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

411–420 of 1001 posts

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

#411

Post by chrisco255 »

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…

Academia is a hostile environment for a right-leaning person. When less than 5% of professors identify as conservative, why would you gravitate to it, as a conservative? That's half the country, by the way. Maybe that has something to do with low engagement. Consequently, the institution suffers dramatically from its own groupthink.

That being said, there's a difference between academic education and other forms of education, such as vocational or work experience. One is not better than the other. I'm weary of people that think they're smarter or better than someone else on the basis of what school they went to or how long for. Academia does not have a monopoly on knowledge. Particularly in the information age, but even well before the age we find ourselves in, there's always been value in the pragmatic experience of less intellectual pursuits.

I'd say the U.S.'s slant towards pragmatism and away from intellectualism is one of my favorite things about the country. I'd say it showed itself pretty well on the Covid response. Red states were more quicker to re-open, quicker to drop restrictions, and quicker to move on to living with Covid and in spite of it. People knew intuitively that you wouldn't be able to control a virus more infectious than the common cold.

And many people know this, intuitively as well, that's why New York loss record population last year and why Florida and Texas grew dramatically. The intellectuals running New York and New York City probably have tons of education and not one bit of common sense, because all they know is conformity. When an ordained expert says jump, they ask how high?

That doesn't even begin to cover the other part of it, which is how poorly adapted academia is for the 21st century. Even if it were free, it wouldn't fix that problem.

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

#412

Post by salemh »

deltree7 wrote: post #384
zapataband1 wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

No post body was provided.

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

#413

Post by treis »

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.

Bankruptcy isn't a get out of debt free card. You can only get debt that you can't realistically repay discharged. The new graduate with a job at Google making $150k isn't getting their student loans discharged.

So the answer to your question is as much as I think they could reasonably repay based on their earning potential after graduation. Which is a reasonable answer to the whole problem except that it hands a huge advantage to rich kids who's parents can write that tuition check.

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

#414

Post by namelessoracle »

honkycat wrote: post #397
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…

> The loans are exactly why the colleges were able to continue jacking up the prices. This is partly true. The US also DID use to subsidize more University tuition. However: Agreed. The loans are dumb. They feed into the issue in exactly the way you describe. They should be interest free as long as you are making regular payments.[1] > Also, in-state tuition for state schools is much less... This is so thorny... I ha…

The issue with student loans no one talks about is that the interest collected on them is already earmaked to help pay for Obamacare and Pell Grants.

If you wonder why Democrats get so hesitant to do anything about the situation there is one of your reasons why. (there are alot more reasons but thats a decent reason)

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

#415

Post by bryanlarsen »

tomschlick wrote: post #70
bryanlarsen wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China has been very successful at preventing the original variants from spreading. So they provide an existence proof that it is possible, at least pre-Omicron. I'd rather live with ineffective American lockdowns than effective Chinese ones, but the Chinese example falsifies your statement.

Yeah I wouldn't believe anything related to the virus coming from China, especially numbers that make the CCP look good. They have too much of an incentive to lie, even more so that its finally not taboo to believe that the Wuhan lab was responsible for the outbreak.

So take your information from reports that make the CCP look bad, like the extreme measures taken when an outbreak is detected.

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

#416

Post by _jal »

sosuke wrote: post #380
_jal wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Salary of full-time faculty at American colleges and universities: 1970-71: $81,798 2018-19: $88,703 Mean salary of American college and university presidents in 1983: $160,640 (2018 dollars). Median compensation of private college and university presidents in 2018: $668,000. Median compensation of public college and university presidents in 2019: $495,808 More, and primary source links: https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyb…

nvm

The post declares near the top:

"ALL FIGURES ARE INFLATION-ADJUSTED INTO CONSTANT 2018 OR 2019 DOLLARS."

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

#417

Post by texasbigdata »

jacobolus wrote: post #403
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 ign…

That’s the point?

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

#418

Post by rdtsc »

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.

> Are Colleges and Universities pocketing the money?

They are. Why wouldn't they? Kids and parents can get massive loans from the government, it would be silly for universities and all their admin staff to pass up the opportunity to enrich themselves.

Universities have started to compete on which ones have more gyms, clubs, luxury dorms, various interest groups. Well, the basket weaving club needs an instructor, a secretary, a janitor, a new facility, a maintenance person for it etc. Some of them may be friends and cousins of the existing administrators, but you're not supposed to notice that too much.

I couldn't stop laughing when I visited my alma mater, a decade later and seeing how they had build a brand new gym with a huge lazy river around it. In my head I could hear the enthusiastic tour guide "Your child can type their homework while floating around in a lazy river, isn't that great!". But then, of course, I realized that it was my tuition that has paid for the lazy river.

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

#419

Post by namelessoracle »

throwaway5752 wrote: post #172
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…

That completely shifts the blame to bureaucracies, and that isn't fair. Loans are where they are because students prefer newer dorms, amenities, programs, and research opportunities. Student competition leads to prestige, leads to demand from employers for graduates from a specific institution. It is a self-reinforcing dynamic. The fact student loads have special bankruptcy treatment is bad. But absent Sallie Mae (or…

They care so much about dorms and the food programs that schools have to mandate that the student live on campus and pay for on campus food their first year!
Post reply on HN