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Gen Z is giving up on college

businessinsider.nl

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Re: Gen Z is giving up on college

#21

Post by reedf1 »

Mistletoe wrote: post #11
Racing0461 wrote: post #4

That would be the correct assessment given the return of college vs the cost. Unless you want to be a doctor/lawyer/dentist/engineer, college isn't really worth it. and to those saying an average college grad makes 1M more per lifetime than a HS grad, that included people who went to college when it was worth it. we need to look at the expected earning of someone joining now, but this as expected, can't be calculated…

80k invested at 18 and getting 10% returns like in the stock market is $1 million at age 45. At 65 it’s $7 million dollars. The math on college doesn’t even beat the stock market. I’m not anti-college because I think you find yourself there and learn a lot, but the math doesn’t make sense compared to just investing the money in my opinion. And 104k is the average. >The average cost of attendance for a student living…

"...getting 10% returns like in the stock market..."

You should start a fund!!

Re: Gen Z is giving up on college

#22

Post by pharos92 »

It's a real shame that cost has significantly outweighed the value derived from high education.

It's in the interest of business to continue to add value and explore new territory. Unfortunately though this has metastasized in higher education to producing junk degrees and programs that simply do not warrant costly or even sometimes formal training.

High education has evolved from something accessible only by the elite, or the brightest (elevated on the dime of the elite) to an overpriced commodity that yields little returns. Especially in undergrad, is the cost really worth it to achieve a basic level of competency that employers then have to build on significantly after the fact?

My advice to young people in my home country (not USA) is only go if the profession you want requires it. And I'll often help them to do a cost-benefit-analysis to work out if college is the right path.

Re: Gen Z is giving up on college

#23

Post by tyroi34iooi »

Traubenfuchs wrote: post #16

Lumping students of useless liberal arts "degrees" together with those on their way to becoming neurosurgeons, quants, investment bankers, lawyers or strategy consultants is a disgusting media default I can not comprehend. You CAN NOT lump those together for an average. Different planets. Different universes. Besides that: Aren‘t colleges as full as ever? Any college has trouble to fill a new semester?

Old school "liberal arts" before 1970 was about processing information, finding bias, finding patterns, critical thinking... Very meta... It would be excellent preparation for profession where you deal with people and information (investment banking).

Liberal arts of current year has nothing to do with that.

Re: Gen Z is giving up on college

#24

Post by rikketikm »

Mistletoe wrote: post #11
Racing0461 wrote: post #4

That would be the correct assessment given the return of college vs the cost. Unless you want to be a doctor/lawyer/dentist/engineer, college isn't really worth it. and to those saying an average college grad makes 1M more per lifetime than a HS grad, that included people who went to college when it was worth it. we need to look at the expected earning of someone joining now, but this as expected, can't be calculated…

80k invested at 18 and getting 10% returns like in the stock market is $1 million at age 45. At 65 it’s $7 million dollars. The math on college doesn’t even beat the stock market. I’m not anti-college because I think you find yourself there and learn a lot, but the math doesn’t make sense compared to just investing the money in my opinion. And 104k is the average. >The average cost of attendance for a student living…

No one has 80k laying around when he/she's 18, your calculation doesn't make any sense.

Re: Gen Z is giving up on college

#25

Post by komali2 »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #19
mkl95 wrote: post #14

As a late millenial and college dropout, I have considered attending college part time, and I have enrolled in online degrees a few times. But I lose motivation every time, because every uni system seems to be stuck in the 2000s, and I have a better job than all my friends with degrees anyway. If I found the uni experience remotely enjoyable, I would surely pursue a degree.

I can't imagine what it is like doing a degree these days in say CS, when the wealth of information on Youtube is incredible, and you can self-pace and learn interesting stuff. Postgrad would still be a different story.

I find youtube content to be very lowest common denominator and just a difficult form to learn from. There's open source comp sci curriculum that compile various MooCs and free college courses though that I thought was phenomenal: https://github.com/ossu/computer-science

Re: Gen Z is giving up on college

#26

Post by derelicta »

That's what happens when you keep telling a whole generation that it's their fault for having accumulated large amounts of debt, that they should have just chosen a "productive" degree and not something "useless" like Litterature or History.

Gen Z is meant to be a productive generation, not an educated one. To hell with concepts such as upstanding citizens, as long as they are obedient at work :)

Re: Gen Z is giving up on college

#27

Post by nottheengineer »

Maybe there's another part that leads to this. The world is rapidly growing in complexity, so people may not know exactly what to do after finishing high school. Anecdotally, I found that to be the case in germany.

We get state-funded universities and people often start over in a different subject after realizing they didn't pick the correct one the first time around. I did that too. My and my friends' parents said this was very uncommon in their time, usually due to financial considerations.

I could definitely imagine that there's a similar situation in the US. You get to pick once and if you pick wrong, it's worse than not going to college at all.

Any other input on that? Mine is purely anecdotal and I didn't find any hard data to support or disprove my theory.

Re: Gen Z is giving up on college

#28

Post by romanovcode »

dncornholio wrote: post #6

Wondering if social media is in part responsible. It seems you can make a lot of money as content creator, especially in NA. I don't understand or believe the COVID story.

Survivorship bias. Extremely small percentage of those who are doing social media are actually making money.

Re: Gen Z is giving up on college

#29

Post by xboxnolifes »

Mistletoe wrote: post #11
Racing0461 wrote: post #4

That would be the correct assessment given the return of college vs the cost. Unless you want to be a doctor/lawyer/dentist/engineer, college isn't really worth it. and to those saying an average college grad makes 1M more per lifetime than a HS grad, that included people who went to college when it was worth it. we need to look at the expected earning of someone joining now, but this as expected, can't be calculated…

80k invested at 18 and getting 10% returns like in the stock market is $1 million at age 45. At 65 it’s $7 million dollars. The math on college doesn’t even beat the stock market. I’m not anti-college because I think you find yourself there and learn a lot, but the math doesn’t make sense compared to just investing the money in my opinion. And 104k is the average. >The average cost of attendance for a student living…

> 80k invested at 18 and getting 10% returns like in the stock market is $1 million at age 45. At 65 it’s $7 million dollars. The math on college doesn’t even beat the stock market.

This isn't the alternative for most people. There isn't an option to get a mix of 80k in federal and non-federal students loans to throw into the stock market. The real question is, for most people, does it make sense to take on ~80k in student loans and go to school for 4-5 years, or should you try to immediately enter the job market.

Plus, expecting 10% real returns, year after year, in some chosen passive fund is unrealistic modeling.

Re: Gen Z is giving up on college

#30

Post by erfgh »

dahart wrote: post #18

> Four years after graduating, according to recent data from the Higher Education Authority, a third of students earn less than $40,000 — lower than the average salary of $44,356 that workers with only a high-school diploma earn. Red flag here, this seems like a super misleading and bogus comparison. There is no good reason to compare the bottom third of graduates to the whole pool of non-graduates other than to try…

Your statistic is even more misleading because in the non-graduates category you are lumping in people that couldn't make it to college even if they wanted.

The relevant comparison is graduates versus people that voluntarily skipped college even though they could get a degree if they chose so.

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