A Popular Mechanics series sorts through cliches and social prejudices distorting choices in education. Are liberal arts programs fancy-pantsy hotbeds of sophomoric socialist posturing? Are votech programs mind-numbing economic dead ends? Do both sorts of programs bilk unsuspecting parents, students, and taxpayers out of increasingly mountainous piles of tuition that will never be reflected in paychecks?
To judge purely from the lifetime impact on earnings, many of our preconceptions don't pan out. None of this answers the question whether we should be focusing on more than lifetime earnings, but before families and taxpayers incur big IOUs on higher education strategies, it's at least worth looking at. I'm no fan of federal regulations in education, but I wouldn't mind seeing schools have to show wage outcome data before they get federal funding. Pay for your own operations, and you can experiment with whatever academic philosophy suits and your customers.
I really enjoy Popular Mechanics articles.
4 comments:
I am concerned with the middle schools having no vocational classes- it is a place where a kid used to be able to experience another facet of life, something that might open up an interest. If they never have the opportunity to experience they never know what they are missing. Creation is not all pixels on screens.
One of the oldest human traits is to make things we need, yet half the country seems to be baffled by which way to turn a wrench. People are starved for creation in some respects, actual hands on work-there are many techies here who are desperate to hold something they made in their hands.
Yeah, my junior high (sic) had a wood shop with a range of power tools (none portable, though, other than a hand-held drill), and I was able to take shop for a semester (even then, we were limited to one semester). The high school just across the street from us had an auto shop in which it was possible to assemble a car from basic parts up if you were of a mind to, and we junior high-ers had access to that on recommendation. Our junior high shop had a metal brake with which the auto shop could form some sheet metal parts. Why the junior high shop had the brake and not the auto shop remains a mystery.
Not here in Plano, though, at the middle school level.
Eric Hines
From the linked Brookings study:
"We calculate an estimate of ten-year return by summing the average earnings faced by graduates over the first ten years following graduation[vi] and subtracting off the wage they would have received as a high school graduate without a degree (taking into account additional years of earnings when they would have been enrolled in college). To estimate this benchmark, we used data on Texas residents from the Annual Social and Economic Supplement to the Current Population Survey, obtained via IPUMS CPS.[vii] We then subtract the institution specific costs[viii] to get the ten-year financial return."
This is pathetic; it does not consider the reality that the mix of characteristics of those who attended/graduated from college...IQ, motivation, etc....is likely very different from those who did not. A classic example of confusing correlation with causation.
The authors even seem to realize this:
"Essentially, our study does not take into account the fact that wages are a function of both individual characteristics and college quality. For the purposes of policy, a value-added measure has the capacity to overcome some of the limitations of this brief study."
So why did they publish this thing? Seems pretty irresponsible to me.
Good points.
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