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

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

#511

Post by deanishe »

armchairhacker wrote: post #388
jillesvangurp wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a simple and effective escape hatch: study abroad. Europe, Australia, South America, Canada even. Some countries are more affordable than others but the most expensive (by far) option is staying in the US. From the point of view of developing your brain, leaving your country is a free education in itself. There is also the effect of embedding yourself in a network of expats made up of the best and brightest f…

I can vouch for studying abroad. But can you get loans and scholarships for it as easily as studying at home? Even if the university is free you must pay for food and housing.

> Even if the university is free you must pay for food and housing.

A one-person apartment in the local halls of residence costs under €500/month here in DE. A room in a shared flat costs a lot less.

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

#512

Post by jleyank »

mystraline wrote: post #486
pjmlp wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most important fact, that people overlook, is that its industrial capacity was never bombed during the war, and Pearl Harbour was the only time the country got directly attacked.

When was Pearl Harbor attacked by Japan? Now, when did Hawai'i become a state? And when and by whom was their king deposed? > Pearl Harbour was the only time the country got directly attacked. Uh, which country again was it? (Edit: -4, really? Damn, people are salty about actually knowing history versus going against the US public school system's propaganda that "We (royal) were attacked". In reality, the occupier fo…

Hawaii was a US territory as was Alaska (which was also attacked). As is Puerto Rico today.

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

#513

Post by immibis »

vasco wrote: post #311
jswelker wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The F1 issue is absolutely real. Foreign students have been the secret sauce in keeping prices lower for US students for a long time now. Trump 1 and now Trump 2 presidencies have created financial crises at most universities just by making vague anti immigration gestures without even materially changing student visas. Presidents and provosts routinely make desperate oversea sales pitches to try to gin up the pipelin…

> have created financial crises at most universities Those multi-billion dollar endowments are fine man, don't worry about them, they're not running out.

At 4% a billion dollars yields 40 million per year, if you have 1000 staff that's 40k each, barely pays a salary.

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

#514

Post by sharts »

rayiner wrote: post #161
collinmcnulty wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This view seems to be common, but I think it misses what incredible alchemy comes from making people who come in for “job training” (like I did) spend 4 years in close proximity with research, academic freedom, liberal arts, and at least an attempt at some kind of intellectual idealism separate from economic incentive. It’s peanut butter and chocolate that has served democracy and its people well by having a middle c…

That's historical revisionism. The percentage of American adults over age 25 who have a college degree was only 20% as recently as 1990. When America was truly at the top of the world in the 1950s and 1960s, it was under 10%. A high fraction of college attendance is better correlated with the 21st century decline in America's situation.

Today’s college is yesterday’s high school though

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

#515

Post by torginus »

danans wrote: post #207
rayiner wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's historical revisionism. The percentage of American adults over age 25 who have a college degree was only 20% as recently as 1990. When America was truly at the top of the world in the 1950s and 1960s, it was under 10%. A high fraction of college attendance is better correlated with the 21st century decline in America's situation.

> The percentage of American adults over age 25 who have a college degree was only 20% as recently as 1990. When America was truly at the top of the world in the 1950s and 1960s, it was under 10%. Due to automation and the great advance of technology, the floor for most jobs has risen such that the skills/knowledge that a 1950s school dropout had would be insufficient for anything but the most menial jobs today. Outs…

That is absolutely untrue - a large part of the jobs were either outsourced and/or automated to be trivial, but a large part is essentially barely made easier by technology - food service, all the jobs necessary for running and building infrastructure, homes etc. is only changing very slowly due to technology - this is due to the nature of the fields, even if there were rapid advancement in plumbing (there weren't) in the past few decades, most of the buildings are standing and rebuilding them makes little sense - same with water treatment facilities, power plants etc.

In fact I would argue in some ways society is even less capable today - the percentage of people skilled in the trades is much lower, so it would be much harder to rebuild from scratch.

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

#516

Post by sharts »

monero-xmr wrote: post #282
rayiner wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany is a great example of how you don’t need most of the population enrolled in universities. > The USA is still THE powerhouse economy of the world. The US was a powerhouse economy when it could build the world’s largest navy almost overnight. Since the 1980s, the U.S. economy has become highly financialized. It’s disputed how much American economic dominance is real versus on paper today.

I agree with you, but if the US truly has the best military (and it does 100x) then when push comes to shove, the US will destroy anyone who tries to undermine it. Very dangerous game to oppose it. Being able to construct things quickly is important, but if the US can militarily seize nearly every country on earth in days, the power is not necessarily where the kit is located

100x and yet it only took a couple of decades to replace the Taliban with the Taliban.

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

#517

Post by [deleted] »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #258
anonym29 wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can't solve FizzBuzz in half an hour with a language of your choice while being able to look up syntax, your problem isn't that you failed to cram for leetcode, it's that you don't know how to write code. There's nothing inherently wrong with not being able to write code, but you probably shouldn't be applying for software engineering roles where the main responsibility of the job is ultimately to write workin…

Just to be clear I have no problem passing these interviews, I just spent a few weeks cramming leetcode and got a job at Google. Leetcode wasn’t the main reason I was hired, but it was a filter that I had to get through (I’ve never been given fizzbuzz before, but I assume that is just because it’s no longer in style and hasn’t been for more than a decade). You just don’t throw yourself into on the fly coding, you pra…

[deleted]

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

#518

Post by dan-robertson »

Maybe one thing to keep in mind is that there are a big range of colleges in the US. If you go to a poorly regarded party school then probably you have a good time and maybe even get some useful connections out of it, but the main advantage is presumably being able to check the ‘college degree’ box when applying to relatively ordinary jobs. If you go to Harvard then (a) you pay much less if you have limited means and (b) your future prospects are probably significantly better from the experience (this is a bit complicated – a lot of the good outcomes are due to capable and ambitious inputs so the direct benefit of the degree is more limited).

It is easy to read something about one subset of universities while subconsciously thinking of a different subset (eg all universities vs well-known / highly regarded / similar ones to your own).

When some survey says that people no longer see the value in the degree, it obviously doesn’t mean that no college is worth it.

Another thing: a lot of recent wage growth was in the lower end of the income distribution so better alternatives is part of the decreased desirability of college.

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

#519

Post by nicoburns »

collinmcnulty wrote: post #143
jswelker wrote: post #102

Higher ed is like employer based health insurance in that they are both weird path dependent historical accidents. People want cheap healthcare, and it got shoehorned into an odd employer fringe benefit system that really is not at all related healthcare in any intrinsic way. People want job training, and it got shoehorned into extra departments at liberal arts universities intended as aristocrat finishing schools. J…

This view seems to be common, but I think it misses what incredible alchemy comes from making people who come in for “job training” (like I did) spend 4 years in close proximity with research, academic freedom, liberal arts, and at least an attempt at some kind of intellectual idealism separate from economic incentive. It’s peanut butter and chocolate that has served democracy and its people well by having a middle c…

> I think it misses what incredible alchemy comes from making people who come in for “job training” (like I did) spend 4 years in close proximity with research, academic freedom, liberal arts, and at least an attempt at some kind of intellectual idealism separate from economic incentive.

For me it was the opposite. I came into college full of academic curiosity, and left completely burnt out by a system that cares about grades and proving knowledge much more than the pursuit of knowledge.

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

#520

Post by justin66 »

terminalshort wrote: post #404
jswelker wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And resultingly, if you do go to college and immerse yourself in the educational experience, you come out with superpowers compared to your peers. Getting companies to see those superpowers in a hiring pipeline of course is a different story

I partied my way through an easy major with nothing to do with my job. The people who didn't have no "superpowers" that I don't. The degree is a bunch of status signalling bullshit.

It sounds like you’ve rationalized your lazy work in college by convincing yourself it wouldn’t have made any difference if you had worked harder.
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