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A College Degree Is No Guarantee of a Good Life

theatlantic.com

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

#371

Post by diebeforei485 »

vaidhy wrote: post #339

I have been reading through the comments and I am very curious about a few things - 1. What "bullshit" degrees people are talking about? Are they the liberal arts studies? If so, as a society do we not see value in the fine arts? Expertise in music, language, anthropology, history, etc do not necessarily lead to a well-paying job.. but they give intellectually satisfaction in and of itself. 2. IMHO, the pay you are l…

The arts (orchestra/symphony, opera/musicals, etc) are a luxury good. There is a small, niche market for these things, mostly centered around certain cities - so we can only have so many artists.

The mass arts that the masses can afford to consume (TV, streaming music, and movies) are by definition based on popularity, so we can only have so many artists.

I don't know why we fund so many people's arts degrees. We need less funding for arts degrees, and more funding for the arts instead. Someone being able to live a basic (but self-sufficient) life has nothing to do with funding arts degrees.

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

#372

Post by linuxftw »

vaidhy wrote: post #339

I have been reading through the comments and I am very curious about a few things - 1. What "bullshit" degrees people are talking about? Are they the liberal arts studies? If so, as a society do we not see value in the fine arts? Expertise in music, language, anthropology, history, etc do not necessarily lead to a well-paying job.. but they give intellectually satisfaction in and of itself. 2. IMHO, the pay you are l…

> Most of the "golden age of civilizations" had this property

I don't know what civilizations you're talking about, but the vast, vast majority of humans in the past were busy working in the fields to avoid starvation. The classical fine artists were wealthy or had wealthy patrons.

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

#373

Post by simplify »

bobbydroptables wrote: post #364
simplify wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if you need do anything significant with your money in those 7 years? Like rent an apartment? Have a car to get to work? The debt doesn't just magically go away. Chapter 7 requires liquidating assets, and chapter 13 requires paying some loans back anyway. And besides, I don't see why loan companies couldn't require cosigners to reduce risk on these college loans.

>Like rent an apartment? Have a car to get to work? Then you rent an apartment or buy a car. Are you implying you can't do this after bankruptcy? It's much easier to do these with a bankruptcy on your "record" than with a $1000 monthly payment.

I'm implying that these things are affected by your credit score.

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

#374

Post by bradly »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #181
bradly wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, you are correct. Paul Graham writes in Hackers and Painters about how wealth is not zero-sum. You can read more about it in his essay here: http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html

Wealth doesn't map well to what we're talking about here. No economy can support an unbounded number of "high paying" jobs, for example. While wealth has gone up steadily since the world industrialized, a good (i.e. high paying) job is relative to the current standard of living and so wont be monotonic.

> No economy can support an unbounded number of "high paying" jobs, for example.

Why not? Is there some economic axiom that states this? Can wealth not continue to increase? And can't wealth be used to create "good" jobs?

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

#375

Post by travisoneill1 »

Auracle wrote: post #278
simplify wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? Nothing, and that's exactly why education debts need to be dischargeable like anything else. Dischargeable loans makes loan companies have actual responsibility and consequences in deciding who to give loans to. Otherwise, they blindly give out loans (why not, there's n…

But it could lead to plenty of people making the smart decision to file for bankruptcy even when they have a good degree. Bankruptcy at 22 isn’t that big of a deal, generally. I’m not sure what the answer is, though I think an economic approach is key.

Make 10% of the balance become dischargeable at the end of each year after graduation.

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

#376

Post by ryanmarsh »

cptnapalm wrote: post #137
ryanmarsh wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We give everyone in the U.S. high school education and we don't make the claims you make above. We used too. A high school education meant something to my grandparents.

I once picked up a hundred year old Latin schoolbook meant for grade schoolers (fifth grade, I think). It was significantly more information dense than the college course Latin textbook I had.

You should see the books I was taught to read with. Written in the 1800's. They'd be considered 8th grade reading level these days.

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

#377

Post by bradly »

School-Cotton wrote: post #174
bradly wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand this. The U.S. would be much worse without free, universal High School, regardless of whether you think it has devalued over time. I believe that if I didn't have a H.S. education, my life would be more difficult, but I get the feeling from these replies that people view a u.s. high school education as throw-away.

Many developed countries in e.g. Europe don't actually have universal academic high school like the US does - they have perhaps 1/3 of people go to academic high school, where it is more difficult than in the US (perhaps comparable to the difficulty of AP classes). The rest go to vocational or semi-vocational school.

Thanks for that. Yeah, I'm all for education reform and different options so it's great to hear about different programs, but many of the comments here are dismissing education, both high school and higher ed, simply because it is less scarce or not what it used to be.

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

#378

Post by ryanmarsh »

rbanffy wrote: post #197
cptnapalm wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once picked up a hundred year old Latin schoolbook meant for grade schoolers (fifth grade, I think). It was significantly more information dense than the college course Latin textbook I had.

Latin was much more important a hundred years ago than it is today. Also, a college education was not a given back then. OTOH, I can imagine the HS-level Physics books were very different from the ones we studied with, with different subjects given different depths.

Latin is a good subject to learn as the foundation of many modern languages, and subsequently other subjects such as logic and philosophy.

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

#379

Post by daniel-s »

vaidhy wrote: post #359
andreilys wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"1. What "bullshit" degrees people are talking about? Are they the liberal arts studies? If so, as a society do we not see value in the fine arts?" I don't see value in graduating with 6 figure debt for those degrees. In the words of Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting: “You wasted $150,000 on an education you coulda got for $1.50 in late fees at the public library.”

I do not believe in this over-simplification. However, the point about going to debt for those degrees is a question specific to US at this point in time. We should talk about free college education or heavily subsidized one, but this same group here has been heavily against these ideas because they are socialist. However, happiest countries in the world seems to be mostly social democratic[1] and for one, if possibl…

Your list is a list of countries that also happen to be at the top of this one [1]. They are the countries with the most freedom and capitalism. People are generally happy when they're free to own property and become prosperous.

[1] https://www.heritage.org/index/ranking

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

#380

Post by subjctvtime8 »

andreilys wrote: post #347
vaidhy wrote: post #339

I have been reading through the comments and I am very curious about a few things - 1. What "bullshit" degrees people are talking about? Are they the liberal arts studies? If so, as a society do we not see value in the fine arts? Expertise in music, language, anthropology, history, etc do not necessarily lead to a well-paying job.. but they give intellectually satisfaction in and of itself. 2. IMHO, the pay you are l…

"1. What "bullshit" degrees people are talking about? Are they the liberal arts studies? If so, as a society do we not see value in the fine arts?" I don't see value in graduating with 6 figure debt for those degrees. In the words of Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting: “You wasted $150,000 on an education you coulda got for $1.50 in late fees at the public library.”

I didn’t get a CS degree. Just started programming when I was 8 or 9. I’m in the $200k/yr, house paid off, never had college debt, and 23 year-ish of gains in stocks following a “buy and hold” approach since the 90s. Apple at $8-$9/share right before that iMac was a good call.

I also have deep and engaging conversations with mathematicians and physicists. I’ve tutored them in odd math they’ve simply never encountered.

Unless collective resources are needed for something like a nuclear reactor design study, a whole lot of application doesn’t require the college debt.

It’s almost as if we just need to agree on what some things are for social stability reasons, and we can debate the rest.

Instead we seem keen to be filtered for willingness to go into debt on education and housing, so we can justify demanding $200k/year for something open source programmers do for fun.

I’m pretty sure a whole lot of why we do things is satisfy social memes, and little to do with economic utility.

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