More thoughts on the overvaluation of a college degree:
Wolf’s position is firm. An increase in the quantity of graduates will neither create a dynamic, wealth-producing economy nor will it create the conditions for the emergence of lots of dynamic, wealth-producing individuals. Universities are not what they are currently being cracked up to be. But that leads to another problem. So deeply entrenched is the belief that, to use the words of the 1998 Dearing report, ‘Higher education has become central to the economic wellbeing of nations and individuals’, that it is becoming increasingly difficult to recall what the purpose of institutions of higher education might be. Their autonomy as academic bodies, in which one ought to be free to pursue an interest in a subject area to a higher level, has been effaced by their thoroughgoing instrumentalisation as drivers of economic growth and social mobility.
One of the biggest myths is that the subject matter doesn’t matter — that a degree in medieval French literature is just as good, and worth just as much money as one in chemical engineering. It’s not.
You might want to include a link to the original story.
Do you have any evidence that large numbers of people actually believe that subject matter doesn’t matter? Certainly, none of the fine arts majors I knew were under any illusions that they were likely to make nearly as much in their later careers as the engineers.
Link is fixed, thanks.
There is no doubt that many students are aware of the differential prospects on earning of their choice in majors, but this isn’t reflected in any way in public policy, in which the government backs all student loans, for all amounts, regardless of degree. As with housing, that’s how bubbles happen.
I think a much bigger myth is the assumption that all of the higher average income of college graduates comes from the education, since selection bias seems to be a major factor.
Rather than have the government pick and choose which degrees to back loans for, they should charge the institution default insurance based on their student repayment history.
A big problem in the UK is outright denial of the different value of degrees from different universities. Yes, some people actually try to deny that some degrees are actually worth less than nothing – if you have one, your cv goes in the bin.
I like to talk to the low level people who actually run alo of big companies. In the top end companies in the UK standard practise is for the lowest level person in HR to have the job of filtering cv for the white collar jobs. Russel Group (think Ivy League), or their foreign equivalents are in if you have a goo result – 1st or 2.1 in UK parlance. Open University (correspondence degrees) is cool too. Non degree with experience is given to more senior people for assessment. The rest go in the shredder.
this isn’t reflected in any way in public policy, in which the government backs all student loans, for all amounts, regardless of degree.
Great Ghu, Rand, you didn’t just propose that government help pick and choose college majors by subsidizing some more than others, did you? Have we not had enough social engineering through government spending? It’s bad enough they subsidize going to college instead of, say, undergoing a practical apprenticeship in small engine repair or plumbing.
What Carl said.
Getting back to the original topic of “institutions of higher education … as drivers of economic growth and social mobility” – if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.
A given.
I always feel like the odd-man-out among colleagues, co-workers, peers in that I actually work in the field that I studied in college. It seems like no one in my age range puts to use anything they studied in upper-division or grad school. It’s like there’s some sort of bubble…