James Alucher's Thoughts about College

Some contrarian thoughts about college from James Alucher, a writer, blogger, trader, and venture capitalist in his blog “Living Life is better than Dying in College”.

He says: “Colleges have made use of the myth that you can’t get a job unless you have a college education. So young people feel a rush to get that college out of the way so they can get a job and ‘begin’ their adult lives. I think kids should begin their adult lives at 18 by experiencing what else the world has to offer.”

“I saw what people were doing in college. I know now how much I learned in college and how much I learned in other experiences in life and which is more relevant to me now at the age of 43. And, btw, it was much cheaper when I went to school than it is now. So when did I develop this theory? Almost immediately when I realized college had nothing to do with any successes or failures that I had in life (and I had A LOT of failure despite college). And also, it took me 8 years to pay back my student loan debt. Now it takes kids 30 years to pay down that debt. It’s not fair to the youth of our country.”

Good to see someone that is willing to question the status quo and our herd mentality.

QUESTIONS ABOUT COLLEGE AND FINANCIAL SUPPORT AFTER HIGH SCHOOL

There are no right or wrong answers here. But to the extent you think these through as a parent and then actively communicate your philosophy with your high school student your son or daughter will know what to expect. Here are a few questions for you start with.

- How do you feel about your daughter going to college?
- What are the advantages of college? This is a critical one; spend some time really thinking and researching it. If you attended college a generation ago, do not assume that your daughter will have the same experience. Do not assume that college is as a sure thing as it might have been a few decades ago.
- What are the disadvantages of attending college other than the cost and investment of time?
- Would you be embarrassed if your daughter did not attend college? Your friends are bragging about Susie heading off to Princeton and all you can talk about is Mary starting as a waitress at Mel’s Diner.
- Do you think college is a great investment at any cost?
- Some parents insist that their son work for a year before going to college. What do you see as the pros and cons of this requirement?
- If your daughter goes to college, how much are you willing to help financially and if so what conditions do you plan to put on this support?
- How do you feel about your son going into the military after high school? If he heads to the military rather than going to college are you willing to provide the same amount of Post High School subsidies? If so you are rare. Most parents will subsidize college, or even just hanging around the house but rarely will they subsidize military service, going to work or starting a new business.
- If your son attends college, what do you consider a full load?
- How do you feel about your daughter starting a business after high school? If she starts a business rather than attending college are you willing to provide the same amount of Post High School subsidies?
- How do you feel about your daughter working at a non-profit (for no pay or benefits) immediately after high school? If she does this are you willing to subsidize her to some degree and if she subsequently attends college will you provide the same amount of college subsidies that you would have provided if she had attended college immediately after high school?
- Are you willing or able to provide any subsidies at all after high school? If not is it clear to your son? If you are not going to provide any subsidies it makes sense to communicate this early rather than at the high school graduation ceremonies.
- If your son starts at an entry level job at the local utility are you willing to provide the same amount of Post High School subsidies? If not are you willing to provide any subsidies?
- How do you feel about your son living with you after high school? Do you feel the same about it when he is 19 years old as when he is 35?
- If your daughter attends college, how many years are you willing to subsidize? Consider that only about 53% of students that start college have graduated within six years.
- If your son attends college are you willing to support him studying virtually any subject? Some college subjects (like Accounting and Engineering) usually result in related jobs after college where other degrees (like Psychology and Theatre) are rarely generating good paying jobs after college.
- Are you willing to subsidize an impractical education (Gender Studies, Sociology, Art Appreciation) to the same extent that you are willing to subsidize a more practical field?
- Are you willing to subsidize your daughter attending graduate school right after she completes her undergraduate degree? Even if the only reason is that she has studied a subject (like Ethnomusicology in her undergraduate studies) that has no demand and it is either going to work at McDonalds or attending Grad school. How much are you willing to subsidize graduate school?

“23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism” by Ha-Joon Chang

This book was recommended by a friend that generally has views that are quite left of mine. Nevertheless it is an interesting read. I disagree with most of Chang’s conclusions but concur with much of his take on investments in education. Chang believes in Capitalism but is down on “free-market capitalism”. He generally advocates bigger government and governments that direct more of the productive capacity of the government. That having been said, his views on education are very much in the minority and contrary to other big-government advocates.

When has a politician stood up and said: “We are investing too much in education, especially silly studies in Greek History, Music and Modern Art at our colleges and universities.”? Never. Instead, speech after speech is along the lines of Obama’s latest State of the Union address: “Of course, the education race doesn't end with a high school diploma. To compete, higher education must be within the reach of every American.”…” if we raise expectations for every child, and give them the best possible chance at an education, from the day they are born until the last job they take — we will reach the goal that I set two years ago: By the end of the decade, America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world.”

But Chang disagrees with this notion: “There is remarkably little evidence showing the more education leads to greater national prosperity. Much of the knowledge gained in education is actually not relevant for productivity enhancement, even though it enables people to lead a more fulfilling and independent life. Also, the view that the rise of the knowledge economy has critically increased the importance of education is misleading.” And I would question how effective it really is at helping people live more fulfilling lives, especially for the amount spent.

“With increasing de-industrialization and mechanization, the knowledge requirements may even have fallen for most jobs in the rich countries.”

Chang points out that it is taken for granted that: “More educated people are more productive - as evidenced by the higher salaries they get. So it is a matter of mathematical logic that an economy with more educated people will be more productive.”

Chang notes that: “In 1960, Taiwan had a literacy rate of only 54%, while Philippine’s was 72%. Despite its lower education level, Taiwan has since then notched up one of the best economic growth performances in human history. In 1960, the Philippines had almost double the per capita income of Taiwan ($200 vs $122), but today Taiwan’s per capita income is around ten times that of the Philippines ($18,000 vs. $1,800)” This is where I think Chang draws conclusions from limited observations. Obviously there are so many factors that determine the economic performance of a country and education is just one of them. The Philippines was a US territory until the end of World War II. Since independence in 1946, the country has not had a very stable democracy and had to deal with Ferdinand Marcos’s corrupt dictatorship from 1972- 1986. After the return to democracy in 1986, progress was hampered by national debt, government corruption, coup attempts, a persistent communist insurgency and an Islamic separatist movement.

Chang cites Lant Pritchett, a Harvard economist who worked at the World Bank for a long time. “Pritchett analyzed the data from dozens of rich and developing countries during the 1960-87 period and conducted an extensive review of similar studies in order to establish whether education positively influenced growth. His conclusion is that there is very little evidence to support the view that increased education leads to higher economics growth.” In Pritchett’s paper he says: “possibly education does raise productivity, and there is demand for this more productive educated labor, but demand for educated labor comes from individually remunerative but socially wasteful or counterproductive activities - a bloated bureaucracy, for example, or overmanned state enterprises in countries where the government is the employer of last resort - so that while individuals' wages go up with education, output stagnates, or even falls.”

Chang asks: “Why is there so little evidence to support what seems to be such an obvious proposition that more education should make a country richer? It is because, to put it simply, education is not as important in raising the productivity of an economy as we believe. To begin with, not all education is even meant to raise productivity. There are many subjects that have no impact, even indirectly, on most workers’sproductivity - literature, history, philosophy and music, for example”

“To begin with, with the continuous rise in manufacturing productivity, a greater proportion of the workforce in rich countries now require much less education - stacking shelves in supermarkets, frying burgers in fast food restaurants and cleaning offices. Insofar as the proportion of people in such professions increases, we may actually do with an increasingly less, not more, educated work labor force, if we are only interested in the productivity effects of education. Moreover, with economic development, a higher proportion of knowledge becomes embodied in machines.”

“A large part of this is due to the simple fact that mechanization is the most important way to increase productivity.”

“Now, it may be argued that, even though economic development may not necessarily require the average worker to be more educated, it needs more educated people at the higher end. After all, as I have pointed out above, the ability to generate more productive knowledge than others is what makes a country richer than others. Thus seen, it may be argued, it is the quality of universities, rather than that of primary schools, that determines a nation’s prosperity.” Perhaps this is the case in the fields of science and engineering, but doubling our expenditures in literature, music and history is unlikely to increase our productivity. So we need to consider very specifically what kind of college investments that government should subsidize if we care about increasing our wealth.

Chang states: “Let us take the striking example of Switzerland. The country is one of the top few richest and most industrialized countries in the world, but it has, surprisingly, the lowest - actually by far the lowest - university enrollment rate in the rich world; until the early 1990s, only around one-third of the average for other rich countries. Until as late as 1996, the Swiss university enrolment rate was still less than half the OECD average (16 percent vs. 34 per cent).”

“Higher education, of course, imparts certain productivity-related knowledge to its recipients, but another important function of it is to establish each individual’s ranking in the hierarchy of employability. In many lines of work, what counts is general intelligence, discipline and the ability to organize oneself, rather than specialist knowledge, much of which you can, and have to, actually pick up on-the-job.” But how well does our US college system really develop discipline and organization skills? With degree deflation and a move to treat the college student like a “customer”, there has been a trend for faculty to go along to get along - in other words, don’t make the tests and the assisgnments too difficult because then the college student will not give the professor good evaluations that are required to keep one’s job. And the more pleasant we make the resort-like setting and create an environment where everyone passes, how much of a real ranking system have we created? Does graduating from a cushy college where virtually everyone graduates really demonstrate much self-discipline?

Chang notes: “By hiring you as a university graduate, your employer is then hiring you for those general qualities, not for your specialist knowledge, which is often irrelevant to the job you will be performing.” As Caroline Bird said: “It may well be that college attracts large numbers of those who are predisposed to change and learn – and that they would score high on all the test whether they go to college or not. If this is so, if college selects rather than creates ability, the diploma has become what Christopher Jencks of Harvard calls “a hell of an expensive aptitude test.”

Chang goes further: “Once the proportion of people going to university goes over a critical threshold, people have to go to university in order to get a decent job. When, say 50% of the population goes to university, not going to university is implicitly declaring that you are in the bottom half of the ability distribution, which is not the greatest way to start your job search. So, people go to university, fully knowing that they will ‘waste time’ studying things that they will never need for their work.” Actually I don’t know that our 18 year olds really know what they are going to learn in college. They simply know that everyone says they need to go, that their parents and society are subsidizing that path but no other one and they haven’t really considered any alternatives. Finally why would an 18 year old want to start a tough job rather than lazing around a beautiful campus in search of beautiful coeds?

And because of our discrimination laws, company hiring practices need to show relevance to the job being filled. So employers generally don’t use SAT and GMAT scores in hiring because they can’t show definitively the connection between higher test scores on these tests and the requirement for their work. If the employer uses test scores that have not been shown not to not discriminate based on cultural and racial backgrounds (I do not know how to express this accurately without a double negative), they can put themselves at risk of lawsuits. But the college degree is now accepted as a valid delineator for whom one hires. So employers indirectly achieve the same SAT score aptitude test but at a very expensive price.

But beyond basic IQ and technical know-how, how many employers really look at the self-discipline demonstrated in college. Things like, how much the individual paid for the experience himself, how much the graduate worked during college, how many units per semester did she take, how many classes did the candidate drop, are all factors that are generally ignored by those hiring recent college grads.

Chang states that: “Given that Switzerland was until the mid 1990s able to maintain one of the highest national productivities in the world with a university enrollment of 10-15 per cent, we could say that enrolment rates much higher than that are really unnecessary.”

“In the case of rich countries, their obsession with higher education has to be tamed. This obsession has led to unhealthy degree inflation and the consequent over-investment of huge scale in higher education in many countries.”

In summary we think:

1. There are a myriad of factors that determine a country’s economic success. Just a few of the non-education factors are the type of economy, government debt, birth rates, political stability, innovation, investments made in the past, access to natural resources, and cultural work ethic. The right investment in education (by government and the individual) can clearly help the individual. But the wrong kind of education investments will do little to make a country more competitive.
2. There are different lag times for different factors. For example a huge hurricane or earthquake or a terrorist attack can put the economy behind almost instantly but additional expenditures in pre-school education will probably not pay off for 20+ years.
3. College diplomas are now a sorting system for employment opportunities and it is a very expensive and sometimes ineffective way to sort.
4. It matters what education we invest in. College education that leads to more productivity in a country will have a bigger payback on broad-based prosperity than those investments that are for the general interest and the “enlightenment” of students.
5. Greater expenditures on education do not necessarily lead to an increase in practical know-how or greater prosperity.

Is it any wonder that 70% of American high school grads go immediately onto college?

It’s where the money is. Not the money 10 years later but where virtually all the money is for an 18 year old.

Most parents subsidize their children attending college (cars, tuition, room and board). But how many parents subsidize their kids starting a business right after high school, starting a job, or joining the military?

For some high school students, college is the right fit. But for many of the 47% that attend college and have not graduated within six years it is not. And for many of the roughly half of today’s college graduates that walk away with a degree in subjects like Ethnomusicology, Sociology, English, History, Theatre, Art Appreciation or Dance, and are finding no job offers, it may not be the right path either.

Campus visit or Major visit?

We think that most high school students and their families usually get the sequence backwards. First they select a college and then they select a major. But selecting a college first assumes that which college you attend is the most important factor. Many an advisor declares that the college major is one of the most important choices made by the student. They are wrong; your major is the most important decision.

If one’s goal is to gain financial independence via a college education (granted this is not the mission of every 18 year old), then what one studies makes all the difference. Today’s graduates in Petroleum Engineering are getting multiple job offers at high starting salaries. On the other hand those that are graduating with degrees in Theatre, Medieval German and Gender Studies rarely find any job offers at all.

If you want to pursue a degree in Petroleum Engineering there are fewer colleges to choose from (see CollegeToolKit.com). On the other hand it is hard to find a college that does not have a Business degree (the most common of degrees in America today).

How does one conduct a Major visit? How does one check out different majors and the opportunities in these majors to determine if a major is a good fit for your skills and interests?

Unfortunately most high school guidance counselors can’t help much; most of them can’t tell you how the opportunities vary between a chemical engineer and a petroleum engineer.

You might actually need to visit a campus or two. But not to check out the resort like setting but to speak to the professors in the field you are interested in. Talk to some of the students in your major, and perhaps sit in on a class. Then meet with the Student Placement office and see what you can learn about who is hiring the graduates and if you can get the contact details so you can talk to the folks with the jobs directly. This action is valuable on a number of dimensions because some of these same campus reps might have ideas for you about scholarships and internships once you arrive at college.

One clue about the right major is investigating how those majors are faring in getting internships during their summers. If the internships are primarily with no pay that is a sign of a poor demand for grads in that area. If the internships are primarily for pay, then it is a sign that employers are recruiting college grads in a field where recent grads are in high demand.

Keep in mind that the most common major for college freshmen is Undecided. If you are unsure, why not attend your community college for a year or two or work for a year while you try to narrow down your career direction?

And a majority of college students change their majors during college. But there are changes and there are changes. Going from Computer Science to Math in your freshman year is a minor deviation. Switching from Mechanical Engineering to Civil Engineering in one’s sophomore year is also not a big deal. But if you decide in your senior year that instead of wanting to be an elementary teacher you want to change to pre-med, you just added a couple of years duration to your college experience (even before you start medical school). And if you have studied at a typical private Liberal Arts college they might not even have the science curriculum that you need to get ready for Med School.

There are a number of online career assessment tools at Quintessential Careers. But keep in mind that these assessments tend to focus on what you might be good at. They rarely reflect whether there are in fact many jobs in the field. You might be an outstanding musician but are you really good enough to earn a living as one?

So think major first and college second when planning out your college path.

When it comes to education we get what we measure

One of the goals I consistently hear is that we need to increase the number of college graduates produced by the United States. The most agressive of these is that the goal should be that 100% of Americans ought to be college graduates.

Today the US has more college grads (as a percentage of those over 25) than ever before - roughly 27%. In 1940, this number was about 5%. Oddly enough, as the percentage has gone up, the US has fallen from the World’s most competitive and powerful economy to one that is struggling.

As we continuously set and measure the wrong goals (for example, the percentage of high school students who go on to college), we also become more efficient at producing the wrong results. We have succesfully achieved higher college graduation numbers, but we've ineffectively instilled the knowledge and learning needed to make America more competitive.

Likewise, if we simply track the high school dropout rate, and the only goal is to reduce the number of high school dropouts, a likely unintended consequence is that schools simply dumb down the curriculum enough to allow more to graduate from high school and then declare victory. Today , nearly one third of US high school students either drop out or fail to finish high school in four years. Clearly it is far more expensive to educate kids who don’t want to learn than to educate those that do.

Testing based on the "No Child Left Behind" act is designed to reward high performing schools and penalize poor schools - but the entire emphasis has been on English and Math. English and Math are extremely important, but equally important - yet ignored and not measured - are science test scores. Since we have not acknowleged the importance of measuring science results, we have consequently invested inadequately (resources and time) in the subject. One or two US students of every 100 scored well enough to be considered advanced in science according to a recent report by the National Assessment of Education Progress in Science. This portends a bleak future for America’s ability to stay competitive in the world technology markets.

“Highlights of national (math and science test results) show that 34 percent of fourth-graders, 30 percent of eighth-graders, and 21 percent of twelfth-graders performed at or above the Proficient level, demonstrating competency over challenging subject matter.” The longer our students stay in our public school system, the farther behind they fall in science.

In President Obama’s last state of the union address, he called for a “Sputnik movement” fed by investments in research and education. Who among our growing universe of Americans who have never passed a science or math test will conduct this research? We didn’t send a man to the moon on the backs of college graduates in Sociology and Gender Studies.

There is much talk about rewarding the top teachers and dropping the rest. This sounds like a good start. But absent a system for measuring the factors that will make America competitive, we risk simply getting more efficient at teaching the wrong subjects. And of course, if our public employee unions insist on pay for seniority rather than pay for results, and if we fail to challenge and change that position, it may not make much of a difference what we measure.

Perhaps we need a radically different education system, one run by private enterprise and non-profits but requiring transparency in standardized test score results (including Science) for all to see and compare. Among competing private schools, some might rely on different combinations of online education, computer-assisted learning, frequent testing, and grandmotherly encouragement. And the government’s role in education would be restricted to providing financial support via vouchers and formulating and auditing a uniform testing system that measures learning results for English, Math and Science. Then the government would leave the management and execution of education to the private sector. We would see much more learning taking place at a far lower price.

The longer our students stay in our public system the poorer they do in science.

Just one or two US students out of every 100 scored well enough to be considered advanced in science according to a recent report by the National Assessment of Education Progress in Science. This gives a bleak forecast for America’s ability to stay competitive in the world technology markets.

“Highlights of the national results show that 34 percent of fourth-graders, 30 percent of eighth-graders, and 21 percent of twelfth-graders performed at or above the Proficient level, demonstrating competency over challenging subject matter.” The longer our students stay in our public system the poorer they do in science.

And of course the study points to the shortage of science and math teachers. There are no shortage of History teachers. This is not to diminish the role of History teachers but when we pay them as much as science and math teachers, the few science, math and engineering grads we have graduating from college these days will generally accept much better paying jobs outside of teaching. And even if they want to be a teacher, the school districts, with their teacher unions won’t hire a recent science teacher when they are laying off an experienced History teacher. With union seniority rules, the school districts will instead ask the History teacher to do their best at teaching Chemistry. What a mess.

Is it any wonder that only about 2.5% of college graduates today are US students in Engineering?