University

Is it still worth going to university, financially? University Minister David Willetts says the mean value of a degree is £100,000. That’s the average extra money a graduate will earn in their lifetime, compared with people who left school at 18.

This kind of logic is always suspicious. A statistical link between two things doesn’t mean one caused the other. As Stuart Sutherland wrote in Irrationality:

“The Thatcher government, anxious to reduce subsidies to students, repeatedly claimed that going to university increases earning power. It cannot be denied that graduates do on average earn more than others, but there is no good reason for regarding this as cause and effect. After all, university students have higher than average IQs, and they may be more determined than others; moreover, their parents tend to have good positions and to be middle or upper class so that they can often help their children to obtain good jobs.

“These factors are surely enough to account for higher earnings.The causal association between a university education and higher pay later in life is therefore not proven and the repeated assertion of this connection by British Ministers of Education demonstrate only that the British education system has not succeeded in teaching them how to think.”

It would take a cruel scientist to get reliable data on the true money value of university. He’d have to take hundreds of sets of identical twins, and randomly choose one from each pair to go to university. The other would be sent to get a job after their A-levels. By following the twins throughout their lives, one might get a good estimate of the ‘graduate premium’.

Thankfully, this study will never happen. This does mean, though, we’ll be left with no real clue as to the cash value of a degree.

Of course, some degrees are more valuable than others. A joint honours degree in two unconnected subjects seems particularly useless. Anyone for Derby Uni’s course in Dance & Movement Studies with Architectural Design? Law with Zoology? Criminology with Popular Music Production?