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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

#401

Post by banannaise »

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…

There is a rapidly growing list of increasingly dire "strictly American problems". I wonder when and how it will break.

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

#402

Post by logicalmonster »

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".

What human activity has 0 risk?

For all of human history, there's been a chance that a child will die in a car-accident or be abducted by a child predator on his way to school every day. We haven't said that kids should stop going to school because of this, have we?

There's a non-zero chance people will die traveling to and from work today. We haven't said that people should stop working to save lives, have we?

I think that most people being bad at understanding risk-management is at the core of why there's there's such big divide with how to react to Covid.

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

#403

Post by jacobolus »

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…

> kids that had a job, any job before age 18 make 35% more than their peers over their lifetime

Just as with claims about college, there is a huge selection bias in this observation. (A substantially higher proportion of youngish Americans obtain a bachelors degree than have a job before age 18.)

Edit: Let’s be clear: there is obviously a huge selection bias when talking about college as well, which should not be ignored.

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

#404

Post by [deleted] »

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".

[deleted]

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

#405

Post by autokad »

gorjusborg wrote: post #139
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…

I've lived in the U.S. my entire life, and I agree with you. Our culture somehow misses the fact that as a society we benefit from educated citizens. There's even a segment of the population that fetishizes ignorance as a virtue, and knowledge as leftist indoctrination. There also seems to be a deep seated fear that any sort of public investment in people is seen as a slippery slope to soviet-style authoritarian gove…

> knowledge as leftist indoctrination.

Almost all of my classes had leftist brainwashing. In my machine learning class, the professor would use voting republican as a classifier making the wrong decision. Given that people had made it this far in education to be good at repeating and learning what ever the professor says and that the professor is in a position of power over the students, this is very bad.

> There also seems to be a deep seated fear that any sort of public investment in people is seen as a slippery slope to soviet-style authoritarian government.

Well, we now have to show our papers to go to restaurants, bars, work, etc and are now required to mask our faces in public. its considered an act of terrorism to raise your voice at a school board meeting, and we're being censored on internet platforms. so yeah, you already accomplished your soviet-style authoritarianism.

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

#406

Post by timmg »

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...

I don't know about all of the rest of the world, but many countries require you to "test in" to college (and then it's free). The US basically lets anyone go to college if they can pay.

You can argue one is better than the other. But you should be honest/aware of the difference.

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

#407

Post by granzymes »

Down 6.6% from Fall 2019.

This is likely some combination of Covid making college temporarily less attractive (the social connections are just as important as the education) and lower-income students who have families that need them during the pandemic (community college enrollment dropped by a higher 13%).

I would expect enrollment (at least at 4-year universities) to fully recover once the pandemic is well and truly over.

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

#408

Post by namelessoracle »

lumost wrote: post #120
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…

Would it really penalize disadvantaged households? I’d imagine that many such students lack a co-signer for these predatory loans, or would be further disadvantaged by a 200k degree that doesn’t meaningfully change their economic outcomes in 2022. To make college work you need to pick a dwindling number of high leverage disciplines such as CS, even picking something technical like Chemistry won’t yield a return on a…

From what i hear you need at least a Masters degree in Chemistry to get lab assistant style jobs at entry level now :(

And no, they do NOT make good money.

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

#409

Post by sokoloff »

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?

Because the AMT course is typically 24 months long by itself (for a combined airframe and powerplant certificate)? It’s 30 months of relevant, supervised maintenance work experience or a qualified AMT school program, which are often 24 months full-time.

That’s far more time than a typical creative writing minor.

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

#410

Post by ativzzz »

greedo wrote: post #157
rootusrootus wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Relatively, yes, I believe so. But Oregon State still tells me to budget 30K/year for a resident undergrad. About half of that is living expenses, half is school.

I don't understand how we've accepted $30k/year as relatively affordable...

In my undergrad, when I was living in dorms, it also came with a meal plan (I think ~2 meals a day covered). So for in state, 10-15k was tuition. The rest was rent + meals. So 15k / 12 = $1250 a month, which is not cheap, but considering it includes food is really not bad at all.
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