The student loan crisis is really an underemployment catastrophe • Hacker News Board

Re: The student loan crisis is really an underemployment catastrophe

#351

Post by tracker1 » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 4:43 PM UTC

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #228

jseliger wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Using a graph that shows soaring productivity to argue that soaring productivity isn't happening seems a little counterintuitive to me. But I'm not a prize-winning economist, so perhaps I'm missing something. The US economy can't be fixed by educating more plumbers. The core problem is that the US has turned itself into a peacetime rationing economy. Essential services - healthcare, education, housing, financial supp…

> healthcare, education, housing, financial support - > are strictly rationed for reasons that are strictly > unnecessary and economically destructive for the > majority of the population

Does that mean you want to force more people to become doctors and for healthcare institutions to overspend?

Housing is mostly limited by usable land and the rate at which construction can happen. For cities, building something often means tearing down something else. Near cities, for the most part are expanding as fast as housing can be built. What makes you think it's artificially limited?

Re: The student loan crisis is really an underemployment catastrophe

#352

Post by crooked-v » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 5:23 PM UTC

tracker1 wrote: post #345

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…

Largely came to say similar... As someone who didn't go the college route, it's hard for me to sympathize with someone who chose to go 6 figures into debt for a degree in a job that's specifically overloaded, and jobs that pay less than 1/4 if that debt. It's just not a wise decision. Not to mention the over-bloated costs to begin with. Most of the suggested solutions will not really do much to change things. Maybe r…

> It's just not a wise decision.

Children don't make wise decisions, especially not when they've been told for years that if they get a college degree everything else will just fall into place automatically.

Re: The student loan crisis is really an underemployment catastrophe

#353

Post by tracker1 » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 5:38 PM UTC

crooked-v wrote: post #352

tracker1 wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Largely came to say similar... As someone who didn't go the college route, it's hard for me to sympathize with someone who chose to go 6 figures into debt for a degree in a job that's specifically overloaded, and jobs that pay less than 1/4 if that debt. It's just not a wise decision. Not to mention the over-bloated costs to begin with. Most of the suggested solutions will not really do much to change things. Maybe r…

> It's just not a wise decision. Children don't make wise decisions, especially not when they've been told for years that if they get a college degree everything else will just fall into place automatically.

I don't think someone that is 17-18 should be referred to as a Child. I do think the Universities should do more to disclose the likelyhood of working in a given profession based on their degree path... however, realistically, the individual bears a lot of responsibility.

Aside: based on some actions/headlines that consistently pop up in news articles (most recently Oberlin)... maybe we should start treating them like children. Also, maybe it's time to stop telling kids the world should be whatever they deem to be as "fair."

Re: The student loan crisis is really an underemployment catastrophe

#354

Post by saltcured » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 6:03 PM UTC

chrisco255 wrote: post #88

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So marginal incremental improvement in drive-train technology and electronic doodads? That's how I read that list you gave me. Cars these days don't age any better than cars from 20yr ago or the more modern cars of the 90s. I guess anti-corrosion has improved but it hasn't improved by that much. You still have plenty of vehicles that repeatedly rust out in some spot because the salt gets flung there and the surface c…

Average age of cars on the road is 11 years vs 8 years in the 90s...which means cars are on average lasting 37.5% longer than 20 years ago. And that might be a lagging indicator.

Are you sure about how this metric is defined? The average age of cars in today's fleet is not the same thing as the expected lifespan of today's new car.

In a growing fleet, new purchases expand the fleet and necessarily lower the average age. On the other hand, if production falls below replacement rates, the average age of the fleet will increase. Couldn't such a change reflect changes in demographics (number of new drivers added to population) or habits (amount of car-based travel) as much as car durability?

Also, wouldn't such fleet metrics be influenced by the lumpy history of natural disasters like hurricanes flooding densely populated coastal regions?

Re: The student loan crisis is really an underemployment catastrophe

#355

Post by crooked-v » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 6:44 PM UTC

tracker1 wrote: post #353

crooked-v wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's just not a wise decision. Children don't make wise decisions, especially not when they've been told for years that if they get a college degree everything else will just fall into place automatically.

I don't think someone that is 17-18 should be referred to as a Child. I do think the Universities should do more to disclose the likelyhood of working in a given profession based on their degree path... however, realistically, the individual bears a lot of responsibility. Aside: based on some actions/headlines that consistently pop up in news articles (most recently Oberlin)... maybe we should start treating them lik…

Someone at 17-18 can be mature... but the US school system and the general culture around how teenagers are handled doesn't do much if anything to actually encourage that. It's entirely possible for people going into college today to have had zero opportunity to pick their own classes, manage their own bills, or have any real control of even the tiniest career up to that point, which is exactly the worst context to come from when making up-front choices involving tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Re: The student loan crisis is really an underemployment catastrophe

#356

Post by vlehto » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 8:05 PM UTC

fiftyfifty wrote: post #215

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…

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…

You get exactly the same benefit if government only backs 70% of each student loan. Then it's not profitable loan if the student cannot pay back.

But if you keep significant government backing, then the student loans would get lot lover interest rates. Which is probably good for absolutely everybody.

Re: The student loan crisis is really an underemployment catastrophe

#357

Post by CydeWeys » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 8:48 PM UTC

Mikeb85 wrote: post #256

CydeWeys wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> A lot of immigrants are job creators. And a lot aren't. There's a reason you throw away outliers in statistics.

If every job creator is an outlier, and you throw away all outliers, then there should be zero jobs in existence. Clearly your methodology is flawed.

Re: The student loan crisis is really an underemployment catastrophe

#358

Post by isoskeles » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 9:45 PM UTC

LoSboccacc wrote: post #348

isoskeles wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You must understand that we’re talking about trade school as an alternative to college, so if you point out some stunning detractor toward trade school, you’re implying the detractor does not exist for the alternative. Maybe I took that implication to an extreme end, but calling out trade schools for producing “corporate drones” absolutely bears the implication that you believe the alternatives are different / not as…

> you’re implying the detractor does not exist for the alternative. no? what kind of crazy dichotomic logic is that? you're way overthinking it. > Do you think 99% of people who go to college moreover college output has a lot more variation than trade school output, so assuming that the proportions of outcome are the same is as well something that was never claimed. > You must understand you just dropping things I ne…

Haha, whatever you say.

Re: The student loan crisis is really an underemployment catastrophe

#359

Post by exabrial » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 9:50 PM UTC

It's a crisis of handing too much money to people that have no chance of repaying it. We have people that took at $100k in loans for a music education degree. A very noble cause, but you're unlikely to pay that back within 15 years given the salary prospects.

The root of the problem like many other macro problems [housing crisis, income disparity, etc] is well-intentioned but misplaced government subsidies.

Re: The student loan crisis is really an underemployment catastrophe

#360

Post by AmericanChopper » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 11:22 PM UTC

qntty wrote: post #324

AmericanChopper wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 lab…

> It’s self-evident that if those college graduates who are underemployed had chosen different courses, then the problem would look quite different. Not only is this not self-evident, it defies common sense and economics. If more people take professional degrees then the supply of those degrees increases and salaries decrease (and we're back where we started). That is, if there are enough professional jobs to go arou…

Your anecdata doesn’t add much to the conversation, and you seem to be relying on a particularly extreme interpretation of what I said. It’s a fact that there are many skilled professions where we have labor shortages. If more people (I never said all people) had chosen to study in those fields, then they likely would not be facing underemployment. Unless you want to disputed the existence of skilled labor shortages, then this is a perfectly self evident conclusion. If you’d like to claim that there simply aren’t enough skilled employment opportunities in the entire economy to provide all of the skilled professionals with employment (which it seems you’re hinting at), then I’d suggest you produce some evidence to support that position.