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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

#221

Post by [deleted] »

anon291 wrote: post #148
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that printing money creates more money, but doesn't create any more stuff. College degrees (theoretically) create more educated people. If you just "hand out" degrees, that doesn't happen, but if you actually teach people, then it does.

Educated people are the way they are due to a particular personality that they have. They are curious and self driven. Many educated people have no formal education. You cannot teach a personality. That's not to say other personalities are less worthwhile... It's just that we have emphasized one kind of personality as the ultimate one and then are surprised that -- after maxing out opportunities for those already sui…

[deleted]

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

#222

Post by ajashdkjhasjkd »

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…

> Most of the world has severed the two

Yes, and the US system is the envy of the world and is responsible for the overwhelming majority of wealth generated in the US over the past few decades.

I'm not sure how that's an argument against the US Higher Ed system.

Edit: The real issue you seem to be pointing to is the cost of attending universities in the US. There are 2 parts to this. 1 is the costs of running a university, and the other is the cost that is paid by the student.

Most of the rest of the world subsidizes student tuition so students dont pay much out of pocket. The US, OTOH, has been consistently reducing govt support for student tuition. Even worse, it's been pushing students into taking loans that unlike most other loans cannot be discharged during bankruptcy. And even though students aren't required to start paying back those loans until they graduate, they do start collecting interest from day 1, which means a student has picked up a significant burden simply from the interest on the loans they received to pay for their freshman tuition, when they graduate.

These are all issues with the US system of financing education as opposed to the actual liberal arts education system.

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

#223

Post by ajashdkjhasjkd »

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…

> People want job training, and it got shoehorned into extra departments at liberal arts universities intended as aristocrat finishing schools

I really wish the computer science degrees and even online courses spent like 30 mins on the history of computer science.

The entire existence of this field has been dependent on those non job-training liberal arts degrees.

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

#224

Post by SilverElfin »

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

Yes but it is not standardized at all. Every college has its own way of doing things. Even every degree or school within a university can be different in how they handle grades. Some places put every student on a curve, so that a particular distribution of grades is always enforced. Some places operate on more of a pass/fail basis - often this is done for the first couple years to avoid measuring students when they’re adjusting to a new lifestyle (meaning partying a lot). Some places tend to give out easy grades. So you cannot compare students across different degrees and colleges.

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

#225

Post by jswelker »

danans wrote: post #207
rayiner wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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%. Due to automation and the great advance of technology, the floor for most jobs has risen such that the skills/knowledge that a 1950s school dropout had would be insufficient for anything but the most menial jobs today. Outs…

Community colleges are the best existing institution we have to fill the gap. They are too wedded to the university model though. Credit hours, semesters, discrete courses, administrative overhead, the whole works, minus much of the campus life dressing.

Hell I applaud even boot camps for trying to fill it, for all their faults. At least they tried something slightly different.

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

#226

Post by mNovak »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #37
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.

Many (most?) people go to college primarily for the piece of paper, not for the educational and social experience.

I think most people (namely high school seniors) go to college for neither. They go because that was the expectation, and was assumed to be at least approximately productive path.

While arguably that's indirectly 'for the piece of paper', I'd argue the pleasant experience is a factor too, even if not quoted as such. i.e. if it was a purely rational, economic choice (my interpretation of going to college just for the degree) we'd see higher enrollment in high-ROI majors.

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

#227

Post by 8f2ab37a-ed6c »

Reminiscent of this thread talking about undergraduate-level students mailing it in: https://bsky.app/profile/jesbattis.bsky.social/post/3m6pvvko...

Is this not rational behavior? If, through grade inflation, the only thing that matters to an employer is what school you went to and that you completed it (the sheepskin effect), then isn't the correct optimization to reduce wasting time on levers that won't make any practical difference in the end?

Sure sure, there's the love of learning and the formation of the well-rounded modern individual, but most people are much more pragmatic than that.

They need to get in, get the piece of paper for the least effort, get a job. Everything they need can be taught on the job or asked to ChatGPT most likely anyway.

A Case Against Education https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691174655/th... was prophetic of this phenomenon years ago.

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

#228

Post by jswelker »

ajashdkjhasjkd wrote: post #222
hc12345 wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Most of the world has severed the two Yes, and the US system is the envy of the world and is responsible for the overwhelming majority of wealth generated in the US over the past few decades. I'm not sure how that's an argument against the US Higher Ed system. Edit: The real issue you seem to be pointing to is the cost of attending universities in the US. There are 2 parts to this. 1 is the costs of running a unive…

Envy of the world due to network effects and inertia, not due to any inherent superiority of our model. There are some good parts of our model, don't get me wrong, but they do not explain the status of the US system at all.

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

#229

Post by Aperocky »

Almost nobody seem to see college as a place where people can develop the skills to learn itself? Did it get that bad?

It doesn't matter that I didn't remember how to do real analysis, but I had that class, and I learned it at some point, the process itself is exactly what happens in work - we'll learn new things, use it for some time, and then almost forget it to learn the next thing.

It doesn't have to be college, but there are a lot less opportunity, freedom and guidance to do so elsewhere.

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

#230

Post by drnick1 »

collinmcnulty wrote: post #196
mc32 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What they crank out today suffers from grade inflation. No longer is 'C' the average grade. Kids and parents who pay over 100k for their diploma all demand above average grades. It's not as bad as presenting a diploma from a Caribbean diploma mill, but they're not what they used to be.

Agreed completely on this. I almost wonder if it’d be more palatable to add a grade above A, like a Japanese style “S”.

That already exists, it's called an A+.
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