The Upside Case Of A College Education In One Chart

Zero Hedge ^ | 03/28/2014 | Tyler Durden

[SeekAndFind]

Late last night we presented a scathing report highlighting the extensive downside case why a college education may be best described as a "waste of time and money." But surely it can't be all "cons" - after all, with student debt now well over an all time high $1 trillion (ignoring that a substantial amount of that notional is used for anything but) there must be a reason why year after year record amounts of young adults scramble into the warm embrace and soothing promises about the future of a college education... which has never cost more.

Why? In order to present a balanced view, on the chart below we show the conventional wisdom about the "pros" of higher learning.

We leave it up to our readers to decide if the lifetime NPV of loan outflows is enough to make up for the increased weekly wages and so called greater career opportunities arising from having a piece of paper with some Latin scribbles on it.

[bigbob]

I think that the accuracy of the unemployment side of that chart is the reason to view it with some skepticism. We’ve seen many instances of how the feds lie with stats to make the employment picture look rosier than it really is.

[ronnie raygun]

College education is a liberal communist enterprise that re educates your already confused child into a living breathing drone of the state while you and your child is burdened with school loans that illegal immigrants get for free by the other liberal communist progressive politicians we elect to office. Wake up people

[FredZarguna]

Those are long-term numbers based on the private (ADP) stats, not the bogus Federal Household Survey. They are based on actual paychecks produced by ADP year-over-year and are pretty dependable.

[SoConPubbie]

That chart isn’t right.

Doctors, on a weekly basis, bring home much more than that.

I know that most seasoned software developers bring home more than than on a weekly basis.

[SoConPubbie]

If that chart were actually reliable, most doctors would be bringing home around 85K a year.

(52 X 1623) = $84,326

Something doesn’t smell right here.

[Alberta's Child]

The “Doctoral Degree” category doesn’t just cover medical doctors. It includes a lot of people with a PhD in some arcane subject matter who work in research positions, or even outside their field of expertise entirely.

[FredZarguna]

Your analysis is wrong on two counts.

First despite the name, doctors do not have doctoral degrees. Doctoral degrees are PhD's.

Doctors have professional degrees [an MD, OD, JD, are "professional doctorates," but many lesser degrees not considered equivalent to a PhD are also professional degrees.]

Second, the average professional degree -- which is what an MD or a lawyer has -- comes out to around $92K according to the BLS most current stats, and this chart actually is pretty close to that at 89+K. It's only off by a few percent , which could be because the year I recall that stat from is different from this year, or because they aren't including some professions in their average. The average nonspecialist physician makes about $185K according to surveys. There are a lot of very poorly paid "professionals" who aren't MD's who bring that number down.

[FredZarguna]

I doubt it covers MD's at all. Most economists don't classify MD's or JD's as doctoral degrees. Neither do most business schools or stats. They're professional degrees [and note, their mean income is higher than PhD's, as shown in the chart.]

[SoConPubbie]

Doctors have professional degrees [an MD, OD, JD, are "professional doctorates," but many lesser degrees not considered equivalent to a PhD are also professional degrees.]

Second, the average professional degree -- which is what an MD or a lawyer has -- comes out to around $92K according to the BLS most current stats, and this chart actually is pretty close to that at 89+K. It's only off by a few percent , which could be because the year I recall that stat from is different from this year, or because they aren't including some professions in their average. The average nonspecialist physician makes about $185K according to surveys. There are a lot of very poorly paid "professionals" who aren't MD's who bring that number down.

Your reasons notwithstanding, I find the numbers very suspect.

Now that maybe a function of living in LaLa land as I do with higher salaries, but the salaries of technical professionals alone average much higher, as least for my region. And it is a big region in a geographic sense and a numeric sense. Add in all the other "big" metropolitan areas, and these numbers seem to be skewed downwards from reality.

[FredZarguna]

You live in an area like Northern Virginia and downstate New York where the cost of living is about 100% higher than the rest of the country. Salaries are also hyper-inflated in those areas -- though not by a full factor of 2. Those parts of the country are not as numerous as you believe in weighting the average (<15%)

The problem with the chart is that in attempting to show the broad relationship between amount of education and pay or unemployment, the categories that it creates are too broad. There are people with "professional degrees" making <40K/year. There are a great many PhD's in humanities and social science who are unemployed, or working in sh!t jobs which have nothing to do with their degrees.

[ForYourChildren]

The reference to Doctoral degree is short for Ph.D. which is Doctor of Philosophy. This is not an MD, or Doctor of Medicine.

The PhD is achieved in almost any type of study, including: PhD Mathematics, PhD History, PhD Mechanical Engineering, PhD Piano, PhD Women’s and Gender Studies, etc.

So the $1,623 is an average for all PhD but does not include MD.

[CodeToad]

Never do these charts match what I know of salaries. This one doesn’t, either.