Is Higher Education worth it?

That's a good topic to debate on. The infographic does apply to India and the answer to the question whether it's worth it is "if it fulfils your expectations". That might be the most generic sounding answer but that's how I see it. Is my Mac worth Rs. 91,000? Does it give me a return on investment to my expectations?

In fact, event the undergraduate engineering degree isn't worth it for most of us. I see that the colleges that had the same infrastructure in my days (about a decade ago) as they have now have ramped up their fees by at least 10-20x. Why? Because they can!

The PG scene is no different. Thanks to the general perception that a higher degree would mean a higher position in the jobs than your batch-mates and a higher salary than them would continue to drive admissions in these colleges. Ultimately, as I see, no one is really interested in the 'education' part of it than the 'certificate' they give you at the end.

I've known people who'd go for MBA because they didn't get selected in campus placements and couldn't spot any walk-in. That's how it is!

I personally believe one should invest in the right kind of education - but the industry has to prepare for it as well. If you want a job in an IT company; why not spend Rs. 1 lakh on educating yourself over a period of 1 year on the right programming languages? Because once you enter the IT industry - they will make you unlearn everything for 3 months and teach you what they need.

My MBA friends don't really do any 'management' per se. All they told me is that some mastery over Excel, Powerpoint & Outlook - and they're good to go. The MBA degree was just an easy entry for them to the job world.

MBA immediately after graduation is useless - MBA fresher managers more so. But if your role demands it (Manager and above need to understand the financials of a company to be effective), MBA is worth it's price.

To understand the financials of a company, you can always do some basic course in finance (from one of the MOOC's offered ... Udemy, Coursera, Lore, Classle .. have ample such courses for free).

Why bother paying so much and get negligible returns?

Disclaimer - I am an MBA PGDM myself, and I am playing the Devil's Advocate

Why bother paying so much and get negligible returns?

Simply because it's less time consuming if somebody teaches you than when you learn on your own. If access to information were a criteria, a librarian would be a scientist!!! (not belittling Einstein though - he was a patent clerk!)

So the question is, is the formal structure of imbibing the information presented deserve the premium that is being charged today?

It all depends, I would say. Currently in India, education system is NOT at all good. With my UG & PG engineering experiences, I can say that, except few top colleges, most of all colleges are really suck.