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On average, skipping college and investing tuition costs nets a higher return

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Re: On average, skipping college and investing tuition costs nets a higher return

#341

Post by ada1981 »

umeshunni wrote: post #173
ada1981 wrote: post #161

Consider an undergraduate program where ~150 people each contributed say $50,000 each to collectively buy a large parcel of land and create their own eco-regenerative village. That would be $7.5 MM dollars. Over the course of a few years they would build micro-homes, permaculture farms, invent, build, hack, create art, take free online courses, host traveling scholars, incubate start-up ideas, etc. They'd be a self-s…

So, how do these people learn the skills to build houses, physics and math skills that are required to 'invent', basic electrical and computer science skills to know how to program and so on?

We have a group of mentors that will work with the initial group and then the graduates will help the others.

Self-directed learning is nothing new, sudsval.org has been doing it for decades with k-12 students and many people are self-taught to expert level at any number of things.

The community will determine what they need to learn and will be empowered with support in those efforts.

There will also be a collective wiki knowledge base that students can add too, including their own courses and projects so others can benefit from them.

Everything is open source and available to anyone who'd like to contribute or learn.

Re: On average, skipping college and investing tuition costs nets a higher return

#342

Post by jrs95 »

somethingwitty1 wrote: post #144
jrs95 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But is the benefit society gets from a college educated populace really worth the cost? I feel like there are a decent number of degree programs which we would never get a return on our investment for subsidizing, so making it free for studying any topic seems foolish. Plus, job specific training could be just as good or better than a 4 year degree in many cases, and that would take far less time and be much cheaper.

It depends on what we feel is beneficial to society. Is financial return the only thing we should care about? I'm not a philosopher/artist, etc, but I feel they are important to society, regardless of whether they generate financial gain. We should be providing as many opportunities as possible, not putting financial barriers on education. These are the similar arguments that went on in the late 1800's and well into…

In this case, I do think it's what we ought to care about. We have serious problems related to job skills and underemployment that need to be addressed far more than philosophy/art/etc needs to be subsidized. I'm especially opposed to just flooding our existing institutions with money, since they seem poorly equipped to deliver what's needed economically for either their students or for society in general. We could do a much better job of improving education by reforming K-12 than we could by just pumping money into our higher education system imo

Re: On average, skipping college and investing tuition costs nets a higher return

#343

Post by dingo_bat »

The problem is I don't have that money to invest. I'm going to take a loan, which is only available for college. So the choice becomes "don't go to college and earn zero" or "go to college with bank's $ and earn a nice salary later".

Re: On average, skipping college and investing tuition costs nets a higher return

#344

Post by gozur88 »

For a few years now I've been thinking as a high school graduate you'd learn far more by taking your college money and starting a business or two. Assuming, of course, you didn't want to do something highly technical like medicine, law, or, you know, advanced materials construction.

Re: On average, skipping college and investing tuition costs nets a higher return

#345

Post by xbeta »

krakensden wrote: post #46

As a culture, we really need to stop telling 17 year olds to not worry about money, go to college, and figure something out. There is always someone ready with a romantic appeal to a classical education, and it is so frustrating for me. Wasting four years is a huge cost. Years, decades of debt is a huge cost. Going to college with no plan about money? The costs are assured. Plus, the degrees people are actually getti…

Have you thought about the college tuitions is expensive in US because every institution tries to run it like a business. Some countries in Europe offers free university-level education, some even free to foreigners. They also don't have bad quality.

Maybe the problem is the US ?

Re: On average, skipping college and investing tuition costs nets a higher return

#346

Post by city41 »

forkandwait wrote: post #168
krakensden wrote: post #46

As a culture, we really need to stop telling 17 year olds to not worry about money, go to college, and figure something out. There is always someone ready with a romantic appeal to a classical education, and it is so frustrating for me. Wasting four years is a huge cost. Years, decades of debt is a huge cost. Going to college with no plan about money? The costs are assured. Plus, the degrees people are actually getti…

> Wasting four years is a huge cost. At college I: learned calculus, computer programming, advanced mathematics, urban planning, how to communicate like a grown up, and those are just the big topics. I also took acting classes and learned social skills and made lifelong friends. When I graduated, a professor arranged my first professional job which was an order of magnitude better than any blue collar gig I had ever…

Is your degree at 30 your only degree, or did you also go straight out of high school? I think OP's main point is the "straight out of high school" part. Or maybe my bias makes me think that. A lot of kids have no idea who they are and what they really want to do.

I was one of them. I got a degree in graphic design. I'm a horrifically bad designer and absolutely hate doing it, but that's just where my wandering, unknowing self ended up. I went back to school as an adult to get a CS degree.

My brother didn't go to college out of high school, instead started working at restaurants. After doing that for several years, he realized he loves cooking and went to culinary school. He's had a great career ever since.

Of course two stories are very anecdotal. But if I could do it over again, I'd probably do something to similar to my brother.

Re: On average, skipping college and investing tuition costs nets a higher return

#347

Post by gozur88 »

learc83 wrote: post #294
twotwotwo wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And college got expensive partly through policy choices. Offering easy loans tends to make people price insensitive, so tuitions go up and a lot of that money goes to things like increasingly fancy buildings and making textbook publishers' shareholders rich. Meanwhile often less is going to state schools that, with low in-state tuitions, were historically a way up for a lot of people. (An older friend went to Berkele…

This article from 538 argues that almost 3/4 of the rise in tuition is accounted for by a drop in state support. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/fancy-dorms-arent-the-m...

That's only public universities, though. How does that explain the corresponding increases at private schools?

Re: On average, skipping college and investing tuition costs nets a higher return

#348

Post by averagewall »

kcdev wrote: post #289
icantdrive55 wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have an answer either. I do think they should make student loans bankrupt-able. It's time. Oh yea, and put a hiring freeze/salary cap on all administrative personnel for any school that accepts federal loans. The best teachers I had were at community colleges, and usually had summer jobs. I never figured out what most of the administration did besides irritate the better teachers.

Bankrupt-able student loans will not help the problem. The universities who are taking advantage of the easily available money from the government will still get paid. During bankruptcy, the loan write down hurts the lender. In this case it's us taxpayers. The real answer is to cut what's funded by the government, make the rest of the financing come from the universities themselves, AND make it bankrupt-able. Then as…

Why have special rules for student loans at all? If a degree is not very important anymore then it should be just free choice. Banks will step in to provide private loans on whatever terms they feel like. They'll be bankruptable. The banks can make their own judgements about the borrower's ability to repay it - eg. higher interest rates for useless degrees or low grades.

I thought the whole business of government helping with student loans is to enable poor people to get a degree when that was vital to getting rich. But that's not really needed anymore. You can often make more money with a trade certificate than a degree.

Re: On average, skipping college and investing tuition costs nets a higher return

#349

Post by HarryHirsch »

bdcravens wrote: post #241
forkandwait wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of the 100 or so people I know my experience is very typical.

> a professor arranged my first professional job Not typical.

What do you think the "alumni lists" on researchers' webpages are good for? On the other hand, if a researcher has no alumni list on their page and isn't just starting out, that's an obvious sign for all that can read.

Re: On average, skipping college and investing tuition costs nets a higher return

#350

Post by dragonwriter »

debaserab2 wrote: post #337
forkandwait wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wasting four years is a huge cost. At college I: learned calculus, computer programming, advanced mathematics, urban planning, how to communicate like a grown up, and those are just the big topics. I also took acting classes and learned social skills and made lifelong friends. When I graduated, a professor arranged my first professional job which was an order of magnitude better than any blue collar gig I had ever…

> Now, I think there is a problem when naive, often blue collar people, go to college and don't know how to make the most of that experience Huh? Isn't anyone going to college almost always a "blue collar" worker due to the fact that they don't have an education suitable to a white collar environment yet? It sounds like you were in a great position to make an informed decision about how to get the most out of your ed…

> Huh? Isn't anyone going to college almost always a "blue collar" worker due to the fact that they don't have an education suitable to a white collar environment yet?

No, most people who go to college are not workers, blue collar or otherwise.

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