Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 1001 posts

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

#341

Post by phkahler »

grover35 wrote: post #194
phkahler wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> If a job pays poorly, doesn't that suggest there are many people willing and able to do those jobs, relative to the need for the job to be done? No. This notion of relentless competition is insane. One school district was paying a janitor barely a living wage. The standard response was "he could improve himself / get a degree, and find a better job. That shifts all blame on him an ignored the fact that the distric…

That's not a rebuttal.

No it's not. I was going to write one but then decided I'm not qualified to speak for farmers.

I will say this. Both my grandfathers were farmers. One worked his whole life and died broke. The other invested what he could, and never worked the land a day in my life (that I can remember). He once said that he didnt make his money farming, meaning it was from saving and investing. He rented his land, barn, and equipment to others.

IMHO investing is really close to renting (yes, I have some investments). SaaS is rent. Loaning money is rent. We increasingly live in a world where or renters and owners and people who do the most actual work are the least valued. It's still not a rebuttal, just a general observation that things aren't "fair" for some definitions of "fair". This situation is a societal choice and doesnt have to be that way. I'm not sure what a better way looks like though.

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

#342

Post by jeffbee »

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…

The SAT's past racial bias is still echoing through the nation. There were still test questions based on Very White Things like cotillions and yachting as recently as 40 years ago. The repercussions of those things could be that some person barely missed getting admitted to a university, took a lifetime earnings hit, lived in a poorer town with worse schools, and now their kids who may be very smart and talented also don't score well on tests. The whole point of affirmative action is to swing the pendulum to the other side for a while, to not just make it fair now, but to counteract past unfairness.

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

#343

Post by BlargMcLarg »

WalterBright wrote: post #326
BlargMcLarg wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not (just) college. Even if you do make it past college, hitting what older generations would consider typical markers of adulthood (having your own place, a good job, a stable relationship, a family, etc.) are all delayed and/or more difficult to achieve. Meanwhile many jobs are trying to sell themselves not through a TC that would let one hit these markers, but through football tables, pizza parties, drinks an…

When I was a teen, teenagers had after school jobs. McDonald's, stores, etc., were populated with teen workers at minimum wage. Today those jobs are held by adults, expecting to be able to raise a family on it. Teenagers rarely have jobs, their first job waits until after they graduate from college.

Cherry on top: once they graduate, they are met with "entry-level jobs" asking for years of experience, giant requirements lists and an overall predatory environment, only to be reinforced that failure is a personal fault and not one of the system.

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

#344

Post by rmbyrro »

wolverine876 wrote: post #182
acidbaseextract wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Who or what is Polymatter? Why do you trust them? It would be useful if people said why they trust whatever they are linking to. Random stuff on the Internet isn't worth the time.

To 99.99% of people on the internet, your comment would be "random stuff on the Internet".

I'm sorry, but who are you and why should I trust your reasons to trust other people?

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

#345

Post by nostrademons »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #29
jameshart wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It is not the degree that is valuable, it is the network it allows you to access that is valuable. The classmates you have at certain institutions will increase the probability of you achieving certain goals.

The thing is that you frequently end making connections with alumni of those institutions in your first few corporate jobs, since they all recruit out of the same pool of elite universities. So even if you didn't go to Stanford or MIT, if you work at Google (well, in the 00s - it doesn't focus nearly so much on elite universities now) you will know people who went to those schools, and if you need to make a connection with another alumnus of them you can reach out to your friends and say "Hey, can you connect me to your classmate?"

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

#346

Post by gjvc »

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.

You are correct -- this is an awful notion. Plumbers, HVAC technicians, electricians, bricklayers, joiners, framers, builders, are the people who build and maintain the real world, and we need to raise the status of these (and others, forgive me for not listing them all) professions, which take just as long if not longer in which to get qualified, and recognize the dedication to professional standards and the entrepreneurial attitude required to be successful in their respective trade and to bring up the next generation of tradespeople via apprenticeships. * In fact, when you add it all up it meets or exceeds the work put into an undergraduate degree, and yet we don't value it the same.

If you're going to college, you could do worse than to begin getting qualified in a trade on the side -- at worst, you'll learn some widely-transferable practical skills.

* One might also note how much of the above is missing or done badly in the software industry.

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

#347

Post by Someone1234 »

klipt wrote: post #245
dantheman wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is student loans, if the students don't have the money the college will adapt to be less expensive.

Europe has cheap high quality colleges, I believe part of the difference is European colleges exist mainly to teach, while American colleges are a mini city with expensive sports teams and stadiums, large bureaucracy with many layers of admin, fancy facilities not directly related to education, etc, all to attract students to pay high fees.

European style colleges exist in the US: They're community colleges.

The problem in the US is that "community college" is seen as a lower grade qualification that people "settled" for, instead of an educational focused institutional with bare bones and no immoral mandatory tie-ins (e.g. first year mandatory high price accommodations/gyms/meal plans, etc).

I understand community colleges have a lot of problems too (e.g. low educator pay and conditions). I'm just pointing out that everyone thinks that a European University is 1:1 with the city-colleges of the US, when in reality they're often nothing that fancy and pretty bare-bones.

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

#349

Post by jimbob45 »

glued wrote: post #307
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…

I was on track to go to a prestigious university in high school when my fundamentalist christian parents kicked me out of the house at the age of 16. I ended up jumping around to live with different friends then eventually my grandparents. I had no money and thought I had no future. The stress was killing me, my grades and SAT score suffered. I ended up at a small state school in rural Georgia because of this. Today…

You can always retake the SAT. That or prove your worth by achieving a high GPA at a community college.

It sounds like maybe money would have been the limiting factor in your case but I don’t know.

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

#350

Post by cbm-vic-20 »

xyzzyz wrote: post #319
wolverine876 wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by "less adult"? Do you think people were less adult before we had universal eduction? Are there benefits to their adulthood from it?

My point is that you claim that college prepares people to be adults “in every way”, so I wonder in what way today’s college graduates are more prepared to be adults than, say, overwhelming majority of adults were in 1930s, who didn’t have any college experience.

In the 1930s, you weren't expected to have 5 years of experience for an entry level job, and they had actual on-the-job training, which no company wants to invest in anymore.
Post reply on HN