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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

#41

Post by com2kid »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #34
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.

Have you seen modern plumbing? Solar heaters for water, grey water reclamation systems, hydronic heating, smart controllers for garden sprinklers.

I've talked to quite a few very smart plumbers. The ones at the top of the field (earning good $) work with complex setups.

Re: Gen Z is giving up on college

#42

Post by rightbyte »

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.

No. You need like 100000+ "fans"/regulars to live of your YouTube channel. So if a person follows 5 creators, 5 in 100 000 can live of that. We are talking piano tuner rarity here.

Re: Gen Z is giving up on college

#43

Post by bryanrasmussen »

squokko wrote: post #33
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.

the question is what will that bottom third earn without the college?

And I suppose some of that bottom third are not people who shouldn't go to college but perhaps people who pursued their dream in college only to graduate and found out that dream earns less than the average high school grad.

But sure, some percentage of people in that bottom third are the ones that should instead do some vocational education and pursue a career that does not require college.

Re: Gen Z is giving up on college

#44

Post by brobdingnagians »

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…

A better comparison would be the median of both (not average); especially in the context of a young person deciding what their odds of improving their circumstances are by going to college. A quick search looks like median for bachelor's degree is significantly higher. But with declining real wages, there could be a perception that going to 4 years of debt could be a bad idea in the long run.

That would seem to indicate that the raw statistics aren't the reason Gen Z isn't going to college, but is either perception of earnings vs debt / time / effort, segmentation by the colleges the rich go to vs the middle class, or the reasoning is something completely unrelated to finances such as social perception of it.

Re: Gen Z is giving up on college

#45

Post by dahart »

squokko wrote: post #33
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.

Yes really. The high school group also has a bottom third. It’s misleading to cherry pick one of them.

Re: Gen Z is giving up on college

#46

Post by hef19898 »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #34
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.

Even tech, software and hardware, unless you develop said tech, the use for said tech didn't really change fundamentally since social media came around. And that arguably only affected media and advertizing. What is posing problems now is the necessary transition from our old "system" (Western OEMs using Asian suppliers and burning fossil fuels, to oversimplify it) to something different (politically, socially, economically and technologically). Seems somewhere between 25 and just shy of 50 percent of any given population have serious problems accepting and adapting to that.

Re: Gen Z is giving up on college

#47

Post by FirmwareBurner »

com2kid wrote: post #41
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Have you seen modern plumbing? Solar heaters for water, grey water reclamation systems, hydronic heating, smart controllers for garden sprinklers. I've talked to quite a few very smart plumbers. The ones at the top of the field (earning good $) work with complex setups.

Majority of plumbing work (which also pays well) is still just fixing legacy pipework from old building that's decaying and needing repairs or replacements, not installing the latest heat-pump powered 'Butt-Squirter 2000', which still uses the same plumbing concepts of the last 100 years.

Re: Gen Z is giving up on college

#48

Post by taylorius »

pharos92 wrote: post #22

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 eli…

The primary interests of business are primarily making money. When capitalism works at it's best, the innovation and exploring of new territory is the mechanism by which companies gain an edge in the market. Unfortunately there are other, less useful ways of gaining market advantage (monopolies, cartels, regulatory capture etc). It's a problem of corruption. To quote Bill Burr - "The president makes 400 grand a year. He's supposed to keep billionaires in line?"

Re: Gen Z is giving up on college

#49

Post by ReptileMan »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #34
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.

But then the western europe governments policy of porous borders and Gastarbeiter imports make sure that there can never really be a shortage of semi skilled labor so it is not clear if those trades can bring you to the middle class

Re: Gen Z is giving up on college

#50

Post by dahart »

erfgh wrote: post #30
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.

It’s not my statistic. It’s the Fed’s. They have a longer version of this report where they account for and try to calculate the causal value of college, which more or less does exactly what you’re suggesting. It’s in section III here: https://www.stlouisfed.org/-/media/project/frbstl/stlouisfed...
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