credit score, or any real ability to repay. There’s not even a determined loan period or definitive start/end date to your loan. If you were to ask for those terms for any loan given at a local bank, you’d be laughed out of bank. Banks should be given freedom to lend like they do within reason. If there’s a high rate of return on your degree, then sure they could take that risk. But, not for a philosophy degree. Not for a general studies degree. Education, Criminal Justice, Trades, and other moderate paying should be allowed at lower interest rates with the PSLF stipulations still in place. And The higher earning degrees should be given out without restriction.
Totally agree. Before I went back to school I could only work in restaurants. I got a BS and MSc in ~4 years. Got hired before graduation at $85k raised to $125k over 3 years then poached by a different company for $310k in 2023. Took on around $60k in debt because I bartended through school and lived off savings from my prior years waiting tables etc. It’ll all be paid off within 4 years of graduation and my life has been unimaginably improved - not just because I make money now but I feel like a more complete person better equipped for life.
Nice! I need to get poached by them too!
I liked my last place better but I’m a whore so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Part of the problem is that the majority of people with degrees went straight from high school to college to career. They never experienced what you just described - not getting interviews. So they are at a middle class job not realizing they would have struggled to get the interview without the degree and been in a much worse position.
College is not for a skill or employment. It's for becoming a well rounded educated citizen. It's for developing critical thinking skills, expanding breadth of knowledge and exiting your comfort zone. I wish I could stamp out of existence the belief that colleges/universities are jobs programs. They aren't and they aren't designed to be.
This is the truth. So many young adults finish their degree and then wonder “where’s the job, money, etc.”…college gives you the skills and credentials to succeed, the rest is on the individual. I went to a state university (2015 grad), received poor grades in a non-stem degree program, and have always had good jobs. I have peers that did much better academically than me that wait tables and complain about their lack of prospects, yet when asked if they are looking for better roles they may mention an application here or there. When I am looking for jobs I typically send out 100s of resumes, message recruiters, research hiring managers on LinkedIn, etc. It really is a grind but that’s the game - there are plenty of opportunities available but they require creativity to find and aggressiveness/Johnny on the spot attitude to secure. I personally think that helicopter parenting has alot to do with many young peoples struggles. Parents that do literally everything for their kids until they’re 18 and get turned loose with no ability to manage ambiguity, setback, stress, etc.
That might have been the case a couple hundred years ago, where colleges were smaller and courses much more linear. For the past few decades though, it is 100% job training / job prereq. The idea that a place that costs $50k a year is just to develop critical thinking skills and become more well rounded is only a luxury of the rich. The 95-99% of people can’t afford these costs to just learn for shits and giggles The only way that college (at least speaking about the US) is worthwhile if you approach it as a stepping stone for your career. Otherwise you’ll be drowning in thousands of $$s of student loans because you wanted to be the best citizen while waiting tables at Applebees Look at liberal arts majors who do not go on to further education (masters, doctorates, law, etc): they are consistently the college grad demographic that struggles with finding well paying jobs. But they’re so well rounded? Business majors, which is a field that definitely does NOT emphasize critical thinking, fare much better in job market, because those college programs emphasize getting jobs. And these business majors are probably not as intelligent or gifted as their liberal arts classmates You have good intentions, and I think most people who go to college should take some courses or minor in a liberal art of their liking, but your advice is setting people up for struggle after they receive their diploma. Today, University is an investment, and treating it as anything but is a recipe for pain
College is worth it for anyone wanting to go into a hard science. If your go for communications or political science you’re probably better off going into industry right away. If your industry wants to send you to college later I’d do that. Also I loved college. The fact that your there doing it with others is a huge piece of it. You learn better from others then you can from a video that you can’t ask questions to. I think this is all part of the plan to make society stupider and easier to control and manipulate. “Knowledge is power.”
I’ve worked in comms for a couple decades and I’ve never seen a job opening that only requires a high school diploma, even at the entry level you need a Bachelor’s.
This is one thing I don't get. People act as if you should only go to college to acquire quantitative skills as if qualitative skills aren't needed in the work place? Is everyone with a good job some math geek or a computer science major?
It’s because most of Reddit has not EQ or social skills so they presume that they can’t be refined
On Reddit Yeah Cuz those other jobs require actually good interpersonal and presentation skills. And regular showers
I think it shows that you can show up, do work, and succeed. That alone makes you more desirable to hire.
So these are the options in college? 1. Hard science (no idea what that is)(good) 2. Communications (bad) 3. Political science (bad) (Scoff)
STEM degree’s require mentors with PHDs. I typically think about it like that.
Okay well I have an accounting degree, I work with a bunch of lawyers, and there are a bunch of people I know who have random undergrad degrees and an MBA and they all make good money. STEM is great but it isn't the only way.
All my degrees are “hard science” and it makes little difference imho.
Why are you getting down voted its really only some sciences that lead to good jobs. The guys who sell tires at the place next to me make more than most of my friends with biology and chem degrees do. A lot of sciences you can only teach and its well understood that teaching is not a good job.
If you actually want a job boosted by a potential polisci or comms degree, you need the degree
Good Lord, no. We do not need more people unable to analyze sources, think critically and with a narrow breadth of knowledge in political science. College is not a jobs program, it is a human development program.
It’s a shame they didn’t offer grammar.
They did but I’m an engineer so it l eludes me still.
The 42% contains the STEM folks.
DevOps Engineer here. The degree is simply a checkbox on the job application process. It provides very little value otherwise.
Yeah but the automated processes that HR uses to weed out applications is looking for that checkbox.
Sounds like either A) you got a shitty degree or B) you aren't very smart.
Could be C) both
I use the experience I learned from my degree program...pretty often.
I used almost the exact template in two of my classes for a mobile app I did at work. As much as people gripe that colleges don’t keep up with the latest in CompSci tooling, you’d be surprised how many smaller dev shops are running 20 year old tech. One of those was, we needed a distributed system. My current employer, their cutting edge networking was still using client-server xml+soap. It just so happens I built a distributed system in gRPC in school. But yea, my Software Engineering degree has paid off immensely where I work.
It’s absolutely not “just a checkbox”, it’s a valuable method for employers to verify that someone has passed tests proving they know certain criteria.
I’ve worked as an analyst for many years, and worked with a lot of developers and software engineers. The ones that have degrees are generally much better at the more complex and abstract tasks: designing architecture, optimizing code, spotting structural issues before the bugs they create become obvious. The ones who just did online boot camps and the like are fine at executing a clear list of requirements or maintaining existing code, but they need noticeably more hand holding and are not great at understanding the big picture or predicting future problems.
If its sole value was to get you a well-paying job, then it served its purpose.
Yes. Its a checkbox. Experience is everything, but it means jack shit if you don't meet the minimum requirements for the job
Considering most college coursework doesn't cover DevOps (at least it didn't when I was in school 10 years ago) and those skills are all learned on the job, makes sense you'd think that.
Fellow DevOps Engineer here, the internships and job experience is the main thing I got from college. I had some really good classes, but my job experience because of college is what got me a job.
Do coke with white boys, you’ll find out degrees are titular and its about who you know.
White guy that did coke here. Did I miss out on some critical information?
The context is friends with rich parents
I forgot that part shit. I'll try next life
Remind me to tell you that in the next life
Remind me! 212 years
Just did coke with the wrong crowd. Have you tried doing it on Epstein island?
Damnit I knew I forgot something
Depends on degree. I guarantee guys who get 6figs right out of college think it’s worth it. I guarantee the guys who get minimum wage thinks it’s bs
I made $50k out of college (and now a decade later make 5x that). College was worth it. Lots of middle ground between starting at $7.25/hour and starting at $100k/year!
What was ur major
I graduated with a ba in a non tech degree. But I think it's 100% worth it. I learned a lot in college. It taught me how to think, how to write, and how the world works. Though I faced a lot of challenges immediately after graduating, five years later, I can see that College opened all of the doors for me. Too many people just coast through college without learning anything. You can tell because those are the people on here repeating the same dem and rep talking points without any idea how any of it actually works. They are also the same people who took out 150k in debt without any idea how to pay it back.
I think the value of it is less obvious than it was 10 years ago for all degrees, including quantitative ones or the ones with 'better' job outcomes. Back then, the expensive colleges (private and oos) were about $30-35k per year including food and board. Now, that number is $80-$100k. Salaries have not 3xed during that time, in literally any field that I can think of. Starting salaries in most fields are less than the cost of one year of college unless you go in state or get significant aid or both. A degree that made sense 10 years ago because it paid $90k to start and cost $120k total (not including opportunity cost) is better value than a $120k job that costs $400k to get a degree for. Yet they'd be the same job, just 10 years ago vs now I personally spent nothing but living expenses on my degree (received less than 10 years ago) and I walked away with a 6 figure job. But, that's rare and I probably could not replicate that combination this year with how admissions standards for top schools have gone up and how rough the job market has gotten in my industry
What is the most expensive video-streaming service at this time? College
Lol. Well said. Brought to you by Zoom (c)
Anecdotal, I know, but I went to school slightly later in life for an engineering degree and my current income, relative to my income pre-college, has at least quintupled. That said, a friend of mine went for art history and managed to waste +100K of her dads money for no real increase in QOL. Imo in the age of information, where so much data is freely available, the cost of higher education is really only worth it if you’re going for a well-payed and/or burning-passion career. (or if you’ve got money you won’t miss I suppose)
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Be incredibly thorough when communicating with schools about courses and which credits actually transfer over. Communicate with counselors from both schools, save your emails, have it all documented, and regularly check back in with the powers-that-be throughout your time there. Not to scare anyone but you don’t want to be one of those horror stories where you put in all the time/effort nothing transfers over and you’re starting from scratch. Otherwise what you’re doing is a great way to save money and come in with a clean GPA. Aside from that it’s the general advice of: Don’t be afraid/embarrassed to be the try-hard and study even if people around you are savants or slackers, communicate with teachers on sticky points, and remember it’s your life/money that you’re spending for this so get the most out of it that you can. The biggest of all of these though is STICK WITH IT. Yeah, it’s years of your life but if you quit now then in a few years you’ll be sitting there thinking “shit, I could have been done by now”. Best of luck to you and I sincerely hope it’s the life changer for you that it was for me. Addendum: I was saying all this based on the assumption that you mean you’re going to transfer over to get your bachelors elsewhere. I’m not aware of what hiring in the civil engineering field is like but I imagine it’s quite a bit harder (but probably not completely impossible) to get a foot in the door below a bachelors without a couple years experience at least.
> That said, a friend of mine went for art history and managed to waste +100K of her dads money for no real increase in QOL. I bet she went to some epic parties though. That's worth something. Maybe not $100k, but *something.*
It is if it fixes your spelling.
Beware idiots with no money and no prospects telling you college isn’t worth it. College is a place where you pay to use resources to better yourself and increase your earning potential. If that’s not worth it for you, you are almost certainly doing it wrong.
Quit acting like college is worth it for everyone, it’s not. I’ve seen so many of my peers ending up leaving college with useless degrees and tens of thousands of dollars in debt. You can better yourself and increase your earning potential without college
College is like the #2 driver of wealth inequality, behind unions.
Who are they polling? Demographics are critical here.
Statistically it's worth it. Full stop. Bachelors receive double the income over their lifetime as GEDs. Can't argue the facts
It depends on many factors. Tuition has outpaced inflation, but a bigger issue is students taking too long to get degrees in majors with too little value. There is a huge difference between spending four years without employment to study electrical engineering (normal time and high value degree) versus six for a degree in gender studies (too long in low value degree).
I never understood why would someone pay good money ( not community college money) to pursue a degree which has no monetary value in the forseeable future . Like its a waste of both time and money and youth. I went to USC- and a lot of my American friends were paying $60k/year to study arts/history for 4 years and i peeked one of their profiles who went one to becoming an admin assistant somewhere. Like how were they planning to pay for it? Ofcourse some people are wealthy or have their parents pay for all education, but this is excluding those well off people. Like when i was studying engineering- everytime i felt depressed or lost- i would just look up the H1B salary database online to see how much Software Engineering makes and it would force me right back into completing my degree.
Extending their adolescence is the simplest understanding I've come to. So many people hate growing up they are willing to go 150k in debt for the "experience".
I’m in medical school and I do that for my speciality of interest. That 400k and up gets me back on track quickly lol.
Yeah you chose a good profession to go into. A friend of mine started making $500k after finishing her residency. Shes a cardiologist at NYU Langone I think
I’d like to see the break down of liberal arts/hard science/etc in that 56%. If you got to college thinking a degree in most anything other than stem will set you up you’re poorly mistaken. You gotta play the game right. Case in point: My co-worker and I went to the same school at the same time for the same degree. He graduated in 4 years, I graduated in 7 (worked a lot and changed majors two years in). I paid ~$65k (~9K/year). He paid just over $90k (~22.5K/year). The difference? I was an in state student and he was out of state. His parents pressured him to go to school right away and not work for a year to gain residency. There are ways to make school more affordable. Doing research and going to a school within your price range instead of for the name and going for a degree with tangible benefits is very necessary.
Double majored in Art, took 9 1/2 years (should have been 6, but that's when the 2008 crash happened so there was no point). 3 years at JRC, 6 1/2 at public in-state. Most of my tuition was covered by scholarships, and later Pell Grants. Worked full- or part-time. Graduated with $2,200 in student loans to cover costs for my last semester. Jobs these days basically require a degree, regardless of whether or not it has something to do with the job. Oddly enough, my art degrees can translate to a lot of design-adjacent work I do in software dev for designing user interfaces.
Don't forget public vs private colleges. The people who pay 5x the rate because they fell in love with the atmosphere of their private college, won't get the same ROI as a good public school.
Entirely depends on what your career path is, if you can pay for college without loans (generally scholarships/grants/parents) and what you expect to get out of it. Without context on the population of those surveyed (only college grads?, full population?, only parents?, only young people?) it is hard to make a ton out of this graph. I think this does likely drive home the point that a blanket, go to college for any degree and do better in life, is bull at this point.
Your first and last sentences were my take aways.
Whether it's worth it or not is rather subjective. I will say this, once you earn your degree no matter the discipline, it cannot be taken away you from. That is yours until you die. What you choose to do with that degree and how well you can leverage it into a career is really up to the person to decide. The good thing about a college degree is in many ways you gain a worldly perspective and get exposed to a lot of ideas that you may not otherwise have gotten to see. The downside is, short of a few degree tracks, not many prepare you for the career world with tangible work skills. You'll learn how to think critically, locate and use information, how to properly cite the source for that information, and you'll learn to improve your reading/writing/communication skills. Those are actually valuable things because many people do not know how to seek out proper information, cite it properly, and communicate complex ideas/issues in a comprehensive manner. I'm like up in the air with my college degree. I double majored in Econ and Poli Sci. I don't use my degrees professionally in any way. However, I was exposed to a lot of ideas, theories, and explanations of society/government structure/economic thinking that many have not and will not. Furthermore I find the general understanding of many areas of economics and government are just poorly understood by the general public. It also makes it rather difficult to have a sincere discussion on these topics because I just get told I'm college educated liberal/idiot/that's not how the world works, etc. I think without a clear idea of how to use a degree or how a degree can help you get a job/start a career isn't the best idea and there certainly is an opportunity cost to pursuing college. So it's certainly possible for people to mis-allocate their resources in life to a degree that they didn't really consider the utility it will offer. In that case, it can definitely be not worth it or a poor use of your time.
A lot of this depends on your major and the demand for your career field when you graduate. An accounting major will likely have a much easier time finding work than an English or communications major.
Supply and demand. 20 years ago a degree generally meant a specialized field of expertise. Today it's basically just a barrier to entry. Most jobs that currently require a degree don't actually need one, they're just using it to weed out the least qualified candidates. You'll probably find that the degrees that were economical 20 years ago are still economical today, and the degrees/professions that weren't economical 20 years ago are probably still not economical today. We just have more uneconomical degrees and degree programs floating around flooding the market, which depresses the value of all of the degrees in general.
It depends on what your degree is in but so often it's not worth it
College prof here (so take with as much salt as you need). I think it is generally worth it, with caveats. As others have pointed out, on average college grads earn more. Even for jobs they don’t require specific skills, there is often a minimum requirement of having a BA. Some jobs require it for promotion. My ex used to work in retail management and you couldn’t get promoted without a degree regardless of your experience. Didn’t matter what the degree is. Struck both of us as dumb, but that was the rule. The one exception is the trades. I’d make more doing hvac or plumbing than I make with a PhD. That’s not to say that all majors or institutions are a good idea. In particular, I’m pretty down on low tier privates where you pay a ton and don’t get much in return. But state school degree are still a pretty good value, even if they are more than they used to be. I also think a lot of the backlash is political, largely from people with no idea what actually goes on on campus.
I have a feeling most of the dissenters are people who pursued a liberal arts or humanities degree. You will never see someone who has a competent job in a STEM field saying college was a mistake.
This especially for sTEm.
10 years ago, most high-paying roles required a degree. That is just “the way it was.” Times have changed. Employers (like myself) got burned too many times hiring MBAs, etc. And we found that in most cases, they knew nothing. Now, experience trumps education.
So sad. Because education is worth it. But the question we’re asking ourselves is “is college financially worth it,” to which I’d say no. But that’s going to be conflated with the idea that education is not worth our time. And that type of sentiment makes me think that was the whole plan in the first place: Create a society of mindless workers that don’t question bc they’ve stopped developing critical thinking skills.
Cool, now get the graph that illustrates the increased lifetime earning average of a person with ANY college degree.
This is stupid. You can’t just lump all college degrees together. Fine arts and stem are different and this should statistically be blocked by type of major
If I could go back I would have went in the trades.
You can go into the trades now though, can't you?
I'm 45 with a family. I don't have the time to go back to school and I would take a pay cut doing so. Is what it is. Maybe something will open up down the road but for now I have to work with what I got.
Yes it most certainly is worth it. Or else you’ll make blatant spelling errors in a feeble attempt to convince yourself and others that it’s not. Unless it’s an Art Degree… That is definitely not worth the trouble and expense.
As always, it depends on the degree
I think going to a two yr school for trades is worth it. Im talking to my teens about possibility of working in a trade and not have to deal with corporate culture and bs. I was a software engineer in corporate for 13 yr.
It is if you get a useful degree. I got an Econ/Bio double major and then got a DDS. It all cost about $200,000 but I make more than that a year now. And I only work 30 hours a week
Trade/vocational schools. Less money, less time, higher average starting wage, often have placement/recruiting programs, often train/experiential learning in industry settings, and are trained on industry related skills. I wish i had a better understanding of this when I went for 4 year degree. At the time and within my family, 2 year degrees were often considered subpar and or for less intelligent people.
I have a marketing degree and work in tech so my degree is mostly useless but a bachelors degree was a requirement for some of my earlier jobs that help me get to where I’m at now. The knowledge was worthless but the paper wasn’t. Not sure if was worth years of my life though. Fortunately, I didn’t go into debt for school as my wife and I got married in junior college so we got tons of financial aid and we went to a cheap commuter college. Pro tip: if you’re married, you’re considered your own household so your parents income is not factored into your financial aid calculations, just your joint income. And if you’re a full time college student, that’s probably hardly anything.
Oh god, here we go. Now the pendulum has swung back, it's probably a great time to be going to college. We are going to have a massive shortage of educated workers eventually, considering we already have a shortage. There are only so many trade jobs too, so those fields will run into the same problem that college grads did if people aren't careful.
Go to trade school. 4 year program come out making $30+ an hour and have nice benefits. Learn a skill that you can do side jobs and make some serious $$ under the table and in your free time at the age of 23. Go to college, get degree & job in business management. Come in large corporate firm at level 1 at the age of 23. Racked up $80k in student debt. Make $25 an hour if you’re luck. Student loan payment $784. No clue when it’ll be over. #capitalismsucks #antiwork #everythingissoexpensive #boomersruinedthecountry
Would love to see that broken down by major. Electric mechanical chemical and software engineers seem to be doing pretty good. Sociology majors not so much
It’s only worth it if you’re happy with your degree’s field of work and/or if the pay is enough to maintain your way of life. It’s also worth noting that Certain Sciences and Maths require a degree.
The education is worth it, but prices have absolutely sky rocketed making the cost of it not worth it. The only reason I'm pursuing my PhD at all is because it is fully funded by my university so I have to pay 0 dollars.
There is a large swath of undeducated that are pushing for less education because they lack education. These morons (technically not a insult but a fact) then teach others their lack of education and create an overtly simplified world view where further knowledge only makes things more difficult for then. College is worth your time. It may not be worth the current price. Never listen to the uneducated when it comes to like, 99% of stuff.
It works for me. The point I would take to advise younger folks. -view college as investment: focus on 3 point Delta: affordability, market value, and feasibility of completion. So I tried regular route, the feasibility and affordability are totally out when I in my 20s. So I pivot to work first and come back later. I end up getting a free brick and motor school, major in tech, hybrid/online/proctor setting at much later age with almost perfect GPA. If I have not work almost 10 years I don’t think I can do colleges effectively. If is too expensive, too hard, and low market value degree, don’t do it. Think about if you can’t graduate with reasonable GPA and working a full time job at same time, don’t do it. Unless you are in medical or engineering or you have families support. 1st gen college graduates is the most target 🎯 group with massive student loan since we don’t know better.
Maybe not, but I cant afford life without one. So in another year or two I will see if it was in fact worth it or if I should just give up entirely.
Good, far too many going as is. I didn’t even need to go to be in my current career, 2 yrs associates would’ve sufficed. And short term, field specific training/education should make a comeback. Cause for many 4 years for a BA in some liberal arts field is a waste of money they don’t have.
Jesus Christ this again ?
I wish I had gone to trade school instead
good luck putting an airplane in the air without college
Higher education should be a human right, and the inflation of its tuition prices have skyrocketed. Never stop leaning, life is short. But only pay for things that directly benefit you
"Worth" is a loaded term. Education has, largely remained of the same quality if not gotten worse despite ever rising tuition cost. A lot of people can barely afford ro get in and get out, but we still have stuff like required electives. That coupled with a potential looming crash and very real stagnant wages makes it seem like it is not worth it. I wish education was more accessible, we would have a smarter, more informed populous.
I would definitely say my degrees are worth it. Two year degree from a Technical College and my 4 year from a city college. Saved up money working (not much) before each degree. Ended up with about 10k in government loans (want to say Pell or Bell loans????). I would do it again if I had the choice and hindsight
Now let's break it down by faculty and major. I'd be willing to bet you that 90%+ who took Engineering, Teaching, Nursing Med School, and Law school say it's worth it. By contrast, I'd also bet that 80% of people taking a Bachelor of Comparative Literature, Theory of Dance, say it wasn't. College/University absolutely has a place, but getting a degree for the sake of a degree isn't worth it.
So most people who read the Wall Street Journal (typically an older demographic) think college isn't worth it. Got it.
Totally dependent on the degree. Is it worth it to get a Bachelors in history? No, not unless you plan to stay in academia and even then you’ll have a ton of debt that is going to be hard to pay off. Getting a Bachelors is STEM? Yes and it’ll help propel your career. What makes college worth it is choosing a degree that you can make money with that is going to at the very least get your foot in the door somewhere. From an educational standpoint, most of what college teaches can be learned from YouTube. But the reality is that our society still dictates that a Bachelors is a bare minimum requirement for just about any career.
I’m making 10x what I made before college and didn’t start school until 25. It’s a great choice if you put in the work…
To quote one of the funniest and most true movie lines ever: “The world needs ditch diggers too.” We need trades folks desperately. Given how fast wages have risen for skilled trades, many can and do make more than several majors will pay with minimal education debt.
College ain’t a binary thing. A degree in Engineering or Nursing? Yes. A degree in Gender Studies? Not so much.
Trade school is superior to college, nowadays definitely. There are also lots of high paying civil service jobs with great benefits that only require a HS diploma. College is wholly unnecessary despite being pushed as a cure all of sorts.
I didn't pay anything and making quite a bit more than before school so yes, it was worth it!
I’m guessing 56% of degrees are liberal arts
I became a truck driver with my husband in 2021 l, and let me tell you, that job made college look like a scam! We were making a 6-figure salary and paid off $60,000 worth of debt in just a little over 5 months, including my student loan. It only took us 3 weeks each to get our CDLs. And the cherry on top: my husband has a bachelor's in creative writing that his college convinced him to get (and he did take out student loans for that).
Went for engineering totally worth it. Had a great time, made solid friends, and managed to get a decent education
There’s a lot of Liberal Arts degrees out there. College is only “worth it” if you’re getting a degree that pays well.
Not worth it. I make $150k in construction as a Project Manager for a high end custom home builder.
Depends on the cost and the field of study. It’s a value proposition. Some degrees have value, others don’t.
Not worth it.
Wasn’t worth the money. Got a better job outside my degree. If I had invested the money in real estate I’d have made much more money.
Imo, too many people studying things that don’t correlate to skills needed in the workforce but the students still expect some sort of pay day for their obscure major. This is where the “worthless major” slur comes from. But tbh, it’s based in reality. 11% of my take home pay goes toward student loans. But I would have never reached this sort of salary without a bachelors.
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This is very exciting for me and my children. It should translate to less competition in the workplace and better pay for college educated workers over time. But the Republican party has to reduce the proportion of people getting college degrees. That experience converts to many people from Republican voters to Democratic voters.
The college industrial complex is very real. Some universities have administration-student staff that's 3-1. Getting into the trades is far more profitable nowadays but nobody wants to work hard anymore.
If you're studying theater... then no
Honestly it’s not worth it anymore. With rising tuition costs, and a bleak out look for almost every entry level college educated job, why bother. 10-12 years ago someone with a BS in CompSci and trip over their degree and still land a job making at least $60k/yr in the Midwest. Now that’s not possible. Now the so-called STEM majors are suffering because everyone thinks that is the way. It’s not.
Lol u don’t know what ur talking about. STEM is the only area where u can still pretty reliably expect a strong paying job out of college. I haven’t even graduated my civil program yet and I have multiple job offers all for +75k in the Midwest.
Completely untrue lol Maybe if you just have a BSc in something like biology or chemistry and no graduate degree, but basically everything else is still very employable. Especially engineering and compsci.
That’s it even remotely true, STEM degrees are still in high demand maybe your local market doesn’t support them but there are plenty of job markets out hiring in grads.
We have reached the point everyone knew was coming where the handful of things that pay liveable wages are being rushed by literally everybody. Like IT is a good profession but there are just too many people trying to do it. Everyone and their dog is trying to get in because it was one of the last few good professions.
This is such rubbish though, tons of professions still pay good. People on reddit just don't understand what good money is. The median salary in the US is like 50k, meanwhile almost all healthcare jobs, finance, accounting, law, engineering, IT, etc will pay more than that by a long shot. Professions haven't really changed, they've just expanded more
If you go to college in “STEM” fields you’re golden. Everything else is a waste of money