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

151–160 of 165 posts

Re: Gen Z is giving up on college

#151

Post by readthenotes1 »

hef19898 wrote: post #115
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,…

And there I am, with my double degrees from a German Unibersity and not a single Euro in student debt... Instead of the average of student debt in the US, we have a mortgage on hous, and a house obviously. All that despite paying taxes, which also cover stuff like higher education. Because do not forget, you pay taxes in the US as well. On top of your student loans and whatnot. And no, Germany tried to cut tuition fe…

Were there any restrictions on who could enter a German University? Because the requirements to get into a United States college or university are pretty lax.

Re: Gen Z is giving up on college

#152

Post by HDThoreaun »

readthenotes1 wrote: post #149
HDThoreaun wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Do high school grads not face the same issue?

Re: Gen Z is giving up on college

#153

Post by johnnyanmac »

dahart wrote: post #142
johnnyanmac wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

>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.

Sure, but when they were worse off they wasted maybe 10-20k on a degree. Lot of money down the drain, but you could pay that off working at a minimum wage job. Now it's more on the order of 5x those numbers, while spending power of minimum wage is down.

I didn't make that conclusion in a vacuum.

>What does it say when you look at the stat that degrees earn 2x more than non-degrees, as a summary

A general summary isn't a good idea on how to look at things, especially in a downturn. A general summary is that most "household's" average income is decent. But that's not who minimum wage is for, and also clouds the fact in the details that "households" have become more and more dual-income. Even if we didn't, we shouldn't ignore the 8% homelessness (random statistic, substitute it with the real govt statistic) and 20% minimum wage earners because the median is doing fine.

Re: Gen Z is giving up on college

#154

Post by dahwolf »

If I have to believe several recent articles, there's an interesting gender imbalance as well. Whereas young women are making spectacular gains in higher education (in numbers, scores, degrees), young men are not going to college at all, do go but drop out or they under-perform in comparison.

If you brush aside male-dominated studies like tech, the new baseline is 60-40 female/male. Not even that because some are already affirming men, without the correction it could easily be 70-30 and there's a case known of 80-20.

In part this is due to old reasons (men going into trades) but also for new reasons (men preferring to benefit of a decent economy) as well as some men just staying home and playing video games.

This growing female dominance has a lot of interesting side effects, many not particularly positive. Life on campus is different as it comes to dating/romance/sex. The men tend to not commit to anything as they are in a luxury position. Whilst surely a good time for the men, this destroys any hope of genuine intimacy and scars women for the rest of their lives into thinking that all men are trash.

To men, female dominance is bad in the sense that there's a lack of male role models. They possibly had none at home, then again none in early education (90% female teachers and growing), and then very few in higher education.

Recent cultural orthodoxy (excessive safetyism, "woke-ism", mob justice) is also a somewhat feminine invention that is unappealing to (some) men. Which leads to an ever-growing political gap between men and women.

Re: Gen Z is giving up on college

#155

Post by dahart »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #153
dahart wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

>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. Sure, but when they were worse off they wasted maybe 10-20k on a degree. Lot of money down the drain, but you could pay that off working at a minimum wage job. Now it's more on the order of 5x those numbers, while spending powe…

Fair points. College is more expensive, and has been growing faster than inflation for decades, no question about it. Looks like avg. cost of attendance for a 4 year degree at a state school is 80-90k. I don’t know how many people get financial assistance, or how many experienced loan forgiveness. I do think the U.S. could afford to pay for college outright based on the fact that degree holders earn more, and thus pay more taxes. The lifetime taxes for this group exceeds the cost of college.

> 8% homelessness

FWIW, homelessness in the U.S. is currently about 0.18%

Re: Gen Z is giving up on college

#156

Post by friend_and_foe »

piva00 wrote: post #122
friend_and_foe wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't believe that the scenario I'm describing as it is happening before your eyes is a sound argument?

Given that the USA does not provide universally free education and still suffers from degree inflation requirements, no, I don't believe it's a sound argument that free education would make it worse. It will happen anyway, as it is happening in the USA, even if it costs a lot. At least with free education everyone has the opportunity to attend it no matter your level of wealth or your financial outcomes from it.

That's not the argument I made though. The argument I made is that it isn't any better, isn't free, and as a further point, they'll do away with the free university programs when they cease to provide economic return because it's a mirage.

Re: Gen Z is giving up on college

#157

Post by friend_and_foe »

HDThoreaun wrote: post #144
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.

Yeah, and part of what I'm saying is, if credential is more important for a job that capability then it's inefficient additional overhead, unless credential actually proves capability such as with CS or engineering, or medical school for now. With the rise of free education these credentials will go the way of the dinosaur and these institutions that rely on it aren't going to last unless they adapt to the new landscape, which I don't see how they can. Research institutions maybe?

Re: Gen Z is giving up on college

#158

Post by bdamm »

friend_and_foe wrote: post #105
bdamm wrote: post #7

Fundamentally, college is about building skills and networking with people. Leveraging AI should be taught in all college curriculum since it is a power multiplier for everyone. This idea that AI is making college irrelevant is completely absurd to me.

You can build skills and network with people on your computer, for free.

There is no doubt that some people can succeed without the structure of a college institution, but many people do NOT. And not everyone knows the tricks for connecting with quality and knowledgeable people who are invested in your personal success. College provides a path for that.

I don't think it says anything negative about people who choose to follow a college degree path. Rather, it speaks to the talent of people who succeed without it. There are many paths to a good and useful education. I personally went to a university and got a degree. And I know 100% that I would not have succeeded without it. That's my personal story; I've met plenty of people who succeed outside of that. Not everyone is the same or can take the same paths.

Re: Gen Z is giving up on college

#159

Post by johnnyanmac »

dahart wrote: post #155
johnnyanmac wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. Sure, but when they were worse off they wasted maybe 10-20k on a degree. Lot of money down the drain, but you could pay that off working at a minimum wage job. Now it's more on the order of 5x those numbers, while spending powe…

Fair points. College is more expensive, and has been growing faster than inflation for decades, no question about it. Looks like avg. cost of attendance for a 4 year degree at a state school is 80-90k. I don’t know how many people get financial assistance, or how many experienced loan forgiveness. I do think the U.S. could afford to pay for college outright based on the fact that degree holders earn more, and thus pa…

Yeah I absolutely agree. There will always be crazy expensive anything and education is no different. but for state institutions they shouldn't be beholden to the same trend chasing that a private school does. Especially when all those fancy amenities are partially coming out of taxpayer money to begin with. What are we paying for if they can take that money and still increase costs to new students?

Re: Gen Z is giving up on college

#160

Post by ecf »

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…

> Red flag here

Impressionable students believe they can go to college, do little to no work actually comprehending the material they’re going to be using in their field of choice, and then go all “shocked pikachu” when they graduate and are unemployable.

It’s not a college problem. It’s a student problem. They believe just because they have a degree that they’re entitled to high paying jobs when a degree isn’t that special anymore.

Post reply on HN