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

Gen Z is giving up on college

businessinsider.nl

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 165 posts

Re: Gen Z is giving up on college

#31

Post by CodinM »

Almondsetat wrote: post #12
rikketikm wrote: post #5

How do you expect people to study humanities if you're making it inherently impossible?

I don't understand why people confuse studying with getting a diploma. You can study all the humanities you want for free. What people (irrationally) want is to study them in a big building and then get whatever job they want on the basis that they know what some dude wrote 300 years ago in Germany

This is a green heron since the issue at hand isn't "oh but you can study without a diploma", the issue is "you won't be taken seriously because you don't have credentials" e.g. piece of paper.

Re: Gen Z is giving up on college

#32

Post by fabian2k »

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…

You usually don't have 80k lying around at 18, and nobody is going to loan you 80k to invest them (and even if they would, the interest would fundamentally change your calculation). And 10% returns is rather optimistic, though the number I've seen most often in these kinds of calculations is 6-7%, so it's not that far off.

So this comparison doesn't really make much sense as those students simply don't have the money to invest in stocks instead. The opportunity costs here are the wages they could earn in the meantime.

Re: Gen Z is giving up on college

#33

Post by squokko »

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…

Not really, that bottom third is the third who shouldn't go to college, and there are ways of knowing whether your child is in that bottom third before they spend $200,000 doing it.

Re: Gen Z is giving up on college

#34

Post by FirmwareBurner »

nottheengineer wrote: post #27

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 t…

>The world is rapidly growing in complexity

Only if you work in stuff like tech, but the world still needs many other jobs like plumbers, police officers, etc. who's jobs don't change that fast.

Re: Gen Z is giving up on college

#36

Post by Almondsetat »

CodinM wrote: post #31
Almondsetat wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why people confuse studying with getting a diploma. You can study all the humanities you want for free. What people (irrationally) want is to study them in a big building and then get whatever job they want on the basis that they know what some dude wrote 300 years ago in Germany

This is a green heron since the issue at hand isn't "oh but you can study without a diploma", the issue is "you won't be taken seriously because you don't have credentials" e.g. piece of paper.

I mean, what credentials does a humanities graduate actually have? Who would need such knowledge in any job except for a humanities job itself?

Re: Gen Z is giving up on college

#37

Post by hef19898 »

nottheengineer wrote: post #27

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 t…

In Germany you also have the issue of an increased number of studies to choose from, roughly 15 years ago you had some specialozation added on top of your general studies. Now some of those are standalone studies.

Switching once is totally fine, after all you only what a given field looks like once you started. Maybe even twice. But by then one should now which field and degree to pursue.

Re: Gen Z is giving up on college

#39

Post by MrPatan »

rikketikm wrote: post #24
Mistletoe wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Then no one can pay for college anyway
Post reply on HN