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College Unaffordable Even in Higher Income Brackets

nytimes.com

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Re: College Unaffordable Even in Higher Income Brackets

#111

Post by niftich »

antisthenes wrote: post #101
niftich wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do tertiary degrees get you? If you're an employer, why would you want to employ these people?

Most notably computational finance and research in the natural sciences (material, biochem, physics) all require tertiary degrees since those courses are simply not available at the undergraduate level. The benefits of hiring these people by the financial and the pharma sector should be obvious.

Sure, but these fields are known for being selective, and objectively requiring a very high level of domain-specific knowledge. Presumably, they will remain this way in the future, despite the cost of education rising.

Notably, if the field doesn't objectively require a very high level of domain-specific knowledge, but rather a general baseline command of a broad topic, eg. software development?

Re: College Unaffordable Even in Higher Income Brackets

#112

Post by chris11 »

jamesroseman wrote: post #66
chris11 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think going to a better college would have made much of a difference in job opportunities? It seems like some of the larger tech companies do a lot of recruiting at state colleges.

[Anecdote] Here in Boston Microsoft built an entire office just to offer a great internship program (Foundry, now Microsoft Garage) to Harvard and MIT students. I think on average recruiters view top tier schools as places where your ROI for headhunting is higher, because more prospects are more likely to make it through the recruiting process -- but that's just a hunch.

That's true I guess. I did transfer from a really small college to a big state school with a decent cs program. It's not a top college, but we do get a ton of money for research. And I did notice a huge difference in opportunities.

But I don't see going here as being drastically worse than a better school. I've gotten interviews at a bunch of places, and every summer I have classmates that intern at highly competitive companies like Google/MS/Amazon/Palantir. I don't know some of what I'm missing because I'm not at Harvard or MIT but I don't know how my school would be a negative at most places.

Re: College Unaffordable Even in Higher Income Brackets

#113

Post by rguzman »

intopieces wrote: post #77
jamesroseman wrote: post #13

I think a reality that will hopefully soon catch up with societal stigma in the United States is that college isn't right for everyone. I understand this as a separate point from college being unattainably expensive, but it is an important point. I have friends who would be mechanics, Peace Corps volunteers, electricians, or plumbers if they hadn't instead gone to a private 4-year institution, pressured to attend the…

>I think a reality that will hopefully soon catch up with societal stigma in the United States is that college isn't right for everyone. That's the problem, not the solution. College should be for everyone. There's no reason why a person who becomes a plumber or peace corps volunteer or electrician can't also go to college and learn those things, among other topics. In 2015, only 33% of American adults had a college…

College != Education. Education should be for anyone who wants it. However, the returns on a college education (especially if the monetary costs are high) are highly dependent on the abilities (IQ, grit, conscientiousness, etc) of the individual in question. It is a bad investment for a lot of people.

Re: College Unaffordable Even in Higher Income Brackets

#114

Post by dv_dt »

flubert wrote: post #108
dv_dt wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So at 17 or 18, with little life experience, students are supposed to make a financed $160k ($40*4) investment which may decide their economic fate for 20-30 years? Even with the help of parents and advisors to make predictions that isn't a good policy for the general case. (For one parents and advisor’s are also often wrong). There are ways to achieve good outcomes in the current system, but that is not the same as…

>So at 17 or 18, with little life experience, ...isn't the real failure right here, in the constant infantilizing of our young? Shouldn't we be expecting our society to produce semi-capable adults when they come of age? It's not like people have to be so unworldly at the tender age of 18. http://roppskyline.pbworks.com/w/page/6550634/Growing%20up%2...

I would argue that requiring social/economic path that loads people down with high-debt at the beginning of their life is a recipe to destroying a lot of beneficial economic activity. (irrespective of if their specific career pays a lot).

I strongly suspect that if you took the exact same amount of money as is spent on education today, financed it using either public debt or taxation or some mix, and direct funded more education through public universities, education would run more efficiently, and society and businesses would benefit economically more than individually loading people down with educational debt.

Re: College Unaffordable Even in Higher Income Brackets

#115

Post by legutierr »

gist wrote: post #81
dv_dt wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So at 17 or 18, with little life experience, students are supposed to make a financed $160k ($40*4) investment which may decide their economic fate for 20-30 years? Even with the help of parents and advisors to make predictions that isn't a good policy for the general case. (For one parents and advisor’s are also often wrong). There are ways to achieve good outcomes in the current system, but that is not the same as…

> So at 17 or 18, with little life experience, students are supposed to make a financed Well a good start might be simply avoiding majors that you know will go nowhere, don't you think? Like music, art and certain liberal arts. Even when I went to school it was known to be hard to get a job in those fields. But yet people still choose them and tried to "follow their passion". My passion was to learn something where I…

If some music, art or writing program is a top program, we want the best, most passionate people capable doing that work to be there, regardless of how much money their parents had. We all benefit if our most talented artists, musicians, writers and filmmakers are able to work in their chosen field. It's how culture moves forward, and it makes all our lives better.

What you seem to be saying is that only the rich and well-off should pursue those fields, while the poor and middle class keep their heads down to "earn a living."

Can't you see how that policy will impact your life negatively? I would hate to live in that world. Wouldn't you?

Re: College Unaffordable Even in Higher Income Brackets

#117

Post by noonespecial »

So long as the government guarantees students that they can get the loan, and guarantees lenders that it will be paid back (mostly by making the debt lifelong and not dischargeable through bankruptcy) the cost of education will simply be set at whatever the maximum available loan is.

This will cause the value of the education to be transferred away from the student and to the administrators of the institutions. The student will be allowed to keep a small percentage of this value for his/her trouble, a sharecropper of their own education.

Re: College Unaffordable Even in Higher Income Brackets

#118

Post by antisthenes »

Sacho wrote: post #46
rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Precisely. At this rate, I don't see much advantage in bringing a few snowflakes into this world to combat the tidal waves of ignorance. And that's assuming I can give them a childhood that was even a fraction of mine.

Perhaps you havent considered all the possible options. What about wiping your debt, saving money and moving to a developing country to start your family?

I am not rm_-rf, but I certainly would not hedge my future children's future on the stability of a developing country.

That's barring the other multitude of issues associated with moving (child isolation, increased competition, lack of certain infrastructure, new languages, loss of social support network, etc.)

Re: College Unaffordable Even in Higher Income Brackets

#119

Post by antisthenes »

bradleyjg wrote: post #47
rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #3

My partner and I - both well-educated and well-employed professionals - sketched out our long-term financial plan recently. The only way we envisioned owning property would be to build our own a considerable distance away from our small city's center. That alone proved to be a significant part of our budget, which is already under considerable pressure from student loans and car payments. We estimated the expenses fo…

The only way we envisioned owning property would be to build our own a considerable distance away from our small city's center. That alone proved to be a significant part of our budget, which is already under considerable pressure from student loans and car payments. Why must you own property?

Because owning property is a form of defense (risk hedging) against the rent-seeking capitalist class.

Re: College Unaffordable Even in Higher Income Brackets

#120

Post by niftich »

throwawaysocks wrote: post #106
niftich wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do tertiary degrees get you? If you're an employer, why would you want to employ these people?

The answer is mostly completely obvious, and the fact that you're even asking makes me wonder if you're trolling (EDIT: apologies, I over-reach). Here are some categories of jobs for which most people don't or can't self-teach, or where a tertiary degree is the default route: Huge swaths of the medical profession (MDs, BSNs, PAs, DOs, Pharm.D.'s, ...) Non-BSN nurses and expert tradesmen and craftsmen (tertiary == pos…

It was a genuine question, and here's why:

if these advanced degrees possess such importance to their respective fields that employers will refuse to hire anyone who hasn't attained them, that simply means that the employers have outsourced a large portion of their on-the-job training to public education. This is troubling, as why should my [insert some other college degree] subsidize companies of lawyers, accountants, actuaries?

And if the above is true, the signalling theory also holds -- by an applicant showing up with the degree, they demonstrate that they've taken significant steps to increase their attractiveness and employability to the employer. It's a competitive advantage. And that competitive advantage is eroded if a large fraction of the population also attains the same degree.

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