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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

#71

Post by traceroute66 »

aetherspawn wrote: post #13

College is fine in fields where the careers are regulated and college is required i.e. engineering, medicine, law, accounting, etc. For the other unregulated fields its unsurprising considering that the quality of education was questionable compared with just reading half a dozen good books.

> College is fine in fields where the careers are regulated and college is required i.e. engineering, medicine, law, accounting, etc.

Agree wholeheartedly !

If you're going to college to "study" a mickey-mouse degree, then frankly you're wasting your time and your money.

Mickey-mouse degrees can be readily taken care of through far more cost effective options: books, practical experience at home and apprenticeships/junior jobs.

Employers are not stupid either. If you think a mickey-mouse degree is going to magically make you more employable then you're going to be in for a surprise.

Re: Gen Z is giving up on college

#72

Post by acchow »

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…

The correlation is there, but do we know this is causation in the implied direction? It seems to me that anyone who comes from an upper-middle class educated family would actually make a lot more by not going to college.

Re: Gen Z is giving up on college

#73

Post by pharos92 »

taylorius wrote: post #48
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.…

Make money, yes. But it's hard (in a corruption free environment) to make money without providing a level of value.

Re: Gen Z is giving up on college

#74

Post by FirmwareBurner »

ReptileMan wrote: post #49
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.

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

That's how the "free market" works.

If you can't afford a house anymore because it got too expensive, then sorry mate, you're out of luck, that's the fair price of the "free market" supply/demand. Nothing we can do about it, try being less poor next time.

But if a company can't find cheap labor for the price it's willing to pay (aka labor shortage), then they can import as many workers as possible with the help of the government, until the price of labor comes down to the level they deem "fair".

Re: Gen Z is giving up on college

#75

Post by poisonborz »

In terms of education, they're right. Unis became a relic in terms of giving up to date knowledge compared to the ""open"" market. What they chase is headcount and research funds, entangled in medieval rulesets and personnel with lifelong tenure (either by law or politics) who have little incentive to change. Few fields remain where they are unavoidable, like law or medical studies.

In terms of social life, experiences, my heart breaks for them to miss this. Merely just the setting of getting off the chains of parents, while still not having to (that much) worry about finances and and just visiting lectures that interest you gives you a whole different scope of thinking.

Re: Gen Z is giving up on college

#76

Post by hef19898 »

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…

One, those 80k need to come from somewhere. Also, if you manage to get 10% per year, consistently over 27 / 47 years, you should run your own investment fund. There, you gonna make your 7 million per year...

Re: Gen Z is giving up on college

#77

Post by dahart »

randomdata wrote: post #67
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…

Definite red flag any time there is an attempt to compare completely different people. Of course the down syndrome kids are going to struggle more in school and, for the same reason, also struggle more in the workplace. There is nothing to suggest that graduating from college will cure their down syndrome, however. Since college attainment has risen over time, a better look is to see how incomes, adjusted for inflati…

> it would appear that a 378% increase in educational attainment[1] since the 1960s brought a 17% increase in average incomes[2]. Maybe there is something to it.

Your 2nd source is not really average incomes, because it intentionally does not include many of the educated - this is what “production and non-supervisory” employees means.

Re: Gen Z is giving up on college

#79

Post by dagw »

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…

In fact, diploma holders as a whole on average earn roughly 2x what non-graduates earn

The other number you have to consider is how many of the people that start university end up with a diploma. Also not all diplomats and schools are created equally. While the avg. might 2x that is no doubt skewed heavily by people with the 'right' diploma from the right 'university'. If I can only get into a 'bad' university and I'm not 100% sure I will graduate, it is not at all sure that it makes financial sense for me to go.

Re: Gen Z is giving up on college

#80

Post by randomdata »

dahart wrote: post #77
randomdata wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definite red flag any time there is an attempt to compare completely different people. Of course the down syndrome kids are going to struggle more in school and, for the same reason, also struggle more in the workplace. There is nothing to suggest that graduating from college will cure their down syndrome, however. Since college attainment has risen over time, a better look is to see how incomes, adjusted for inflati…

> it would appear that a 378% increase in educational attainment[1] since the 1960s brought a 17% increase in average incomes[2]. Maybe there is something to it. Your 2nd source is not really average incomes, because it intentionally does not include many of the educated - this is what “production and non-supervisory” employees means.

Yeah, I don't love it, but it's what I found. Strangely, it is not plastered over every "Is college worth it?" article. You'd think it would be right up front and center.

Median income is much more readily available, but not so useful here as the median person still does not have a college degree. That said, it could possibly stand in to help control for income gains seen unrelated to college.

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