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The student loan crisis is really an underemployment catastrophe

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Re: The student loan crisis is really an underemployment catastrophe

#241

Post by CydeWeys »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #145
CydeWeys wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of H1B holders create jobs as well. The economy isn't a pie of fixed size with everyone fighting over a limited number of slices. Overall, immigration has been a net boon to the US's economy, including the creation of many jobs.

Net boon to the economy in terms of GDP, but it does have some negative effects on wages and employment.

Not necessarily. A lot of immigrants are job creators. Think of how many startup founders are foreign, and have created a lot of money and jobs for a lot of people. Hell, look at how well represented foreigners are in the upper echelons of the FAANGs. Even Sergey Brin was born in Moscow.

Re: The student loan crisis is really an underemployment catastrophe

#242

Post by rpz »

derefr wrote: post #208
asabjorn wrote: post #202

This is a bit like saying "People buying luxury cars is just a problem with people not having high-paying jobs". It seems more fruitful to focus on what product is being sold through state-subsidized loans and if they provide the necessary value. Bloated administrations is largely to blame for the increased cost, and a middle class student getting a student loan they can't default on for a degree without earning pote…

In this case, though, the "product that [was] being sold" that made these students originally go to school, is employment—or rather, a proxy signal for employability that the consumers of the product hope will get them employment. People consume education when they can't find a job, in the hopes that they'll become more employable, even though this makes the problem of their unemployment more dire rather than less (b…

> people consume education when they can't find a job

I think many of our youth are "consuming" higher education because that's what they're expected to do.

> it's sort of like taking stimulants when you're hungry

I'd say it's more like teaching someone how to swim by tossing them off a boat, but with life preservers so they kinda squirm around and do alright but they ain't really swimmin

Re: The student loan crisis is really an underemployment catastrophe

#243

Post by mattkrause »

barry-cotter wrote: post #232
jessriedel wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree with most of this, but there are good reasons to think education costs are not driver by bloated administration. https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/05/bl...

> More importantly, the data reject the bloat theory. Figure 8 shows spending shares in higher education. Contrary to the bloat theory, the administrative share of spending has not increased much in over thirty years. The research share, where you might expect to find higher lab costs, has fluctuated a little but also hasn’t risen much. The plant share which is where you might expect to find lazy rivers has even gone…

Ummm...you can't compare higher education spending with elementary/secondary school staffing, as those two graphs in the link do.

Re: The student loan crisis is really an underemployment catastrophe

#244

Post by MisterBastahrd »

aerophilic wrote: post #221
OJFord wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it common for houses not to last centuries? I know lots of people living in very old houses. Perhaps mortgages should have longer terms too?

Short answer: yes it is common for a building not to last long periods of time (unless properly maintained). I recall a civil engineer telling me once that most “tract” homes only are designed for a 35 year useful life. While I can’t find a reference for that, I did find this Quora article from a structural engineer: Answer to What is the design life span of a building? by Vishnu Vijayakumar https://www.quora.com/Wha…

That's why foundation repair companies are so popular.

Re: The student loan crisis is really an underemployment catastrophe

#245

Post by andrei_says_ »

Brain_Thief wrote: post #142
luisaguimaraes wrote: post #83

It's such a shame that the state can't support the education system financially, so that 20-year old people wouldn't have to take loans to study. It works in other countries, so why not in the US?

The simple and honest answer to your question is greed. The fact is that the USA has more than enough money to support a healthy and well-educated population through government-funded healthcare and education (including what you asked about - higher education), but the capture of significant portions of our government by corporate interests has successfully stopped that kind of progress from occurring so that an ever…

Thank you for summing this in one paragraph.

Re: The student loan crisis is really an underemployment catastrophe

#247

Post by darepublic »

ineedasername wrote: post #64

I'm not sure the author's suggestion that potential students be diverted to trades/coding bootcampts etc., will solve too much, and instead may simply shift the problem into those trade industries as well. Somewhere in the ballpark of 2,000,000 students earn a bachelors degree each year. Let's say 25% of students should be diverted into trade schools instead. That will mean an additional 500,000 student per year ente…

That's why you should learn things you enjoy and find intrinsically valuable because there is never a guarantee of employability

Re: The student loan crisis is really an underemployment catastrophe

#248

Post by AmericanChopper »

qntty wrote: post #70
AmericanChopper wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem statement in the article is ‘student loan crisis an underemployment catastrophe’. If you accept the idea that some degrees are more marketable than others, then ‘the question’ absolutely is ‘why are people completing unmarketable degrees?’. That’s not to say there aren’t also other problems. But the problem this article is discussing is that people are completing college degrees that do not improve their…

If you're talking about a single individual, doing a degree in something employable might be a good strategy for getting a job, but it doesn't follow that getting more people into professional degree programs will significantly change the underemployment situation. Our economy only needs so many teachers, engineers, doctors, etc. Underemployment of an entire generation isn't caused by the degrees they choose.

The article doesn’t put forward a case for underemployment of an entire generation. It puts forward a case for a certain level of increased underemployment for a generation of student loan holders.

It’s self-evident that if those college graduates who are underemployed had chosen different courses, then the problem would look quite different. The fact that developed nations have to import large amounts of skilled labour proves this (although you could make a solid argument that they import more than they strictly ‘have to’).

There’s likely a number of factors that contribute to this problem. Generally increasing enrolments seems like it would be having some level of impact. But this article does not even attempt to shed light onto what those factors might be, and how they might be weighted. I don’t know what I’m supposed to have learned from reading this that I couldn’t have picked up from just looking at the graphs it includes.

Re: The student loan crisis is really an underemployment catastrophe

#249

Post by graeme »

ineedasername wrote: post #64

I'm not sure the author's suggestion that potential students be diverted to trades/coding bootcampts etc., will solve too much, and instead may simply shift the problem into those trade industries as well. Somewhere in the ballpark of 2,000,000 students earn a bachelors degree each year. Let's say 25% of students should be diverted into trade schools instead. That will mean an additional 500,000 student per year ente…

This is potentially the lump of labour fallacy. There isn't a set amount of work to be done.

If we have a mass of students learning no useful skills and divert them into useful fields, then the overall productivity of the economy will go up.

Obviously if everyone floods into a single field there's some limit: you can't productively employ 10x the plumbers without a matching increase in buildings.

But in general, better skills should lead to a better economy.

Re: The student loan crisis is really an underemployment catastrophe

#250

Post by perl4ever »

jseliger wrote: post #138
ineedasername wrote: post #64

I'm not sure the author's suggestion that potential students be diverted to trades/coding bootcampts etc., will solve too much, and instead may simply shift the problem into those trade industries as well. Somewhere in the ballpark of 2,000,000 students earn a bachelors degree each year. Let's say 25% of students should be diverted into trade schools instead. That will mean an additional 500,000 student per year ente…

There are two books that cover this subject well: The Case Against Education : https://jakeseliger.com/2018/03/12/the-case-against-educatio... , which argues that most "education" is really signaling, not human capital acquisition, and Paying for the Party : https://jakeseliger.com/2014/04/27/paying-for-the-party-eliz... , which argues that many schools have evolved some substantive majors and some non-substantive ma…

"Then we'd see soaring productivity, which we don't see"

If you average everyone, sure. But that's kind of circular reasoning. If you look at the elite employees of, say, the FAANGs, the tail of the distribution, their productivity is soaring.

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