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A College Degree Is No Guarantee of a Good Life

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

#251

Post by pigscantfly »

AQuantized wrote: post #236
nikeshm wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you mind elaborating on your experiences in France and England? I'm curious about the situation there. I was under the impression that there are many effective non-college options in those countries (England's pretty robust apprenticeship system comes to mind), and that university is generally both hard to get into and relatively cheap to complete. I also haven't lived in either France or England, so I speak fr…

It's not hard to get into a university in the UK. It is quite hard to get into a 'top' university, and Oxbridge typically requires a fair bit of luck in addition to being very hard. There are pretty decent apprenticeships, but only so many people want to work trades regardless. It's not exactly a ticket to wealth or status like a degree might still be perceived.

From an American perspective, it seems extremely easy to get into a 'top' UK university. Oxford and Cambridge admit around 20% of applicants. Compared to Princeton (6%), Stanford (4%), MIT (7%), etc. it seems like a cakewalk. Is there something I'm missing?

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

#252

Post by bobthepanda »

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…

I mean, people got college educations before 1998, when student loans were made non-dischargeable except in cases of "undue hardship".

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

#253

Post by chrisseaton »

pigscantfly wrote: post #251
AQuantized wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not hard to get into a university in the UK. It is quite hard to get into a 'top' university, and Oxbridge typically requires a fair bit of luck in addition to being very hard. There are pretty decent apprenticeships, but only so many people want to work trades regardless. It's not exactly a ticket to wealth or status like a degree might still be perceived.

From an American perspective, it seems extremely easy to get into a 'top' UK university. Oxford and Cambridge admit around 20% of applicants. Compared to Princeton (6%), Stanford (4%), MIT (7%), etc. it seems like a cakewalk. Is there something I'm missing?

> Is there something I'm missing?

Yes you're missing something.

My friends in the US all apply to a very large number of elite universities. In the UK I don't believe you're even allowed to apply to more than one elite university in the same year, and only a very small number of universities overall. One person I know in the US applied to 23 universities.

And then on top of that, in the UK all admissions for elite universities and most below that require an in-person interview, which the US (bafflingly) doesn't do.

I think I applied to one elite and two just below elite.

All of this means total applications in the UK are far fewer than in the US but each is more focused and more realistic which makes successful admissions seem higher. But really people who wouldn't have gotten in didn't apply in the first place.

> it seems extremely easy to get into a 'top' UK university

Also, what's with these scare-quotes? Are you skeptical that they're really top universities? They consistently top international rankings, alongside your best.

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

#254

Post by bhupy »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #249
bhupy wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's a great point.

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

#255

Post by dhairya »

chaostheory wrote: post #219
dhairya wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very few people I know actually have careers directly related to their undergrad majors. I majored in Creative Writing and interdisciplinary (politics, philosophy, and economics) studies. Currently working as an applied AI researcher and about to go back to get my phd in AI as well. There are many paths to take. Often being different helps you stand out. Having a humanities and social science background is just as im…

> Very few people I know actually have careers directly related to their undergrad majors.I majored in Creative Writing and interdisciplinary (politics, philosophy, and economics) studies. I strongly feel that path is only an affordable luxury if you come from a upper middle class background and up. Most people can't afford to experiment with higher education given its high monetary cost. You guys might not agree, bu…

I'm conflicted in responding to this. What you described was not my experience. I come from an underprivileged background and was fortunate to escape my social location. Part of it was luck though which is not replicable.

But I agree that it is harder to take risks coming from a low-income background where the cost of bad choices is amplified. Risk taking is risky though. That's the tragedy, it's hard to escape your social location incrementally. But at the same time for each success story there are many that don't succeed whose stories we don't hear.

I usually tell students to double major (or minor) if they are privileged to go to college. We as a society have moved away from the idea of renaissance person who has experience in many disciplines towards hyper-specialization. It makes it hard to adapt when everything around you is bound to change.

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

#256

Post by C1sc0cat »

I had a mate who did this in the UK joined the army but he said he enjoyed his time in the "Mob" but eventually you have to get a job that pays a real wage.

It is one way of getting training - and if you say went into the right MOS cyber etc get to Master Sargent E8 you could then get a good job outside.

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

#257

Post by pigscantfly »

chrisseaton wrote: post #253
pigscantfly wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From an American perspective, it seems extremely easy to get into a 'top' UK university. Oxford and Cambridge admit around 20% of applicants. Compared to Princeton (6%), Stanford (4%), MIT (7%), etc. it seems like a cakewalk. Is there something I'm missing?

> Is there something I'm missing? Yes you're missing something. My friends in the US all apply to a very large number of elite universities. In the UK I don't believe you're even allowed to apply to more than one elite university in the same year, and only a very small number of universities overall. One person I know in the US applied to 23 universities. And then on top of that, in the UK all admissions for elite un…

I see; I didn't know that. I was using the quotes from the parent comment; I don't know enough about the UK system to know which are considered 'top' -- which I'm guessing is as subjective and rancorous a discussion as it is here -- to be confident in my own judgment beyond the parent-cited Oxbridge.

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

#258

Post by throwawaygh »

biophysboy wrote: post #248
throwawaygh wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> In your view, what distinguishes the former from the latter?

Hard to give a generic answer.

Basically, anything that makes me say "yeah there's no youtube tutorial for that, no public github repo you could copy ideas from, and you had to have solved a lot of difficult gritty problems in creative ways to get it to work".

For that reason, A lot of the most impressive projects I've seen demonstrates the potential of a new tech stack. Demonstrations of promise can be either really cool demos or else pieces of infrastructure that lower the barrier to entry/iteration time/etc.

Back when 3D printing and laser sintering where new technologies, here are examples of cool projects around that emerging stack:

* digging into the firmware and/or hacking around the firmware to fix some limitation of the machine. This is probably not relevant anymore, but was when 3D printers were still new and had annoying bugs.

* A domain-specific CAD-like tool that did a bunch of "physically possible" checks for certain types of objects by using numerical analysis to do a bunch of ad hoc checks. Fantastic project because you can look at it and say "if you took two years and did this in a more systematic way it'd be a great product"

* auto-generated statues/art

* etc.

NB: that would be a bit less impressive these days, because 3D printing is now mainstream and a lot of these projects can be done via copy-pasta development from github repos, or even by following a youtube tutorial.

What is your primary skillset, and what's an emerging capability in that space? How can you use software to either demonstrate the promise of that capability or else build useful infrastructure that could make that capability easier to access?

NB: this is mostly for undergrad and maybe non-thesis masters projects. If you're in a thesis masters program or phd program, focus on doing science. Pick a good advisor and listen.

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

#259

Post by pragmatic »

bradly wrote: post #106
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.

We give everyone in the U.S. high school education and we don't make the claims you make above. Why would higher education be different? The purpose of free higher ed for all is not to guarantee everyone a good life–it is to try and give everyone an equal chance at a good life. If higher ed is highly correlated to escaping poverty and upward economic mobility, then college costs raising at a rate 11 times faster than…

That is exactly what has happened to high school education.

Kids are passed along without meeting the standards of the grade or degree so that the institution does not look bad.

You may be too young to remember when this was the crises du jour and the No Child Left Behind program, etc.

Not everyone can get earn a PhD. Not everyone can pass the rigors of high school. Not everyone can run a 4 minute mile either.

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

#260

Post by C1sc0cat »

9HZZRfNlpR wrote: post #233
C1sc0cat wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure that is actually a good idea as kids with well of backgrounds tend to get the higher tracks. I remember a native German poster on hn commenting on the subject "funny how the its the brown skinned Germans, who end up in the lower tier schools"

You get there by merit not wallet, I thought usa has it the same to be honest. Sometimes I feel like Americans have very deranged view of Europe where half thinks it's some socialist equality utopia and the other half thinks a communist hellhole.

Really and having well of parents live in a wealthy make no difference, not being Neurodiverse also is a big help.

You know that meritocracy was seen as a bad thing when it was coined.

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