> it’d be disingenuous to assume the conversation is about anything other that the economic trade off.

To me it seems hollow and sad to think about higher education purely in job and money terms, but maybe I’m weird. I studied what I wanted to learn about, and was naïve about any economic trade offs. There were a few companies I thought were cool and dreamt about working for, and at some level I knew it’d take a degree to get in, but in my book school was quite valuable beyond the jobs I’ve had, in many non-financial ways.

> you’re basically telling them their economic value is shit before they are even grown. I don’t believe in that.

Maybe I didn’t understand, but I can’t quite reconcile your suggestion to only look at college as an economic trade off, with not believing in recommending college due to your pessimistic interpretation of the message. It’s a fact that in the US, people with 4-year degrees earn more than people without, statistically speaking. (And the factor is a lot bigger than I thought.) People with advanced degrees statistically earn a considerable amount more than people with 4-year degrees. If you want to look at this as an economic trade off, it seems like there’s only one recommendation that makes any sense, no? Like, based on the numbers and my own experience, it doesn’t feel like going to school has particularly strong negatives that offset the positives. (BTW I went to a state school, and borrowed money to pay tuition.)

It's not necessarily fully causal though.

You'd need a comparison group who are just as intelligent and conscientious and equally rich as the college graduating population for comparison. They would likely find ways to demonstrate their value in other ways if forced not to attend college.

No you don’t need to do a study. We already know college is causal in the sense that you can’t get good jobs without the credential. The job market already enforces the causal relationship. And that’s a major reason why the advice to go to college is sound advice: we know for a fact that it broadens one’s options and enables a vast set of higher paying jobs. Whether this system is good or fair is reasonable to debate, but doesn’t change today’s economic “tradeoffs”.

What you’re asking is whether the credential represents a measurable and valid increase in skill and learning, and ideally adjusted for socioeconomic status. That’s an interesting question, and there’s a whole field of literature on this topic. But the answer to that question won’t change the economics nor the advice.

Many papers go much further than what you suggest and they adjust for things like race and family history of higher education, in addition to intelligence and family income. I have read through quite a few papers myself, and the conclusions I’ve seen vary on where they land on the causality axis between true learning and credentialism, but none of them come to the conclusion that true learning isn’t a significant factor. And it would be pretty silly to assume that people who spent 4 years learning learned nothing, right?

It's a bit phosophical though. If you had a huge cohort of smart and capable people on the job market who didn't go to college, the job market would adjust its requirements. Currently the filter regarding a degree gives high enough signal,and it's generally considered legally acceptable, while other types of filters are more legally risky.

Everything is connected to everything else. Things respond to changes in other things.

Of course as an individual the actionable recommendation is a different thing than diagnosing the overall societal scale usefulness of pushing so many people though college.

Analogy: is binding your daughter's foot good for her future prospects? Under a certain cultural context it was "good" for the marriage prospects. But the causation goes through a social-cultural consideration, that can shift and still "work" well. So whether the modern world could drop the college ritual or not is a question that's still up for debate even if the individual advice remains "go to college / bind the feet".

> Things respond to changes in other things.

Yes. For example, when people take 4 years to learn full time, by the end they generally have learned.

> college ritual

I don’t buy that foot binding is a valid analogy to college. Why do you believe it is? Foot binding as a practice has died, while college hasn’t. Foot binding causes lifelong health problems, while college leads to lifelong benefits. Your language suggests you see no value in 4 years of education. Why?

What are the downsides to college? What is the objection to learning? Isn’t learning on the job the alternative? Some people say there’s 4 years of job market opportunity cost. Except the people who start work out of high school get stuck in lower paying jobs forever. The people who go to college get to learn & explore many topics outside of “work” for 4 years and then immediately take a higher paying job that statistically surpasses their GED working friends in 3 years, and then keep earning more forever.

Some people borrow money to attend college and go into debt. This can be a real issue for some, and I believe the average debt is higher than when I went to school. For the majority who get decent jobs, this is temporary, and the debt gets paid off, and then they end up richer.

What if university was free to attend? Does that change your calculus? Would you still consider college a “ritual” or a tradeoff if there was no direct financial cost to attending?

I live in a country with free college. It still delays maturation and life stages and makes the youth unproductive in their prime years.

For some fields it's clearly important, you can't learn everything about bridge design and civil engineering on the job, the structure and the topics that build on each other in an order definitely benefit from a well designed multi-year curriculum.

But for many people it simply functions as a conscientiousness signal stamped by a prestigious institution, when the material is not connected to the job.

Now, sure leasurely education is nice. I like to learn about medieval history myself, or about geology from YouTube and maybe if I had infinite time I'd learn more about music and the wonderful world of fungi. I guess this is nice, and if people learn such leasurely subjects to their pleasure, it can be seen as a good thing, a better life. But the truth is that most people don't really derive pleasure from learning abstract things like this. They are forced to do this because this is the way to get a job. It's a multi year initiation rite.

Hey I hear you, school isn’t for everyone, and I don’t believe everyone should go, and I don’t believe anyone should be forced to go. I only think everyone should be aware of the job & financial prospect stats and their likely future options, that’s where the general recommendation comes from. People who don’t know what they should do after high school should consider college as it offers the most options. People who know what they want to do are going to ignore the advice anyway… and they should! Motivated people can and do learn volumes and start companies and make fortunes without college; if only we were all that strong.

I’m jealous; the US could afford to pay for college for all on a fraction of the additional income tax earnings from college grads. We choose not to even though countries like yours have demonstrated a clear ROI. Many (I suspect most) Americans are aware of the ROI of education as well, but we have some special frozen place in our souls reserved for refusing to give away anything for free to anyone for any reason, regardless of whether it helps or hurts either them our ourselves. :P

So to be fair, most college grads don’t waste time studying things like medieval history, or fungi, or any other pure whims, maybe aside from one or two elective classes. People have majors and gen-ed requirements, and generally stick to it. My CS degree was delayed a year because I was taking music classes that had a conflicting schedule, and I paid extra money and a year of employment opportunity cost for it. And still, TBH, my biggest regret isn’t that it cost me, it’s that I didn’t take advantage of the opportunity to study even more music, and art.

One big problem with viewing college as pure vocational training, or of an economic tradeoff, is that most people don’t keep their first job for very long. Whether you change your mind, or get laid off, or get promoted, you’re not going to do exactly what you trained for very long. This is why getting a well rounded education and forcing people to read and write and do some history and math and language are all so important. For example, learning how to program computers doesn’t make good managers. But writing a lot of papers and taking Philosophy and English does, a little bit, perhaps surprisingly.

It’s a feature, not a bug, that there’s material not directly connected to a job. This is actually one of the reasons why companies want a 4-year degree credential - they’re interested in people who are competent in more than one thing. I feel like it’s also a feature, not a bug, that college gives people time to mature. How many people change their majors? Do those people get to change their jobs as easily if they work instead of go to college? Some can, but it’s a lot harder when you depend on what little income you have and the job market isn’t great and you’re not trained for other things.

i’m not the parent, but you’re using college and learning interchangeably in the discussion. Learning is indisputably causal and necessary and valuable toward a better life and better earning and employment opportunities. what’s in debate is whether college as the mechanism for learning still holds up with regard to various parameters. it’s not obvious and the problem is there’s tremendous inertia biasing the status quo.

On if college was accessible and free would that change the equation: yes of course. I’d recommend anyone go to college that can, (i didn’t) but it wouldn’t because it’s the best way to learn a topic, and id recommend it with the transparency that it won’t make or break the rest of your life and you can learn whatever you want whenever you want for the rest of your life so take the long view here.

Yes you’re right; I am leaning heavily on the learning part of college and maybe I’m downplaying some of the negatives. (Or maybe it’s just objectively worse on average now than when I went to college; schools have definitely gotten more expensive over time.) I admit that a degree is neither the only way to learn things, nor necessarily the best way to learn things. I agree there’s massive inertia in this system too. Maybe I’m rationalizing, but I truly enjoyed my time in school and feel like I got a lot out of it, but I’m aware that not everyone does. And even if there are stats and averages that paint a rosy picture, there’s certainly no guarantee; not everyone with a degree makes more money or leaves feeling like they were bestowed any intangible benefits.