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I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

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Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#201

Post by barry-cotter »

ryanSrich wrote: post #70
nickysielicki wrote: post #56

> Cancelling student debt is good if it's tied to fixing the problem going forward, which means not offering it, or having the colleges be the guarantor, or ISAs, or something. What do you tell the upper middle class families that didn't buy a bigger house or pad their investment accounts so that they could help put 3 of their kids through schools? My parents spent at least $200k on undergrad education between me and…

The US is anti-children from the moment they are born. College is no exception. As someone with 2 kids under 2 years old, it’s one of those things you don’t think about until it happens to you. - daycare is on average around $2k per month per child where I live. - outside of tech, almost no companies pay for parental leave. At most, they are obligated to hold your position, but no pay is required. This is especially…

> once your child graduates high school they have the option to either take out hundreds of thousand of dollars in federally backed loans if they’re lucky enough to have parents that don’t make enough money. If they have middle class parents they’ll have to rely on even worse loans from private lenders.

Um

> Currently, student loan debt at graduation is an estimated $31,100.

https://educationdata.org/average-student-loan-debt-by-year

Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#202

Post by ryan93 »

tessierashpool wrote: post #72
crackercrews wrote: post #52

Definitely agree that removing the SAT appears to be related to the upcoming supreme court case about affirmative action. COVID was a good reason to delay it for a couple years. But schools are pushing it out further. That makes no sense. It seems the SAT is increasingly considered "racist" because it reveals racial disparities in learning. What's next? Get rid of the driver's license test because it turns that white…

that is entirely a guess, though. there's actual documented evidence of colleges admitting less Asian-Americans and Jews than the test scores of either group would suggest, and Altman refers to this phenomenon in the thread. > It seems the SAT is increasingly considered "racist" because it reveals racial disparities in learning. What's next? Get rid of the driver's license test because it turns that white kids pass i…

The average math SAT for kids whose families make over 250k would put you in the bottom ten percent at fucking Boston university.

Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#203

Post by mike00632 »

wolverine876 wrote: post #171
mind-blight wrote: post #58

I'm concerned that the majority of "should we fix college or should we circumvent college" conversations don't bring up one of the scariest parts of our current economy: STEM jobs are the main viable path for economic stability and freedom. All of the conversations I've seen implicitly assume that this is good, and that the solution to farmer workers (or other low paid workers) escaping poverty is to train them as so…

> STEM jobs are the main viable path for economic stability and freedom. People repeat that but what is it based on? Most of the population, including most people who have economic stability and freedom, have not had STEM jobs and very likely will not have STEM jobs. More importantly, college is about much more than job training. College prepares people to be adults in every way, not to be a resource for corporations…

It's based on the entry level salary for California tech workers being six figures whereas the wage for farm workers is an exception to laws such that they can be paid below minimum wage.

Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#204

Post by sokoloff »

jameshart wrote: post #18
wpietri wrote: post #6

This is kind of a weird mix of points. Ignoring his political axe-grinding, I think the value of a college degree is increasingly in question for many fields because the price has risen wildly for decades without a corresponding increase in market value. (Except perhaps for elite-institution degrees, which are more about the brand and the network than what people actually learn.) I think we haven't seen at least a pa…

Question: do elite institution degrees confer any addition to market value commensurate with their cost, or do they simply select for people who already have high market value?

It’s been studied some and there's at least some substantial evidence that it's the latter. (I posted this on another thread last week.)

> For most students, the salary boost from going to a super-selective school is “generally indistinguishable from zero” after adjusting for student characteristics, such as test scores. In other words, if Mike and Drew have the same SAT scores and apply to the same colleges, but Mike gets into Harvard and Drew doesn’t, they can still expect to earn the same income throughout their careers. Despite Harvard’s international fame and energetic alumni outreach, somebody like Mike would not experience an observable “Harvard effect.” Dale and Krueger even found that the average SAT scores of all the schools a student applies to is a more powerful predictor of success than the school that student actually attends.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/12/does-it-ma...

That’s not “education” directly, but does suggest an extremely strong applicant pool selection effect is happening.

Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#205

Post by jopsen »

kube-system wrote: post #172

“US college educations” consist mostly of schools that aren’t highly selective schools that discriminate against Asians. Most students aren’t going to private schools of any kind, let alone highly selective ones.

You just saying that most students don't go to an icy league school, right? :)

Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#206

Post by WWLink »

sokoloff wrote: post #183
com2kid wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America is a country that loves the free market country, yet no one seems to be talking about supply and demand to fix college prices. Double the number of large quality state universities. Re-index public university tuition to what they were in 2000 + inflation. Mandate that funding comes with X number increase in tenured professors. Re-instate public funding for state universities to what it was in 2000 + inflation…

Room and board is already more expensive than the in-state tuition on an average basis. You could further reduce tuition and fees, but it costs a lot to be housed and fed (and to forgo earning a full-time income for 4 years). Could you realistically get room and board down below $8K/year with more spartan dormitories and meal plans? Maybe, but not by much I don't think. https://educationdata.org/average-cost-of-colle…

Speaking from anecdotal experience, the university I went to put a lot of thought and money into things like being sustainable, producing zero waste, having high quality healthy food, etc. This is fantastic if you're looking at things from a long term perspective.

On the other hand, if your goal is to churn as many bodies out as possible with degrees, it's a pretty big waste of money. We could ship in frozen tyson chicken from China or whatever and just deep fry it as dinner, and turn the dorms into pod hotels or something.

Of course that goes from ideal to complete dystopia, but if that's your goal... lol.

Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#207

Post by epicureanideal »

mind-blight wrote: post #58

I'm concerned that the majority of "should we fix college or should we circumvent college" conversations don't bring up one of the scariest parts of our current economy: STEM jobs are the main viable path for economic stability and freedom. All of the conversations I've seen implicitly assume that this is good, and that the solution to farmer workers (or other low paid workers) escaping poverty is to train them as so…

> I love having more engineers, scientists, and doctors, but we desperately need non-STEM work to be a viable option

I’m not sure I agree. We could open more research labs, and dramatically increase the number of positions in STEM.

We could double or quadruple the number of teachers, and if we got even a small increase in the number of highly successful students who can do original work in research or STEM it would make all our lives better.

We could increase the number of nurse practitioners who could do basic medicine like fixing broken bones and treating common illnesses.

There’s room to add lots more mechanical and robotics engineers, and a lot of that work requires more spatial reasoning skills than math, despite what one might think. A lot of people who we wouldn’t think of as STEM oriented can do and enjoy those jobs.

Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#208

Post by WBrentWilliams »

My careful reading of the facts (disclosure: my daytime gig is making the wheels in a university's student records system whir)

* Forgiving student debt is an endless political cycle, promising to piss off anyone who has either paid off their large debt without forgiveness (raises hand - five figures (think 1990s luxury car) between my wife and I) or didn't acquire the debt in the first place (self-funded or scholarships).

* Standardized test scores going away: Read the fine print (I implemented this policy in code). The test scores went away for admissions. You can get in without standardized test scores. However, public and private scholarships are still tied to standardized test scores. Funding agreements (I was involved in maintaining the university's implementation of these) from private donors or public sources have mostly not been altered. Rhetorical: Are standardized tests really going away?

* Tech hiring without degrees: Culture and HR fit is important here. Does HR, protecting the company from itself, quietly screen and discard resumes without necessary keywords? This is an effective way to remove non-degree holding candidates.

* Alternatives: Yes, we (in the United States) do need them. We have needed them for at least 30 years. Politically, all we ever really seem to get are NEETs and High-Schools-With-Smoking-Areas.

I like that Mr. Altman's thinking of alternatives. Please share them. I want to see a successful implementation. My job, and the way I define it, relies on making it possible for as many to dream as possible. I support widening the number of paths to dream as possible. I believe that this is not a zero-sum game.

As for price, there is already an economic force that will cause interesting swings ahead. In my circles, it is called a demographic cliff. My university is already seeing it and has made short term changes. I foresee many small universities and colleges closing and merging. Eventually, when shrinkage cannot happen any longer, the price of services (tuition and fees) will be lowered. Just in time for the current administrative overhead to retire.

Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#209

Post by valzam »

Tretiotrr wrote: post #57

In Germany you study for free. There was a video (perhaps even from kurzgesagt) which describes how critical it is for our society to allow as many people as easy access to knowledge as possible and not only for obvious reasons but also to increase the chance for all of us that the hidden genius is finding a cure for cancer. You can even study for free in Germany as an non German. You know what happens? Those people…

If only Germany were smart enough to give people who study here a 2-3 year work visa after they finish their studies. As it is you still need to find an employer willing to sponsor you (which at least is easy if you earn a lot).

Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#210

Post by ajb »

beaned wrote: post #137
nobodyandproud wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is basically a non-problem because of the supply/demand mechanics of the labor market. You’ll have to back-up that assertion. Supply/demand mechanisms fail the labor market badly. By law of supply and demand, professions introduce artificial scarcity to boost their income; and the market responds either through some combination of: Immigration, automation, consolidation (less businesses), cut-corners Farming h…

He justified it with his next sentence: > If farm workers' job gets sufficiently bad from a value proposition perspective, then people will leave the occupation and employers would be forced to pay higher wages to attract workers.

Not everything is like the laws of physics, which continue to work over many orders of magnitude. Supply and demand for employment works backwards at both the top and the bottom of the salary range. At the top, beyond a certain point supply decreases because people save enough to give up working. At the other end, reducing post can increase supply because people's need for income of inelastic below a certain point, so they start working longer hours and working second or third jobs.
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