Rate of Return on College Degrees, and Other Links
Is a college degree worth what it costs?
How much would we save if every doctor worked for free?
For ex-Yazuka members: prosthetics to replace severed fingers. HT: Tyler Cowen
Henderson on Keynes. Unusual and interesting.
I wonder if severed fingers for major errors would work in the public policy arena.
How much would we save if every doctor worked for free?
Physician services is only 10% of health care expenditure. However, the things doctors order on behalf of patients account for the other 90%.
@ college link:
“Those who believe, as I do, that education has intrinsic value both to individuals and to society as a whole should reconsider their habit of relying on market-based private rate-of-return rhetoric.”
This rhetoric justifies many other absurdities, such as exploitation in the international workforce. It’s ironic that education is the sole liberator of injustice, tyranny, conformity, etc.
Education does not have intrinsic value by any stretch of the imagination. Value judgments are subjective, and education is an extremely broad word, and I think one would be hard press to defend some types of education as being intrinsically valuable or necessary for a functioning economy or society.
Is a college degree worth what it costs?
I can say without hesitation, the type of college degree makes a huge difference. If you want to maximize income compared to education, trade school (i.e. electrical work, plumbing heating & air conditioning) is a good bet.
However, if you want to do even better without starting your own business, start out in grade school and high school actually doing your home work and getting good grades. It’s not rocket science. Then, get a scholarship, go to a state school and study nursing, therapy (e.g. physical, occupational, speech) engineering, software engineering, actuarial science or accounting. If the degree is easy, the pay will be low and the competition fierce in the job market. If the degree plan is very difficult and the familiar faces you see in your college classes become fewer and fewer each year, when you’re done you will have a degree that will sustain you.
Forget graduate school. That wastes time and costs money. Get a BS degree that requires professional certification and pursue all the certifications you can.
Get whatever the market is demanding and match it up with the closest thing to your interest/desire/goals. There is a high return on your investment in college and grad school if you do it right. Many fail to make those connections, and for some, college is not worth the investment.
But a lot of people are not interested in subjects or jobs close to what the market advocates, which leads to the question: Does everyone deserve a college education.
How much is a college degree worth? Unemployment for all college graduates 25 to 30 or so is 3.3%. What’s it worth to be able to work and start a family?
@ the doctor’s working for free link:
“Is 10% too much to pay the providers of the intellectual and procedural services that are still necessary for $3,000 MRIs and $200/month prescriptions to be used for the right reasons and produce the right outcomes for patients?I don’t know.”
I don’t know, but I find it a little ironic that this blog article is written by a physician. I am not against physician’s making a good living, but I am against a good percentage of physicians who play with people’s health and make you take every test when not necessary just to make more money — while the patient stacks up massive debt. Of course, there are other actors in the corrupt world of our health care industry, but a percentage of doctors do also share the blame. Reason why I don’t like generalizations like these.
I would not say as a general concept that an undergraduate degree is worth what schools are charging for tuition, but as was stated above, it depends on the degree.
Quality of the school matters substantially when asking whether or not college cost are worth what kids are getting out of it. A lot of state school throughout the nation are below sub-par in their education quality and kids are taking out thousands of dollars of loans to go to those school. I would say if it is not worth it by any stretch of the imagination to take out massive loans to go to a failing state school.
For ex-Yakuza members: prosthetics to replace severed fingers.
Do Yakuza members become ex-Yakuza members when they run out of fingers from screwing up 10 times? That would be as good an indicator as any they weren’t exactly up to snuff!