Is college worth it?

firehose
Wed, 23 Dec 2009 21:21:07 +0000

To answer your question dstark, I’m a Stanford student so the same principle applies. However, I have a suspicion that the author choose Yale since they have the lowest median income upon graduation (out of HYPS).
[Top US Colleges ? Graduate Salary Statistics](http://www.payscale.com/best-colleges/top-us-colleges-graduate-salary-statistics.asp)

This is no attack on Yale, it is probably just due to the type of majors that are common at Yale. Notice that the two highest starting salaries come from MIT and Harvey Mudd, the two schools with the highest percentage of Engineering majors. Picking Yale helps the authors case.

On a different note, I think this question can be interpreted in a different way. I have been looking at it under the light of “Is College worth it (for the individual)?”. But if we view it as asking “Is College worth it (for society on a whole)?”, I think it becomes far more interesting. Nearly everyone will admit that for people who are willing to work hard and learn college is defiantly worth the investment, but what about people who are less motivated? From and economic perspective, does it make sense to allocate resources to these people’s education?

I have no idea what the answer is to the above question. I do not have the data or the ability to conduct a marginal analysis of our post secondary education system. Obviously, the 9 billion in waist is not good, and there are a lot of people at college who should not be there, but at the same time how would someone propose to get rid of all of the lazy people and keep all the hard working ones? Where would some one draw the line between who gets to go to college and who does not? Also, how would someone assess the benefit of having an educated populace, which would not be taken into account in an economic analysis?