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False Advertising for College Is Pretty Much the Norm

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Re: False Advertising for College Is Pretty Much the Norm

#61

Post by mehrdadn »

ve55 wrote: post #6
RobertRoberts wrote: post #4

I taught college for about a dozen years (part time on the side), and may get dragged back into again soon. I can say emphatically, the quality of the schooling only helps people who would succeed anyways. Those that won't or can't, no school can help them. There are just too many lazy, unmotivated or simple defeatist students out there. To not be too harsh, there are many students over their head in life (debts, rel…

It was noticed that those who were in more higher education went on to achieve more success later in life (where success is often more income, but obviously many other things too). Over time some inferred causality from this: clearly the reason why some were successful was because they had a degree or even a masters or PhD. Thus in order to encourage success, it was decided that higher education should be strongly re…

> But what was not considered was that the causality here could be incorrect

How do you know this possibility has been left unconsidered?

Re: False Advertising for College Is Pretty Much the Norm

#62

Post by ppseafield »

stealthmodeclan wrote: post #49
ppseafield wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Today, the ones who get most benefit from the social system act indifferent to the soceity need and refuse to contribute. Look at the Panama Papers and all of the off shore banks, the Double Irish with a Dutch Sandwich, etc. As a percentage of income per individual, these are the the folks that benefit the most and contribute the least to society by several orders of magnitude. Subsidies, bailouts, elaborate tax ev…

> these are the the folks that benefit the most and contribute the least to society by several orders of magnitude Let's not assume there are only 2 groups, one rich/evil and other poor/victims. There are also rich who contribute positively to the soceity at large. I've no problem with with poor people who contribute their share. There are also poor people who negatively contribute to the soceity. Money is not the on…

I absolutely did not classify all rich people. I specifically called out the extra wealthy that go out of their way to avoid taxes via loopholes or accounting tricks. Do you think Apple's billions of dollars in avoided tax is the same as someone shitting on the BART escalator? Do you think it's the same as McDonald's Corp not paying a living wage and as a result its employees being poor enough to need food stamps? (Which means tax payers are effectively subsiding McDonald's.)

Re: False Advertising for College Is Pretty Much the Norm

#63

Post by em500 »

ve55 wrote: post #6
RobertRoberts wrote: post #4

I taught college for about a dozen years (part time on the side), and may get dragged back into again soon. I can say emphatically, the quality of the schooling only helps people who would succeed anyways. Those that won't or can't, no school can help them. There are just too many lazy, unmotivated or simple defeatist students out there. To not be too harsh, there are many students over their head in life (debts, rel…

It was noticed that those who were in more higher education went on to achieve more success later in life (where success is often more income, but obviously many other things too). Over time some inferred causality from this: clearly the reason why some were successful was because they had a degree or even a masters or PhD. Thus in order to encourage success, it was decided that higher education should be strongly re…

The causality / endogeneity problems with estimating returns to schooling (due to unobserved individual "ability" variables) have been known to economists if not politicians) since since at least the 1960s, probably even earlier, see e.g. the intro of http://davidcard.berkeley.edu/papers/causal_educ_earnings.pd...

Measuring the true returns of education is impossible, both on the individual level (we can't replay history with alternative choices) and the population level (clean randomisation on education is socially unacceptable), so all we have are approximations and methodological hacks (technical summary in linked summary paper). But such approximations typically found that "ability bias" was not all that large.

Re: False Advertising for College Is Pretty Much the Norm

#64

Post by em500 »

mehrdadn wrote: post #61
ve55 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was noticed that those who were in more higher education went on to achieve more success later in life (where success is often more income, but obviously many other things too). Over time some inferred causality from this: clearly the reason why some were successful was because they had a degree or even a masters or PhD. Thus in order to encourage success, it was decided that higher education should be strongly re…

> But what was not considered was that the causality here could be incorrect How do you know this possibility has been left unconsidered?

It was certainly not unconsidered by labor economists who have worked on such problems for the past half century (http://davidcard.berkeley.edu/papers/causal_educ_earnings.pd...)

Re: False Advertising for College Is Pretty Much the Norm

#65

Post by cptskippy »

It's odd that no one has addressed the issues of the rising cost of higher education. Once upon a time you could work a full-time job during the summer and part-time during the school year to pay for your education and graduate debt free. This wasn't that long ago either, I paid for my college education in the late 90s in cash I earned.

Re: False Advertising for College Is Pretty Much the Norm

#66

Post by cm2012 »

jedberg wrote: post #42
topkai22 wrote: post #36

The real problem with higher education is really how we finance it. Give the lenders the ability to discriminate based on major and borrowers the ability to default easier and all of a sudden you’ve got some banks seriously motivated to ensure students get economic return on their investments. Besides, it just shouldn’t take a decade or more for someone to discharge a bad debt. Student debt seems uniquely oppressive…

That's how you get nothing but science and engineering majors, because most other majors don't have the ROI on average. But society is probably better off with some history and art majors too. We need to find a way to finance education that isn't based on future income.

Studying things that don't make money has always been the privilege of the wealthy. Just because college was once only for the elite doesn't mean those same tedious sayings apply to our current world.

Re: False Advertising for College Is Pretty Much the Norm

#67

Post by projektir »

sadamznintern wrote: post #58
toomanybeersies wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The viewpoint that college is a place for vocational education seems to be a very common viewpoint here on HN, a similar viewpoint seems to be that it's normal and easy to pack your life up and relocate so XYZ city because cost of living is low and wages are high, or some other reason. I guess being a tech-centred community this is to be expected. I don't know about others, but for me university was an important expe…

The idea that college is a place to find yourself is mostly a statement of immense privilege. I grew up upper middle class (professional parents with masters) and I didn’t spend a moment in college finding myself, I spent most of it working or networking or sleeping. My folks paid for my CS degree from a state school, but even looking at the opportunity cost I’m not sure if anybody but the already wealthy or those at…

Something is wrong with your analysis. Lots of below upper middle class folks report "finding themselves" in college, and most people don't earn $180k out of college regardless.

> I make less than most of my friends and they, by virtue of independent wealth or higher income or elite status, are significantly happier than me.

I'm not really in the "money is irrelevant" bucket but this doesn't look like a monetary problem you're facing here.

Seems like you overtuned things and hit a lot of diminishing returns, where you worked hard but didn't see much for it, but now you assume people who work less hard have seen even less, but that's not actually always the case because well we are told the world is unfair quite often, yet in cases like work we for some reason decide not to believe it.

Re: False Advertising for College Is Pretty Much the Norm

#68

Post by justsomedude43 »

"The administration of President Donald Trump just made it easier for for-profit colleges to get away with making fake promises about things like graduation rates and job placements."

This is where I stopped reading. Pretty much the first sentence. False advertising has been a problem for at least two decades now, mostly in Law and nothing has been done about it. People started talking about it only recently after the rich kids got affected by the false advertising; their parents spend $200k-$300k on a Law degree with a Bar test only to find out that their kids can't get a job that pays more than $50k because there's been an abundance of lawyers for about twenty years now.

Same goes for IT and all sorts of BS degrees ala marketing, communications, david beckham studies etc... besides you don't need somebody to tell you:

"Hey, save your money you don't yet have, that degree is useless! You can do that without having one."

You only need half a brain cell to figure this for yourself. It's not brain surgery and if you do need someone to tell you that, then you really do need a hard lesson.

Re: False Advertising for College Is Pretty Much the Norm

#69

Post by pmiller2 »

cptskippy wrote: post #65

It's odd that no one has addressed the issues of the rising cost of higher education. Once upon a time you could work a full-time job during the summer and part-time during the school year to pay for your education and graduate debt free. This wasn't that long ago either, I paid for my college education in the late 90s in cash I earned.

If you paid for school yourself with money earned through employment in the late 90s, my guess is you either majored in STEM, had a lot of AP or other credits going in, or did your first 2 years at a community college (or, possibly more than one of these). I’d also wager you went to an in-state public school. Am I right? If so, that probably makes you the exception rather than the rule.

Re: False Advertising for College Is Pretty Much the Norm

#70

Post by dagw »

sadamznintern wrote: post #58
toomanybeersies wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The viewpoint that college is a place for vocational education seems to be a very common viewpoint here on HN, a similar viewpoint seems to be that it's normal and easy to pack your life up and relocate so XYZ city because cost of living is low and wages are high, or some other reason. I guess being a tech-centred community this is to be expected. I don't know about others, but for me university was an important expe…

The idea that college is a place to find yourself is mostly a statement of immense privilege. I grew up upper middle class (professional parents with masters) and I didn’t spend a moment in college finding myself, I spent most of it working or networking or sleeping. My folks paid for my CS degree from a state school, but even looking at the opportunity cost I’m not sure if anybody but the already wealthy or those at…

I make more than most of my friends and while it certainly makes my life a lot easier than theirs, it doesn't make me happier than them.
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