Archives for December 2013

Three Reasons a Degree is Important

“Is a College Degree Worth It?” There are three important reasons the answer is almost always Yes.

A degree is a credential, it communicates important information to the external world. The first reason credentials are important is because employers screen and select new employees based on the credential. Automated resume screening software screens job candidates before an interview. The second reason is one we have explored before. On average, each progression of  accredited degree (Associate’s, Bachelor’s, Master’s, Professional/Ph.D.) produces more life time income than the degree immediately below it. This is true even though some associate’s degrees produce higher income than some bachelor’s degrees.  The third important reason has to do with the motivation of the learner. This last one is about you – as in Your Future is Calling. This is the reason we will explore in depth here in what I call the lessons of CS50/CS50x at Harvard University.

Buzz TodaySource:  David J. Malan CS50 blog: I am a Senior Lecturer on Computer Science at Harvard University I received my A.B., S.M., and Ph.D. in Computer Science from the same in 1999, 2004, and 2007, respectively. I teach Harvard College’s introductory course, Computer Science 50 otherwise known as CS50. In October 2012 Harvard launched a MOOC called CS50x. 150,349 students registered to take the course online. 1,388 or .9% of the original registrants received a certificate of completion for taking the course.

The data in the BUZZ Today documents the level of completion of the MOOC number CS50x offered starting in October, 2012 from Harvard University. The percentage of enrollment that received a certificate of completion was .9%. CS50 is the core course offered on the Harvard campus to students enrolled in degree seeking programs at this prestigious University. During the fall of 2012 there were 706 Harvard students enrolled in CS50. Of those 706 originally enrolled, 703 or 99.6% completed the course.

With so many nines floating around it may be confusing. The results for completion are .9% vs. 99.6%. Just to be totally clear, this is something under one percent vs. nearly one hundred percent for the same course from the most famous University in America. What does it mean?

Clearly it is not about the commonly referenced issues of course content, college reputation, faculty status/capability or time of the year. It is the same course, the same university at the same time. I will assert that what is different is the student doing the learning and more specifically the motivation of the students enrolled in the MOOC CS50x versus the motivation of the on campus student enrolled in CS50.

Here is the specific conclusion relative to the headline that the degree is important. The most important distinction between the students enrolled in CS50x, the online MOOC and CS50, the Harvard University campus course, is that all of the students on campus were students enrolled in a degree program. They were degree seeking students. In contrast, none of the students enrolled in CS50x, the online MOOC were degree seeking students. CS50x does not award college credit. By design, completion of CS50x online does not qualify for credit toward an accredited degree. There is one other important distinction between CS50x and CS50. The campus based CS50 students actually paid thousands of dollars of tuition to be enrolled while the CS50x MOOC students enrolled for free.

So the key comparisons are:

CS50x – Free MOOCM .9% completion
CS50 – Tuition paying and degree seeking 99.6% completion

This is the same course from the same institution taught by the same faculty member. One is online and one is on campus. All of those who enrolled in CS50x knew it was online before they registered.

It’s clearly not about the cost, the content, the fame of the faculty member, nor the reputation of the institution. These are all factors frequently cited as differentiators. I assert that it isn’t even about the quality of the students attending even though Harvard’s highly selective admission policies are designed to assure high quality students. On a pure random basis, with 150,349 registrations for a Harvard course there had to be tens of thousands with the intellectual capacity of those attending CS50 on the Harvard campus.

There is only one defensible inference to be drawn from this gigantic .9% vs. 99.6% gap. The implication has to be that the campus based students were motivated to complete while the online CS50x students had no comparable compelling purpose to complete the course. The investment of the campus students represented a step toward an important credential – in this case, an accredited Harvard University degree. For the online MOOC students this was just another course out of thousands available.

And it is with this evidence that I share the third important reason for earning a degree.  This third reason is about you, the learner. The credential, that is, the degree itself is a powerful motivator to do the work to learn and prosper from the effort.

Oh, by the way, I think this data has important implications for the outlook of MOOCs as the disruptive force in higher education. I will let you draw your own inferences about this issue. My belief is that MOOCs as they are constituted today will not displace the higher education as we know it.

Five Things College Freshmen and Their Parents Need to Know

Increasingly college freshmen are enrolling in majors that do not fulfill their personal passions because they think it is more important to have a high paying career. That is a mistake. This choice is not an either or. Both the freshman and the parents should be doing everything they can to have both. It’s possible. Your Future is Calling gives you a clear road map to follow.

Buzz TodaySource: Bureau of Labor Statistics” Number of Jobs Held…Results From a Longitudinal Survey”: The average person born in the latter years of the baby boom (1957 – 1964) held 11.3 jobs from age 18 to 46, according to the U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The survey was of 9,964 men and women who were ages 14 to 22 when first interviewed in 1979 and ages 45 to 53 when interviewed most recently in 2010 – 2011. Both high school and college graduates were included in the research.

Here are the five things college freshmen and their parents need to know.

#1 College is often viewed as the place where our sons and daughters go to “find themselves”. This a part of the mission of our colleges and universities and it should be. But the truth is that many of us spend most of our lives trying to “find ourselves”. There are scientific ways to help the freshman accelerate this personal development, to help they find out “who they are”. Among online instruments I recommend these in particular: O*NET Interest ProfilerStrong Interest Inventory, the Gallup SF-34 Strengths Finder and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator All of these personal assessments can be done online for less than $100 (O*NET Profiler is free). They are well worth the investment of the freshman’s time and money.

#2 College freshmen are faced with many complex decisions as they set the course for their life. Many of those decisions, including immediate ones like the university they decide to attend, the major(s) they study and the careers they ultimately go into depend on “who they are”. It is one of the most important things they (and their parents) need to know to make good decisions.

#3 In college, and in careers after graduation, the freshman will compete against others and some will make better decisions because they have a good idea about “who they are” from the start. Your freshman needs to have every possible advantage in these life competitions.

#4 Career choices are important to consider early in the education process. Earning power is strongly related to the career chosen and there are lots of sources of excellent data that shows exactly what various careers pay. Three I recommend on this important topic include: O*NET, Occupational Employment Statistics from the U.S. Department of Labor and for California residents interested in a community college, there is the very detailed Salary Surfer.

#5 Many freshmen start out with majors that do not lead to good career choices. It is what I call the Major – Major – Major decision. This costs time and can lead to huge student debt. It is important to consider the choice of college major as the first step in the life career decisions. The earlier the freshman can know about what motivates them the better will be the education choices.

The bottom line is that the freshman year is the first big step to the life of an adult in our society. Cost, quality, the college of choice, the major are all important decisions for the freshman. It is not easy. The press is telling the story about today’s college experience. Business Week reported: “Stress Takes Its Toll on College Students”

But even with all of these factors one thing is very clear. The freshman will live every day of their life with “who they are”. What science tells us is that this does not fundamentally change over the course of an entire lifetime. We are who we are. On the other hand, what the BUZZ Today clearly tells us is that the freshman will change jobs – many times. What the freshman has to get right is knowing what motivates them, not how they can make the most money possible in their first job after graduation.

What You Need for Upward Social Mobility – An Education

Upward social mobility in America is definitely harder but it is not dead.  What you need to do is get an education to have the best chance at a better life.  Here is the evidence that should motivate you to get that education.  Buzz TodaySource:  New York Times An American child born into the lowest 20 percent income level has a less than a 1 in 20 chance of making it to the top, as Mr. Obama pointed out.  But one born in the top 20 percent has a 2 in 3 chance of staying there.  Source: New York Times: Further, more people express uncertainty in chance to achieve the American dream: a majority believe that the American Dream is becoming markedly more elusive.  More than six in ten workers worry that they will lose their jobs because of the economy.  Less than half of Americans expect to move up in their economic class over the next few years.

While the hope of upward mobility is getting pummeled by the bickering politicians in Washington, the reality is that social mobility is still possible.  What it requires is for you, the individual, to take action rather than waiting for policy makers to do their job. Getting an education is the most  important investment you can make in yourself.

Source:  Federal Reserve Board of San Francisco:   “Economic mobility, or the ability of individuals to move up or down the income distribution, is a fundamental value in the United States, one that defines the American dream.  Absolute mobility (adults who have higher income than their parents did) is 67%.  Absolute mobility is greatest for those in the lowest quintile. 83% of those in the lowest birth quintile had larger adult incomes than their parents did.  These results show that most Americans are able to achieve the American Dream in the sense that their income is greater than that of their parents.”

But the most important information about the impact of education on social mobility is deeper in the Federal Reserve report under the heading relative mobility.  “Relative Mobility is the extent to which individuals can change rank in the income distribution relative to their parents.  Here, only 5% of children born into the bottom quintile (the one in twenty the president refers to in the New York Times BUZZ Today article) who didn’t graduate from college end up in the top quintile.  By contrast, 30% of bottom-quintile children who graduate rise all the way to the top quintile.  But only 7% of those born to parents in the bottom quintile get a college degree.”

The implications are clear.  Without a college degree moving out of the bottom quintile is nearly impossible. With a degree, a relatively large percentage (30%) who graduated actually move from the bottom to the top quintile of the income distribution.  Just to put this in perspective, 33% of those born in the top quintile actually fall down out of that quintile.  Social mobility is alive both moving up and moving down.

To move up it is clear that a college education is key.  Which major you select, where you go to school and how you reduce your costs are all important. See Your Future is Calling for details on how to manage these.

Just to show that it is actually happening, here is data from California tax records that show how tens of thousands of Californians actually moved up by getting an associates degree in the California Community College system where resident tuition is less than $1,200 per semester and an associates degree costs less than $6,000 in total tuition.

Here is why selecting your major is so important and what is possible when you make good choices.

Source:     California Community College office of the Chancellor

Income (annual)

Associate graduate                    2 years before     2 years after      5 years after

Forensics and Investigation                $12,501                   $24,313                  $43,806

Home Services                                        $17,115                    $27,160                  $36,531

Police academy                                      $23,972                   $54,154                  $70,520

Cardiovascular Tech                             $12,298                   $62,211                  $71,841

Physicians Assistant                              $15,163                   $70,068                 $95,727

Dental Hygienist                                    $16,130                   $63,750                 $62,507

Pharmacy Tech                                      $11,838                    $32,592                $39,160

Registered Nurse                                  $17,072                    $67,618                 $78,801

Physics, general                                    $10,969                    $27,308                $56,618

Automotive Tech                                  $12,746                    $35,675                 $41,023

Biomedical Tech                                   $12,695                   $44,562                 $55,673

The comparison of the income in the left column with the income in the right column is strong evidence of significant upward mobility as a result of very affordable education.  The left column (where they started) is every bit as important to this conversation as the salaries in the right column.  But there are no guarantees as in “Is College Worth It?”  The following data shows the importance of making wise choices when it comes to selecting you major and the career that follows.

Journalism                                             $14,664                    $25,672                 $17,347

Cosmetology                                           $14,970                    $20,354                 $18,662

Applied Photography                            $16,561                     $16,270                 $22,011

Child Development Admin                 $14,308                    $20,489                 $17,573

Film Production                                     $ 7,800                     $16,032                $10,931

These graduates started in the same place as those in the top half of the table but they ended up with very different results.  The conclusion is that upward mobility from a low starting point is highly possible with the right education.  But it’s not automatic.  There are no guarantees.  You must be informed and select your career and major wisely.