Another interesting point I didn't see made in TFA, is that this decline started years before AI came bursting onto the scene and has continued on the same trajectory (for those others considering the impact AI has/will had/have on the perceived value of higher-ed).
I think because in the last years that the American college system has been perceived as a business and for-profit system, and that buying into that system has been associated with long term debt, the economical equation is what stands in the forefront of many people's minds when they consider pursuing a college career, and it might not make sense anymore from that perspective. If you have an education system that is perceived as a purely economical option, education is not anymore perceived as a means in itself. What kind of influence this will have on the culture of learning will probably become visible in the future - and is already apparent in certain areas of life.
For-profit colleges blossomed explicitly because people were told "college = success". In the past, college was a privilege and mostly available to wealthy families or the smartest and most ambitious kids. There was probably huge selection bias in saying this cohort had successful careers. Getting more people into college was probably a net win but diploma mills really diluted the perception of college degrees.
I think there is a tendency to conflate the decline in opinions of higher education with a larger anti-science or anti-establishment view.
I don't think this is totally the case! College costs continue to grow (well exceeding already high inflation), and the most recent way I have seen the value was framing it not around academics (or even job readiness, which is still not what college is about), but "building social skills" [1]. The college referenced in the piece is 40-70k/y depending on your status; fewer and fewer young people see taking out 100k+ of debt, 4+ years to "build social skills" as a worthwhile endeavor.
Asians are notably missing from that Gallup poll, I suspect the decline will not be so severe.
I’m confused why this isn’t talked about more often.
As a parent, most of my time that I spend thinking about money is thinking about how to pay for college. It is the second largest purchase im going to make next to my house, and it is the financial decision that sucks up the most thought.
If my kids have a 1/3 chance of interacting with someone that doesn’t think college is worth it, then that impacts how I think about whether to orient the next 20 years of savings around saving for my kids college.
If that person interacting with my kids is their boss, or person tasked with hiring them, then this _greatly_ impacts my decision to pay my kids’ college.
Note: I don’t mean to imply “I’m deciding between whether my kids have a dedicated time period where they live on their own and just study”. I’m specifically talking about paying for an education experience that will result in a credential (a degree).
Maybe I’m greatly impacted by Bryan Caplan’s “The Case Against Education” but some part of me believes the main value of a college education is that other people think a college education is valuable.
This seems to be getting less important in my lifetime. It’s hard to tell where the general sentiment is gonna be 20 years from now.
I'm in Europe so maybe my view is different, though there's a lot of that thinking over here too: the only possible value of higher education is the advantage it gives me in relation to others (competitiveness, perception...).
But there are other more important (imho) values.
First, it is an excellent opportunity for personal worth. Socially: change of social group, freedom to explore, independence without much responsibility. Intellectually: mastering an advanced topic, in a program less directed than previous education, geared toward people with some demonstrated skill/affinity, meaning more depth. Also, no teacher or parent asking for grades, meaning more responsibility over own learning and organization.
It's a time for exploration. As it's said in classical AI, too much exploitation and not enough exploration means suboptimal solutions.
But also, higher education provides a resource for society. People with niche knowledge, expertise in a variety of topics, means a society is more resilient to disruption, and also more likely to innovate.
University is also a place for intellectuality and individuality, values very important to sustain a democracy, since democracy's main enemy is the inside enemy, in the form of ignorance and gullibilty.
Of course, to me all this means higher education is mostly a public service and therefore should be mostly taxpayer funded, but again, I'm from Europe :)
As a Dane, I have also heard these fluffy benefits described but they lack evidence. Everyone gets a basic education in school and I agree that's valuable. When it comes to studying esoteric subjects with zero scientific and economic and social benefit? I just disagree. I don't think tertiary education is intrinsically valuable. One can be well socialised and master subjects and skills without university.
I agree with you, but this varies between countries. Americans seem to pay a lot more which makes it hard to appreciate either the personal or social benefits. In the UK people have before more focused on subjects as its become more expensive over the decades.
In England (Scotland, Wales and NI are a bit different) its £10k/year for fees (except three or four universities), plus living costs (which will vary depending where you are). Fees plus an amount for living costs (reduced as parental income rises, and you get more if studying in London) can be funded by a student loan, which has returned to interest at the rate of inflation (it was higher, and close to commercial rates for a few years, very unfairly on those in that scheme).
This is not as good as some European countries, but it seems to be a lot cheaper than the US. its hard to compare because fees vary a lot more and American universities are more generous with financial aid.
The question conflates education as a social good - unarguable, unless you're an authoritarian and/or a cultist - with the value of college education as a consumer product.
The case for a college education as a product has become less and less convincing as the job market value of credentials has dropped and costs have risen.
I would not assume college in its current form is going to be a thing 20 years from now, except - possibly - as a legacy finishing school for the extremely rich.
Everyone else is going to be scrabbling for income in an economy where a lot of what used to be white collar work is done by AI, and a lot of what used to be blue collar work is done by robots.
The critical skills will be creative independence, improvisation, and systems thinking - the ability to hack the social and financial economy to invent paid work instead of applying for it.
>The question conflates education as a social good - unarguable, unless you're an authoritarian and/or a cultist - with the value of college education as a consumer product.
At least he's just haplessly conflating them in a question rather than engaging in the (too common around here) behavior of maliciously conflating them in a dishonest attempt to rebuff someone who's criticizing the value/utility of college for the latter
> If my kids have a 1/3 chance of interacting with someone that doesn’t think college is worth it, then that impacts how I think about whether to orient the next 20 years of savings around saving for my kids college.
It doesn't matter what people think, the question is whether the jobs your kids want to do require a degree or no. Let say they want to be a doctor or a lawyer college, then college education is needed. Even programming which is a field with a lot of self-taught people and hobbyists, professionals without a college degree are the exception.
College should be for becoming educated. Not for getting a job.
If paying huge amounts of money isn’t worth it to you to be educated, fine. But that doesn’t mean the education is bad, just that it’s not worth it from a financial perspective.
I studied philosophy and art, even though I found have studied something more “practical” (a dubious distinction that I think is less and less accurate in the dynamic modern economy, but that’s a separate discussion.) I don’t regret it for a second, and if my future kids want to study art and philosophy I’ll encourage them to and pay for it the best I can by then.
This, if one just wanted to get a job, they should go to trade school. There's no point in bastardizing academia into trade school when trade school already exists.
Its the same in the UK. The government (specifically Tony Blair) decided a long time ago to greatly increase the number of school leavers going to tertiary education. Parents and teachers push university as they only way to get a good job - this is not even true given a trade will give you a better income than many degrees.
Funding this massive expansion has also spread government funds thin so it has made university more expensive, which pushes people to make a financial decision. At my daughters' sixth form college far fewer people are doing music or drama and far more doing maths at A level, as they want to do "useful" subjects at university.
The impact is even worse if you are male. The number of men doing subjects like archaeology (which my younger daughter is currently doing) has fallen sharply, and its becoming a "rich girl" subject. Its actually a secure career (there is a shortage!) if not well paid, but people do not know that. When people think about jobs they think STEM or business.
We even have a system here whereby you can do both for vocational subjects. My older daughter did a degree apprenticeship (in engineering in her case, but also available in law, accountancy, etc.) which means you work while doing a degree. Fees paid and you get a salary. People are waking up to this but it needs to expand.
The reality is that college is a business decision. You pay in years of your life and quite possibly loans as large as mortgages, so you better not be another highly educated barista when you're done.
> College should be for becoming educated. Not for getting a job.
That ship has sailed. College is a now a job gate-keeper and are extorting young people for certificates that employers 'require' to hire them.
I'm all for education, and there are indeed jobs for which degrees should be required (engineering, nursing, etc), but many many jobs just require some generic degree in anything. It's a bullshit requirement and the costs are massive and rising and saddle young people with debt some can never get away from.
I have always said that if someone is considering college for the credentials then they're not in the right mindset to get the most out of it. The perspective that a parent should save up to "get their kid into" a school always felt infantilizing to me as well. College should be the time that students step up and take a role in determining their own preferences, their own finances, their own direction.
As I said in another comment the cost of university in the US seems to vary a great deal. Can Americans explain how much is typical? It sounds like you start saving for it before you know what university they will go to and what they will do. How much do you typically aim to save?
Americans have told me in the past how much they personally are expecting to spend and its often a huge amount, but I have no feel for what it typical, or how much it varies.
Businesses aren't hiring as many new grads, and many "thought leader" business types are actively snorting at not needing many or educated employees.
So what do we think the "American views" would do in that situation?
All the colleges are pretty much land trusts designed to extract money from kids with loans. There is no concern for educating anyone as the teaching staff is underpaid across the board and most of the money sucked up by leadership and sports teams that do nothing for most of the athletes even let alone the students.
Department of Education has no control over curriculum. Its for financing student loans. Abolishing the Department of Education and various regulations they impose on schools at all levels, could actually help curb the excessive admin and leadership hiring that you complain about in the first section.
Attending US schools, teachers always tell me, "you are stupid if you don't vote for democrats unless you are filthy rich". Even books I learned mentioned those.
I find US schools leaning too far left as much as being communism.
I was indeed far left, but as I started reading more books, and wearing engineering hats, I started doing tradeoffs.
Is school really trying to drag me down so that I can move up the ladder?
US school system does not even help you any more with bringing up questions, and questioning current system.
At this point, colleges are useless not only because political biases, but also due to AIs.
I am super enquisitive person, and AIs help me get started faster (on learning new subjects) than Google search ever have
I do wonder with polls like this, that include middle-of-the road options like “fairly important,” if there could also be some change in how we communicate our preferences. Maybe we’ve got a general creeping uncertainty about everything.
Not sure why anyone would be surprised by this. People may still accept that they need a college degree to get their desired job, but that doesn't mean the education is actually worth it.
Prices are up substantially. Grade inflation is out of control, demonstrating that people are paying for the credential more than the education. Masters degrees have become a way for international students to purchase a visa. No one is learning anything.
> but that doesn't mean the education is actually worth it.
I don't understand how we can have this conversation when the cost and quality of the product is so, so incredibly varied.
Some people loop in room and board with college costs, but you need to live somewhere even if you aren't in college. The two decisions aren't intrinsically intertwined. Being enrolled in a college might give you some options you wouldn't have otherwise, but if it's not a superior option to what you already have then you shouldn't take it. In other words college 'room and board' cost should either be ignored because it's the same price you'd pay elsewhere or it should be a net benefit if it's a subsidized, multi-tenant solution.
Meanwhile other's go to colleges that cost $10k a year for tuition and fee's, other's go to ones that run $40k+ per year. One college might focus on education and career prep/placement, another highlights their athletic teams and greek life parties.
Notice the pattern: It begins after ~70s oil shock and coincides with the rise of neo-liberalism, upon its promise which millions were raised to believe in: "Skilled workers will always be desirable, grill yourself forever and college is the only way that you can be recognized and labeled fit as one."
But many failed to see that this premise would result in one way, which is actually what's happening right now: Growing outsourcing (especially observable in SWE due to its nature) purely driven by market competitiveness (inevitable dynamics of neo-liberalism) and hype surrounding it (leaving no room for other players in the game to choose any other way) which can no longer be sustained through traditionally accepted way of hiring new people who can master new inventions. Although, I highly doubt this is also sustainable.
Eventually, it was well expected for people to stop believing in a system which offers very little foreseeable success of accomplishment and thus, doing manual/repetitive labor is far more preferable for people.
I think there are several interrelated factors at play here
1) is the dilution of the “college” degree in terms of quality - an online degree from the does not generate the same outcomes as from a highly selective institution.
2) value for money for a college degree keeps declining (unless you get it for free) - tuitions have gone up astronomically and colleges have spent lavishly on administrators, student housing and sports complexes, all without improving or changing the core product for which they are charging (education).
3) too many / the wrong people are going to college - just look at the universities that will basically take anyone, less than a third graduate, and they borrow / are in debt at graduation, and they have starting salaries that no better than high school grads (say USC - Aiken)
4) students pursuing expensive degrees for jobs that do not pay / low ROI (we need techers and social workers but spending $200k-$400k to become a social worker that pays $45k/yr doesn’t seem to be the winning proposition.
5) if you’re somewhat mechanically minded, are willing to travel and work outside, and can pass a background check / drug screen you can earn $75k/yr inside of two years working a blue collar job.
Given these elements - it seems unsurprising that more and more people don’t see college as the answer.
Higher Ed (and Ed) has declined once again as well. There are many majors that are, to be completely honest, jokes and shouldn't even exist. I personally had plenty of classes that I wrote an essay and knew I would get an A as long as I agree with the professor's/teacher's pet political views, or the same paper would mysteriously be docked a few points. High Schools teach less Shakespeare, and more random children's books that aren't worth the paper they are printed on. Liberal Arts and Humanities spend too much time on pet modern social justice causes, and not enough time on Cicero, Aristotle, etc. If we go back to a solid foundation of a classical education, actually reading the great works in school, leaning into critical thinking, and adding rigor, then higher education will actually be worth it. Math and Science I believe is still pretty solid and rigorous in higher ed but k-12 needs to be totally revamped.
I think quite a bit of this phenomenon should be attributed to how young adults choose their education/career path. We're still in the "you can be whatever you want" and "if you make your passion into your work, you won't work a single day in your life" phase of the civilizational boom/bust cycle. Do high schoolers familiarize themselves with the supply and demand per field or do they wing that part/ignore it? For the fields that they feel pulled to, do they consider which people become financially well off after graduating in it? E.g. is it mainly authors, public speakers and professors, all basically in educational roles, making the field a government subsidized ponzi scheme? And do they on an ethical level consider which layer of society's hierarchy of needs their future expertise will feed into? As in, does the subject revolve around pleasure maxing in the upper echelons, or will it be useful for infrastructure, supply chains, defense, health,...
It seems that most people wing most of those points in a pursuit for what they think their life's passion to be at 18 years old. And neither do any governments in America or Europe really step in to incentivize socially benefitial choices, at least afaik, instead relying on the import of immigrant experts while at the same time experiencing massive brain drain to better off countries, e.g Germans moving to Switzerland en masse.
> And neither do any governments in America or Europe really step in to incentivize socially benefitial choices
NYS, as much as I complain about the state government, does actually do this a bit. One is the BOCES program which is an adult education system that teach trades, and highschoolers can go to for free (Think diesel mechanics, carpentry, and also things like computer repair or networking). The other is that there is a system for free associate degrees for adults 25+ (recently the requirement for them to not have a college degree was removed so that there can be reskilling), but the limitation is career focused jobs. So you can get a free associates degree in nursing, health sciences, engineering technology, metal fabrication, etc. but not in say literature.
Not going to college was probably one of the better decisions I made. I chose to join the US Navy instead as a submariner (nuclear). Rather than signing up for 100k student debt, I was signing a 100k enlistment bonus. I was able to purchase my first house at 22. I was then immediately picked up by Google once my enlistment expired.
Obviously everyone's situation will be different. But now having been in the software engineering realm for many years, the level of maturity and execution I see in college graduates is deeply concerning. I generally outperform not necessarily because I'm smarter, but mostly because I just have strong discipline, communication, and conflict resolution skills gained from years in the military.
These articles never ever bring up the long history of anti-intellectualism in the United States. College may indeed be getting less “worth it” in pure financial terms, but it’s certainly ironic that many people only had a high view of them in the first place because of the supposed financial benefits. Now that those financial benefits are less certain, out comes the anti-intellectualism again.
A more rational society would acknowledge that higher education is a good thing, and therefore try to make it affordable, not try to undermine it entirely.
>A more rational society would acknowledge that higher education is a good thing, and therefore try to make it affordable, not try to undermine it entirely.
This assumes you believe that graduates are indeed gaining skills or beliefs that contribute to the betterment of society. Part of the reaction is a backlash to DEI/Woke and its a true statement that many recent graduates are not in fact contributing to but actively wishing for or working towards the downfall of US Society.
I think that influence is a handful of classes at best. Unless you’re suggesting that every university in the United States has no educational value anymore, and has been replaced with a Fox News caricature?
>These articles never ever bring up the long history of anti-intellectualism in the United States.
Pick any nation and it's the same. Intellectuals as a class catch a bad rap because of how many of them are useful idiots for whatever the oppressive and/or extractive systems in a society are at any one time.
With anything that requires patience, you have a problem competing with immediate rewards.
Why should I learn Stoke's Theorem? Why should I learn Nietzsche? Questions you can't answer until you learn them, and questions that compete with "how will I find a job" and "how will I find a girlfriend".
The problem is, if you don't learn how to answer such questions, you will not know that such questions exist. You will find a job and a partner, and think you never needed to contemplate any of the things you didn't think about.
Information is practically free now. And many people that are fresh out of college are still not ready for the careers their degrees supposedly prepared them for. I expect either for colleges to adapt to provide more real-world knowledge or for companies to care less about whether someone has a degree and more about their work history and personal projects. For me, 4 years of work in the field (commercial construction and service calls) was a much better decision than 4 years of college would have been. My current company hired me for my experience in the field.
I agree. Someone who is willing to learn will use the information they have available to do that. If someone has access to the world's information and is unwilling to learn, that is their problem, and college probably won't help.
I strongly agree. Not only is information free, but application of that knowledge is also either free or incredibly cheap. The case for university is very poor now, and looking ahead even two years, I question its existence. Even before AI, it had basically become a signalling mechanism: "I have the right contacts, socio-economic status, grades, and foresight to get into this specific university and study this specific course. I have no idea how to apply it in the real world." There is some value in that signalling mechanism, but it appears most of the value derived was not even the degree itself. Let's cut out the middleman and on our CVs just put our parents' income, our zip code, our IQ, grades, and connections. I know that's crass and for the record I'm not advocating for this. I'm just deconstructing a sick industry which desperately needs upending.
The original point of college (modern era) was to give employers confidence that you knew the work subject and could perform proficiently.
College weeded out those who couldn't cut it.
Then we decided everyone needs to go to college, and that society would blindly place a college tuition bet on each person.
Now everyone is going to college, and with risk assessment thrown to the wind (a 17 year old), costs have exploded. Knowing that the debt is so intense, and that it is not dischargable (society hedged their blind bets here), college has kind of stopped it's weeding out and turned more into a pay-to-win enterprise. Legions of kids without the chops are just getting shuffled through to that magic degree so they can have a shot at paying off their debt, and hey, employers just want to see that degree to unlock those white collar salaries.
But what's slowly been happening is employers feeling like they are getting had, and people with degrees are coming in the door and leaving you totally bewildered how the hell they ever finished a degree. So the requirements are loosening and scrutiny to get in is tightening.
TL;DR: The degree market has been diluting itself in an attempt to alleviate the insane cost of a degree. Jobs are noticing degrees are meaning less.
Doesn't the graph make this easy to interpret? College used to not be seen as necessary by the majority of people and so only those with a strong aptitude or desire to pursue higher education did so. It became a metric to use during hiring because a degree accurately indicated that the person holding it had high aptitude or a strong interest in the field and the competency to obtain a degree. People observed this and tried to game the system by acquiring any degree to pad their resume (the motivation changed from real aptitude and interest to simply getting a higher paying job). This worked for a time while there was still an overhang in the perception of a degree but eventually the sheer volume of people with degrees made it evident that it was no longer an accurate measure. The value of a bachelor's degree in any field plummeted and was replaced by other measures (a masters, multiple degrees, PhD, exclusive schools) which were also gamed by applicants. Now the jig is up and we're in a situation where the measure is whether your family has enough money and connections to get you a laundry list of qualifications or you rely on contacts or demonstrated talent to get the higher paying jobs. The widespread discounting of the importance of higher education is a good thing, it means that people are realizing that it is no longer an exploitable measure and will hopefully lead to a correction in both the number of people getting degrees and the cost of pursuing a degree. The unfortunate part is that we're in an interim period where costs are high and there are still a lot of employers that see a degree as a box that needs to be checked.
You know what surprised me about this data? They break down the % who say having a college degree is very important by different dimensions. One dimension is, people who went to college vs. not.
You would think that people who have a college degree would be much more likely to say that college is very important. But even they are pretty lukewarm: 38% of people with a college degree say that having one is very important, vs 30% of people without one. Not that big of a difference!
That's what happens when the real world starts to hit us all, and we realize that the push towards college when we were growing up was largely propaganda (not to say teachers don't really believe in its usefulness, but they can't back it up with facts).
I was 'lucky' enough to only spend $30k on my seemingly-useless Computer Science degree. If I could go back and do it again, out of high school, I would go to tradeschool to become an electrician.
What a waste of money though, I wonder what else that $30k could have gone towards... or hell, just keep it as investments. A $30k piece of paper is in my bedroom though...
I'm not really that upset about college itself, I'm upset about all the people around me who fed me the lie (that they too believed), that getting a degree somehow sets you apart and unlocks all the high paying jobs. I think a master's degree holds more weight, but still.
The problem is ultimately what it always is - money.
Instead of higher education being something that people do because they want to do it, because they're passionate about a subject or simply want to grow and learn - it became viewed as an edge that would help you get jobs more quickly or better-paying ones. You spent some of your money and time now, but would have a higher salary later in life.
Then, globalism and the internet came in. You are no longer competing with people in your home town. Or your state. Or your country. You are competing with everyone, everywhere, all the time. Employers, for better or worse, only have so many slots available. If one candidate has a degree and the other doesn't, it makes sense to use it as a filter - if only to reduce the shear amount of applicants you need to consider. Every applicant is time and effort and money, and reducing it to a narrow list quickly is paramount.
Now, a degree went from an edge to a necessity. If you did not have it, you would simply be filtered out and your chance of getting anything beyond minimum wage was effectively zero. That meant that almost any cost would be accepted, because the consequences would be so high if not taken. But, schools only have limited seats. Nearly fixed supply and increasing demand meant the price skyrocketed.
Now, we're in the next phase. The balance has tipped. Now, competition is so fierce globally that even with a degree chances of a good job are slim. You might be overqualified, with years of experience and a relevant degree - but if you're competing with 1000 other similar applicants than does it even matter? With those kind of odds and the consideration of lifelong debt, now people are starting to see it as a waste of time.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 36.1 ms ] threadI don't think this is totally the case! College costs continue to grow (well exceeding already high inflation), and the most recent way I have seen the value was framing it not around academics (or even job readiness, which is still not what college is about), but "building social skills" [1]. The college referenced in the piece is 40-70k/y depending on your status; fewer and fewer young people see taking out 100k+ of debt, 4+ years to "build social skills" as a worthwhile endeavor.
Asians are notably missing from that Gallup poll, I suspect the decline will not be so severe.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANHnFgyjx08
As a parent, most of my time that I spend thinking about money is thinking about how to pay for college. It is the second largest purchase im going to make next to my house, and it is the financial decision that sucks up the most thought.
If my kids have a 1/3 chance of interacting with someone that doesn’t think college is worth it, then that impacts how I think about whether to orient the next 20 years of savings around saving for my kids college.
If that person interacting with my kids is their boss, or person tasked with hiring them, then this _greatly_ impacts my decision to pay my kids’ college.
Note: I don’t mean to imply “I’m deciding between whether my kids have a dedicated time period where they live on their own and just study”. I’m specifically talking about paying for an education experience that will result in a credential (a degree).
Maybe I’m greatly impacted by Bryan Caplan’s “The Case Against Education” but some part of me believes the main value of a college education is that other people think a college education is valuable.
This seems to be getting less important in my lifetime. It’s hard to tell where the general sentiment is gonna be 20 years from now.
:(
But there are other more important (imho) values.
First, it is an excellent opportunity for personal worth. Socially: change of social group, freedom to explore, independence without much responsibility. Intellectually: mastering an advanced topic, in a program less directed than previous education, geared toward people with some demonstrated skill/affinity, meaning more depth. Also, no teacher or parent asking for grades, meaning more responsibility over own learning and organization.
It's a time for exploration. As it's said in classical AI, too much exploitation and not enough exploration means suboptimal solutions.
But also, higher education provides a resource for society. People with niche knowledge, expertise in a variety of topics, means a society is more resilient to disruption, and also more likely to innovate.
University is also a place for intellectuality and individuality, values very important to sustain a democracy, since democracy's main enemy is the inside enemy, in the form of ignorance and gullibilty.
Of course, to me all this means higher education is mostly a public service and therefore should be mostly taxpayer funded, but again, I'm from Europe :)
In England (Scotland, Wales and NI are a bit different) its £10k/year for fees (except three or four universities), plus living costs (which will vary depending where you are). Fees plus an amount for living costs (reduced as parental income rises, and you get more if studying in London) can be funded by a student loan, which has returned to interest at the rate of inflation (it was higher, and close to commercial rates for a few years, very unfairly on those in that scheme).
This is not as good as some European countries, but it seems to be a lot cheaper than the US. its hard to compare because fees vary a lot more and American universities are more generous with financial aid.
The case for a college education as a product has become less and less convincing as the job market value of credentials has dropped and costs have risen.
I would not assume college in its current form is going to be a thing 20 years from now, except - possibly - as a legacy finishing school for the extremely rich.
Everyone else is going to be scrabbling for income in an economy where a lot of what used to be white collar work is done by AI, and a lot of what used to be blue collar work is done by robots.
The critical skills will be creative independence, improvisation, and systems thinking - the ability to hack the social and financial economy to invent paid work instead of applying for it.
At least he's just haplessly conflating them in a question rather than engaging in the (too common around here) behavior of maliciously conflating them in a dishonest attempt to rebuff someone who's criticizing the value/utility of college for the latter
Glass half full and all that
It doesn't matter what people think, the question is whether the jobs your kids want to do require a degree or no. Let say they want to be a doctor or a lawyer college, then college education is needed. Even programming which is a field with a lot of self-taught people and hobbyists, professionals without a college degree are the exception.
College should be for becoming educated. Not for getting a job.
If paying huge amounts of money isn’t worth it to you to be educated, fine. But that doesn’t mean the education is bad, just that it’s not worth it from a financial perspective.
I studied philosophy and art, even though I found have studied something more “practical” (a dubious distinction that I think is less and less accurate in the dynamic modern economy, but that’s a separate discussion.) I don’t regret it for a second, and if my future kids want to study art and philosophy I’ll encourage them to and pay for it the best I can by then.
Its the same in the UK. The government (specifically Tony Blair) decided a long time ago to greatly increase the number of school leavers going to tertiary education. Parents and teachers push university as they only way to get a good job - this is not even true given a trade will give you a better income than many degrees.
Funding this massive expansion has also spread government funds thin so it has made university more expensive, which pushes people to make a financial decision. At my daughters' sixth form college far fewer people are doing music or drama and far more doing maths at A level, as they want to do "useful" subjects at university.
The impact is even worse if you are male. The number of men doing subjects like archaeology (which my younger daughter is currently doing) has fallen sharply, and its becoming a "rich girl" subject. Its actually a secure career (there is a shortage!) if not well paid, but people do not know that. When people think about jobs they think STEM or business.
We even have a system here whereby you can do both for vocational subjects. My older daughter did a degree apprenticeship (in engineering in her case, but also available in law, accountancy, etc.) which means you work while doing a degree. Fees paid and you get a salary. People are waking up to this but it needs to expand.
That ship has sailed. College is a now a job gate-keeper and are extorting young people for certificates that employers 'require' to hire them.
I'm all for education, and there are indeed jobs for which degrees should be required (engineering, nursing, etc), but many many jobs just require some generic degree in anything. It's a bullshit requirement and the costs are massive and rising and saddle young people with debt some can never get away from.
Americans have told me in the past how much they personally are expecting to spend and its often a huge amount, but I have no feel for what it typical, or how much it varies.
I find US schools leaning too far left as much as being communism.
I was indeed far left, but as I started reading more books, and wearing engineering hats, I started doing tradeoffs.
Is school really trying to drag me down so that I can move up the ladder?
US school system does not even help you any more with bringing up questions, and questioning current system.
At this point, colleges are useless not only because political biases, but also due to AIs.
I am super enquisitive person, and AIs help me get started faster (on learning new subjects) than Google search ever have
Prices are up substantially. Grade inflation is out of control, demonstrating that people are paying for the credential more than the education. Masters degrees have become a way for international students to purchase a visa. No one is learning anything.
I don't understand how we can have this conversation when the cost and quality of the product is so, so incredibly varied.
Some people loop in room and board with college costs, but you need to live somewhere even if you aren't in college. The two decisions aren't intrinsically intertwined. Being enrolled in a college might give you some options you wouldn't have otherwise, but if it's not a superior option to what you already have then you shouldn't take it. In other words college 'room and board' cost should either be ignored because it's the same price you'd pay elsewhere or it should be a net benefit if it's a subsidized, multi-tenant solution.
Meanwhile other's go to colleges that cost $10k a year for tuition and fee's, other's go to ones that run $40k+ per year. One college might focus on education and career prep/placement, another highlights their athletic teams and greek life parties.
One college might be worth it, another might not.
But many failed to see that this premise would result in one way, which is actually what's happening right now: Growing outsourcing (especially observable in SWE due to its nature) purely driven by market competitiveness (inevitable dynamics of neo-liberalism) and hype surrounding it (leaving no room for other players in the game to choose any other way) which can no longer be sustained through traditionally accepted way of hiring new people who can master new inventions. Although, I highly doubt this is also sustainable.
Eventually, it was well expected for people to stop believing in a system which offers very little foreseeable success of accomplishment and thus, doing manual/repetitive labor is far more preferable for people.
1) is the dilution of the “college” degree in terms of quality - an online degree from the does not generate the same outcomes as from a highly selective institution.
2) value for money for a college degree keeps declining (unless you get it for free) - tuitions have gone up astronomically and colleges have spent lavishly on administrators, student housing and sports complexes, all without improving or changing the core product for which they are charging (education).
3) too many / the wrong people are going to college - just look at the universities that will basically take anyone, less than a third graduate, and they borrow / are in debt at graduation, and they have starting salaries that no better than high school grads (say USC - Aiken)
4) students pursuing expensive degrees for jobs that do not pay / low ROI (we need techers and social workers but spending $200k-$400k to become a social worker that pays $45k/yr doesn’t seem to be the winning proposition.
5) if you’re somewhat mechanically minded, are willing to travel and work outside, and can pass a background check / drug screen you can earn $75k/yr inside of two years working a blue collar job.
Given these elements - it seems unsurprising that more and more people don’t see college as the answer.
It seems that most people wing most of those points in a pursuit for what they think their life's passion to be at 18 years old. And neither do any governments in America or Europe really step in to incentivize socially benefitial choices, at least afaik, instead relying on the import of immigrant experts while at the same time experiencing massive brain drain to better off countries, e.g Germans moving to Switzerland en masse.
NYS, as much as I complain about the state government, does actually do this a bit. One is the BOCES program which is an adult education system that teach trades, and highschoolers can go to for free (Think diesel mechanics, carpentry, and also things like computer repair or networking). The other is that there is a system for free associate degrees for adults 25+ (recently the requirement for them to not have a college degree was removed so that there can be reskilling), but the limitation is career focused jobs. So you can get a free associates degree in nursing, health sciences, engineering technology, metal fabrication, etc. but not in say literature.
Obviously everyone's situation will be different. But now having been in the software engineering realm for many years, the level of maturity and execution I see in college graduates is deeply concerning. I generally outperform not necessarily because I'm smarter, but mostly because I just have strong discipline, communication, and conflict resolution skills gained from years in the military.
A more rational society would acknowledge that higher education is a good thing, and therefore try to make it affordable, not try to undermine it entirely.
This assumes you believe that graduates are indeed gaining skills or beliefs that contribute to the betterment of society. Part of the reaction is a backlash to DEI/Woke and its a true statement that many recent graduates are not in fact contributing to but actively wishing for or working towards the downfall of US Society.
Pick any nation and it's the same. Intellectuals as a class catch a bad rap because of how many of them are useful idiots for whatever the oppressive and/or extractive systems in a society are at any one time.
Why should I learn Stoke's Theorem? Why should I learn Nietzsche? Questions you can't answer until you learn them, and questions that compete with "how will I find a job" and "how will I find a girlfriend".
The problem is, if you don't learn how to answer such questions, you will not know that such questions exist. You will find a job and a partner, and think you never needed to contemplate any of the things you didn't think about.
College weeded out those who couldn't cut it.
Then we decided everyone needs to go to college, and that society would blindly place a college tuition bet on each person.
Now everyone is going to college, and with risk assessment thrown to the wind (a 17 year old), costs have exploded. Knowing that the debt is so intense, and that it is not dischargable (society hedged their blind bets here), college has kind of stopped it's weeding out and turned more into a pay-to-win enterprise. Legions of kids without the chops are just getting shuffled through to that magic degree so they can have a shot at paying off their debt, and hey, employers just want to see that degree to unlock those white collar salaries.
But what's slowly been happening is employers feeling like they are getting had, and people with degrees are coming in the door and leaving you totally bewildered how the hell they ever finished a degree. So the requirements are loosening and scrutiny to get in is tightening.
TL;DR: The degree market has been diluting itself in an attempt to alleviate the insane cost of a degree. Jobs are noticing degrees are meaning less.
You would think that people who have a college degree would be much more likely to say that college is very important. But even they are pretty lukewarm: 38% of people with a college degree say that having one is very important, vs 30% of people without one. Not that big of a difference!
I was 'lucky' enough to only spend $30k on my seemingly-useless Computer Science degree. If I could go back and do it again, out of high school, I would go to tradeschool to become an electrician.
What a waste of money though, I wonder what else that $30k could have gone towards... or hell, just keep it as investments. A $30k piece of paper is in my bedroom though...
I'm not really that upset about college itself, I'm upset about all the people around me who fed me the lie (that they too believed), that getting a degree somehow sets you apart and unlocks all the high paying jobs. I think a master's degree holds more weight, but still.
Instead of higher education being something that people do because they want to do it, because they're passionate about a subject or simply want to grow and learn - it became viewed as an edge that would help you get jobs more quickly or better-paying ones. You spent some of your money and time now, but would have a higher salary later in life.
Then, globalism and the internet came in. You are no longer competing with people in your home town. Or your state. Or your country. You are competing with everyone, everywhere, all the time. Employers, for better or worse, only have so many slots available. If one candidate has a degree and the other doesn't, it makes sense to use it as a filter - if only to reduce the shear amount of applicants you need to consider. Every applicant is time and effort and money, and reducing it to a narrow list quickly is paramount.
Now, a degree went from an edge to a necessity. If you did not have it, you would simply be filtered out and your chance of getting anything beyond minimum wage was effectively zero. That meant that almost any cost would be accepted, because the consequences would be so high if not taken. But, schools only have limited seats. Nearly fixed supply and increasing demand meant the price skyrocketed.
Now, we're in the next phase. The balance has tipped. Now, competition is so fierce globally that even with a degree chances of a good job are slim. You might be overqualified, with years of experience and a relevant degree - but if you're competing with 1000 other similar applicants than does it even matter? With those kind of odds and the consideration of lifelong debt, now people are starting to see it as a waste of time.
I don't see a solution.