I think ‘go to grad school’ may be treated too harshly here. In particular
(NoahK) Also, for most readers I imagine that career capital is their most important asset. A consequence of AGI is that discount rates should be high and you can’t necessarily rely on having a long career. So people who are on the margin of e.g. attending grad school should definitely avoid it.
but then,
(Zvi) Career capital is one form of human capital or social capital. Broadly construed, such assets are indeed a large portion of most people’s portfolios. I’d rather be ‘rich’ in the sense of having my reputation, connections, family and skills than ‘rich’ in the sense of having my investment portfolio, in every possible sense. This is one reason not to obsess too much about your exact portfolio configuration per se, and worry more about building the right human and social capital instead.
(which point gets broadly acknowledged in the conversation.)
I think ‘grad school’ is getting treated as ‘place to get skills which will pay off financially later’, where the above analysis makes sense (skills-derived-income-later should be discounted somewhat). This also makes sense in the context of this conversation, which is mostly about wealth stuff. But grad school is also
place to meet talented, motivated, well-connected people (‘human capital’ lol!)
time period to do potentially-impactful research
affiliation to gain immediate and future credibility (‘career capital’?)
...?
On these grounds it plays pretty nicely for the right sort of person and place. (Having joined Oxford ~1yr ago I can already speak positively about these three factors.)
Grad school presumably also has a somewhat funding-dependent analysis, like, it’s probably bad to go into a bunch of debt to go to grad school. In my case, I’m ‘funded’ but since I came from a very high tech salary, it’s effectively a quite obscene paycut (and one which I may yet regret on a personal level).
I think ‘go to grad school’ may be treated too harshly here. In particular
but then,
(which point gets broadly acknowledged in the conversation.)
I think ‘grad school’ is getting treated as ‘place to get skills which will pay off financially later’, where the above analysis makes sense (skills-derived-income-later should be discounted somewhat). This also makes sense in the context of this conversation, which is mostly about wealth stuff. But grad school is also
place to meet talented, motivated, well-connected people (‘human capital’ lol!)
time period to do potentially-impactful research
affiliation to gain immediate and future credibility (‘career capital’?)
...?
On these grounds it plays pretty nicely for the right sort of person and place. (Having joined Oxford ~1yr ago I can already speak positively about these three factors.)
Grad school presumably also has a somewhat funding-dependent analysis, like, it’s probably bad to go into a bunch of debt to go to grad school. In my case, I’m ‘funded’ but since I came from a very high tech salary, it’s effectively a quite obscene paycut (and one which I may yet regret on a personal level).