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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

#141

Post by com2kid »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #47
com2kid wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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.

This describes software engineering as well, it is just that this site is biased towards people building new stuff rather than engineers who do maintenance work!

FWIW the plumbers I know live in nice custom houses and enjoy learning about new things all the time.

Re: Gen Z is giving up on college

#142

Post by dahart »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #99
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…

>There is no good reason to compare the bottom third of graduates to the whole pool of non-graduates other than to try to justify a misleading comparison about graduates somehow earning less when they’re not. if 33% of a "more educated population" is ending up worse than the less educated average, I'd say it's something to note. But I think the conclusion came out wrong. on a micro level, it shouldn't affect if you g…

> I took it as “you can’t just use college to ‘find yourself’ anymore

This FUD is exactly what I’m worried about. You took away a summary point that things are changing and somehow bad for degree earners, when in fact the bottom third of college grads have always been worse off, they’re the bottom third. College was never a guarantee of financial success. Of course some people can go into tech with only a high school diploma and earn more than someone with a degree who does social work or poetry or anthropology.

What does it say when you look at the stat that degrees earn 2x more than non-degrees, as a summary? To me it says that the dream of finding yourself in college is alive and well, that it’s not risky to go, if you have the means and the choice. To me it says the risk of not going is much higher than the risk of going. I agree with your point about choosing your major and sticking with your plan, if income is your goal, which is what most people try to do, I think. ~2x the income on average for 4 year degrees compared to high school is pretty big number, it surprised me, and it tells a different story than this article does. Before I read the Fed’s study I thought that college was maybe worth 15% more, on average (which would still be a nice boost…)

The Fed’s report calls the extra income that degree holders earn the “income premium”, and they even point out that the income premium is quite robust and not changing much, at the same time they’re arguing that the “wealth premium” is going down. They go so far as to ask “Why Has the College Income Premium Been More Durable than the Wealth Premium?” As far as the US Federal Reserve goes, there is no question and no debate about whether degree holders are earning more.

> Let’s never forget the elite are insulated from the problems of the future working class.

Sure, that is true. But with ~40% college degree attainment in the US, we are not talking about the upper class at all here, we’re talking about the middle class too, and talking about education that is available to most people.

Re: Gen Z is giving up on college

#144

Post by HDThoreaun »

friend_and_foe wrote: post #96

Young people are more attuned to where the wind is blowing, in part because they are part of the force that drives it, but generally because they're still learning how to navigate the world and don't have the privilege of not paying attention. You can get any book online for free. Any research paper. Any textbook. Any information you like that is known to more than a couple of people. You can even get almost all MIT…

The education isn't the point of college though. Employers are more interested in the credentialism than the education for the vast majority of jobs. Even in software engineering which works hard to avoid credentialism via leetcode and the like it's quite important. It's difficult to even get an interview at many(most?) firms without the degree.

Re: Gen Z is giving up on college

#145

Post by HDThoreaun »

Almondsetat wrote: post #36
CodinM wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The credential is that they were able to pass their classes, hopefully with good grades. Many employers want to know that you are the type of person who succeeds, not that you know some specific thing. University has basically taken the place of apprenticeships because employers don't want to train incompetent people, so they make you show competence with a degree.

Re: Gen Z is giving up on college

#146

Post by HDThoreaun »

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?

West Virginia University has an enrollment crisis that lead to cutting a bunch of programs.

Re: Gen Z is giving up on college

#148

Post by ActorNightly »

piva00 wrote: post #107
ActorNightly wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>engineer College isn't generally worth it for engineering either, unless you really want to work for something government or government adjacent where there is an explicit requirement for a degree. Learning to code can be done on your own time, and you can get a job without a degree, and software development is applicable to all engineering, with more and more of the "expertise" of other fields being moved into comp…

You can't be a civil, mechanical, aerospace, marine, chemical, etc. engineer through software... Software is just a tool for engineering disciplines, not everyone wants to be writing software instead of designing and building physical things.

>You can't be a civil, mechanical, aerospace, marine, chemical, etc. engineer through software..

Civil is the oddball in that list, because of PE certification, but the rest you absolutely can.

Having a Masters in Aerospace Engineering and having switched to software later, 95% of the work that I did over the 10 years in aerospace involved software packages. 60% of it was matlab, either data processing or analysis, and 30% of it was CAD, which is essentially programming.

Knowing what I know now, if I wanted to get into Aerospace through software, I would work on open source projects for autopilot or some aerospace analysis software, teach myself CAD, and with that portfolio I would absolutely get hired entry level into the companies I worked at, and would learn all the same stuff I learned while working, and the total level of effort to do this would be less than going to a 4 year college. And the only cost would be a decent laptop that can run CAD software.

Re: Gen Z is giving up on college

#149

Post by readthenotes1 »

HDThoreaun wrote: post #134
Mistletoe wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one said 10% real returns. It’s 10% counting inflation, which is the number I provided. > The average stock market return is about 10% per year for nearly the last century, as measured by the S&P 500 index. I don’t know why people are getting hung up on this 10%, it’s just the historic returns everyone in Boglehead and FI/RE communities uses. If you wanted to use the 6-7% real returns after inflation that is fine…

I get hung up because the last century was by far the best economic century for humans ever, and it seems reasonably likely that the next will not be as good growth wise.

That affects the value of a college degree as well, of course.

I believe there have been studies that show that graduates who are unlucky enough to be job searching during a one or two-year recession have a lifelong income deficit compared to those who don't

Re: Gen Z is giving up on college

#150

Post by readthenotes1 »

piva00 wrote: post #114
friend_and_foe wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Look, the cost comes from somewhere. You earn it later and pay it later, in taxes or in loan service payments. Either way, you pay it. At least with a loan you have a shot at being done paying one day. And this sort of thing only makes sense as a nation managing a treasury if the people go on to make significantly more from their degrees. With the way education is going, credentials no longer guarantee good pay,…

> Look, the cost comes from somewhere. You earn it later and pay it later, in taxes or in loan service payments. Either way, you pay it. At least with a loan you have a shot at being done paying one day. And this sort of thing only makes sense as a nation managing a treasury if the people go on to make significantly more from their degrees. Society benefits from having a highly educated population, even if wealth gen…

"Society benefits from having a highly educated population, "

Show your work here. Society also benefits from having electricians, plumbers, and garbage men.

Be sure to include how you would prove that graduating with a bachelor's degree indicates that the graduate is educated. From what I have seen, that ain't necessarily so.

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