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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

#211

Post by anonymars »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #189
anonym29 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've interviewed Harvard CS grads for SWE roles at big tech who couldn't write a working program for fizzbuzz, for defanging an IP address, or for reversing words in a sentence, in a language of their choice, with leetcode's provided instructions, in half an hour, with unlimited attempts, gentle coaching from me, and the ability to use the internet to search for anything that isn't a direct solution (e.g. syntax). Ye…

If you don’t cram for leetcode, you won’t pass a leetcode interview. It takes some kids a few interviews to figure that out, even they are from elite school like MIT. You were just their learning experience.

I get the impression you latched on to the word leetcode and took away something very different

FizzBuzz, reversing a sentence -- this is programming your way out of a wet paper bag, not elite and esoteric skills that need advanced study and cramming

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

#212

Post by nobody9999 »

btilly wrote: post #159
anon291 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It didn't get shoe horned. Before college degrees proliferated, employers had entrance exams and were expected to train people. A supreme court decision found this to be racist. Companies could be held liable so most companies stopped that and demanded a 'fair' credential. Then everyone had to go to college

This one case isn't the full story, but I firmly believe that it is a big deal. See https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/401/424/ for the case. The problem is that any hiring test that blacks and whites pass at different rates, is presumed racist. Never mind that the real issue might be that the blacks went to worse schools and received a worse education. Never mind that there is a big body of research showing…

>The problem is that any hiring test that blacks and whites pass at different rates, is presumed racist. Never mind that the real issue might be that the blacks went to worse schools and received a worse education.

Your first sentence is the result of bigotry against those with "enhanced" melanin content, not the cause.

The cause is laid out in your second sentence.

Resolve the systemic bigotry (not just against those with enhanced melanin content, but against those with the least resources as, at least in the US, most schools are paid for by local property taxes, making the poorest areas the ones with the worst schools) and put us all on a level playing field and we'll be a much fairer society IMNSHO.

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

#213

Post by nobodyandproud »

rayiner wrote: post #161
collinmcnulty wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This view seems to be common, but I think it misses what incredible alchemy comes from making people who come in for “job training” (like I did) spend 4 years in close proximity with research, academic freedom, liberal arts, and at least an attempt at some kind of intellectual idealism separate from economic incentive. It’s peanut butter and chocolate that has served democracy and its people well by having a middle c…

That's historical revisionism. The percentage of American adults over age 25 who have a college degree was only 20% as recently as 1990. When America was truly at the top of the world in the 1950s and 1960s, it was under 10%. A high fraction of college attendance is better correlated with the 21st century decline in America's situation.

Correlation-only is sloppy analysis.

The inheritors and descendants of those that directly created the problem are screaming at the colleges as the problem.

But that’s ass backwards: Create the long-term financial opportunity and the college problem will disappear overnight.

The correlation is because rational actors will follow the only leads available to make money, survive, and raise a family.

Edit: I edited the tone, slightly.

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

#214

Post by doctorpangloss »

rayiner wrote: post #161
collinmcnulty wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This view seems to be common, but I think it misses what incredible alchemy comes from making people who come in for “job training” (like I did) spend 4 years in close proximity with research, academic freedom, liberal arts, and at least an attempt at some kind of intellectual idealism separate from economic incentive. It’s peanut butter and chocolate that has served democracy and its people well by having a middle c…

That's historical revisionism. The percentage of American adults over age 25 who have a college degree was only 20% as recently as 1990. When America was truly at the top of the world in the 1950s and 1960s, it was under 10%. A high fraction of college attendance is better correlated with the 21st century decline in America's situation.

are you saying that your kids should not go to college? okay, now do you see why your statistic is meaningless, even if it is true? who answers “yes” to the first question? (hardly anyone).

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

#215

Post by jswelker »

hc12345 wrote: post #209
collinmcnulty wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This view seems to be common, but I think it misses what incredible alchemy comes from making people who come in for “job training” (like I did) spend 4 years in close proximity with research, academic freedom, liberal arts, and at least an attempt at some kind of intellectual idealism separate from economic incentive. It’s peanut butter and chocolate that has served democracy and its people well by having a middle c…

Most of the world has severed the two. A lot of what you'd consider key parts of the university experience just doesn't exist in most of Europe or the highly developed parts of Asia. In practice, it's attaching job training to a very, very expensive resort, regardless of who is paying for it. It's pretty nice, in the very same sense that spending 4 years in a beach resort ls also great, but one needs to be absurdly w…

The F1 issue is absolutely real. Foreign students have been the secret sauce in keeping prices lower for US students for a long time now. Trump 1 and now Trump 2 presidencies have created financial crises at most universities just by making vague anti immigration gestures without even materially changing student visas. Presidents and provosts routinely make desperate oversea sales pitches to try to gin up the pipeline. I know of one major state university whose entire financial existence depends on visas from a few companies in Hyderabad.

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

#216

Post by blitz_skull »

nashashmi wrote: post #122

Total cost of ownership is 4 years x $15k-$25k (for a cheap public school) + missed income from working that same four years ($35k x 4 years). This is equal to $220k +/- $20k of lost money. Now compare this to income differential. Starting grad income is $80k(?). At 4% raise per year compared to 3.5% raise per year for a non-college employee. Over 43 years. My math comes out to the college grad is still making more m…

Assuming a grad income of $80k is an insane starting assumption. MAYBE you’re making that in software (good luck getting your foot in the door).

Any other industry? Biology? Social sciences? Academia? Manufacturing?

I struggle to think of anything other than finance that has a shot of STARTING at $80k. Hell I didn’t hit $80k in software industry until ~3 years in and I thought I was (I indeed WAS) very lucky.

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

#217

Post by xethos »

crossbody wrote: post #170
xethos wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually included the graduate as a beneficiary ("a well-paid, highly taxed contributor" or "the graduate" in the counter), but more importantly: The entirety of society benefits from a well-educated populace. That's one reason even those without children pay for public education. Following that, if everyone benefits, why is the graduate taking on all the risk (via a non-dischargeable student loan) instead of sprea…

Ok, I overlooked that. I think that's fair that risk should be more spread. Comes at a cost of people choosing degrees more frivolously though and wasting their time and everyone's money

I'd like to push back on "useless" degrees here, as well. The idea that degrees that leave graduates struggling to pay their bills (especially with student loans factored in) are worse than degrees that maximize income is bad for society. Not every job that is good for society pays well - if they did, educators would be better paid, and many executives would not be compensated as well as they are.

Some degrees are less in-demand (at time of graduation) economically, but a well-educated populace that can apply critical thinking and remember lessons from history, can be its own reward. Notably, pushing for a population completely lacking these skills is an excellent way to topple a democracy over time.

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

#218

Post by nradov »

jltsiren wrote: post #200
jswelker wrote: post #102

Higher ed is like employer based health insurance in that they are both weird path dependent historical accidents. People want cheap healthcare, and it got shoehorned into an odd employer fringe benefit system that really is not at all related healthcare in any intrinsic way. People want job training, and it got shoehorned into extra departments at liberal arts universities intended as aristocrat finishing schools. J…

The job training you get at 20 is often obsolete when you're 40. For example, many women of my parents' generation trained for jobs in the textile industry. But eventually the jobs disappeared, as Finland got too wealthy. A bit more abstract education would have made it easier for them to find a new career. But not too abstract. From my point of view, the weird parts of the American educational system are the high sc…

There are certain advantages to having separate academic and vocational tracks, but that tends to lock out late bloomers. Quite a few of prominent US scientists and business leaders didn't have good grades going into secondary school.

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

#219

Post by hc12345 »

petesergeant wrote: post #117
jswelker wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And resultingly, if you do go to college and immerse yourself in the educational experience, you come out with superpowers compared to your peers. Getting companies to see those superpowers in a hiring pipeline of course is a different story

Do American colleges not give degree grades? In the UK your degree class (grade) is moderately important for your first job

As prices for college go up, the student is more of a customer than anything, and therefore the pressure to raise grades goes up. Who is going to go to a college where people tend to need an extra year to graduate, when each year is 60k? Or one where only the top 5% of a class gets a top grade?

You are already seeing grade inflation in the UK too: Go look at the percentage of first class degrees over time.

The only place where a modern US university can be used as a filter is in their own admissions, where they can still be pretty stringent. Harvard could fill their class 6 times with people that are basically indistinguishable from their freshman class, so just getting into the right university already shows that you must have had some skill and maturity by the time you were a junior in high school.

This is also why hiring juniors is so difficult nowadays for software: Having successfully finished a CS degree at most universities says nothing about your ability to write any code at all, or analyze any complex situation. And with the advent of leetcode training, it's not as if you can now tell who happens to be good because they remember their algorithms and data structure classes really well. You have no idea of how good the new grad is going to be when they show to the interview, and even those that pass might not be all that great in practice, as they might just have spent 3 months memorizing interview questions like an automaton.

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

#220

Post by SilverElfin »

paulorlando wrote: post #17

Better than asking "is college worth the cost," and getting into ROI calculations per major is asking "could we provide a similar (or better) educational and social experience at a fraction of the cost"? To that the answer is yes.

I agree the answer is “yes”. But I think people are also forgetting that the reason college was a useful thing to pay for, was it was effective in differentiating between someone who was highly capable and someone who wasn’t. In a world where anyone can get a degree by simply spending enough time and money, there’s no real differentiation happening. Even if someone gets a degree, their fundamental competency (I guess I’m talking about something like IQ) is going to be whatever it is. And so it’s going to be hard to find jobs and the perceived value goes down.
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