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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

#331

Post by CapricornNoble »

LoSboccacc wrote: post #310
fiftyfifty wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We just need to reduce or eliminate government backed student loans and the problem will take care of itself. This "crisis" is almost a replay of the housing crisis we just had, government backed loans encourage lenders to lend out money to people who are not qualified for the loan. It doesn't make sense to keep loaning out tens of thousands of dollars to 18 year old kids that have no income [yet] and no real plan to…

this but you also have to have affordable education because it's the most reliable, predictable and virtuous of all class mobility mechanisms, and trade school don't provide that for the most part because those are optimized to make corporate drones, not self thinking individuals

I'm pretty sure any competent welder and machinist running a small business custom-fabricating high performance automotive parts (or a similar field, like oil pipelines) would take umbrage with your description of their profession as "corporate drones who aren't self-thinking".

Re: The student loan crisis is really an underemployment catastrophe

#332

Post by CapricornNoble »

graeme wrote: post #249
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, bett…

"If we have a mass of students learning no useful skills and divert them into useful fields..."

What do we do if a significant portion of the students who already aren't learning useful skills lack the neural plasticity to become productive in other endeavors? Or in other words, how do we incorporate humans into the economy when those individuals are objectively inferior at EVERY task compared to an automated (robot, AI, etc...) alternative? Especially as we consider things like climate change and austerity, and how humans are supposedly the greatest threat to overall environmental longevity?

Re: The student loan crisis is really an underemployment catastrophe

#333

Post by challenger22 »

godelski wrote: post #267
barry-cotter wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Both of these are ludicrous. The salaries for my school are public, they are for all public schools (that I've looked at at least). I can tell you from the data from my school the administrative costs have gone up substantially. Both from number of administrators increasing significantly. The average administrative staff wage is over 250k (I know that's not a lot in tech salaries, but that is HUGE where I am. Cost of…

Congratulations, you have disproven statistical evidence by providing an anecdote.

Re: The student loan crisis is really an underemployment catastrophe

#334

Post by LoSboccacc »

CapricornNoble wrote: post #331
LoSboccacc wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this but you also have to have affordable education because it's the most reliable, predictable and virtuous of all class mobility mechanisms, and trade school don't provide that for the most part because those are optimized to make corporate drones, not self thinking individuals

I'm pretty sure any competent welder and machinist running a small business custom-fabricating high performance automotive parts (or a similar field, like oil pipelines) would take umbrage with your description of their profession as "corporate drones who aren't self-thinking".

exceptions exists everywhere, do I have to introduce a disclaimer for the 1% of everything or can we have a discussion of the general case without people having to nitpick every word?

heck, I even didn't use an absolute

> for the most part

Re: The student loan crisis is really an underemployment catastrophe

#335

Post by isoskeles »

chii wrote: post #237
fiftyfifty wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We just need to reduce or eliminate government backed student loans and the problem will take care of itself. This "crisis" is almost a replay of the housing crisis we just had, government backed loans encourage lenders to lend out money to people who are not qualified for the loan. It doesn't make sense to keep loaning out tens of thousands of dollars to 18 year old kids that have no income [yet] and no real plan to…

But without the student loans, the under privileged will not be able to afford said education - I don't want to see a society where only those who can afford it go to university.

If I am a bank, I’m absolutely giving a loan to an underprivileged kid with good grades who wants to go to college for a useful degree.

Re: The student loan crisis is really an underemployment catastrophe

#336

Post by isoskeles »

FussyZeus wrote: post #278
icelancer wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This simply isn't true. Schools offer crazy financial aid and there are junior colleges / state universities that offer 100% of aid to impoverished individuals. The people taking malinvestment (student loans for unproductive means / negative ROI) are firmly in the middle class bracket, both lower/upper sides of it.

And who decides what constitutes malinvestment? I'm guessing there will be plenty of funds made available for tech work, what with Twitter, Ubereats and Facebook being so critical. How about the arts? How about history and culture, you know the stuff that makes living worthwhile beyond your usefulness to line the pockets of capitalists? Or how about we just confront the problem dead on, remove the money and profit as…

> How about the arts? How about history and culture, you know the stuff that makes living worthwhile beyond your usefulness to line the pockets of capitalists?

Do you ever think about the possibility of people making art or studying history without going into tens of thousands of dollars of debt?

Re: The student loan crisis is really an underemployment catastrophe

#337

Post by isoskeles »

LoSboccacc wrote: post #334
CapricornNoble wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure any competent welder and machinist running a small business custom-fabricating high performance automotive parts (or a similar field, like oil pipelines) would take umbrage with your description of their profession as "corporate drones who aren't self-thinking".

exceptions exists everywhere, do I have to introduce a disclaimer for the 1% of everything or can we have a discussion of the general case without people having to nitpick every word? heck, I even didn't use an absolute > for the most part

Yes. Do you think 99% of people who go to college are self-thinking and not corporate drones? Why do so many of them move on to work at corporations?

Re: The student loan crisis is really an underemployment catastrophe

#338

Post by graeme »

CapricornNoble wrote: post #332
graeme wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, bett…

"If we have a mass of students learning no useful skills and divert them into useful fields..." What do we do if a significant portion of the students who already aren't learning useful skills lack the neural plasticity to become productive in other endeavors? Or in other words, how do we incorporate humans into the economy when those individuals are objectively inferior at EVERY task compared to an automated (robot,…

That's a good question in the medium term. But, the US education system presents a clear misallocation of skills that can be fixed.

It won't solve the underlying issue you address, but it will improve things, and waste less societal resources in the educational process too.

Re: The student loan crisis is really an underemployment catastrophe

#339

Post by rchaud »

godelski wrote: post #308
conanbatt wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The average administrative staff wage is over 250k ( This is a big salary even in SF. What average admin staff is that?

University. That is the average of our university's admin salary. I don't know the median, so that could be pushed by a few high earners. But given the president's salary it looks like there are quite a few high earners.

If the salaries are public, can you post the link?

Re: The student loan crisis is really an underemployment catastrophe

#340

Post by LoSboccacc »

isoskeles wrote: post #337
LoSboccacc wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

exceptions exists everywhere, do I have to introduce a disclaimer for the 1% of everything or can we have a discussion of the general case without people having to nitpick every word? heck, I even didn't use an absolute > for the most part

Yes. Do you think 99% of people who go to college are self-thinking and not corporate drones? Why do so many of them move on to work at corporations?

> trade school [] are optimized to make corporate drones

I mean, I'm not a native English speaker but it seems pretty clear to me I was NOT talking about college output, quite the opposite actually.

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