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This Is Why The American Dream Is Out Of Reach

thelastpsychiatrist.com

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Re: This Is Why The American Dream Is Out Of Reach

#121

Post by mkramlich »

tjmc wrote: post #120
mkramlich wrote: post #84

Discussing whether college education is worth it is an inherently controversial topic here on HN, I think, and here's why. First, because most would agree that getting degrees in a technical field are more justified and warranted than non-technical fields. So you're going to get two totally opposite conclusions from the folks dissing $100k history degrees versus the folks praising $70k electrical engineering degrees.…

Your post should be in the HN submission guidelines. With the banishment of politics, religion and the other usual suspects, "formal education" has become HN's flame war topic. It would be an interesting experiment for pg to list flame war topics when they emerge, link to a few insightful summaries (like yours) in the posting guidelines and then ask people to write about something else.

thank you for the compliment. agreed the site would possibly be improved if certain topics were banned or at least better moderated. it's hard to get rid of all the bathwater without getting rid of little painful parts of the baby though. :)

Re: This Is Why The American Dream Is Out Of Reach

#122

Post by lionhearted »

roc wrote: post #54
lionhearted wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Essentially, a good liberal arts education transforms your world-view of those subjects the same way a good engineering education does. I think most people agree with that, they just disagree that it's worth paying $50/hour to get. Go into any high end coffee place and you'll find someone you can have a good discussion with about liberal arts-related topics. I was talking about Jeffersonian vs. Hamiltonian democrac…

Isn't that like arguing that you can pick up programming knowledge on internet discussion boards cheaper than a degree program? In theory, sure, you can. In your spare time you might run into someone who really knows his shit and enlightens you. But, just as with the coffee shop, more times than not you run into people whose facade of knowledge would shatter the first time you ask a question. Trick being, if you bare…

> Isn't that like arguing that you can pick up programming knowledge on internet discussion boards cheaper than a degree program?

Nah, it's more arguing that you'd be better off learning by contributing to Open Source - then you'd get lessons and contacts for free instead of paying a lot of money to get.

> The reasonable component in the price of higher education is about the quality of the interpretation and dialogue between yourself, the professor and the other students.

$150 per class is a lot man, you can't just brush that aside. You can live on $150 for a whole week if you're frugal and live with roommates. And that's just one class. A day with four classes = $600 you're now in debt. That's a month of rent and cooked food if you're willing to slum it. Work on OSS, freelance, connect with people from the community - I say a month's worth of "living time" is worth a hell of a lot more than four classes.

Re: This Is Why The American Dream Is Out Of Reach

#123

Post by yardie »

gaius wrote: post #10
starkfist wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The Greatest Generation" refers to the parents of the baby boomers.

They don't get off Scot free either. Here in England they voted in the Nanny State in '45 and we've been paying for it ever since. Did you know in '48 they claimed the cost of nationalized healthcare would go down in time as the population got healthier...?

Do you mean go down in the sense that a bottle of coke is cheaper now than then after accounting for inflation or down as in an operation that costs £100 will be £50 in a decade?

Also, you could have the American system that only seems to go up in costs exponentially.

Re: This Is Why The American Dream Is Out Of Reach

#124

Post by encoderer »

lionhearted wrote: post #122
roc wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that like arguing that you can pick up programming knowledge on internet discussion boards cheaper than a degree program? In theory, sure, you can. In your spare time you might run into someone who really knows his shit and enlightens you. But, just as with the coffee shop, more times than not you run into people whose facade of knowledge would shatter the first time you ask a question. Trick being, if you bare…

> Isn't that like arguing that you can pick up programming knowledge on internet discussion boards cheaper than a degree program? Nah, it's more arguing that you'd be better off learning by contributing to Open Source - then you'd get lessons and contacts for free instead of paying a lot of money to get. > The reasonable component in the price of higher education is about the quality of the interpretation and dialogu…

Agreed. Hard to argue that price inflation in education hasn't reduced its value.

Not its worth -- that's remained or even increased. But its value.

Re: This Is Why The American Dream Is Out Of Reach

#125

Post by gaius »

yardie wrote: post #123
gaius wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't get off Scot free either. Here in England they voted in the Nanny State in '45 and we've been paying for it ever since. Did you know in '48 they claimed the cost of nationalized healthcare would go down in time as the population got healthier...?

Do you mean go down in the sense that a bottle of coke is cheaper now than then after accounting for inflation or down as in an operation that costs £100 will be £50 in a decade? Also, you could have the American system that only seems to go up in costs exponentially.

Down as in, a healthier population will require less healthcare. They never foresaw the NHS paying for hymenoplasty...

Re: This Is Why The American Dream Is Out Of Reach

#126

Post by DannoHung »

fuzzmeister wrote: post #35
cynicalkane wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm rather bothered by all the people knocking liberal arts degrees, in this and other threads. I did go to a school with a reputation for having a hard liberal arts core education, and it turned out to be a great decision. (In retrospect, I now wish I had gone to a different school, but the one I chose wasn't bad at all.) It's hard to explain why it's good to be able to think about these things, but it's hard to exp…

As am I. A liberal arts education makes you better able to understand and explain the world around you. The notion that every moment of college must be teaching you a skill that you will directly apply in your future career is positively stifling.

Maybe, maybe not, but for the time and cost investment, it's not a good proposition if you aren't going to make money off of it. And, at any rate, if you're not going to use the qualification bestowed, why not simply take part time classes and take on the subjects that interest you most as oppossed to taking the curriculum mandated for a degree?

Re: This Is Why The American Dream Is Out Of Reach

#127

Post by djb_hackernews »

potatolicious wrote: post #109
djb_hackernews wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a reminder but Hard Science degrees also make you take some general education requirements, for instance my Computer Science degree came with courses such as: * 4 Semesters of Latin * Chinese Mythology * History * Linguistics * Entomology * Sociology * Macro Economics

Not always. I went through an engineering degree and took exactly two non-engineering courses in my 4.5 years - and that was only because I loaded one of them on as an extra credit (damn near killed myself doing it too). The way the college system works today, the "well roundedness" aspects are disappearing, and quickly. Don't blame the schools, blame ourselves - we're the ones balking at paying top-dollar for a hard…

Whoa! really? Which school?

Re: This Is Why The American Dream Is Out Of Reach

#128

Post by krschultz »

mkramlich wrote: post #84

Discussing whether college education is worth it is an inherently controversial topic here on HN, I think, and here's why. First, because most would agree that getting degrees in a technical field are more justified and warranted than non-technical fields. So you're going to get two totally opposite conclusions from the folks dissing $100k history degrees versus the folks praising $70k electrical engineering degrees.…

And the readers here should be very aware how easy it is to access and use free and independent resources and techniques to teach themselves in the areas of software and business

This element can not be understated. When I want to learn something about Ruby on Rails or Java I have a pile of resources: open source code, free online tutorials, books, forums, StackOverflow, HN, etc.

For a lot of other disciplines, this is not the case. You are lucky if there is a book on Amazon that gets close. Forget websites, forget forums, forget open source, there is just no equivalent to all of that. It makes it a lot more difficult to survive without a college degree becuase a lot of times you are rederiving things.

Re: This Is Why The American Dream Is Out Of Reach

#129

Post by matwood »

randallsquared wrote: post #94
matwood wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depression? Grow up. It would depress me to sit at my house all day for 2 months while borrowing money from my friends to pay the rent. How would some side work suck up all your energy? It's not like you have to think to serve fries, stock shelves or wait tables. Working crap jobs is the best motivator I've ever had to do better for myself.

It's not like you have to think to serve fries, stock shelves or wait tables. Working crap jobs is the best motivator I've ever had to do better for myself. It sounds like you've never done it. You have to think to do all of that stuff -- not enough to keep you from being bored out of your skull, but enough that you can't actively think about something else and still do it well enough to keep your job. Stocking shelv…

Never done it? I've had a job of some sort since I was 15. I worked overnights while in HS stocking shelves in addition to landscaping during the days in the summer. I put myself through college waiting tables so when I graduated I had Come up with all the excuses you want, but at the end of the day you're still mooching off your friends when you're perfectly capable of doing some job while you look for more work. IMHO, that's not acting like an adult.

Re: This Is Why The American Dream Is Out Of Reach

#130

Post by whereas »

randallsquared wrote: post #94
matwood wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depression? Grow up. It would depress me to sit at my house all day for 2 months while borrowing money from my friends to pay the rent. How would some side work suck up all your energy? It's not like you have to think to serve fries, stock shelves or wait tables. Working crap jobs is the best motivator I've ever had to do better for myself.

It's not like you have to think to serve fries, stock shelves or wait tables. Working crap jobs is the best motivator I've ever had to do better for myself. It sounds like you've never done it. You have to think to do all of that stuff -- not enough to keep you from being bored out of your skull, but enough that you can't actively think about something else and still do it well enough to keep your job. Stocking shelv…

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