1. Many trades also pay like crap and have a very limited window in which you can do it. In addition many are not welcoming to women at all, regardless even if you take the highest paying trades, do they pay more than the highest paying careers that require higher education?
2. Which boot camp? How many people ended up like your daughter? How much was it? Without these facts no comparison can be made.
3. Some colleges perhaps, smart people can get full scholarships and even without that community college plus a cheap state school isn’t expensive. Link to your study? Did these people not go to college?
4. As you’ve already demonstrated college is hardly required let alone loans.
I’m surprised this is the top post.
Average College grads make more money over their lifetime, period.
The study you linked is over 10 years old. Furthermore, it is using lifetime earnings as the core metric, which means they are pulling in data about people who earned their degrees like 50 years ago.
All the data that currently exists shows better outcomes for students that go to college.
One would expect this even if college had no benefit to students because the population of students that go to college is pre-selected. Before they attend, students that go to college, on average, demonstrate better analytic skills than the students that do not go to college. They also, on average, have access to more existing wealth and other resources through their family.
In the absence of perfect data (which is almost always the case in sociology), it is reasonable to look at case studies to try to make sense of reality. It is not bad practice. It is what Harvard Business School does. It's what product managers and UX designers do when creating products. It's what marketing teams do when selling products.
Feel free to disagree with the interpretation of anecdotal data, but statements should not be dismissed out-of-hand because no p-value accompanies them.
And while I have sympathy for your story, it isn't much more than what you want to be true. As an example: even a rather stupid medical doctor will tend to earn a lot of money. So, assuming you are capable of getting the degree, it will likely pay well.
Another large group goes into teaching, where income is also set mostly by your degree and tenure, not individual skills.
None of that is definite. I'm just trying to show how you can spin a story either way. But refuting the data which is clear on this across time and many countries requires more than a good story.
The question why you'd want to believe that is rather natural, as are your emotions. The mythological welders with 6-digit incomes are a staple on HN, so it isn't really unusual. I guess it's part of a cluster of attitudes best described as anti-elitism.
> "Before they attend, students that go to college, on average, demonstrate better analytic skills than the students that do not go to college. They also, on average, have access to more existing wealth and other resources through their family."
This is a classic example of the concept of "correlation does not equal causation". This is when two things are related, but one does not lead to the other.
> "But refuting the data which is clear on this across time and many countries requires more than a good story."
We all know correlation does not equal causation because we went to college. Or have read a single thread here. But it's still empirical data and, as such, slightly better than motivated storytelling.
It's not slightly better if you are trying to determine causation. I'm not sure what you think "correlation does not equal causation" means if you think this is the case.
I'm not sure what story you think I'm trying to tell. My main point was that anecdotal data can be valuable when the empirical data doesn't tell the whole story.
I agree with your point about the doctor. It's a good point that uses storytelling which is the thing you seem to be against.
As for what I believe personally, I think college is still the right choice for most students who want to pursue a STEM field or study business. I went to college, studied a STEM field, and it worked out well.
You say that empirical data is always better than storytelling based on anecdotes. I disagree. Misleading empirical data can be actively harmful and worse than no data at all.
For example, if students assume from the existing correlations that college will automatically raise their income, regardless of their intended career, they might be left with no career prospects, crushing amounts of debt, seemingly no hope of ever owning a home, seemingly no hope to ever support a family, etc. It's very depressing and what many of my peers are facing now.
That is why it may be better to evaluate the statement "college improve your lot using median outcomes" using outcomes for college graduates that do not come from wealth and that are not skilled enough to get into top-tier universities on merit (use median to avoid outlier sub-groups skewing the average).
Basically, if you do not already have a force multiplier is the reward of college worth the huge loan that can't be dismissed in bankruptcy?
There are studies that already do this and show that regardless of your socioeconomic background you college improves lifetime earnings. Check out my post history for the link.
There are a lot of things wrong with doing manual work:
Pay sucks dick.
Unless you bust ass and work overtime/meet management's obscene expectations (you won't unless you're on meth), your pay is going to suck.
If you want a more relaxed environment (residential stuff, "small," few employees, lifestyle biz) your pay is going to be even lower.
Commercial pays better, but it's more soul-sucking and kills your body quicker.
If you're not in a skilled trade (big 3: plumber/pipefitter, electrician, or HVAC; physical IT/wire-pulling) it's even worse.
If you don't have a family/friend connection, good luck breaking in to anything worth anything (that includes a union. If you're non-union, you're basically screwed, unless you're high-skilled/massive amount of certs and can negotiate for yourself).
LUNA (or whatever the labor union goes by nowadays) is pretty decent if you've got a lot of problems in your life, but can come to work sober (and on time), do the work without bitching, and be productive. All the other unions worth anything are, once again, almost impossible to get into (unless you wait years, have a connection, or have a track record). Everyone wants to be an electrician (so much so, that even non-union shops aren't accepting any "apprentices,"---cheap labor---that don't already have experience; this is no different from the unions).
If you get in, it's a golden meal ticket for the uneducated; but pay caps out quickly (and any white collar professional with a shred of ambition will surpass you in pay in their 30s).
Hours are uncertain.
You can sometimes be working 2 hours a day, and sometimes 12. Overtime is cool, but it doesn't beat getting home and having a few hours to do anything at all, instead of passing out on the couch and waking up at 5am to go back to work.
Past that, any other jobs that pay better (tow truck operator, lineman, etc.) have even worse/more dangerous conditions. Your body will start hurting in your twenties, and you'll feel like you're 60. This won't go away unless you stop doing any physical labor for a while, but if you do that, you won't make money, nor gain "hours" (for those sweet union pay bumps after you pass a certain amount of hours -- regardless if you're the most efficient and most experienced apprentice, you'll still be getting paid the same as the bumfuck nephew of the owner who's only there because family takes care of family).
If you're a citizen of the U.S., there's no real reason to do manual labor, unless you really don't care that much about money or starting a family (most people in manual labor). For illegal immigrants, the pay is fucking amazing compared to what they get paid back home. They can work for a few seasons, save up their cash, then go back home where American dollars let you live like royalty.
I work in tech now. I get paid more than 2,000x what I did being a tradesmen, my body feels amazing now, I can fuck around all day doing whatever I want because I'm remote, and---in comparison---I barely do any work. These are my anecdotes.
Went. Dropped out for a variety of reasons. Never went back. Don't have a degree.
Definitely made finding a job as a SWE difficult. Pretty hard to break in. I got lucky.
I never had any connections/family worth anything, so I learned how to sell/market myself, and I talked my way into all of my early jobs.
Pretty straightforward once you figure out the process. Took a long time of eating shit to get there though.
I'm also lucky that I was adopted into an upper middle class family, and went to good schools, and interacted with children from successful families.
Even if those relationships have done zero for my career prospects, being surrounded by those sorts of people rubs off on you. If I grew up in a working class area, around working class people, my sense of values and my perspective on the world and so on would be a lot narrower, and less likely to lead to great financial success.
Some people never had a chance. The communities they're born into, and the people that imprint onto them, can snuff out any hope of moving up and out.
Re 1, at least in the US, it's very dependent on market and path.
I have two family members who have been pipefitters for 20 years. Both make more than I do as a software engineer. Another is a doctor, and makes more than they do. But another does boat repair, and makes more than the doctor.
If the last decade is any indication, skilled labor - especially those not afraid to own their own business, are set to make a killing. It's nearly impossible to even get people to come out for normal household jobs anymore - they're all way too busy with more lucrative clients.
I'm sure there are some pipefitters who make a lot of money, but we should go by averages, not outliers.
The average for "Plumbers, Pipefitters, and Steamfitters" is $56,330 per year, according to the BLS. For "Software Developers, Quality Assurance Analysts, and Testers" it's $110,140 per year. For "Physicians and Surgeons," it's $208,000 per year.
We also need to consider that running your own business is a lot of work, and doing physical labor can be hard on the body. One of the benefits of office jobs is that you get high pay, stable hours, relatively low stress and get to work in an air-conditioned room. So I would still prefer that over skilled trades even if the pay was the same.
> One of the benefits of office jobs is that you get high pay, stable hours, relatively low stress and get to work in an air-conditioned room. So I would still prefer that over skilled trades even if the pay was the same.
One of the downsides is your job can be easily outsourced to a country with lower wages, and with remote work here to stay (IMO), that is going to be even easier than before.
There are no remote plumbers.
I firmly believe that if you show up on time, are pleasant, and are competent at your work, running your own business is a slam dunk and you can charge whatever you want (within reason). Because my experience is that it's nearly impossible anymore to get all of those things.
> can be easily outsourced to a country with lower wages
There are shops that specialize in "re-shoring" projects after cheap offshored contractors end up spending the complete project's budget without shipping anything working.
Their salespeople would talk to potential clients, get the project's duration, then quote them a reasonable price for domestic developers, get laughed out of the room as the company decide to go with much cheaper "best cost countries". Then a few months before the end of the contract they would contact the same company again and most of the times (assuming the company was still alive, a lot of badly capitalized startups just shut down at this point after having wasted all their runway) end up re-doing the project.
Reminds me of when a plumber was installing an RO system in my house, was swearing for half an hour about the PEX, then forgot to shut-off the lines while a PEX fitting fell off and poured 200 gallons of water on my crappy fake wood shaw floor causing it to ripple. He then claimed it was my condos fault for using PEX in the first place. Holy crap you can't be more right.
I just want to emphasize your exception. Old tradespeople are the best! I have had nothing but good experiences with them. Young hotheads are everywhere in the trades and they can be so bad you have to call the police on them. Old guys who have survived for many years tend to be extremely knowledgeable and efficient in their work.
Related: Treat them better than you would a normal contractor. Because, honestly, they are probably doing you a favor. Which is to say, they could make more money doing another job with their skills, but are choosing to do yours.
One of the downsides is your job can be easily outsourced to a country with lower wages, and with remote work here to stay (IMO), that is going to be even easier than before
Only if PII isn't an issue. Which it still is for a large number of remote jobs. You have to do the work inside US borders because of liability or security issues for an incredibly large number of remote roles. If you don't believe me, just roll over to weworkremotely.com or any of the other remote job boards and check out how many current openings specify "USA only."
"easily outsourced" haha, not it cannot! This is also a skill on its own (to successfully manage an offshore team. And noone wants to do it frankly, too much work, too little appreciation.
A big point is: (1) As an employee X, the employer knows how much X is making and will try to keep that down, while (2) a person X who owns their own business that happens to be a good business can just rake in the money with nearly no one else the wiser who can stop or slow X.
E.g., while I was growing up, a guy in the neighborhood was doing really well. He was in the peanut vending business, you remember, put in a coin, turn a crank, and get out some peanuts. So the customer, how do they know how much money the peanut vendor is making?
Well plumbing has problems as well: cognitive requirements are not especially high so in theory many people can do it if they are trained. Many immigrants to the U.S probably consider it.
Try pulling a broken cartridge out of a 20 year old shower faucet after the handle snaps off. I'll give you the pliers you need. You get one try and if you fail, you will now need the tools to remove tile or cut drywall, cut pipes, solder, etc.
Heh, so I installed a new faucet in our kitchen sink and thought I’d done a good job, I had hoses snaking all over the place and my wife was like “I can’t even use the pull-out sprayer because it won’t go back in once I pull it out.” So a few months later I call my plumber and ask if he can replace the valves under my kitchen sink because they’re old and the tolerances are outside my skill level for trying to saw them off and replace them. He comes out, spends an hour replacing the valves and then he’s like “oh yeah, I fixed all the hoses under the sink for no charge, the last guy did a horrible job, you can’t even use the sprayer!” I look under the sink and it’s like NASA came in and rerouted everything, tons of room, no crazy hoses hanging down, and the sprayer works!
I had plumbers out recently to replace a water heater.. after they left I went down to find out they had pushed the new one right up against the outlet the sump pump was using so I couldn't unplug that without moving the whole water heater. I'm not usually the one to complain that people don't take pride in their work but... it was a pretty visible and egregious error in a spacious and well conditioned utility room! Still haven't found anyone that goes above and beyond even for simple tasks.
Never mind 20 years old, I use a puller for much younger cartridges. Saves me needing the pull and pray method.
This is one of those things I believe to be more about feel.
That plumber has done this 1000 times and will make it look easy.
They can pass you tools, walk you through it, give you as much help as you can possibly receive, but you'll struggle a ton anyway. Or, as you say, break it.
Practice makes perfect. Sometimes it is still cheaper to get somebody who knows what they're doing. We can't yet remote that in.
Interesting idea, and maybe we already have a step toward remote piloting in the form of Youtube videos that explain how to do various tasks: plumbing, home improvement, auto repair, hvac, and so on.
Maybe for simple things.
Have you ever tried to plaster a wall or ceiling? You can watch 100 videos of how its done, if you don't have the motor skills and muscle memories it's not so easy.
And even 'simple' DIY might be doable for a sample of the population but there are also people who struggle with putting together flat pack furniture. Are they going to be brazing their plumbing after watching a youtube video?
Personally, I see society going in the opposite direction.
Back in the 1980s there were a lot more jobs in manufacturing, doing things like manual machining; and every driver had to have basic mechanic's skills because cars needed constant tinkering.
We've got many more youtube videos showing how to use a hacksaw - but far fewer people who use hacksaws on a daily basis.
On-demand makes a huge difference. Most people aren't going to memorize how to fix everything that might go wrong. Youtube lets you search for how to fix something when it breaks.
Like a library with free video that's in your pocket and open 24/7. You don't think that makes a little bit of difference to the practicalities of what happens when e.g. your boiler stops working one evening?
The downvotes are warranted but being “piloted” over the internet is a really interesting idea. There was a similar idea in the Black Mirror Christmas special.
In this scenario the trained human is being paid to operate a VR device. Instead of paying a human to send you tools and operate a VR device as you do the repair you might as well pay them to fix the thing.
There's a lot of misleading information out there. On this site I once saw a carpenter say he was making more than he used to make as a $300k software developer. But I had some carpenters working for me and somehow I figured out they made around a tenth of that. In reality some of the outliers making a ton of money are wearing many hats as sales/marketing people, employing and managing subcontractors and employees, perhaps running their own website and SEO, and to truly get the gravy train running they nail some big sale where they sell some huge contract for an overpaying corporate client.
My dad has run a skylight installation business since 1979, and at least over the past 30 years, has kept a payroll of about 10 employees.
His business grosses about $2M per year, apparently after payroll and supplies he nets $500k. He was claiming something like $300k back when my mom stopped working in the late 90s.
For some odd reason, my folks have next to nothing to show for it, at least not to retire comfortably as he's about to turn 75. They dson't live extravagantly aside from going on a few nice vacations a year that might total $30k. The condo they rent is $3500 month. They mostly eat at home or family style restaurants. They have a couple used Audi A4s w/ lease/insurance/gas maybe $2k total per month. You'd break even making maybe $180k
Even being extraordinarily bad w/ money, there is no conceivable way my father makes more than half what he claims.
My purely anectodical experience with this is that when people that own these kinds of businesses say they make $500k a year they mean in their best year they made $500k. What they don't say is that for every year they made $500k they had 4-5 years where they were just barely scraping by. Construction is incredibly cyclical and there are a lot of lean years. I've also found a lot of them aren't great at managing the financial side of the business. A lot of the time they don't actually know how much they're making.
I've asked repeatedly for access to financials and to get more insight into my parents' retirement accounts and have met resistance, which is frustrating as I may have financial burden for their care coming up soon.
It's been discussed many times, he's had it appraised and it's not as much as one would think - high 6 figures at best. Would pay for ~5 years at their current spend rate. But yes, that will likely happen and with their retirement savings and social security they'd have to move to a LCOL area.
Basic point is, if my father had truly earned the income he claimed for decades against the lifestyle lived, they should have a retirement nipping at 8 figures; living out retirement in relative luxury and going on fantastic vacations on the regular. Instead they will have to economize and there may be a point where I have to kick in financial assistance.
> One of the benefits of office jobs is that you get high pay,
you get high pay for a high paying job, and low pay for a low paying job. office or not is independent.
> stable hours,
maybe, but it again is down to the job itself, not just where you do it. the most stable hours i've ever gotten was working in a fab shop.
> relatively low stress
well, depending on the job. also, tge sedentary nature of the work in an office can be, besides hard on the body, a huge source of stress, and one that might be hard to identify until you've separated yourself from it.
> and get to work in an air-conditioned room.
thinking back to shitting in a portapotty at a quarter to six in the morning in winter-- i can't argue with this point!
> We also need to consider that running your own business is a lot of work, and doing physical labor can be hard on the body. One of the benefits of office jobs is that you get high pay, stable hours, relatively low stress and get to work in an air-conditioned room. So I would still prefer that over skilled trades even if the pay was the same.
On the flip side you stay in better shape, and therefore are healthier. When you work a physically demanding shop you exercise all day every day. With your typical office job, we’ll I have health issues from sitting too long.
I don't think that for this specific leaf of this thread that averages are what we're talking about actually. The immediate grandparent was referring (naively imo) to the differences between the highest possible reaches of academic financial performance. Otherwise I generally agree, except that my friend went from having zero prospects to being a pipefitter with a good enough salary to support a family of 2 and a house in a very short time. That's what seems most relevant. Who gives a shit about highest theoretical financial output.
That was my intent, but looking back on that post I really mangled the text when editing it. (Just look at that "is temporarily is".)
Well, too late to fix it now, I suppose it's a lesson on the perils of inadequate sleep and the risks of video-conference calls with people in wildly dissimilar timezones.
It's kind of a political meme that welding is the key to everyone getting a middle class lifestyle, because good welders get paid a good amount.
The joke ofc being that there is a 'shortage' of welders because it's actually very hard to become a good welder. If, somehow, we got a bunch of people to become really good welders, it would just go to being a low paid profession.
its very hard to be become a good welder and it usually takes about a decade to master that craft, so 10 years gone. Very similar to medical school except you are making money during that decade instead of paying it to schools and residency.
The best people in any field make the most money in general, and it takes a lot of experience and work along with intelligence and natural ability to be among that group.
How old are you and how old are they? If we’re talking anecdotes I guarantee I know people that make more than all the people you’ve mentioned combined and went to college. It doesn’t mean anything. Let’s talk medians here.
We're all within 7 or so years of age, except the boat repair who is considerably older.
This isn't a contest IMO, we all do more than OK. But it's definitely not fair to say that college pays more than trades. Both have huge swaths of pay ranges, from effectively zero, to millions. But if you're optimizing for making as much money as possible, I'd argue you're doing it wrong anyways.
Median income and age don't paint the whole picture, though, either -- you need to take into account things like student loan debt, or benefits, or even taxes (because it is not uncommon for trades, even for those personally pulling in 6+ figures, to be paid a good chunk of their compensation in cash that's not necessarily recorded anywhere).
Learning a trade and going to college for a white collar job are two different routes entirely, in my opinion. Even assuming that the skillsets were interchangeable, a lot of trades people would never trade their job for an office job and vice versa.
> taxes (because it is not uncommon for trades, even for those personally pulling in 6+ figures, to be paid a good chunk of their compensation in cash that's not necessarily recorded anywhere).
some good points, but I wanted to call this out specifically. when we're discussing at a high level what career paths should be encouraged, possibly via policy, I don't think we should price in the ability to evade taxes.
Oh, I completely agree we should pay our taxes– but this swings the other way too, for stocks/equities, which themselves under long-term capital gains can be taxed at much less than income (which a certain segment of US population would consider a form of legal tax evasion) or at a certain point borrowed against ad-infinitum without paying taxes, and the fact that tradespeople will often pay much more in sales tax than office workers. What is legal and what is not in terms of paying taxes _is itself_ a high level policy decision meant to incentivize a certain way of work/living– just look at the tax policies around W4 employees versus 1099 contractors, or NSOs vs ISOs, filing jointly vs married, child and education tax credits, or really anything the IRS makes a decision on ever.
My point is it's just not at all a 1-1 comparison when determining "total compensation" across sectors like this, and that median income is a bad metric to use on its own to determine whether someone would be better off going to college or learning a trade.
What then should a residential client do? (Assuming they haven't yet found "their electrician" that they have rapport with.) Get a recommendation, overpay if necessary, pay promptly, then hope they'll take your call and not overquote next time?
Two of my tradies (painter and gyprocker) I actually found by having them do work at my office building, and then contacted them for work at home.
As a self-employed painter (and a good list of other trades prior to), I'd say that references work both ways -- You, as the client, want the tradesman to have good references, but in my little neck of the woods, everyone knows everyone -- And we also use references to 'feel out' if we even want to work for someone.
Who do I want to work for? Someone who appreciates the end result, but is reasonable about timelines and a 'structured but not fully firm' timetable.
In the trades, we are usually doing a fine dance between other tradesmen doing their thing, then it is our turn to do our thing. So many phases in the process of a new build or remodel effort requiring all these different trades to line up correctly, usually between at least a few projects going on at the same time. When the plumber is 3 weeks behind, it bumps the insulators, which bumps the drywallers, which bump the painters, which (can) bump some finishing details, etc.
So, I'd say honestly, the understanding of things being delayed (within reason) is my primary "will work for them again" metric. Obviously we all work to get paid, but being paid isn't the reason I do what I do. Taking pride in work done is how I'm able to 'stare at walls' all day, and be fine with it.
That being said, throughout the thread I see people stating that no one wants to deal with the residential work. I primarily focus on residential work. It's probably easier to bill to the moon and skip some corners in the commercial world (ie. 'make more money') but as mentioned above, I've zero interest in that - It's a combination of being compensating fairly and pride in the work.
Find someone that does good work, for a fair price, and be civil -- It will be remembered. I'd dare say that most trades people that I know/knew have no problems with the 'stress of work', but the interactions with over-demanding clients are what cause them never to be willing to take a call again.
OR bill out the nose, hoping they don't even get the job, as it's just not worth it. (irony is, most of these stories end up with them getting the job, anyway).
The last time I used "my" painter, he was a day short of finishing the job and had to duck off for a charter fishing trip for a friend's bucks party. He came back and finished the job when that was over. Fine by me! He's a great guy, does the job, quotes fairly and is easygoing - happily recommend him to anyone.
That's a tough question. A recommendation from a friend is probably the best bet. And when they do come and do the work, offer them drinks and snacks, make them comfortable. They will remember that since 90% of customers don't do that. You can also give a tip. I do all of those things and its worked out well.
This is why the GP linked a source with the national average for college graduates and non-grads. Certainly there are tradespeople who make a ton of money, but usually they make less than degree holders.
Average isn't useful though. Your expected pay after med school is very different from a music degree. Sure a few in music make millions per year, but most struggle to make anything, and a significant number who do get a good income are not in anything related to music.
There are many different trades, with different income expectations. And of course if you are willing to own the business (not easy) is a factor, some business are more conductive to owning your own business.
We need to be honest with kids: it matters what degree or job you presue. While I can't predict the future perfectly I can look at trends and say some engineering jobs are better than others. Med school looks really good too. Music on the other hand should be a second major or a minor if you study it at all. Likewise in the trades some are better than others, though I'm not sure what to get into.
Med isnt immune to automation or remote work as well (telemedicine)...its surprising a bit. I would be really surprised if there isnt tons of automation 10-20 years from now.
Nurses are pretty well protected though.
>Certainly there are tradespeople who make a ton of money, but usually they make less than degree holders.
I wonder how much of this isn't also driven by the reduction in private union membership. I've worked white collar jobs in organizations with strong unions and I'm willing to bet the blue collar workers were probably almost surely, on average, more than the average white collar workers elsewhere. And when I worked in areas with weak union membership, the converse was true.
The difficulty in the former was that it was hard to get into the union, but once you did, you were probably making many multiples of the average household income for the locale.
This is what some people call a never getting old story of a builder who arrives to fix up your house in a Ferrari. It's a myth. Sole traders are sole traders. Some will pull in more,some will do less. Fantastic incomes aren't happening that often. If they start employing people- that's a business, exactly the same as if some dev would get a bunch of others under his ltd corp.
> If the last decade is any indication, skilled labor - especially those not afraid to own their own business, are set to make a killing.
It's almost always been this way. I remember a reading a quote from a prolific 19th century author (whose name I can no longer find online, thanks to broken phrase searching in Google) complaining about enterprising carpenters earning more than his government salary.
The issue is that it's not an apples to apples comparison. Small business owners who provide blue collar services can make significantly more than salaried white collar workers. However, runnig a small business requires a completely different set of skills, and the percentage of blue collar workers who can do their trade and run a successful small business is far lower than the percentage of people doing blue collar work.
My dad owns a business (one man shop) adjacent to the construction industry. He makes as much as I do, and I work for FANG with a PhD. My dad trained a family friend to do the same thing in under a year. He now makes substantially more than I do. Nine extra years of school is a pretty substantial opportunity cost, debt or not.
> 1. Many trades also pay like crap and have a very limited window in which you can do it.
I'm not sure what you mean by limited window unless we are talking about professional athletes and some categories of manual laborers.
> In addition many are not welcoming to women at all, regardless even if you take the highest paying trades
This is rapidly changing. Also, there are also skilled trades that are mostly women (e.g. cosmetologist, many medical roles).
> do they pay more than the highest paying careers that require higher education?
When we factor out jobs that require 8-12 years of education, in general, yes the trades aren't a bad deal.
> 2. Which boot camp? How many people ended up like your daughter? How much was it? Without these facts no comparison can be made.
I'm not turning this into an ad for the school my daughter went to. Cost was literally 1/2 of he first year salary over $40,000. It was capped at a maximum amount. She ended up paying about $6k, but it was contingent on her getting a job that payed better than $40k.
3. Some colleges perhaps, smart people can get full scholarships and even without that community college plus a cheap state school isn’t expensive.
I have five kids. My first was straight As, great test scores, and we still ended up with $6-8k of expense per semester after the full ride scholarships paid for tuition at a small private college.
Ok, here is the biggest community college in the US: Ivy Tech. $2,400 per semester for 12 hours, plus fees. It's not that expensive, but they also have less than 20% of students complete their degrees...
> Link to your study? Did these people not go to college?
It didn't matter what education level they attained, across the population the outcome was consistent. Having a job while young made a huge difference - almost as much as having a degree.
4. As you’ve already demonstrated college is hardly required let alone loans.
A lot of the trades are hard on your body. By the time you are 45-50 your knees could be wrecked and that makes it hard to do service work like electric/HVAC.
There are an argument that desk work isnt healthy either but that is a different discussion.
As a 46 year old I agree, but I'll say that most tradesmen I knew have either moved on to owning/managing or have switched careers. Overall they've done very well.
Also, IME, tradesmen always have the nicest houses regardless of income because they or someone they can trade with will do top quality work for barely any compensation.
> As a 46 year old I agree, but I'll say that most tradesmen I knew have either moved on to owning/managing or have switched careers. Overall they've done very well.
Suvivorship bias?
I imagine that those that are still in the trades are managers/owners. Those that have blown out knees, but don't have the skills to manage/own/washed out a decade ago... Are not.
There's not enough room in the trades for every person who did work in their 20s to manage/own in the 40s, unless you have a lot of attrition.
Isn’t that covered by “switched careers?” Anyway, just to add to the anecdata here, my wife was a hair stylist in a nice part of town. Women/men would trade a weekend at their beach house (concert tickets, private jet access, etc) for hair cuts and color. She’s now “just a kickass mom.”
Point is, for a time, we had access to some 0.1er% shit that’d I’d never get to utilize in my “office job” while my wife would trade for some truly spectacular experiences with the spouses of CEOs and CTOs. Heck, she’s half the reason I got the network I have these days. There’s something to be said about someone saying nice things about you to a captive audience :)
Definitely. There are a lot of young guys in the trades who no one should hire under any circumstances. They do drugs, drink, and even start fights on the job site. They get fired frequently and just move to the next job. There are so many of them that it makes for a toxic workplace for anyone getting into the trades.
Not unless they're dogmatic about the language they're developing in, they aren't. I ran into people ALL THE EFFING TIME as a recruiter who refused to train in another language or environment because they were going to make less money if they moved on, even as the market for their current skillset dwindled to nothing.
That's a completely different issue from having injured your back or shoulder or knee so often that you need surgical corrections just so you can remain functional at a resting state.
My neural network was ground down to a nub for a variety of reasons. I could not leave the cozy confines of this react and typescript stack until winter had ended
If you're unable to work "in the field" as a trades(wo)man, you can always switch over to supervisory or inspection works or go the fully office job route (=planning, architectural offices).
You definitely can (and you should if you have the ability!) but there are by their nature fewer supervisory roles available and the skill sets, at least my experience, don't overlap that much.
> This is rapidly changing. Also, there are also skilled trades that are mostly women (e.g. cosmetologist, many medical roles).
As a woman who likes trades like manual work as hobby - a lot of those do actually depends on physical strength. At hobby level it does not matter that much, but to achieve actual commercial productivity is simply much harder without all those muscles.
When I did longshoreman for the summer there were but 2 women in the bull pen.
One was a heavier older lady, imagine a burly dinner lady and you’ve probably got her.
The other woman was maybe in her 30s and looked trim, but she had arms gnarled like branches and you could see a six pack through her tshirt.
Mad respect for women who choose a profession like that, but it needs to be a lifestyle and it will consume you. As an untrained man with a normal (assumed) amount of testosterone, my body adapted over two shifts of swinging 70lb metal bars around.
> I'm not turning this into an ad for the school my daughter went to. Cost was literally 1/2 of he first year salary over $40,000. It was capped at a maximum amount. She ended up paying about $6k, but it was contingent on her getting a job that payed better than $40k.
You already have. I want to see the graduation stats.
> It didn't matter what education level they attained, across the population the outcome was consistent. Having a job while young made a huge difference - almost as much as having a degree.
Where’s the link?
Sorry but your point is way too centered on your anecdotes. Fact remains that college graduates make more money.
I can provide hard data on this if the original commenter doesn't want to. I went to a bootcamp called Hack Reactor.
My salary immediately doubled and has since quadrupled in the 5 years since I attended. It isn't be a great option for everyone, and not every attendee has had a great outcome. But it can work for those with an affinity for analytical work and willingness to work 70-hour weeks for 12 straight weeks.
I'm pretty sure not, I'm pretty sure this person is going to argue until someone helps them justify their education expenses to themselves, or their teaching profession. They're fishing for a "you're right, college is the only thing that's worth it."
As opposed to the other person, who laid out their anecdotes to make themselves feel better by not providing sufficient information to refute it?
Come on. The stats support colleges. You need to provide more than anecdotes to be taken seriously. I could just as easily blurt out that I make more than all of his 5 kids combined because I went to college and boom, anecdote refuted. This isn’t how it’s done in conversations worth having.
If the stats supported colleges you wouldn't have this huge nationwide movement of people looking to make college free because they're burdened until retirement by debt they can't pay off. That's not anecdotal, that is a major political platform point.
Which is the problem with your presented stat. "People with degrees make 40% more over their lifetimes on average" is useless because it tells us nothing about whether it's worth the capital expenditure. Just making more money isn't the point, having a better life is the point.
So it is very relevant, and your statement here is basically an admission that your 40% stat I keep seeing in these threads is equally irrelevant. "You can make more money and still be burdened" equates to "making more money won't necessarily make your life better." If that's true, what the hell is the point of going to college? To make 40% more?
We are talking about salaries, not some philosophical discussion. If your goal is to maximize lifetime earnings college is worth it as shown by college vs non-college graduate earnings - including the cost.
We are talking about whether college is worth the investment in unearned capital and time, we are focusing on the capital expenditure. "Paperclip optimizers are great if you want to optimize for paperclips" is not a strong selling point for paperclip optimizers in the real world. Is college worth the investment? It's not purely philosophical at all, it is very practically relevant. Will my life be better for doing it?
The typical horror story of insurmountable college debt of hundreds of thousands of dollars comes from people who go to grad school, where the loans are uncapped, so that they can reach as high as fifty grand a year or more, as opposed to undergrad, where loans are capped to around ten grand a year. Colleges for that reason have to be more generous with financial aid to undergrads.
Unfunded grad school is pretty much never worth it for that reason, especially for non-STEM fields (but even for STEM, it's still pricey enough that it probably isn't worth paying full price). Med school is also pricey, but high salaries make up for that, and what I've heard of law school is that it isn't worth the cost if you aren't going to a top 20 school.
But as for specifically undergraduate education, I do think the financials make it worth it in many cases, but it's misleading to generalise across all majors. 30k of debt for a computer science degree is likely worth it, sure. Is it worth it for an English degree? Debatable, but 30k of debt at least isn't going to financially hobble someone for the rest of their life. Is it worth paying full sticker price (if e.g. the student doesn't qualify for financial aid) for a sociology degree? I think that would be dubious.
The degree obviously makes a difference but, regardless of the degree what’s more important is what you’re trying to do.
Many college grads complete degrees without a strong reason for it nor have they explored the potential opportunities.
Even an English degree is fine if you have an understanding of what you’re trying to do and set yourself up properly, e.g journalist, technical writing, marketing track vs the degree and no clue
> Skilled trades pay better than most bachelor's degree track jobs.
Well, it's hard to tell whether this is true for 'most' bachelor's degree track jobs (this depends on what one means by 'skilled trades' which I don't believe there's an objective definition for), but I would say it's probably true for at least some of them. It seems that electricians, for instance, have higher starting pay than English degree holders, as well as higher median mid-career income. So in that respect it's misleading to say that everyone should go to college because going to college raises their income by 40%.
It's beyond a taxi medallion. Before uber you had to have one. With college that's never been true. The thing that propped up the whole industry was high school counselors scaring kids into thinking they'll be burger flippers and ditch diggers for the rest of their lives without it, and that's never ever been true. The number of young people I've known who had existential dread at the thought of not going, beyond reason, peoples lives were destroyed by all this.
There are a lot of companies out there that mandate a degree for roles that don't require one. That creates artificial demand for an expensive credential, and of course a loan industry happy to issue debt for said required credentials (it's a racket). I put forth that if you exposed companies to the cost of that credentialing in some way (a tax of some sort on roles that mandate higher education), those roles would suddenly not require a degree, or on the job training would replace it.
The taxing of credentials is an interesting concept I haven't heard before. What do you think some potentially unintended consequences be?
It made me think of the way some professional licenses work. The payment to keep the credential is essentially a tax. Some employers won't list the credential on a job description because then they'd be required to pay for it. But they only hire people with said credential, essentially shifting the tax on the individual and creating a kind of shadow job hiring process where the people being turned away may not be sure that getting the credential would open the door for them.
That's true, but it's largely the result of a glut of degrees in the job market, as well as high unemployment. As people start figuring this out, and as demand for work outpaces supply (both are starting to happen) you're going to see the smart employers drop these shenanigans and the dumb ones go out of business or start paying degrees what they're worth if they insist on it.
Nah, but I don’t like claims without evidence. That’s how misinformation spreads. I’ve already laid out my source for believing college grads make more money than non college grads.
> Average College grads make more money over their lifetime, period.
Stop this. The most accurate predictor of a person's lifetime income is the income of their parents. Children of wealthy parents are more likely to go to college. It's like saying "People who drive expensive cars in high school make more money over their lifetime, period".
I question the statistical literacy of people who make the argument that going to college has a significant causal impact on future earnings.
The analysis done in that paper is a good starting point for a productive conversation. We could discuss the bounds on various coefficients and decide whether the conditional statements about those coefficients made in the paper have clear answers in either direction. Or we could critique the various modeling assumptions. Etc.
Section 3.6. "Family background" of the pdf you linked to discusses the impact that parent's educational attainment has on how much money someone earns as a result of going to college, not whether they attend college. It's not used as a control in a way that's relevant to this discussion.
Do you have another study?
Either way, it's a fact that parental income is the best predictor of future income. Not educational attainment.
But why? What are the CAUSAL relationships between parental earnings, educational attainment, and child earnings? The children of doctors are more likely to become doctors, but saying that educational attainment is therefore less related to doctoring than parental occupation is obviously a bit absurd. Just because a parent paves the path doesn't mean that educational attainment is irrelevant to walking that path. And anyone who makes it through med school and residency has the option to enjoy high earnings, regardless of parental income.
The MD example, for the curious and humble reader interested in Truth rather than Winning, makes it abundantly clear why section 3.6 of the linked paper asks a question that's directly relevant to untangling these causal links.
> Do you have another study?
There's an entire literature base on exactly this question. "lifetime earnings parental earnings education" returns 130K results on Google Scholar. But, to be blunt, I don't think you're interested in learning anything. I think you're interested in Winning the thread. So I'm not posting for your benefit; that would be futile. I'm posting for the benefit of intellectually curious readers.
This is a particularly pernicious misunderstanding because it leads people to believe that they have to take out loans to go to college or they will earn less money. Saying "People who do X make more money" can have consequences if that statement isn't necessarily true.
What you want is a study that shows that people from lower income quintiles that go to college have a higher lifetime earning than people from the same quintile that didn't go to college. Maybe that exists? if it did, I'd imagine the pro college people would be waving it around everywhere.
Using Google Scholar to find relevant research is a great habit. but you really have to read it to make sure it says what you think it says
> What you want is a study that shows that people from lower income quintiles that go to college have a higher lifetime earning than people from the same quintile that didn't go to college. Maybe that exists? if it did, I'd imagine the pro college people would be waving it around everywhere.
Yes, there is a large college wage premium for students in lower income quintiles. The most that can be said is that it's smaller, but still quite large.
I assumed the point of contention was a more nuanced question about causation, since the above is just a simple factual question that can be checked without any sort of analysis.
I agree "people who go to college make more money" is not a helpful thing to be telling kids, but I think it would be much more fruitful to pose the question as comparing the outcomes of different fields of study (which could also include specific trades), rather than questioning the utility of college entirely.
> What are the CAUSAL relationships between parental earnings, educational attainment, and child earnings?
Social network, safety net, family experience with college, etc.... There are plenty of reasons why class mobility is imperfect. [Edit: I, for example, had access to summer jobs in highschool through my parents' professional network that were not as easily available to other people.]
> There's an entire literature base on exactly this question. "lifetime earnings parental earnings education" returns 130K results on Google Scholar.
Yes, but you chose a specific article to post to refute a specific claim. The article doesn't address that claim, so it is entirely reasonable to ask for a citation that does actually back up your argument. Your response here amounts to: "just go read the all the literature until you see I'm right" and is not constructive, even without the name calling.
Edit: You seem to have substantially edited your comment. Thanks for removing the name calling but generally ghost edits like this are frowned upon here.
> Yes, but you chose a specific article to post to refute a specific claim.
Yes it does! I think you're misreading OP's post.
What was OP's claim?
>> The most accurate predictor of a person's lifetime income is the income of their parents. Children of wealthy parents are more likely to go to college. It's like saying "People who drive expensive cars in high school make more money over their lifetime, period".
OP's assertion about "best predictor" is true but irrelevant. The interesting question is why?
OP asserts that the answer to that question is literally "for the same reason that rich kids drive BMWs".
OP is asserting that college has the same causal effect as a parent purchasing a BMW for a child. I.e., none at all, it's just a proxy for parental wealth.
That strikes me as an unlikely causal hypothesis.
Could there perhaps be a reason other than parent income that the child of an MD drives a BMW to school? Probably not.
But could there perhaps be a reason other than parent income that the child of an MD does well in their premed program? Seems likely.
And indeed, the above article establishes a causal link that's directly relevant to falsifying that assertion, that college == bmw in terms of causal effect.
Elsewhere, OP asks if the college wage premium persists across family backgrounds. I think perhaps something related to that question is what you perhaps read into their post. But that's not actually the claim they are actually making in that post.
(BTW: CWP and PEP are positive for students from low income backgrounds... these are just numbers you can look up... why am I the thread secretary for basic statistics?)
I simply do not see a anything in that study that refutes that college is just a proxy for parental income. The study only discusses parental background in terms of parental education and I don't see any controlling for parental income (though those two factors are clearly correlated, but are not identical and conflate them in several places.)
In reality, a significant part of the correlation between of college and is indeed due to college being a partial proxy for parental wealth. At the same time a significant part of the correlation between parental wealth and child income is to the that same proxy.
Even when you control for parental wealth, there are large heterogeneities in the effect of college on income in different groups. This makes it hard to argue for a simple, direct causal link between college and income.
While I think you and me tend to agree on this subject, I think you should focus less on being the "thread secretary" and more on understanding the opposing argument and clearly explaining your argument rather than posting dense statistical papers with no analysis and using abstruse acronyms.
Let's say there's a social norm to "go to college if you are smart enough or hard-working enough" for lower income families and "no matter what" for the wealthy (since all you need to be successful anywhere is wealth). If that were the case, they would be self-selecting into college on the basis of their own perceived ability to succeed there, confounding other related measures.
I think focusing just on resources misses part of it.
Upper class parents know how to raise children to present as higher class because they have the benefit of having been raised and lived in that class.
Being able to spend time on my kids helped, but they also entered school at a high level in math and reading and with the diction of a higher class because I knew how to teach this to them.
Some of the knowledge of how to succeed in education and develop children's minds is unevenly distributed, and it's not something easily fixed by just committing resources. (Though committing resources surely helps).
Just have to say, what a shitty way to end your comment. You've poisoned the conversation, and I think you read into something that wasn't there. The other commenter took the high road by ignoring it.
> Either way, it's a fact that parental income is the best predictor of future income. Not educational attainment.
Sure, but they are interrelated factors and they way they effect the distribution is complicated. This study was linked elsewhere and does control for parent's income: (I didn't vet the methodology or data, just looking at what their reported results say.)
One of the reasons that parental income is such a strong predictor of child income is because parental income has a strong effect on how much college will increase your income.
Interestingly enough, that effect is quite disparate based on more than just parental income.
The study says that low income whites see only a 12% boost to income from college while high income whites see a 131% boost to income from college. Interestingly, blacks show an even higher boost to income from college, 175%, and parental income had no statistically significant effect on this boost.
Also interesting is how those effects play out when you look at different parts of the income distribution. Parental income increases the average effect of college, but doesn't significantly affect the median effect. Thus a lot of the increase to the effect of college on average incomes [edit: for children of higher income parents] is from gaining access to the long tail of very high income outcomes.
So the answer is if you are a poor white male, college is far less valuable than if you are female, rich or black (in increasing order of college effect size.)
The kid that's driving a new BMW at age 16 will make more money than everyone else too. Do you suggest that kids buy BMWs in order to increase their lifetime earning potential?
Is it the college education itself that explains all of the earnings difference?
Or is it that the most adept of each income block are more likely to complete college education, and some of the later income difference is because of intrinsic ability rather than the benefits and signaling advantages of a college degree?
> 1. Many trades also pay like crap and have a very limited window in which you can do it.
Which is why the parent comment specifically mentioned "skilled trades". If you're not familiar with the term, think plumber or electrician instead of roofer or outdoor landscaper. The working window for skilled trades is also far greater than software engineering.
There are skilled trades that don’t pay well. In any case there’s no canonical list of “skilled trades” to begin with.
I fail to see how you can be an electrician longer than a software engineer, but even if that was true there are far more careers a college degree enable that pay more.
imo a "skilled trade" involves a hard to learn skill that is in high demand. Consequently, the demand yields a higher salary than a commodity "non-high skilled" trade that is not high in demand.
> I fail to see how you can be an electrician longer than a software engineer
Because electrical components and systems do not evolve and change as fast as software constructs, neither does plumbing.
> but even if that was true there are far more careers a college degree enable that pay more.
That's debatable when you account for student loans paired with less marketable degrees. Otherwise, I feel that student debt wouldn't be an issue.
Many skilled trades are not that hard to learn, those who know it just pretend they are hard to keep people out.
Of course with an engineering background I know how to read all the different tables and understand where the numbers came from. That might give me an advantage, but I can learn to do most of them pretty quickly if I want. (they are faster than me because they tend to have the tables memorized)
If they're not hard to learn, then imo it's not a "skilled trade".
> those who know it just pretend they are hard to keep people out.
> Of course with an engineering background I know how to read all the different tables and understand where the numbers came from.
If you're an EE and you're referring to electricians, I would argue that electrical work is not an easy concept for most of the population which is one reason for its market demand.
It’s “gated” to ensure that the individual actually possesses those skills and can perform theses tasks safely and comply with safety standards. As someone who's immigrated from the developing world, I can tell you horror stories when it's less regulated. I'm not a fan of regulation, but there is a minimum level needed to ensure trust.
That is half true. It is gated, but the difficulty of getting a license doesn't match the difficulty of the work. Years of apprenticeship before you can go on your own. Of course some need those years, but not everyone.
There is reason for a license, but they have a system to ensure only so many get one thus keeping supply down
There's a great Milton Friedman test: if license requirements benefit consumers you would expect to see consumers at the statehouse demanding legislation. But this is not what you see in the modern day. It's true very instrumental organizations like the FDA were funded based on public outcry, but now most lobbying done to or affecting those organizations is done by people already in the market.
You must not have never interacted with something like, say, AC install. It's regulated and you're not supposed to buy the parts yourself. You can, but some stores shut you out, they won't take your refrigerant back that legally needs to be disposed of, and so on. Recently I fixed some AC units that just needed a soldering touch up where "real repair companies" wanted to do a full new $10k install.
In the first set of examples, you have unlicensed work by unlicensed contractors killing people. Survivors are then angry enough at politicians to demand either more strict regulations or better enforcement. It’s a response to your freidman quote
The 2nd example highlights what happens when you have a bunch of unlicensed individuals posing as locksmiths ripping people off because they don’t know how to properly deal with locks. Instead of picking them, they use a drill to destroy the lock and overcharge their victims with new locks. It’s a big problem.
I've seen unlicensed and licensed work by licensed contractors kill people. Contractors aren't structural engineers and all of them will try to cheat you.
Locksmiths in my area have a proclivity to drill locks because it's cheaper than picking, save very cheap locks. Some locks can't reasonably be picked even by most locksmiths -- they have other things to do than teach themselves how to pick 1 specific type of lock.
You don't really understand the markets for these things and think you can regulate them.
Also not enough people have the time or inclination to pick locks or learn enough about a trade to discern good vs bad contractors. My points still stand.
I feel that you need to live outside of the bubble of a developed country to get a better perspective of things.
The drill to destroy locks is proper security theater. If people knew how easy it was to pick a lock they wouldn't trust security. Drilling takes time and makes the lock look better than it is.
The same thing is true of many high paying white collar jobs. Lawyers, physicians, CPAs, PEs all have to pass exams to become licensed. Many of these are gated by non-optional schooling. E.g., in most jurisdictions, you cannot just pass the bar and become an attorney. Others, like physics and architects, are additionally gated by mandatory apprenticeships.
Gatekeeping is not some thing that just the scare quotes skilled trades do.
> without that community college plus a cheap state school isn’t expensive.
UCLA is 13k per year, *if* you are from California. Classes are likely impacted (even upper division) so even if a person goes to UCLA just for the last 2.5 - 3 years they could easily owe > 30k
The real cost
- rampant corruption (in california, if they ever opened the books on the non-profit entities it would be a major stunner and awakening for many people). Last I saw there was ~100 non-profits serving ~20 campuses . You can read more https://www.calstate.edu/csu-system/auxiliary-organizations/.... But what they don't tell you, those books are private and not shared with the public. Rest assured, they are money laundering machines.
- rent seekers like Pearson and Mcgraw Hill (fun fact, did you know the 2 joined forces to run a company called Follets that runs most campus bookstores (how is that allowed?)
I think 30K is quite a reasonable cost. Parents have almost two decades to save the money, plus they can do so with a 529 plan and avoid capital gains taxes. Even saving $100 dollars a month invested in the market will net 42,000 after 18 years (assuming 7% return).
European here — that is an insane cost for college fees from my POV. I attended one of the most highly rated courses for my profession in Europe and only paid about €3K per year.
You'd be surprised at how in some places in Europe the differential in taxes compared to the United States is not as significant as you would expect. When you factor in state and federal taxes it's not that unusual to pay upwards of 35-40% in annual taxes. The difference is at least a lot of the European countries have something to show for it (subsidized education, universal healthcare, etc).
I’ve lived in Germany for a number of years. My taxes were around 42% if I recall correctly. Plus 400 euros a month for health insurance. Oh, and don’t forget 25% of capital gains.
I do agree with you though: you get your money’s worth in Europe.
Yeah, I live in SF now after moving from Europe. The tax difference is not really that different for me (high earner), but what you get in return in really depressing. Good weather and astronomical wages make it worthwhile.
You can also go to the Cal State system. SDSU, for example. You can also put in two years at a community college and then transfer across.
Graduating from an ABET accredited engineering school is just fine.
Pitt and CMU engineers used to have this debate back at Westinghouse and the general consensus was the primary difference between the engineers was 10 years extra to pay off your student loans.
> - rent seekers like Pearson and Mcgraw Hill (fun fact, did you know the 2 joined forces to run a company called Follets that runs most campus bookstores (how is that allowed?)
This makes me furious. ALL of the universities I know lost their really nice bookstores that you could browse through.
The problem is that the bookstore has two spikes of book profitability and the rest of time the books are a waste of space. That's "inefficient"--so everybody outsourced and now the "campus bookstore" is just a gift shop with a small wing to shuffle online book orders at the beginning of the term.
The current total cost for UCLA is $36,297 per year for California residents, $28,408 if you're living with relatives. That is for the 9 months per year fall/spring session, so summer school/housing/etc is not included. This is also only for your direct educational expenses. In that budget your "personal" expenditures are set at about $5/day which includes entertainment, recreation, clothing, etc.
And perhaps the biggest problem of all is that it is intentionally made exceptionally easy to take out additional loans, generally just clicking an extra button while setting up your schedule/financing for the next semester. As most college age individuals (let alone those attending a decent university) expect they're going to be millionaires at some point, it is an exceptionally exploitative system feeding off widespread completely unrealistic life expectations. It's easy to rationalize how much nicer $xxxxx would make your life today, while how little value it will have tomorrow. But for most, tomorrow will never come.
1. So does many degrees (ie: Art and Humanity?). At the upper-level with Skilled Trades, you usually go by your own company/name and then you can make substantially more.
2. Probably a little. These boot camps are mostly a scam like many colleges today.
3. You can do college cheap. You can also get a scholarship if you qualify. You can do college the expensive way if your parents will pay for it. Taking a $100-200k loan for it is stupid.
4. Yes.
Which leads me to the conclusion: College degrees used to get you higher pay, people overbought that and someone filled the market, people now can't sell their college degrees for money. Worse, many of them have raked up debt to get that college degree.
Sounds familiar? This is like people buying the top in a crypto, realestate, stock-market bubble. But you add a few steps and the thing sounds legit. (Did you ever wonder why people buy MLM and not go directly and buy a Ponzi Scheme).
> In addition many are not welcoming to women at all
Economists are now finding that as more women move into a profession, the pay goes down. Similarly, when computer programming moved from a female dominated profession (early days) to male dominated (now) the pay went up. Medical fields that have higher proportions of women have lower pay. Along these lines, as college skews more female (college grads are like 60/40 female/male now) the "college grad" professions are having a declining wage premium compared to non college grad jobs.
Correlation is not causation. It's possible that as fields pay more, they attract more men (because due to gender roles imposed on men, men lose more status from low income than women do) and conversely as fields pay less, men abandon them for other higher paying fields.
Economists are now finding that as more women move into a profession, the pay goes down
How much of this is just labour side supply/demand? If you have an all-male profession suddenly open up to women then that effectively doubles the pool of candidates. You would expect wages to go down (a lot) in that case.
Back in the 1930s - before computers existed it was considered boring women's work (sexism intended). There wasn't much demand because of course computers were a room full of people running this by hand. In the 1950s when computers were invented males discovered programming was interesting and took over.
As such it is more the image is programming will be women's work than a reality because the reality is there weren't many programmers.
I don't know of a solid source, but I've heard anecdotally that computer programming and operation roles in major corporations of the '60s and '70s tended to be dominated by women, partly because the kinds of tabulation and collation that big business wanted were extensions of existing secretarial work, but also for the more immediate practical reason that the average female office worker of the time was far more likely than her male colleagues to already be an experienced typist.
“Programmer” used to be the name of a job turning flowcharts into punch cards, because hiring someone to use a keypunch was much cheaper than computer time. They were replaced not by men but by compilers.
Not in direct answer to the question, but as an interesting aside, the conditions of space didn't allow for normal memory implementations in the Apollo missions back in the 60s. An alternative form, called core rope memory [1], used the placement of copper wire along a rope to encode ROM-style instructions into blocks of memory. This memory was literally woven by a team of older ladies for the purposes of use in the guidance systems. Great anecdote from the annals of comp sci history.
1. Trades are overwhelmingly what people do when they don't go for a BA, and often have houses and children far before college graduates. Many more mechanics, plumber, hvac, electrical, welders, pipfitters, etc than we give credit for.
3. Scholarships are not based on intelligence. They are based on access to resources. Many good scholarships require references, achievements, good writing, and lower income. Hard to do that in a city school, if at all. Those that get the scholarships come from parents that know how to game the system. This leaves first generation students far out of the equation. To add to that, judging students based on their high school is a terrible method of educating.
4. A degree has become more required if you don't have the resources to already live in a major city for your work. For example, you can work in software if you live in cali cities far easier than if you live in Utah. If you're coming from Utah, you have to pass the "I'm a drone" test of getting a degree. Many people would like to work in something other than trades, hence university.
University no longer functions like we think it does. Large amounts of it are now online, auto-graded, with instructors barely doing any work other than showing up. Housing and tuition costs have skyrocketed with far less scholarships than ever before. I recall a 40,000 scholarship 8 years ago that simply doesn't exist anymore, along with a number of others. Many of these are funded by various communities or collaborations of companies, and over time the over corporatization, lack of funds and lack of community have lead them to just not offer scholarships anymore. Why give away free money? A really easy way to upset a number of teachers, especially high school teachers, is to tell them to try to locate applicable scholarships for their students. They can't. Perhaps a couple that maybe add up to $800 one shots. Half of that being a local scholarship. They get very hand wavey and think 1 of 3 scholarships from Microsoft or Google is reasonably obtainable, yet realistically it would be similar to winning the lottery.
There are many bright and hard working students I meet daily that simply cannot get the support they need and cannot devote their time to learning what they need to. It is absolutely brutal the number of hours some of these students are working just to survive. We give the largest amount of support to students whom are already well off and tell those that have to work for what they have to go away. That's American education as I see playing out as we speak.
>Trades are overwhelmingly what people do when they don't go for a BA, and often have houses and children far before college graduates.
Having a house and children as soon as possible isn't a win. It's what happens when you lack imagination. There's so much more to life than pumping out kids at 21 in your 3/2 in fly over country.
Not for most people there isn't, degree or no degree. Most people lack imagination, live boring lives, and want financial stability and a rewarding family life. Your last statement is very condescending.
If your goal is generational wealth, leaving your kids better off than you, return on capital investment and things like that, owning property as early as possible that you can afford to own puts you miles ahead of people that don't do it, again degree or no degree.
I don’t think it’s condescending at all. It’s a tough pill to swallow at best. I’m not saying those things are wrong to want or that they have no value, only that doing it as soon as possible will have you miss out on a lot of experiences and opportunities that may not be present after you settle down. Therefore, doing it earlier is not a win, as implied in the original comment.
Edit: This is an example of the classic marshmallow test.
Yes it is an example of the marshmallow test, but not in the way you think. You failed the test, and the people you mock passed it. They are willing to make sacrifices in the present in order to create a better future, while you chase instant gratification.
You’re making a lot of assumptions about me knowing nothing about what I do or will do in the future. For the record, having kids is not a noble deed and does not automatically result in a better future. Overpopulation is a burden on society. Having kids is a mostly selfish act because most people would rather have their own kids than for someone else to have more kids and they have none. Besides, who is going to finally enjoy this better future? Or are we just supposed to perpetually kick the can down the road until climate change kills us all?
If everyone thought like you then there would be no future as humanity would go extinct. It only takes one generation of everyone subscribing to your philosophy to kill us all versus the uncertain future of climate change, where there is no scientific evidence that we will all die. Unfortunately, too many people in the West think like you, which is why overpopulation isn't a problem in the West; in fact, the reverse is and governments are covering it up by increasing immigration. If you're concerned about overpopulation on a global scale, you better be prepared to address it (possibly violently) in Asia and Africa.
Unless you are an Einstein-level genius (who by the way, had kids), the best contribution you can make to society is to have kids. Kids are multipliers as their achievements can not exist if they are not born. There is no "experience" that is worth dooming humanity to extinction, and I also doubt you can name any experience that a parent has not had at some point in their life.
"Flyover country" is very condescending, belittling and arrogant.
What exactly are they missing out on? Perhaps you're missing out on what they have as well?
Telling people what their priorities in life ought to be is absolutely condescending. It's not a marshmallow test. It's a question of personal priorities and values. Looking down on people because they have different priorities and made different choices than you, telling yourself they missed out in doing it, it's really just a way to convince yourself you're happy with your choices and nothing more.
Having children as soon as possible may not be a win, but having a house surely is. How could owning a valuable and necessary asset not be considered a win?
Because owning a house makes you reluctant to move to pursue great life opportunities, some of which are career based that would earn you more money over your lifetime. Of course that has changed with the adoption of remote work but let's be honest, no one saw that coming.
Owning a house doesn't necessarily make you reluctant to move to pursue other opportunities somewhere else. Renting or just re-selling the house is always an option.
Also, anything good in your life would make you reluctant to move somewhere else. But you wouldn't say, for example, that having a significant other is bad because it makes you reluctant to move.
Both renting and re-selling are major sources of friction. I'm a first-time homeowner and I find the prospect of moving today far more daunting than when I was still renting, because of these factors. The risk feels much higher, so I need a much greater promise of reward before I'm willing to take it.
Sure, but would you prefer to have your house or to not have your house? Selling your house for free (or more realistically, way under market value) would not have as much friction.
Having a house and children only happens when you have the resources. People burdened by college debt can’t do these, or at least not usually in the fashion they want. For those people who even want houses and children, the sentence was directed at trades being a quicker route. Perfectly possible to live alone and waste income on rent with trades, and if you’re not heterosexual you’re not usually “pumping” out kids regardless. Digital nomad and similar lifestyles, not so much, but I’d argue that’s preference as much as imagination. Some people like family and community.
“Flyover country” is readily considered condescending. Might be an accurate description, but accuracy is not what makes it condescending.
>Having a house and children as soon as possible isn't a win. It's what happens when you lack imagination. There's so much more to life than pumping out kids at 21 in your 3/2 in fly over country.
Really??
Just as a counter-example, if you have your kids in your young 20s, then they are out of your house when you hit your mid 40s.
In your mid-40s, you tend to have much more money and a much better sense of what you want out of life.
So assuming you have children at some point, when is the best time to be child-free, in your 20s or in your 40s?
And what about the joy of grandchildren?
When society tells you to wait until you are 35 to have kids, how is having kids at 21 "lacking imagination"? Going against the crowd requires imagination.
> There's so much more to life than pumping out kids
I think it's pretty hard to argue this is true while literally making "life." Yeah you don't usually get a shiny new car and an unnecessarily large house having kids at 21, but the life you're talking about is a negative for humanity.
What does it matter when you're happy and have everything you need to survive and provide anyways? That's what a "win" is.
>Yeah you don't usually get a shiny new car and an unnecessarily large house having kids at 21, but the life you're talking about is a negative for humanity.
This is so far from what I’m talking about that it’s closer to what I’m arguing against than for it. I am not talking about materialistic things. I am talking about experiences, relationships, and outlook-defining memories.
> What does it matter when you're happy and have everything you need to survive and provide anyways? That's what a "win" is.
Eating buttered potatoes for the rest of my life isn’t a win to me even if it will technically sustain me.
You can do more. You can be more. You can experience more. And most people don’t even try. Sad.
> I am talking about experiences, relationships, and outlook-defining memories.
And "pumping out kids" as you put it does this for many people. Sorry it doesn't for you, but saying that it isn't a "win" for some people is short sighted.
> You can do more. You can be more. You can experience more.
Many would say the same of those in their 30s and 40s with kids.
> Sad.
Again, many would say the same about your aspirations. Insulting, isn't it?
My point being, what makes you happy, doesn't make others, so don't cast someone who has kids at 21 with a home and ability to provide for them into a bucket of not "winning" at life.
>And "pumping out kids" as you put it does this for many people. Sorry it doesn't for you, but saying that it isn't a "win" for some people is short sighted.
Who says it doesn’t for me? I’m not against kids. I want kids, I’m going to have kids. But I’m going to finish getting some bucket list items out of the way first, when they’re possible and practical to do.
>Many would say the same of those in their 30s and 40s with kids.
Some things are either not possible or not responsible to do once you have kids. And once they’re adults, you’re too old.
>Again, many would say the same about your aspirations. Insulting, isn't it?
Not at all! I’m okay with that. Everyone’s living their own life and others can have an opinion on it if they want to.
>My point being, what makes you happy, doesn't make others, so don't cast someone who has kids at 21 with a home and ability to provide for them into a bucket of not "winning" at life.
Again, I started a more involved discussion, but the original comment strongly implied that earlier is better and I disagree. Sorry you’re taking it so personally.
"You can do more. You can be more. You can experience more. And most people don’t even try. Sad."
I had a lot of experiences before I had kids. Traveled the world, great jobs, career, friends.
But those all seem pretty empty by comparison. I'm glad I did all that, but a lot of it (while very exciting at the time) I see as been-there-done-that. (Though I still get a lot of satisfaction from my career.)
But at some point I realized that human relationships are just a lot deeper than a trip to a faraway temple. And, though I like my friends, marriage and kids is just a much deeper relationship, full stop.
Also, I figure it's time to let the next generation experience things for the first time. I'd rather share those experiences with my kids then do another experience for myself and my friends for the Nth time.
I suspect that you are young, and you might also change your mind at some point. For me I just got to the point where I realized that I could go pretty much anywhere I wanted -- enough vacation time and money. And I just didn't want to.
Professional accomplishments are also great, so I don't criticize you if that's where you find meaning. But retirement might be pretty painful if so.
There are many careers that don't require or even suggest retirement. I've heard of professors dying mid semester. That's how I'd like to go - in the midst of doing what I live for.
> Average College grads make more money over their lifetime, period.
And yet incomes have held stagnant through the entire rise of college attainment. That contradicts the notion that there is more money to be made.
Within a given population, those who are born more capable will earn more than those who are less capable. Those who are born more capable are able to go further in school and be more productive in the workplace for the same reasons. Someone born with a crippling disability that forced them to drop out of high school also struggles to find gainful employment for the same reasons.
However, over time, those in similar standing seem to end up making the same amount of money no matter what. If the existence of college and everything associated with it were to magically vanish, those born more capable would still earn more money over their lifetime than those born less capable.
> However, over time, those in similar standing seem to end up making the same amount of money no matter what.
Cool claim, have any supporting evidence? Personally, I don’t believe that. The opportunities that you have as a result of the skills that you have can create great divergence in lifetime earnings. You’re making a pretty extraordinary claim.
Supporting evidence that incomes are stagnant? The aggregate data that is compiled from tax return information will naturally be your most accurate source, although I'm sure you can find thousands of articles that distill that further into a more digestible form as it seems to get reported on regularly.
Which you will find by looking at the income data, or any news article that covers income stagnation if you want the distilled version for easier reading.
> Why don’t you post the data you’re referring to so we’re on the same page?
Like, you want me to link to it? I wouldn't know the URL off the top of my head. That is an oddly specific thing to memorize.
> Something tells me you won’t show any that supports the quoted assertion.
No doubt. You can tell someone is just looking for a fake argument when they start asking for someone to have memorized an arbitrary URL that is likely a deep path structure and not reasonably memorizable.
> By the way the quoted assertion has nothing to do with income stagnation.
Especially when they think they have it all figured out, free of misinterpretation. The intent of what I said has everything to do with income stagnation. If you have interpreted it differently, I'm not sure what to tell ya.
Should I be concerned that you don't believe me? You've mentioned that a couple of times. I guess I'm not clear on what value you are trying to add to the discussion.
What? you slam that post for not supplying the information and yet state
>[trades] are not welcoming to women at all
/ last time I looked at ANY trade, they are begging women to come WORK. Maybe that's what you meant though
What do you mean by "last time I looked at ANY trade, they are begging women to come WORK."? By looking at trades, do you mean look at a website claiming to want women to work in them? The PR/advertising spins on jobs don't always align with the working conditions driving anyone with standards or a family away. See how "essential" workers have been treated during the pandemic. If you listen to the radio, they are being begged to work. But that work is conditional on bad pay and conditions often.
Edit: I'm not trying to claim there aren't good trades, just that the "word on the block" about how easy it is to get a job doesn't always reflect reality.
Working in the trades and seeing tradesmen. Specifically large scale commercial construction. The more laborious the work the lower the participation rate by women. But, there were many women working as electricians and project managers.
The state school where I live charges $18K/year for tuition and housing. That sure isn't cheap, especially for a mediocre school. Graduating with $72K in debt from this school would be a waste of money if you aren't doing a STEM program, and if you are, there are far better schools.
> 1. Many trades also pay like crap and have a very limited window in which you can do it. In addition many are not welcoming to women at all, regardless even if you take the highest paying trades, do they pay more than the highest paying careers that require higher education?
Exactly.
These types of post often ignore the actual work being done.
A graduate student might make a comparable hourly rate to an amazon warehouse employee, but he or she can also go to the bathroom and sit down.
Working in an Amazon warehouse would not be considered a "trade" by most definitions. It doesn't require much if any training and amost anyone in normal physical condition can do it. It's more of a pure "laborer" job, these have always paid less than skilled trades.
You've missed the point. Very obviously working in an Amazon warehouse isn't a trade. The point isn't that working at an Amazon warehouse is a trade, nor the job's actual wage...
The point is that two jobs with superficially equivalent wages can be far from equivalent in things like the toll it might take on one physically...
The same could be said for the starting salary of graduates with undergraduate accounting degrees and entry level plumbers ($40k-$50k annually)... Similar in terms of wages, far from equivalent in terms of physical demands...
"Average College grads make more money over their lifetime, period."
Your "period" makes me think about more questions, not less.
1) Will that still hold in 2070? Kids who are now 18 are likely to be working at least until then. How do the developments over time look like? Won't the increasing shortage of tradespeople drive up their compensation?
2) How does a finer division by majors look like? I would be surprised if every major out there made more money than, say, an electrician.
3) Lifetime is a very long timespan. College grads are deeply in their debt in their 20s and 30s, so they can afford starting a family less. They will be better off when they are 50, but in the meantime they possibly sacrificed a an unborn kid or two to their tuition debt. This is a nasty tradeoff.
2. How does the finer division by non college jobs look like? Electrician is one of the top- how does it compare to a doctor accounting the medical debt?
1) You cannot predict the future, but expecting that current situation will hold indefinitely isn't a safer bet either. I think the best you can do is observe the trends.
2) Of course, I would recommend anyone to take the more compensated route, trade or college but it is probably easier for someone of average academic aptitude to become a good electrician than a good surgeon or a good programmer. That is the point.
3) What are the interests? I heard quite a lot of horror stories regarding the interest rates on college debt. Interest rate for non-trivial principals is the most important parameter of any debt.
> 2. Which boot camp? How many people ended up like your daughter? How much was it? Without these facts no comparison can be made.
Plenty of coding bootcamps have great placement rates and great salaries. For example, the median salary at Boston's Launch academy is $72k. The median salary for Fullstack Academy Grace Hopper in NY is $90k.
I know several people who have gone to both of these, the data is legit, that's the outcome I saw from the graduating class.
> 3. Some colleges perhaps, smart people can get full scholarships and even without that community college plus a cheap state school isn’t expensive. Link to your study? Did these people not go to college?
Even "cheap" state schools aren't so cheap https://educationdata.org/average-cost-of-college We're still talking on average $25k/year. But that depends heavily on the state. In some states, you pay $14k in others $30k. Either way. Not cheap.
2. Your stats are incomplete- how many of these people already have degrees? What’s the breakdown between that and wages? What’s the median pay for college graduates who go into the same professions?
3. Not cheap compared to what exactly? College graduates generally get paid more money over the lifetime.
This shows that 1% have no high school diploma, 5% have graduated high school and the remaining 94% have gone to or graduated from college.
15% have 1-4 years of college and no degree, 6% an associates, 55% a bachelor’s, 16% have a masters, 1% doctorate, 1% a professional degree.
Data from 2018,2019,2020 is collected from the surveys.
Average Wages:
No college degree: $61,836
Associates: $57,762
Bachelor: $71,267
Masters: $74,774
Professional: $66,619
Doctorate: $83,250
Not clear if this is the first job only or if this includes the results of second and third jobs. There is a section showing average wages for first job is $69,079 and average wage for third job is $99,229.
Also 15% of the graduates have never been employed from the boot camps. (16% for 2018 grads, 15% for 2019 grads, and 37% for 2020 grads.)
There are a lot of other insights in there as well.
Unfortunately the reporting doesn’t generally show quantiles or other information about the spread in wages. There are a few results where mean and median are shown.
As it’s a survey and self-reported there are always going to be some limitations. If others have alternative data to offer up, please share!
A comment doesn't necessarily need to be accurate to reach the top, it could merely confirm the biases of enough people so they think "yeah, sounds right to me!"
I feel like another caveat to college is that it is mentally exhausting. I went to a state college for 2 years and dropped out and pursued IT certifications. In my career and I am currently sitting at 75k after a year of experience. I'm also more knowledgeable than my coworkers who finished their graduation by a longshot. My 6 certifications covered more than their entire curriculum. The current college system is very broken.
> In addition many are not welcoming to women at all...
There's a long way to go on this, but there are definitely people pushing back on it in various ways, including a number of women welders, electricians, bricklayers, etc all posting about themselves and their experiences on Tiktok:
To find white collar employment? At least before remote work became prevalent recently, I suppose so.
On the other hand, the infrastructure for a large urban area doesn't run itself! Trade work is definitely needed to keep the roads paved and cars functional, the warehouses and stores stocked, the buildings in repair, etc., I would hazard even more so than in less urbanized areas.
I think what I'm getting at is that it seems a little too facile to say uncritically that anyone can just go drive a forklift and expect to make a reasonably liveable income.
Yea, I am skeptical about top comment also. This is anecdotal, but I have a brother who is a welder w/ bunch of AWS certifications. For several years he worked at union and non-union shops here in Los Angeles. His experience is virtually the same in every shop - low pay (~$25-27/hr), physically challenging work, very limited vertical mobility. It was a sad struggle to observe from a position of someone w/ a FAANG job.
I ended up loaning $80K to him, so that he can open his own small welding shop. It is likely that money is gone forever without return. Even now with his own welding/metal fab business it is a constant struggle - winning bids inconsistently, short cash runway, $28/hr, can't afford to pay for his medical insurance, late night work to ensure new projects are coming in, abuse from general contractors who exploit small subcontractor welders, big boys clubs (small subs can't get those projects), etc.
I'm not surprised at all - people with degrees try to find reasons to think they're better then the rest.
1. Many trades also are your own business, and can immediately scale for income - many plumbers, electricians, etc are millionaires with a small team of employees less than 15.
2. Google offers free marketing certification for this reason as well, it's not impossible for marketing/seo people to make 100k annually. It's very, very common.
3. Many colleges are not worth it and is debt- look at most state schools and you'd see a semester costs minimum $45,000. Yes there's community colleges.
4. Even community colleges require loans, and have programs of financial aid that is really "apply for fafsa, apply for stanford loans and then have pipelines for private debt.
You're way off on 3. You're saying that tuition alone at a state school costs $45k per semester, which would be $90k per year. This site says that the average in-state public school is ~$25k all-in for a year. That includes tuition, room and board, books and transportation.
You literally said "look at most state schools." How can most state schools have a cost that is higher than the average. Also, even your own case proved it. These schools are charging 56k or 34k respectively for 2 semesters. Therefore, a single semester would be 28k or 17k. Far from the 45k you allege in the original post.
Did you misread your own cite? UCLA is $36k for 9 months for in-state students, not $56k. Ohio is $24k for in-state. Anyone looking at these schools out of state is either not paying full price, due to scholarships or other aid, or is not worried about how to pay for it (bank of mom and dad).
Apparently lots of places, since the national average is substantially lower than the Ohio numbers.
But, more importantly, both UCLA and Ohio University are flagship R1s. Likely literally every other public university in Ohio is cheaper than OU, and I'd be unsurprised if UCLA is one of the more expensive public options in CA (wouldn't know, never lived in CA).
e: sure enough, the total cost at Youngstown State is 22K (tuition 10K, the rest is food and housing).
As an aside, including room and board in college prices always struck me as a bit odd (except in cases where living in a dorm is required, I guess, but that's somewhat rare). Do non-college-students not eat/drink/sleep?
Colleges/Universities and expensive enough and screwed up enough that exaggeration isn't necessary.
For someone who is finding holes in the OP’s reasoning, unfortunately, your linked post and statements lack rigor.
“ Average College grads make more money over their lifetime, period.”
There are huge selection effects in play. It is true that even after controlling for these effects, college has economic value. But the statement about making more money isn’t the right framing at all. There’s a whole chapter on this in the book called “Mastering metrics”. You might want to pick that up - it’s a coffee-table book for the quantitative-minded person.
Yeah the parent comment is trying to make college very cut and dry as a bad choice. That’s not true and removes the complicated aspect: college is still a very very good choice for most, and yet it’s horribly overpriced. Besides if you read the article, it’s not like kids are making hyper rational decisions about their future earning potential. They just want to avoid online classes and got hooked on making cash.
The PDF you linked cites lifetime earning data collected from the previous century. It might tell you about how things were 1950-2000. But says little about our current Internet-driven world.
> Average College grads make more money over their lifetime, period.
So that doesn't mean that if those people hadn't gone to college they wouldn't be making that extra money.
No one is saying that people that go to college are less valuable, what's in question is exactly what is college attendance adding that can't just be created in a less expensive, less elitist and more efficient environment.
1. Many trades also pay like crap and have a very limited window in which you can do it. In addition many are not welcoming to women at all, regardless even if you take the highest paying trades, do they pay more than the highest paying careers that require higher education?
2. Which boot camp? How many people ended up like your daughter? How much was it? Without these facts no comparison can be made.
3. Some colleges perhaps, smart people can get full scholarships and even without that community college plus a cheap state school isn’t expensive. Link to your study? Did these people not go to college?
4. As you’ve already demonstrated college is hardly required let alone loans.
I’m surprised this is the top post.
Average College grads make more money over their lifetime, period.
https://www2.ed.gov/policy/highered/reg/hearulemaking/2011/c...