One of the top players in college basketball this year was Texas freshman Kevin Durant, whose team lost over the weekend. Durant is 6'10", and averaged something like 30 points a game from January on, so the automatic assumption is that he's going to enter the NBA draft, where he would be one of the top couple of picks. Durant has made some comments that suggest he's thinking about coming back next year for another run at the NCAA's.
This has prompted the usual discussion about whether he should stay or go, with the usual suspects taking the usual sides. Some people speak of the wonders of being in college, and the value of an education, and insist that he should stay in school, while others urge him to go right into the draft, and take the flipping great wodges of cash that will come with a high position in the NBA draft.
This is always an interesting debate to watch, because it's so completely artificial, as ordinary people don't usually have that option. For most people with college degrees, the degree is a hard prerequisite for their chosen career, so leaving college early just isn't a viable option. So, most of the discussion about what college players like Durant should do takes place between people who have absolutely no idea what it's like to make that decision.
But let's consider the hypothetical case for someone in science. Imagine you're a college junior, and a giant research company comes to you and says "We're starting a research facility that's going to be the new Bell Labs, and we think you'd be a great fit. We want you to come work for us, and we'll set you up with a lab, generous research funding, and a salary of $100,000 (US) per year, if you skip your final year of college, and come work for us right now. If you don't take the job now, we'll hire you next year, for $75,000 a year."
Would you take it, or would you finish out your college career?
I'm trying to keep the hypothetical offer somewhat realistic, here. In the sports context, people always overplay the risk of injury, but really, there are very few examples of guys who stuck around for an extra year of college, and then suffered an injury that completely destroyed their pro careers, and tehre are plenty of examples of guys who suffered horrific looking injuries who went on to do fine in the pros (Willis McGahee, Kenyon Martin). The real offer isn't "Millions of dollars right now, or nothing a year from now" but "Millions of dollars right now, or millions of dollars in a year or two, barring total disaster."
That's why I didn't go with a bigger salary offer. Obviously, if some zillionaire offered you ten million dollars to leave school and do science, you should take it, ebcause nobody's going to offer you ten million dollars to be a scientist after you graduate. But that's not the offer that top-rank athletes really face-- the money they'd get by going early is within a few factors of two of the money they'd get a year or two later. So, to be fair, the money offered to scientists in the hypothetical should be good, but not outlandish.
It's a hard thing to picture for academic science, of course, because there's a lot of credentialism in academia-- if you don't have a Ph.D., you won't be taken seriously in some fields. That's why it's a Bell Labs sort of scenario-- imagine a job that has all the perks of academia, but is outside the usual academic prestige structure.
It's not a question many of us face directly, so it's a tough call. There is a very rough analogue, though, and that's early graduation. Many of the best college students out there enter with enough AP credits to be able to graduate a term or two early, or a full year early, if they take extra classes for a few semesters. How many of them actually take that deal?
I don't have any numbers on that, but my vague impression is that it's not that common. I've seen a fair number students come through our department who had enough credits to leave school early, and very few of them have actually done it. At somewhat greater remove, my alma mater offers a "3-2 program," where students can earn a Physics BA in three years, and an engineering degree (a BS, I think) in two years at a different institution, but I've heard that only one student has actually done it in the last twenty-odd years. Lots of students come in asking about it, but for the most part, they end up enjoying college enough that when they're faced with the idea of leaving school after three years, they mostly elect to stay.
The students I know who have graduated early mostly had a strong financial incentive to do so-- getting out a year early saves them and their families a year's worth of student loan debt, which is a large sum of money. Financial aid tends to limit the impact of that a bit, but even a good aid package still involves a lot of debt, and some people aren't willing to incur that expense just for another year of hanging out in college.
Of course, you see some of the same thing in sports. This morning on the radio they were running down a list of high-profile players who chose to return to school when they could've come out early, and for the most part, they were people who are financially secure: Grant Hill and Peyton Manning both had fathers who played in the NFL, and Joakim Noah's father is a professional tennis player-- the guys who passed up the draft to do another year in college mostly didn't need the money all that badly. And as I type this, John Elway is on the radio saying that he would adivse his son to stay in college rather than coming out early.
The only possible exceptions I can think of are Tim Duncan and Matt Leinart, and that's mostly because I have no idea what their family backgrounds are like. I don't think either of them is coming from an impoverished background, though.
Leaving early is a lot more common in sports than in elite colleges and universities, just because the financial equation is different. Athletes are more commonly drawn from the economic underclass, and as a result, can't really afford to pass up the big bucks for fun in college. Students at elite private colleges, on the other hand, are more likely to come from more financially secure backgrounds, and thus aren't under the same pressure to start making money right away.
So what would I do, in the hypothetical above? I'm not sure. I had a great time in my senior year in college, and on some level, I wouldn't want to pass that up. But then again, the salary in my hypothetical is more than I'm making now, so...
In the end, I think I'm enough of a squishy academic type (a "liberal arts twink," in Mike Kozlowski's memorable phrase) that I'd probably take my chances with sticking around another year. But the hypothetical above is more money than I'm making now, so...
I think it probably comes down to whether you see education as a means to an end, or an end unto itself. I lean toward the latter, which is why I'm working at a small liberal arts college, so I'd probably stick around. It's not that easy a decision, though.
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Well, since I went to RPI and after my Junior year I was dreading another year of college without any girls around I'd take the offer in a heartbeat. I suspect Mr. Durant doesn't have this problem though.
The real issue for him though isn't just injury, its loss of performance. As you note, he's been playing our of his mind for 3 months and is now going to be #1 or 2 in the NBA draft. And while you are right that the injury situation isn't that common, regression to the mean is. Look at Matt Leinart, if he comes out after his Junior year he almost doubles his #10 salary from the following year. Admittedly the NFL draft salaries are insanely non-linear at the top, and the NBA aren't. Still, Mr. Durant can't get any more money by staying, delays his free agent contract by a year, adds the risk of injury and may leave the zone. I'll be stunned if he stays.
I did that, for a startup company. Paid well for two years and then I went back to grad school. Had to take one or two correspondence courses to finish a college degree.
The opportunity to work with the people at the startup outweighed the benefit of sticking around and finishing a double major.
"had a great time in my senior year in college, and on some level, I wouldn't want to pass that up."
I think this misses a bit of the reality that is college athletics. These guys work for a living in college. Granted this is more true in football than basketball. But a lot of these guys get to their Senior season looking to be done with it. While many of us add on a degree here or there to stick a 5th (or 6th) year, many athletes are looking to be done with it by then.
I'm not suggesting this argument supercedes yours, just that you have to take it into consideration.
Interestingly, Chad, an example of your hypothetical situation did occur in geology in the 1950's. I was told by my undergrad mineralogy professor that during the uranium boom, company reps were practically lurking outside his classroom door for students who could adequately identify uranium minerals and the clues to mineralized zones. Apparently, a fair number of them took the cash and went out to the Uravan district in Utah and Colorado.
I don't know if a similar thing happened in Canada during the diamond rush of the 80's and 90's, but perhaps someone around SB would.
Let's tweak your analogy a little. How about a post-doc who doesn't have enough data to start his own lab is approached by a biotech company and offered a decent salary. (S)he knows that (s)he can put the work in and get the data, but in two years when that is possible, the jobs available in academia may or may not be there, and cartainly won't be paying as well as the biotech job available today. Plus, during those two years, said post-doc can be getting equity in the company, seniority, etc. What to do? Go for the sure thing now? Or bet that the freedom that the academic life offers will be available two years from now when you're ready?
I think that other than the orders of magnitude difference in salary, this really isn't all that different from the choice that athletes have to make... But maybe that's just because I'm having a hard time making my mind up...
Lou: The real issue for him though isn't just injury, its loss of performance. As you note, he's been playing our of his mind for 3 months and is now going to be #1 or 2 in the NBA draft. And while you are right that the injury situation isn't that common, regression to the mean is. Look at Matt Leinart, if he comes out after his Junior year he almost doubles his #10 salary from the following year.
I don't know about that.
Leinart is sort of an odd case-- part of the reason he slipped as far as he did is that the Texans made a late surprise decision to take Mario Williams rather than Reggie Bush. Which meant that Bush and Vince Young slipped down a spot, and a the teams at #4-9, who had been assuming that Leinart would be gone had already decided to take other players.
For the most part, I think the effect of great performances is a given year is badly exaggerated. The example that comes to mind, as a Syracuse fan, is John Wallace, who inquired about his draft status in 1995, and was told he'd go late in the first round. He went back to Syracuse for his senior year, hoping to raise his stock, and almost single-handedly took the Orangemen to the title game, and was drafted 18th, behind a whole slew of players who were coming out early, including a couple of high-school kids.
You won't see a more impressive individual run than that, and it didn't really do him that much good.
These guys are scouted and tested and evaluated to such a degree these days that I don't think much slips by. I think we're past the point where a stellar individual performance or two could dramatically swing a player's draft status.
Norm: I think this misses a bit of the reality that is college athletics. These guys work for a living in college. Granted this is more true in football than basketball. But a lot of these guys get to their Senior season looking to be done with it. While many of us add on a degree here or there to stick a 5th (or 6th) year, many athletes are looking to be done with it by then.
I'm not sure that's all that different, though. What I really enjoyed about my senior year was not so much the second semester of quantum mechanics or my senior thesis research, but the... college-y stuff. Hanging out with friends, drinking way too much, playing rugby, etc. The attraction wasn't the stuff I was there to do, it was the stuff I was doing while I was there, if that makes sense.
I think the same is probably true for those players who choose to stick around-- Peyton Manning and Matt Leinart didn't stay in college an extra year because they really liked college football, they stayed in college and extra year because they enjoyed being in college. And, hell, if I had the chance to be a star quarterback at Tennessee or Southern Cal, I'd hang around an extra year, too. Why rush into getting sacked a hundred times as an NFL rookie on a bad team when you can stay in school a year longer and be treated like a god?
It ain't professional athletics, but I know quite a few people who, in the mid-1990s, left college without a degree in order to take good-paying technology jobs (programming, web design, IT support). Many are still doing fine, but others have found that their careers have stagnated, because demand for people in their fields decreased, and supply went up, and companies started requiring bachelor's degrees for a lot of positions they were previously happy to fill with non-college-grads.
So, in your scenario, in the interest of long-term financial stability and career prospects, I would recommend sticking it out in college and going for the slightly lower eventual salary (which is still plenty of money).
I don't think that really applies in the realm of pro sports, though, because it's generally not a career that really has a long-term payoff.
I think a more apt comparison for science types would be leaving grad school before the Ph.D. Classmates of mine in grad school left early to work in the financial industry, or to found a startup based on their research.
In the first two or so years of grad school, you're doing intense coursework, perhaps a little teaching, and your development is broad-based. After that, you start specializing, and the development is in learning how to go deep into a subject (and how to take on and finish multi-year projects). Perhaps you'll learn a particular technique quite well. Soon, you might find yourself with a skill set that's highly valued in some industry, and for which additional time in grad school won't make you more valuable. I could well understand the allure of a 4-5x boost in salary, plus a retirement plan and health insurance that doesn't require you to wait in line with all the undergrads at the student health center.
I'm curious what the situation is like in electrical engineering or computer science, where there are likely to be more lucrative positions in industry.
Interestingly, Chad, an example of your hypothetical situation did occur in geology in the 1950's. I was told by my undergrad mineralogy professor that during the uranium boom, company reps were practically lurking outside his classroom door for students who could adequately identify uranium minerals and the clues to mineralized zones. Apparently, a fair number of them took the cash and went out to the Uravan district in Utah and Colorado.
Good point.
I would guess that any CS program in the late 90's has similar stories. I've certainly blamed the drop in physics enrollments in the late 90's on the fact that any college sophomore who could work a computer could expect to get handed a wheelbarrow full of cash at some dot-com with more venture capital than sense.
I have had to make that choice - either I could take an IT consultant job now, or hope that there still was a job when I finished my B.Sc. in computer science.
I choose the money.
Of course, I'm still taking exams once in a while (I actually have one in a few weeks), but it's definitely secondary to my work.
These guys are scouted and tested and evaluated to such a degree these days that I don't think much slips by. I think we're past the point where a stellar individual performance or two could dramatically swing a player's draft status.
What about Joakim Noah? Last year people were talking about him being a lottery pick; this year nobody seems to think that'll happen.
"These guys are scouted and tested and evaluated to such a degree these days that I don't think much slips by. I think we're past the point where a stellar individual performance or two could dramatically swing a player's draft status."
Hi, Carmelo Anthony. If he had gone back to school for another year, or 2, and was a good player (such that people started to sorta forget his ridiculous ncaa tournament performance) - you think he still goes #3?
No.
While I was working at JPL, which is administered by Caltech, it became clear that some headhunters had stolen a Caltech/JPL directory.
I kept getting these calls at work promising to double my salary.
Finally, I said:
"Put a written offer at twice my salary on my desk wihin 24 hours, or go away."
The offer was there. I took it. Sometimes I miss JPL, but the money was real. It's how I bought my Cadillac, my vacations to Tahiti, and Fiji on the way to and from the first Worldcon in Melbourne, Australia.
The job didn't last as long as I'd have liked. But long enough to launch me into marriage, fatherhood, and a home which, until the bubble bursts, is worth close to a million bucks.
I actually mean every word, but I'm not surprised if anyone's skeptical.
Oh, and this was well before the Dot Com boom, about which I've posted tales elsewhere, as have so many others.
Yes, not only VC, but also investment houses of the old Wall Street variety like to hire PhDs in Math and Physics. They call us "rocket scientists."
And when they declassify our contact with extraterrestrials, you'll know, as the government-Google consortium starts hiring all the physicists away from the tenure tracks at small liberal arts colleges.
It's a matter of national security. If the ETs sign a contract with Bill Gates, we're all screwed...
In my case I was kinda burned out when I entered grad school, and ended up with an all-but-doctorate degree -so taking a technical job for a year or two would have been a good plan, probably would have refreshed my attitude to finish the thing.
The sports case is simpler -take the contract. Earning enough to create a lifelong trust fund really opens up your options, why take even the smallish risk of not making it into the pros -plus your pro career is likely one year longer. You can always go back afterwards, perhaps as a coach/student at the same time.
I don't know the exact numbers, but the difference between the top 5 NBA picks and the rest of the first round is something like 5mil/yr vs 1mil/yr. If you are going to be in the top 5, you aren't going any higher, and have a very good chance of dropping.
bigTom and Brian hit the nail on the head. In MBA-speak, they show how to calculate the Revaluation Option. The right to renegotiate the terms of a contract has a calculable value, albeit valuation is more an art than a science in the VC community. It ain't Black-Scholes y'know.
I was in Vegas this past weekend, and contemplated putting $$$ on UNLV, but the locals had pushed the odds into aburdity.
The difference between a #1 and #3 pick is a factor of 2. See http://www.nbpa.org/cba_exhibits/exhibitB.php for further edification.
But that's not really the important factor: by staying in school one extra season, you are essentially giving up a salary to play for nothing for one year. If, like Durant, you are a #1 or #2 pick, that means giving up 3.5million dollars to have fun at college. Forget the injury potential and the regression to the mean: I can't see how anyone who has a pro basketball career as their goal in life would pass up the opportunity to be a top 2 pick.
Phone Bill...Phone Bill!
The thing about sports figures coming out of college early is that nothing is stopping them from going back later. Whatever their financial situation before their pro contract, the top folks are going to make enough in their first year or two so that they could live the rest of their lives on it if they avoid buying Hummers and mansions. In this circumstance, it seems as if even those interested in education for education's sake would be well advised to take the cash and come back to finish their degree (or just start another one) when their sports career comes to an end.
The situation becomes harder to parse if the athelete in question isn't going to make fuck-you money right away. I'm not sure where the line should be drawn, but the kind of contracts that first-round-drafted football players tend to get should be more than enough to make even the most committed academic take a break for a few years to get rich.
I think that the hypothetical scientist case is very different. For an extra k$25/year, HypoSci is asked to permanently damage his credentials and employability. k$100/year is a nice salary, to be sure, but (as I can more or less attest personally) it doesn't produce instant lifetime financial security the way a M$3 signing bonus would, and there are no lifetime employers outside of academia anymore. So, HypoSci is very likely to find themself back in the job market at some point with no degree on their resume. I may be wrong, but I think this absence would result in the frequent remanding of said resume to the circular file, whatever relevant experience it may hold otherwise. So, I would say that whatever HypoSci's feelings are on the merits of education for its own sake, taking the job early doesn't seem to make a lot of economic sense.
I think that the hypothetical scientist case is very different. For an extra k$25/year, HypoSci is asked to permanently damage his credentials and employability. k$100/year is a nice salary, to be sure, but (as I can more or less attest personally) it doesn't produce instant lifetime financial security the way a M$3 signing bonus would, and there are no lifetime employers outside of academia anymore.
True, but at the same time, there isn't as narrow a window for a scientific career as for athletics. Professional atletes are washed up at 40, but there are scientists who continue working well into their 70's. If the hypothetical scientist gets cut loose at 30, well, they can go back to school, but a basketball player who gets cut at 30 might have a hard time finding work, and they're not going to be able to re-train as a football player, or whatever.
Also, saying that a $3M signing bonus provides lifetime financial security is probably overestimating the financial acumen of your typical pro athlete...
Michael Vick is one of those that left school (Virginia Tech) early to enlist for the NFL draft for family reasons, turning down what most sports critics saw as a major Heisman trophy potential the next year had he stayed.
In his case, it was for family reasons for just the debts you discussed. In his case, (so the stories go) he felt the desire to take the money to put his mother on stronger financial footing rather than have her suffer in relative poverty while he finished school.
Of course, given the critics attitudes today, one might think maybe he should have stayed in school to work on "fundamentals" a bit more.
Baseball's an odd one - its the only one that generally looks at player maturity before getting them into the show. Even after time at college or local ball, one is expected to continue to build up technique and time in the minors before making it to the majors. There's a layer between the newbies and the show to keep the immature players out of the game until they've grown as players and people.
In Football and Basketball, there's no such layer - one goes from college straight to superstardom or obscurity (even if you do get into the league).
the software and computer industry is another one of those where its possible to have a decent job, even a career, without actually finishing school, and the lure of that can be very strong indeed.
but not finishing does eventually have an impact on where the companies will let you go. many CS candidates who don't finish because either the math was too hard or the rest of the liberal arts that go with a degree bore them so much they flunked out by not doing homework, end up working IT departments managing machines for college grads doing the real programming or accounting and making 3 times as much. Granted, an IT job like that pays better than being a clerk at CompUSA (especially as it and places like it are closing all over the country).
generally, the programming world tends to use internships and the like to help very good programmers complete their degrees. the rest of the exposure that an education brings does come into play in most programming jobs; eventually one has to talk to the customer, you know. :)
Leinart stayed an extra year in part because he had an elbow injury that was so bad he couldn't work for scouts. He needed surgery after his junior year (of eligibility, he was an academic senior who redshirted a year), but if he got the surgery, he couldn't go to the combine or do a pro-day. He got the surgery and was in good shape come football season in the fall.
Of course, Leinart could have gone the Mcgahee route and had some nfl team pay him while he recouperated, but Leinart's injury wasn't quite as bad as Mcgahee. Plus mcgahee's agent did some crafty work to boost his draft status. Leinart would have fallen in the draft if he had come out a year early.
And, yeah, Leinart was financially okay before he got his first nfl paycheck. Remember the Dwayne Jarrett issue? Jarrett was living with Leinart in an apartment that Leinart's dad either owned or was renting for Matt. Jarrett had a deal on rent where he was paying less than market value. Jarrett almost lost his eligibility over this. I'm not sure about mcgahee's financial situation.
As for the academic side of things, I was one of those kids who showed up to college with a lot of AP credits and could have graduated a year early. A couple of things caused me to change my mind. First, when I interviewed for college, the alum I spoke to had finished in 3yrs and told me it was a bad idea. There were also a couple of courses I wanted to take my senior year that I hadn't been able to take earlier because of scheduling conflicts. In hindsight, I should have graduated a semester early, worked in my advisor's lab fulltime during what would have been my last semester, and used the free time to party and go to more grad school interviews (ie, free vacations).
This is an argument that gets hashed out far too often no Slashdot (and is one of the recurring Slahdot arguments that I always watch in sick fascination-- I rarely read anything but headlines on Slashdot, except for that one theme.) The argument is whether a degree is really worth anything, and whether you need one to have a career.
There always have been and there always will be gold rushes in the technical fields, where the demand is so great and the fruit is so low hanging that it's easy to make gobs of money. And in the middle or soon after one, there's a big upswell of people who, because they're out there making money, sans degree, think they don't need degrees. To a first order approximation, these people are right in that at that moment, those particular people don't need degrees. After all, no one really cares what my GPA was any more, right? Once you get that first job, you're established in a profession, right?
Well, maybe.
Some people really do continue to do well for decades without a degree, and at that point, it probably really doesn't matter. But if the market downs down, or some clever PhD automates the entire field that had previously been throwing money at you, you're kinda screwed. I'm a long perspective guy by nature-- my advice is nearly always to get the degree as a hedge against future uncertainty. (Aside from that, I know damn well that in my field, the MS will get you the better salary and the more interesting assignments. We won't even talk to you without a BS, but I assume the BS in boom time will do better than someone without the BS.)
But.
I don't really see the market for pro sports drying up any time soon. Nor does one actually go to school in order to get a BS in Basketball (although we'd be more honest if we called it that.) One can learn the finest points in basketball just as well, if not better, as a pro, I'd think.
So isn't the analogy more like, "You're a junior college. A group of a dozen Nobel prize winning scientists from MIT and Stanford announce their intention to start a new school in Miami, and they want you to be in their first crop of PhD students, next year. They'll admit you without the customary BS in your field. Do you accept?"
Also, saying that a $3M signing bonus provides lifetime financial security is probably overestimating the financial acumen of your typical pro athlete...
Yeah, I appreciate that my hypothetical athelete is making financial decisions more or less like I do rather than like a realistic pro athelete. I guess if I were giving advice to someone considering leaving school for a big-money sports contract, I'd say something like "Take the money, acquire the services of a good financial planner (NOT your agent), and don't spend money like an idiot."