The real absurdity here is that we can have a discussion about student loans and not discuss the fact that non-STEM degrees offer, in nearly all cases, a poor ROI.
This completely boggles my mind. It's insanity.
This completely boggles my mind. It's insanity.
It was also relatively cheap. People work for a summer, at minimum wage, and afford college for the rest of the year.
You have to demonstrate value to employers; to anyone with whome you desire to exchange goods or services for money.
Simply having a college degree is a very weak signal for value.
I'll guess that most of the people who gave you that advice probably learned it some 30-40 years ago, when it was more applicable.
The reason they don't is simple: class. A librarian making $40K/yr is treated better than a welder making $80K/yr.
A lot of people (self included, until a moment ago) imagine this whole thing crashing down when companies realize they can get good candidates without requiring a college degree. But I think that will be a secondary marker. The real tipping point will be when young tradesmen build a cool (as in, expensive) frat-like house, and a few sororities start hanging out with them.
I suspect it mostly means they want the government to pay for the types of problem solvers that businesses want, and enough of them to keep the wages low.
I think that's implicit in how hnamazon123 refers to ROI. Who gets the return - the student, businesses, and/or the country - for investing in someone's education?
But we did it wrong! It's our fault. I guess in a couple decades when there's a total of 2 majors that will actually return your investment we will actually be able to have a productive talk about college costs. Until then, those at the bottom will continue to be told it's their fault.
More students need to start choosing the cheaper public institution for that degree because that private school is not providing enough extra value to offset the enormous cost.
If I get a loan to buy a Ferrari I've made a very bad decision from a purely financial perspective. But if that car brings me enjoyment and makes my life more fulfilling then I'm perfectly happy.
Of course, if the Ferrari dealer lied to me and said that the car's value would go up by 40% as soon as I drove it off the lot then thats a different story.
It is probably true that ple ty of college students don't really know what they're really signing up for. And incredibly misleading statistics about the income of people who went to college vs those who didnt certainly don't help. Pretty much every art history and anthropology major that I've known has been acutely aware that their degree isn't really increasing their earning potential much and are perfectly okay with that.
Because it's heavily subsidized and regulated. If it these were unsubsidized private transactions subject to the same bankruptcy laws as any other, I'd agree with your sentiment.
At the same time though, we do subsidize a lot of potentially dangerous, and arguably luxurious amenities because a critical mass of people enjoyusing them responsibly. National parks, highways, even medical procedures are all far from safe if you don't understand the risks involved in what you're doing. Most people do understand those risks and safely use these resources, just like most literature majors understand the risks involved in racking up debt to study literature.
Of course, as tuition goes up - and its gone up a lot even since I was in college not that long ago - the relative risk goes up. Maybe there is a lag in really appreciating the magnitude of that risk and we should be more careful.
If that's what people view it as, and they're ok with how much debt they're going to incur and all of the stipulations that come with that debt, then more power to them. Can't argue with that.
But I think many people are not really doing that value calculation thoroughly or at all. There are a lot of students who sign up for college because that's what they "should" do and they don't necessarily properly evaluate whether the cost is worth it in lifetime earning potential or personal fulfillment.
It's kind of like the housing market before the bubble. Most Americans believed that they "should" own a house and believed that real estate is always a good investment. We all see how that turned out.
I mean, yes, spending 4 years with minimal responsibility, partying, and studying great literature and arts is certainly enriching.
However, I'm sure most of your students feel entitled to that experience and would demand a system which would take money from me to pay for it.
Having recently graduated from college, I strongly disagree with the idea that your students offer much to society to the point where I should be paying their way through college. They're free to live in virtual debt slavery. That's their right to decide that the college experience they got was worth it.
Since college prices have risen so fast, while wages have gone down, there's a good argument for forgoing school.
The average 18 year old paying $150K for a Sociology degree at some expensive non-ivy private school is going to be making $30K a year with or without his degree, for many years. Besides the loss of 4 years of income, the $150K (which will end up costing 2.5x-3x after interest) would have earned a lot of money invested in the market.
It's all well and good to be pissed off at rent seeking credential granting institutions and the employers that lazily rely on them, but that's no excuse for repeating false information that only leads kids astray.
Your statistics are also assuming that it is the college degree itself that is producing the difference in income, and not the individual.
As politically incorrect as it is to say, a good portion of the non-bachelor degree population would not earn much anyway - 'urban' with minimal basic education, immigrants without language skills, low IQ, disabled, etc.
Find me a study based on IQ - one in which similarly intelligent persons are matched on income (not salary) at varying ages, and I'm guessing that in the future, many in the middle IQ range will not benefit from their liberal arts degree.