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Americans no longer see four-year college degrees as worth the cost

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Re: Americans no longer see four-year college degrees as worth the cost

#5

1 in 8 incoming freshmen at UCSD (a leading institution in the states) cant solve "x + 5 = 3 + 7"... Why would I pay 30k a year or whatever it is to get a degree from somewhere like that?

My roommate can solve this. And he just turned 6. I gave him today some equations with two unknowns....

Re: Americans no longer see four-year college degrees as worth the cost

#7
I feel the same fallacies happen with money and degrees:

- People with more money live better lives, so let's just print/hand out money and everyone will live a better life!

- People with college degrees live better lives, so let's just push more people through college and everyone will live better lives!

In both cases, of course, completely missing the underlying reasons money/college degrees provide(d) better lives.

It's hard to believe that any single person in government truly thinks printing money will increase resources or that more easily handing out college degrees will automatically make everyone better off. So I don't fully understand how this happens, perhaps pandering to the electorate.

Re: Americans no longer see four-year college degrees as worth the cost

#8
The pendulum swings. College was only for the elite. Then it slowly expanded until it got to the point of, “everyone should go to college, doesn’t matter what you study.” Now it’s swinging back. Hopefully we manage to get to a reasonable place and not go all the way back to college only being for elites.

Re: Americans no longer see four-year college degrees as worth the cost

#9

1 in 8 incoming freshmen at UCSD (a leading institution in the states) cant solve "x + 5 = 3 + 7"... Why would I pay 30k a year or whatever it is to get a degree from somewhere like that?

You'd go to UCSD if you could solve that equation, and want to learn to do more. (If you can't solve the equation, UCSD is a very expensive way to learn how.)

I think the more relevant question is, why would you go to grade school and high school at institutions that produce graduates like that?

Re: Americans no longer see four-year college degrees as worth the cost

#10

1 in 8 incoming freshmen at UCSD (a leading institution in the states) cant solve "x + 5 = 3 + 7"... Why would I pay 30k a year or whatever it is to get a degree from somewhere like that?

The more important question is do they learn to solve it, fail out, or just get pushed through?

One of those is a bad outcome, but the other 2 are fine.

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