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I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

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Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#81

Post by acidbaseextract »

crackercrews wrote: post #52

Definitely agree that removing the SAT appears to be related to the upcoming supreme court case about affirmative action. COVID was a good reason to delay it for a couple years. But schools are pushing it out further. That makes no sense. It seems the SAT is increasingly considered "racist" because it reveals racial disparities in learning. What's next? Get rid of the driver's license test because it turns that white…

Polymatter recently had a great video on the way the college ranking system is a hustle for foreign student money, and just how heavily it distorts colleges incentives: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQWlnTyOSig

Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#82

Post by ThrustVectoring »

One of the underappreciated parts of student loans is that every debt is someone else's financial asset, and this usually nets out to financing the transfer of real goods and services to retirees. If you stop squeezing young adults, you have to squeeze the retirees that own their assets. Inflation, asset prices going down, pension benefits reduced, tax increases, etc - reducing student loan amounts doesn't affect the real economy, so easing up on material constraints means more real consumption there instead of elsewhere.

Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#83

Post by 999900000999 »

cudgy wrote: post #73
999900000999 wrote: post #40

Ehh. College is a net good, but do it on the cheap. Unless you plan to attend a top law school, no one cares about your undergrad. Community College students can still transfer into UCLA or other top schools. Hell, community college was good for me since I was able to take out student loans and get the hell away from my family. No more evictions for me! Even if you don't finish college, it's a great deal. I was at 6…

> I was at 6 figures before I graduated. Very few degrees offer this type of wage at graduation. Not everyone wants to build software. Although I agree with your general point to attend cheaper schools until it matters (eg graduate level and want to be a professor or lawyer).

My degree has nothing to do with my career.

If you have horrible family like my own college is one of the very few options you have. If anything the FASA process needs to do more to accommodate people who don't really have families.

The calls for student loan forgiveness ignore the good these loans do. At 18 you can do so many stupid things, taking out a loan isn't the worst. If that loan gets you put of a volitile situation max it out

Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#84

Post by yucky »

mach1ne wrote: post #43

I don't see the point of cancelling student debt. It's obvious it's not fixing the problem. Probably the only reason it's even on the table is the fact that it's not stepping on any toes.

It's only on the table because it's an attempt to buy votes.

Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#85

Post by mgh2 »

raincom wrote: post #69

HYP (Harvard, Yale and Princeton), and top tier law schools (Harvard, Yale, Stanford), top tier b schools (Harvard and Stanford) still control the whole thing. Sure, if you can ace leetcode like an olympiad, you can become a L7 at FAANG. However, if you are a MBA from San Jose state, you would be working as a financial analyst. However, if you are a Stanford MBA, you would be a SVP. Top tier firms in PE, VC, IC, and…

Is it pedigrees that matter or what these signal?

Ethics aside, I rather have a smart person in charge rather than the opposite

Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#86

Post by okaram »

wpietri wrote: post #6

This is kind of a weird mix of points. Ignoring his political axe-grinding, I think the value of a college degree is increasingly in question for many fields because the price has risen wildly for decades without a corresponding increase in market value. (Except perhaps for elite-institution degrees, which are more about the brand and the network than what people actually learn.) I think we haven't seen at least a pa…

Maybe ... I think IBM, for example did, and others might.

OTOH, it may be easier and cheaper to make an agreement with their local community college.

I think what makes the discussion hard is that people say 'college' and mean wildly different things. The author seemed to mean elite colleges in some comments, overall statistics in others, and for-profits in others. I think there are very different problems in different sectors.

Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#87

Post by abecedarius »

wpietri wrote: post #6

This is kind of a weird mix of points. Ignoring his political axe-grinding, I think the value of a college degree is increasingly in question for many fields because the price has risen wildly for decades without a corresponding increase in market value. (Except perhaps for elite-institution degrees, which are more about the brand and the network than what people actually learn.) I think we haven't seen at least a pa…

A degree doesn't cost the company. An in-house bootcamp and apprenticeship program does. Once the less-legibly-promising new hires are equally productive, they now have a resume making them legibly good to the company's competitors in the job market, so it can't make up its investment by underpaying. ("Programmers are happy and tend to stay" is something the competitors can do too.)

I'm not saying don't do it, or that the status quo is good. But I don't think your suggestion really addresses the problem that got us here, the problem that we've subsidized an expensive signaling game (cf Bryan Caplan's The case against education).

> Ignoring his political axe-grinding

This was gratuitous. I didn't even see any politics in the thread.

Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#88

Post by ulrashida »

lordnacho wrote: post #50
ulrashida wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Got the same impression. The narrative presented indicates the writer has minimal appreciation for what degrees in fields other than their own actually provide. Good luck being able to practice engineering if you haven't got a degree! The licensing bodies for professions won't care a fig about your life experience.

OTOH, I actually have an engineering degree and I can't build a bridge, a radio, or a robot, despite having looked at all those things during the course. People who can actually do it have done it for a lab or a business, and then get accredited. My impression of the engineering degree is that it's basically a certificate in being able to deep dive into... something. Whether that's actual bridges or financial derivat…

Entirely fair.

I've worked as an engineering manager for both professional engineers and non-degreed technicians / technologists. My observation (such as it is) is that the degreed engineers had a stronger framework to be able to connect ideas and learn new skills. On the other hand, technologists were able to do tasks just as well as engineers but had trouble generalizing the concepts.

Importantly, the degree (combined with professional guidance) also helps you appreciate the things you don't know. For example, a geotechnical engineer may be perfectly able to assess an abutment or design a blast but they wouldn't certify a dam foundation and would reach out for help in doing so.

It's probably worth sharing that I hated my undergraduate education with a burning passion. I've only recently begun to appreciate it more -- turns out those old farts who did the accreditation might have known a thing or two about what you need to know later in your career.

Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#89

Post by kistanod »

It's still important to have doctors/nurses/engineers that went through rigorous tenure. The problem lies with inflated tuition costs for a useless degree like gender studies, where after graduating college, your options are 1) drown in debt 2) continue the cycle of being in academia (masters/PhD) and justifying the existence of this system.

Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#90

Post by okaram »

jameshart wrote: post #18
wpietri wrote: post #6

This is kind of a weird mix of points. Ignoring his political axe-grinding, I think the value of a college degree is increasingly in question for many fields because the price has risen wildly for decades without a corresponding increase in market value. (Except perhaps for elite-institution degrees, which are more about the brand and the network than what people actually learn.) I think we haven't seen at least a pa…

Question: do elite institution degrees confer any addition to market value commensurate with their cost, or do they simply select for people who already have high market value?

Private elite institutions (Yvies) offer excellent education, and networking with really rich people ;). Some people already had that, some will make economic use of it, and some not. I assume the variance within-group is very very high, so you can probably calculate stats to defend any point. And then the cost also varies, so ...

'Elite' state schools (GA Tech, Michigan State? Etc) probably have excellent ROI.

Expensive, not really elite schools are probably not worth it on average, but again, cost varies highly, so ...

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