Not long ago, the Duke Trinity Class of 2006 held its 10-year reunion. It’s hard to believe it’s been that long since I graduated. I wasn’t able to attend the event, since I was working abroad, but I thought it was a good opportunity to reflect on where life has taken me in this decade, and particularly on the ROI of my Duke education.
So where am I, ten years on? Here’s a breakdown of what I invested in my Duke degree, and what I earned as a result of it.
Educational investment: approx. $200,000 (4 years * $50,000 / year)
Total pre-tax earnings from first lab job (summer job while attending Duke): $4160 (13 weeks * 40 hours/week * $8/hour)
Second lab job (a summer job at Duke, which got extended): $23,400 (1.5 years * 52 weeks = 78 weeks * 30 hrs. / week (avg.) * $10/hour avg.)
Third lab job (also while still an undergrad) – Jan-Apr 2005: $2720 (17 weeks * 20 hours/week * $8/hour)
Fourth lab job (the only research position I was ever able to find after graduating): $19,829 (8 / 12 months * $29,744 annual salary)
Total pre-tax income earned: $50,109
Approximate after-tax income, assuming 20% tax: $40,087
Total ROI (after-tax income minus cost of education): -$159,913
ROI per year: -$39,978 (-$159,913 / 4 years in industry)
That’s one hell of a figure, and sadly, it’s unlikely it will ever change. Mind you, these are not my total earnings over that period, but I’ve excluded jobs which had nothing to do with my degree, like waiting tables and delivering pizzas. In fact, pizza delivery paid about as much as my highest-paying lab position, and constituted a very large part of my income for a couple of years.
Fortunately, I decided to change industries back in 2010, following an extended bout of unemployment. I went back to school, got a 2-year Associate’s Degree in Computer science from a community college, and I now work as a software consultant. Here’s what my ROI looks like for my second degree:
Educational investment: approx. $5000 (2 years * $2500 / year)
First programming job: $6,667 (2 / 12 months * $40,000 / year)
Second job: $23,025 (6 / 12 months * $46,050 / year)
Third job (current job): $400,000 (4 years * approx. $100,000 / year)
Total income earned (pre-tax): $429,692
Approx. after-tax income, assuming 30% tax: $300,784
Total ROI (after-tax income minus cost of education): +$295,784
ROI per year: +$59,156 ($295,784 / 5 years in industry thus far).
Now, that’s more like it.
As of now, I’ve spent roughly equal amounts of time working as a genetics researcher and a software developer. In the research industry, I had the advantage of getting started professionally while I was still an undergrad, and had three summer jobs under my belt by the time I graduated from Duke. At the time, I figured this would ensure I’d land a good job post-graduation, but in reality, it did little for my employment opportunities. From 2006, when I graduated, to 2010, when I formally abandoned the research industry, I spent most of my time unemployed, underemployed, and working side jobs (like pizza delivery) to supplement my income.
In computer science, by contrast, I attended a school with little name recognition, and didn’t have the benefit of summer jobs to pad my resume before graduating. I also had only a 2-year degree in CS, compared to a 4-year degree in biology. I figured I’d be up against some serious challenges, and I was fully expecting that I’d need to re-enroll to finish a second bachelor’s degree in CS before I’d find a decent position. Fortunately, this was a non-issue: I was hired straightaway, and although the first couple jobs were fairly short-lived and didn’t pay particularly well, I soon landed a position at a Silicon Valley firm with high pay scales, good benefits, and ample job security, and I’ve remained there to this day.
So what’s to take away from all this? That what matters most is what you study, not where you study it. I realize this is hardly a new message on this blog, but it helps to put some hard figures on the table as proof of what works and what doesn’t. For me, at least, a minimal investment in the right field paid for itself many times over, while a much larger investment in the wrong field never paid off, and ten years on, still remains a huge loss.
As I see it, I’m not only $160,000 poorer for having attended a private university; I’ve actually lost an additional $100,000 per year by not getting into the right industry earlier on. In hind sight, had I studied CS at a state school as my first degree, I not only would have reduced my educational costs by at least $150,000, but I would also would have entered into the software industry in 2006, rather than 2011. Had I done that, I’d probably be around $600K wealthier, and I wouldn’t have the trail of bitter memories, either.
Then again, what’s done is done. Today, I’m grateful that I’ve finally found a good line of work, but still, no thanks to my private education.
Interesting ROI on your education in two different schools. You suffered setbacks initially, but now you have rebounded nicely.
How is the quality of instructions in the community college you got your software associate’s degree from compared to Duke? What about networking opportunities?
Compared to Duke, overall I’d say the community college courses were less well structured, and the quality and consistency of teaching was not as good. A lot of the exercises we did weren’t very challenging, but we still covered a lot of core programming concepts. It was enough to get me through job interviews and land me my first programming position.
I can’t really compare the CS curriculum to Duke’s CS courses, since I didn’t take any there. The Duke grads I know who studied computer science have all done well for themselves, but not necessarily any better than I’ve done with a community college degree.
Very reminiscent of mine and many of my classmates experience from UChicago…but people go to Uchicago ‘learn to learn’ and to go to ‘grad school’ NOt for the average ~60k salary!
What a joke
I’ve read a few pages on this blog and have come to the belief that the writer is a bit delusional. First of all, he didn’t attend an Ivy League, yet he’s berating them.
Second, he chose his school because of the pre-med program, but didn’t decide to go to medical school. I’d bet if he actually did go to medical school, this blog wouldn’t exist to complain about his wages.
Instead with his bachelor’s degree he apparently thought he would easily become a high paid scientific researcher at a lab without a graduate degree. High paid scientific researchers at labs will generally hold a graduate degree. Either that, or expect to spend some time seriously proving yourself rather than expecting it handed out on a silver platter right after graduating college. If he really was a top-level researcher in the field, this shouldn’t have been a problem.
The writer didn’t follow through on what he needed to reach his goals. I am just stunned by how the writer can keep a straight face and try to place blame elsewhere on what happened to him. Of course different positions pay differently. Everyone knows that. The writer is delusional.
Am I delusional? Not anymore, thanks to a dose of hard reality. But was I at 18? Absolutely, insofar as I thought my school was something it wasn’t. But this wasn’t a delusion of my own invention — it was a delusion I inherited from my parents, my peers, the media. A delusion that tens of thousands of students buy into every year when they apply for a top-tier private undergrad experience that costs a fortune most don’t have, and may never make back… believing all the while that it’s a safe bet. It’s the dream that if they can just get into Harvard, or Stanford, or, yes, even Duke, that they will be able to pave their way. That the school will guide them, foster them, nurture their gifts and aid them to become more competent adults and make the most of their talents.
Be grateful that you haven’t been subjected to this delusion yourself.
Because that isn’t really what happens, at least not very consistently. My experience was far more lackluster than what I was led to believe and was too young and naive to call bullshit on, and I was left out in the cold at the end, broke and unemployed. I will not apologize for that, and I will not apologize for expecting more of my school. And you might think it presumptuous of me to comment on other universities, but I’ve spoken to enough students from various schools to know that this isn’t a phenomenon that’s confined to Duke or any university in particular.
And yes, I know Duke’s not an Ivy. I use “Ivy” loosely (let’s call it artistic license) to refer to top-tier private universities in general, and I use it only for lack of an alternative, equally concise term. In any case, I’ve spent summer programs at actual Ivies, and I come from an Ivy family (father – Yale and Columbia, grandfather – Yale) so I know the score. Yale and MIT admitted me alongside Duke. I’m not writing this blog in a vacuum of ignorance.
Regarding ROI and financial expectations, I think you’ve proven my point without realizing it. Yeah, I was pre-med and chose not to attend med school in the end. But so what? Ask yourself, on a general level: What would you expect from a $200,000 education? To graduate with no practical skills, no chance of finding even a reasonably decent job, and no useful guidance from your academic or career counselors? To be forced to stay in / go back to school to make ends meet? Wouldn’t you feel like you’d been raked over the coals if your bachelor’s degree wasn’t worth something on its own? Or would you say, “Nah, it’s alright, I figured my bachelor’s would be useless. I just need to spend another 6 years here. I’ve got another $200K lying around, anyway”?
I am going to Duke in the fall class of 2022. I keep praying God gives me health and if so then I feel like the Duke degree for me will go to great use because I want to do engineering and I am really passionate in even continuing with graduate school engineering management. I believe it will be worth it as it has been for many people. I am sorry to say but you have not shown that you were in any way passionate about Biology, the bachelor degree you got. Usually a bachelor in biology or chemistry or biochemistry ends up taking medicine at the graduate level. I don’t get how you could have expected to get a high-paying Lab job, when in reality you went to one of the best Pre-med schools in the country and for that reason, you should have continued to pursue medicine. You didn’t see the value in your degree and the material you were learning because you had no end goal in mind and you were just forcing yourself in a wrong path. There are so many successful medical students who graduated from Top Universities, but obviously they had an end goal in mind and worked hard to achieve it and make it a reality. It seems as if you are just blaming the university while you had chosen the wrong path for yourself, something that can happen at any university in the world, yet you choose to put full blame on Duke. The Lab jobs are now even left for interns and volunteers so how were you expecting to make a lot of money as a Lab researcher with a bachelor degree. That was not a lucrative option and if you were looking to make money, then you should’ve at least chosen another bachelor degree that is more lucrative.
There are also many students who graduate from the IVY League and go on to be great because they used the education to their advantage and had taken the right bachelor courses to be successful in their careers. I think you are making an effort to not see that you are at fault for not using the education you had received to your advantage.
You make some fair points, but here are a few thoughts in response.
“you have not shown that you were in any way passionate about Biology” – actually I was, up to a point. I always had an interest in life sciences, but I didn’t find the coursework worthwhile at Duke. And I did originally intend to become a doctor, but after shadowing a cardiologist at Duke Medical Center, I did some hard thinking and decided medicine wasn’t for me. Unfortunately, by that point I was halfway through my third year, and it wasn’t financially viable to change majors, as I would have needed extra time to finish.
“you had no end goal in mind and you were just forcing yourself in a wrong path” – in hindsight, this was indeed true, but I didn’t see it while I was busy with my studies. This is a problem for many students, who either aren’t sure what they want to pursue when they enroll, or else change their mind partway through, perhaps realizing the degree or career they intended to pursue isn’t what they imagined. If the degree you end up with isn’t worth anything on its own, then it’s hard to justify taking such a huge financial hit, and that’s part of the problem with private universities – unless there’s a near-guaranteed ROI, it’s a massive gamble. I’m not trying to dodge responsibility for my decisions, but rather to point out that unless you know exactly what you want and are absolutely certain you’ll follow through, AND you make the right predictions about the value of the degree from the university where you matriculate, then it’s a huge risk, and one many students may not realize they’re taking.
“you had chosen the wrong path for yourself, something that can happen at any university in the world” – agreed, but this again underscores the risk of private education and the costs associated with it. I could well have made the same mistake at a state university, but it would have been a far cheaper mistake, and I’d have had a much easier time recovering from it. My intent is not to say that Duke is a bad school, but rather that there are many things which can go wrong along the way, and if you’re one of the unlucky ones who ends up in such a situation, you risk finding yourself under a mountain of debt in the process.
“how were you expecting to make a lot of money as a Lab researcher with a bachelor degree. That was not a lucrative option and if you were looking to make money, then you should’ve at least chosen another bachelor degree” – I didn’t expect to make a lot of money necessarily, but I hoped I’d at least be able to build a career of some kind. But after watching multiple labs go under due to funding cuts and seeing PhDs out of work, I realized even grad school wasn’t a particularly safe option with biology. So I agree with you, I should have chosen another major, and it’s hard to see the value in a biology major from any school… as they say, hindsight is 20/20, but I didn’t foresee these oncoming problems at the time. And I never got an inkling of the potential risk of a bio degree by itself from any of my advisors, who mainly encouraged me simply to take courses I enjoyed. Bad advising is of course something that can happen at any university, but I tend to expect a more useful insight from a school where the price tag is so high. I’ve been told that it’s unreasonable to have your future laid out on a silver platter, but the experience comes at a price that would justify such an expectation.
“There are also many students who graduate from the IVY League and go on to be great” – absolutely, but not everyone is so lucky. When all the pieces fit, things work out fabulously. But then, things can also go very well with a state school diploma, which I’ve learned from meeting many wealthy professionals who attended schools I’ve hardly heard of. This is a lot of what I’ve tried (maybe unsuccessfully) to convey on this blog – in broad terms, it matters far more what you study, not where you study it (of course there are exceptions, but exceptions don’t define the rule). And if you’re not absolutely 100% sure of what you want to study or pursue as a career, or you realize at some point that what you chose was a mistake, then it might be a bad idea to opt for a costly private university, no matter how prestigious.
As you’ve chosen to attend Duke, I will only wish you the best of luck, and hope that your experience turns out better than mine. 🙂
How can you still keep up this blog? I understand that you’re still reeling from the debt from Duke but investing this much time into a project based from bitterness makes little sense to me. Ultimately you’re responsible for what you do in college. Currently attending a Top-20 school on a full ride and I’m grateful that any mistakes I make now won’t be made worse by debt. I’m sorry about your position but I’m confused by your refusal to move on.
Hi Lola, to be honest it doesn’t take much to maintain the blog, only a trivial annual fee for the domain name. I don’t write much anymore, but I’ve opted to leave it up as a reminder to others of just how destructive this type of educational track can be. If I’m bitter, it’s only because it’s caused lasting, irreversible damage to my life. My academic upbringing, first imposed by my helicopter parents and then reinforced by one professor and advisor after another, warped my perspective on the world outside academia, filled me head with delusions about the value of my degree, and left me with no practical skills whatsoever, in spite of studying the sciences.
I’ve had to spend years un-learning these ideas and habits in an effort to better myself and get my life on a positive trajectory. And I’ve succeeded, but the opportunity cost has been enormous, and the sacrifice of time tremendous. Because of it, I will never achieve my full potential, and I think it’s important to highlight to others that this supposedly amazing, wonderful experience can in fact be hugely counterproductive.
Regarding “moving on”: it’s indeed important to move past bad experiences, but on the same token it’d be silly to bury such experiences from public view when the debt bubble is still growing so explosively, and when more students and parents than ever before are enthusiastically chasing precisely the experience that ruined my adolescence and the better part of my twenties. They think they’re doing the best for themselves and their children; I’m here to say, that probably isn’t the case. There are many out there suffering because of it, but few are as vocal as I am. My situation is nowhere near as bad as for some of my former classmates.
I also maintain the blog as a reminder of how useful a humble public school degree can be. You don’t need to attend an elite school to be a success, and doing so may in fact work against you. I think this is a message worth sharing again and again, particularly in a country which is collectively hooked on debt and which still entertains the idea of a “sure thing” whilst they get conned out of their life savings. American private universities are one of the biggest financial rackets ever perpetrated, and I refuse to be silent on the matter until something is done about it. In fact, I’m seriously considering political activism (i.e. running for office) in pursuit of major educational reforms, as I watch the years pass while the same broken system remains.
I’m happy you got a full ride, and I hope you find some value in your studies. But please be mindful of the practicality of whatever degree you pursue – remember you’re still sacrificing years of your life for whatever degree(s) you pursue, plus whatever pre-college preparatory work you invested in! And please don’t assume that your professors and career advisors, particularly those who have never worked in private industry, are qualified to provide any useful career advice (unless you’re planning to stay in academia yourself). Best of luck to you!