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I can't find the study right now, but economists are not stupid, and there are experiment design to combat sampling bias.

One study I remember followed students who barely made the admission cut, and who barely didn't make the cut. To illustrate, let's say people who go to college average 1800 in SAT score, and general population average 1200. This indeed causes sampling bias. So you compare two groups with average 1610 and 1590 instead. The first group went to the college, the second group didn't. This should minimize sampling bias. You get the idea.

I agree that they should do this, but I don't think SAT scores would be a good measure.

And I don't think they could find a large enough sample of the population that wouldn't be biased in some other way.

Why? Because the only reason a smart and motivated person doesn't go to college is because they either have a great opportunity that would delay it (like a highly ranked chess player) or they some other outlying condition.

This would really be biased because it would show how highly talented people really don't need college at all.

I just don't see how you can get around this problem because it is so heavily ingrained in our culture that you have to go to college, so almost everyone that can, does.

"... the only reason a smart and motivated person doesn't go to college ..."

You seem to think being smart and motivated is binary, which of course they aren't. They are continuous. You compare people who are barely smart enough and barely motivated enough to go to college, against people who are barely not smart enough and barely not motivated enough to go to college, to reduce bias.

On the other hand, this does raise an interesting issue of inhomogeneous return to education. It is possible (even probable) that return to education is not same for groups with different abilities. It may be the case going to college is a very good deal if you are not very smart, but not a good deal if you are very smart. I think economists are actively researching this area.

College helps teach critical thinking skills, which is very important.

A lot of people seem to have the notion that college is "job/career training", well, it isn't (and if you are in college thinking that, you're in for an unpleasant surprise). No CS student graduates and is capable of engineering large-scale projects without at least several years as being a junior to someone and learning "how to do it in the real world". Most CS students graduate and don't even know what source control is.

No, but college is about learning to think critically, and independently. You learn some cool topics along the way (and some not-so-cool topics), which stretch your brain and challenge those critical thinking skills.

I think people view college wrong. Everyone should go to college. We want a more educated, more critically and independently thinking society. And that's what college provides.

This has an extremely wide variation between colleges, the vast majority of schools my friends went to did more to beat out original/critical/creative thought then they did to encourage it... the few friends that did get the kind of education you're talking about went to very small (5k or less), very expensive ($40k or more), private, liberal arts schools where they majored in something very specific and had motivated and inspired mentoring professors. It's much harder to find these schools (the Ivy's aren't locks for this kind of education) than people realize; it more or less comes down to a flash of intuition while touring a campus.

> college is about learning to think critically, and independently

Are you sure of that? I know that's the common narrative, but I'm not convinced that's the case.

How are you "not convinced"? There is nothing to convince.

College teaches you to write better (critical thinking skills in practice), interpret better (more critical thinking), implement better (yet more critical thinking), etc. Even your major courses teach you critical thinking.

Of course you can teach yourself all the material you would learn during major courses. That stuff is largely irrelevant outside of college. If the argument is then "college teaches nothing", well then, I can't argue with you because this is nonsense. Get a degree from a reputable 4 year university and then come tell me it was a total absolute waste of 4 years. You may think that while attending college, but it's wasted effort.

The true value of a college education is intangible.

I actually went to an interesting talk on this subject.

The speaker was a classicist and the subject was the debate which happened in the 1860's about what the focus of education should be: technical training (ag & engineering) or the classical education, which was more focused on "well-roundedness".

The technical training camp won. Most of the universities founded at the time (including schools like the Midwest Big Ten, MIT, and Cornell) focused on agriculture and engineering and still do to this day. The classical education was tacked on the side.

I think there is a huge swath of the population which isn't represented on Hacker News whom this technical education still serves quite well. The gentleman farmer still benefits from learning about soil chemistry and how crop rotation affects it, and the biology of the livestock he raises. Engineers (real engineers, who use differential equations) and technicians still learn the foundations of their craft needed to start the modern day apprenticeship.

Programmers are weird outliers.

Agreed, it's amazing how pervasive this myth is despite the glaring flaw you mentioned.

The last time there was a suitable control group was during the Vietnam war, when people flocked to colleges based on their draft number rather than their career ambitions [1]. Unfortunately, that was over 40 years ago.

[1] http://www.nber.org/papers/w4067

> it's amazing how pervasive this myth is

Is it really so amazing?

Virtually everyone doing research in this area has a massive vested interested in the ivory tower.

Your point #2 implies that there is a short list of fields that require a degree. I think you have that backward. I'd be interested in seeing a list of middle class career track jobs that don't require a degree to get in the door. Web developer? "Entrepreneur"? As far as I can tell, the economy is largely divided between service jobs and jobs that require a college degree.

I think a lot of college grads get jobs now not because of their degree, but because of their connections via friends and family or an internship.

I think we push kids into college who have really no idea what they want to do with their lives and end up in debt and still with no idea after they get out.

It sounds to me like you know people who have above-average connections. It seems to me that family connections (the job-getting kind) highly correlate with wealth, and I think we can agree that wealthy kids are gonna be just fine, college or no (they'll probably go to college eventually, even if they don't right away). Internships definitely matter, but then most internships go to college students, so not exactly an argument against being a college student...

I agree 100% with your last paragraph, but that doesn't change the reality that businesses prefer to hire employees with degrees. I hate the massive debt too (trust me, I have a bunch of it), but in the US as it currently stands, it's easier to pay off that debt than to punch through the earning potential wall without receiving the certification it pays for (assuming, again, that you aren't wealthy and can't just pay outright).

4) If you want a good theoretical grounding in computer science/software engineering

Yes, you can become a programmer without it. A very few of the good ones I know are autodidacts to the extent they didn't need it. But the vast majority of the best people I know did do a degree and will tell you the structured, deep learning benefitted them and their careers immensely.

And yeah, as others have stated - engineers of all stripes need a degree. I don't want people 'hacking' a bridge or building.

> The question shouldn't be "Are the people who go to college making more money than the people who don't?" The question should be "Are highly motivated and educated people better off if they go to college instead of doing something else?"

> And the answer to that is often "No, they aren't."

It's certainly possible to get a job in some fields (notably tech) without a degree. And if you work long enough, you'll probably get to the same point you would have with one. On the other hand, I'm quite willing to bet that the average salary of a 22 year old with a 4-year CS degree vastly exceeds the average salary of a 22 year old with 4 years of work experience.

The same goes for graduate degrees, especially for tech companies that have a technical job ladder (those where you can get promoted without becoming a manager): take a look at the starting point for new hires with various degrees, then take a look at the average work experience of people who worked up to those starting points.

When I first started considering graduate school, I actually ran the numbers for whether it made economic sense to pursue a graduate degree, and it most definitely did, by a huge margin.

I do, however, agree with the concept of selection bias here: college is as much a signal of who you already were when you entered as what you learned.

I think we push 18 year olds into spending thousands of dollars on a degree they may or may not need and probably don't care much about.

If an 18 year old decides he wants to get into programming and then realizes he wants a deeper understanding of computer science, then he should look into a college degree or classes.

We have it backwards. College should be for people who know exactly what they want to study/do, not for people who have no idea what they want to do.

> I think we push 18 year olds into spending thousands of dollars on a degree they may or may not need and probably don't care much about.

Perhaps we (folks who went to college/uni) also push it down 18 year old throats because of an unconscious need and desire to feel that our college education was and is in fact important and valuable. Think about all those ever increasing number of doctorates and advanced degrees that NEED students to justify their expense obtaining...

> not for people who have no idea what they want to do.

Most people just want to make "more" money so they can afford more

EDIT: BTW, I believe everyone really needs to evaluate whether college makes sense or not. It doesn't make sense for a lot/majority of people IMHO.

The irony is I went to college basically because I was expected to. I remember it very clearly sitting in AP Calc my senior year of highschool in January and thought to myself "I should probably apply to some colleges. I'm kind of expected to go." I'm not disappointed I went but I don't believe it was necessary.

> We have it backwards. College should be for people who know exactly what they want to study/do, not for people who have no idea what they want to do.

That much I agree with: you should know exactly what degree you want to get before you enroll. College is far too late to explore your options.

> On the other hand, I'm quite willing to bet that the average salary of a 22 year old with a 4-year CS degree vastly exceeds the average salary of a 22 year old with 4 years of work experience.

Based on my own experience, I disagree entirely. All the employers I've talked to would rather hire and pay more to the guy with 4 years of experience, hands down. I'm sure it depends on the job and the type of company, but 4 years is a huge head start. When the college student graduates, the guy who didn't go to college will be his boss.

Now, of course, the ideal scenario is to do both: get work experience and complete college at the same time. You might finish school a year later if you're taking fewer classes, but then you have the best of both worlds.

> Based on my own experience, I disagree entirely. All the employers I've talked to would rather hire and pay more to the guy with 4 years of experience, hands down. I'm sure it depends on the job and the type of company, but 4 years is a huge head start. When the college student graduates, the guy who didn't go to college will be his boss.

Ah, but that's not the question. You won't have 4 years of experience during the hiring process; you'll have 0, and no degree. In that situation, 4 years after getting hired, where will that put you relative to someone who gets a degree?

I don't think that's true. Plenty of companies hire interns right out of high school. If you start there at 18 instead of 22, you'll be much more desirable than the guy fresh out of college who hasn't had a job yet. Now, if we assume that you weren't doing anything useful with your life during the would-be college years, then sure, you're right, but I don't think that's relevant.

This reeks of limited world-view. While in tech people may be able to hack it and get hired with a degree, that is not the case in other most(all?) other engineering disciplines, finance, education, etc. "2) If your preferred field requires it (Doctor, Lawyer)" understates the situation massively.

And the answer to that is often "No, they aren't."

Curious if you have an data/research to back this up.

I presume trying to get defintion & then sample of "highly motivated" people & the opposite of them- would be quite a challenging task.

I am claiming that highly motivated people don't need college to be successful. I don't think I need data to accept that. The business world is full of such people.

I am not an economist (thank god), but I don't need to prove the opposite, that college is bad.

The threshold is on the people (economists) who make the claim that college is generally "a good investment".

If I can find a fault in their study (which I did), then their hypothesis is invalid.

Too many economists feel the need to publish papers that fit a simple narrative or correlation.

You did no such thing. "Return to education" is number one topic in labor economics, and labor economists work hard to remove bias. The issue you raised is called "ability bias". Ability bias exists, and is important. But you didn't prove ability bias completely offset measured return to education.

Here is one example study trying to control ability bias. Given the same motivation, if you live closer to college, you are more likely to go to college. So you can use distance to college to erase the effect of motivation.

http://www.nber.org/papers/w4483

This is the kind of stuffs economists publish papers about. It is not about fitting a simple narrative. If you could show ability bias completely offsets measured return to education, you would be famous in no time.

If you have an example of a study that removes ability AND motivation bias from it's assessment of whether a college education is worth it, then I would love to look at it.

Until then, I am highly skeptical of a "correlation" between college degrees and success/wealth.

Like I said before, I don't have to prove anything. The economists have to prove there is a correlation, I am assuming that there isn't a correlation until there is a study that takes out these biases.

The sad part is that economists have published so many bad studies about this "correlation" that the media narrative is that a college education is almost always worth the price.

I am curious: do you find twin studies unconvincing? I think it does a good job of removing genetic and family background bias.

You mean as in studying genetically identical twins raised in the same family?

It would maybe be a step in the right direction, but motivation is going to be different between twins, often vastly different.

And I know how difficult it is to quantify "motivation", but really, I don't know a way around it.

But getting back to the issue: Is a college education worth the time, money and opportunity cost that we put into it?

And is it possible to design a study that could confirm or deny it?

The problem is that almost all motivated and/or smart 18 year olds go to college.

Is there a sample size large enough to find the ones that don't?

And even if you did, you would run into the opposite effect, motivated and smart 18 year olds that don't go college usually are outliers that have something else to do, like getting into a special program, a good job or being a professional chess player.

So, when you find these people, they would be the opposite sort of bias. Their circumstances would be so unique that they would prejudice the study against college.

Right now, college is the default option for people who can get in, so by its very nature, it biases the population.

I don't see a way around it, but I am open to ideas.

Sometimes it's just an investment. Many $80-100k entry level jobs do require very specific education. I bet those high-paying entry level jobs are fairly impossible to get without the right degree.