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

It’s unpopular to say, but a disproportionate amount of value is of course derived from people who are both educated and have immediate access to resources to fully exploit that education as well as the risk tolerance to innovate in the process, and the social status to build strong trust and social bonds with other similarly prepared people…so although it pains me to say it, yes?

It is certainly plausible that the most benefit to society comes from people that are both educated and empowered.

Whether the cost of that empowerment > the burden outsourced to society, well, that is another discussion.

Perhaps more on point, because I definitely think we can find examples of this in practice, it’s perhaps more truthy and also more actionable to say that college provides its optimal outcomes when it serves people who have intrinsic gifts that are empowered by knowledge. Sometimes these gifts are resources, but often these gifts are cognitive brilliance. Either one is like oxidiser for the fuel of knowledge, but especially brilliance when given resources.

I’m pretty sure that for the majority of college graduates, aside from its social signalling value, the amount of their secondary education that directly benefits them in their life could fit in a couple of years of summer school or a year of community college.

A quarter million dollars in debt is a tragic price to pay for a couple thousand dollars of educational utility. A system that requires a social signal 100x more costly than the value it represents is externalising that cost onto everyone, and the only benefits flow to financiers and the moneyed class.

Aside from educational titles (as opposed to capabilities) society is generally sensible regarding the cost of symbols vs the reality they facade.

We recognise the ridiculousness of people owing $90,000 for a truck when they live in a dilapidated trailer on a rented lot. We understand that a man who lives hand to mouth but wears a half of kilogram of gold around his neck is probably not making the best life decisions. We ridicule the faux-intellectual with their ridiculously stilted props. But somehow, we are convinced to dress up our children like heirs to the crown and send them to finishing school for their jobs in retail. It’s a profound mis-investment.

It’s also worth noting that it is way more expensive to provide an education to the intellectual proles than it is to educate brilliant and hungry minds. We are shovelling money (distilled human effort) into a furnace of misery in the service of vanity.

> when partisanship has to be disguised.

The conservatives are right about the partisan bias of universities. See this survey by Mitchell Langbert.

https://www.nas.org/academic-questions/31/2/homogenous_the_p...

Anthropology and communications saw no registered Republicans. English, Sociology, and Art departments had a ratio of around 40:1 Democrat professors Republican professors, whereas in technical fields the ratio drops considerably to only 1.6:1 in engineering, and around 5:1 for economics, chemistry, and mathematics.

Langbert notes:

> The political registration of full-time, Ph.D.-holding professors in top-tier liberal arts colleges is overwhelmingly Democratic. Indeed, faculty political affiliations at 39 percent of the colleges in my sample are Republican free—having zero Republicans.

Duke: https://dukechronicle.com/article/duke-university-faculty-su...

> When asked for their political identities on a scale of “very liberal” to “very conservative,” 23.2% of respondents identified as “very liberal,” 38.53% identified as “somewhat liberal,” 24.48% identified as moderates or centrists, 9.92% identified as “somewhat conservative” and 3.87% identified as “very conservative.”

Yale: https://buckleyinstitute.com/faculty-political-diversity-rep...

> Across 14 departments in the Social Sciences and Humanities, the report identified 312 Democrat faculty (88%) and only 4 Republicans (1.1%), a ratio of around 78 to 1.

The post is saying that you are forced to buy a car everywhere except five metro areas.

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> And the US has already been undermined by the likes of China, Russia and India

With respect, Russia is being decimated (literally, at least the "big fortresses" that Russia has been gnawing at for months such as Pokrovsk have insane loss rates) by Ukraine's army who are mostly using donated shoddy Soviet-era remainders and decades old Western surplus.

If the US were to wage actual war with modern technology against either Russia or China (whose arms are based off of Soviet designs and stolen American plans), there is no chance in hell either would be able to do much against the US.

India is different but they're at least a democracy that's reasonably worth calling it that (despite Modi doing his best to dismantle it). I don't see any attempts of India to project power anywhere other than in its immediate neighborhood (i.e. the border disputes with Pakistan and China). They're no threat.