it's already a shame that the answer isn't 100% yes, 100% of the time.
back in the 70s, tuition was payable with a summer job and job prospects were decent enough despite geopolitical and economic headwinds
these days, the same problems plague the job market, but every year of college costs 1 year of salary, unless you qualify for stackable forms of financial aid
There are still many colleges that you cost less than a years salary. Other than that nitpick I agree. Economics aside I think that college doesn't actually prepare people for working in the real world. But the only thing that really does that is actually working in the real world.
I think previous commenter is saying every year of full-time college costs you a year of salary, in addition and on top of any tuition or other expenses it may cost you. Few students manage to work full-time and make real progress towards a degree.
Not to mention if they're working fulltime they're forfeiting a large part of the value of the degree. Half or more of the value I got from my degree involved out of class activities.
It all depends on the type of college that you go to. I also think it's funny to suggest that a "large part of the value of the degree" is out of class activities. But if that is true it kind of supports my argument that a degree proves nothing. A degree doesn't reflect those out of class activities.
I get that and I think that with that very narrow definition of college experience that may be true. But I don't think that is the the college experience that the majority is taking part in. I also think it is insulting to suggest that a student who works full-time is not making real progress towards a degree. I worked full-time and made real progress, although I eventually quit because I realized I didn't need a degree. It's is meaningless. The only thing a degree proves is that the person was able to sit through some lectures and doing some rote work. But this is all anecdotal and therefore not really valuable for proving any useful point.
People hate when I talk about working fulltime in the factory on the midnight shift and going to school fulltime.
I didnt get 'the college experience'. But I didnt have any college debt, I became a hardened adult that didnt cry when plant people got pissed. I dont complain. If something needs to get done, I do it.
Graduated in 3 years with my chem engineering degree at age 21.
People will always complain about something. "You should pay for a dorm, food, education from top individuals, books, knowledge, all for spending 200 hours in the summer at a clothing store".
I did a factory full time midnight shift job, all year, lived off campus + commuted. Ate at home too.
This comes at the cost of the 'College Experience"
Not saying it's true for you, but everyone I knew at college that was working full-time was in my opinion getting far less out of college than they would have. You need time to ponder, to explore, to be curious.
Having to grind insane hours just to get in the game might be workable for the very dedicated and tough, but it's certainly not an optimal experience, and something we should strive to make not necessary.
On the other hand, the 4 years I spent working full-time were hands-down the best education I got and directly led to my best job prospects upon graduation, whereas I had peers who finished a 4 year degree and then realized they had no desire to work in their field. Eliminating any cost of college also eliminates any need to ask if what you're studying is actually worthwhile.
> You need time to ponder, to explore, to be curious.
Most of the kids going to college are not mature enough to do any of the above (come on, these are 17 year olds going 30k into debt for their first year alone.) The 'college experience' today is partying / drinking yourself into a stupor and amassing a ton of debt. No, not everyone, but for most that's reality.
I agree. My own daughter will be going into the Air Force in a couple of years. She's not one that would do well in the college environment. She fits in best where she is a part of something bigger than herself where there is guidance and discipline (like most kids).
If she goes in at 18 after high school, she can earn a degree in 2.5 years at night in the Air Force. After her first 4 years she can choose to get out, with a degree, zero debt, life and work experience. If she so chooses, she can opt to go to Officer Candidate School (13 weeks in Alabama) and emerge 3 months later effectively doubling her income, all the while not paying for medical, dental, housing. If she marries another officer and they do 20 years to retirement, she will be 39, young enough to start a second career and enjoy her AF retirement, second career retirement, and maybe, if she's blessed, SS. More kids should go military. I did, and I had my college paid for and I pay nothing down for houses, get my closing costs paid, no PMI, get treated a little better because of my veteran status. It's a great gig for kids.
The military could be a good choice for some people, but I don't know if I'd call it a great gig.
Out of all the 10 or so people I know fairly well who are active duty or former military (Marines, Air Force, and Navy, I don't think I know any Army people unless you count National Guard).
2 have serious PTSD.
1 of those, my neighbor, was just arrested for forging pain med prescriptions--he got hooked after he was seriously wounded in combat.
4 received medical discharges from health issues directly caused by their military service (out of combat). Sure they get monthly payments, but they'd all rather not have the injuries.
All of them have spent considerable time deployed, and most of them have had serious family issues because they were away for so long.
All of their deployments were dangerous. One of my Air Force friends is a jet engine mechanic, but told me that they pulled the Marine guards out of where he was stationed, so they gave him an M16 (or maybe it was an M4, not sure what they were using at the time) and made him do guard duty.
A young women going into the Air Force in a support role is highly unlikely to ever be near the front lines; that is the bailiwick of the Army and Marines. She wants to go into a PR role, so the chances of this are slim.
I grew up a military brat, did almost 10 years myself in the Corps. I was in during DS1 and almost no one I know from that "war" has PTSD. I personally know several Marines who sent dozens of people to their graves and they are are normal as anyone else. PTSD depends on the mental strength of the individual. My own grandfather (WWII in Asia) did a 20+ year career, and my dad (grunt in Vietnam) who also did a 20+ year career didn't suffer from PTSD. My dad was a machine gunner in Vietnam. He was involved in horrible circumstances. His unit was once embattled around a US airfield in a protection role against sappers, and every man on patrol was wounded as well as covered in leeches from fighting in the nasty water. He went on dozens of missions and did and saw all manner of stuff. My dad was well adjusted, went on to earn a master's degree in engineering, and was an all around swell guy.
>PTSD depends on the mental strength of the individual.
People with PTSD don't have some kind of mental weakness. There's even evidence that many cases of PTSD are the results of undiagnosed brain trauma from IED detonations.
>A young women going into the Air Force
Yeah, for some people it's a good option. It's not a "great gig for kids" though in general--for the hundreds of thousands of people with PTSD and other job related injuries, it wasn't a great gig.
Something can't really simultaneously be described as both requiring tremendous personal sacrifice, and a great gig.
I 100% agree with this advice. I think one challenge is that now that the military has essentially become a soldierly caste in American culture, and one that's heavily concentrated in specific geographies, many don't know about what's involved with a career in the armed forces. It's not for everyone, but it would likely be a better decision for some major chunk of the population who'd otherwise flail in a college environment.
There are more than 200 million Americans of military age.
I wouldn't call that a major chunk.
Even if you look at the number of people who've served for any length of time at all, the number is very low. It's not a viable option for a significant portion of the population, because personel numbers are capped.
You've been watching to many American Pie movies. College students are insanely focused because they know how tough the competition is. No one has time to party.
At Ivies and other top 20 schools, I'd agree. Maybe even the top 50. Beyond that, I think the American Pie stereotypes are closer to the norm than you might think.
Real cultural problem/phenonenom there, but not a reason to write off college entirely. 17 year olds are absolutely old and mature enough to do all kinds of valuable learning & thinking, if in the right culture. (So are 13 year olds!)
I found that my full-time job as a student allowed me to test lessons I learned in the classroom, or to at least see their application in real settings. I never met anyone in college who used their free time to ponder. People fill up their free time, one way or the other. Then they ponder during their busy time.
Having to grind to get in the game sounds like real life. An education that does not prepare you for real life is of questionable value.
You need time to ponder, to explore, to be curious.
Ok, but you should do that on your own dime, not someone else's. And when you end up with student debt, you shouldn't complain because you go to "ponder, explore and be curious".
Cool Anecdote - but I don't see your point. It's still more expensive than it used to be, and you can't expect every 18 year old to make the same perfect decisions you did. I worked my ass off too and still came out with debt - and I could do my cushy white collar job now without any of the education I payed so much for though I doubt I would've been given the opportunities I have been given if I didn't have the degree on my resume.
Also, cheers from another Michigander - I went to Western.
The point is that there was a time when you could have worked that factory job during the summer to pay for the next year's tuition. I'm sure you would concede that this is much more reasonable than working a full time job on top of a full time university load.
An ex had a grandfather who put himself through school, including dental school and the extra 3 years for a specialty in orthodontics, working a summer job.
And he complains about his grandkids needing to go into debt. They don't realize how the world's changed in the last 50 years...
I have three children who have completed 2-1/2 bachelors degrees in the last 6 years. Within the next three years I expect that to be 3 bachelors and one masters.
All of this will have been achieved with zero debt and no financial assistance from parents.
Each child is expected to put in 1200+ hours of employment per year of school. This grosses them $12K+ of salary even as freshmen. They choose schools that cost < $6000/year to attend. They pick up some scholarship money to help when they can. They live in cheap apartments with lots of roommates, and they cook their own food.
University of Chicago tuition costs >$50K/year. [0]
UofI-Chicago runs ~$17K. [1]
Prairie State College in Chicago costs < $5K/year[2]
Here's your first college test: Which one offers a better value?
If you can't afford food, rent, and tuition for $15K/year, you're not looking hard enough. If you think you should spend $75K/year right out of high school... college may not be a good idea for you.
This is not so different from my experience decades ago. I used to opt out of traveling home for Thanksgiving because I could work double shifts during the holiday. Every hour over 1200 helped to pad things.
I recently recommended to a high school student that they enter an essay contest worth $1000. I thought they could win. They thought it was too much effort. They might burn up 4 hours! A loan application only takes 30 minutes.
One of my children was recruited by Harvard. Their recruiters open with a line very similar to what they put on their website [0]: "70% of Harvard students receive some form of financial aid. A Harvard education is more affordable than a state school for 90% of American families."
My general rule of thumb is that if it takes more than 4 clicks to discover the tuition costs of a school, they are embarrassed. If they are embarrassed it means that even they can't justify the value proposition.
With some digging I see that Harvard claims [1] annual tuition > $50k. Before they tell you that, they promise you a $67K scholarship.
Given those numbers, you can actually make money if you can live for less than $17K/year after tuition. So, yeah, it might really pay off.
Oh, Harvard is also very clear that after you graduate you owe them a lifelong contribution. There is no question that they are expecting 7 figures back. But it seems reasonable that they get you the clerkship or whatever first that puts you in a position to pay back that kind of money.
Why would that experience be aspirational? Why should that be the way we want to structure society?
Especially when other western nations show us that university can be free and people can have a rich college experience without that kind of death march.
Other Western nations also don't allow everyone to go to college and aggressively track students into vocational programs at an early age. Not saying that's bad, per se, but implementing that approach in the US would create new and different uncomfortable trade-offs.
With that schedule, were you able to do much in the way of networking? That's part of the 'college experience', and is often cited as one of the greatest benefits of going to college.
That's excellent, I might even call it extraordinary. Meaning, that is outside the ordinary.
I knew a guy in college, at UCSD, who was trying to take a full CS load while working at Nordstrom. This was in the 90s, so rent, tuition, and costs weren't as high around UCSD as they are now, but making enough to cover rent alone can be a challenge. He was trying to take calc, physics, datas structures and algorithms, and humanities.
Data structures had a pretty tough teacher that semester. I didn't have to work, and I was putting in 20 hours a week at it, to get a B+. That's not a lot for this course, either.
He dropped it. You did ChemE while working, so I bet you could have handled the CS course load at UCSD while working. But I just can't see this as a viable path for most people. In short, I agree that there are extraordinary people who can handle it, but it's not something we can reasonably expect. You can major in communications this way, but CS will lose a lot of talent.
Memories like this, and others, are why I get so angry at times when I hear billionaire CEOs talking about the shortage of engineers in the US. We have talented people here, smart and eager to work hard, failing because they are underfunded. The massive wealth of these CEOs exists only because they can access a highly educated workforce in a safe, stable, peaceful, business friendly democracy.
If they're going to talk about how this environment is failing them, they aren't doing enough. Seriously. It's appalling that talented people who had the grades and test scores to study CS at public (elite) institutions in Facebook's own backyard are failing out of CS because they can't pay the rent and balance the part time job with the demands of a very rigorous curriculum, while billionaire CEOs talk about how the government is failing to produce or give them access to enough engineers.
This is point-blank wrong, unless you're only talking about elite private schools. Most state schools cost around 1-1.5 years of full-time salary, discounting room and board since you have to pay for somewhere to live independently of if you attend university. If your goal is to simply get a degree, you can do it for less than $50k (which is definitely still off compared to the 70s, I agree).
Your argument is only valid if you are assuming that tuition is paid for out of pocket. If you have to finance that $50k, you will most likely end up paying closer to $80k. The 80k assumes a 15 year repayment at current rates, if they can pay more and get it done in 10 years it drops down to under $70k.
The $50k is assuming financing. Nobody realistically pays for college tuition out-of-pocket unless they were lucky and their parents set up a fund for it.
Source: myself and literally every single college person I know who attended public universities in the Midwest
Yeah, there are some stipulations. Like, you have to go to an in state school. You do give up a significant chunk of your weekends and summers. I was a year behind all of my peers due to training.
But to have almost zero debt is worth it. More people should consider it.
You're missing opportunity cost. If you're in school full-time, you're not working full-time. That costs the salary you're not making and the experience you're not getting, on top of what you pay for school plus interest (because unless your parents are rich or you're That Counterexample, you're borrowing).
In return, you go to school, which one hopes is worth the cost over the course of the rest of your life, however you measure it (but here, mostly in currency). Which brings us back to this discussion.
Well what really screwed the pooch was that state governments defunded public universities forcing them to raise tuition. This caused the Feds to step in to provide more loans, which in the end, are effectively a tax on folks going to college. It's basically a variable tax though since you can minimize it and then they offer some relief programs.
Which is probably a good thing, since it will slowly beat into the minds of upper-levels at corps and recruiters that a College Degree shouldn't be the minimum bar applicants need to reach, and maybe some of these companies will start removing the "has degree" band reject filter.
Even if not all college degrees are worthwhile, it doesn't mean that companies are wrong to want college degrees.
In fact, it's probably true that the highest-paid, highest-skill jobs have the most genuine need for college degrees. And for the rest, virtue signaling is a real thing: if you have more applicants than jobs, you set up high filters to winnow the pool.
Or perhaps less cynically, winnowing the pool to the group of people who have the personalities and temperaments necessary to complete a college degree. It doesn't have to be a perfect filter; false negatives don't matter so much if your filter leads to enrichment.
I'm not saying it's "fair", I'm just saying there are rational reasons to do it.
You seem to be suggesting that the simple addition of a degree requirement is good because it narrows the search field. By this same argument, I could say I will only accept candidates that are left handed.
The assumption is that holding a degree is a proxy for IQ, or work ethic, or some other positive trait. Left-handedness doesn't signal much of anything, beyond perhaps a slightly shorter life expectancy.
Yes, my HS counselor, in speeches to students at assemblies (c.1999), was constantly saying "It doesn't matter which college you go to, but you absolutely must get a degree."
Not sure if joking, but I agree, in a general sense. For skills above a certain level/specialization, I don't like the idea of a "full time, career teacher". In order to really ground the lessons/advice they're giving, they need to be a practicioner[1] too -- otherwise, your questions will get answered with "... that's what the book says" or some rationalization of some idiosyncratic ritual they favor. That doesn't impart a real understanding.
For a HS counselor, that would mean they also work as a career counselor outside to tell people whether or what jobs to change to, or to stay at their current one.
I wouldn't apply that to core education, as there are no e.g. professional adders, but you get the the picture.
I could go on, but that's a topic for another day, I guess.
[1] a retired or former practicioner would suffice here too
I don't like the idea of a "full time, career teacher".
This one - I still remember her name but I won't doxx her obv - I happen to know had gone from school to university to teacher training to my school. She had never been outside the education system in her entire life. But her job was to advise 16- and 18-year olds on how to set themselves up for career success...
(I think she also taught Home Ec or some similar fluffy subject)
But, here's the thing: They weren't wrong. The sheer number of people who have had their resumes ignored simply because they don't have a degree of some sort attests to that.
>> ...they even went so far as to say it didn’t even matter what you studied!...
> ...They weren't wrong. The sheer number of people who have had their resumes ignored simply because they don't have a degree of some sort attests to that.
This doesn't imply that having any degree would have gotten their resumes looked at, or secured them an interview.
Looking over other people's shoulders while they job search I've seen plenty of openings that require a bachelor's but don't require it be in any particular field.
These may or may not be the best jobs but it's not an uncommon requirement and they are typically better in some dimension than openings that require a HS diploma only (at least within the same organization).
As a 1999 graduate, I can verify the "College is the only way to succeed" sentiment from that time. Most of my class had applied for and been accepted well before we graduated.
Sadly, many of them acquired lots of debt, and not much else. I advise any young people I get to talk with about post high school education to not jump head first into a degree program. Life won't pass you by if you take a year or two to formulate a plan.
>I advise any young people I get to talk with about post high school education to not jump head first into a degree program. Life won't pass you by if you take a year or two to formulate a plan.
I applaud you for this. There's often so much pressure from every single direction around a young adult to attend college including internal pressure. After having been the first from my immediate family and older to graduate I feel I am also the first in my family to have an opinion or advice worth giving to another person in that position.
The thing I always say is that it's almost worse to go to college with no plan or "track" to graduating and your goals. Maybe you need a year after high school to figure out your direction as you work a job or two to earn some tuition and spending money before you embark on your educational crusade.
I'm not sure if my personal feelings and abilities apply to many other folks but after K-12 (public schooling) and voluntarily enrolling in university (~4 more years of education) I have a really hard time willingly singing myself up to learn anything new in a "traditional US Public education environment" for lack of better words / explanation. So my advice is to get a plan together, make sure you are motivated and mentally prepared to work hard toward your goal, and make sure you get it done in the time you set aside for yourself. From my POV I don't think I could ever willingly mentally allow myself to go back into student mode. Learning is on my time, to my tastes and liking now. But that feeling only started to come into my life after I was able to get my bachelor's degree. That said, what I mean here is: If you are going to go through all the trouble of going to college you might as well take it extremely seriously. Treat it like it's your job, your #1 priority. Everything comes after your education. It doesn't mean you can't have fun or you can't live your life but it does mean that you should be treating your education seriously and more importantly you should be understanding that you are paying A LOT of money to be there. You aren't going to conjure up all the mental fortitude and courage to re-motivate yourself to go back to school once you've mustered up the strength and courage to quit the first time. Don't give yourself a chance to "get back to it" unless you truly have no other chance / better route to take.
I LOVE LEARNING but I DO NOT LOVE the US's curriculum and standardized test-based education system. Having worked with kids (5-10y/o) for over a decade and having gone through everything they are preparing to go through (university, a degree, and the hunt to obtain the start to their career) I can see many of the issues that plague the education system, I see oh-so-many ways that it's failing or coming up entirely too short for our youth, and sadly enough I'm also realizing how simple it sounds to say, "We need to fix the education system." but also how incredibly difficult it is to actually change this system.
Now we are at this pinnacle of an education decision where it seems to feel like we are teetering on a two-decision contest that's been randomly and seemingly created from the system in place which will decide, somewhat, the future of education:
The current and traditional system, which we have in place now, demands we all work hard and achieve to the highest degree in order to attend a good college / university where we will work hard and achieve to the highest degree in order to obtain a great job where we'll work hard and attempt to achieve to the highest degree.
In primary school you work hard and learn the foundations and basics in order to get successfully get to intermediate school. In intermediate school you work hard and gain new tools to apply to your future work you must do to prepare for your future which takes place in high school. In high school you work hard, continue building on your founda...
Reading your post gave me a greater empathy for the frustrations that our education system inflicts by not getting into specifics about how to develop a realistic structure and plan for life that is flexible but has an age appropriate level of detail.
Just the exercise would be useful, but even more so some feedback. But then that raises the question, who is equipped to give that feedback? Should an educator tell someone else's kid that maybe they need a backup plan in case the astronaut thing doesn't pan out?
When I was young my father stuck me in front of a publication from the bureau of labor statistics that gave the long term outlook for every occupation they track. It was really great advice that every kid should see (they also ought to make a more kid friendly version, it can be very dry). The big picture stuff was pretty spot on, and it lets you know some hard truths like some jobs will require living in a major city, food service has plenty of openings available but low pay, that kind of thing. It helps you get realistic, even for dream-type jobs like actor or astronaut.
>When I was young my father stuck me in front of a publication from the bureau of labor statistics that gave the long term outlook for every occupation they track. It was really great advice that every kid should see
This is more of the kind of thing I wish kids were shown.
Not only show them and teach them skills they'll need the very second they graduate high school, god forbid they are on their own or have no family to rely on. How are we expecting newly graduated 18 year olds to be true participating adults in our society when education teaches them nothing of value?
At least if public schools took a more vocational approach and showed students career tracks with all sorts of options and branches for people with a given set of skills they could at least tuck that information in the back of their mind, they'd know their options and they'd likely gravitate toward working towards the things that they feel they are best suited for.
When they aren't sure that's when teachers, guidance counselors, professionals in different markets (who come in and do assemblies / talks) and parents come into play to help guide a student who isn't quite sure. It's not easy for a pre-adult to decide their career but what I'm really saying and really wanting to see is at least some more emphasis on reminding those kids that life's not all about college. More important that college is creating a comfortable life for yourself and potentially your family and to do that you need to learn how to create value for an employee or society (if you start your own business) before you graduate. Not many companies want to hire people to pay and train them if they have no skills and experience and things like that are becoming more and more rare outside of the trades -- and even then a lot of the artisans and tradespeople seem like a closed off wall if not the type of career most students have been "brain washed" (for lack of a better / less devious word) that blue collar service jobs are below them.
Maybe work study programs for all high school juniors (16/17) and seniors (17/18) in different sorts of service and white collar jobs to give them an idea of how a business works with both blue and white collar workers forming together in a company to make products or offer services. Something to give those students some insight into the way things really are.
A lot of 18-year-olds are not really very mature these days either. Kids are generally more sheltered, less independent, and have less experience managing their own lives than previous generations. That is why universities now have huge bureaucracies to deal with students who are physically adults but emotionally unprepared to manage their lives and take responsibility for their behavior, actions, and decisions without parents guiding everything.
So taking a year or two to figure out how to be an adult is not the worst approach to take.
If more people decide to delay or seek alternatives to college, the higher ed bubble will burst. Universities will not be able to afford the administrative staff they are carrying if enrollments decline.
> So taking a year or two to figure out how to be an adult is not the worst approach to take.
A year spent figuring out how to be an adult would indeed be helpful. Unfortunately, for students who are still immature and sheltered at 18, an additional year spent having their lives completely managed by their parents seems more likely.
Employers are generally looking for a proxy for iq, since testing iq directly has potential legal problems. SAT, ASVAB, grades, degree attainment are often just proxies for iq. I think if Congress passes a law explicitly allowing iq tests for all job applications we'll see many of these seemingly irrational job requirements fade away.
The ASVAB is a vocational (subject) test, not an IQ test. I think it does try to measure general intelligence in some sections, but it’s really focused on “can you do this type of job.” When I took it over a decade ago there was basically a “clerking” section which I flunked.
The ASVAB is what you say it is. I took it back in the mid 80s, scored just shy of perfect, yet I chose a combat MOS because of my interests and desire for going the "hard route". Looking back, I regret not going into a technical role in the Air Force rather than going Marines, but I've now been in IT for 20 years, and Uncle Sam paid for my degree when I left the service. All in all, a good gig.
>The ASVAB measures cognitive ability like other common IQ test, but it dependent upon the individual’s previous education for successful scores. It removes the individual attention received in common IQ test, but gathers much of the same information.
College degree and ASVAB results are not similar criteria at all. They serve completely different purposes.
A college degree shows an ability to complete a specific course of discipline. It does not really even indicate aptitude in the discipline. Just the ability to follow through and complete the requirements. I suppose it shows a minimum level of aptitude in that you didn't give up hope and quit.
ASVAB doesn't indicate the ability to follow through with anything. It tries to hint at aptitude in a wide range of disciplines. It purports to provide your relative capabilities and interest in many topics.
That is why the military relies on ASVAB. They don't need to know your level of stick-to-it-ness or discipline. They will beat that into you or drum you out very quickly. They are more interested in where among hundreds of specialties you are most likely to fit.
> It does not really even indicate aptitude in the discipline.
I don't know what standards are like in the U.S., but at least where I went to university a good 30% (of those who were in the top 20% of the highly selective entrance exam) ended up getting kicked out because they didn't pass enough courses in their first or second year.
Yes, for some people it was an inability to concentrate, but I also know a few who put in more than the minimum hours but for some reason it just didn't 'click'.
I don't know if the US is suffering from grade inflation which lets through people who should have been failed, or if you are just in a bubble of people who are successful, but what you describe is nothing like what I experienced.
ASVAB is an IQ test. Education correlates strongly with IQ. IQ isn't the only thing you get from the type of degree earned and where it's earned from, but it's a big component.
IQ doesn't seem nearly as relevant as conscientiousness and ability to follow directions. College success really acts as a proxy for "I am able to complete assigned tasks under stress." I also imagine the relationship between IQ and productivity isn't exactly linear...
There are a few ways I could reply to this comment.
1. I could try and attack the evidence, by linking studies such as http://digitalcommons.sacredheart.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?ar... which found that conscientiousness is better correlated with grades (a proxy for job performance) than SAT score (a proxy for IQ), but that's not a very strong claim considering all the proxy measures involved (and it still does show that IQ matters).
2. I could attack the article you linked: "employers are more interested in employees' social skills than their cognitive ability" seems correct, in that communication is a key difficulty in jobs at large organization, much more than any individual's cognitive capacity. One could claim it's better at a large org to "satisfice" for IQ while optimizing for social skill. "Emotional Intelligence" vs "Cognitive Ability" as linked later in the article also doesn't seem to capture a sufficiently broad space of factors. And what is "culture fit" about, then?
3. We could talk about the taboo on discussing IQ. I could discuss my experience talking with supporters of "human bio-diversity", geneticists who seemed quite interested in discussing correlations between "various socio-cultural factors" and IQ, mostly with the intent of riling up people, or playing a contrarian position. Many people have a weak understanding of IQ and genetics, and end up drawing incorrect and occasionally repugnant conclusions based on the data (typically due to a lack of understanding that, across generations, genetics are malleable, IQ is malleable, etc).
"Some people use the data badly" isn't a strong argument against mainstreaming discussion of IQ. A stronger argument might be that individuals like to feel ownership over their own lives. Telling people that "IQ, which is determined mostly genetically, is the largest factor in your job performance (read: life success)" chips away at the common knowledge that an individual has significant personal agency, which is important as a philosophical basis behind various facets of western culture. Scott Alexander at Slate Star Codex tries to synthesize the two sides (one side wants to mainstream IQ, the other feels their self-narrative is threatened, hence the synthesis that it doesn't matter so much on an individual level) here: http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/09/27/against-individual-iq-w... but not everyone finds his arguments compelling.
All this isn't to say I agree or disagree that there should be a taboo -- I personally don't have a stance, but would prefer not to hire based on the metric -- but I did want to share some reasons that an objector might give against making it an acceptable measure.
If we're going to have a discussion about ending the requirement for a college degree or other seemingly arbitrary job requirements we have to understand why companies seek those things. The answer is that companies want to hire smart workers. It's fine to suggest that the degree requirement is wasteful, but I don't think we can expect employers to stop using that metric if we can't offer a better one. IQ is already something employers are looking for, even if they use coded language like "smart" or "problem solvers." Let's at least make it explicitly legal for them to ask for it.
I'm not going to suggest that there's absolutely no bias in the IQ tests themselves, but we've come a long way with them, and they're certainly going to be less biased than the average human who is hiring. Your IQ has no race or gender.
I didn't mention anything about "ending the requirement for a college degree", my claim was that IQ does matter but other features matter just as much, and a college degree turns out to be a solid proxy for _many_ of those features.
I also did not claim that the IQ test itself was biased. I'm not quite certain which of my claims you're responding to.
I'm responding to the actual context of this entire thread, not attempting to make a point by point rebuttal to anything you said.
If IQ isn't the only thing a college degree is a proxy for, that just means we'd need to offer companies even more than just IQ test if we want to remove the college degree requirement.
Sure, the employer (maybe) can’t test for IQ it themselves—but why not have a public policy of “appreciating” if people bring you a credential from an external IQ testing firm? (I.e. the sort of formal testing MENSA does, but without the social club.)
It's illegal to require an IQ test/score for a job unless you can reasonably prove that a particular iq score is required. If you say that 130 is required, you have to explain why 129 is not capable of doing the work. As you might imagine, this is a high risk endeavor which is why most places don't ask for it. The SAT, however, is largely an IQ test in disguise and allows employers/universities to skirt the legal problem.
My point is: don’t require it. Just encourage people (perhaps in guides you submit to job-search programs or the like, or even in a newspaper PSA) to get the IQ tests done themselves, and then bring the proof of their IQ with them as an unrequested document. Basically, make it a social more that people should bring IQ test results to the employer, whether or not the employer wants them.
Also, don’t actually call it an IQ test. Get a third party that tests IQ and then issues a branded certification named after the IQ tier you fall into. Like CompTIA certifications: you could be a holder of a “FooTesting Genius Certification”, and employers could ask for that.
I don't have a degree and honestly have never had any issues with recruiters or interviews for intermediate/senior 'software engineering' positions. I never represent myself as having a degree, but I don't go out of my way to point out my lack of degree either.
Never once in an interview have I been asked about my education. One nice thing about software development positions is the interview process tends to be merit based.
I have mostly interviewed with small/medium businesses in Toronto, but have also done early stage interviews with Google where it was also not brought up. I declined further interviews with Google because I didn't want to move, so maybe it would have been an issue later on.
I don't have a degree and it almost never fails to come up. Ultimately I flunked out (for a variety of reasons). I've done a lot of A/B(/C/D/E) testing with my resume:
- Don't include education - I'm asked about it. Every. Single. Time.
- Include the years I attended college - Asked why I didn't finish. Every. Single. Time.
- Include college in a misleading way - I did a summer extension program for 2 years while in high school at a similar college. I list both colleges, my start year, my end year, and what my degree track was. I do not claim that I have a degree, but nearly everyone assumes I do. I'm almost never asked about it.
Any time I am asked about it I'm honest to the degree they need ("I had to take a break from school due to family issues", which is true: my family had an issue with the number of "F"s I was getting).
I've actually had managers who found out after being hired who told me "if I had known that, I wouldn't have hired you"
Ultimately I think there are a lot of industries that a degree requirement is a good thing (I really want my doctor to actually have an MD), a lot of industries where certification is sufficient (I don't particularly think an LMFT needs to have a full degree), but the vast majority of industries shouldn't require it, and filtering for that is a cop-out.
I've been at Google for a number of years. Whether I had a degree was brought up during the recruiter conversations; nobody cared.
How do you feel about the fact that doctors from foreign countries need to requalify in the US with a whole ‘nother MD program here? Even if they’re from a country with as-or-more stringent requirements, and decades of experience?
“Higher education” is sometimes, in hiring, a dog-whistle for “enculturated to the US because they attended college here.”
> How do you feel about the fact that doctors from foreign countries need to requalify in the US with a whole ‘nother MD program here? Even if they’re from a country with as-or-more stringent requirements, and decades of experience?
There are plenty of countries that do have MD programs that the United States recognizes, like Canada for instance. It's a political issue more than anything. If the medical licensing boards in multiple different countries could come together for some form of agreed licensing this could easily by possible.
> There are plenty of countries that do have MD programs that the United States recognizes, like Canada for instance.
Are there any other countries besides Canada in that list? As far as I know, Canada- and US-educated doctors can practice anywhere in Canada or the US. Everyone else has to be "re-certified," which includes doing a residency in Canada or US. It is very competitive to get a residency placement. The results is that if you have not done a residency in the US or Canada, the rule of thumb is that it takes 10 years to get licensed to practice and you have a 10% chance of success.
In other words, the problem is not that licensing boards don't accept degrees from other countries, but that they don't accept residencies. And getting a residency spot is so competitive and such a long shot that few people can successfully do it.
I fully agree with the US decision. I want my MDs to pass some baseline aptitude set by US regulation and if a governing board decides a country cannot meet that then those doctors need to re-apply.
This applies to technology as well: I want the people writing code that will be deployed in $CRITICAL_SITUATION to pass some baseline aptitude test set by US regulation, ideally with some ethics component. Unfortunately, no such thing exists in software and there's a surprising pushback.
It sort of exists. P.E. Software engineering like most of the other engineering branches use. Signing off on designs that require regulatory approval often requires a PE. In my first job in mechanical design etc. it was understood that I would get this as soon as I could.
However my understanding is that almost no one gets this in software and it’s being discontinued.
They don’t just need to re-do the testing; they need to waste six years and another $300k of tuition to learn things they already know, before anyone will be willing to test them.
Why? US health care is proven to be inferior to that of many European countries.
I suspect the reason that AMA limit access to US markets for foreign trained doctors is because limiting the supply of doctors in the US would likely increase the average salary for current US doctors.
Because it sets baseline standards. Yes, I think everyone knows the US does not have the best healthcare in the world. But I also think it's 100% appropriate to say if you want to practice medicine in this country then you must meet our standards. Just like a drivers license might not be valid in any country you visit outside your own.
> How do you feel about the fact that doctors from foreign countries need to requalify in the US [...]
I have zero problem with this. If I was a doctor on the US and moved outside of it I'd expect to requalify there. Different areas have different levels required and just because you've met the levels required in one area doesn't mean you've met them in another.
> They don’t just need to re-do the testing; they need to waste six years and another $300k of tuition to learn things they already know, before anyone will be willing to test them.
That's your actual concern. I don't think you want to get rid of requalification, just make the process quicker and less expensive. Advocate for this, then.
Interesting. I also do not have a degree, and I'm pursing my associates part time while working full-time as a Junior Dev. However every job interview I've had people bring up my education, and it seems to always be the deal breaker for them. Despite the fact that I know in my personal work, I'm more capable than most of the people with their Bachelors in CS.
I feel like a lot of companies hiring software devs just filter out most of the resumes that don't mention having a Bachelors degree, simply because they can.
Your résumé is a marketing document. You don't have to put anything about your education on there if you have other stuff worth mentioning, like work experience and personal projects. This may increase your hit rate.
I had an argument with one guy who would fire you for "lying in an interview" if you didn't tell him you had a degree, or list it on your resume. His position was that people with degrees would work for him until a better job came along and then just move along, wasting his time "training" them. (Basic laboring work.)
He didn't understand that he was just hiring the lowest common denominator because he wouldn't run a workplace that people wanted to stay in. I've long wondered how many exceptional people he's cast off because they didn't fit his employment profile of "no hope, minimum wage."
Just start talking about what you've done, don't let the education become a sticking point. Especially when you're starting out, people ask about education because they don't know what else to ask about. Make sure your resume lists actual points of interest, and IMO, leave "education" off if you don't have something impressive to put in there. A lot of interviewers essentially just read your resume back to you and ask you to expand.
>Ultimately I think there are a lot of industries that a degree requirement is a good thing (I really want my doctor to actually have an MD), a lot of industries where certification is sufficient .
Why only Doctors? Because human lives are involved? I assume by the same logic, Civil Engineers also need to have a degree (they build bridges and other life critical infrastructure)
There may be thousands of software products that are also life critical. Not just the obvious ones like some medical hardware control program/firmware, Air traffic control programs, Flight onboard software Self-driving car auto-pilot software etc. So I assume those would require a qualified software engineer with a degree.
But there may even be others that may not be so obvious immediately.
I have a degree and not been on the other side (not having a degree) and so cannot identify with any injustice that is perceived by folks on other side. I can certainly see somewhat equivalent when it comes to bachelors degree vs Masters/PHD as I don't have those. So I am not sure where the lines should be drawn to make it fair to everyone.
Ha! Brings back memories. When I was an engineering student at UIUC, I was taking a physics class where the Prof graded crazy hard, even by the standards of the department.
His response was "one day you might build a bridge and can kill someone."
I guess I spoke too broadly in this case. The primary I see isn't an MD, they are a PA-C. But I know that they're consulting with an MD behind the scenes as necessary.
I'm not exactly sure where I draw the line, and for me it's a lot of "I know it when I see it". I'm not suggesting any specific code here, just pointing out that there are positions all over the spectrum. I find the fact that a CID (Certified Interior Decorator) is a thing is absurd.
Maybe my requirement is that someone with an appropriate level is in the chain somewhere.
Because, of course, your experiences are universal to all of humanity.
My own personal anecdotal evidence is contrary; I had to get a college degree before anyone would give me so much as a callback (and the one time I got more than that, it ended with a pathetic offer - with the justification given that "You don't have a college degree"). All of this despite having years of proven open source contributions.
> All of this despite having years of proven open source contributions.
I wonder how experience in open source maps to professional experience. My impression is that employers seem to value professional experience much more.
I've had a similar experience to you in terms of not having a college degree, but after I worked for a few years employers stopped caring.
I think it's fairly obvious that I didn't mean this situation would apply to everyone, I just wanted to supply another view/data-point.
Out of curiosity, what does your github look like? I know you said you have a lot of open source contributions, but what about personal projects on your github?
Software engineers are unlike almost any other advanced technical field, as in there is so much demand and so much change in the field that degrees aren't as important. After a few years of experience, that's what matters more. But i bet that first job is hard to get.
If, instead of using the metric getting a job as a Software Engineer, you used building and deploying quality software in a timely and cost-effective manner, then a CS and/or SE degree may be very important.
When I worked in IT, I noticed a correlation between the absence of each. Those who get jobs as programmers without prior study and/or training tend to be more likely to slip up on quality delivered, deadlines met, and/or resources used. Of course, measuring those things is tricky. Some programmers ship software full of bugs so they can make more money fixing it up later, which is charged to some other account in the company.
This is the reason I chose a community college with a high job placement record. I had a job right after graduation and gained experience working instead of wasting an extra 2 years in college. Plus, an associates degree costs significantly less than a bachelors.
Before I earned my degree, I had countless interviewers tell me that they wouldn't consider me until I had one, in spite of my "not insignificant" experience and interest in the field. (It was sysadmin at the time.)
So I got my degree. Suddenly, the interviewers - some of them the same as before - changed their positions to not considering me in spite of having the qualifications, but because I had no experience.
So before it was experience but no degree, then it was degree but no experience. It's been about eight years since I gave up trying to find work appropriate to my training.
I don’t have a degree and have never run in to an issue with that fact. Came up once in an interview about 20 years ago for a very early job, and that’s the last I’ve heard of it.
The problem is usually getting the first couple opportunities. You don't need a degree if you've been in the industry awhile, but if you're trying to get a prestigious job it gets really easy to be filtered into thrown out stack of resumes.
This is the kicker. Getting your foot in the door is much, much easier with a degree. But, it doesn't mean it's the only way.
I got my first programming gig, sans degree, with my portfolio. My boss commented that my website, and descriptions of my projects, is what got me the interview.
Coming from graphic design, a portfolio is par for the course. But, I think some programmers will overlook the need for one. And no, I don't think Github projects serve as the same thing. A supplement? Yes. But, a proper site for your work can do wonders.
100% of my work has been internal-facing systems for large companies. Should I compose a portfolio of it? How will a hiring manager be able to differentiate it from a bunch of bullshit?
As an artist, you can almost always point to something, and say: I did this. I designed that. I am credited on a blockbuster film.
As a programmer, you can almost always talk a hot game about how you did something, but you can rarely tie that to proof.
Are you saying that's the hiring manager's problem, not mine?
It depends on how you spend that time. Studing hard pays off, slacking off - not.
This should be a common knowledge. It more or less boils down to this and not status or race...
Most people blog to have a blog and don't realize their insights aren't useful. So you're advice is not useful since telling dumb people not to do dumb things is a waste of time, they're too dumb to know what they're doing is a waste of time or doesn't have any useful insights. Sorry to have to be the one to tell you this, you being so smart and all.
Some blogs are clickbait simply to capture clicks, or maybe the blog is to pad out somebodys resume and the content may as well be lorem ipsum boilerplate becasue nobody is ever going to read it anyway, but having a blog is better than not having a blog (most of the time). IF you have even ONE good article to show somebody then they tend to assume that your entire blog will have around that level of quality. So is wanting Adsense money stupid? No. Even if all the stuff is low quality then it may as well be MY low quality blog that gets all the his amirite? Thats what they're probably trying to do. IDK there are really too many reasons to enumerate...
> twitter Personal Finance is a cesspool of shitty adsense/amazon affiliate filled blogs
I realize I am not in tune with times, but it somewhat irks me that a lot of (generally) younger folk at work want to blog about every single task they've accomplished or assigned to. Often turning these seemingly routine tasks into heroic efforts described in the blog postings. I guess it's called career growth. :)
last full time job I had, I blogged almost daily, on an internal system I installed. I was laughed at a bit. Mgr asked for weekly 'status reports' but they always either had too little info, or outdated info. The blog was my daily/hourly notes. Initially I just said "read my blog" for the status update, but that didn't go well, but it helped me summarize.
Meetings? I had the discussion/outcomes in the blog. Tricky SQL or weird edge case decision? I blogged it.
A few months after I left someone said "thanks for writing that - it's been a huge help in figuring out why some of the stuff was done the way it was done". Same person who'd laughed at me for wasting my time. :)
Right. What you did is you documented (internally) what you did, and related decision chains. Before we used wikis, and way back we just wrote it up on paper and archived in folders. Good job and shame on your co-workers seemingly not engaging to similar activity.
What I was referring to though were public blog postings in teh interwebs. And because they are public, you can’t often include details that would make them usable as a documentation in a way internal blog like yours would work.
As an internal tool for documenting what’s been done, or for debriefing. I think blog etc. is just as good as other methods. It’s the public ones where I sometimes wonder how much they add to pool of noise and useless information which makes it so much harder to find good information.
To what extent is it still news. It's not just this topic, it's a whole range of subjects. e.g. the same articles are written and rewritten on housing all the time. And the notion I get sent an article by a friend, see it on FB, twitter, a debate, the paper itself and the half dozen that will cover it by referring to the article in an opinion piece, doesn't help. I'm finding it increasingly more difficult to get meaningful new news or rather, new insights from media channels. It's really frustrating.
I swear to God I am fed up seeing articles like these come out every month.
The Truth is, employers will always want people with degrees.
If you can start your own gig, without any degree, then it's up to you.
Reading the article I thought to myself that it’s a crappy piece that oversimplifies the complex landscape and tries to draw sensationalist conclusions... but after reading the Tweeter thread by the very scientist who’s work is cited, the article looks intentionally false and a retraction worthy.
Instead of saying that college is not worth it, why don’t we do MORE to make it free?
Even if people don’t end up using their knowledge fully, simply giving them the opportunity to have that knowledge may enrich their lives. There aren’t social downsides to free education (so long as it’s not censored).
It's an opinion piece so based on what I've read in the NYT(or the WSJ, doesn't matter the ostensible political leanings of the paper in question) there will never be a retraction and the editorial board will double down on backing the editorial.
The article states nothing of the cost inefficiency, that is cost of producing the good or service. Instead, the article tries to claim that the price of education makes it a questionable investment, given the monetary returns.
Higher education can and is being delivered at reasonable costs across much of the developed world, with many countries choosing to have taxpayers carry the burden of funding education.
This common-pool resource approach (that is non-excludable, but still rivalrous) to education does not prevent private education that exists as a private good (that is both excludable and rivalrous), but it does ensure a baseline.
As a society, we have decided that certain things should not be left to market forces, because either the outcomes are morally objectionable to the majority of the population (welfare for example), or we see a greater overall economic return on investment by doing it en mass (healthcare, education, etc).
Healthcare is especially interesting - if we leave it completely to market, we will likely have return of pandemics that are currently being kept at by via vaccinations and mass treatment. If we allow an economic driver to avoid this care, the diseases we largely think of as extinct can return.
Education can be thought of in the same view - if we provide everyone with a solid baseline, and support future growth regardless of economic background, it is likely that we will reduce the negative effects lack of education currently has on society. Removing the debts will also help and provide a huge social benefit, as well as spur additional economic activity.
> we will reduce the negative effects lack of education currently has on society.
Such as...?
While I lament innumeracy of people for example, I observe even educated people are mostly innumerate. I am pessimistic problems attributed to lack of education will be solved by education because education is so ineffective.
I assert the expense of college is an awful burden to put on someone who must finance most of it through debt. It's a gamble. You can improve your odds of a happy outcome in that gamble by looking at the Student Loan Default Rate for any given major at any given college, and picking the best program for you (with the lowest default rate possible.)
But if you are a child of parents who can finance your college? Absolutely. No question. This is essentially a way to enforce Aristocracy.
I believe college should be free, and that colleges should limit their number of students in any given program to some sustainable number, where the graduates can actually earn a living.
Not to pick on them, but do we really need this many Art History Majors?
Veterinarian programs specific limit how many students they accept, because if they didn't, their graduates wouldn't be able to afford a living wage. Other majors need to catch on.
And then what if you don't get accepted to a program?
All I've got is Universal Basic Income. And progressive taxes to pay for it all.
Any other thoughts? I welcome honest discussion, because I hope it will inform my views.
If somebody is passionate about art history, then they should get a degree in art history regardless of job prospects. You are limiting their ability to get the education they want.
Now I will agree that somebody getting an art history type degree shouldn't be taking loans to get it, they should be paying for it out of their pocket. However we should not limit somebody from pursuing their interests just because their interests are not valuable to society.
Fair enough. And I'm just talking out of my ass about my own theories, here. I still welcome conversation to try to inform myself.
Roughly, I think we should think in terms of Trade Schools and Liberal Arts programs.
I'm a huge fan of Liberal Arts programs, but I don't think they should be a pre-requisite for a STEM career. They also shouldn't be a pre-requisite for many jobs that people have today.
We should all be much more in favor of Mentoring. Maybe Corporations should receive tax benefits for being good Mentors.
I think Liberal Arts programs absolutely should be a prereq for STEM careers. One of the reasons tech is in the state it is, is due to the lack of ethics courses taught.
Again, I strongly disagree. Make it a requirement before writing a single line of code. The impact this industry has on the world is such that ethics training is a must.
I've posted this before, but a year or so ago I was at a major medical research conference for my field (infectious diseases). I was struck when I realized that in every single plenary talk, given by people at the peak of their careers and having a huge impact on science, there was something that betrayed an underlying liberal arts education.
I think the argument is to not prevent people from getting art history degrees - just to make all art history courses in the US artificially limit the number of students they take in to match the actual demand.
So if someone's super passionate about art history and is also able to meet the (presumably) more stringent entry criteria, they will still be able to get that degree.
Thats what they do for high demand degrees like Engg and Medicine in Pakistan. In Govt. colleges education is virtually free if you are admitted on merit, else you can go for self finance
And then what do you when most of the female medical students drop out and get married because the degree was just a tool in rishta negotiations? Why should working poor subsidize a status game?
just to make all art history courses in the US artificially limit the number of students they take in to match the actual demand.
Why? Surely part of the 'charm' of University is to get chance to study thing you know nothing about just to see if that happens to be your thing, plus studying things just because you enjoy it.
Sure we probably shouldn't encourage too many people to get art history degrees, but why not let people take some art history courses just because they find the topic fascinating?
It seems like lending institutions should be taking these statistics into account when rejecting applications. I suspects there are federal regulations in place that prevent this. Maybe the government would rather cover the risk and promote a more educated population than let the education economy stabilize freely.
Student loan interest rates should be tied to the major. Engineering major? $0 down, 3.5% interest rate. Art History major? 25% down, 15% interest rate.
It would theoretically lead to a lower default rate, as it would dissuade "art history" majors from pursuing that low-paying profession. As it stands now, the people who pursue higher paying majors are subsidizing those who pursue the lower paying majors. You can't seriously say that an engineering major is the same risk as an art history major. Then why should they pay the same interest rate? You aren't going to claim that everyone should pay the same mortgage rate, right?
It seems like it might be a good business to offer to refinance loans for, say, CS students at top-tier schools at a lower rate than the government loans.
Ideally that would raise the default rate of the government loans and push up the interest rates of the arts students. Right now the STEM majors are subsidizing everyone else if the interest rates are the same.
From my personal experience, an engineering degree is the fastest path from the underclass to solid middle-upper class. Dissuading those kids from going to college is not a good idea if you care about social mobility.
Sure, right now engineering should accept a ton of students. And be encouraging more. Say, for instance by being free, and then using Progressive taxation on the graduates to pay for it all.
Note that I'm essentially advocating a Loan, but without a Principal. And it's means adjusted what the interest is. And you never finish paying it off.
Disagree. There are too many STEM students already. It's just that plenty of web development shops are okay with hiring a physicist. It's a waste of money and time to encourage more STEM education unless the student is actually passionate about the subject in itself.
The downsides of the current trend are:
- pretentious web development job posts requiring master's degrees in CS "or related field" (as if physics prepares you for jQuery).
- debt-ridden, unfulfilled scientists relegated to the above
I have a STEM degree and I make more than twice as much as anyone in my family who does not have a STEM degree.
If there were "too many STEM students," wouldn't my salary drop?
> It's a waste of money and time to encourage more STEM education unless the student is actually passionate about the subject in itself.
I want people to not have to struggle financially so much. STEM is a pretty well documented way to get a stable job with a very competitive salary.
If you have other ideas, I'm open to them.
> debt-ridden, unfulfilled scientists relegated to the above
As though other careers are not debt-ridden, and are more fulfilling?
If you're getting "a job," you're already kind of screwed. If you're an entrepreneur, or happen to get extremely lucky to love what you're doing, or unless you've gone Amish, we all live with tons of debt and aren't very fulfilled by modern life. Am I wrong?
> Veterinarian programs specific limit how many students they accept, because if they didn't, their graduates wouldn't be able to afford a living wage. Other majors need to catch on.
Medical schools do the same thing, but that's also what's causing a burden on the medical system. I truly blame most of the medical expense increases in the U.S. on them and medicare (which sets a base price and everyone else must make up for).
Basically there was a medical school student freeze[1][2] from early 90's through 2010. Now, it's finally starting to increase, still much less than population.
The limiting factor is not the spots for medical students, but rather for residents and fellows, who are primarily funded through medicare/medicaid and the VA.
No, it isn't. There might be funding limitations, but if the demand to become a doctor is too high for the number of positions offered, then they can stretch the funding over more slots by passing more of the burden onto the resident in the form of lower pay.
To the extent that they can't legally lower pay, that is the factor, not the funding.
The argument that medicare funding slots is the limiting factor is like saying that Hamilton can't come to LA because the NEA won't cover airfare.
Vets can easily make 100k+ in rural areas where the median wage is in the 20s or 30s. You could double the number of vet grads and vets would still be able to make a comfortable living.
Also, I have several veterinarian friends, and about half of them are absolutely struggling financially. Do you have personal contact with some, just out of curiosity?
And if you're curious, the suicide rate for vets is very high. We could argue the reasons, but I don't think it's unreasonable to say that money contributes.
Taking out a $400k loan for education seems like a bad idea unless you know you will be making 150-200+. My sister graudated with something like $150k debt, and it is fully repaid now(8 years after graduation) The mistake the lady in the article made is she picked basically the most expensive option and graduated with debt that is greater than 90% of her peers. She could have prevented her situation by, perhaps, going to a cheaper or in-state school.
And yes, vet suicide rate is high, but so is the suicide rate in rural areas where they frequently operate. If you aren't a canine/feline/companion vet, the suicide rate of their clients(farmers) is almost certainly higher than the suicide rate of vets.
There are only 30 vet schools in the United States. It is in many respects harder to get into than vet school.
Tuition is very expensive. I don't know how your sister graduated with $150k in debt. She was for sure in-state. Was her undergrad paid for entirely by parents or scholarship?
According to this one, vets are higher than farmers:
But ~$89,000 isn't six figures, so...? Also, I suppose it depends on the source and relevant area covered by the statistic. I've heard other (lower) figures elsewhere.
I don't believe college should be free, and I believe students should be able to choose whatever major they want to. I believe we should do away with gov't backed loans for college which artificially increase enrollment into soft majors.
Students should sooner than later learn to make informed decisions.
The tax increases you would need to sustain a system like that would be absolutely devastating. Also, college degrees would mean a lot less if they're free- devaluing them for people who actually paid for them
Yeah? Wait until you find out how much harder it is to be in the corporate world after age 40.
Graduate: Say age 22. You have ~20 years to make most of what you're going to make.
I'm not saying it's impossible to work after 40, not at all. I'm just trying to tell anyone who will listen that is is harder and even with full employment in tech, it is still hard to make the kinds of moves I made in my 30s, reinvent myself, and generally do the cool things I want to do.
They are devastating to the people who take them out, not to everyone around them. You are not required to take out a student loan, you are required to pay taxes no matter how high they are
One applicant getting a full ride merit scholarship (or a small group of them) based on their own achievements is not going to devalue a degree. Giving everyone in your society a full ride scholarship based on nothing but their existence absolutely will. Abundance is inversely related to value
> Veterinarian programs specific limit how many students they accept, because if they didn't, their graduates wouldn't be able to afford a living wage.
Are you sure that's the only reason? Are the reasons the same for medical school too?
I think people should be allowed to pursue any major they desire. The only way you can really enforce quotas on everything is probably through laws or policies set by the Dept of Education by forcing schools that want to take their loans to set quotas. My opinion is, then you're getting into the central planning problems of the government knows best.
I would like to see tuition at community colleges reduced so its affordable to all, which would include free for those at or near poverty lines. For regular universities, I don't think it's unfair for those taking loans to have to attend some type of in-person seminar that:
* summarizes the work load and type of study their proposed majors require
* outlines current and projected job prospects and income
* financial planing that helps them figure out how many years it will take the pay back their loans based off of job prospects and income, and what that means for buying homes and cars, retirement planning, vacationing/recreation, and living expenses.
Perhaps then make them wait a short period of time before they can then "sign" that yes they do understand and that they still want to pursue a degree with loans. Kids that young (17-19) don't really have any good grasp on the finances and their parents might be blinded by hope.
Perhaps that "finance" seminar wouldn't help but it might at least get them to re-think their secondary education options.
>> Veterinarian programs specific limit how many students they accept, because if they didn't, their graduates wouldn't be able to afford a living wage.
> Are you sure that's the only reason?
I'd be surprised. I'm sure that, as always, budgets and class sizes are concerns as well. There are also other ethical concerns to be considered (e.g. lots of students implies lots of animal cadavers implies...?).
Limiting class sizes to keep wages inflated sounds a little conspiratorial to me, but I won't deny that it could be a factor.
But if you are a child of parents who can finance your college? Absolutely. No question. This is essentially a way to enforce Aristocracy.
Are you sure? $100k in college vs. $100k in S&P 500 ..I think the it's about the same. The grad starts with a -100k deficit (i'm assuming graduate school is included). The Aristocracy perpetuates itself through inheritance. I don't think most college grads, even with the wage premium, feel like aristocrats.
Make the college take a 10% stake in any loan taken out to attend that school. The colleges would be a lot more selective about who they let in (hint: not everyone) and what their students' majors were.
Maybe that would work if colleges were publicly traded or something, but otherwise I think internal politics and ideological motivations are probably too strong for this to actually work.
Just in case you guys don't know, this is exactly how university works in a number of countries in Europe.
There are few problems, but they're minor compared to the American model imo.
As for people who don't get accepted, in a closed and healthy economy, there's literally never a shortage of jobs (at least pre-AI). There's always something that needs to be done and you can create training programs or job placements for it. Also there are many "technical schools" which offer sorter degrees or professional training.
With AI, jobs will eventually diminish, but UBI has many caveats, the most important being that it leaves (ex?)workers powerless. In order for them to maintain the right to basic income they need some kind of leverage to enforce it. My opinions is that if they don't own the machines that produce they won't manage to do it.
So far the only reason they weren't slaves (or dead) was that they could leverage the need for their labor. Now that it diminishes, they're left with nothing.
> Not to pick on them, but do we really need this many Art History Majors?
You cannot calculate how many art history majors the world needs. You just need to trust people to act vaguely in their own interest, and society's interest, most of the time and to trust that things will work out.
Consider the important exceptions to this approach, where we try to match the number of students to demand. You can sort of calculate how many doctors the world needs, since everything involved (cost of services, number of patients, number of doctors, demography, doctor salary, yadda yadda) is objectively measured. We still manage to get that wrong, and there's a shortage. (or is there?)
The notion that you're going to be able to somehow be able to determine the market demand for graduates of the kind of degree program where people will move into a wide variety of jobs, like art history for one, is pure fiction if we can't even get medicine right. Of course if you're going to form a dictatorship of some kind you're obligated to try, but it will be one of the many things about your dictatorship that does not work very well.
If the student loan default rate is high, they are accepting too many. That's a metric that would work today.
A metric that might work in the future is to look at employment and job satisfaction.
> You just need to trust people to act vaguely in their own interest, and society's interest, most of the time and to trust that things will work out.
Sure. And I want free college, and progressive taxation.
I also advise that we do a far better job of publishing and thinking about career opportunities and satisfaction. Maybe even to the extent that schools should seriously consider whether it's responsible to accept X majors.
> If the student loan default rate is high, they are accepting too many.
It's fun to think about how screwed up a society would become if it did simpleminded, authoritarian things like reduce the number of seats for education students because teachers defaulted on their student loans at a higher rate than business students, and opened up a corresponding number of spots for business students. There are so many factors affecting that default rate other than society's need for graduates of a degree program...
Here's an idea: make sure people who are intellectually capable of succeeding in a degree program can choose the major they want. Support them financially if they need it. Full stop.
> I also advise that we do a far better job of publishing and thinking about career opportunities and satisfaction. Maybe even to the extent that schools should seriously consider whether it's responsible to accept X majors.
So much of what you're talking about already exists.
I guess the difference is that the school was previously limiting you based on their resources, which is understandable. It would be a totally different thing if they said "You can't go nursing school because there are currently too many nurses and it might be hard for you to find a job, even though our classes are half full."
Let's do the opposite instead, and make it as easy as possible for people to get into tech at least.
The moment a tech Union or professional organaizion like this appears, and starts to try and implement policies like this is the moment I fight as hard as I can to destroy said institution.
If you want to argue that less useful majors that have worse jobs prospects, should be harder to get in whatever way, I could maybe agree with that. (IE loans are harder to get or whatever).
What I cannot agree with is the philosophy of some private org given out a limited supply of certifications, to protect it's own members. IE, the American medical association as applied to tech, or whatever.
I tend to shy away from UBI in favor of something like a guaranteed federal jobs program.
My fear is that UBI will tempt policy makers to cut social programs. "We gave you money, buy your own medical insurance". With guaranteed jobs we can put more work into our infrastructure while eliminating unemployment, which helps keep fair labor practices in the forefront of employer's minds.
Many social programs should get cut if we get UBI.
I also think many more programs should be socialized. Notably college and healthcare.
I'm not sure if I have reasonable arguments for which things should and should not be socialized.
Guaranteed jobs force people to work. That forces people to have latch-key kids, or daycare. Family bonding is ridiculously important.
Early childhood development is the most important thing in your life, basically. UBI encourages family bonding.
Also, if we get UBI, I think we have to get rid of protections for Unions (union-only shops), tenure, and minimum wage. Make the labor market much, much more of a Free Market. People will ACTUALLY QUIT shitty jobs. Which is good for everyone. Wages will have to go up if the job is shitty, or the job will need to be reworked to be less shitty.
I'm not so sure about college. It seems some of it is economically valuable and a wise investment, and some of it is just a waste of time and money that the state shouldn't be subsidizing directly. If the output of an education isn't contributing significant value back to society, then it shouldn't be taxpayer funded.
The idea of UBI originated specifically to cut social programs and their associated administrative overhead. The idea being that it's more efficient to just write everyone a check that will cover necessities than it is to have various departments providing different parts of what people need on a means-tested basis. The problem with that is if the UBI doesn't actually pay out enough for someone to be able to afford everything they need. Healthcare seems like the biggest variable here though, and if we had a sufficient UBI + universal health coverage, I don't think there would be many, if any, remaining social programs that couldn't be eliminated.
I was thinking about UBI and does anyone have a good explanation why the price of housing across the board wouldn't increase accordingly making it just an accelerated wealth transfer? The same way housing prices in military heavy towns are basically tired directly to the millitary housing allowance or how tuition goes up when you give everyone loans?
There aren’t that many art majors. There are a lot of business majors though, probably too many.
In my country (belgium) the universities are mostly funded through taxation. The government negotiates per-student reimbursement rates with the universities, different rates for different degrees. The average all-in cost of a student is around 12K euro per year, with the student paying 1K of that and the government providing the rest. The resulting education is of a quality matching good colleges in the U.S. at a fraction of the cost, while still paying faculty a decent wage. The catch is the heavy government involvement and price controls, this is counter to the U.S. philosophy of the role of government, which is why this system could never work there. Additionally, all-in tax rates are double those of the U.S. (also is used to provide universal healthcare), effectively nationalizing huge chunks of the economy.
The focus should be on bringing down tuition fees. Whether you pay for tuition in debt repayment or taxes, the result is the same. Arguably debt is fairer than taxes because every individual gets to choose whether they want to carry that burden.
> I believe college should be free, and that colleges should limit their number of students in any given program to some sustainable number, where the graduates can actually earn a living.
So, who gets to choose how many? If you leave it to a professional association you end up in the situation we have with doctors in the US, where we definitely do not have enough.
And who gets to pursue their degree? Do colleges get to keep choosing whoever they want? Because that's probably just going to reinforce the Aristocracy you are complaining about. Do we do it on test scores? Besides the obvious bias issues, not your entire career is determined by some test scores, is that really what we want?
Maybe it's just me, but I really dislike the idea that some exams you take at the end of school basically control how the rest of your life will go, and I'm basically ok with the art history people only being the sons of daughters of aristocrats because there's no money in it.
I think educating people without putting them in debt is a great goal, I just don't think this is a good way to get there.
[EDIT]: In terms of counter-proposals, I think college is actually not the right place to be focussed. I think our housing, transportation and healthcare policies basically make lots of places close to unlivable for those doing low status jobs. I think we need to get very serious about density & public transit. We need to figure out how to do construction on both cheaply so that we can house everyone affordably. Basic income is great and all, but so much of that will go to rent that I basically see good housing/transit policies as a prerequisite for making that actually sustainable.
The issue isn't that college is pointless, it's that tuition is too high and wages too low. You should support politicians with a plan to counter this trend.
Education is important. Raising the overall level of education in this country should be a much larger goal that it seems to be.
> Raising the overall level of education in this country should be a much larger goal that it seems to be.
On one level, I totally agree. At the same time, well-meaning attempts to make college loans available to everyone for everything seem to have massively bloated the cost of education to a crippling degree. I think the key is in the how of the approach.
That is the problem with politics: the unintended effects are always an issue.
Of course everything else has this issue as well. The only difference is most of us start small, and if it works we expand. You can't do that easily for national programs.
Yes, but they have their own unintended consequences. As an outsider I have no idea what, but I've been around long enough to know they exist. They might or might not be worth it.
Wall Street greed did this! The financiers got their hooks into higher education. I'm friends with a person who is the head of financial aid at a major Mid-Atlantic university. She saw it all go down during the Bill Clinton years.
It was all sold as helping people but all they did was help themselves. A lot of university administrators are guilty, too. There were likely kickbacks and other illegal schemes taking place.
>well-meaning attempts to make college loans available to everyone for everything seem to have massively bloated the cost of education to a crippling degree.
I'm not so sure about this as a cause. If you look at the costs for colleges that have increased over time, you can start to see where a lot of this money is going. Spending on new and maintaining aging technology is increased. And now you have entire departments like Title IX that never existed in prior school models.
And with expansion, additional management overhead now exists. There is seemly at least a Director of <insert title here> for everything.
> There is seemly at least a Director of <insert title here> for everything.
I would argue some of the things you list as causes of increasing tuition are the effects of tuition surpluses from additional income from a trillion in student loans.
I would agree. I've been in higher ed for the last 10 years and can tell you there are a lot of compounding factors that gotten us in this mess of high costs.
I do too, a core belief is that educated people are critical to success on a national and world level. However, colleges have an aggressive liberal slant which for me took a decade to even out to center.
Europeans observe that USA at large has an aggressive conservative slant.
I understand it's changed recently, but colleges (and lower schools) traditionally had a very conservative curriculum in general education / liberal arts core of Economics, Literature, and History.
>I think we should consider a well educated base of voters, workers, and neighbors as critical infrastucture (sic) along with roads and internet.
A lot of people are disinclined towards education and education isn't so important that people should be coerced into submitting to it. In fact, educating people against their will usually impairs the learning experience for motivated people in the classroom. The people who interrupt the teacher and misbehave usually do so because they don't want to be there.
Beyond that, a lot of public schools are failing to do their jobs or prioritizing knowledge poorly. A school district near me has rapidly declining test scores but touts a social justice curriculum. I certainly don't want to forbid anyone from learning critiques of colonialism, but I think that's "dessert" and should really only be taught after students have a strong knowledge base in more practical knowledge.
>I think some decisions lately have highlighted an open hostility towards science, education, and by implication, democracy. This needs to be reversed.
To the degree this is true, I primarily blame those who politicize science and education. Look at the "march for science" - the well meaning folks at my local march were too happy to use climate change predictions to demand others make massive concessions. In this, we see the difficulty in using empiricism as a means to support agendas - the climate change models aren't performing well, and even if the predictions were accurate, there should be some discussion about the cost and benefits. America does better than most nations under climate change predictions and the countries that will be the worst impacted as those who play the biggest roles in it: the oil rich middle eastern and African states sure enjoy selling oil but beg for help to deal with the consequences of their customers using the oil they sell. To some degree, the people who don't care about the consequences of climate change aren't hostile to science and they don't want to debate the issue at the level of science which is probably the right way to handle it because the discussion isn't really about the climate, the core issue is the degree to which we should sacrifice for people we don't care about.
Lastly, it sometimes seems like the more schooling one receives, the more hostile they are to science. High school graduates might not like things like racial differences in IQ, but it's my experience that individuals with graduate-level education are more hostile to the same thing. I would hope that the additional schooling would make these people more open to accepting things based on the strength of evidence but that's not the case. It's not clear how we reverse that hostility but the answer doesn't seem to be "more school".
Judging from recent news about no white day etc college can be a place to go and become deluded and converted to socialism. So maybe worse than pointless
I think he's referring to the "Day of Absence" where white people were not supposed to be on campus. A white progressive professor dared go to work that day and they tried to destroy him for it. It's also a big problem that free speech is increasingly under attack at universities.
Free speech is not at all under attack at universities. What's happening is that shitty people are no longer able to say shitty things without being called out on it. That's what they're upset about.
Read about what happened with Bret Weinstein (the aforementioned professor).
Consider why so many comedians (e.g., Jerry Seinfeld) are no longer performing at colleges. They say it's become unbearable. That's a big clue that free speech is not welcome.
Look at how guest lecturers and ideas are getting shut down. University used to be the bastion of free speech and ideas, but that is increasingly under threat. Just watch what happened at this lecture at Queen's University to see an example how bad it's getting: https://youtu.be/MwdYpMS8s28?t=9m44s
Distinguished professors trying to have a well reasoned and peaceful discussion with students. And that wasn't just disrupted, the doors were barricaded and people were pounding on the windows (breaking at least one) throughout the remainder of the event. Outside it was even yelled "Lock em in and burn it down". Seriously, watch the whole thing (followed by footage of what happened outside) and I think you'll be taken aback.
These are not cases of shitty things being called out, it goes way beyond that.
Again, I completely disagree. I see someone who is being called out for shitty things they're saying. I'm not seeing free speech shut down at all; on the contrary, I see a lot of other people using their free speech to express their disagreement.
And the person in the video, Jordan Peterson, is someone who expresses views that basically say that a lot of people don't deserve to have freedom. He claims that women should not be able to leave abusive marriages. He claims that gay marriage should not be legal at all. He's used a lot of pseudoscience to make it appear as if he's being rational, when really all he's doing is expressing disdain and scorn for lots of marginalized groups. And I can't be upset with those groups for finally getting tired of him disparaging them, and telling him to shove it.
No, they absolutely are not. One person using their free speech to call out another person for something shitty they said is not "attacking" their free speech. It's exercising free speech. The only way you can believe those sentences are contradictory is if you believe that only some people have free speech, and everyone else just has to sit there and listen to it.
How is disallowing a racial group from going to school without being screamed at and harassed fall under 'shitty people are no longer able to say shitty things without being called out on it'?
All the solutions that would actually solve these problems are politically unpalatable, all the politicians that would / could provide these solutions would be run out of town.
Also Educated != smart. You can have plenty of educated people but still have bad outcomes in society. If only smart people could vote then that would go a long way to fixing society, but again, a solution like that is immediately off the table. So there are ways and means to fix any and every problem, the problem is nobody will use the tools or they are not even smart enough to know that the wrench is for turning bolts in the first place (the don't even realize the solution in staring them in the face in other words.)
But it is important to clarify: education in what is important.
I think there is massive difficulty in forming any sort of consensus approach to define a proper baseline of 'education' that works for everyone. Our school systems are frankly not designed for it, and it seems a utopian ideal that they may be 'corrected' to do so. Considering the diversity of motivators and systems/tactics used for schooling across cities/counties/states and the content that is covered/ignored, is it realistic to attempt to measure a 'baseline of education'?
To me it comes down to structuring a better formal definition of 'education' at a societal level. Economic utility is the obvious motivator in today's society, which pumps up many fields of 'education', but hinders the perceived importance of other fields. Some forms or fields of education that are not covered in our modern schooling systems may actually improve the education baseline, and vice versa with some content currently covered.
University was mostly a core of classes that everybody needed to take, free electives that let me take whichever classes I wanted, and then degree courses which were a subset of my classes.
We over-fixate on the major in these discussions because we look at the crazy American education prices and then think in $/major. But otherwise I'd say university does a decent job of making people credentialize in generally important concepts. And this process helps you in life, like being able to think and speak intelligently on any topic.
I think it's the gross expense of uni that causes us to push people into majors like STEM that can be directly transmuted into dollars. But I don't think that's best for society. And it's an unhealthy approach to education.
For example, if I could redo university, I would've majored in philosophy. It's just obnoxious that I had to make that decision somewhere within age 17-20.
I see where you are coming from. Perhaps my original wording didn't do justice to my thought process.
I agree with your take about STEM majors being pushed due to both ROI potential and/or market demand for skills. I also agree that this is an unhealthy approach to education. However, I don't see this changing. I see it as the fundamental motivator of education for many people. Likely, the people to which I am referring are not readers of this site, who are of the highest skills in their respective fields (most likely technical).
I am interested in your opinion that "university does a decent job of making people credentialize in generally important concepts" but then following with your personal interest (later realized) in an education based on (and in) philosophy.
I think this actually reinforces my point, because the motivator is the credential, or some creditable skillset. This is the economic utility motivator I was referring to, rather than a more abstract education in philosophy or other arts. The skills gained from these more abstract educations are not as highly valued by their economic potential, however they could actually be more beneficial to both the person and society as a whole.
Formal university settings are not the only way "education" can be conferred/obtained.
Would a person who only knew apprenticeships trust someone who sat through 4 years of theoretical lectures, book learning, and "sample projects", when their expectation is that trained apprentices have worked side-by-side with masters in "the real world" for many years, doing real work that real people depended on?
The government is not a force for good in the world. Data shows that in the vast majority of cases, government is an enemy of public good, by virtue of the people in government. I don't think regulation is the answer to this problem./
A degree in Communications or a host of other soft majors is basically worthless. Arguable that 4 years would be better spent elsewhere, not to mention the money that goes into faculty salaries.
A liberal arts degree can be worth it, but only if it is actually a program with effort in it.
I'm not so sure about the idea that education is important for its own sake, the way you framed it -- that somehow if we make everyone go to more schooling we'll have a better citizenry. They may learn the wrong things, they may learn nothing, they may learn useless things. What's relevant is comparing the 4 years they spend not earning experience and money to what they could have been doing, and what they would have been learning there, and how they would have been improving themselves in that case. Are you saying that the median student is a better citizen if he spends 4 years doing mediocre work at a mediocre school vs. 4 years learning a trade? That we'll all be "better off" if the plumbers learn literary criticism before they learn plumbing?
The article takes an exclusively financial look at 'worth it' and completely ignores both education and human connection as an aspect of going to college. I get that the author is writing about money and money alone, but the headline is deceptive.
Additionally, I do understand that a lot of people go to college for the purposes of getting a job. But that's not all college is, and pretending that the only reason anyone values college is the salary level afterwords is missing the most interesting pieces of the discussion. Things like,
-the arts are important for a society regardless of the financial profit from it (i.e., it would be 'worth it' to a society to not force each individual person to earn a living wage for their whole working life).
-college as a mechanism for meeting people, making connections, and learning about the world. Yes, some college experiences can be closed-minded, but that is not the norm.
-many other things. This author is so focused on money, they are missing the forest for the trees.
I am a software developer with a Fine Arts major from a small liberal arts college. I am immensely grateful for my liberal arts background. Without it, I think I would be going through life a bit blind.
You don't need to rack up six figures of debt to make human connections or gain experiences. There are a number of ways to accomplish this without all the debt and in arguably more useful ways than memorizing things you'll never have a chance to use. Off the top of my head, I can imagine volunteer work or, better yet, New-Deal-style programs with actual financial incentive would offer the same ~magical experience~ of fraternity.
It doesn't make sense to go into debt, sure. But if you can get someone else to pay for college (i.e., a generous scholarship) it's well worth it, and the tuition costs pre-tuition spiral would definitely be worth it as well.
It's difficult to think of a better way to cultivate personal relationships than college. Presumably you've chosen classes based off your own interests, so the people you meet within those classes are good candidates for friendship (via homophily). True, you could use subreddits to find folks with similar interests, but in my experience those don't lead to the same kinds of relationships you develop when you physically encounter other people.
Building a state park a la the New Deal CCC doesn't really create the same sense of shared interest since no one's actually interested in the art of bricklaying for the most part, and volunteering has a lot of turnover (mostly due to folks using it as a resume item).
If you're at a SLAC, the number of people you see is limited so there's less competition for attention when forming bonds and a lot of mere exposure effect.
The value of college (at least at a SLAC) is arguably less about the classroom lessons and more about having a decent method for finding other people you can grow with.
> What all this suggests is that the college-degree premium may really be a no-college-degree penalty.
The most relevant conclusion here is that. However, I notice this article doesn’t explore the wealth of labor that only needs an associates or trade certification.
Nowadays, in my honest opinion, tuition cost in an institution is not proportional to the "amount" of knowledge that you are getting out of it, but is rather proportional to the statistical chance of you acquiring a life-changing connection that will help you succeed in life - whether that's a chance you start a startup or getting that "dream" job + a statistical chance you will get hired based off of the institution's "brand".
I could be wrong, but my idea is that nowadays - schools are just brands, rather than an educational environments, but there are exceptions of course.
Thought experiment: would college be "worth it" if it were free?
That is to say, would it be a valuable use of time and effort?
I am sure there are people who can study hours of literature, philosophy, political science, math and physics on their own. I am sure they would write papers and find others to discuss them.
For the rest of us there is only college.
(You might ask: valuable to what end? Worth what? And that is a good question but the answer is much longer.)
> Thought experiment: would college be "worth it" if it were free?
Just to add another perspective/angle on it, university is free to attend in many other countries (you even get paid to study, although not much). People still discuss whether it is worth it and I would agree the question is interesting, but just interesting to keep in mind.
General thoughts on the advantages of institutional learning.
* Experts know the relevant information, and learning from them is the best way. Colleges provide access to experts.
* A good lecture can be just as informative or more informative than a good book.
* Lectures can include information from published journals that haven't made it to textbooks yet. There is too many published journals to know what is the most relevant/interesting in the field without being an expert, and lecturers can provide required background information to understand bleeding edge ideas often written in ways off-putting to novices.
* Many people study harder if they know they will be tested on their knowledge.
* Assignments provide feedback on your work.
* Math is something best learned in groups for most of the population.
* Social interactions with other dedicated students can be encouraging.
* College provides many resources that help aid studying & research. From libraries to uranium centrifuges.
I'm not sure college is the best use of four years for everyone, but I am sure that it does provide real value.
I suspect the answer is "no" more frequently than you may expect.
The opportunity cost is four years of your life, four fewer years of full-time work experience, and the income that comes with that work experience.
When I was in high school all these recruiters came from various colleges to try and get us to sign up for their schools. I saw what almost none of my peers saw: They were salesmen trying to generate revenue for their business. They did not have my best interests in mind. They presented these lovely little marketing sheets describing how much money you'd make with a degree in X, Y, or Z. I realized then that I didn't know how much money was a lot or a little, but I had an idea the numbers would be rosy. So I started asking people I knew how much money they needed to live and how much they considered a lot. I began cold-calling people in various roles I was considering and asking if the numbers the college recruiters gave us were realistic for an entry-level worker with a degree and no experience. Big shock -- they weren't. In the end, I figured four more years of work experience would put me well ahead of my peers who went to college and it has. That was nearly two decades ago and I'm very well ahead of my peers now. There are some folks who just don't have the discipline to learn things on their own -- for them, maybe college is a good choice. There are others who need a degree by law to practice their chosen field of work. That makes sense for them too. But for the rest of us -- college may be considered harmful.
Out of curiosity, what kind of job were you able to land without a college degree? More and more jobs require a degree, even those that don't seem to need it, just because more and more people are going to college.
Though if you're the type of person who's driven enough to do that cold calling, I'm sure you'd find a way around it.
If they just had to rely on the free market, colleges would have closed a long time ago.
They can't improve anymore because they don't get any signal they're doing a good job. If I'm doing a good job, I know because people will pay me or I win (cold)battles in war. Instead in these peaceful times, colleges don't have a way of knowing for sure they're doing good, except with self-congratulations and educational theories.
At the same time, I think if it wasn't for State licenses, regulations that force to have a degree and a culture that discriminate against people without a state-supported college degree, we would see no advantages for the college degree holder, at least with current colleges.
If you get an education with the sole purpose of generating higher net earnings you deserve to lose money.
For most people it should hopefully be: "I want to be a lawyer, so I go to law school", or "I am interested in engineering so I study engineering" - you study because you need the degree to get the job you want.
This is a nothing article, the fact that it completely leaves out what degrees are being obtained invalidates it to me. It says that a college graduate makes only ~$3,000 more a year on average than a high school graduate? With how hard they are dissing degrees, I assume they are talking about some worthless degree like liberal arts.
"Why do employers demand a degree for jobs that don’t require them?"
> This is a common practice. Speaking from tech industry experience, you'd be hard pressed to find a single job opening that didn't have a degree requirement listed. The kicker? It's not actually a requirement, it's there for formality.
" Technology increased the demand for educated workers, but that demand has been consistently outpaced by the number of people — urged on by everyone from teachers to presidents — prepared to meet it."
> If this is referencing the tech industry, then this is an outright false claim. Tech industry job openings to skilled applications is something like 2:1, if not 3:1 right now. Since he just said technology in general, it might not be referencing the tech industry. Talking about the job market in general, I don't have any insight into that.
"The authors don’t speculate as to why this is the case, but it seems that students from poor backgrounds have less access to very high-income jobs in technology, finance and other fields. Class and race surely play a role."
> Absolutely false. Race might play a small role depending on the state and environment, but class sure doesn't. No respectable tech employer cares about your financial upbringing, it's about what you have to bring to the table right then and there.
It really all comes down to how you play your cards. If you have the chance to attend college(which not everyone has the chance to do), you have to go with what will open the most doors. You can't expect to spend 2 years getting something like a liberal arts degree and expect to be making 6 figures. You have to research, you have to understand what skills are in demand. I will say that I am biased when writing this. As someone who grew up extremely poor and found opportunity through a tech degree in a local college, I very well have a world of opportunities now because of it. So it is infuriating that the author dares to consider the idea of even community college not being worth it, when it very well is one of the very few doors that leads to bigger and better things for low income people.
> It's not actually a requirement, it's there for formality.
This simply isn't true a lot of the time. It is sometimes, but there are plenty of jobs that require highschool level skills but will filter out those who don't have a degree just because they can. It's not that big a deal if you select one candidate over the other because the former has done a 2 week internship that made no difference in the qualifications, but did signal some small extra thing that gave the candidate the edge. It's not okay if a diploma gives a candidate the edge structurally, despite being useless for the required job skills, and costs $40k for the individual to get. That's an insane price we expect people to pay just to compete for a job.
> No respectable tech employer cares
It's not just that. It's the fact the vast majority of jobs are obtained through your network. Class and race are just proxies for the probability that a person has a weak network within a high-socioeconomic-class industry like tech or finance. It's not necessarily a claim of blatant classism or racism by the employer, but rather that your mom not knowing an uncle with a position for you, or dad not showing you you need to do this internship and that volunteer project and apply to that program to get recruited, or growing up with friends who became plumbers and whose parents were plumbers too, is not as conducive to landing a job as others with similar intelligence/credentials but a different class background/upbringing/network is.
That having been said, I agree with your other points. These articles get a bit tiresome. As always the answer is, it depends. College can be worth it, but not for everyone and not by doing anything.
It sort of amazes me sometimes to speak to people who just never ran any of the numbers. It should be mandatory for student loan applications to be data-driven. i.e. any college in a state should be able to go to the state educational board and obtain annual data for every accredited program or at least workfield, and use that for the loan programs. So for example, the state could track the average salary at 1, 5 and 10 years for an Art History major. Plug that into a loan calculator. Then plug in the loan payments. And then offer a comparative view, compared to not going to college, community college and other majors in college. And then a student has to read through all of that and make a conscious decision that yes, I'm going to borrow $50k, have an estimated payback time of 45 years old and earn no more than minimum wage and be expected to have a >50% chance of not being employed as an art historian in the first place. I'm seeing this kind of data take off a little bit, but it's still pretty poor and some universities skew the numbers. Government should do more to standardise these things and mandate universities and students use them.
> It is sometimes, but there are plenty of jobs that require highschool level skills but will filter out those who don't have a degree just because they can.
There's also "the minimum viable candidate" vs. "cheap value-add".
E.g., an admin asst that does the job as described vs. the admin asst that occasionally helps with spreadsheets, does some basic graphic design work, and proof-reads both user-facing and technical documentation.
Does an admin asst need a college degree? No. But I'll take the admin asst with some art, accounting, and writing skills ANY day. Those skills completely re-define the role and add tons of value at very low cost.
I've seen the same in tech roles. Given two candidates who are both obviously capable of doing the primary duties of the job, the one with a deeper background (either from college or self-taught) is obviously preferable because versatility outside of the designated role is always a nice value-add.
College is probably a great thing for some people, but it's been oversold. It's not the destination, it's just one way of getting there.
One reason why it's so easy to sell, is that college is a near universal experience for the middle and upper classes, and being an expensive experience, people credit it with much of the personal growth that happens in one's early 20s. They also credit it with making them good at their field.
"I really learned how to think in college"
"I really learned how to be apply myself in college"
"I really learned computer science in college, which wouldn't have happened if I went via some other path.
etc.
It's far too painful for most people to think "I could have been an equally skilled person if I'd spent that time doing something else".
I come from a long line of people who've succeeded without going to college. When I tell people I've known for a while that I dropped out of a community college they usually seem stunned and surprised that someone could actually have a reasonably intelligent conversation with them (and be a decent engineer) without that history.
My experience is that you can read books on the humanities, and CS, and get work done AND not kill yourself in the process. Maybe the road is a little longer in some ways, but you also come out of it without debt, and you get the benefit of having a very different set of formative experiences than your peers.
Haha, that's my experience too. I keep it to myself a bit better these days. Somebody asked me at my last role if I had my masters in comp science; "Hmm, not yet! I've been thinking about it though..."
Sometimes when coworkers find out there is a remark like "Oh wow, I never realized that." Imagine after somebody had brought up their alma mater and I remarked "Oh wow, I never would have realized you went to college.."
I dropped out of high school to take a web dev job at a local firm. If we're being honest, I've always had a little weakly-repressed pride over the fact. When people ask me about education, beyond just stating that I haven't gone to college, I usually mention that I dropped out of high school.
Recently, a friend suggested that I avoid mentioning this to prevent stigmatization. I realize now there are probably a bunch of people who think badly of me for it, much to my bemusement. Until my friend mentioned it, it hadn't crossed my mind that anyone would interpret that as "this slob couldn't even finish high school".
I'm sure some can learn just as well on their own as in college, but that is really not the main benefit of it. The main benefit is that the people at your college are self-selecting: they have similar interests as you do, they have similar ambition, they have similar abilities. If this college is a good one, you are going to meet more brilliant, fun, and engaging people in your 4 years than you would in almost any other scenario. Those people you meet will not only make a huge impact on your own development as a person, but will continue to do so long after you are no longer together. They will expose you to a million things you would never be exposed to otherwise. On top of that, the intensity of the experience (from living together, being on campus together, going to parties together, etc.) is simply not comparable to more than a handful of similar options.
Yes, you could stay home, or move elsewhere, and be one of a handful of people like yourself. Or you could go and be surrounded by thousands of brilliant, amazing people for years of the most formative years of your life.
The benefit of going to a good school isn't the classes, it's the people.
If you go to an Ivy, everything you wrote is incredibly true. Going to any Ivy or other elite (or even semi-elite) school is a HUGE benefit if for no reason other than networking.
As you move down the scale that becomes less and less true. People go, learn whatever they learn, get few if any connections, and wind up with a pile of debt.
So, we've created an incredibly regressive system.
One other thing to note. When people form those friend groups it's not just about who's their intellectual peer, it's also about who came from similar backgrounds etc. It's an engine of division as much as anything else.
I agree that the value is there for some individuals, but I disagree that this is a good thing for society as a whole. If you get accepted to Harvard, it's almost certainly worth your while to go. College still remains a finishing school for the elites in our society. Some people bubble up from the underrepresented portions of our society, but they remain the exception, and will continue to be so until something changes.
I've included a couple links below that explain the disadvantages some groups face when attending college.
This is a really important point. Often, elite discussions about the importance of college come from people who fondly remember their time at Harvard, and not those burnt by "schools" like the Boston Architectural College which has a 100% acceptance rate and charges $20K a year, Or Suffolk University which can barely hold onto its accreditation, but charges $37K a year to study "international business."
By bucketing all these experience together as if they're the same experience does a tremendous disservice to those who can least afford to make a six-figure mistake.
For me the value of my degree is very clear: without a degree, I would have had a hard time immigrating to the US.
So this whole "Is college useful thing" is basically only relevant if you never want to live anywhere else. Immigration is far harder if you do not have a degree.
If we put aside the financial concerns, which admittedly is a significant factor, what you get out of college is what you want to put into it. If you see it as just a hoop to jump through, then perhaps it's not worth it.
Big surprise: people born rich will have more money no matter if they have college degree or not.
What the article doesn't say is that all other things being equal it is still worth it to have college education.
I don't think that the right way to motivate poor people is to tell them that even with degree they might be worse off than the rich. Having a degree will be better for them than not having it.
Learning always pays off - be it in college or not.
Every modern society needs it's signaling mechanic, otherwise it becomes virtually impossible for people to want to take risks, eliminating all ladder access for the underprivileged.
Signals only work if they're hard to fake. The expense of a college degree in both time and dollars perversely increases its utility as a signal.
Of course, the price of a degree can only go so high before before people are unwilling to pay it. But the natural tendency will not be for the price to come back down, but rather for new, more accessible educational options to show up with lower signaling values. It already happened before with the difference between ivy league schools vs the rest and public vs. private.
Society will get even more stratified, with ever finer class distinctions becoming an indelible part of your pedigree. Technology will make it ever easier to buck the trend and become entrepreneurial, but even that will slowly get folded into the system. We see this with how craft brewing ended up getting rolled into the existing system, preserving the lion's share of the profits for the big bottlers.
Ever-decreasing social mobility is the price we pay for advancement.
Instead of cost being the authenticator of the signal academic performance \ intelligence could be like it is in some european countries wherw college is low cost but admitance is based on high school performance.
I like that option, but barring an order of magnitude more public investment in higher education, I can't see it happening. We're stuck with the school system we have, it seems.
Outside of work, I know a number of folks with degrees from Stanford, Berkeley, Santa Clara. These folks are not in tech. They love to bust on San Jose State University like its the worst thing ever.
At work, in tech, I know a number of folks with degrees from San Jose State University. They are hard working and successful millionaires.
The folks in the first group would LITERALLY DIE if their kids went to San Jose State University.
It makes me sad/angry for them that they feel there is NO OPTION other than to get their kids into Stanford/Berkeley/Santa Clara at all costs.
I got a teaching credential from San Jose State. The piece of paper helped me get a demeaning job in the indoctrination industry. Other than that the education was almost completely worthless. Except perhaps from the character building of enduring endless drivel, and I didn't need to go to college for that. Turns out the job wasn't worth the effort, and since then I've had a decent career doing things that I learned independently.
College was close to free for me. At that price it was still way too expensive. I doubt that is the case for the best students at the best schools. But for the rest of us, I advise being highly skeptical of the value of a modern college education. Especially of the education department at SJSU.
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[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 292 ms ] threadhttps://www.google.com/search?q=site:nytimes.com+college+wor...
The usual answer is "it depends"
back in the 70s, tuition was payable with a summer job and job prospects were decent enough despite geopolitical and economic headwinds
these days, the same problems plague the job market, but every year of college costs 1 year of salary, unless you qualify for stackable forms of financial aid
I didnt get 'the college experience'. But I didnt have any college debt, I became a hardened adult that didnt cry when plant people got pissed. I dont complain. If something needs to get done, I do it.
Graduated in 3 years with my chem engineering degree at age 21.
People will always complain about something. "You should pay for a dorm, food, education from top individuals, books, knowledge, all for spending 200 hours in the summer at a clothing store".
I did a factory full time midnight shift job, all year, lived off campus + commuted. Ate at home too.
This comes at the cost of the 'College Experience"
Having to grind insane hours just to get in the game might be workable for the very dedicated and tough, but it's certainly not an optimal experience, and something we should strive to make not necessary.
Most of the kids going to college are not mature enough to do any of the above (come on, these are 17 year olds going 30k into debt for their first year alone.) The 'college experience' today is partying / drinking yourself into a stupor and amassing a ton of debt. No, not everyone, but for most that's reality.
If she goes in at 18 after high school, she can earn a degree in 2.5 years at night in the Air Force. After her first 4 years she can choose to get out, with a degree, zero debt, life and work experience. If she so chooses, she can opt to go to Officer Candidate School (13 weeks in Alabama) and emerge 3 months later effectively doubling her income, all the while not paying for medical, dental, housing. If she marries another officer and they do 20 years to retirement, she will be 39, young enough to start a second career and enjoy her AF retirement, second career retirement, and maybe, if she's blessed, SS. More kids should go military. I did, and I had my college paid for and I pay nothing down for houses, get my closing costs paid, no PMI, get treated a little better because of my veteran status. It's a great gig for kids.
Out of all the 10 or so people I know fairly well who are active duty or former military (Marines, Air Force, and Navy, I don't think I know any Army people unless you count National Guard).
2 have serious PTSD.
1 of those, my neighbor, was just arrested for forging pain med prescriptions--he got hooked after he was seriously wounded in combat.
4 received medical discharges from health issues directly caused by their military service (out of combat). Sure they get monthly payments, but they'd all rather not have the injuries.
All of them have spent considerable time deployed, and most of them have had serious family issues because they were away for so long.
All of their deployments were dangerous. One of my Air Force friends is a jet engine mechanic, but told me that they pulled the Marine guards out of where he was stationed, so they gave him an M16 (or maybe it was an M4, not sure what they were using at the time) and made him do guard duty.
I grew up a military brat, did almost 10 years myself in the Corps. I was in during DS1 and almost no one I know from that "war" has PTSD. I personally know several Marines who sent dozens of people to their graves and they are are normal as anyone else. PTSD depends on the mental strength of the individual. My own grandfather (WWII in Asia) did a 20+ year career, and my dad (grunt in Vietnam) who also did a 20+ year career didn't suffer from PTSD. My dad was a machine gunner in Vietnam. He was involved in horrible circumstances. His unit was once embattled around a US airfield in a protection role against sappers, and every man on patrol was wounded as well as covered in leeches from fighting in the nasty water. He went on dozens of missions and did and saw all manner of stuff. My dad was well adjusted, went on to earn a master's degree in engineering, and was an all around swell guy.
People with PTSD don't have some kind of mental weakness. There's even evidence that many cases of PTSD are the results of undiagnosed brain trauma from IED detonations.
>A young women going into the Air Force
Yeah, for some people it's a good option. It's not a "great gig for kids" though in general--for the hundreds of thousands of people with PTSD and other job related injuries, it wasn't a great gig.
Something can't really simultaneously be described as both requiring tremendous personal sacrifice, and a great gig.
Just because someone doesn't freely offer up that information or says they don't have something, doesn't mean they actually don't have it.
There's about 1.3 million active service members.
There are more than 200 million Americans of military age.
I wouldn't call that a major chunk.
Even if you look at the number of people who've served for any length of time at all, the number is very low. It's not a viable option for a significant portion of the population, because personel numbers are capped.
You've been watching to many American Pie movies. College students are insanely focused because they know how tough the competition is. No one has time to party.
Having to grind to get in the game sounds like real life. An education that does not prepare you for real life is of questionable value.
Ok, but you should do that on your own dime, not someone else's. And when you end up with student debt, you shouldn't complain because you go to "ponder, explore and be curious".
Also, cheers from another Michigander - I went to Western.
Not everything can be reached through HN, it's an echo chamber of similar minded people
And he complains about his grandkids needing to go into debt. They don't realize how the world's changed in the last 50 years...
All of this will have been achieved with zero debt and no financial assistance from parents.
Each child is expected to put in 1200+ hours of employment per year of school. This grosses them $12K+ of salary even as freshmen. They choose schools that cost < $6000/year to attend. They pick up some scholarship money to help when they can. They live in cheap apartments with lots of roommates, and they cook their own food.
University of Chicago tuition costs >$50K/year. [0] UofI-Chicago runs ~$17K. [1] Prairie State College in Chicago costs < $5K/year[2]
Here's your first college test: Which one offers a better value?
If you can't afford food, rent, and tuition for $15K/year, you're not looking hard enough. If you think you should spend $75K/year right out of high school... college may not be a good idea for you.
This is not so different from my experience decades ago. I used to opt out of traveling home for Thanksgiving because I could work double shifts during the holiday. Every hour over 1200 helped to pad things.
I recently recommended to a high school student that they enter an essay contest worth $1000. I thought they could win. They thought it was too much effort. They might burn up 4 hours! A loan application only takes 30 minutes.
[0] https://collegeadmissions.uchicago.edu/cost-aid [1] https://admissions.uic.edu/undergraduate/tuition-financial-a... [2] http://prairiestate.edu/apply-reg-pay/tuition-and-fees/index...
My general rule of thumb is that if it takes more than 4 clicks to discover the tuition costs of a school, they are embarrassed. If they are embarrassed it means that even they can't justify the value proposition.
With some digging I see that Harvard claims [1] annual tuition > $50k. Before they tell you that, they promise you a $67K scholarship.
Given those numbers, you can actually make money if you can live for less than $17K/year after tuition. So, yeah, it might really pay off.
Oh, Harvard is also very clear that after you graduate you owe them a lifelong contribution. There is no question that they are expecting 7 figures back. But it seems reasonable that they get you the clerkship or whatever first that puts you in a position to pay back that kind of money.
[0] https://college.harvard.edu/admissions [1] https://college.harvard.edu/financial-aid/net-price-calculat...
I put myself through a state CS program in the '90s by bartending and selling pot, while guiding whitewater trips (and selling pot) in the summer.
Things have changed, but not that much.
Especially when other western nations show us that university can be free and people can have a rich college experience without that kind of death march.
I also dont think college was great to meet people. I had some friends, but none that turned out to be ambitious like me.
I knew a guy in college, at UCSD, who was trying to take a full CS load while working at Nordstrom. This was in the 90s, so rent, tuition, and costs weren't as high around UCSD as they are now, but making enough to cover rent alone can be a challenge. He was trying to take calc, physics, datas structures and algorithms, and humanities.
Data structures had a pretty tough teacher that semester. I didn't have to work, and I was putting in 20 hours a week at it, to get a B+. That's not a lot for this course, either.
He dropped it. You did ChemE while working, so I bet you could have handled the CS course load at UCSD while working. But I just can't see this as a viable path for most people. In short, I agree that there are extraordinary people who can handle it, but it's not something we can reasonably expect. You can major in communications this way, but CS will lose a lot of talent.
Memories like this, and others, are why I get so angry at times when I hear billionaire CEOs talking about the shortage of engineers in the US. We have talented people here, smart and eager to work hard, failing because they are underfunded. The massive wealth of these CEOs exists only because they can access a highly educated workforce in a safe, stable, peaceful, business friendly democracy.
If they're going to talk about how this environment is failing them, they aren't doing enough. Seriously. It's appalling that talented people who had the grades and test scores to study CS at public (elite) institutions in Facebook's own backyard are failing out of CS because they can't pay the rent and balance the part time job with the demands of a very rigorous curriculum, while billionaire CEOs talk about how the government is failing to produce or give them access to enough engineers.
This is point-blank wrong, unless you're only talking about elite private schools. Most state schools cost around 1-1.5 years of full-time salary, discounting room and board since you have to pay for somewhere to live independently of if you attend university. If your goal is to simply get a degree, you can do it for less than $50k (which is definitely still off compared to the 70s, I agree).
Source: myself and literally every single college person I know who attended public universities in the Midwest
But to have almost zero debt is worth it. More people should consider it.
In return, you go to school, which one hopes is worth the cost over the course of the rest of your life, however you measure it (but here, mostly in currency). Which brings us back to this discussion.
However, to include college time in the opportunity cost, it would need to be 'for all', not 'there exists'.
In fact, it's probably true that the highest-paid, highest-skill jobs have the most genuine need for college degrees. And for the rest, virtue signaling is a real thing: if you have more applicants than jobs, you set up high filters to winnow the pool.
I'm not saying it's "fair", I'm just saying there are rational reasons to do it.
If you find that filtering for people who are left-handed improves the average quality of your candidates, then yes.
But of course, a college degree is not even remotely as arbitrary as you're suggesting.
That is why you should never take career advice from someone who ended up as a careers adviser....
For a HS counselor, that would mean they also work as a career counselor outside to tell people whether or what jobs to change to, or to stay at their current one.
I wouldn't apply that to core education, as there are no e.g. professional adders, but you get the the picture.
I could go on, but that's a topic for another day, I guess.
[1] a retired or former practicioner would suffice here too
This one - I still remember her name but I won't doxx her obv - I happen to know had gone from school to university to teacher training to my school. She had never been outside the education system in her entire life. But her job was to advise 16- and 18-year olds on how to set themselves up for career success...
(I think she also taught Home Ec or some similar fluffy subject)
> ...They weren't wrong. The sheer number of people who have had their resumes ignored simply because they don't have a degree of some sort attests to that.
This doesn't imply that having any degree would have gotten their resumes looked at, or secured them an interview.
My first degree is in Mech Eng, I think there are very few people in that field without a relevant degree. Computing is the exception, not the rule!
These may or may not be the best jobs but it's not an uncommon requirement and they are typically better in some dimension than openings that require a HS diploma only (at least within the same organization).
Sadly, many of them acquired lots of debt, and not much else. I advise any young people I get to talk with about post high school education to not jump head first into a degree program. Life won't pass you by if you take a year or two to formulate a plan.
I applaud you for this. There's often so much pressure from every single direction around a young adult to attend college including internal pressure. After having been the first from my immediate family and older to graduate I feel I am also the first in my family to have an opinion or advice worth giving to another person in that position.
The thing I always say is that it's almost worse to go to college with no plan or "track" to graduating and your goals. Maybe you need a year after high school to figure out your direction as you work a job or two to earn some tuition and spending money before you embark on your educational crusade.
I'm not sure if my personal feelings and abilities apply to many other folks but after K-12 (public schooling) and voluntarily enrolling in university (~4 more years of education) I have a really hard time willingly singing myself up to learn anything new in a "traditional US Public education environment" for lack of better words / explanation. So my advice is to get a plan together, make sure you are motivated and mentally prepared to work hard toward your goal, and make sure you get it done in the time you set aside for yourself. From my POV I don't think I could ever willingly mentally allow myself to go back into student mode. Learning is on my time, to my tastes and liking now. But that feeling only started to come into my life after I was able to get my bachelor's degree. That said, what I mean here is: If you are going to go through all the trouble of going to college you might as well take it extremely seriously. Treat it like it's your job, your #1 priority. Everything comes after your education. It doesn't mean you can't have fun or you can't live your life but it does mean that you should be treating your education seriously and more importantly you should be understanding that you are paying A LOT of money to be there. You aren't going to conjure up all the mental fortitude and courage to re-motivate yourself to go back to school once you've mustered up the strength and courage to quit the first time. Don't give yourself a chance to "get back to it" unless you truly have no other chance / better route to take.
I LOVE LEARNING but I DO NOT LOVE the US's curriculum and standardized test-based education system. Having worked with kids (5-10y/o) for over a decade and having gone through everything they are preparing to go through (university, a degree, and the hunt to obtain the start to their career) I can see many of the issues that plague the education system, I see oh-so-many ways that it's failing or coming up entirely too short for our youth, and sadly enough I'm also realizing how simple it sounds to say, "We need to fix the education system." but also how incredibly difficult it is to actually change this system.
Now we are at this pinnacle of an education decision where it seems to feel like we are teetering on a two-decision contest that's been randomly and seemingly created from the system in place which will decide, somewhat, the future of education:
The current and traditional system, which we have in place now, demands we all work hard and achieve to the highest degree in order to attend a good college / university where we will work hard and achieve to the highest degree in order to obtain a great job where we'll work hard and attempt to achieve to the highest degree.
In primary school you work hard and learn the foundations and basics in order to get successfully get to intermediate school. In intermediate school you work hard and gain new tools to apply to your future work you must do to prepare for your future which takes place in high school. In high school you work hard, continue building on your founda...
Just the exercise would be useful, but even more so some feedback. But then that raises the question, who is equipped to give that feedback? Should an educator tell someone else's kid that maybe they need a backup plan in case the astronaut thing doesn't pan out?
When I was young my father stuck me in front of a publication from the bureau of labor statistics that gave the long term outlook for every occupation they track. It was really great advice that every kid should see (they also ought to make a more kid friendly version, it can be very dry). The big picture stuff was pretty spot on, and it lets you know some hard truths like some jobs will require living in a major city, food service has plenty of openings available but low pay, that kind of thing. It helps you get realistic, even for dream-type jobs like actor or astronaut.
This is more of the kind of thing I wish kids were shown.
Not only show them and teach them skills they'll need the very second they graduate high school, god forbid they are on their own or have no family to rely on. How are we expecting newly graduated 18 year olds to be true participating adults in our society when education teaches them nothing of value?
At least if public schools took a more vocational approach and showed students career tracks with all sorts of options and branches for people with a given set of skills they could at least tuck that information in the back of their mind, they'd know their options and they'd likely gravitate toward working towards the things that they feel they are best suited for.
When they aren't sure that's when teachers, guidance counselors, professionals in different markets (who come in and do assemblies / talks) and parents come into play to help guide a student who isn't quite sure. It's not easy for a pre-adult to decide their career but what I'm really saying and really wanting to see is at least some more emphasis on reminding those kids that life's not all about college. More important that college is creating a comfortable life for yourself and potentially your family and to do that you need to learn how to create value for an employee or society (if you start your own business) before you graduate. Not many companies want to hire people to pay and train them if they have no skills and experience and things like that are becoming more and more rare outside of the trades -- and even then a lot of the artisans and tradespeople seem like a closed off wall if not the type of career most students have been "brain washed" (for lack of a better / less devious word) that blue collar service jobs are below them.
Maybe work study programs for all high school juniors (16/17) and seniors (17/18) in different sorts of service and white collar jobs to give them an idea of how a business works with both blue and white collar workers forming together in a company to make products or offer services. Something to give those students some insight into the way things really are.
So taking a year or two to figure out how to be an adult is not the worst approach to take.
If more people decide to delay or seek alternatives to college, the higher ed bubble will burst. Universities will not be able to afford the administrative staff they are carrying if enrollments decline.
A year spent figuring out how to be an adult would indeed be helpful. Unfortunately, for students who are still immature and sheltered at 18, an additional year spent having their lives completely managed by their parents seems more likely.
>The ASVAB measures cognitive ability like other common IQ test, but it dependent upon the individual’s previous education for successful scores. It removes the individual attention received in common IQ test, but gathers much of the same information.
A college degree shows an ability to complete a specific course of discipline. It does not really even indicate aptitude in the discipline. Just the ability to follow through and complete the requirements. I suppose it shows a minimum level of aptitude in that you didn't give up hope and quit.
ASVAB doesn't indicate the ability to follow through with anything. It tries to hint at aptitude in a wide range of disciplines. It purports to provide your relative capabilities and interest in many topics.
That is why the military relies on ASVAB. They don't need to know your level of stick-to-it-ness or discipline. They will beat that into you or drum you out very quickly. They are more interested in where among hundreds of specialties you are most likely to fit.
I don't know what standards are like in the U.S., but at least where I went to university a good 30% (of those who were in the top 20% of the highly selective entrance exam) ended up getting kicked out because they didn't pass enough courses in their first or second year.
Yes, for some people it was an inability to concentrate, but I also know a few who put in more than the minimum hours but for some reason it just didn't 'click'.
I don't know if the US is suffering from grade inflation which lets through people who should have been failed, or if you are just in a bubble of people who are successful, but what you describe is nothing like what I experienced.
>A growing body of research suggests general cognitive ability may be the best predictor of job performance.
>A growing body of research suggests general cognitive ability may be the best predictor of job performance.
Of course there are other factors as well, but IQ is one of the biggest factors and it's taboo to even mention it.
1. I could try and attack the evidence, by linking studies such as http://digitalcommons.sacredheart.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?ar... which found that conscientiousness is better correlated with grades (a proxy for job performance) than SAT score (a proxy for IQ), but that's not a very strong claim considering all the proxy measures involved (and it still does show that IQ matters).
2. I could attack the article you linked: "employers are more interested in employees' social skills than their cognitive ability" seems correct, in that communication is a key difficulty in jobs at large organization, much more than any individual's cognitive capacity. One could claim it's better at a large org to "satisfice" for IQ while optimizing for social skill. "Emotional Intelligence" vs "Cognitive Ability" as linked later in the article also doesn't seem to capture a sufficiently broad space of factors. And what is "culture fit" about, then?
3. We could talk about the taboo on discussing IQ. I could discuss my experience talking with supporters of "human bio-diversity", geneticists who seemed quite interested in discussing correlations between "various socio-cultural factors" and IQ, mostly with the intent of riling up people, or playing a contrarian position. Many people have a weak understanding of IQ and genetics, and end up drawing incorrect and occasionally repugnant conclusions based on the data (typically due to a lack of understanding that, across generations, genetics are malleable, IQ is malleable, etc).
"Some people use the data badly" isn't a strong argument against mainstreaming discussion of IQ. A stronger argument might be that individuals like to feel ownership over their own lives. Telling people that "IQ, which is determined mostly genetically, is the largest factor in your job performance (read: life success)" chips away at the common knowledge that an individual has significant personal agency, which is important as a philosophical basis behind various facets of western culture. Scott Alexander at Slate Star Codex tries to synthesize the two sides (one side wants to mainstream IQ, the other feels their self-narrative is threatened, hence the synthesis that it doesn't matter so much on an individual level) here: http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/09/27/against-individual-iq-w... but not everyone finds his arguments compelling.
All this isn't to say I agree or disagree that there should be a taboo -- I personally don't have a stance, but would prefer not to hire based on the metric -- but I did want to share some reasons that an objector might give against making it an acceptable measure.
I'm not going to suggest that there's absolutely no bias in the IQ tests themselves, but we've come a long way with them, and they're certainly going to be less biased than the average human who is hiring. Your IQ has no race or gender.
I also did not claim that the IQ test itself was biased. I'm not quite certain which of my claims you're responding to.
If IQ isn't the only thing a college degree is a proxy for, that just means we'd need to offer companies even more than just IQ test if we want to remove the college degree requirement.
Also, don’t actually call it an IQ test. Get a third party that tests IQ and then issues a branded certification named after the IQ tier you fall into. Like CompTIA certifications: you could be a holder of a “FooTesting Genius Certification”, and employers could ask for that.
You know, like a college degree. Except shorter.
Never once in an interview have I been asked about my education. One nice thing about software development positions is the interview process tends to be merit based.
I have mostly interviewed with small/medium businesses in Toronto, but have also done early stage interviews with Google where it was also not brought up. I declined further interviews with Google because I didn't want to move, so maybe it would have been an issue later on.
- Don't include education - I'm asked about it. Every. Single. Time.
- Include the years I attended college - Asked why I didn't finish. Every. Single. Time.
- Include college in a misleading way - I did a summer extension program for 2 years while in high school at a similar college. I list both colleges, my start year, my end year, and what my degree track was. I do not claim that I have a degree, but nearly everyone assumes I do. I'm almost never asked about it.
Any time I am asked about it I'm honest to the degree they need ("I had to take a break from school due to family issues", which is true: my family had an issue with the number of "F"s I was getting).
I've actually had managers who found out after being hired who told me "if I had known that, I wouldn't have hired you"
Ultimately I think there are a lot of industries that a degree requirement is a good thing (I really want my doctor to actually have an MD), a lot of industries where certification is sufficient (I don't particularly think an LMFT needs to have a full degree), but the vast majority of industries shouldn't require it, and filtering for that is a cop-out.
I've been at Google for a number of years. Whether I had a degree was brought up during the recruiter conversations; nobody cared.
How do you feel about the fact that doctors from foreign countries need to requalify in the US with a whole ‘nother MD program here? Even if they’re from a country with as-or-more stringent requirements, and decades of experience?
“Higher education” is sometimes, in hiring, a dog-whistle for “enculturated to the US because they attended college here.”
There are plenty of countries that do have MD programs that the United States recognizes, like Canada for instance. It's a political issue more than anything. If the medical licensing boards in multiple different countries could come together for some form of agreed licensing this could easily by possible.
Are there any other countries besides Canada in that list? As far as I know, Canada- and US-educated doctors can practice anywhere in Canada or the US. Everyone else has to be "re-certified," which includes doing a residency in Canada or US. It is very competitive to get a residency placement. The results is that if you have not done a residency in the US or Canada, the rule of thumb is that it takes 10 years to get licensed to practice and you have a 10% chance of success.
In other words, the problem is not that licensing boards don't accept degrees from other countries, but that they don't accept residencies. And getting a residency spot is so competitive and such a long shot that few people can successfully do it.
However my understanding is that almost no one gets this in software and it’s being discontinued.
But this is just one of the many reasons for why medical care is so expensive in the US.
I suspect the reason that AMA limit access to US markets for foreign trained doctors is because limiting the supply of doctors in the US would likely increase the average salary for current US doctors.
I have zero problem with this. If I was a doctor on the US and moved outside of it I'd expect to requalify there. Different areas have different levels required and just because you've met the levels required in one area doesn't mean you've met them in another.
> They don’t just need to re-do the testing; they need to waste six years and another $300k of tuition to learn things they already know, before anyone will be willing to test them.
That's your actual concern. I don't think you want to get rid of requalification, just make the process quicker and less expensive. Advocate for this, then.
I feel like a lot of companies hiring software devs just filter out most of the resumes that don't mention having a Bachelors degree, simply because they can.
He didn't understand that he was just hiring the lowest common denominator because he wouldn't run a workplace that people wanted to stay in. I've long wondered how many exceptional people he's cast off because they didn't fit his employment profile of "no hope, minimum wage."
Why only Doctors? Because human lives are involved? I assume by the same logic, Civil Engineers also need to have a degree (they build bridges and other life critical infrastructure)
There may be thousands of software products that are also life critical. Not just the obvious ones like some medical hardware control program/firmware, Air traffic control programs, Flight onboard software Self-driving car auto-pilot software etc. So I assume those would require a qualified software engineer with a degree.
But there may even be others that may not be so obvious immediately.
I have a degree and not been on the other side (not having a degree) and so cannot identify with any injustice that is perceived by folks on other side. I can certainly see somewhat equivalent when it comes to bachelors degree vs Masters/PHD as I don't have those. So I am not sure where the lines should be drawn to make it fair to everyone.
His response was "one day you might build a bridge and can kill someone."
I'm not exactly sure where I draw the line, and for me it's a lot of "I know it when I see it". I'm not suggesting any specific code here, just pointing out that there are positions all over the spectrum. I find the fact that a CID (Certified Interior Decorator) is a thing is absurd.
Maybe my requirement is that someone with an appropriate level is in the chain somewhere.
My own personal anecdotal evidence is contrary; I had to get a college degree before anyone would give me so much as a callback (and the one time I got more than that, it ended with a pathetic offer - with the justification given that "You don't have a college degree"). All of this despite having years of proven open source contributions.
I wonder how experience in open source maps to professional experience. My impression is that employers seem to value professional experience much more.
I've had a similar experience to you in terms of not having a college degree, but after I worked for a few years employers stopped caring.
Out of curiosity, what does your github look like? I know you said you have a lot of open source contributions, but what about personal projects on your github?
I've yet to see a correlation between the two.
So I got my degree. Suddenly, the interviewers - some of them the same as before - changed their positions to not considering me in spite of having the qualifications, but because I had no experience.
So before it was experience but no degree, then it was degree but no experience. It's been about eight years since I gave up trying to find work appropriate to my training.
I got my first programming gig, sans degree, with my portfolio. My boss commented that my website, and descriptions of my projects, is what got me the interview.
Coming from graphic design, a portfolio is par for the course. But, I think some programmers will overlook the need for one. And no, I don't think Github projects serve as the same thing. A supplement? Yes. But, a proper site for your work can do wonders.
As an artist, you can almost always point to something, and say: I did this. I designed that. I am credited on a blockbuster film.
As a programmer, you can almost always talk a hot game about how you did something, but you can rarely tie that to proof.
Are you saying that's the hiring manager's problem, not mine?
People shouldnt blog, unless they are going to do hard work making the content useful.
People shouldnt be a contractor, unless they have fantastic skills in a sector.
If you are going to work hard and think hard, you will have success in nearly any market.
If you copypasted the example android Hello World app, you arent going to succeed in the programming market.
From twitter posts, it seems like they know their crap is the same as everyone else, but they want the Adsense money.
Idk, twitter Personal Finance is a cesspool of shitty adsense/amazon affiliate filled blogs.
> twitter Personal Finance is a cesspool of shitty adsense/amazon affiliate filled blogs
Why are you reading it then?
I tried getting into twitter, but it turned out to be spam.
I realize I am not in tune with times, but it somewhat irks me that a lot of (generally) younger folk at work want to blog about every single task they've accomplished or assigned to. Often turning these seemingly routine tasks into heroic efforts described in the blog postings. I guess it's called career growth. :)
Meetings? I had the discussion/outcomes in the blog. Tricky SQL or weird edge case decision? I blogged it.
A few months after I left someone said "thanks for writing that - it's been a huge help in figuring out why some of the stuff was done the way it was done". Same person who'd laughed at me for wasting my time. :)
What I was referring to though were public blog postings in teh interwebs. And because they are public, you can’t often include details that would make them usable as a documentation in a way internal blog like yours would work.
As an internal tool for documenting what’s been done, or for debriefing. I think blog etc. is just as good as other methods. It’s the public ones where I sometimes wonder how much they add to pool of noise and useless information which makes it so much harder to find good information.
Or I just need to improve on my googling-fu! ;)
This is so far from the truth that it'd be laughable if it wasn't so sad.
I do think they should do more to differentiate between news and opinion pieces.
Instead of saying that college is not worth it, why don’t we do MORE to make it free?
Even if people don’t end up using their knowledge fully, simply giving them the opportunity to have that knowledge may enrich their lives. There aren’t social downsides to free education (so long as it’s not censored).
you don't make things more cost effective by changing who pays for them. you just get more people taking advantage of the cost ineffective good.
Higher education can and is being delivered at reasonable costs across much of the developed world, with many countries choosing to have taxpayers carry the burden of funding education.
This common-pool resource approach (that is non-excludable, but still rivalrous) to education does not prevent private education that exists as a private good (that is both excludable and rivalrous), but it does ensure a baseline.
As a society, we have decided that certain things should not be left to market forces, because either the outcomes are morally objectionable to the majority of the population (welfare for example), or we see a greater overall economic return on investment by doing it en mass (healthcare, education, etc).
Healthcare is especially interesting - if we leave it completely to market, we will likely have return of pandemics that are currently being kept at by via vaccinations and mass treatment. If we allow an economic driver to avoid this care, the diseases we largely think of as extinct can return.
Education can be thought of in the same view - if we provide everyone with a solid baseline, and support future growth regardless of economic background, it is likely that we will reduce the negative effects lack of education currently has on society. Removing the debts will also help and provide a huge social benefit, as well as spur additional economic activity.
Such as...?
While I lament innumeracy of people for example, I observe even educated people are mostly innumerate. I am pessimistic problems attributed to lack of education will be solved by education because education is so ineffective.
But if you are a child of parents who can finance your college? Absolutely. No question. This is essentially a way to enforce Aristocracy.
I believe college should be free, and that colleges should limit their number of students in any given program to some sustainable number, where the graduates can actually earn a living.
Not to pick on them, but do we really need this many Art History Majors?
Veterinarian programs specific limit how many students they accept, because if they didn't, their graduates wouldn't be able to afford a living wage. Other majors need to catch on.
And then what if you don't get accepted to a program?
All I've got is Universal Basic Income. And progressive taxes to pay for it all.
Any other thoughts? I welcome honest discussion, because I hope it will inform my views.
Now I will agree that somebody getting an art history type degree shouldn't be taking loans to get it, they should be paying for it out of their pocket. However we should not limit somebody from pursuing their interests just because their interests are not valuable to society.
Roughly, I think we should think in terms of Trade Schools and Liberal Arts programs.
I'm a huge fan of Liberal Arts programs, but I don't think they should be a pre-requisite for a STEM career. They also shouldn't be a pre-requisite for many jobs that people have today.
We should all be much more in favor of Mentoring. Maybe Corporations should receive tax benefits for being good Mentors.
But not a pre-req for day one, earning a salary.
Hell, let's make some Continuing Education demands on STEM.
Accepting a pull request (code reviews) should require training.
Launching code requires even more training.
So if someone's super passionate about art history and is also able to meet the (presumably) more stringent entry criteria, they will still be able to get that degree.
And the free program should be based on Merit, and career demand.
Who chooses what defines "Merit"?
If you get accepted to their program, it's free for you.
Accreditation means auditing to standards and performance.
Why? Surely part of the 'charm' of University is to get chance to study thing you know nothing about just to see if that happens to be your thing, plus studying things just because you enjoy it.
Sure we probably shouldn't encourage too many people to get art history degrees, but why not let people take some art history courses just because they find the topic fascinating?
Don't predicate the rate on a hypothetical earning... Base it on actual earnings.
Ideally that would raise the default rate of the government loans and push up the interest rates of the arts students. Right now the STEM majors are subsidizing everyone else if the interest rates are the same.
A startup exists which refinances loans based on college major and SAT scores
Note that I'm essentially advocating a Loan, but without a Principal. And it's means adjusted what the interest is. And you never finish paying it off.
The downsides of the current trend are:
- pretentious web development job posts requiring master's degrees in CS "or related field" (as if physics prepares you for jQuery).
- debt-ridden, unfulfilled scientists relegated to the above
If there were "too many STEM students," wouldn't my salary drop?
> It's a waste of money and time to encourage more STEM education unless the student is actually passionate about the subject in itself.
I want people to not have to struggle financially so much. STEM is a pretty well documented way to get a stable job with a very competitive salary.
If you have other ideas, I'm open to them.
> debt-ridden, unfulfilled scientists relegated to the above
As though other careers are not debt-ridden, and are more fulfilling?
If you're getting "a job," you're already kind of screwed. If you're an entrepreneur, or happen to get extremely lucky to love what you're doing, or unless you've gone Amish, we all live with tons of debt and aren't very fulfilled by modern life. Am I wrong?
Medical schools do the same thing, but that's also what's causing a burden on the medical system. I truly blame most of the medical expense increases in the U.S. on them and medicare (which sets a base price and everyone else must make up for).
Basically there was a medical school student freeze[1][2] from early 90's through 2010. Now, it's finally starting to increase, still much less than population.
[1] https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/total-medical-scho...
[2] http://aamcdiversityfactsandfigures2016.org/report-section/s...
An interesting post on this is here, although it somewhat contradicts the popular notion that graduate medical education is limited by funding: https://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/gme-federal-fun...
To the extent that they can't legally lower pay, that is the factor, not the funding.
The argument that medicare funding slots is the limiting factor is like saying that Hamilton can't come to LA because the NEA won't cover airfare.
Do you know how much student loan debt vets have?
https://www.studentloanplanner.com/veterinarian/
Also, I have several veterinarian friends, and about half of them are absolutely struggling financially. Do you have personal contact with some, just out of curiosity?
And if you're curious, the suicide rate for vets is very high. We could argue the reasons, but I don't think it's unreasonable to say that money contributes.
Taking out a $400k loan for education seems like a bad idea unless you know you will be making 150-200+. My sister graudated with something like $150k debt, and it is fully repaid now(8 years after graduation) The mistake the lady in the article made is she picked basically the most expensive option and graduated with debt that is greater than 90% of her peers. She could have prevented her situation by, perhaps, going to a cheaper or in-state school.
And yes, vet suicide rate is high, but so is the suicide rate in rural areas where they frequently operate. If you aren't a canine/feline/companion vet, the suicide rate of their clients(farmers) is almost certainly higher than the suicide rate of vets.
Tuition is very expensive. I don't know how your sister graduated with $150k in debt. She was for sure in-state. Was her undergrad paid for entirely by parents or scholarship?
According to this one, vets are higher than farmers:
https://mentalhealthdaily.com/2015/01/06/top-11-professions-...
But yeah, I don't know how that's divided among the different kinds of vets.
Eh... depends on the job. I don't think that most prospective veterinarians dream of working for the USDA ($$$) when they graduate.
[1] https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/veterinarian/sala...
So, how is it "easy" to make 100k+?
/shrug
Students should sooner than later learn to make informed decisions.
But in theory Risk Agencies will learn to assess risk. Credit Default Swaps getting AAA ratings shows they do not.
And Credit Agencies will theoretically learn that investing in a local community is good for everyone. But they haven't.
If you knew that an applicant had a Full Ride Merit Scholarship to a good degree program, it would "mean less" to you?
Can you explain that a little bit better?
Graduate: Say age 22. You have ~20 years to make most of what you're going to make.
I'm not saying it's impossible to work after 40, not at all. I'm just trying to tell anyone who will listen that is is harder and even with full employment in tech, it is still hard to make the kinds of moves I made in my 30s, reinvent myself, and generally do the cool things I want to do.
One applicant getting a full ride merit scholarship (or a small group of them) based on their own achievements is not going to devalue a degree. Giving everyone in your society a full ride scholarship based on nothing but their existence absolutely will. Abundance is inversely related to value
When someone declares bankruptcy, does money just appear?
Those things do hurt all of us. Costs go up. Insurance costs more. Interest rates go up. Taxes go up (if the program was federally backed.)
I am advocating for merit scholarships. Full ride. For a huge swath of people who demonstrate a reasonable level of merit.
I'm not handing money to someone who flunks all their classes.
Are you sure that's the only reason? Are the reasons the same for medical school too?
I think people should be allowed to pursue any major they desire. The only way you can really enforce quotas on everything is probably through laws or policies set by the Dept of Education by forcing schools that want to take their loans to set quotas. My opinion is, then you're getting into the central planning problems of the government knows best.
I would like to see tuition at community colleges reduced so its affordable to all, which would include free for those at or near poverty lines. For regular universities, I don't think it's unfair for those taking loans to have to attend some type of in-person seminar that: * summarizes the work load and type of study their proposed majors require * outlines current and projected job prospects and income * financial planing that helps them figure out how many years it will take the pay back their loans based off of job prospects and income, and what that means for buying homes and cars, retirement planning, vacationing/recreation, and living expenses.
Perhaps then make them wait a short period of time before they can then "sign" that yes they do understand and that they still want to pursue a degree with loans. Kids that young (17-19) don't really have any good grasp on the finances and their parents might be blinded by hope.
Perhaps that "finance" seminar wouldn't help but it might at least get them to re-think their secondary education options.
> Are you sure that's the only reason?
I'd be surprised. I'm sure that, as always, budgets and class sizes are concerns as well. There are also other ethical concerns to be considered (e.g. lots of students implies lots of animal cadavers implies...?).
Limiting class sizes to keep wages inflated sounds a little conspiratorial to me, but I won't deny that it could be a factor.
Are you sure? $100k in college vs. $100k in S&P 500 ..I think the it's about the same. The grad starts with a -100k deficit (i'm assuming graduate school is included). The Aristocracy perpetuates itself through inheritance. I don't think most college grads, even with the wage premium, feel like aristocrats.
I'm leaning heavily on "most" here.
I don't think $100k in S&P 500 at 18 provides you with enough income at 22 and on. If you $100k in S&P 500 at birth or sooner, maybe.
Also, yes, if everyone in the country owned enough S&P 500 to get by, then... No, that wouldn't really work, would it? :)
There are few problems, but they're minor compared to the American model imo.
As for people who don't get accepted, in a closed and healthy economy, there's literally never a shortage of jobs (at least pre-AI). There's always something that needs to be done and you can create training programs or job placements for it. Also there are many "technical schools" which offer sorter degrees or professional training.
With AI, jobs will eventually diminish, but UBI has many caveats, the most important being that it leaves (ex?)workers powerless. In order for them to maintain the right to basic income they need some kind of leverage to enforce it. My opinions is that if they don't own the machines that produce they won't manage to do it.
So far the only reason they weren't slaves (or dead) was that they could leverage the need for their labor. Now that it diminishes, they're left with nothing.
And then we set up tax structure to massively favor paying dividends to stock holders, thus including the government.
Thoughts?
You cannot calculate how many art history majors the world needs. You just need to trust people to act vaguely in their own interest, and society's interest, most of the time and to trust that things will work out.
Consider the important exceptions to this approach, where we try to match the number of students to demand. You can sort of calculate how many doctors the world needs, since everything involved (cost of services, number of patients, number of doctors, demography, doctor salary, yadda yadda) is objectively measured. We still manage to get that wrong, and there's a shortage. (or is there?)
The notion that you're going to be able to somehow be able to determine the market demand for graduates of the kind of degree program where people will move into a wide variety of jobs, like art history for one, is pure fiction if we can't even get medicine right. Of course if you're going to form a dictatorship of some kind you're obligated to try, but it will be one of the many things about your dictatorship that does not work very well.
A metric that might work in the future is to look at employment and job satisfaction.
> You just need to trust people to act vaguely in their own interest, and society's interest, most of the time and to trust that things will work out.
Sure. And I want free college, and progressive taxation.
I also advise that we do a far better job of publishing and thinking about career opportunities and satisfaction. Maybe even to the extent that schools should seriously consider whether it's responsible to accept X majors.
It's fun to think about how screwed up a society would become if it did simpleminded, authoritarian things like reduce the number of seats for education students because teachers defaulted on their student loans at a higher rate than business students, and opened up a corresponding number of spots for business students. There are so many factors affecting that default rate other than society's need for graduates of a degree program...
Here's an idea: make sure people who are intellectually capable of succeeding in a degree program can choose the major they want. Support them financially if they need it. Full stop.
> I also advise that we do a far better job of publishing and thinking about career opportunities and satisfaction. Maybe even to the extent that schools should seriously consider whether it's responsible to accept X majors.
So much of what you're talking about already exists.
That's why I said "do a far better job of ... thinking about"
Are you proposing a system where a school would accept you, decide there were too many of your preferred major, and kick you out or choose another?
The other option would be to force 17/18 year olds to choose their future careers while in high school.
That happens all the time.
So, yes.
Let's do the opposite instead, and make it as easy as possible for people to get into tech at least.
The moment a tech Union or professional organaizion like this appears, and starts to try and implement policies like this is the moment I fight as hard as I can to destroy said institution.
If you want to argue that less useful majors that have worse jobs prospects, should be harder to get in whatever way, I could maybe agree with that. (IE loans are harder to get or whatever).
What I cannot agree with is the philosophy of some private org given out a limited supply of certifications, to protect it's own members. IE, the American medical association as applied to tech, or whatever.
My fear is that UBI will tempt policy makers to cut social programs. "We gave you money, buy your own medical insurance". With guaranteed jobs we can put more work into our infrastructure while eliminating unemployment, which helps keep fair labor practices in the forefront of employer's minds.
I also think many more programs should be socialized. Notably college and healthcare.
I'm not sure if I have reasonable arguments for which things should and should not be socialized.
Guaranteed jobs force people to work. That forces people to have latch-key kids, or daycare. Family bonding is ridiculously important.
Early childhood development is the most important thing in your life, basically. UBI encourages family bonding.
Also, if we get UBI, I think we have to get rid of protections for Unions (union-only shops), tenure, and minimum wage. Make the labor market much, much more of a Free Market. People will ACTUALLY QUIT shitty jobs. Which is good for everyone. Wages will have to go up if the job is shitty, or the job will need to be reworked to be less shitty.
In my country (belgium) the universities are mostly funded through taxation. The government negotiates per-student reimbursement rates with the universities, different rates for different degrees. The average all-in cost of a student is around 12K euro per year, with the student paying 1K of that and the government providing the rest. The resulting education is of a quality matching good colleges in the U.S. at a fraction of the cost, while still paying faculty a decent wage. The catch is the heavy government involvement and price controls, this is counter to the U.S. philosophy of the role of government, which is why this system could never work there. Additionally, all-in tax rates are double those of the U.S. (also is used to provide universal healthcare), effectively nationalizing huge chunks of the economy.
The focus should be on bringing down tuition fees. Whether you pay for tuition in debt repayment or taxes, the result is the same. Arguably debt is fairer than taxes because every individual gets to choose whether they want to carry that burden.
So, who gets to choose how many? If you leave it to a professional association you end up in the situation we have with doctors in the US, where we definitely do not have enough.
And who gets to pursue their degree? Do colleges get to keep choosing whoever they want? Because that's probably just going to reinforce the Aristocracy you are complaining about. Do we do it on test scores? Besides the obvious bias issues, not your entire career is determined by some test scores, is that really what we want?
Maybe it's just me, but I really dislike the idea that some exams you take at the end of school basically control how the rest of your life will go, and I'm basically ok with the art history people only being the sons of daughters of aristocrats because there's no money in it.
I think educating people without putting them in debt is a great goal, I just don't think this is a good way to get there.
[EDIT]: In terms of counter-proposals, I think college is actually not the right place to be focussed. I think our housing, transportation and healthcare policies basically make lots of places close to unlivable for those doing low status jobs. I think we need to get very serious about density & public transit. We need to figure out how to do construction on both cheaply so that we can house everyone affordably. Basic income is great and all, but so much of that will go to rent that I basically see good housing/transit policies as a prerequisite for making that actually sustainable.
Education is important. Raising the overall level of education in this country should be a much larger goal that it seems to be.
On one level, I totally agree. At the same time, well-meaning attempts to make college loans available to everyone for everything seem to have massively bloated the cost of education to a crippling degree. I think the key is in the how of the approach.
Of course everything else has this issue as well. The only difference is most of us start small, and if it works we expand. You can't do that easily for national programs.
Is this American exceptionalism? Many nations do this, with great results.
It was all sold as helping people but all they did was help themselves. A lot of university administrators are guilty, too. There were likely kickbacks and other illegal schemes taking place.
I'm not so sure about this as a cause. If you look at the costs for colleges that have increased over time, you can start to see where a lot of this money is going. Spending on new and maintaining aging technology is increased. And now you have entire departments like Title IX that never existed in prior school models.
And with expansion, additional management overhead now exists. There is seemly at least a Director of <insert title here> for everything.
I would argue some of the things you list as causes of increasing tuition are the effects of tuition surpluses from additional income from a trillion in student loans.
I think some decisions lately have highlighted an open hostility towards science, education, and by implication, democracy. This needs to be reversed.
I understand it's changed recently, but colleges (and lower schools) traditionally had a very conservative curriculum in general education / liberal arts core of Economics, Literature, and History.
A lot of people are disinclined towards education and education isn't so important that people should be coerced into submitting to it. In fact, educating people against their will usually impairs the learning experience for motivated people in the classroom. The people who interrupt the teacher and misbehave usually do so because they don't want to be there.
Beyond that, a lot of public schools are failing to do their jobs or prioritizing knowledge poorly. A school district near me has rapidly declining test scores but touts a social justice curriculum. I certainly don't want to forbid anyone from learning critiques of colonialism, but I think that's "dessert" and should really only be taught after students have a strong knowledge base in more practical knowledge.
>I think some decisions lately have highlighted an open hostility towards science, education, and by implication, democracy. This needs to be reversed.
To the degree this is true, I primarily blame those who politicize science and education. Look at the "march for science" - the well meaning folks at my local march were too happy to use climate change predictions to demand others make massive concessions. In this, we see the difficulty in using empiricism as a means to support agendas - the climate change models aren't performing well, and even if the predictions were accurate, there should be some discussion about the cost and benefits. America does better than most nations under climate change predictions and the countries that will be the worst impacted as those who play the biggest roles in it: the oil rich middle eastern and African states sure enjoy selling oil but beg for help to deal with the consequences of their customers using the oil they sell. To some degree, the people who don't care about the consequences of climate change aren't hostile to science and they don't want to debate the issue at the level of science which is probably the right way to handle it because the discussion isn't really about the climate, the core issue is the degree to which we should sacrifice for people we don't care about.
Lastly, it sometimes seems like the more schooling one receives, the more hostile they are to science. High school graduates might not like things like racial differences in IQ, but it's my experience that individuals with graduate-level education are more hostile to the same thing. I would hope that the additional schooling would make these people more open to accepting things based on the strength of evidence but that's not the case. It's not clear how we reverse that hostility but the answer doesn't seem to be "more school".
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/01/opinion/when-the-left-tur...
Consider why so many comedians (e.g., Jerry Seinfeld) are no longer performing at colleges. They say it's become unbearable. That's a big clue that free speech is not welcome.
Look at how guest lecturers and ideas are getting shut down. University used to be the bastion of free speech and ideas, but that is increasingly under threat. Just watch what happened at this lecture at Queen's University to see an example how bad it's getting: https://youtu.be/MwdYpMS8s28?t=9m44s
Distinguished professors trying to have a well reasoned and peaceful discussion with students. And that wasn't just disrupted, the doors were barricaded and people were pounding on the windows (breaking at least one) throughout the remainder of the event. Outside it was even yelled "Lock em in and burn it down". Seriously, watch the whole thing (followed by footage of what happened outside) and I think you'll be taken aback.
These are not cases of shitty things being called out, it goes way beyond that.
And the person in the video, Jordan Peterson, is someone who expresses views that basically say that a lot of people don't deserve to have freedom. He claims that women should not be able to leave abusive marriages. He claims that gay marriage should not be legal at all. He's used a lot of pseudoscience to make it appear as if he's being rational, when really all he's doing is expressing disdain and scorn for lots of marginalized groups. And I can't be upset with those groups for finally getting tired of him disparaging them, and telling him to shove it.
Students asked for white people to not come to the college for a day, a white professor disagreed with this, the students called for him to be fired.
Pressuring people of a certain race to stay home seems wrong, and I don't think the professor is shitty for standing up to it.
Also Educated != smart. You can have plenty of educated people but still have bad outcomes in society. If only smart people could vote then that would go a long way to fixing society, but again, a solution like that is immediately off the table. So there are ways and means to fix any and every problem, the problem is nobody will use the tools or they are not even smart enough to know that the wrench is for turning bolts in the first place (the don't even realize the solution in staring them in the face in other words.)
But it is important to clarify: education in what is important.
I think there is massive difficulty in forming any sort of consensus approach to define a proper baseline of 'education' that works for everyone. Our school systems are frankly not designed for it, and it seems a utopian ideal that they may be 'corrected' to do so. Considering the diversity of motivators and systems/tactics used for schooling across cities/counties/states and the content that is covered/ignored, is it realistic to attempt to measure a 'baseline of education'?
To me it comes down to structuring a better formal definition of 'education' at a societal level. Economic utility is the obvious motivator in today's society, which pumps up many fields of 'education', but hinders the perceived importance of other fields. Some forms or fields of education that are not covered in our modern schooling systems may actually improve the education baseline, and vice versa with some content currently covered.
University was mostly a core of classes that everybody needed to take, free electives that let me take whichever classes I wanted, and then degree courses which were a subset of my classes.
We over-fixate on the major in these discussions because we look at the crazy American education prices and then think in $/major. But otherwise I'd say university does a decent job of making people credentialize in generally important concepts. And this process helps you in life, like being able to think and speak intelligently on any topic.
I think it's the gross expense of uni that causes us to push people into majors like STEM that can be directly transmuted into dollars. But I don't think that's best for society. And it's an unhealthy approach to education.
For example, if I could redo university, I would've majored in philosophy. It's just obnoxious that I had to make that decision somewhere within age 17-20.
I agree with your take about STEM majors being pushed due to both ROI potential and/or market demand for skills. I also agree that this is an unhealthy approach to education. However, I don't see this changing. I see it as the fundamental motivator of education for many people. Likely, the people to which I am referring are not readers of this site, who are of the highest skills in their respective fields (most likely technical).
I am interested in your opinion that "university does a decent job of making people credentialize in generally important concepts" but then following with your personal interest (later realized) in an education based on (and in) philosophy.
I think this actually reinforces my point, because the motivator is the credential, or some creditable skillset. This is the economic utility motivator I was referring to, rather than a more abstract education in philosophy or other arts. The skills gained from these more abstract educations are not as highly valued by their economic potential, however they could actually be more beneficial to both the person and society as a whole.
Would a person who only knew apprenticeships trust someone who sat through 4 years of theoretical lectures, book learning, and "sample projects", when their expectation is that trained apprentices have worked side-by-side with masters in "the real world" for many years, doing real work that real people depended on?
A liberal arts degree can be worth it, but only if it is actually a program with effort in it.
I think this is a decent list of acceptable majors/concentrations (outside a trade specific school perhaps):
https://college.harvard.edu/academics/fields-study/concentra...
I envision a day where everyone enjoys the "right" to a PhD. We will be very smart then, won't we?
Additionally, I do understand that a lot of people go to college for the purposes of getting a job. But that's not all college is, and pretending that the only reason anyone values college is the salary level afterwords is missing the most interesting pieces of the discussion. Things like,
-the arts are important for a society regardless of the financial profit from it (i.e., it would be 'worth it' to a society to not force each individual person to earn a living wage for their whole working life).
-college as a mechanism for meeting people, making connections, and learning about the world. Yes, some college experiences can be closed-minded, but that is not the norm.
-many other things. This author is so focused on money, they are missing the forest for the trees.
It's difficult to think of a better way to cultivate personal relationships than college. Presumably you've chosen classes based off your own interests, so the people you meet within those classes are good candidates for friendship (via homophily). True, you could use subreddits to find folks with similar interests, but in my experience those don't lead to the same kinds of relationships you develop when you physically encounter other people.
Building a state park a la the New Deal CCC doesn't really create the same sense of shared interest since no one's actually interested in the art of bricklaying for the most part, and volunteering has a lot of turnover (mostly due to folks using it as a resume item).
If you're at a SLAC, the number of people you see is limited so there's less competition for attention when forming bonds and a lot of mere exposure effect.
The value of college (at least at a SLAC) is arguably less about the classroom lessons and more about having a decent method for finding other people you can grow with.
The most relevant conclusion here is that. However, I notice this article doesn’t explore the wealth of labor that only needs an associates or trade certification.
...but the author of the opinion piece will be happy to.
I could be wrong, but my idea is that nowadays - schools are just brands, rather than an educational environments, but there are exceptions of course.
That is to say, would it be a valuable use of time and effort?
I am sure there are people who can study hours of literature, philosophy, political science, math and physics on their own. I am sure they would write papers and find others to discuss them.
For the rest of us there is only college.
(You might ask: valuable to what end? Worth what? And that is a good question but the answer is much longer.)
Just to add another perspective/angle on it, university is free to attend in many other countries (you even get paid to study, although not much). People still discuss whether it is worth it and I would agree the question is interesting, but just interesting to keep in mind.
* Experts know the relevant information, and learning from them is the best way. Colleges provide access to experts.
* A good lecture can be just as informative or more informative than a good book.
* Lectures can include information from published journals that haven't made it to textbooks yet. There is too many published journals to know what is the most relevant/interesting in the field without being an expert, and lecturers can provide required background information to understand bleeding edge ideas often written in ways off-putting to novices.
* Many people study harder if they know they will be tested on their knowledge.
* Assignments provide feedback on your work.
* Math is something best learned in groups for most of the population.
* Social interactions with other dedicated students can be encouraging.
* College provides many resources that help aid studying & research. From libraries to uranium centrifuges.
I'm not sure college is the best use of four years for everyone, but I am sure that it does provide real value.
I suspect the answer is "no" more frequently than you may expect.
The opportunity cost is four years of your life, four fewer years of full-time work experience, and the income that comes with that work experience.
When I was in high school all these recruiters came from various colleges to try and get us to sign up for their schools. I saw what almost none of my peers saw: They were salesmen trying to generate revenue for their business. They did not have my best interests in mind. They presented these lovely little marketing sheets describing how much money you'd make with a degree in X, Y, or Z. I realized then that I didn't know how much money was a lot or a little, but I had an idea the numbers would be rosy. So I started asking people I knew how much money they needed to live and how much they considered a lot. I began cold-calling people in various roles I was considering and asking if the numbers the college recruiters gave us were realistic for an entry-level worker with a degree and no experience. Big shock -- they weren't. In the end, I figured four more years of work experience would put me well ahead of my peers who went to college and it has. That was nearly two decades ago and I'm very well ahead of my peers now. There are some folks who just don't have the discipline to learn things on their own -- for them, maybe college is a good choice. There are others who need a degree by law to practice their chosen field of work. That makes sense for them too. But for the rest of us -- college may be considered harmful.
Though if you're the type of person who's driven enough to do that cold calling, I'm sure you'd find a way around it.
At the same time, I think if it wasn't for State licenses, regulations that force to have a degree and a culture that discriminate against people without a state-supported college degree, we would see no advantages for the college degree holder, at least with current colleges.
For most people it should hopefully be: "I want to be a lawyer, so I go to law school", or "I am interested in engineering so I study engineering" - you study because you need the degree to get the job you want.
"Why do employers demand a degree for jobs that don’t require them?" > This is a common practice. Speaking from tech industry experience, you'd be hard pressed to find a single job opening that didn't have a degree requirement listed. The kicker? It's not actually a requirement, it's there for formality.
" Technology increased the demand for educated workers, but that demand has been consistently outpaced by the number of people — urged on by everyone from teachers to presidents — prepared to meet it." > If this is referencing the tech industry, then this is an outright false claim. Tech industry job openings to skilled applications is something like 2:1, if not 3:1 right now. Since he just said technology in general, it might not be referencing the tech industry. Talking about the job market in general, I don't have any insight into that.
"The authors don’t speculate as to why this is the case, but it seems that students from poor backgrounds have less access to very high-income jobs in technology, finance and other fields. Class and race surely play a role." > Absolutely false. Race might play a small role depending on the state and environment, but class sure doesn't. No respectable tech employer cares about your financial upbringing, it's about what you have to bring to the table right then and there.
It really all comes down to how you play your cards. If you have the chance to attend college(which not everyone has the chance to do), you have to go with what will open the most doors. You can't expect to spend 2 years getting something like a liberal arts degree and expect to be making 6 figures. You have to research, you have to understand what skills are in demand. I will say that I am biased when writing this. As someone who grew up extremely poor and found opportunity through a tech degree in a local college, I very well have a world of opportunities now because of it. So it is infuriating that the author dares to consider the idea of even community college not being worth it, when it very well is one of the very few doors that leads to bigger and better things for low income people.
This simply isn't true a lot of the time. It is sometimes, but there are plenty of jobs that require highschool level skills but will filter out those who don't have a degree just because they can. It's not that big a deal if you select one candidate over the other because the former has done a 2 week internship that made no difference in the qualifications, but did signal some small extra thing that gave the candidate the edge. It's not okay if a diploma gives a candidate the edge structurally, despite being useless for the required job skills, and costs $40k for the individual to get. That's an insane price we expect people to pay just to compete for a job.
> No respectable tech employer cares
It's not just that. It's the fact the vast majority of jobs are obtained through your network. Class and race are just proxies for the probability that a person has a weak network within a high-socioeconomic-class industry like tech or finance. It's not necessarily a claim of blatant classism or racism by the employer, but rather that your mom not knowing an uncle with a position for you, or dad not showing you you need to do this internship and that volunteer project and apply to that program to get recruited, or growing up with friends who became plumbers and whose parents were plumbers too, is not as conducive to landing a job as others with similar intelligence/credentials but a different class background/upbringing/network is.
That having been said, I agree with your other points. These articles get a bit tiresome. As always the answer is, it depends. College can be worth it, but not for everyone and not by doing anything.
It sort of amazes me sometimes to speak to people who just never ran any of the numbers. It should be mandatory for student loan applications to be data-driven. i.e. any college in a state should be able to go to the state educational board and obtain annual data for every accredited program or at least workfield, and use that for the loan programs. So for example, the state could track the average salary at 1, 5 and 10 years for an Art History major. Plug that into a loan calculator. Then plug in the loan payments. And then offer a comparative view, compared to not going to college, community college and other majors in college. And then a student has to read through all of that and make a conscious decision that yes, I'm going to borrow $50k, have an estimated payback time of 45 years old and earn no more than minimum wage and be expected to have a >50% chance of not being employed as an art historian in the first place. I'm seeing this kind of data take off a little bit, but it's still pretty poor and some universities skew the numbers. Government should do more to standardise these things and mandate universities and students use them.
There's also "the minimum viable candidate" vs. "cheap value-add".
E.g., an admin asst that does the job as described vs. the admin asst that occasionally helps with spreadsheets, does some basic graphic design work, and proof-reads both user-facing and technical documentation.
Does an admin asst need a college degree? No. But I'll take the admin asst with some art, accounting, and writing skills ANY day. Those skills completely re-define the role and add tons of value at very low cost.
I've seen the same in tech roles. Given two candidates who are both obviously capable of doing the primary duties of the job, the one with a deeper background (either from college or self-taught) is obviously preferable because versatility outside of the designated role is always a nice value-add.
One reason why it's so easy to sell, is that college is a near universal experience for the middle and upper classes, and being an expensive experience, people credit it with much of the personal growth that happens in one's early 20s. They also credit it with making them good at their field.
"I really learned how to think in college"
"I really learned how to be apply myself in college"
"I really learned computer science in college, which wouldn't have happened if I went via some other path.
etc.
It's far too painful for most people to think "I could have been an equally skilled person if I'd spent that time doing something else".
I come from a long line of people who've succeeded without going to college. When I tell people I've known for a while that I dropped out of a community college they usually seem stunned and surprised that someone could actually have a reasonably intelligent conversation with them (and be a decent engineer) without that history.
My experience is that you can read books on the humanities, and CS, and get work done AND not kill yourself in the process. Maybe the road is a little longer in some ways, but you also come out of it without debt, and you get the benefit of having a very different set of formative experiences than your peers.
Sometimes when coworkers find out there is a remark like "Oh wow, I never realized that." Imagine after somebody had brought up their alma mater and I remarked "Oh wow, I never would have realized you went to college.."
Recently, a friend suggested that I avoid mentioning this to prevent stigmatization. I realize now there are probably a bunch of people who think badly of me for it, much to my bemusement. Until my friend mentioned it, it hadn't crossed my mind that anyone would interpret that as "this slob couldn't even finish high school".
Yes, you could stay home, or move elsewhere, and be one of a handful of people like yourself. Or you could go and be surrounded by thousands of brilliant, amazing people for years of the most formative years of your life.
The benefit of going to a good school isn't the classes, it's the people.
As you move down the scale that becomes less and less true. People go, learn whatever they learn, get few if any connections, and wind up with a pile of debt.
So, we've created an incredibly regressive system.
One other thing to note. When people form those friend groups it's not just about who's their intellectual peer, it's also about who came from similar backgrounds etc. It's an engine of division as much as anything else.
I agree that the value is there for some individuals, but I disagree that this is a good thing for society as a whole. If you get accepted to Harvard, it's almost certainly worth your while to go. College still remains a finishing school for the elites in our society. Some people bubble up from the underrepresented portions of our society, but they remain the exception, and will continue to be so until something changes.
I've included a couple links below that explain the disadvantages some groups face when attending college.
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/07/27/blacks-with-... https://www.vox.com/2017/9/11/16270316/college-mobility-cult...
By bucketing all these experience together as if they're the same experience does a tremendous disservice to those who can least afford to make a six-figure mistake.
So this whole "Is college useful thing" is basically only relevant if you never want to live anywhere else. Immigration is far harder if you do not have a degree.
What the article doesn't say is that all other things being equal it is still worth it to have college education. I don't think that the right way to motivate poor people is to tell them that even with degree they might be worse off than the rich. Having a degree will be better for them than not having it. Learning always pays off - be it in college or not.
We've created a system that reaps huge profits in encouraging people to go to school, regardless if that's the right place for them.
If there's no counterweight to that profit motive, things will not change.
Signals only work if they're hard to fake. The expense of a college degree in both time and dollars perversely increases its utility as a signal.
Of course, the price of a degree can only go so high before before people are unwilling to pay it. But the natural tendency will not be for the price to come back down, but rather for new, more accessible educational options to show up with lower signaling values. It already happened before with the difference between ivy league schools vs the rest and public vs. private.
Society will get even more stratified, with ever finer class distinctions becoming an indelible part of your pedigree. Technology will make it ever easier to buck the trend and become entrepreneurial, but even that will slowly get folded into the system. We see this with how craft brewing ended up getting rolled into the existing system, preserving the lion's share of the profits for the big bottlers.
Ever-decreasing social mobility is the price we pay for advancement.
At work, in tech, I know a number of folks with degrees from San Jose State University. They are hard working and successful millionaires.
The folks in the first group would LITERALLY DIE if their kids went to San Jose State University.
It makes me sad/angry for them that they feel there is NO OPTION other than to get their kids into Stanford/Berkeley/Santa Clara at all costs.
College was close to free for me. At that price it was still way too expensive. I doubt that is the case for the best students at the best schools. But for the rest of us, I advise being highly skeptical of the value of a modern college education. Especially of the education department at SJSU.