A College Degree Is No Guarantee of a Good Life • Hacker News Board

Re: A College Degree Is No Guarantee of a Good Life

#241

Post by dhairya » Fri, Jul 31, 2020, 4:59 PM UTC

hectorr1 wrote: post #4

Most successful people have X. Government: “Let’s give everyone X!” Over time the value of X is diluted, loses its status signaling, and overall quality degrades. Successful people move to Y.

The value of college is not being diluted. It's the signal to employers that college degrees is useful filter that is being diluted.

Hiring in general is done poorly and I understand why. It's hard to differentiate between so many candidates especially for entry level positions where a lack of job history makes it difficult to evaluate talent. So it makes sense that employers optimize for lazy signals like completion of a degree.

In general universal education is far better for a country.

Re: A College Degree Is No Guarantee of a Good Life

#242

Post by C1sc0cat » Fri, Jul 31, 2020, 4:59 PM UTC

quietbritishjim wrote: post #93

nix23 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More like having the best connection's from the university/family/friends ;)

I never said the degree was a benefit itself! Just that it might satisfy "Most successful people have X" (Although, here in the UK at least, the quality of degrees genuinely does vary by university in a way that roughly corresponds to their rankings. I know that's an unfashionable observable but I have seen enough degree programs at different universities to know it's likely true unless I happen to have seen an atoni…

It does vary when I worked at BT, one of our students doing a year out had lectures from one of the people who built the Manchester Baby.

On our team we had a guy from ENA and he was the son of a French diplomat and a British mother - we quickly learnt he did not need any hand holding.

Re: A College Degree Is No Guarantee of a Good Life

#243

Post by bhupy » Fri, Jul 31, 2020, 4:59 PM UTC

csharptwdec19 wrote: post #237

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Far from fixing inequality Was this the purpose? I thought it was to raise living standards by improving productivity. By and large, broader education has been successful at that. (It went off the deep end, in recent years, with the proliferation of bullshit degrees.)

I think you covered part of the problem in the second half of your statement. In the US, part of the problem is that by making education debts non-dischargable in bankruptcy, and by the aforementioned proliferation of degrees that may qualify as 'nice to have' rather than 'increase earning potential'. The end result is a lot of people who got a college degree that doesn't really pay for itself, and instead leads to 2…

Making education debts dischargeable in bankruptcy sounds good in theory, but against what collateral do you take out a college loan? Most bankruptcy includes collateral liquidation. What's to stop someone from obtaining a useless degree that doesn't contribute to the nation's economy, and then discharges the debt in bankruptcy?

I think a big part of the problem is that debt is so readily issued for degrees that overwhelmingly leave the recipient incapable of providing for society in gainful ways.

Re: A College Degree Is No Guarantee of a Good Life

#244

Post by analog31 » Fri, Jul 31, 2020, 5:00 PM UTC

hectorr1 wrote: post #4

Most successful people have X. Government: “Let’s give everyone X!” Over time the value of X is diluted, loses its status signaling, and overall quality degrades. Successful people move to Y.

Let's turn this around. Suppose we cut back on education, to inflate its value while ensuring that the population as a whole is less educated. This should make us more prosperous. An example is our widespread prosperity thanks to the high value of medical doctors.

It doesn't make sense.

Re: A College Degree Is No Guarantee of a Good Life

#245

Post by annoyingnoob » Fri, Jul 31, 2020, 5:03 PM UTC

If you turn that statement around the same is true. You can have a 'Good Life' without a college degree too. From my perspective, its more about what you can produce on an on-going basis than any certificates that you hang on the wall.

Re: A College Degree Is No Guarantee of a Good Life

#246

Post by throwawaygh » Fri, Jul 31, 2020, 5:05 PM UTC

hackinthebochs wrote: post #186

throwawaygh wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Good jobs are zero-sum. Without universal high school, the USA would still be a largely illiterate subsistence farming nation with high rates of poverty as defined at the global scale. Even well-paying jobs in the trades require literacy and basic mathematics skills. So, no, good jobs aren't zero-sum.

At one point a factory job would have been considered a good job. In modern times, they're on the low end. What counts as a "good job" is relative to the current standards of living and so you can't naively compare across timescales.

Yes, agreed. And our high schools evolved to prepare students for those good factory jobs. Now that those factory jobs aren't good, maybe our high schools should also evolve.

But the point is that we can't do away with K-12 schooling. Subsistence farming was, is, and will be a bad job.

Re: A College Degree Is No Guarantee of a Good Life

#247

Post by dgb23 » Fri, Jul 31, 2020, 5:06 PM UTC

tryptophan wrote: post #124

spamizbad wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People always trot out this canard but you should look at how few actual degrees get awarded. cultural gender studies only produces about 15,000 degrees[1] compared to nearly 42,000 for Computer Science [2]. [1] https://datausa.io/profile/cip/cultural-gender-studies [2] https://datausa.io/profile/cip/computer-science The problem here really isn't unmarketable degrees. It's low wage jobs that require college-educated…

So a random useless degree only has computer science 3x as popular? Seems like a significant enough number to me...

I have no idea what they study in this degree. But I assume it is based in part on philosophy/ethics, history and social sciences.

To me gender studies in particular seems to be an overly specific field to warrant such a high number (comparatively). I'm also very suspicious of its implementation (and I say that reluctantly as a feminist).

That said, I think there is huge value in philosophy/ethics but also in history and social sciences.

We need more smart, scientifically minded people studying these things globally and generating results, because we suffer from a severe lack of meaning and rational discourse.

To me it seems like half-baked ideology, fundamentalism, religion, cynical propaganda and tribalism are suppressing the advancement and refinement of our value systems and the resulting long-term goals of our societies.

While today's youth and intellectuals are squabbling over superficial things like gender pronouns, the powerful greedily disregard their responsibilities (at best) in the name of self interest. They're not only ignoring the consequences but actively try to discredit everything that gets in their way, even scientific fact, without repercussion!

People are still getting, murdered, mutilated and enslaved/oppressed and nature is starting to beat down hard on everyone, while the media and politics only further the divide and stir unrest by fighting over attention.

What value systems do we have today? Many base theirs still on provably toxic, incoherent and cynical ideologies like Marxism, Neo-Liberalism, Nationalism, Imperialism, Social Relativism, religion and so on. And in the middle we have a huge gaping "meh": An unreflective hodgepodge of tribalistic, after-the-fact values resulting in a pessimistic, regressive mindset: full of conservative nay-saying and hostile cancel-culture.

None of this is good enough and I feel like we are not advancing, but regressing. And none of this is solved by having more CS graduates who end up tuning the knobs on some ERP-system, analyzing customer data or building marketing websites.

Re: A College Degree Is No Guarantee of a Good Life

#248

Post by biophysboy » Fri, Jul 31, 2020, 5:08 PM UTC

throwawaygh wrote: post #73

game_the0ry wrote: post #69

No one really goes to college and grad school to learn. Higher ed is commoditized as a: * insurance policy, where students use it to avoid limiting themselves to low-status and low-paying careers * lottery ticket, the gateway to a "prestige" career track [1] * status signaling mechanism, where young people flex their educational elitism [2] And higher ed is arguably bad at what its supposed be good at - a delivery me…

> If you have ever interviewed a fresh grad who didn't study "Cracking the Coding Interview" Goodhart's Law. > or did not have a few "side projects" under their belt IME: end-of-course projects at places like MIT and Carneige Mellon are often much more impressive than the CRUD web app or copy-pasta Jupyter notebooks I tend to see from e.g. coding bootcamps or especially self-taught applicants. And students usually ha…

> Sometimes a self-taught person comes along with a genuinely impressive project, and I push hard to hire those folks. But for the most part it's silly little single-person-project web apps and such.

In your view, what distinguishes the former from the latter? CS is not my primarily skillset, but I do know "how to program". And, because I'm a grad student, I want to do something with a very high impressive:time ratio, if that makes sense.

Re: A College Degree Is No Guarantee of a Good Life

#249

Post by JumpCrisscross » Fri, Jul 31, 2020, 5:11 PM UTC

bhupy wrote: post #243

csharptwdec19 wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you covered part of the problem in the second half of your statement. In the US, part of the problem is that by making education debts non-dischargable in bankruptcy, and by the aforementioned proliferation of degrees that may qualify as 'nice to have' rather than 'increase earning potential'. The end result is a lot of people who got a college degree that doesn't really pay for itself, and instead leads to 2…

Making education debts dischargeable in bankruptcy sounds good in theory, but against what collateral do you take out a college loan? Most bankruptcy includes collateral liquidation. What's to stop someone from obtaining a useless degree that doesn't contribute to the nation's economy, and then discharges the debt in bankruptcy? I think a big part of the problem is that debt is so readily issued for degrees that over…

> What's to stop someone from obtaining a useless degree that doesn't contribute to the nation's economy, and then discharges the debt in bankruptcy?

I assume lenders would take the degree being pursued, institution at which it’s being pursued and applicant’s academic history (and this likelihood of completing it) into account.

Currently, there is zero incentive to do that work.

Re: A College Degree Is No Guarantee of a Good Life

#250

Post by throwawaygh » Fri, Jul 31, 2020, 5:11 PM UTC

HPsquared wrote: post #193

throwawaygh wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Good jobs are zero-sum. Without universal high school, the USA would still be a largely illiterate subsistence farming nation with high rates of poverty as defined at the global scale. Even well-paying jobs in the trades require literacy and basic mathematics skills. So, no, good jobs aren't zero-sum.

Middle school alone would be sufficient for most jobs. Also don't forget most learning happens outside school.

I've tutored a lot of tech school kids.

College Algebra is required to enter a lot of trades. And not just because it's a requirement for the AS, but also because you actually do need to be able to understand the material in order to work in many trades. The students I tutor often fail college algebra, move on to their subject courses thinking they can tick off that useless stuff later, then realize they need a college algebra tutor after failing those courses because it turns out they need to understand how to interpret a table or graph of a function in order to do the job.

College Algebra is really hard for a lot of people. I can say with almost certain confidence that, even with extensive tutoring, they would never make it through that course without years of practice reasoning about mathematical objects in Algebra I and Algebra II and Geometry.

I think people who are naturally talented in STEM massively underestimate the amount of practice some people need to pick up the quantitative skills needed to enter many trades.