Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

381–390 of 1001 posts

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

#381

Post by AlwaysRock »

ren_engineer wrote: post #259
xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #108

This is nearly a strictly American problem. Much of the rest of the world has realized that society requires and is capable of supporting advanced education for all -- after all we want humanity to be advancing , right? America is still stuck in this alternate universe where it's a great privilege to have the opportunity to learn, which is of course true to some extent, but they really put it on a pedestal there. Com…

>Much of the rest of the world has realized that society requires and is capable of supporting advanced education for all -- after all we want humanity to be advancing, right? the number of STEM degrees in the US has basically been flat for decades, majority of degrees being handed out are effectively useless in terms of boosting productivity and "advancement". Go around and ask people with college degrees how often…

My theatre degree has been useless from a compensation standpoint for me. It was somewhat helpful when I was in sales but I only got it because it was the easiest degree that required the least amount of maths.

I went to college because my parents forced me to. Thankfully I got out without any debt. I cant imagine how upset I would be if I racked up 100K is debt and ended up with a useless degree like many of my friends did.

That being said... I cant really blame my parents for forcing me to go. It did seem like the best option at the time. No one told me, or I guess them, about alternative educational programs or trade schools. I'd probably be a carpenter now if someone had. I had pretty much zero plans for my life post high school so college at least gave me something to do while I figured it out.

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

#382

Post by [deleted] »

ljhsiung wrote: post #362
standardUser wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I am not thinking of twenty years ago, I accurately stated the cost of tuition today, which generally does not include renting a place to live, on-campus or otherwise, or a meal plan.

You didn't say "cost of tuition" in your original comment. Further, I think it's disingenuous to only consider tuition. Cost of living in e.g. Berkeley is ridiculous, literally more than tuition. [1] (I understand that living is not something Berkeley can fix, but it's very much their problem and a concern on students' minds, regardless of whose "fault" it is) To only consider tuition is a cost-shifting marketing tac…

[deleted]

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

#383

Post by scruple »

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

I'm in my early 40s. I dropped out of university. I've been programming professionally, in a wide range of contexts and in various industries and niche markets, for over 15 years. I still deal with the stigma associated with not having a college degree. It's not as frequent today as it was when I was at year 1-5, but it still comes up often enough that I get the sense it will never go away.

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

#384

Post by deltree7 »

zapataband1 wrote: post #365
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.

Yeah we I read somewhere that in Germany 60% of students go into trades and they have seriously beefed up their programs. But yeah there is a stigma here in the US about trades, I think that's partly due to the social consequences of having insane wealth gaps and worshipping billionaires.

Huh? From Peter Thiel to Bill Gates to Steve Jobs to Zuckerburg, most billionaires don't push the college propaganda and have shown/encouraged path without college education.

It's only the pseudo-social scientists who can't do proper data analysis (finding out the real confounding variable) that push the college propaganda

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

#385

Post by honksillet »

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…

Government needs to get out of the student loan game entirely.

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

#386

Post by starwind »

panzagl wrote: post #204

The dean of students at my daughter's university (Montana State) has been pretty upfront about this mostly being demographics- Gen Z is smaller than the Millennials. That being said, both of my daughter's had drilled into their heads how expensive college would be by their HS teachers and staff. We're continually telling them not to worry about it, it's our responsibility to pay, not theirs, don't feel bad for not go…

I live in Colorado. I don't see a lot that I would "anti-intellectualism" since I live close to Denver but I definitely see a much higher value placed on skills than degrees

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

#387

Post by lapsedacademic »

starwind wrote: post #369
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…

There shouldn't be a divide between skilled trades and bachelor's degrees. If I could add a creative writing minor to math degree, why was it impossible for me to add an aircraft maintenance certification through my school?

> why was it impossible for me to add an aircraft maintenance certification through my school?

Because schools can't bullshit maintenance certification curricula and aren't willing to pay qualified faculty.

See also: the alarming number of schools where CS and Data Science courses are still taught by mathematics faulty (because they can't find CS faculty who are willing to work for $70K).

This model of "pay unqualified people to teach a good enough version of the course and hope our consumers don't notice they're being shafted" only works in unregulated fields. Most trades are not unregulated.

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

#389

Post by treis »

ngc248 wrote: post #332
commandlinefan wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

How many people are getting into selective schools? It cant be more than a few thousands, so indeed there are opportunities for those who go to non-selective schools. It depends in the end. Problem is we always keep hearing about these selective schools in the media and that colours out perception a lot. Of course try as much as possible to get into a selective school, but if one is unable to, there are still opportu…

>How many people are getting into selective schools? It cant be more than a few thousands,

Much more than that. The ivy league admits ~20k a year. That number jumps to a few hundreds of thousands if you extend to flagship state schools & the Dukes, Northwesterns, and Stanfords of the world.

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

#390

Post by supperburg »

Americans are such colossal idiots. I can say it because I’m an American. They think, god what kind of evil and stupid person would EVER send their kid to private high school? It’s stuck-up, snobby, and the education at the free public school is just as good! Oh but in college my children must have nothing but the best and make connections with lots of important people and if it costs us hundreds of thousands of dollars then it’s worth every penny and anyone who doubts that is a fool. The disaster that our colleges are in is caused by this fear of missing out, the mental disease of the common idiot. If I had kids it would be the best private schools and tutoring up until college and I wouldn’t pay a penny for college unless it was a physics major. If you truly educate your kids from 0 to 18 then they really don’t need college.
Post reply on HN