A College Degree Is No Guarantee of a Good Life

Post by triceratops » Sat, Aug 01, 2020, 2:24 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #429

triceratops wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I proposed guild discrimination laws similar to employment discrimination laws, making it illegal for guilds to exclude on the basis of protected categories.

That wouldn’t help. In a country where the non-white population is rapidly growing and the white population is shrinking, and also is trying to catch up in terms of education and income, the population of guild members will be whiter than the population of potential new members. Limiting supply (favoring existing members over potential new members) will in practice disadvantage non-whites. There was a very clear exam…

Post by ThrowawayR2 » Sat, Aug 01, 2020, 3:57 AM UTC

throwawaygh wrote: post #436

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #349

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> " How do you become a good writer without feedback from a good writer (or, at least, critical reader)? " Software developers have to communicate with our co-workers and write documents continually anyway so it's not much additional effort to observe the clarity, effectiveness and persuasiveness of what one is writing or even solicit feedback. You also get to observe colleagues and leaders who are good (or not) at w…

You’re assuming a baseline at or above those intro courses. I’ve had engineers who don’t know how paragraphs work, or whose vocabulary and reading comprehension seems to have stunted at middle school. Those people are usually stuck as juniors without formal education because they’re not at the point where self-teaching is possible. Ymmv

Post by sp527 » Sat, Aug 01, 2020, 4:10 AM UTC

subjctvtime8 wrote: post #380

andreilys wrote: post #347

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"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…

Post by NigroqueSim » Sat, Aug 01, 2020, 4:27 AM UTC

jimbokun wrote: post #387

jmchuster wrote: post #384

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Top universities already put all of their courses for free online. e.g. here's all of MIT's CS lectures: https://www.youtube.com/c/mitocw/playlists . There's no downside to them doing so, because they derive most of their profit from their reputations. And then if you want a more formalized course structure, you have online courses like KhanAcademy. And then if you want to personalize your learning, you can find indi…

> The only difference is that you won't get a reputable slip of paper. I would add the costs behind providing that slip of paper are not insignificant. It requires having people with expert level knowledge of the field assess your work and your knowledge over a broad range of courses. So universities in the US are ridiculously over priced, but the value they provide is still > 0.

Post by rtx » Sat, Aug 01, 2020, 6:08 AM UTC

analog31 wrote: post #392

diebeforei485 wrote: post #371

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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 nee…

How much do we fund arts degrees, compared to, say, engineering, business, and clinical fields? It would be interesting to see the breakdown.