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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

#91

Post by wpietri »

mgh2 wrote: post #85
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

What they signal? Like generational wealth and elite connections? [1]

I have definitely seen hiring managers lean very hard on pedigree so they didn't have to do the actual work of evaluating candidates. It was basically the same deal with a lot of certifications, like Scrum/Agile and Java certs.

I also think that your bucketing people such that Harvard = smart and state school = "the opposite" is a great example of the problem. Personally, I'd always rather work with somebody who has had to work their way up, as they tend to have a more balanced perspective.

[1] E.g.: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/07/harvards-freshman-class-is-m...

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

#92

Post by disambiguation »

ryanSrich wrote: post #70
nickysielicki wrote: post #56

> Cancelling student debt is good if it's tied to fixing the problem going forward, which means not offering it, or having the colleges be the guarantor, or ISAs, or something. What do you tell the upper middle class families that didn't buy a bigger house or pad their investment accounts so that they could help put 3 of their kids through schools? My parents spent at least $200k on undergrad education between me and…

The US is anti-children from the moment they are born. College is no exception. As someone with 2 kids under 2 years old, it’s one of those things you don’t think about until it happens to you. - daycare is on average around $2k per month per child where I live. - outside of tech, almost no companies pay for parental leave. At most, they are obligated to hold your position, but no pay is required. This is especially…

This is an extremely important observation and it doesn't get discussed enough.

For whatever reason, the USA is extremely hostile to having kids.

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

#93

Post by gruez »

mind-blight wrote: post #58

I'm concerned that the majority of "should we fix college or should we circumvent college" conversations don't bring up one of the scariest parts of our current economy: STEM jobs are the main viable path for economic stability and freedom. All of the conversations I've seen implicitly assume that this is good, and that the solution to farmer workers (or other low paid workers) escaping poverty is to train them as so…

>STEM jobs are the main viable path for economic stability and freedom.

>We really need farm workers, and most of them live in poverty. I love having more engineers, scientists, and doctors, but we desperately need non-STEM work to be a viable option

This is basically a non-problem because of the supply/demand mechanics of the labor market. If farm workers' job gets sufficiently bad from a value proposition perspective, then people will leave the occupation and employers would be forced to pay higher wages to attract workers.

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

#94

Post by sometimeshuman »

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…

As an ancedote, I was told by my low income peer group that you get 600 points just for filling out your name on the SAT and that 800 points could get you into a great school like MIT. So I assumed it was a pass/fail exam in a sense and left early during the verbal part because I found it condescending and boring.

Before the exam, I couldn't understand why the higher income kids were paying for SAT training classes. What is the point of scoring 1600 if 800 could get you in the "best" school. It would have interfered with my after school job anyway.

To add further, I thought MIT was just DeVry for rich people but otherwise equivalent and that only black kids get scholarships (ironic since I am Latino). Are things different now ? Are most kids from lower socio-economic backgrounds still clueless about the college admissions process, the difference between colleges, and scholarships. It seems like that is the part that needs to be fixed and eliminating SATs is shortsighted.

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

#95

Post by tough »

gruez wrote: post #93
mind-blight wrote: post #58

I'm concerned that the majority of "should we fix college or should we circumvent college" conversations don't bring up one of the scariest parts of our current economy: STEM jobs are the main viable path for economic stability and freedom. All of the conversations I've seen implicitly assume that this is good, and that the solution to farmer workers (or other low paid workers) escaping poverty is to train them as so…

>STEM jobs are the main viable path for economic stability and freedom. >We really need farm workers, and most of them live in poverty. I love having more engineers, scientists, and doctors, but we desperately need non-STEM work to be a viable option This is basically a non-problem because of the supply/demand mechanics of the labor market. If farm workers' job gets sufficiently bad from a value proposition perspecti…

Macro-farms and thousands of automation systems can make your need for human labour decrease more rapidly than people can find other jobs...

It´s going to be a fuckin´mess, 4 dudes richer and everyone else screwed

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

#96

Post by okaram »

blakesterz wrote: post #51

"But cancelling all student debt and then continuing to issue new debt to students that the university fails (i.e. by not putting them in a position to make enough money to easily pay it back) doesn't make sense." That's one thing that never made any sense to me. I get it. I really do. But I've never seen any compelling, realistic answer to "And then what?". This only solves the problem of the HUGE number of people w…

> This only solves the problem of the HUGE number of people with crushing loan debt now.

That's a big problem solved. We can also solve other problems. Nothing requires us to solve all of them at the same time.

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

#97

Post by gruez »

tessierashpool wrote: post #72
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…

that is entirely a guess, though. there's actual documented evidence of colleges admitting less Asian-Americans and Jews than the test scores of either group would suggest, and Altman refers to this phenomenon in the thread. > 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 kids pass i…

>the SAT's a way of laundering discrepancies in generational wealth, which is indeed due to racist public policy as well as racist private actions. it may be intended not that way, but that's how it functions.

But what are SATs being replaced with? "holistic admissions"? A poor kid can prepare for the SAT by studying his ass off, with mostly free/cheap materials from the internet. How can you do the same with "extracurriculars" (eg. going to africa to dig a well) and "hobbies" (going the country club every week)?

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

#98

Post by tester756 »

mind-blight wrote: post #58

I'm concerned that the majority of "should we fix college or should we circumvent college" conversations don't bring up one of the scariest parts of our current economy: STEM jobs are the main viable path for economic stability and freedom. All of the conversations I've seen implicitly assume that this is good, and that the solution to farmer workers (or other low paid workers) escaping poverty is to train them as so…

That's real problem

Only one person (the oldest one) from my like 20-30ppl circle within age range of 20-30 gets close to IT salaries, that's ridiculous

in most cases it is around 40% (around 2 minimal wages) of my *nothing special* salary by IT standards (4.5 minimal wages), people with better cards get 7-10 minimal wages here, top people like 15-20+

and they see no reasonably easy way to jump higher (e.g within one or two years)

I can't honestly recommend anything but IT to anyone that can put a lot of effort (while mentioning all bad things ofc)

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

#99

Post by belltaco »

tough wrote: post #95
gruez wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>STEM jobs are the main viable path for economic stability and freedom. >We really need farm workers, and most of them live in poverty. I love having more engineers, scientists, and doctors, but we desperately need non-STEM work to be a viable option This is basically a non-problem because of the supply/demand mechanics of the labor market. If farm workers' job gets sufficiently bad from a value proposition perspecti…

Macro-farms and thousands of automation systems can make your need for human labour decrease more rapidly than people can find other jobs... It´s going to be a fuckin´mess, 4 dudes richer and everyone else screwed

In that case, this statement would become false:

>We really need farm workers

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

#100

Post by colpabar »

gruez wrote: post #93
mind-blight wrote: post #58

I'm concerned that the majority of "should we fix college or should we circumvent college" conversations don't bring up one of the scariest parts of our current economy: STEM jobs are the main viable path for economic stability and freedom. All of the conversations I've seen implicitly assume that this is good, and that the solution to farmer workers (or other low paid workers) escaping poverty is to train them as so…

>STEM jobs are the main viable path for economic stability and freedom. >We really need farm workers, and most of them live in poverty. I love having more engineers, scientists, and doctors, but we desperately need non-STEM work to be a viable option This is basically a non-problem because of the supply/demand mechanics of the labor market. If farm workers' job gets sufficiently bad from a value proposition perspecti…

> If farm workers' job gets sufficiently bad from a value proposition perspective, then people will leave the occupation and employers would be forced to pay higher wages to attract workers.

Serious question - have you ever been poor? Are you aware that sometimes people have to work at shitty jobs because they have no other options? And, if employers really would "be forced to pay higher wages" as you claim, why are all the restaurants in my city still short staffed?

I'm not claiming to have a solution but claiming "the market will fix it" seems like such a cop-out, like telling someone god will take care of it.

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