Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I killed my teenager’s fancy college dreams

slate.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 463 posts

Re: I killed my teenager’s fancy college dreams

#121

Post by pnathan »

gen220 wrote: post #69
hajile wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does art school make a person a better artist? I would argue not really -- especially in a day in age where so much advanced art instruction is available for free. When a company or person wants to commission you, do they look at your degree or your portfolio? The only real benefit of art college is more contacts to sell on your personality. $300,000 for that $75,000/yr college is a huge marketing budget for someone…

My girlfriend and I have had this discussion a lot, because she went to a top tier art school. I think you might be underrating three factors in your reasoning: One is the value of very direct feedback and guidance from seasoned, respected professionals. The class sizes in top art programs are very small, and most classes have a frequent, intense “critique” portion where the professor and students tear apart each oth…

I sometimes wonder about rpg's notion of a MFA in programming. I think it'd be very valuable - there's a lot of crossover between art and programming, I think.

Re: I killed my teenager’s fancy college dreams

#122

Post by starpilot »

vsskanth wrote: post #4

Serious question: how does a parent deal with their high school kids wanting to pursue college in a field with a low probability of high lifetime earnings (art, theatre etc.) ? Especially when they are middle class without generational wealth to insulate themselves

You crush their college dreams, which is what the whole article is about.

Re: I killed my teenager’s fancy college dreams

#123

Post by elil17 »

seattle_spring wrote: post #109
honkycat wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this trade school obsession is foolish. Everyone cargo-cults it as "pragmatic" without actually analyzing what the jobs entail and what you can actually expect to make. Statistically, you still earn way more with a degree than without. You EARN that pay in the trades, and being an electrician is dangerous. The work is hard on your body. A lot of electricians end up on disability. I wasn't very academic growin…

> Part of the reason you go to school as a young person is that you do not have a family to feed or a house to pay off. If you go to art school as a young person, you won't have the problem of paying off a house because you won't have a job that qualifies you for a mortgage.

A B.A., even in fine art, still opens up a ton of okay-paying jobs. Jobs like paralegals, retail managers, and HR often require a bachelors degree but don’t care what that degree was in.

Re: I killed my teenager’s fancy college dreams

#124

Post by hajile »

gen220 wrote: post #69
hajile wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does art school make a person a better artist? I would argue not really -- especially in a day in age where so much advanced art instruction is available for free. When a company or person wants to commission you, do they look at your degree or your portfolio? The only real benefit of art college is more contacts to sell on your personality. $300,000 for that $75,000/yr college is a huge marketing budget for someone…

My girlfriend and I have had this discussion a lot, because she went to a top tier art school. I think you might be underrating three factors in your reasoning: One is the value of very direct feedback and guidance from seasoned, respected professionals. The class sizes in top art programs are very small, and most classes have a frequent, intense “critique” portion where the professor and students tear apart each oth…

I think survivorship bias and the need to justify the education necessarily clouds judgement.

If there's one thing the internet has taught me, it's that finding legitimate critique about anything is easy and cheap -- just put it out there and ask. There are lots of online art communities that can do this job very well.

High-pressure environments may benefit some people, but people with that kind of drive are likely to push themselves anyway. Plus, an actual commissioned project is way more pressure than any professor could add (at least to me)

Since the principles of art and design don't really change, they can be provided cheaply and easily just as you can find free (and very good) resources on basically every fundamental of programming.

$300,000 paid over a staggering 20 years at 7% interest is $560,000 by the time you're done and you're on the hook for over $2300 every single month or around $28,000 in student loan payments every single year.

(note: these numbers are from salary.com which gives the highest income of all sites I looked at)

The average artist salary seems to be $45,000 to $55,000 per year. 90th percentile salary is only around $72,000. If you're an average artist, more than 50% of your GROSS salary goes toward your student loan and even if you are top-tier, you still wind up paying 39% of your gross toward your loans. Even as an art manager, at 88k at the 50th percentile and 125k at the 90th percentile (not something you're likely to be doing with zero experience), you're going to be in a very tough situation until your mid-40s and that's assuming you don't want to have a family.

In contrast, a low-level HVAC tech makes about as much out the gate without all the debt. A high-level tech makes 62k on average (76 at 90th percentile) while that manager position 72k on average (92k at 90th percentile). An apprenticeship is generally free, but even if you wanted to go to your local community college, you'd be 10-15k out the door at the upper-end. That would be less than $120/mo over 20 years and less than $300/mo over 5 years.

Even a 25th percentile artist will make as much without a degree at 47k per year will be making about as much as a 90th percentile 72k per year paying out 28k every year. Investing the extra 4k every year you save over paying for that degree with a mild 5% ROI gives almost 80k saved for retirement by your mid 40s when your student-loan person is just breaking even. If you've managed to learn the rest of those fundamentals sometime over that last 20 years, you're going to beat that college education by a much larger margin.

https://www.salary.com/research/salary/benchmark/artist-sala...

https://www.salary.com/research/salary/benchmark/art-manager...

https://www.salary.com/research/salary/alternate/hvac-instal...

https://www.salary.com/research/salary/benchmark/hvac-mechan...

https://www.salary.com/research/salary/benchmark/hvac-superv...

Re: I killed my teenager’s fancy college dreams

#125

Post by starpilot »

honkycat wrote: post #98
hajile wrote: post #71

And here we have once again why the government shouldn't be subsidizing student loans and shouldn't exclude them from bankruptcy. We need to quit incentivizing sub-prime loans. Unlike the housing crash where the houses retained most of their value and could be sold later, you can't sell your degree to pay back the money. If you're getting a necessary degree, it's very uncommon to default on your loan because you'll b…

I think this trade school obsession is foolish. Everyone cargo-cults it as "pragmatic" without actually analyzing what the jobs entail and what you can actually expect to make. Statistically, you still earn way more with a degree than without. You EARN that pay in the trades, and being an electrician is dangerous. The work is hard on your body. A lot of electricians end up on disability. I wasn't very academic growin…

Factoring in tuition costs, plumbers earn almost the same lifetime income as doctors: https://www.high-profile.com/plumber-vs-doctor-who-brings-in...

And it's generally not a life threatening career.

Re: I killed my teenager’s fancy college dreams

#126

Post by marcus_holmes »

honkycat wrote: post #98
hajile wrote: post #71

And here we have once again why the government shouldn't be subsidizing student loans and shouldn't exclude them from bankruptcy. We need to quit incentivizing sub-prime loans. Unlike the housing crash where the houses retained most of their value and could be sold later, you can't sell your degree to pay back the money. If you're getting a necessary degree, it's very uncommon to default on your loan because you'll b…

I think this trade school obsession is foolish. Everyone cargo-cults it as "pragmatic" without actually analyzing what the jobs entail and what you can actually expect to make. Statistically, you still earn way more with a degree than without. You EARN that pay in the trades, and being an electrician is dangerous. The work is hard on your body. A lot of electricians end up on disability. I wasn't very academic growin…

Is this correlation or causation though?

Are young people who get through a degree course then super focused on getting as much money as they can because they have all this debt?

As opposed to people who don't have mountains of student debt, and can then afford to take lower-paying, better-for-their-life jobs?

Huge debt is really stressful, and hard on mental health. I don't know the comparative suicide rates of electricians and art grads, but I'd suspect art school is effectively worse for your health than a trade.

People generally have two or even three careers now. Migrating from electrician to manager is about as easy as migrating from software developer to manager.

Re: I killed my teenager’s fancy college dreams

#127

Post by seanmcdirmid »

commandlinefan wrote: post #46
rayiner wrote: post #16

These parents are heroes. > A couple months ago, my 17-year-old daughter’s guidance counselor called her into his office to ask pretty much the only question that adults ask high school seniors: “What colleges are you applying to?” When Ella tossed off a handful of universities, he said, “Have you thought about going to art school?” This is goddamn malpractice. > Like most parents, who save on average $18,000 for the…

> $75,000 annual sticker price Dear lord, that's insane. UT Austin estimates $26,000/year (in state), including room and board.

And $26k is still insane, at least compared to when I went to school in the 90s. It’s tough these days.

Re: I killed my teenager’s fancy college dreams

#128

Post by JakeTheAndroid »

penagwin wrote: post #85
hajile wrote: post #71

And here we have once again why the government shouldn't be subsidizing student loans and shouldn't exclude them from bankruptcy. We need to quit incentivizing sub-prime loans. Unlike the housing crash where the houses retained most of their value and could be sold later, you can't sell your degree to pay back the money. If you're getting a necessary degree, it's very uncommon to default on your loan because you'll b…

I struggled with college and don't know if I'll be returning... I made it over a third of the way to a CS degree but had to take a break from school. I got a job while in college as a programmer - and work full time making around the 50k range. I feel that I self taught myself the necessary technical skills for my job, and that the biggest places for self improvement aren't acedimic but business/relationship related.…

I wouldn't worry too much about the degree in CS if you're already in the industry. Unless you want to do something very specific, your work experience will trump your academic experience in nearly every case. I don't have a degree and have been able to move companies a number of times, as have my other engineer friends without any sort of degree.

Unless you want to do some serious crypto research or something like that, more schooling probably isn't required. You'd be better served getting a CISSP or something.

I was going to school for physics and do plan to go back because I want to be in that field doing research eventually. If you want to do something similar, then school might be worthwhile.

Re: I killed my teenager’s fancy college dreams

#129

Post by elil17 »

vsskanth wrote: post #4

Serious question: how does a parent deal with their high school kids wanting to pursue college in a field with a low probability of high lifetime earnings (art, theatre etc.) ? Especially when they are middle class without generational wealth to insulate themselves

Show them the website of the American Visionary Art Museum. It’s a museum for art made by people who never went to art school. It’s filled with stories of people who had rich lives as artists alongside other careers.

You don’t need art school to be an artist. http://www.avam.org/

Re: I killed my teenager’s fancy college dreams

#130

Post by [deleted] »

hajile wrote: post #71

And here we have once again why the government shouldn't be subsidizing student loans and shouldn't exclude them from bankruptcy. We need to quit incentivizing sub-prime loans. Unlike the housing crash where the houses retained most of their value and could be sold later, you can't sell your degree to pay back the money. If you're getting a necessary degree, it's very uncommon to default on your loan because you'll b…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN