More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years • Hacker News Board

Re: More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years

#301

Post by feoren » Thu, Jan 13, 2022, 4:51 PM UTC

bart_spoon wrote: post #100

sylens wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it's quite clearly this. Millennials have been out there for nearly a decade yelling on social media about how ridiculous their student loans are. Kids on the precipice of college have started paying attention. Combine that with the restrictions for Covid, and you have a lot of kids who don't think that taking on tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of dollars in debt is worth it for some Zoom classe…

Plus the amount and quality of alternative learning resources is very high, at least in some fields. I know coding bootcamps get a bad rep, often justified, but at the same time my buddy went to college for a degree in HR and I went for STEM. He ended up hating HR, did a 9 week boot camp, managed to get a job, and after a few years of experience is in roughly the same place as me and is thriving. It took him a little…

It may seem right now like someone who did a 9-week bootcamp is in the same place as you, but the differences will start to show up after a few years. I have degrees in both CS and Math, and I often say that I got the most benefit from my CS degree in the first ~5 years of my career, and from my Math degree since then. The tech your buddy learned in bootcamp will get stale and he'll have to start over; meanwhile your deeper level of knowledge will help you contribute to the development of the next era of whatever you're working on. This is assuming other factors are roughly equal; of course if your buddy spends more time on self-learning than you, this might not come true.

Re: More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years

#302

Post by mywittyname » Thu, Jan 13, 2022, 4:51 PM UTC

VampireWillow wrote: post #166

bagacrap wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The loans are exactly why the colleges were able to continue jacking up the prices. As with homes, people will pay as much as institutions are willing to loan them. In both cases the currently low interest rates allow the loan principal to be much higher (given that folks calculate cost based on recurring payments). If you remove the student loan system then tuition would become cheaper. However that does unfairly im…

Here in Canada the government simply dictates to universities how much they can charge. It seems beyond insane to me to do it any other way, seeing as our entire societies are dependent on getting enough people educated to perpetuate a service economy. To be fair, this kind of means that universities should be completely public. And although they are for all intents and purposes, in theory they are still non-governme…

The department of education in the USA kind of does that too. The amount of government-backed loans a student can receive for undergrad is capped at ~$35,000 (it's unlimited for graduate school). It's also graduated, so a freshman can only receive ~$4,000 their first year, and it goes up from there. Grants are given to freshman to cover the shortfall. Also, students/parents are expected to contribute, based on household income.

Most public state schools keep their pricing in line with these caps ($35k in loans + ~$5k in grants). I just picked on Iowa because, and here's a list I found:

https://www.universityreview.org/iowa-colleges/

You'll notice that in-state tuition for all public state schools is around $8k a year. Here's the same for Tennessee:

https://www.universityreview.org/tennessee-colleges/

Re: More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years

#303

Post by ryathal » Thu, Jan 13, 2022, 4:51 PM UTC

ejb999 wrote: post #220

roody15 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is indeed interesting. Most major universities look to maximize adjunct faculty and honestly new professors make much less than you think. My point is I don’t think the money is going to university teaching staff at least…

Can't speak of all schools, but at my local state school (which I attended) - which as far as sports teams is way down on the list of being considered important (i.e. you'll never see them on TV), they constantly bringing in coaches making $1M/year, who then hire a bunch of assistant coaches making $200K a year etc - and then when the teams don't do well - like losing 80% of their games - they fire the coaches (payin…

Sports are generally separate from the rest of the university budget. It's not tuition dollars that are paying the coach, it's season tickets, TV contracts, and donors. Men's football/basketball makes obscene money for the big schools, and the little schools get paid to be beat up by the big schools. The reports that sports don't make money are like how movies don't make money, it's largely creative accounting not actual losses.

Re: More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years

#304

Post by shockeychap » Thu, Jan 13, 2022, 4:52 PM UTC

ChicagoDave wrote: post #28

I have 3 college-aged kids and one nearly there. Their universal concern is the cost. It has become prohibitive. Colleges assumed the trend of charging $25k to $50k per year would be sustainable. They were dead wrong, especially given the horrendously predatory loans backed by the government and barred from bankruptcy. If we fix the college financial system, enrollment would likely skyrocket.

I remember reading a while back something like, "It used to be that you could mostly pay for college with a summer job. Today, the only summer job that could pay for college is being Elon Musk."

Re: More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years

#305

Post by simplestats » Thu, Jan 13, 2022, 4:52 PM UTC

zeppelin101 wrote: post #196

VikingCoder wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's what I don't get - Where the hell is the money _going_? Are Colleges and Universities pocketing the money? Are they publicly traded and distributing dividends? Are they building rockets? I know some of it goes back to financial aid, and some goes to football coaches... But we're talking about so much freaking money, and I just can't visualize where it's going.

A lot of it is going to the administrative staff. They have massive departments, many buildings, and many unnecessary staff members with high salaries. Meanwhile, a lot of the teaching faculty is making a pittance.

Buildings are traditionally paid for by a benefactor who gets their name on it. And the school often ends up with higher costs as a result (and one less parking lot or green area). Such donors are kind of a mixed bag.

Re: More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years

#306

Post by hackflip » Thu, Jan 13, 2022, 4:52 PM UTC

VampireWillow wrote: post #174

nradov wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The better alternative is to immediately return all students and staff to full in-person education with no mandates or restrictions. Yes that will incur some small but acceptable level of additional risk.

Your comment is the epitome of "some of you will die, but that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make".

The 3rd calendar year into this this, I'm willing to make that sacrifice. Everyone who wants to be vaccinated is vaccinated. Young people will overwhelmingly be fine. The old should make sacrifices for the young, not the other way around.

Re: More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years

#307

Post by ravenstine » Thu, Jan 13, 2022, 4:52 PM UTC

reilly3000 wrote: post #247

ravenstine wrote: post #140

Most of the college graduates I know ended up not using their degree because they majored in something no one cares about like communications, philosophy, journalism, etc. Maybe some people are figuring out that flipping burgers or literally just hanging out at home is a better use of their time from a financial standpoint than spending 4 or more years taking various prerequisites to get a degree that only results in…

>something no one cares about like communications, philosophy, journalism, etc. Excuse me? No one cares about fields that employ 2.8 million workers [BLS.gov 2020] ? No one cares about work that provides information, entertainment, and shapes political views? FYI your doctors, lawyers, and politician's biggest expense line items usually include money going to communications and media professionals. I and many others…

> Read a goddamn book.

> [...] to wholly discount its importance is capitalist orthodoxy

Touched a nerve, eh? You have no clue what books I've read or how many.

I didn't "wholly discount" the importance of so-named classical liberal arts. But there aren't many good reasons for putting one's self into debt to get a degree in such things. Be honest, liberal arts isn't heart surgery. Liberal arts can be learned for free if it is the knowledge itself that is of highest importance. The cost of majoring in these areas of studies are hardly congruent with how well they prepare someone to become a part of the world outside of academia and the cost that they bear. Perhaps to certain individuals the cost still is justified by the end result they are aiming towards, but to assume that everyone going into the liberal arts is in college not because society is cajoling them into it would be highly ignorant.

You're mistaking my valuation of the degree for a valuation of the subject mater itself. Are you familiar with the growing amount of student debt in the United States? Liberal arts are no exception, and there's nothing I'm aware of about fields it encompasses that justifies the expense in both time and debt. It appears to be a racket.

Re: More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years

#308

Post by _moof » Thu, Jan 13, 2022, 4:52 PM UTC

hammock wrote: post #180

matt_mb wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>However, today it's easier than ever to live off the nanny state WITHOUT a career. In what way?

Welfare payments supplemented wages by about 8% in 1960. That figure has risen to about 36% today, a 3.5x increase. Chart: http://www.mygovcost.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/governme... Source: http://www.mygovcost.org/2011/03/14/the-u-s-as-welfare-state... (the first random example I found on Google)

This chart includes Social Security and Medicare. I don't think it makes sense to include retirees in a data set when making an argument about "welfare."

Re: More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years

#309

Post by Shared404 » Thu, Jan 13, 2022, 4:52 PM UTC

learc83 wrote: post #281

Shared404 wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The predatory part is the pushing kids who don't understand finances into taking massive loans with high interest rates. I've passed on a traditional uni for this because I want to avoid debt, and still get "why don't you go to uni?"'d every so often by family and acquaintance's. And if the argument is "well, if you don't make enough to pay it, just don't!", as GP appears to be, I don't like spending other people's t…

>The predatory part is the pushing kids who don't understand finances into taking massive loans with high interest rates. There's literally lectures and a quiz you have to pass before you can take the loans that explains how repayment and interest rates work. For public loans the actual amount doesn't really matter because payment is income based. And the cap on lending is around $60k for 4 years, so I'd hardly use t…

> There's literally lectures and a quiz you have to pass before you can take the loans that explains how repayment and interest rates work.

Yes, but they are told their whole life "after college, you'll make enough to pay it off easy, no problem!"

> For public loans the actual amount doesn't really matter because payment is income based. And the cap on lending is around $60k for 4 years, so I'd hardly say it's predatory.

60k, with an extremely high interest is most definitely a problem.

> Of course all this only applies assuming your American, which I'd guess your not since your friends call it uni.

Nope, I live in Texas. Anecdotally, my group of friends all flip between "school name"/School/Uni in conversation. In this case, I picked uni because I'm on mobile and typing is hard.

Re: More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years

#310

Post by giaour » Thu, Jan 13, 2022, 4:53 PM UTC

vorpalhex wrote: post #228

thehappypm wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A $50,000 loan with a high interest rate is not good AT ALL.

"Below $50,000". And student loans have low rates unless you go private. Of course, who is more likely to need private loans they may not be able to pay? Probably not the trust fund kids.

"Low rates" here meaning 8%?! It's lower than credit card APR, but would you take a large installment loan at that rate?

The interest rate especially shocking when you consider that interest is supposed to pay for the creditor taking on the risk of default, which is almost impossible with student loans.