Evaluating Reasons for College - Measurable Benefits

Let’s examine the benefits of the most common reasons for college. Here are the questions we’ll try to answer:

Career Prep → How much will you earn?
Self-Improvement → How much will you learn?

In contrast to the fast-and-loose approach we’ve taken so far in this sequence, we’ll be more rigorous here. Unfortunately, rigorous discussions tend to be boring; that’s why most people don’t discuss academic papers for fun. To avoid getting bogged down, we’ll focus on the conclusions/takeaways and relegate the details to appendices. If you feel curious after reading this page, feel free to dive into the details. For most people, though, these summaries are probably enough.

Earning

On average, people in their late twenties with bachelor’s degrees tend to earn ~60% more than similarly-aged people with only high school diplomas. Roughly a half to three-quarters of that earnings difference is caused by attending college (with the remainder attributable to pre-existing differences in ability). That means that college graduates enjoy a salary boost of ~30%–45%, on average, from having attended college. Most of the boost comes at the very end, so it’s really important that you make sure you make it all the way until graduation day.

Some economists argue the earnings benefits of college are caused by the degree’s ability to signal your desirable traits (intelligence, work ethic, etc.) to employers, not from learning or personal growth that may occur. From an individual perspective, the cause of the increase in earnings doesn’t matter too much; as long as you’re able to earn more, that’s a good thing.

Some majors undoubtedly have a bigger effect on earnings than others, but we don’t have the resources to do a fair comparison. What we do know is that career prep majors tend to have a larger penalty for switching careers than do self-improvement majors, although switching is also less common for career prep than for self-improvement. That’s not an argument for choosing one way or the other, though.

In summary, college tends to be very good for earning potential, as long as you finish with a diploma in hand. If you’d like to dig into the nitty-gritty details, see the Earning appendix.

Learning

When we ask, “How much will you learn?”, we aren’t interested with subject-matter-specific learning or skill-building. Instead, we’re interested in the types of learning that go beyond one subject and help improve your life as a whole: Your ability to think critically, master new concepts quickly, express yourself persuasively, etc. In short, we’re interested in measuring self-improvement.

According to a prominent study, 45% of students don’t improve those types of skills during the first two years of college. When taken as a whole, the authors of the study concluded, “Freshmen who enter higher education at the 50th percentile would reach a level equivalent to the 57th percentile of an incoming freshman class by the end of their sophomore year.” That doesn’t seem like much of an improvement, especially considering the cost (in both money and time) of college.

However, there’s a caveat: These conclusions are based on the average results. Some students learned more than average, some less. Based on my experience in college, I can say that many students are prioritizing goals other than improving their critical thinking skills (and that’s OK). It would have been most helpful to see the results broken down by goals, but that data doesn’t appear to have been collected. Instead of being bad news about the learning-potential of college, then, the results of this study might be better interpreted as a warning sign: You’ll only learn in college if you put in the required effort.

From this perspective, the next logical question is, “What do you need to do to learn a lot in college?” The authors answered this question by comparing the traits and habits of students who learned a lot and students who didn’t. The key factors associated with increased learning included choosing rigorous coursework, spending a lot of time studying alone, and engaging with professors outside of the classroom. Assuming these correlations indicate causation, you may want to try to include them to increase your learning.

For more detail, see the Learning appendix.

Next up, we’ll evaluate some of the drawbacks of our reasons for college.