I’ll move my thoughts from the comments to the post regarding whether it’s worth pursuing a full 4-5 year degree at an American university at roughly 30 years old to earn more. I’m curious about your opinions, and maybe this will be useful to someone.
[UPDATE: someone correctly noted in the comments that one could go straight to a Master’s program, which means you could get your degree in 1-2 years. Less investment, divide all figures by 2-3]
I myself would gladly go back to school. The question is about the ROI.
I see two main reasons for obtaining an American education: networking and joining the “university graduates’ club.
Joining the club is useful so that an employer can roughly understand whether it’s worth their time to interview you. If a person has completed 4 years of an American university in person, they can at least speak English fluently, are used to working with deadlines and solving problems on their own, and perhaps can also distinguish what’s important and urgent from what is not, and possibly knows how to get along with people and speak their language. Without a U.S. education, all this might surprisingly differ in an interview, and then what, send them away after just two minutes of talking?
Networking — A typical student interacts with hundreds of people over 4 years who may potentially remember them. Besides, being from the same university as someone else is really cool. A motivated student manages to get noticed by a couple of thousand people, to varying degrees. They will of course collectively forget him, but if reminded, they might pretend to remember.
That’s it, I see no more reasons. Knowledge can be obtained otherwise.
Joining the club is necessary so that you are just considered for an interview as one of a hundred applicants. To pass it, other skills are needed, some of which are indeed obtained at university, although of course, one can learn them without university education too. For example, on the job.
Now about the ROI.
I think that a person post-30 with 10-15 years of experience after obtaining an American education will not see a salary increase sufficient to justify the costs of the education. Plus, by putting a hold on career development, he can certainly lose in “keeping up with the market”. Plus, the employer might decide to hire someone younger and more energetic. Of course, they won’t admit that this was a factor.
(It’s another matter entirely if there’s no job at all and new opportunities are hard to come by. There’s some logic in obtaining further education later in life. Also another matter if you want to be smarter and have the chance to disregard the career and money—day by day, food will come, we’ll figure it out. That’s also a valid reason.)
Here’s my calculation on ROI:
One year of study at a decent university that makes sense to add on top of a “home country’s normal one” (not at community college) costs about $25,000 at a minimum. Add another $5,000 for living and various direct educational expenses. A bachelor’s degree then costs $120,000. Since you can’t fully work while studying on campus, you’ll likely have to say goodbye to at least half-3/4 of your salary, though you’ll surely have some part-time jobs to cover the rest. Let’s assume, the salary of a recent immigrant with 20+ years of experience in the U.S. is around $150K, although I really underestimated that, plus it depends a lot on the location, but for simplicity, let’s stick with it. So, let’s say that’s another $100K per year lost. In total, education will cost nearly $600,000 over four years.
We started from the fact that a person had a $150K salary. He or she gave up 4 years of life and $600,000 to increase it by how much? Suppose this is a 30-year-old programmer. Would the same company hire them in the same position at the same time for a $100K higher salary just because they now have a 4-year bachelor’s degree compared to not having one? I personally doubt it. Would they have been hired for another job where a bachelor’s degree was absolutely necessary? Probably. Would they have been paid $100K more than at the job they had already found? That’s a big question. Let’s say they would have. Then it would take the person another six years to recoup the education costs through this higher salary. So, ten years after deciding “I’ll go study to earn more,” they break even and start earning a profit. Considering that during their studies they could potentially lose touch with the market, it might take more than 10 years. And then see my comment about age.
However, these considerations do not apply to all markets. There are licensed ones where you need specific education. If you don’t have it, you cannot proceed—you have to study. For example, if you have a medical degree from Russia, in the U.S. they won’t even let you stand next to a doctor. You need to obtain education, and fortunately, some universities take into account your existing knowledge (some do). There are many professions like this. I mainly write about IT because that’s all I know.
Hi, I'm Rauf Aliev. 