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A comment on ROI on a college degree depends what you study, not where. Parent comment

Re:ROI on a college degree depends what you study, not where by Bartweiss on Wednesday May 04, 2016 @09:46AM (#11628276)
Language seems like a complicating factor here. It's difficult (especially in non-Latinate cases) to learn self-directed, and people who are fluent and willing to work in the field can actually do quite well traveling and translating for businesses and government agencies.

Of course, all of these numbers are complicated by "salary of graduates" versus "salary of graduates employed in field".

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:ROI on a college degree depends what you study, not where by jjuel on Wednesday May 04, 2016 @09:56AM (#11628352)
But it does depend. If the above poster was taking Japanese as his sole Major it is probably not worth it. If he/she is taking it as an addendum to say a Business degree then it is very much worth it.
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Re:ROI on a college degree depends what you study, not where by emodendroket on Wednesday May 04, 2016 @10:03AM (#11628407)
I guess it depends how you define "worth it." I have a satisfying career but it has nothing to do with my ability in Japanese.
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Re:ROI on a college degree depends what you study, not where by emodendroket on Wednesday May 04, 2016 @10:00AM (#11628382)
If you're studying Japanese because you think it will make you money it is a bad idea
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Re:ROI on a college degree depends what you study, not where by Tideflat on Wednesday May 04, 2016 @10:12AM (#11628460)
Less well known languages like Japanese tend to have higher returns on investment than common ones like Spanish. IIRC Spanish has a return on investment of about 3%.
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Re:ROI on a college degree depends what you study, not where by emodendroket on Wednesday May 04, 2016 @10:17AM (#11628497)
In my experience the Japanese translation market was very crowded and didn't pay well so my first plan went out the window.
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Re:ROI on a college degree depends what you study, not where by dagw on Wednesday May 04, 2016 @10:40AM (#11628653)
I forget if it was Planet Money or Freakonomics, but there was a podcast about the ROI of learning a foreign language and according to the research they cited the only foreign language worth learning from a pure ROI perspective was English.
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