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College May Not Be Worth It Anymore

nytimes.com

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Re: College May Not Be Worth It Anymore

#191

Post by John_KZ »

VikingCoder wrote: post #7

I assert the expense of college is an awful burden to put on someone who must finance most of it through debt. It's a gamble. You can improve your odds of a happy outcome in that gamble by looking at the Student Loan Default Rate for any given major at any given college, and picking the best program for you (with the lowest default rate possible.) But if you are a child of parents who can finance your college? Absolu…

Just in case you guys don't know, this is exactly how university works in a number of countries in Europe.

There are few problems, but they're minor compared to the American model imo.

As for people who don't get accepted, in a closed and healthy economy, there's literally never a shortage of jobs (at least pre-AI). There's always something that needs to be done and you can create training programs or job placements for it. Also there are many "technical schools" which offer sorter degrees or professional training.

With AI, jobs will eventually diminish, but UBI has many caveats, the most important being that it leaves (ex?)workers powerless. In order for them to maintain the right to basic income they need some kind of leverage to enforce it. My opinions is that if they don't own the machines that produce they won't manage to do it.

So far the only reason they weren't slaves (or dead) was that they could leverage the need for their labor. Now that it diminishes, they're left with nothing.

Re: College May Not Be Worth It Anymore

#192

Post by ChuckMcM »

The New York Times may not be worth it anymore :-)

It annoys me how they conflate focused learning and investment returns. If they said "Cars may not be worth is anymore" because the best cars are beyond the reach of most people to afford and those people would be better off riding the bus. College is like this in other ways as well, when you don't have a car you are constrained to the jobs you can get that you can ride a bike to or take public transit to. When you don't have that third party accreditation of study in a subject you are constrained to jobs where companies are willing to train you through it. That is great if you didn't want to pay for college, it sucks if they only train you on their stuff, once again limiting your mobility.

College is an option generator. Just like a car is an option generator. More places you can choose to go from where you are. The more options you have, the higher the likelyhood that a good fit between you, your interests, and your life goals will be found.

Re: College May Not Be Worth It Anymore

#193

Post by whataretensors »

jhawk28 wrote: post #69
whataretensors wrote: post #51

School is a waste of time and resources for the talented these days. You can learn anything you want online by the best people. It's becoming training for state-run communism. No choice, only negative reward signals, march at the same speed as the average. Of course if we tell people the truth - your outcome can essentially be predicted by measuring IQ, which stabilizes around age 7. SAT score is essentially a makesh…

You are missing the cultural implications of college. In our society, college has been setup as the "growing up" period where parents can pay some place who will provide food, clothing, and knowledge. The "kids" are pseudo on their own and can become independent.

This is the cultural implication of the elite. The cultural implication on the young poor is to indebt them while telling half of them they are failures. Meanwhile the smartest of the poor are strip-mined from their communities and turned into indentured wage slaves.

Nice culture.

Re: College May Not Be Worth It Anymore

#194

Post by xkjkls »

derefr wrote: post #182
shaftway wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have a degree and it almost never fails to come up. Ultimately I flunked out (for a variety of reasons). I've done a lot of A/B(/C/D/E) testing with my resume: - Don't include education - I'm asked about it. Every. Single. Time. - Include the years I attended college - Asked why I didn't finish. Every. Single. Time. - Include college in a misleading way - I did a summer extension program for 2 years while in…

> I really want my doctor to actually have an MD How do you feel about the fact that doctors from foreign countries need to requalify in the US with a whole ‘nother MD program here? Even if they’re from a country with as-or-more stringent requirements, and decades of experience? “Higher education” is sometimes, in hiring, a dog-whistle for “enculturated to the US because they attended college here.”

> How do you feel about the fact that doctors from foreign countries need to requalify in the US with a whole ‘nother MD program here? Even if they’re from a country with as-or-more stringent requirements, and decades of experience?

There are plenty of countries that do have MD programs that the United States recognizes, like Canada for instance. It's a political issue more than anything. If the medical licensing boards in multiple different countries could come together for some form of agreed licensing this could easily by possible.

Re: College May Not Be Worth It Anymore

#195

Post by justin66 »

VikingCoder wrote: post #7

I assert the expense of college is an awful burden to put on someone who must finance most of it through debt. It's a gamble. You can improve your odds of a happy outcome in that gamble by looking at the Student Loan Default Rate for any given major at any given college, and picking the best program for you (with the lowest default rate possible.) But if you are a child of parents who can finance your college? Absolu…

> Not to pick on them, but do we really need this many Art History Majors?

You cannot calculate how many art history majors the world needs. You just need to trust people to act vaguely in their own interest, and society's interest, most of the time and to trust that things will work out.

Consider the important exceptions to this approach, where we try to match the number of students to demand. You can sort of calculate how many doctors the world needs, since everything involved (cost of services, number of patients, number of doctors, demography, doctor salary, yadda yadda) is objectively measured. We still manage to get that wrong, and there's a shortage. (or is there?)

The notion that you're going to be able to somehow be able to determine the market demand for graduates of the kind of degree program where people will move into a wide variety of jobs, like art history for one, is pure fiction if we can't even get medicine right. Of course if you're going to form a dictatorship of some kind you're obligated to try, but it will be one of the many things about your dictatorship that does not work very well.

Re: College May Not Be Worth It Anymore

#196

Post by snikeris »

> College graduates born poor earned on average only slightly more than did high school graduates born middle class. And over time, even this small “degree bonus” ebbed away, at least for men: By middle age, male college graduates raised in poverty were earning less than nondegree holders born into the middle class. The scholars conclude, “Individuals from poorer backgrounds may be encountering a glass ceiling that even a bachelor’s degree does not break.”

> The authors don’t speculate as to why this is the case, but it seems that students from poor backgrounds have less access to very high-income jobs in technology, finance and other fields.

Perhaps people born poor demand less money for their labor because if they're making more than their parents ever did they're more content with their current level of pay.

Re: College May Not Be Worth It Anymore

#197

Post by xkjkls »

j_gu wrote: post #149
passivepinetree wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't true at all. IQ is much less important than work ethic and attitude at many/most jobs.

So why then does the US military place people according to the ASVAB?

Mainly because it is really hard to measure work ethic over any short period of time. College being 4 years gives a pretty good proxy.

Re: College May Not Be Worth It Anymore

#198

Post by ericb »

vlan0 wrote: post #119
ericb wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Raising the overall level of education in this country should be a much larger goal that it seems to be. On one level, I totally agree. At the same time, well-meaning attempts to make college loans available to everyone for everything seem to have massively bloated the cost of education to a crippling degree. I think the key is in the how of the approach.

>well-meaning attempts to make college loans available to everyone for everything seem to have massively bloated the cost of education to a crippling degree. I'm not so sure about this as a cause. If you look at the costs for colleges that have increased over time, you can start to see where a lot of this money is going. Spending on new and maintaining aging technology is increased. And now you have entire department…

> There is seemly at least a Director of for everything.

I would argue some of the things you list as causes of increasing tuition are the effects of tuition surpluses from additional income from a trillion in student loans.

Re: College May Not Be Worth It Anymore

#199

Post by xkjkls »

djrogers wrote: post #142
awalton wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is probably a good thing, since it will slowly beat into the minds of upper-levels at corps and recruiters that a College Degree shouldn't be the minimum bar applicants need to reach, and maybe some of these companies will start removing the "has degree" band reject filter.

I don’t have a degree and have never run in to an issue with that fact. Came up once in an interview about 20 years ago for a very early job, and that’s the last I’ve heard of it.

The problem is usually getting the first couple opportunities. You don't need a degree if you've been in the industry awhile, but if you're trying to get a prestigious job it gets really easy to be filtered into thrown out stack of resumes.

Re: College May Not Be Worth It Anymore

#200

Post by awalton »

aarongough wrote: post #123
awalton wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is probably a good thing, since it will slowly beat into the minds of upper-levels at corps and recruiters that a College Degree shouldn't be the minimum bar applicants need to reach, and maybe some of these companies will start removing the "has degree" band reject filter.

I don't have a degree and honestly have never had any issues with recruiters or interviews for intermediate/senior 'software engineering' positions. I never represent myself as having a degree, but I don't go out of my way to point out my lack of degree either. Never once in an interview have I been asked about my education. One nice thing about software development positions is the interview process tends to be meri…

Because, of course, your experiences are universal to all of humanity.

My own personal anecdotal evidence is contrary; I had to get a college degree before anyone would give me so much as a callback (and the one time I got more than that, it ended with a pathetic offer - with the justification given that "You don't have a college degree"). All of this despite having years of proven open source contributions.

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