FoundValue Blog

What the president would have said if John Carney was writing his speech

Gene — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 03:16:00 +0100

John Carney has a post on what he thinks Obama should have said to the nation's schoolchildren. In short, college degrees are in a bubble and are overvalued. Unless you are really smart, you should learn a trade.

Those of you with average intelligence will find that high school is about as far as your academic talents will take you. Likewise those of you with a disposition that makes sitting in classrooms intolerable won't gain much out of "staying in school." This is nothing for you to be ashamed of—and no one should pressure you to accept the fate of failing in classes where you really shouldn’t be in the first place.

For most of you, college is an expensive waste of time. At some of our elite schools, you would form connections that are invaluable. It’s one of the things our elite colleges do best—putting the highly intelligent in the same place as the well-off and well-connected. Going to these schools serves as heuristic for employers—your admission to the school is short hand for intelligence and diligence.

But this kind of education—the standard college education—is really only suitable for somewhere around 15% of the population. Unfortunately, we now send a much higher proportion of our students to college, which amounts to a terrific economic waste.

An education is never wasted; or so it is generally believed. But tens of thousands of dollars easily can be wasted on a piece of paper that isn't going to do much for you.

More on the value of a good education: what pays?

Gene — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 19:15:00 +0100

Which undergraduate degrees lead to high salaries? Mostly engineering, along with computer science and physics. Oh, and economics — nice to know you don't have to be useful or accurate to make the $$! Find online degrees here.

Best Undergrad College Degrees By Salary

Methodology
Annual pay for Bachelors graduates without higher degrees. Typical starting graduates have 2 years of experience; mid-career have 15 years. See full methodology for more.

The value of a good education

Gene — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 00:21:00 +0100

It is broadly believed, by me as well, that a college education pays (cash) dividends over a lifetime of employment. We tend to compare the income of a college graduate to a non-college graduate. But this is the wrong comparison. We need be comparing to someone who got into college, could have gone to college, but didn't or dropped out. At least then you are closer to comparing similar pools of individuals. The kind of person who would never have gone to college or couldn't have gotten in in the first place, may, or may not, have ever had the same income potential.

According to an article by Rolfe Winkler at Reuters

How much more will you make if you go to college than if you don’t? Are those extra earnings enough to pay back your loans with interest, along with the opportunity cost of forgoing full-time wages while you’re a student?

A common misconception is that a college degree is worth a million dollars over the average working lifetime. But a paper published late last year by the National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges pegs the value at close to a tenth of that, $121,539.

A million dollars over a lifetime is something. One hundred thousand less so. But, both those numbers discount the value of four years of partying and dating that college provides. Price those into the mix and college starts looking a lot more attractive at both the low and high end of the range.

Hat Tip Felix Salmon

College smollege

Gene — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 07:27:00 +0100

Here is a worthy counter to my previous, somewhat snarky, post on online education. All about it’s disruptive potential. Also, here is a book on the topic, Disrupting Class, by Clayton Christensen for those who want to dig deeper. Hat tip to Auto Generated for the book catch. Somehow I missed it despite being a fan of his seminal work, The Innovator’s Dilemma.

Not related to this topic, but we liked this post Destroy the Paparazzi.

A free online education is worth what you pay for it

Gene — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 06:43:02 +0100

There a lot to be said for the argument that part of what you are getting at a for-pay, credentialed, university is the signaling it provides. First, that you were good enough to get in. Second, that you could afford it, or get someone else to pay. And third, that you had the fortitude to stick through the entire tedious process.

All a free online ‘degree’ gets you is an education. Some would say, not really so much. Josh Dean gave it a shot and this to say to say in Popular Science. In short, he flunked physics and biology but did well in home economics!

He has a list of his top ten online learning sites:

1. MIT OpenCourseWare

2. University of Berkeley

3. Johns Hopkins School of Public Health OpenCourseWare

4. Google Code U

… see the rest of them here

Tips on staying disciplined while working at home.

Gene — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 22:03:00 +0100

Not really new, but still a nice reminder from Paralyzed on how to stay focused while working from home.

His tips:

Have fixed hours when you're working.
Remove all distractions.
Before you start working. Get inspired.
Allow yourself to have a proper lunch break.
Allow yourself to have 3–4 small breaks everyday.
Get out from your home for lunch with friends from time to time.
Never work more than 8 hours a day, unless you absolutely have to.

Read the whole thing.

Indeed indeed.

Gene — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 20:48:00 +0100

An interview with Indeed co-founder and CEO Paul Forster from Silicon Alley Insider

The video is not embedding so you'll need to click through to watch.

Get everything the Ivy League has to offer on the cheap. Except what matters.

Gene — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 20:28:00 +0100

Studies suggest that it is not whether you go to to Harvard that determines your liklihood of success, but whether you were able to get in. Even if you went somewhere else. Or dropped out. So, for those of us who didn't get in, but would like to imagine that what we really missed out on was the superior education, now you can take the same classes as those masters of the universe, Fortune 500 CEOs and Wall Street quants (who have so excelled in recent times).

Just don't be surprised to find that you somehow still fail to receive the really important skills: The political and social connections to land a job where you qualify for the Ivy League welfare program being adminstered by the Fed and the US Treasury. Now that's an education!

Hat tip to John Carney at Clusterstock.

The best and worst cities to find a job

Gene — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 08:56:00 +0100

According to an analysis done by Indeed (hat tip to Erick Schonfeld of TechCrunch, the list of best and worst cities for finding a job, with gratuitous snark, in our troubled times are:

Best

Washington, DC Your money at work.
Jacksonville, FL I don't know why.
Baltimore, MD More government jobs I suspect.
Salt Lake City, UT I guess they didn't go crazy. That was probably all it took.
New York, NY Finance isn't dead.
San Jose, CA Tech rules!
Hartford, CT Finance still isn't dead. It's undead.
Oklahoma City, OK I don't know why.
Austin, TX Tech rules!
Boston, MA Tech rules!

Worst

Buffalo, NY New York and California rule! Not!
Orlando, FL What? Disney's not hiring?
Sacramento, CA State government job fiasco.
Rochester, NY It's a wonderful town.
Chicago, IL If Blagojevich was still around this wouldn't have happened.
Portland, OR Tech sometimes rules. Sometimes not so much. Or too many baristas per starbucks.
Los Angeles, CA Tent city of dreams.
Riverside, CA Housing bust central.
Miami, FL Mortgage scam central.
Detroit, MI Buy a house for $1000. Get a second house free!

Clearly a government money pipeline or utter regulatory capture of government by your industry edge out reasonably solid businesses or fiscally prudent local culture.

Take the blue pill

Gene — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 01:18:00 +0100

The Matrix: You take the Blue Pill, the story ends. You wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the Red Pill, you stay in wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.

President Obama: If there's a blue pill and a red pill, and the blue pill is half the price of the red pill and works just as well, why not pay half price for the thing that's going to make you well?

Paul Krugman: Reading various reactions from the commentariat to last night’s presser, I had a horrible insight: many of them had no idea what Obama was talking about with the red pill-blue pill thing.

Me: I also had a horrible insight. Originally I thought Obama was just confused and reversed the color of the pills in his reference — in the Matrix the Red Pill lets you see reality and the Blue Pill allows you stay in the simulated world designed to keep you docile while the machines harvest your energy.

Then I thought, perhaps he was not confused at all. He did not reverse the colors. He is pushing the Blue Pill.