The latest NBC News poll shows two-thirds of registered voters down on the value proposition of a degree. A majority said degrees were worth the cost a dozen years ago.
Americans have grown sour on one of the longtime key ingredients of the American dream.
Almost two-thirds of registered voters say that a four-year college degree isn’t worth the cost, according to a new NBC News poll, a dramatic decline over the last decade.
Just 33% agree a four-year college degree is “worth the cost because people have a better chance to get a good job and earn more money over their lifetime,” while 63% agree more with the concept that it’s “not worth the cost because people often graduate without specific job skills and with a large amount of debt to pay off.”
My friends and I talked way back in school about how further engineering education was negatively correlated (not exactly: see comment) with pay after a bachelors and was statistically a terrible deal.
EDIT: That’s not to say it’s worthless! But it ain’t worth what they’re charging. There isn’t actually a negative correlation in the strict sense but rather there isn’t clearly a premium for the degree in all markets. You can be taking a straight up financial loss. The original statement was inaccurate, but that’s historically what we told each other.
It kind of depends on what you want to do. I worked almost 10 years at a consulting firm that specialized in failure analysis and they loved hiring PhD metalutgists and Masters grads in specific engineering disciplines.
This was partially because that specialization helps in niche cases and partially because it helps market smaller companies as competent if you can say “I have 4 phds on staff for X, Y, and Z, one is a professor at (technical university name here)”
The team leads or project leads were always older engineers who only had their bachelor’s degrees (and experience) but would shit talk professors and advanced degrees when the “academics” weren’t around though. It was a REALLY toxic situation and ultimately led to me leaving. (I’m a BS Mech btw)
Your a bullshit mechanic? Damn that’s a useful skill in this day and age.
Lot of low effort bullshit going on. We could use something right and proper
Professionals have standards. I’m not sure there is an ISO standard for BS but N.I.S.T was probably working on one before the current administration gutted the funding for being woke.
I didn’t check to see if there’s an XKCD for this, but: This should cover the ISO BS
besides the research side, which engineering are likely to have jobs
An engineering Masters is worth more than zero, but probably not worth the tuition to go to Grad School in the first place. IMHO, nobody should go into debt for any grad school unless they are becoming a medical doctor or lawyer (and even then it’s not a slam dunk.)
If a grad school gives you an assistantship so you can go there for little to no money out of pocket, that’s fine. If you work for a company willing to pay for your grad degree, that’s fine too (although it will take a lot longer than working full time). But it’s a bad idea to pay your own way.
This is the way to do it. If you’re paying for your whole PhD, you’re doing it wrong.
I’m sure it depends on where you go, but going to MIT or Stanford is likely too expensive to justify, even if you are good enough to get and graduate.
You only go there if your parents are rich or you get scholarships
I’ve known a few MIT guys, they definitely have money.
they are also likely to be more well-off academically too, meaning they have the goods for a grad degree and suceed in it, because they all thse private tutoring sessions plus any nepo connections for better resources like internships, lab experience not to mention nepo-connections to employers. in our HS we only had 1 very gifted student who is more than likely to suceed in his field more than the rest of the 99% of our hs class, and then we have top performers,not gifted but 4.0 upon hs graduation. everyone else, they are on thier own.
remember when they paid for everyones MD school one time at columbia? the school selectively chose certain groups over others, they chose the more well off students over the disadvantaged students(socioeconomic)
Yeah I went to a cheap state school for an engineering degree. Sure I still haven’t paid it off yet, but it was definitely financially worth it. Even more worth it if you consider how much I don’t want to do uneducated labor for a living.
Uneducated labor isn’t only manual labor. Lot of uneducated folks have mad skills. We’re just not curing cancer or inventing new batteries or planning trips to Mars.
I’m a technical lead for a software company (that’s not a non-degreed position generally but 30 years of experience can take you far in any field), my wife is a customer service manager / trainer who has presented to a nationwide audience, my oldest daughter is a bank manager.
My son broke the mold and got a nursing degree and currently makes less working harder than any of us. That said, it was 100% the right choice for him. He has a passion for patient care and I’m sure he’ll go far.
feel like he could make more in nursing, has he looked into traveling nursing? i know they make bank off of it, depending on where you are. nursing is one of those degrees, if your stuck in a hospital you are more stressed and likely to have less pay, compared to movign around to different facilities.
I appreciate the suggestions. He is aware of traveling nursing. I think he has some specific goals, although obviously those can change over time. The biggest thing he has to deal with is his medications require him to work consistent shifts. He can’t go back and forth between days and nights, and a lot of positions require more flexibility.
He’s not doing terribly — he just bought his own house, which is more than a lot of guys under thirty can say. But he hasn’t yet caught up with the rest of us pay-wise.
That’s fair. I’m in manufacturing so I associate it with physically difficult trade labor, low paid administrative labor, and low paid repetitive and boring labor. Some uneducated people develop plenty of skills, that said, my degree was a shortcut to skills and a direct path to a good career. The deal has gotten worse over the past few decades, but we still need people who have traditional educated knowledge. And I fear that we may face serious problems if education rates plummet.
The general education also had a drastic positive impact on my personal development as well, but I’m not rich enough to pay tens of thousands for that.
Completely agree.
These high status schools provide lifetime connections and in-groups that are irreplaceable and not found elsewhere.
You are essentially guaranteed to be connected to people in power and wealth by going to these schools.
Sure not everyone is able to capitalize on that but being a Harvard alumus is a legitimate and recognized status among ivy grads and especially among other Harvard alumni. Im sure MIT and Stanford are comparable but this is the real reason people want to go these schools.
yea, the nepo-connections from these school. just having it on your resume without those connections wont do you any good.
I’m sure there are a few at MIT and other prestigious engineering schools that go there for connections, but engineers are typically nerds and want to go somewhere to learn. Unless that’s changed since I was in school 15 years ago.
It’s exactly backwards. The more prestigious the school, the more money it has to subsidize its students. Advertised price tags only apply to the wealthy.