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

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

#351

Post by lordnacho »

nslice wrote: post #327
lordnacho wrote: post #63

We have to do something about what people think college is to an employer. I'm excluding courses where you specifically need the degree: medicine, law, and maybe some others. Clearly you can't be a doctor or lawyer who hasn't passed his exams. Also if you are going to be a professor or phd naturally you will need to have studied whatever it is. For everyone else, all college does is shows people that you are diligent…

A degree is just a filter. If you get 200 applications for a job listing, you are going to prioritize those with relevant degrees.

A huge number of jobs have no relevant degree. What's the degree for being a management consultant? Or a pharma sales person?

The number of jobs that are just "general business role" is enormous.

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

#352

Post by ryathal »

commandlinefan wrote: post #226
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.

> Their universal concern is the cost. I have a senior in high school right now and although I think you're right - he's concerned about a potential quarter-million dollar tuition bill before this whole thing is over - he's also concerned about the whole selectivity of it all. From the outside looking in, you never know what's important and what's not. He has this feeling (and I'm not sure I can dispute it) that the…

If you want to be a college grad hired by Google, college name matters. If you want to move across the country, college name matters. If you want to stay in the region/state, not choose a garbage tier college is all that matters. It's not Ivy league or bust, but choosing top 100 university for chosen field is a good bet.

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

#353

Post by 0xdky »

MikeTheRocker wrote: post #311
DebtDeflation wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tend to agree. I did my Masters degree (pre-Covid) as part of a predominantly online program at a large university. It worked out well, but I cannot even begin to imagine doing an undergraduate program remotely and missing out on the campus experience. There's much more to "going off to college" than taking classes, and I fully understand why 18-22 year olds would not want to shell out tens of thousands of dollars to…

I'm currently about 2/3 through an online Master's degree: Georgia Tech OMSCS. Same as you? For me it's been a drastically different experience compared to my in-person undergrad. Whereas my Bachelor's degree was full of camaraderie and formative life experiences, my Master's has been more or less bereft of social or personal growth and focused entirely on course material. This is okay for me since my primary goal is…

I hope there will be student towns with mostly students taking online courses for the camaraderie and learning by helping out each other.

Apart from the labs, I do not see a reason to go to college to learn.

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

#354

Post by lapsedacademic »

qaq wrote: post #265
belval wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's probably my Canadian experience talking, but this sentence: > 85% of graduates have less than $50,000 in student loans. Paid off over 20 years, that’s really not much. It is pretty terrifying that you manage to mentally justify going in debt for 20 years over your college education. I understand that given a good job it's easy to pay it back, but I never even borrowed even a tenth of that to complete my engineer…

But there is no magic you are paying higher taxes and that’s not for 20 years it’s forever

There are two sources of "magic":

1. Efficiency. Canadian universities deliver similar/better products at much lower cost. Not just cost at point of use, but actual "amount of money spend annually to deliver education".

2. Financing model. Taxation allows you to fund things without paying interest to a middle man. If you pay off a set of loans whose principle is 50K, but with 5%-7% interest rates, then you're paying a lot more than 50K. So even if the products were equal in price, the taxation model might work out ahead.

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

#355

Post by honkycat »

VikingCoder wrote: post #169
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'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.

Endowments. They are lining their pockets with it. A lot of Unis are becoming investment firms that happen to supplement their income with a school attached to them.

Sports team boondoggles are a popular way to spend tuition money.

Administrative salary and staffing bloat.

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

#356

Post by vmception »

granshaw wrote: post #334
jimmyjazz14 wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the first two are problems colleges need to fix I think its more of a matter that we need to change our mindset about who should be attending college maybe some people would be better off going the trade school route.

Part of the problem is the social stigma of not having a college degree. Not sure how to fix that

These aren't colleges problem. US institutions are 300 years old, they will survive this 60 year old meme, and go back to being meeting spots for the well-money and influential who also become the learned population.

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

#357

Post by lapsedacademic »

granshaw wrote: post #334
jimmyjazz14 wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the first two are problems colleges need to fix I think its more of a matter that we need to change our mindset about who should be attending college maybe some people would be better off going the trade school route.

Part of the problem is the social stigma of not having a college degree. Not sure how to fix that

> the social stigma of not having a college degree

People have been saying this for decades, but is it still really a thing? Perhaps on the coasts? If you're in a small or mid-sized city in the midwest or the south, it's almost exactly the opposite...

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

#358

Post by epistasis »

sokoloff wrote: post #292
epistasis wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they have to make it undischargable in bankruptcy, that is a pretty big clue that the loan is usurious, IMHO.

How much money would you personally be willing to lend to a high school senior with no collateral, no credit, and no job who plans to study for 4 years and then file for bankruptcy? That’s why they’re not discharged in bankruptcy: to make them possible to be made en masse.

I'm not disagreeing with that point, I'm disagreeing that these sorts of loans should be legal at all, much less that they should be a common method of funding the education necessary for the knowledge workers of the future.

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

#359

Post by PopeUrbanX »

indymike wrote: post #314

There are three problems that colleges need to fix. 1) Skilled trades pay better than most bachelor's degree track jobs. My kids can make more money with a six month apprenticeship than they will with all but a few 4 year degrees. If you can drive a forklift, you can make $45K/yr... which is identical to what an firsty year teacher makes. 2) There are better options than college for many. One of my daughters did a si…

No post body was provided.

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

#360

Post by soheil »

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.

The administrative fees are outrageous. Administration staff effectively getting paid from student loans just to set more guidelines and procedures in place for students to follow and for themselves to gain more power is perverse incentives.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/stop-feeding-college-bureaucrat...

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