Quite right.
Short answer is yes, a degree fucking matters. All the statistics I’ve seen show that a college degree leads to greater lifetime earnings than just having a high school degree.
Elon Musk may have a “lot of respect for people who work with their hands” but how many engineers, programmers, accountants, lawyers, and other professionals is he hiring at SpaceX or Tesla without formal education in those areas?
Now not all degrees not are all colleges created equal. But I think the real question that an 18 year old high school graduate with no professional experience needs to be asking is “what the hell do you want to do for a living to support yourself?” And other question to consider is “where will this path take you in 10, 20+ years?”
A lot of young people go off to expensive colleges and don’t really start thinking about their first job after they graduate. Now maybe that sort of works out if you are smart and go to a top college and get hired in some big corporations college recruiting program. But not having any clear idea what you might want to do when you graduate is a good way to find yourself in a low-paying dead end service job with a shit-ton of debt.
There’s another thing to consider. The traditional trades, like carpenter, plumber, electrician, etc. require a lot of work in all seasons and a lot of hard physical labor. Some people just aren’t capable of the labor required to make a lifetime career out of that. My wife’s family is probably 50% tradespeople, and by the time they hit their 50’s, I see a lot of arthritis, joint replacements, and decades of accumulated minor injuries that cut their careers short and ended up on disability.
I’m 66 and after a lifetime of mostly white-collar-ish work am in good shape musculoskeletalally speaking.
My bro is 64. After a lifetime in the trades he’s strong as hell and could beat my weak lazy ass to a pulp in no time flat. OTOH, he’s about to become an arthritic cripple. 5 years hence he’ll be easy pickin’s.
It’s a tough life. I respect the hell out of his accomplishments. But the piper will be paid. Expensively so.
Maybe my relationships with tradesmen is different.
A plumber replacing your sewer line for 10k is not the one digging the ditch. An independent contractor has people or crews they hire for anything from digging a ditch or another tradesman skill like electrical.
This idea that a skilled independent plumbing contractor is the one who digs the 30 yard ditch to replace your sewer line is perplexing to me.
How do you know he’s about to become arthritic?
Is there significant evidence that a lot of physical work necessarily induces arthritas etc?
Might even be the opposite… use it or lose it etc.
I haven’t really looked into this: has it been studied?
It feels like there’s a lack of symmetry if the outcome comparison is between “4 year degree” and “high school only” though. Oversimplifying to make a point, imagine three groups of people:
- Averagely or above functioning folks, at least enough to get through a 4 year degree and hold down a job after.
- Averagely or above functioning folks, at least enough to get through a trade school, apprenticeship, or other skill building experiences and hold down a job after.
- Highly unmotivated or troubled folks, who maybe scape by high school but can’t do much more after than play video games in their mom’s basement.
I think the interesting comparison of “life outcome” would be between (1) and (2), but if the metric is conflating (2) and (3) in a comparison to (1) it does make me wonder if we’re inferring the correct things.
Yes, there is obviously a significant correlation between folks that are of above-average intelligence, have good executive functioning skills, and are self-motivated and those that complete a 4-year degree. That correlation is, I believe, the primary reason it’s used as a screen for job applicants regardless of whether the degree program itself is strictly necessary to do the job.
If you could somehow filter for those people that meet the criteria of above-average intelligence, executive function, and self-motivation and then compare outcomes with and without a 4-year degree you might see closer results than in the global cohort. But I think the screening effects will still show up in your outputs.
Those that are wildly successful without a 4-year degree tend to be on the very high end of at least one of those metrics (IME self-motivation primarily).
I think that is a “yes”.
The skilled independent plumbing contractor most likely started out digging 30 yard ditches and by dint of skill, native intelligence, hard work, and probably a bit of luck, managed to stand out from all the other ditch diggers to become a business owner. The other 99% of ditch diggers will remain ditch diggers until their knees and backs give out.
That is not how plumbing works.
Seriously?
A problem is that the statistics that make it into the popular literature aren’t very good. Expanding on what others have mentioned, people are exiting high school with different levels of executive function, self motivation, intelligence, grit, privilege, spoons, mental health, physical health, etc. Some of those terms have baggage associated with them. I don’t want to get hung up on any one. We don’t have a random sampling of people attending (let alone completing) college; I can hear the colinearity police breathing heavy.
And wage premium fails to account for forgone wages and discount rate.
Right now there are a relatively small number of people with
- good executive function, motivation, discipline
- good number and communication skills
- good family support (money and connections)
who forego college to go into trades.
In my experience in New England these are the top students in vocational technical schools (or vo-tech programs in comprehensive schools).
These people kick ass. In a few years they have their own businesses employing a few tradespeople/laborers/apprentices. Or they are supervisors or higher-paid technicians in big firms.
If 25% of the students currently going to middling colleges instead went into trades, there might be more firms competing.
But a most people going into the trades now would get into any college, and would struggle to complete even an Associates degree. They lack one of the three characteristics listed above.
It’s really hard to control for this.
This why my views on the topic are bit skewed in support of tradespeople.
The above quote describes the friends/family I know personally. The paths may have been a little different. A few went to trades school and most fluttered about after high school. But they started in low level construction jobs at some point.
My understanding of the career path for tradespeople is based on them. And they all do quite well. Essentially owners of a small business that they actively participate in with some employees/sub contractors.
The statistics regarding education level and average income is true enough. But the STEM degrees pay a lot, the English degrees not so much. Hence the average. I’m not insulting English Majors, I’m sure plenty find successful careers, but it is a trope that your Barista at Starbucks has a college degree in English.
So I think I compare my friends/family to the Barista.
But the Computer Science Major, kicks everyone’s ass salary wise.
Our CFO is a History major, as indeed is our General Counsel (Chief Legal Officer), though of course she has a JD as well. Our Chief People Officer (head of HR) has a Bachelors degree in French (and later an MBA). Our head of Strategy studied PPE as an undergraduate and then got an LLB (British equivalent of a JD).
Right now the highest performing member of my team (Finance) has a degree in Fashion Design & Marketing.
Just scanning through the our Marketing and Sales leadership bios, only one has a degree in Marketing, a couple have Business Administration. The rest are either unspecified or in the much maligned social sciences and humanities.
This is a company with tens of billions in revenue and over 100K employees.
Theres a good variety of schools. Many are very prestigious schools, many are second tier state schools, some traditionally expensive private liberal arts schools (think Colgate), some are schools 99% of people have never heard of (think Clarion University).
Since I have a much maligned degree from a second tier state school, I do get your point. Though not a CFO of a large corporation, I’ve done ok. Even clawed my way all the way up to lower management.
In my lower management role, I am part of the new hire Interview board (for entry level positions). A college degree is required for the job.
So in that sense, the idea a college degree is an advantage is true. You can’t even apply if you don’t have one. The degree doesn’t matter. But we average a 25% passing rate on interviews. You just have to answer the questions in an intelligent manner and you’ll get a job offer. It’s amazing to me 75% of college educated people can’t do that.
The job isn’t anything to sneeze at. Nicely paid white collar job with advancement opportunities.
So yes a History Major can become a CFO of a major corporation. Or a History Major could fail a rather simple interview process, and scrape by as a Barista.
A high school graduate can become a highly successful owner of a HVAC company. Or a high school graduate could scrape by with manual labor jobs in the construction industry like a ditch digger.
I think my problem with the valid studies showing the relationship between education level and income, is the implication that a degree is a guarantee of higher income. And training in the trades is a guarantee of lesser income.
Sure - that’s definitely not true. I’m in a skilled trade and I make more than some privately employed engineers I’ve known (with graduate degrees, no less). I don’t even own my own business.
But college is more egalitarian and potentially easier to access. Not everyone is cut out for trades work. There are trades jobs that aren’t usually very physically demanding, like say the senior operator at an oil refinery. But if you’re obviously frail and clumsy it can be hard getting your foot through the door for a lot of those starter-level trainee jobs or apprenticeships. You’ll just by out-competed in the interview process. And although it is changing, many trades do still have a sexist past that drags women in particular down in interviews. Especially in the dirtier jobs. A lot of crusty old guys simply don’t want to bring on a woman as their plumber’s apprentice.
Also there isn’t an inexhaustible supply of highly paid skilled trades jobs. Most jobs are not well-remunerated white collar or skilled trades. So competition for trades positions can be intense. I still remember getting smoked when I went out for an International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers apprenticeship around age 19 ( I was also a college student - cover all bases 
). They had one test that was a hand-eye coordination speed test and I simply couldn’t compete with the other guys (all guys) in my particular test group. Doubtless I did well in some other tests, but that one sunk me. There were hundreds of applicants by the way, for just a handful of apprenticeship positions.
College you just need the grades and not even necessarily the best grades for non-top level schools.
Not a guarantee. But a higher likelyhood of higher income imo.