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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

#411

Post by pjmlp »

rayiner wrote: post #299
monero-xmr wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you, but if the US truly has the best military (and it does 100x) then when push comes to shove, the US will destroy anyone who tries to undermine it. Very dangerous game to oppose it. Being able to construct things quickly is important, but if the US can militarily seize nearly every country on earth in days, the power is not necessarily where the kit is located

If you take nukes off the table, the U.S. doesn’t have a 100x military advantage. If China seriously mobilized its industrial capability, the U.S. may not have even a 2x advantage. Remember that, right before World War II, the US didn’t even have a top-10 military, having demobilized it after World War I. It’s vast industrial capacity is what enabled it to build a larger military than all of Europe combined within a…

The most important fact, that people overlook, is that its industrial capacity was never bombed during the war, and Pearl Harbour was the only time the country got directly attacked.

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

#412

Post by lurk2 »

overfeed wrote: post #403
lurk2 wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 rat…

> The conservatives are right about the partisan bias of universities Yes - and? Police forces and catholic churches skew conservative, but I figure it's an emergent property based on the self-selected group who join the respective organizations plus some exposure to new ideas. You seem like you expect political "neutrality", but if you look at at any institution, you'll find "bias": theatre fook, country music, poet…

> I figure it's an emergent property based on the self-selected group who join the respective organizations plus some exposure to new ideas.

There are plenty of conservatives interested in anthropology; there’s no reason to think they’ve self-selected out of the pool, so then we have to consider if conservatives enter the field but are exposed to new ideas such that none remain conservatives for long (this seems unlikely), or that these departments have been taken over by people who explicitly use their influence within these departments to promote certain narratives; this is far more likely as they have been explicitly stating that this is what they are doing for decades now.

This theory is further corroborated by where you see this bias; it’s the least pronounced in quantitative, technical fields (mathematics, engineering, chemistry), and most pronounced in fields that are almost completely qualitative.

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

#414

Post by the_gipsy »

pfdietz wrote: post #398
the_gipsy wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America is on a isolation downward spiral. Russia will conquer Ukraine, any other prediction at this point is absurd. See point one, America is alone now, it will take decades to repair the damage.

Some would dispute the "downward" part there. Not trying to be the world's policeman would allow tremendous downsizing of the military and its associated expense. Decoupling and isolation is a very rational response if nuclear proliferation is going to accelerate, in order to avoid having entangling alliances pull the country into a nuclear equivalent of the first World War.

"World's policeman", that's what you tell little kids America was doing. America didn't invade Iraq or Afghanistan for world peace. There were strong economic and strategic motives behind those invasions.

At the same time, soft power is also vanishing.

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

#415

Post by fzeroracer »

stack_framer wrote: post #400
fzeroracer wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One of our guest speakers was a man with autogynephilia—a man who derives sexual pleasure from dressing like a woman. > In a follow-up discussion, I committed the "sins" of referring to him as a man, and saying things like he is not a woman, and there are only two sexes. Now I definitely agree with the other poster that this sounds made up, or at the very least you are significantly embellishing the story in such a…

> you are significantly embellishing the story The guy told us he was married, with children, and that he had a separate apartment where he "lived like a woman" most weekends. He lived that way because his wife didn't like it when he dressed like a woman around her. He said he was intensely aroused by wearing pantyhose and skirts, in particular. That may sound "significantly embellished" to you, but I assure you it i…

I'm sorry but this timeline and story makes zero sense. For reference, 2014 is about a year before gay marriage was fully legalized in the US and reasonably before the whole trans rights movement started being a lot more public. I went to college in a deep blue state and had practically little to no interaction with any transgender folks, both in my gen eds classes and just overall at that same time period. Someone arriving as a guest speaker and talking in the way you've mentioned would've instantly made headlines in 2014, especially since at least one student would've complained and made it a bigger issue which as far as I can tell it doesn't exist. Nor are there any mentions of said guest speaker, and colleges are generally very public about this sort of thing.

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

#416

Post by viraptor »

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #256
collinmcnulty wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think widening the aperture outside the USA shows how big societal progress has come out of universities of the type we now recognize, starting with 1800s Germany. Even within the USA, the technological and social progress that percolated on universities had big impacts beyond the people actually enrolled and were essential in providing the basis for the employment of many other Americans. Finally, it’s worth quali…

>things are seriously politically messed up I would argue universities played a big role here. https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=social+justice... The theory of "elite overproduction" suggests that if you train too many aspirants for the same few elite jobs, they will foment instability in order to get the jobs they feel entitled to. That's what happened when we tried to get everyone going to college. Wha…

> Why would I want my DEI consulting to actually solve the underlying problem

This applies to any consulting. Normally you want to solve a problem, because there's another thousand of companies that need similar problem solved. You don't get many people coming into a company with an immediate "I'm going to try to not improve anything" plan.

> The left-extremists say "you need to give me a job in order to make your team more diverse".

This is seriously weird even as a misrepresentation. The extreme left is for changing diversity overall rather than just "give me a job". (If we actually go extreme left, it would be closer to "we've got enough resources for everyone to not need jobs to survive" anyway)

The overproduction issue is interesting, but it really didn't need the exaggerated caricatures as examples.

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

#417

Post by xzjis »

While Western countries are making education increasingly private, expensive, and accessible only to the elite, in China, free education accessible to all is training engineers who then go on to work for companies that outperform those of other countries.

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

#418

Post by fpoling »

stefs wrote: post #378
danans wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that our system relies heavily on uneducated migrants for menial labor. However, uneducated people in the 1950s regularly got jobs in factories that paid enough for a single income to support a family. That opportunity for uneducated Americans won't come back, regardless of our immigration policies.

While it's true that it was possible to support a family on a single unskilled laborer income in the '50s, their standard of living was far below anything most people would accept today.

A single income family in US with the husband working at a factory in fifties and sixties could afford a home with washing machine, dish washer, TV and a phone. Surely the home was smaller, but it was easier to clean, the TV screen was tiny, but then the family can go to a cinema. There was no internet, but for information one could go to the library. So how it was far below what people in US could accept today?

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

#419

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

It seems mainly to be about cost, as opposed to opportunity. College tuition inflation is insane.

When it came time for me, I couldn’t even come close to affording college (in 1981). Long story, but there were many challenges to address.

I didn’t want to accept financial support from my family (see “long story,” above), but I did let them co-sign a government-backed student loan for $6,000, for a two-year, full-time trade school (which seemed outrageously expensive, back then).

Took ten years to repay, but I never regretted it.

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

#420

Post by overfeed »

lurk2 wrote: post #412
overfeed wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The conservatives are right about the partisan bias of universities Yes - and? Police forces and catholic churches skew conservative, but I figure it's an emergent property based on the self-selected group who join the respective organizations plus some exposure to new ideas. You seem like you expect political "neutrality", but if you look at at any institution, you'll find "bias": theatre fook, country music, poet…

> I figure it's an emergent property based on the self-selected group who join the respective organizations plus some exposure to new ideas. There are plenty of conservatives interested in anthropology; there’s no reason to think they’ve self-selected out of the pool, so then we have to consider if conservatives enter the field but are exposed to new ideas such that none remain conservatives for long (this seems unli…

> or that these departments have been taken over by people who explicitly use their influence within these departments to promote certain narratives

What mechanisms do these department heads use to suppress conservative viewpoints in research? While politics in academia can be vicious, it's never a grand conspiracy like you think it is, it's typically, and depressingly petty issues and grudges.

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