Americans no longer see four-year college degrees as worth the cost

Ivy league is a shrinking circle of spots and does not represent the majority of where exceptionally talented students go to as a result. Lets just take the example I cited with the top 15% of high school students in each high school in NJ would likely exceed the available spots at all Ivy Leagues. You mentioned public institutions in your original message. States have programs in place to ensure exceptional students are taken care of.

>Also, I am not sure if you know people taking CC courses recently, but they are often taught in a way that gives you what you paid for at $0. Prerecorded canned lectures, infuriating and curiosity crushing online worksheets, etc. I know multiple people who were excited to do free CC when it was made free for older (30+) students whose academic aims were immediately stamped out within one semester because there was no college instruction. Just endless online worksheets. These things exist in other higher ed paths too, but truly not to the extent that I've witnessed.

I was admitted to an Engineering school but due to severe health issues with family, I was forced to move closer and enroll in community college so I have gone through this experience in a unique way (Enrolled at University -> Transfered to CC -> Transferred back to University).

This was ~15 years ago but during that time all the teachers at the CC had Masters degrees in their field and also had additional teaching credentials(some had PHDs).

I found that instruction was very focused on ensuring students learned material vs my experience at my public Research based university where either TAs taught courses or professors focused on their research would reluctantly lecture as a requirement.

I will concede that instruction in subjects like Math/Physics were not of the same caliber as university only because while CCs tended to give examinations consisting of hard versions of the practice problems assigned as homework, my Engineering university expected me to to deeply understand the material and would give very unique problems during the common exams that test the deeper understanding vs just technique.

I am surprised to hear the anecdote that you expressed as that wouldn't pass muster with the university accreditation bodies as well as the admissions departments of the public universities that renew the "transfer agreements" with the CCs. In NJ there is a requirement of a minimum standard of instruction needed or else the receiving university has the right to reject course credit from the CC and rescind transfer agreements. The universities know who comes from the CCs and they are assessing academic performance of those students. For example Rutgers does this with some CC in their CS classes as the subject material is not 1:1(they are offered as general elective credit instead so still allows the student to not fall too behind).

Let me ask you was this anecdote occuring during COVID? Maybe that accounts for the strange online instruction?

> It’s peanut butter and chocolate that has served democracy and its people well

Most people are now saying in polls it didn't serve them well! You're disagreeing with the majority of people's lived experiences. And of those who say it was worth it, a lot will be people in denial. Nobody wants to rack up huge debts and then admit it was a mistake. If you were to somehow measure how many people it has actually served poorly, instead of whether people admit it served them poorly, the numbers would be worse.

And serving democracy? No way! The Biden presidency stressed democracy by illegally attempting to bail liberal arts majors out of their debts, an extreme violation of the social contract. And arguing this stuff served people well when they're telling you right out that it didn't, is the kind of anti-democratic attitude that liberal arts colleges incubate in their student body. It's a big reason they're now openly loathed by so many people.

A good example of the problem is when you claim the academy has "some kind of intellectual idealism separate from economic incentive". There is no "separate from economic incentive". Anywhere, ever. For an adult to have such a belief is like still believing Santa Claus is real. It's economic incentives that have led to these professors creating a flood of non-replicable research using unscientific methods. Publish more papers = get promoted, even if the claims are false. So they publish lots of false papers. Incentives = outcomes, always.

Professors brainwashing people at vulnerable stages of their lives into believing false things about human nature is the number one reason why politics is so polarized, why democracy is so stressed all the time and it's so difficult to get anything done. It can easily take decades for people to learn that it isn't true and sometimes they never learn at all (like, because they went into academia themselves).

Do you have any thoughts about the cost of college degrees being worth the cost? That's ultimately what prompted me to comment.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_incredulity

Health insurance is more insurance than car insurance in the US. There is a legal out of pocket maximum of $17k or so, and networks don’t matter for emergency situations. In fact, people get millions of dollars of healthcare from health insurance whereas auto insurance provides a maximum of $500k after which you have to use umbrella insurance.

Health insurance premiums are not insurance premiums, because legally, health insurance sellers cannot underwrite the health risks. Legally, young and healthy people have to subsidize old and sick, via age rating factor caps (3x and even 1x in NY and 2x in MA), and not being able to price pre existing conditions.

Which means health insurance premiums are mostly a tax if you are healthy and less than 50 years old or so, especially if you don’t plan on giving birth that year.

Auto insurance premiums are insurance, because the insurer is pricing your risk of loss, based on your driving history/driving distance/location/etc.