Subprime loans for college hiding in plain sight
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Community college is the answer regardless of what your degree aspirations are.
You will end up saving half of not more of the tuition and boarding expenses compared to spending all four years at a major university, and you get excellent instructors at the most critical time of higher education.
Instructors at major universities for 100-200 classes are usually assistants, not professionals. And you STILL end up with a diploma from a Major university.
You like football games? Put on team colors and pay for a ticket. Most big schools make you pay now, anyway.
You want to go to parties? Then take a year off and have a blast. Get it out of your system. Then go to school.
Here is a link to the list of community colleges in the US:
If you have ambition and have the potential to get into a nice school, then going to community college is ackin to shooting yourself in the foot. Sure, you can still have a nice career afterwards, but you're cutting yourself from many more opportunities you would have had otherwise.
"excellent instructors" depends purely on luck wherever you end up to, and pretending they are automatically better in CC is deception. Most importantly, how bright are your classmates is the #1 thing that drives higher achievement in my experience, as the learning material is all over the internet anyway.
I would like to add that in the sort of signalling game that higher education is, making "rational" bets such as "taking a year to get partying out of your system" is very much inferior to just doing what is deemed socially acceptable (which is partying while in college).
Further, some states in the US have great CC -> 4 year programs. California comes to mind. Graduate from a Cal CC and you're guaranteed admission to UC. A lot of kids in the bay go to Berkeley to finish their 4 year.
The excellent instructor thing isn't a joke either. You really don't need a top PhD student to teach you Calc 1 + 2 (assuming you're doing a STEM track). It's really just about getting the reps in. You're going to be a bit weak on proofs + theory, but you'll be solid on the basics.
The bright classmates thing is a bit real, but you have to find your motivation anywhere.
If you come from a low income household and get accepted to an Ivy+, odds are you'll get a full ride (my own case), so calling OP's post "completely unfounded" is completely unfounded.
They're super picky about who they take, but they do take a few transfer students each year.
I know, for example, many employers aren't exclusively looking for Ivys or even higher-end universities either.
I just said that going this unconventional path was more than often strictly inferior (in the sense: if you were able to transfer to Harvard you would have had also good opportunities anyway) than going the mainstream way.
Perhaps we can guess they meant to - but it ain't what they said.
> You will end up saving half of not more of the tuition and boarding expenses compared to spending all four years at a major university...
> And you STILL end up with a diploma from a Major university.
Big universities (and the above) oversell the importance of connections made at school. Yes, connections matter, but how often do the connections from freshman or sophomore year matter? Many students don't even know what major they will graduate with during that time, and the best connections are those within your field.
Wherever you ended up to, how do you know it would have been better going to a community college?
The data is obviously highly biaised but when you look at top researchers, what % went to CC vs what % to top undergraduate programs?
PS: I say this because I personally know people who went to top institutions lamenting that they should have went another way for some of the reasons you mentioned, and yet they all have landed nice positions wherever they wanted to go.
Right, it is biased. You need a control - two similar people with similar backgrounds. People going to CC are usually not doing so by choice.
I think that ultimately, some people are going to be successful regardless of the path they take. Universities attempt to capture the recognition for where their attendees end up, but I think that has more to do with the attendees than the universities.
I, on the other hand, had loads of group projects in my freshman and sophomore years; and as most of us were used to being the top of our class and having to "carry" other team members who weren't invested, we all had a refreshing realization that, "Hey cool -- everyone here is both smart and motivated!"
Don't know how different that would have been at community college, but I certainly benefitted from having smart and motivated classmates my first two years of university.
> Yes, connections matter, but how often do the connections from freshman or sophomore year matter?
The people I met in my hall at the dorm freshman year constituted the core of my friendship group throughout the rest of university; and I'm still in contact with a large number of them. I'd say a larger than average number of that group went on to advanced degrees like PhD or law degrees. Influence matters.
Would I have gotten a PhD myself if I had started at community college? Maybe, maybe not: hard to tell. But I am glad that I went all four years. (That said, I only graduated with a single four-digit student loan; those two years would certainly not have been worth a six-digit loan.)
That's a very strange way to say "I disagree with this advise."
There is a whole genre of « internet advice » (such that: don’t go to college, study a trade, community college is better than regular college) that are repeated by people for many reasons (such as personal cope, political agenda) that don’t include what’s best for the listener.
That's just called "advice". The internet just makes bad advice globally addressable.
I dropped out of school during middle school. I didn't like school.
Google raised me, the internet raised me, I found education my own way by just looking for examples to mimic. Books, internet, and people to talk to. I retired at 30.
Where there is a will, there is a way. The modern academic system is just a factory.
When I screened resumes, I didn't look at where someone went to school, I looked at what projects they had under their belt and what they had 'obsessions' about.
If you put time in, you will become skillful.
If you put time in, and you don't like what you're doing, you'll probably have a less than good time doing it.
If you put time in, and you like what you are doing to the extent you are obsessed about it, you'll probably not even realize you're working or getting paid.
CC is a great way to skip the BS and get straight to the point.
If you enroll in a 4-year school after CC you can get the BS. ;-)
Don't go to college before you have a sense of what you are interested in learning.
This may not apply to many HN readers, but a lot of young people show up at college quite aimless, and this is not a great way to spend valuable tuition.
You don't need to have your life course charted out, but you will likely be at a disadvantage if you aren't intensely curious about some things and eager to learn more about them when you start buying credits.
I agree that community college is worth considering, but it's unlikely that community college will give you much direction you aren't developing yourself.
The advice I give is a modification of the 'luck surface area' analogy: the more exposure you get to people who are engaged in professional disciplines, the greater the chance you will encounter traits and circumstances that interest and/or inspire you and open figurative and literal doors to your future.
I live in a country where college is paid by the taxpers, and college students get a bunch of advantages (student work, food coupons, cheap stuff, access to student resources, gyms etc.).
We have a bunch of students who have to decide on what to study at age 18, and a bunch of them are just "i'm bad at math, what doesn't have a lot of math?" and totally disregard other factors (mostly, employment opportunities), so after ~5 years, they get their masters in ancient greek and philosphy and then complain that there are no jobs for "educated young people".
On one hand, they knew that there were no jobs in that field when they filled out the application forms, on the other hand, the taxpayers paid for 5 years of a useless college, then they learned something that has zero added value in their eventual workplace, and then they still complain.
TLDR: "interested in learning" sure, but with consideration of "are there jobs in that field?"
May I ask which country? Whenever I look at education stats for a taxpayer college funded system versus the US, there are tradeoffs made, such as less of the population getting college degrees through stricter (taxpayer desired) requirements. I'm curious if your country has a solution that's better on some Pareto frontier of education funding methods.
fwiw my nieces ignored my advice and are liberal arts majors at private colleges in the US but at least they have close to full-ride scholarships.
It sucks that kids have to choose a major right out of high school now (if not before). I have an AA in undecided. When I went to community college (90's) I took art, computer programming, music production, and scuba diving. It was awesome. And it made deciding on a major for my BA much easier.
If you think you know find out what, if any, the “weed out” classes are. I thought I wanted to be a dentist but organic chemistry kicked my ass (ok, took more effort than I cared to give it at the time). It was a wake up that if I didn’t have the grit to get through that, I probably was setting myself up for failure.
(I transferred from another university, not from community college, so I do have a point of comparison.)
A year off "to party" is iffy advice, but "a year off to get high school out of your system," i.e. a "gap year," is really good advice.
I walked out of high school a depressed mess, and instead of slowing down and dealing with that, I let my parents pressure me into rolling that straight into college. Five years later, still pointlessly studying anything that sounded interesting, no degree in sight, sinking deeper into depression… it wasn't until I finally flamed out and put my life back together that I could even think about career. I wasn't even aware that the disciplines I would eventually find interesting even existed until after college.
I still rank going straight into college as the biggest mistake of my life.
Also I disagree about partying better later on in life. Getting shitfaced with your friends at 20 any day of the week, hardly sleeping, and then not feeling a thing the next day and going to class is an experience you cannot replicate later in life. The last thing I want to do at 30 is have more than 2-3 drinks and get less than 8 hours of sleep when I have work the next day. The party atmosphere changes - the experiences get nicer and the food is better, but that raw youthful naivety and energy cannot be replicated, when you don't really care about anything but just having a good time and the environment/peripherals don't matter at all
She probably has as many friends from her original college, which she attended for just one year — the crucial freshman year.
I'm not saying it's worth tens of thousands of dollars to network with other students, but if this is where lifelong friendships then it's worth considering the specifics.
Also, many students qualify for significant need/merit financial aid. For me, attending the #1 rated liberal arts college was only modestly more expensive than attending a UC, with in-state tuition. And need-based scholarships have only gotten more generous in the last couple decades, since I went to school. IIRC all the top schools cover your full costs if your family income is below $125k or so.
First, many students have a home life not conductive to study, or outright hostile. Traditional four year college provides a place where most things taken care of so you can focus on your studies. There are often enormous opportunities to find new friends that are much closer to your mental capabilities and career aspirations.
Second, universities have a wealth of opportunities that a community college simply lacks. For those who are motivated, there is research in all fields, which a student can help with. There are all sorts of work study programs, etc. If you're after work experience relevant to one's career, or a way to explore various careers, a university is really hard to beat. However, just because there is opportunity, does not mean every student is prepared. Professors want prepared students.
Third, most state universities have smaller class sizes for their honor students. If you are not honors student, it still is not hard to find out which paths are less full. For example, a 100 level socioscience survey that fulfills one's core requisite for computer science might also be filled with a 200 level class (having no prereq) in a more specialized class, such as pre-hispanic mesoamérica. You may have to work harder, but you'll also learn more.
Finally, doors of most professors are open. You just have to step though it. This personalized attention and direction are crucial to education. Most students simply do not know to do this, and hence miss the most important aspect of the process. Professors love to help when they meet a student who is driven to learn. By the time you graduate, you should have a half dozen professors who know you well enough that they will write a letter of recommendation. Those personalizes letters are the ticket that open doors, to grants, further study, or to their professional colleagues in industry.
You also don’t seem to mention anything about networking. The best friends I’ve had come from freshman year in college when everyone is in the same boat and more willing to make friends. 2 years in, it’s a lot harder to break into established groups.
At the end of the day, if all you want is a degree and need to save money, the two years at community college followed by two years as a university is definitely the way to go but it’s not optimal imo.
Community college requires more discipline. There’s isn’t as much fun extra cuticular activities, you’re often paying out of pocket and you’re home so there’s lots of distractions.
If you can make it through that, you’ll do well at a university.
The problem with college is it's too expensive. The government has done nothing to make it cheaper. Their backing and forgiveness of student loans only makes it more expensive.
It's infuriating. All the government needs to do is literally nothing. Just get out of the way!
The states do pay for education, but during and after the 08 recession (and generally during the 70s-90s too), they have cut funding for higher ed, to put more into k-12 and tax cuts:
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/fancy-dorms-arent-the-m...
Cuts in state support are balanced by tuition increases; expenses on a per-student basis are not up anywhere near what tuition has increased by.
Additionally, net tuition at 4-year publics actually paid by students has been almost flat or down over the last 15 years (see Figure CP-9 in #10), with net tuition plus room/board up slightly, due to increases in rent not fully controlled by colleges (same figure).
The same applies at private non-profits, flat to negative net tuition, and a moderate increase in tuition+room/board (Figure CP-10 in #1).
The answer is very clear. When states cut funding per FTE student, tuition rises to compensate. When state funding is flat or slightly up, tuition stays level (Figure CP-11A in #1).
All citations from #1, the best data source I know of for college tuition pricing data: https://research.collegeboard.org/media/pdf/trends-college-p...
If you want to look at it on the expenditures side, which should balance with revenue for non-profits, that data is here, and also shows moderate increases in spending: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d20/tables/dt20_334.10.a...
If the government gets out of the way everywhere, the class system and caste system will be back withing 3 months
People think free market capitalism is the natural - thats just propaganda. Feudalism is natural, thats why it existed for 10 thousand years.
The class system is already there. Not everybody can go to Harvard or all the elite colleges. So what are you talking about exactly? If the government wants poor people to go to college, then the government needs to give scholarships to these people, not loans that can't be done away through bankruptcy, let's the banks take all the risks, that's their job.
It's just the best investment we could make. We wouldn't have to worry that anyone's potential got wasted if everyone could easily go to college, and people could switch careers more easily. It would just raise the general competence level of the population and probably instantly start lowering crime. Skilled people without crippling debt. We should do socialized healthcare and make them healthy, too.
Consider phrasing it differently.
A class system is the defining feature of feudalism - if you are born into a class and may never escape, and if higher classes have more legal priviliges than you do, thats no longer capitalism we know and love/hate/tolerate.
Imagine if you couldn't get a loan from a third party, where the university lets you owe it the fees, but you cannot borrow the money from some student loans company or the government.
Then the university would figure out which people it thought would be likely to pay back the money, and which are perhaps worthwhile to fund without monetary reward. And the uni would be well placed to make such decisions.
If the money comes from a third party, the uni gets the money regardless and doesn't need to care. The lender can't be defaulted on, and so they don't care either.
This is exactly the problem. The government guarantees "student loans" made by 3rd parties. Tuition costs have seen huge inflation over the last 25 years, second only to medical costs in the U.S.
I also don't think students realize simple things like... Since money is fungible, that $5 coffee is also being paid for by the loan. They're really borrowing to pay for their lifestyle as well and don't think about that.
Not since 2010.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_Care_and_Education_Reco...
https://www.studentloanplanner.com/parent-plus-double-consol...
Gen Z seems to be much, much more aware of this issue and as a result the number of STEM majors in colleges have exploded. Although it does also seem like the rigor has gone down acutely.
I'm getting my second bachelors in Computer Science now, my first was in Chemical Engineering 12 years earlier. The amount of rampant cheating and seeming inability for the schools to "fail" a student is completely foreign to me compared to my first degree, which took me 8 years to achieve across three schools, so I definitely got a somewhat decent sample of school cultures.
Isn’t the US in the middle of multiple drug crises (opioids, meth) and a mental health crisis?
I agree there's a lot of value which could be provided -- but someone still needs to employ those talented individuals and provide them with the infrastructure necessary to facilitate them doing "their job".
IMO the better solution would be some limited forgiveness for current borrowers, then shoring up/restoring funding for state/public universities, undercutting pricing at privates
Colleges will become affordable again.
The idea of banks having a risk free loans never really made sense to me...
They do not since 2010:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_Care_and_Education_Reco...
> Ending the process of the federal government giving subsidies to private banks to give out federally insured loans. Instead loans will be administered directly by the Department of Education.[23]
Making loans higher interest to handle increased risk, making it even harder for someone to pay for college.
Private universities might have no incentive for change for obvious reasons left as an exercise to the reader, but it would in the interest of the government to support innovation in this area, instead of try to patch a loan mechanism that is only feeding the beast.
Jesus people, if you’re argument is that “but mortgages have collateral” then at least address why 20% of someone’s discretionary income over 20 years for federal loans or your lifetime income via non-dischargeability for private loans doesn’t count.
I don’t give two shits about the financial solvency of the lender, if you have to repo the house the system has failed. Throwing a massive amount of money to someone who’s probably on their second big boy job ever betting 15/30 years of income stability to pay it off is insane.
Student loans are a wild financial product when you stop to think about it, a loan with no collateral, given to someone who often times has no credit, and enforced through it not being dischargeable in bankruptcy.
But I’m from Scandinavia so I do think 10% of income is a great way to pay for college. Have the government collect it and cut out the bank!
Two other common ones not true of this comment are using a very young but non-throwaway account with very low karma, and are not responding to any criticism in the replies - true at the time of my comment but I suspect that will change.
Yes, but so what? That doesn't make it wrong.
2) I tend to push for extremes, so the base point seems more reasonable, but yes that was not needed or good to put in.
>> 3) Wildly outside the commenter's area of competency.
That stings a little, but you're not wrong. That doesn't make my reasoning wrong - see some of my replies to others, and feel free to argue against the reasoning.
In Sweden, once your mortgage is below 50% of the of the purchasing price you don't have to pay it off and you're free to just pay the interest in perpetuity.
So does raising interest rates - see 2008. Look at the fed funds rate spike which set it off (not to say there weren't other problems to make it worse). Also look watch the housing market right now.
Housing as a percent of income has been fairly constant for 50 years (there was a recent HN link on this). Lower interest rates mean you can borrow more dollars at the same monthly payment. This combined with an overall decrease in rates since 1980 have fueled the housing market.
Long terms loans just mean building equity takes a long time, and people who sell within 5 years really don't have any (it will maybe cover moving costs). The problems with interest rates changing and putting people under water are really a problem of people not having equity in their home. Reducing the length of the loans will reduce that problem significantly.
We can still think of what we wish the rules had been in the begging or what to do after unsustainable housing price increases cause Mad Max anyway.
Pay attention when you get a mortgage. It goes like this:
1) what is your monthly income?
2) what are your monthly expenses?
3) calculate: this is how much we think you can afford to pay per month
4) back calculate: this is how much we will approve you to borrow.
5) Typical money available determines house prices.
The key here is that #4 means housing prices are hugely influenced by interest rates, and also the length of the loan. Housing as a percent of income is actually fairly constant because they'll everyone wants to get you for as much as they can, but the bank balances that against risk of default so there is a limit.
That's my rant. Reducing the length will cause people to build equity faster and will reduce volatility and the dangers of things like interest rate hikes.
for the majority who do it for income reasons, ideally it would be designed to not take you more than say, 8 years to pay off, given the median income for the major and area.
this alone would resolve most of the issues. there is value in someone majoring in English. issue is the median English major, given their inclinations are unlikely to make as much as the median, say, Economics major, in a given area.
these disparities would ideally and should be reflected in the cost.
the result would be:
1. when you apply to college you should apply to a major and that should be part of your application
2. different majors should cost different amounts of money
3. acceptance rates should differ based on major
4. classes of different types should cost different amounts of money beyond some gratuity (say, 8 classes).
A not insignificant number of college students have no hope of majoring in STEM even if all of the economics are screaming at them, which they are.
The acceptance difference isn’t really that great, either. Not sure what property valuations have to do with anything.
For example at all of the ivy leagues there’s no significant difference in tuition for major nor is there really a substantial difference in acceptance rate. Some, like Columbia have different schools, but even within them majors, and prospects, differ.
I taught at a university where students were given a math placement exam before being assigned their freshman courses. Getting into Calculus and passing it with a good grade was a sorting hat for what major you could study.
Fees proportional to pay sounds like an income tax.
California for example has proposition 13 which fixes the tax. Are kids in California less prepared? New Hampshire has higher property tax rates than Massachusetts- are they doing better? Etc.
Even if it were true, the most expensive schools are private and so property taxes still would have little relevance to the discussion at hand.
Making minimum payments always increases the length. How do you define your pay off?
For the record [1], in recent years around 58% of bachelor's degree holders incurred debt, with the median at $23,000. If you want to pay over 8 years this is around $3k per year, which should be completely doable for anyone with a bachelors degree over an 8 year span (over 8 years the average person will make far more per year than starting wages).
[1] https://www.bestcolleges.com/research/average-student-loan-d...
So why would somebody pursue a limiting career in servant worker degrees of any type? Computer Science isn’t entrepreneur lessons - it’s vocational school with a higher price tag and we all know it. Pretending a BS in CS is harder to get than a BA in Philosophy is laughably sus.
In the UK for example criminal barristers have been striking due to low pay (sometimes effectively under minimum wage)
Then in the US we have evidence of declining salaries https://www.reuters.com/legal/legalindustry/median-us-lawyer... and over supply of lawyers https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/law_firm_leaders_rep...
It's not really a surprise if you tell people that profession x pays universally well long enough, more people will go there than are required, unless the demand for the profession keeps expanding.
This, to me, is the buried lede. This is worse than payday lending, and it's being perpetrated by our government upon desperate parents.
The problem is many millennials and Gen Z have already given up on social security, do not believe in it in the future, and will not vote to keep a dead or dieing SS program alive when they themselves had abandoned it long ago. And once they hit critical mass the SS can actually die without voters to backup it up and along with it all the terrible old precedences of that program will disappear. That will leave a huge hole for retirement funds, but it also means a new program can be implimented into its place, something like a basic income that has become more popular or just another social security model that has different specifics and rules.
Current social security is relying heavily on population rising or at the least not falling, but even that is very questionable at this point and could end up being the nails in its coffin.
Once Millennials are the majority getting the benefits, they should feel free to refuse them and shut down the program.
Good.
Let's be brutally honest and ask who's really to blame for this.
Everyone but the boomers has had a 401k for most of their working lives, and comparing 401k payout to social security, the "trust fund" looks like it has a terrible ROI.
However, I would bet pretty strongly that one of those constraints won’t hold - probably the amount paid out to each person will be lowered, although the tax percentage could also increase.
The social security program is separate from the federal budget [0], and that's why you see it as a separate tax on your paycheck (if you're American). Every dollar you pay into it, goes into a trust fund, whose sole asset is US Government bonds.
Social security can go bankrupt if the US defaults on it's debt, which although almost unthinkable (see Russia as a recent example of paying bonds despite being under heavy sanctions, and having to pay them in another currency) comes up every few years [1].
[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-column-miller-socialsecur... [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/16/biden-signs-debt-ceiling-inc...
Working young people have to take care of non-working old people. That’s true in a Bangladeshi village and that’s true in America. There’s no policy knob you can turn to make that fundamental dynamic go away.
The federal government should use the power of the purse. A public school can only receive public funds if tuition and fees for US residents is $5,000 per year or less for 30 credit hours. Additionally, private schools should not be eligible for public funds at all. Or, if people are just way too upset about this, private schools are eligible for a max of $5,000 per student per year.
There, I’ve solved the actual problem of infinite runaway costs.
If you proposed funding colleges with taxpayer funds and reducing tuition costs, it gets reflected in the budget today, and you get attacked for causing higher taxes.
If you proposed giving out loans, then you can even sell it as lowering taxes because the government now owns an asset that will earn a return.
Same story with deferred compensation like pensions and retire healthcare for government employees. Reduce cash expense now, fudge the numbers for future expenses to make it seem less expensive, promise lower taxes, and win elections. The current voters will mostly only care about today’s costs.
* Massive Inflation
* Misappropriation of funds and miss selling of the overall product
* Regressive taxation
* Short termism
* High costs to the state and students, low funding for institutions
It's just a huge mess and a terrible system for everyone.
You only have to pay 5% of your disposable income to your student debt. These parents with parent plus loans are going to be fine with that
In fact that’s a loophole that some are talking about that by will make college very cheap for middle class parents at the right life stage. Parents take out a big loan for their kids and then retire so their income becomes very low and the 5% payment becomes almost nothing and then after 10-20 years the remaining balance is totally forgiven
Nobody under 40 came up with this godforsaken system.
Edit: as an example, we got from your comment to "you're an insufferable cunt" in 3 hops—and you contributed 2 of them. Obviously that comment was completely beyond the pale, but the more important thing is not to go into such flamewar territories in the first place.
"Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents."
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
* https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
It may be more important to you, but I don't care. For me, truth is important, and I wrote the truth.
People often use the word "truth" (or "facts") as if it were a sort of trump card, but if you think about it, being true is neither a sufficient nor a necessary condition for a good comment - I wrote about this recently here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32697044.
There are infinitely many truths—they don't select themselves. People have to do that, and the selection process has to do with their own motivations, not truth.
Once you've selected a truth, there are infinitely many ways to express it—including how/whether you're going to take other people into account, how to encode your emotions in the expression, and so on. These also don't select themselves—you choose them, and again that has to do with your own motivations, not truth.
There is also the question of how perfect your access to the truth is, or to what extent you might be mistaken. Other people have very different ideas about the truth than you do (I don't mean you personally, of course). How lightly or tightly you hold that possibility is super important for conversation and again, has nothing to do with truth per se.
Obviously not.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
This follows from the organizing principle of the site:
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
In fact, tediously and/or angrily repeating correct things (or things one feels to be correct—a distinction without a difference for internet purposes) is the thing commenters should most avoid on HN. It's the root evil, relative to the mandate of the site.
Which is a fine sentiment; the problem is that it makes no sense for people to be going deeply into debt to become well-rounded citizens. If you're gonna end up with tens of thousands of dollars in the hole at the end of an education, at the start of your adult life, then yes, it's reasonable to need that education to reliably produce economic dividends.
Like, just think of all the other things that can help people become more well-rounded or better citizens, like community service, or international travel. Once you have the list in your head, think to yourself: how many of these would you recommend that young adults spend years of full-time labor in, and go into major debt to pursue?
I'll turn this around on its head: if we recognize the civic and social benefits of having a well-rounded population, then we ought to treat the current rash of students who knowingly go into debt for their degrees as performing a remarkably selfless act.
Like so many problems in the US, this one is entirely self-inflicted: you can get a liberal arts degree for virtually nothing in much of the rest of the developed world. This hasn't caused crises anywhere else, and hasn't caused students to flock away from technical programs (which are also civically necessary). None of this has to be the way that it is.
From an individual perspective, people should not be willingly going into large debt for poor or relatively uncertain financial prospects.
A real fix for the student loan crisis would be to make a national competency test instead of using a bachelor's degree gauge competence. Then get rid of government backed student loans.
My time in college could have been halved if I could have not taken a bunch of the classes that added no value to my education. Honestly, it's shameful how bad those Gen Ed classes are. They exist to check a box.
And I'd be pretty upset to pay for someone else to get a liberal arts degree, especially when it doesn't contribute anything and could have been gotten for free if the person took some initiative.
Degree attainment is much lower than the U.S. for much of the rest of the world[1] (usually from more restrictive admissions, from my understanding). Also, from talking to people in other countries, universities over there are often much simpler and don't resemble the 4-year summer camp that schools in the U.S. do (studying in a lot of other countries is probably closer to studying in American night school). I'd say it's a good model to consider, but many would oppose it because it's so different from the typical American college experience.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiary_...
“‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens”
applies to so many things in the US.
Americans’ absolute refusal to even attempt to learn anything from comparable countries abroad is pathological at this point.
I do however completely agree that going into deep debt to do just that is a bad idea, but that's more of a societal problem in the US. Most rich countries heavily subsidize young people's education, including travel and service.
Luxembourg is an example of doing this incredibly well: most young people I met there were really well adjusted, broadly educated, and also quite happy.
I'm from Europe as well, mid 30s, so my friends/peers have no significant college debt. Somehow I grew up with people who all went to art school (mom pushed me in that direction early on) - and all my childhood friends that went to art school are now in entry level/low paid jobs with low job ambitions, limited options in life because of income, no long term relationships, no children.
Subjectively I'm not seeing the "complete people" produced by this system. Compared to my friends that only finished high school they may have more complex opinions, but the reality is they are still in dead end situations - I would not call them any more "complete" personalities. Both end up wasting time on "moms couch" and smoking weed, just discussing different topics.
Life expectancy may have extended (although that's average so it's kind of a moot point I'd argue), but prime age for having children has not.
Having children later on in life not only increases pregnancy risks but also gives you more childbirth defects. Objectively the modern "waste 20s to jump around and party" and "spend your 20s/30s building a career" is leading to a societal collapse.
That's partially true. The reality is that most rich countries (That we are talking about) purposefully make young kids stay out of the workforce, unemployable, until their very late 20s pursuing "well rounded people" education that is not useful and leads nowhere but extended unemployment. They have even culturally codified some of this (see: erasmus) This is how they keep unemployment stats low, said countries classified every u-26 as out of the workforce and not looking for work.
In contrast, the US is at least minting some U-21's that end up becoming millionaires, plus by the time most american grads hit their 30's , the majority have a very upward career trajectory, even bought 1-2 large assets.
Meanwhile, their economic peers outside of the US are still at their first job, trying to make ends meet. They could only dream of buying an apt, let alone a house.
You can have differing opinions on what this extended education model provides, whether its more/less useful vs USA, and what it means for social cohesion and peace (by keeping a very large contingent of young kids hooked education freebies). However, it is not up for debate that the limited economic opportunities connected to extended education are severely diminishing the economic prospects of those young kids
Perhaps if the US was Germany levels of selective in University admittance and Germany levels of efficient in the administration of the various degree paths, costs in the US would look more like Germany.
There are more options in the US, all those choices have costs that make the US more expensive.
> really well adjusted, broadly educated, and also quite happy
Being obscenely rich helps.
Society then profits through the resulting efficiency of spherical person transport, with highways replaced by high speed rollways.
The apotheosis of universities achieved, the almost-well-rounded college administrator - rounded enough to round the next batch of students but not round enough to use a rollway himself - celebrates this random process of collisions.
He names the motion of students through this process after his university where it is first developed: the famous Brown University.
Humanities/sociologies: $4400 to $6200 depending on subject.
STEM: $6200 to $9200
Above rates are for Danish students. Universities gets paid more for exchange students.
source: https://ufm.dk/uddannelse/institutioner-og-drift/okonomi/til...
a) Universities in Denmark have no sports teams, facilities or similar. Sport is something you do in your spare time in facilities that the city provides and you do sport with people doing all kinds of other education.
b) Universities have no dorms (there is a single exception to this). Dorms are independent "self-owned companies" which houses students from many different schools/unis.
c) No real prestige in impressive buildings. Students don't choose uni by how impressive buildings etc are.
As the state pays for the education, it has a huge incentive to keep costs low.
Would be interesting to see data on though.
Kinda like a microcosm for society.
My anecdotal sense is that STEM is significantly more expensive. Here are some factors:
1) Salaries for STEM faculty are higher than non-STEM, due to competition from the private sector.
2) STEM education often requires additional lab courses, with their own dedicated staff, space, and equipment.
3) Non-Stem additional instruction (discussion sections, etc.) is taught by non-STEM grad students, who are much less expensive than even STEM grads.
Also STEM classes are much larger, with many state school having more than 50% of their students declare a STEM major of some form.
The current reality is that that many (not all) humanities majors are societal annoyances with little to show for their education and also have a ton of det.
This sentiment was true maybe 50-60 years ago but today, college today is purely for career prep. What drives me nuts is seeing jobs where a degree is necessary but required by the company. I took a peek a "non-STEM" jobs on some job board a while back, I basically wanted to answer the question: "what are my career prospects if I majored in PolSci instead of CS".
What drove me crazy is the number of "humanities of other associated major" requirements when the job was something that clearly did not require you knowing any of that, it was just a blanket "need a degree" requirement, what that degree actually entailed be damned.
One thing I noticed is these jobs seemed to ask for degrees more often than tech jobs. Some tech jobs want to see a 4yr degree but I would say the majority are pure merit based (needs X years in this, Y years in that, some experience with Z tech).
TBH that's the root of the problem we have with education. The reason we see so many useless degrees is that they are literally useless, the only purpose is to full-fill a line item on some job applications. Makes me wonder how much more competitive those jobs would be with stem if they didn't require a degree.
You might make less working in a non-STEM field, but your "edge" is that you didn't have to go to college and take on debt. A software engineer may make way more, but they have student loans to pay down. Getting a degree just to show that you have one seems to be a massive waste of time for everyone but those that collect tuition checks.
Which can be done through online resources, MOOCs, libraries, and using free resources that colleges from such as access to the college library and ability to sit in on guest lectures (the ones that aren't tied to a specific class, they tend to be open to anyone who wants to attend). One will have to miss out on the college experience, especially the parties, but that shouldn't be an issue because it is all about becoming a well rounded citizen, right?
Dropping the sarcasm for a moment, one of the reasons colleges cost so much is because they are investing so heavily in the student experience. How many admins do they pay that aren't related to education (and who make so much more than the professors actually teaching, especially the non-tenured ones). Revamping if not rebuilding buildings that are perfectly fine because they have a dated look. Adding numerous amenities that aren't related to education. Some young adults save quite a lot of money by skipping out on these colleges, at least for the first two years, and going to cheaper ones more focused on just education. Sadly, at least in my experience, there is a correlation between having all the extra experiences and having a higher ranked degree program.
Doesn't/shouldn't this already happen in public school? That sounds like something shilled by higher ed.
This is such a weird perspective. Look at any modern business. A lot of employees will have studied something in humanities. There are valuable skills (particularly writing and communication) that are learned in these degrees that might not be seen as valuable by your average techie.
The problem is not "useless degrees" (they're all useful, regardless of what you may think of them), the problem is insane cost of education.
And if businesses didn't require 4 year degrees for jobs that don't need them, they wouldn't.
We literally gatekeep careers based on your ability to finish a 4+ year $10k+ degree program, and then you actually get the job and essentially nothing you learned was useful.
The number of coworkers i've met with degrees outside their career is basically the majority (as i work outside of STEM), and their skills mostly correlate to how well they were trained on the job. There's PLENTY that never needed college, or that college didnt change jack about their poor skill set (in fact reinforced it).
The people I know who are making the most are doctors/lawyers (and thats a whole OTHER story), and then right after that are the trades (mostly union workers) who never went to college.
I'd much rather see a proper focus on the public education we already have (and varies WILDLY in quality depending on where you are) than basically saying "well we're going to require you to go to school until you're 18, and then we're going to say that no matter how well you excelled there you're only worth minimum wage unless you force yourself through college, and then get a job where you're useless until they finish the on the job training."
A large majority of the economy is based on jobs that just do not require a 4 year degree (MAYBE 2, but even then it should just be a credit requirement). I'm all for better educating the populace, but accomplishing this by just kneecapping those with life circumstances that make a 4 year degree difficult isn't helping.
We won't see widespread de-escalation of credentials until there are labor shortages, at which point it's no longer in anyone's interest to keep potential workers sidelined in school.
It's hard to shake off the bias that a post-secondary graduate would be more likely to be a quick learner than a high school graduate even if in reality they're effectively the same
I was hoping that DEI would be more about inclusivity toward majors and not merely about one’s genealogical expressivity.
Just like nearly any corporate initiative, DEI is about what corporations can do to appease their critics, and right now that largely means gender and ethnic background.
Other forms of diversity, based on career path, religion, ideology, or even nationality, are not considered priorities.
I think this, and it's something I factor into my hiring decisions.
In terms of learning “critical thinking”, it’s just selection bias.
Most smart people go to college and people misattribute the intelligence as somehow being a product of the college. No, it’s not.
Critical reading is a skill you can practice. The specifics depend on the field, but there are many common features such as analyzing and comparing texts, interpreting them from various points of view, and putting things in context. In order to practice critical reading, you must learn something deep enough that you start understanding the nuances of the arguments the experts in the field make.
Fresh STEM graduates tend to have worse critical reading skills than arts/humanities graduates, because they never had the chance to practice it. On the other hand, advancing to true senior positions often requires similar skills, and many learn them later in the life.
I'd be curious to see evidence that STEM majors actually have worse critical reading skills. Or is it a subjective ranking you've derived?
Obviously students will learn how to game the system and pass all the essays/tests over their 4 years.
That doesn’t imply that they’re more useful for society or better placed for their futures.
It just means that they know what words/phrases to use to get an A on their paper.
Depends on the business and the degree. They may be valuable, but they are not 500k usd valuable.
>(particularly writing and communication)
You should learn that in grade school.
(The rest of the comment is ridiculous -- it should be obvious that there is much more to learn about writing or communication than just what can be taught in grade school.)
Do you really think it’s reasonable to expect eleven year olds to write and communicate at the same level as a fully grown adult?
STEM degrees are essential for modern society, humanities degrees are pure luxury that could be replaced by just reading the course syllabus for free and discussing online or with local groups
As for the cost of education, that could be fixed overnight by allowing loans to be discharged. Colleges would instantly stop providing most humanities courses because they know the students won't be able to repay them because they provide no real world value
And that's before we consider the intangible nature of "real world value." Very few of us want to live in a world where value is a pure function of expected production.
they use it as an IQ filter, nothing more.
In my experience tech people value communication and clarity as much and maybe even more than your average person. Try to write code that would be unintelligible to your colleagues. You are not going to get praised for that.
> The problem is not "useless degrees" (they're all useful, regardless of what you may think of them), the problem is insane cost of education.
Absolutely useless. It is ridiculous to think that it should require 14+ years of schooling to learn to communicate.
That's true, as someone working in tech I admit, I am illiterate. I cannot read or write. My communication is very poor. I normally just scream until someone from HR brings me more snackies.
suggests that effective writing could be a social good, and that apparently it does not come naturally.
Your basic point is that education is worthless. What do you propose as a substitute? And please explain also why it is better at the scale of a society?
Given your view on the ease of effective writing, it is fair to expect that your answer is well structured at the level of the entire essay, the paragraph, and the sentence. Your reply should also include appropriate historical references demonstrating your points.
If you cannot meet that standard, then by your own argument you have proved yourself wrong.
What's the deception here? Was the government going around saying how much money you could earn from a humanities degree? Statistics about earning potential degrees of degrees were available for decades. Caveat emptor.
Obama 2015:
"the single most important way to get ahead is not just to get a high school education, you’ve got to get some higher education. That’s why all of you are here."
"But you’re also here, now more than ever, because a college degree is the surest ticket to the middle class. It is the key to getting a good job that pays a good income -- and to provide you the security where even if you don't have the same job for 30 years, you're so adaptable and you have a skill set and the capacity to learn new skills, it ensures you're always employable."
https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2015/0...
The deception is in the belief itself, and the government has a tremendous power to shatter it, yet they choose not to.
The only standard the college should be held to us complying with false advertising rules and laws. They shouldn’t be allowed to market a degree that can’t get you a job as one that can.
S/E/M aren't as appreciated.
Since some STEM fields are well paying, people think argue they aren't as much of a waste of money. But they still suffer from excessive cost (both monetary and time) and the bloat of useless classes that other degrees do.
Not even, really. Average student loan debt for new graduates (Bachelors) with loans last year was $28K. Even for someone with a humanities degree, that's far from an insurmountable debt to pay over 10 years. It's obviously higher for people getting graduate degrees, law degrees, medical school, etc., but so is their compensation. The stories you hear about people racking up $200K in debt to get a Bachelors in Art History range from extreme outliers to basically memes. I support reform, but there's so much misinformation in this space it's ridiculous. A one time debt forgiveness isn't even "reform" IMO, as we're going to be right back where we started in a few years.
Having come from a liberal arts program: excellence there is a strong predictor for general workforce competence, including in technical fields (like I am now). I studied 18th century German philosophy, and now I work on compilers. But even this shouldn't be a necessary justification: developing our understanding of history, society, and the human condition is sufficient in itself.
[1]: https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/the-50-most-expensive-colle...
Me getting a STEM education will pay me back quickly. Thus I can afford to pay for it.
Society probably need someone to do those other things as well, which don't pay as much. So therefore we should pay for it.
It also creates boom-and-bust cycles. I graduated with a degree in physics, just as the Cold War collapsed and mandatory retirement for professors was outlawed. There was an absolute glut of physicists all looking for jobs at once.
We should not subsidize it at schools trying to play the rankings game with artificially small cohort sizes and commensurate high costs to the taxpayer for no additional payoff.
Why should we subsidize it at all? Because it's a public good.
Merit based scholarships and/or government grants for university humanities departments is a far better way of ensuring we get the most bang per dollar subsidized.
It's largely the process of developing and practicing critical analysis and how to effectively communicate it.
Yes, most humanities degrees involve a lot of writing about things written, but it's wrong (and patronizing) to say that the takeaway from the degree is merely the ability to read and write.
Effective communication is a thing a lot of STEM students have a deficit in, to boot. It's not a coincidence that they're the ones often brandishing the humanities as wasted effort.
Right, if you are going to take on tonnes of debt, it should probably before for a degree that has a reasonable chance of repaying the debt.
> colleges offered useless degrees to people that do not need them except for vanity [..]
Not useless, but it is difficult to get a profitable career in this subject areas.
> This is one of the biggest scams in history.
Not even remotely close, unfortunately. Tax is way worse. Your employer gets tax, you then get tax, anything your buy is taxed, if you don't spend it before you die you get taxed, if you try to leave it to somebody you get taxed, if you try to save money the government uses inflation to slowly tax it away from you.
The next biggest scams are likely debt traps (checkout who owns the largest amount of debt of poorer nations right now and how they got there), followed by crypto (which is a glorified pyramid scheme - prove me wrong).
It is not wrong, but as long as it replaces the far, far worse pyramid scheme that is Fiat, I'm fine with it. But we digress :)
But if this figure includes a dorm, food and utilities, then it makes sense. Otherwise, it's absurd a cost.