Is college worth the cost--yes and no

An extremely interesting and highly data driven study just dropped, and I think the findings will be highly useful to all young people on this site and elsewhere. In some sense it confirms what we all already knew, or expected, but it's still worth a look. The data is so comprehensive that you can literally search each institution and the specific majors they offer to see median salary outcomes, and return on investment relative to the median costs over a lifetime. Not all majors are present (mine wasn't), probably because some newer ones lack long term data, but the information is detailed enough that you can get a very, very solid idea about your prospects in a particular field. I encourage all young people on this site to read this article, reread it, and share it with their high school or college aged friends and siblings. Here are my big takeaways:

Unsurprisingly, the return on investment is always negative if you do not finish your degree. If someone drops out of college, the superior choice clearly would have been trade school or simply working a basic job rather than spending money/going into debt for a credential not received. There are not many majors where it would be a better choice to drop out, and if you are in that situation you're probably better off spending the extra time in college to transfer to a more lucrative major. Spending another year or eighteen months in college to swap an anthropology degree for an accounting  or economics degree would be well worth it in most cases.

Virtually all Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics degrees yield a positive ROI, generally above $500,000 over the course of a lifetime. Engineering in particular is impressive as 69% of degrees deliver a lifetime payoff of $1,000,000 or more. If you can hack it in one of these majors and you wouldn’t absolutely hate the next forty years or working life, you should get one of these degrees. 

A lot of science majors have lower ROI's than I expected, but as the report points out, this analysis only encompasses people who have a bachelors degree and tracks their earnings. Since so many science majors pursue higher education such as medical school or graduate school, those with only bachelors degrees aren't that representative of a sample. But if you have no interest in education beyond a four year degree, a biology degree is probably a bad choice. 

The most important decision, by far, is the choice of major. There are Harvard degrees with a negative ROI, and there are degrees from nominally unimpressive schools that return a positive ROI--some quite handsomely: "Moreover, 15% of programs at the cheapest schools (those with net tuition below $2,000) have a payoff above $500,000. At these inexpensive colleges, 82% of engineering programs, 51% of computer science programs, and 37% of health and nursing programs net their graduates more than half a million dollars."

If you can get your degree of choice at a higher tier institution, it might be worth it so long as you are confident in your ability to graduate. Unsurprisingly, the ROI of a degree is negative in 100% of the cases where a student drops out, and the probability of a positive ROI decreases the longer it takes to complete your degree.

My big takeaway is that the most important decision by far is the choice of major, followed by the type of lifestyle decisions that maximize your probability of graduation. Don't move halfway across the country to go to a marginally better school as a flex if being away from family and friends will make you miserable. State is fine, provided your choice of major is a good one. 

Please read this, and help me round up other young people on the site. I dont actually know how old or  young most people are

Is major in the US the same thing as master's degree in UK and Europe?

I dont think so, major refers to your field of study in the US. I should specify all of this is specific to the US

please see above

There 'are a number of jobs that require college, or various certifications.

Even if they're looking to hire anyone they can.

I think college is worth the cost, though if I went, I'd make an effort to go as cheap as I can in what I choose, without experiencing significant drop in quality.

Community college, online classes, I suppose.

'If I went.

Depends on the major. I’m a Finance Major right now so the job field is expansive. If you do something like Gender Studies, then probably not worth the money.

The analysis of Stem matches up with my knowledge: as a software engineer, who has made hiring decisions; unless you went to MIT, or Caltech, or a world renound technical place, it’s not going to move the needle at all; and becomes completely irrelevant the moment you apply for a non entry level job. 

When Interviewing for intermediate, senior and principle roles, I can’t recall ever bothering to check qualifications ever-  it’s been my experience that work experience counts a billion times more above entry level. 

If I understand correctly, the American system has a much more flexible and forgiving first year approach than the style outside of US and Canada.

In Europe, especially in UK, you have to dedicate to a degree. While the 'credits' still exist, you have a preset group of modules you need to do for a degree and only can get a loan for that set, you never ever apply just one by one unless you're on a special kind of course that the equivalent of community college in US offers.

To answer the question in the thread's title, yes it's worth it but I actually think in the US sytem there's more risk because all loans given need to be paid back regardless of how much one earns (unless I'm mistaken). In many other developed nations it's either free via tax-paid grants or it's a loan where you only pay it back once you earn past a certain annual income and you then only pay a set percent of what you're earning above that minimum, there's also a cap on age of what you pay (somewhere around 50s depends on the country).

If the person is young enough, sometimes dropping out after the first year (as in only 1 year has passed, not more) and applying later on in life (but still in their twenties by the time they finish) is worth it.

I'd agree though that if you're in the second year already, you're absolutely screwed, it's then better to get a minimum pass than waste all those loans at that point. The first-year loan is worth risking to waste just once simply based on what realistically you will end up being able to pay back.

If attending college, and an advanced degree is even a just possibility, but not a sure decision, applying one's self in high school to earn scholarship eliminates a need for loans. I left high school with honors, was the senior class president, and carried a 3.9 GPA to a Sophomore year tuition and books scholarship, and, continuing that effort, earned a full ride including board the rest of the way in a private institution in the West.

I agree, the college of choice is far less important to most position-offering companies than the coursework, which is a direct application and leg-up in entertaining offers. Business expects you to hit the ground running, expecting very little learning curve. However, that said, my choice of major was History, but I never wanted nor expected a career in academia, of which, today, I have a rather low opinion in undergraduate work. On the strength of a single course I took my senior year, Process Management, which introduced me to Six Sigma [and convinced me to pursue advanced degrees, PhDs, and I subsequently earned a Six Sigma Black Belt], after the PhDs, I took a position with General Motors. I got lucky because I acquired an interest that was only just beginning to ruffle feathers within the auto industry, and on the subject of process management, I soon eclipsed my first boss in knowledge and application of the subject. I made my dime as a globe-trotting process troubleshooter, and had that position for several companies in and out of automotive, before going to work for myself.

Is college worth it? It is, today, indispensable, not just a good idea, unless all one expects is min wage. I never had a min wage job, even in high school. One summer, I did not have a job at all, by county decree. My father earned too much, and the county [L.A.] decided to set a cap on daddy's salary to allow me to work. I over-qualified; rather, my dad did. Positions went wanting in L.A., so they canned the idea, which says much about the lazy today, let alone then.

I am going to respond to this in full when I get back from classes. I agree with what you say for the most part though, but I will respond more in depth

Nice thread. A friend of mine--a young guy--a few years back was attending university, and his prospects were as good as anyone else's--perhaps better. He graduated high school as his class's valedictorian; he had academic awards out the wazoo. However, after a year and a half, he dropped out. It wasn't because he couldn't handle the course work, or that he missed his family (he was 35 minutes away from them.) He was "too smart" for the curriculum. He wasn't being challenged by it. It also didn't help that at the time, there was an overt agenda to politicize college curriculum, and he could see right through it. The death knell of his University participation came when he took an Art History course, whose professor was clearly pushing a feminist agenda. He had enough, and decided to stop attending university. And that was truly unfortunate because all he ever wanted to do was to attain as much knowledge as he could.

College truly isn't for everyone, even if one is/was a good student. In my opinion, it's better to save the money and learn a trade. Academia has become such a cesspool of warring political factions, that it's hilarious. Of course that assessment too is contingent on one's major.

I would agree with your statement on this issue. You have great points about what you're saying in general, but I also do think you weigh the impact on your school return rate for a certain degree. You can still get jobs that returns a positive, but also note to scale up in the world of whatever you'd like, it's important to look at the university.

I've talked to many employers and such, and if you're university is ranked in the Top 10 for your major, employers immediately perk up if your resume is decent. If you are done with school after college, grades aren't as important. Doesn't mean you should slack off, but they don't carry the weight they had in high school.  However, if you plan on going to graduate school for law, then you most likely need to have better grades.

Fyi I'm a business finance major

Yeah you can clearly see in the data that university quality does matter, within major. But if you had the choice to go to Harvard for psychology or random State U for economics you’d be better off going to a much worse on paper school…which I don’t think is something that most people understand when entering college, certainly the people I went to high school didn’t. The goal was to get into the “best” college no matter what and no one even talked about choice of major 

I agree 100% to what you just said to Supadudz.