zaph comments on Open Thread: November 2009 - Less Wrong

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Comment author: zaph 02 November 2009 12:58:02PM *  4 points [-]

I reservedly second Wedrifid's comment that the little piece of paper at the end is worth it. I know people who have gone far in life without one, and I don't mean amazing genius-savants either, just folks who spent time in industry, the military, etc. and progressed along. But I've also seen a number who got stuck at some point for lacking a degree. This was more a lack of signaling cred that smarts or ability. The statistics show that people with degrees on average earn more than those who don't, if that's of interest to you. But degrees don't instantly grant jobs, and some degrees are better preparation than others for the real world. It sounds like you're interested in a degree in math, which carries over into a lot of different fields.

I think it's great that your taking stock of what your education experience is giving you. As Wedifrid mentioned, the motivation is an important part of schooling, and if you're in a program that is known to be rigorous, the credentials are definitely worth it. But those have to be weighed against current employment options. I'd encourage you to consider working with professors on research, investigating internships, etc., so that you get the full educational experience that you're looking for, and not be one of those graduates that only took classes and then expected a job to be waiting for them when they graduated.

Comment author: Zack_M_Davis 02 November 2009 05:58:32PM 1 point [-]

The statistics show that people with degrees on average earn more than those who don't, if that's of interest to you.

Correlation is not causation. Graduates as a group are smarter and more ambitious than nongraduates. The question is not whether people with a degree do better; the question is what the degree itself is buying you, if you're already a smart ambitious person who knows how to study.

Comment author: Technologos 02 November 2009 07:18:15PM 2 points [-]

I recall some studies (I hate not remembering authors or links) that tried to control for the effect of the degree itself by comparing those who got into a particular school but graduated from somewhere else to those who graduated from that school. Controls for the general "graduate" characteristic, but still misses the reasons for the choice.

Upshot was that there wasn't much difference in income, though I believe that was in part because the highest-level schools send a substantial part of their undergraduates on to become academics.

Comment author: gwern 04 November 2009 12:41:51AM 3 points [-]

The fact that the average graduate of an elite college makes more money in adult life than does the average graduate of a less elite college has no bearing at all on the question of whether or not you (or your son or daughter) will make more money by going to an elite college. The only kind of research study that would help at all to answer that question is one that compares students who had equal initial academic ability and income-earning potential but chose to go to colleges differing in prestige level. Fortunately, such a study has been done; but not many people know about it.

In 2002, Stacy Berg Dale and Alan Krueger published the results of an extensive study of the relationship between college attended and subsequent income for students who, on other measures, had comparable potential.[1] They used data from the National Longitudinal Survey of the High School Class of 1972. As one part of their study, they focused exclusively on those students who had applied to and been accepted by at least one highly elite college and at least one less elite college. Then, from this pool, they compared the adult incomes of those who had chosen the elite school to the adult incomes for those who had chosen the less elite school, and they found no significant difference. In another part of the study, they used statistical means to equate students for income potential, based on information about them when they were in high school (such as their SAT scores), and, again, found that students with equal initial potential did essentially equally well, income wise, regardless of the prestige level of the college they attended.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/200810/reasons-consider-less-selective-less-expensive-college-saving-money-is-jus

Comment author: Douglas_Knight 04 November 2009 05:10:24AM *  1 point [-]

That quote asserts that SAT scores are the same as prestige. The 1998 and 1999 drafts of the paper looked at both, with different results, finding that average SAT score didn't matter, but various measures of prestige did. They have three versions of prestige: variance of SAT scores, Barron's ratings, and tuition. Variance is dropped in the 2002 published version. Tuition still predicts income. The most direct measure of prestige, rankings, seems to be quietly dropped in the few months between the 1998 and 1999 versions (am I missing something?). The final version seems to say on 1515, in a weirdly off-hand manner, that it doesn't matter, but I'm not sure if it's the same measure.

Comment author: CronoDAS 04 November 2009 05:18:32AM 0 points [-]

I remember reading about that study in the New York Times. I think that they said that they only found evidence of an income effect for black students...

Comment author: gwern 04 November 2009 04:57:01PM 0 points [-]

Actual research on the subject is scant, and what exists offers conflicting evidence. One often-cited study from 1998, however, concludes that attending a more selective or elite institution does not translate to an economic advantage for students later on, as measured by their reported income. Attending a more elite college does seem to affect the later incomes of poorer students. The study, written by Alan B. Krueger, a professor of economics at Princeton, and Stacy Berg Dale, then a researcher at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, concluded that the qualities that students themselves bring to their education may be what matters most.

Professor Krueger says that he and Ms. Dale are updating the study this year, with new data from more recent students. But he says he sees no reason yet to question his original conclusions. What pays off for students in the end, he believes, is not attending a prestigious or highly selective college , but finding one with strengths that match a student’s skills, needs and interests.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/19/business/19money.html

I suppose black students do tend to be poorer...

Comment author: Technologos 04 November 2009 04:25:52AM 0 points [-]

There it is. Thanks!

Comment author: wedrifid 04 November 2009 02:19:33AM 0 points [-]

Thanks for that link. I had wondered.

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