nu_throwaway

totally agree - not to mention attempting to decide on 30+ years of career at 18 years old involves significant uncertainty risk as well. all those hospitality management majors from last year and for the next couple years have lost out on upto 4 years of time plus whatever accompanying student debt.

my first job out of college was as a "financial analyst". my undergrad degree (finance) was largely not applicable - excel skills were about the only relevant experience. any 18 year old with a 2 month excel bootcamp and maybe 2 weeks of industry and department specific orientation could have done my job; meanwhile i was desperate and had no other offers so i took it making 50k per year with my shiny new 175k degree.

id argue that with an investment you can compare like to like alternatives and can use a greater degree of objectivity.

there are far more variables to consider in higher ed (student loan debt, opportunity cost of time, unemployment, alternative education experiences, etc) so looking at it as an outflow of cash with a predictable return is misleading at best.

no college has a monopoly on information and there is no proprietary info gained (other than network from elite schools). in a sense the knowledge component of a degree can only approach a value of zero as time goes on. the experience aspect is of course subjective and very important to some.

this sort of reads as self re-assurement for his son's path; the author is a Harvard professor and I assume daily interaction in academia all revolves around how great and virtuous higher ed is yet he's bucked the trend.

perhaps if he truly feels that way he could leave academia and cease perpetuating the myth?

imo calling it an "investment" is part of the problem. its a pure sunk cost and not an asset.

graduated from there. totally agree with what's in that article. at 18 I was swept away by the "allure" of their rapid ascent and aggressive re-development of campus (which has continued to this day) and went there, despite the insane cost.

faculty were generally pleasant to interact with, the education was probably average. job prospects were mediocre - alot of competition in boston and NU is in a lower tier, comparatively.

as a measure of quality, based on my experience, that ranking is worthless.