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Is Higher Education Worth it?

Writer's picture: Mishkat BhattacharyaMishkat Bhattacharya

This is a big and debated question, what with rising costs of education in several countries (parents often ask me about the ROI* for sending their children to college in the US), counter examples like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs who were hugely successful (in some sense) in spite of having dropped out of college, and people like Elon Musk saying that there is no need to have a college degree.


I'm going to consider higher education from the postdoctoral degree downwards till college, so we know what lies ahead for every level. My discussion will be physics-biased, since that is what I am limited to by my experience.


Postdoctoral degree


This degree applies to disciplines like STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, Computer Science and Healthcare), though my experience is limited to a specific subfield of physics.


What is the use of a postdoc degree?


The disciplines mentioned above often require such a degree; in a quarter century of academic experience I have only heard of one or two physicists who were hired into faculty positions without any postdoctoral experience. Some of this is due to the recognition that the PhD, which precedes postdoctoral experience, is a training degree, and the individual needs to demonstrate that they can perform research at another place, independently of their advisor, and perhaps even in a slightly different field.


Some of it, especially the lengthening of the postdoctoral years (to about 6 across all fields in physics) is due to supply-and-demand economics. Every year there are a couple thousand physics PhDs produced in the United States. Partly due to the the fact that there is no mandated retirement age for academics in the US, this demand cannot be accommodated (when I complained to one of my professors around 2010 that the academic job market was bad, he remarked wryly that it had been bad since 1970). So people keep doing postdocs, or eventually seek non-academic jobs.


The postdoctoral experience can help convince even the non-academic employer that the candidate can function independently (the years are counted as leadership experience) and sometimes commands a higher salary than the fresh PhD (but sometimes not).


Doctoral degree


Why get a PhD ? The years are long and exhausting (a Dean once told me when I was a grad student that the PhD is awarded for stamina), the pay is low (essentially half a decade or more of lost income), and the job market very tight (at least for academic positions).


Of course, this degree is unavoidable for those who have set their aims on becoming academic researchers. I know of only one physics professor in the recent past who did not have a PhD, and he was a mathematical prodigy (Freeman Dyson).


A doctoral degree is required or preferred for many positions even in industry. PhD-degree-holders are usually better paid compared to workers with a lower level of education. I often encounter physicists with masters degrees returning to academia from industry to obtain their doctorates, to become eligible for promotion possibilities, such as being a team leader.


Of course there are other professions that require degrees in higher education: law school typically takes three years after college in the US; medicine four years of medical school, one year of internship, and at least three years of residency (whew).


College degree


Generally speaking, college education is a good ROI; specifically though, the outcome depends on the details. For example, STEM degrees tend to attract higher salaries as compared to liberal arts. Again, generally college graduates earn more and have lower unemployment rates than those who only have a high school diploma.


In the US the cost of undergraduate education can total up to low hundreds of thousands of dollars. Those who take loans to pay for college take so long to pay it off that the ROI shows up only after they have worked about 15 years (!). Again, this number varies by discipline.


College is pretty much unavoidable for those who wish to proceed to graduate school. There are, however, a number of students who avoid college (other than famous dropouts like the ones listed above). These may have family business they can find employment with directly; or prefer to go to trade school which gives them a diploma in less than two years (electricians, plumbers, chefs, etc do this).


In general, college provides a much broader education and more career options. In the US, though, it is very expensive.



*Return On Investment






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