These companies have no shortage of applicants. They want to be perceived as highly exclusive firms that hire only the best and brightest from the top schools.
Anyhow, the cost of college is a basic cost/benefits problem. The reason it’s so expensive is that for the most part it’s worth it. From a quick Google, the difference in lifetime earnings between a high school and a college degree is anywhere from $800 k to over $1 million or more.
So if I were to give you a million dollars over your lifetime in exchange for $200k and 4 years of your time, wouldn’t that be worth it?
I’ll take your word for it; it’s not the sort of consulting I do. But when there are more supposedly best and brightest from the top schools, competitors can also higher those folks and offer their services. I would expect a typically supply/demand adjustment. But maybe not.
I would, but more because of the sort of work I’m interested in. That’s what, a 5.5% annual return over 30 years, not counting lost wages?* That’s a range with competing investment opportunities. And of course it also doesn’t follow that any given person will necessarily see that much gain, as the college and non-college populations are different in many ways. Just like someone who goes to a better school will not necessarily earn more money.
*Obviously they don’t make YMMVs big enough here. We can play with the numbers if people are curious.
Every college offers work-study programs. Most colleges (and especially universities) don’t limit enrollment to 1,500, however, so there are far more students than jobs.
Awesome that someone beat me to the time value of money. The comparison can look uglier if you factor in financing part of the cost via student loans. Interest will chew up the expected return (which still involves risk.)
Yes but none like College of the Ozarks where one could actually go 4 years without paying anything.
I think also the COTO model also begs a question of how college expenses could be cut, drastically, really big time, by having students do so many of the jobs which would require paid staff and along with that - health insurance, pension, benefits, workmans comp…
Imagine - no janitors, no lawncare staff, no paid staff in registration, no secretaries, few paid computer techs, etc… and then the idea of income producing businesses run by students.
Work-study program employees (and COTO students) are employees and still entitled to workers’ compensation benefits and subject to the ACA employer mandate.
Anyway, having a bunch of part time entry-level employees is generally not cheaper than having a smaller bunch of full-time employees. You save some money on employee benefits but the costs are more than offset by doubling the amount of time you spend training employees, providing double the work stations and so on. These problems are multiplied exponentially when you get to the supervisory/managerial roles.
Or separate job training and college education. Completely. Instead of aspiring software developers being expected to earn a BS in Computer Science, they would be expected to earn a bachelor’s degree in anything and also complete software developer job training (or pass a competency exam). Junior developer positions could require only the job training component, allowing aspirants to jump more quickly into a position that paid a living, but perhaps not extravagant, wage. Mid-level engineers and especially senior-level engineers would be expected to also have the liberal-arts education that would help them see beyond the box and look at the big world picture of what they are accomplishing.
But the advantage would be that by allowing initial hiring to be based on job training, you get people into jobs that can support them as they finish their academic, liberal arts education.
Some job training programs might require the liberal-arts education beforehand, especially for more complex jobs. So maybe you will need to already have a degree before beginning physician training or attorney training. But the linkages of these professions with inherent “professional” degrees would be set aside. Do you have the skills to be a doctor, or do you lack those skills?
Medical programs fund everything else, because U of T runs a chain of hospitals. I don’t think it’s accurate to say the medical schools themselves are funding the rest.