More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years • Hacker News Board

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

#591

Post by sokoloff » Thu, Jan 13, 2022, 7:26 PM UTC

rootsudo wrote: post #571

emaginniss wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're way off on 3. You're saying that tuition alone at a state school costs $45k per semester, which would be $90k per year. This site says that the average in-state public school is ~$25k all-in for a year. That includes tuition, room and board, books and transportation. https://www.valuepenguin.com/student-loans/average-cost-of-c...

That is not accurate at all https://admission.ucla.edu/tuition-aid/tuition-fees 56k 9 months. https://www.ohio.edu/financial-aid/cost 34k 9 months 9 months is considered 2 semesters. per semester. wouldn't consider ohio personally though. but beats your average by a good 30%. Not sure where it can get cheaper than Ohio.

Is that meant to support your earlier claim that “most state schools...a semester costs minimum $45,000”?

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

#592

Post by zebraflask » Thu, Jan 13, 2022, 7:26 PM UTC

geodel wrote: post #574

zebraflask wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think #1 needs to factor in cost of living. In many urban areas, 45K is near or even below the poverty level for a single worker.

Well , one thing to consider is who more likely need to stay in urban area. I think it is required more for college educated compared to tradespeople.

To find white collar employment? At least before remote work became prevalent recently, I suppose so.

On the other hand, the infrastructure for a large urban area doesn't run itself! Trade work is definitely needed to keep the roads paved and cars functional, the warehouses and stores stocked, the buildings in repair, etc., I would hazard even more so than in less urbanized areas.

I think what I'm getting at is that it seems a little too facile to say uncritically that anyone can just go drive a forklift and expect to make a reasonably liveable income.

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

#593

Post by yardie » Thu, Jan 13, 2022, 7:26 PM UTC

lapsedacademic wrote: post #387

starwind wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 unqualifi…

For most schools CS is literally in the Math Department. And traditional CS is a lot more math than the contemporary CS, which should really be called SWE.

My alma mater finally merged CS and SWE, then moved the new CS/SWE degree to Engineering because engineering basically prints money.

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

#594

Post by zaphod12 » Thu, Jan 13, 2022, 7:27 PM UTC

ravitation wrote: post #522

endisneigh wrote: post #444

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Im very skeptical of this post: 1. Many trades also pay like crap and have a very limited window in which you can do it. In addition many are not welcoming to women at all, regardless even if you take the highest paying trades, do they pay more than the highest paying careers that require higher education? 2. Which boot camp? How many people ended up like your daughter? How much was it? Without these facts no compari…

> 1. Many trades also pay like crap and have a very limited window in which you can do it. In addition many are not welcoming to women at all, regardless even if you take the highest paying trades, do they pay more than the highest paying careers that require higher education? Exactly. These types of post often ignore the actual work being done. A graduate student might make a comparable hourly rate to an amazon ware…

I don't know man - graduate student might be the only job that's more demanding that amazon warehouse employee.

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

#595

Post by aerostable_slug » Thu, Jan 13, 2022, 7:30 PM UTC

zip1234 wrote: post #424

bagacrap wrote: post #71

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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…

At least in a house loan they will check your income and job before giving you the loan. For college they will give anyone a loan for an immense amount of money without verifying anything.

The problem comes in when you try to verify someone's ability to repay the loan. It's not just one's choice in major — for example, the graduation rate for Historically Black Colleges & Universities is only 35%. There are significant deltas between GPA, test scores, and college success rates between various ethnicities. Further, there are significant differences in the repayment of student loans between various ethnicities.

I would not want to be on the team that does a risk assessment with these facts as inputs, because the results would be politically untenable.

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

#596

Post by chaostheory » Thu, Jan 13, 2022, 7:30 PM UTC

endisneigh wrote: post #555

chaostheory wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. Many trades also pay like crap and have a very limited window in which you can do it. Which is why the parent comment specifically mentioned "skilled trades". If you're not familiar with the term, think plumber or electrician instead of roofer or outdoor landscaper. The working window for skilled trades is also far greater than software engineering.

There are skilled trades that don’t pay well. In any case there’s no canonical list of “skilled trades” to begin with. I fail to see how you can be an electrician longer than a software engineer, but even if that was true there are far more careers a college degree enable that pay more.

imo a "skilled trade" involves a hard to learn skill that is in high demand. Consequently, the demand yields a higher salary than a commodity "non-high skilled" trade that is not high in demand.

> I fail to see how you can be an electrician longer than a software engineer

Because electrical components and systems do not evolve and change as fast as software constructs, neither does plumbing.

> but even if that was true there are far more careers a college degree enable that pay more.

That's debatable when you account for student loans paired with less marketable degrees. Otherwise, I feel that student debt wouldn't be an issue.

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

#597

Post by oblio » Thu, Jan 13, 2022, 7:34 PM UTC

larkost wrote: post #421

zapataband1 wrote: post #365

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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.

Not only that, but depending on which state you are in in Germany (and Austria) you get routed at around 4th grade. If the teachers decide that you are academically fit for it then you go on to the Gymnasium, which prepares you for college, often with some focus for your class (e.g.: mathematics, arts, or science). If those same teachers decide that you are not up to college, but are still smart enough for something…

I heard that this year, at least in some regions, they're doing the Gymnasium assignments randomly (!) I know someone where their child qualified for Gymnasium but apparently it's not guaranteed this year due to lack of spots so there's going to be a lottery (!).

This is in North Rhine-Westphalia.

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

#598

Post by halpert » Thu, Jan 13, 2022, 7:34 PM UTC

snomad wrote: post #590

endisneigh wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Im very skeptical of this post: 1. Many trades also pay like crap and have a very limited window in which you can do it. In addition many are not welcoming to women at all, regardless even if you take the highest paying trades, do they pay more than the highest paying careers that require higher education? 2. Which boot camp? How many people ended up like your daughter? How much was it? Without these facts no compari…

> without that community college plus a cheap state school isn’t expensive. UCLA is 13k per year, *if* you are from California. Classes are likely impacted (even upper division) so even if a person goes to UCLA just for the last 2.5 - 3 years they could easily owe > 30k The real cost - rampant corruption (in california, if they ever opened the books on the non-profit entities it would be a major stunner and awakening…

I think 30K is quite a reasonable cost. Parents have almost two decades to save the money, plus they can do so with a 529 plan and avoid capital gains taxes. Even saving $100 dollars a month invested in the market will net 42,000 after 18 years (assuming 7% return).

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

#599

Post by klipt » Thu, Jan 13, 2022, 7:35 PM UTC

glasss wrote: post #551

hardtke wrote: post #537

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> In addition many are not welcoming to women at all Economists are now finding that as more women move into a profession, the pay goes down. Similarly, when computer programming moved from a female dominated profession (early days) to male dominated (now) the pay went up. Medical fields that have higher proportions of women have lower pay. Along these lines, as college skews more female (college grads are like 60/40…

Would love to read more about this phenomenon, do you have links to articles or places to start? Edit: Found an article[0] that links to a study[1] [0] - https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/20/upshot/as-women-take-over... [1] - https://academic.oup.com/sf/article-abstract/88/2/865/223534...

Correlation is not causation. It's possible that as fields pay more, they attract more men (because due to gender roles imposed on men, men lose more status from low income than women do) and conversely as fields pay less, men abandon them for other higher paying fields.

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

#600

Post by joshgrib » Thu, Jan 13, 2022, 7:36 PM UTC

throwaway5752 wrote: post #320

malfist wrote: post #205

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It's a little rich to blame 18 year olds for college costs skyrocketing don't you think? Of course students prefer newer dorms, amenities, programs and research opportunities. But asking someone who might have been getting $5/week allowance to figure out how much a newer dorm is worth when the prices are in the 10s of thousands is an impossible task. They don't know how much money is worth. And then to tell them that…

The demand for top tier education drives prices, just like the financing structure for loans for that education drives prices. Excluding one or the other is a false choice. Maybe if risk of default were factored into loans that would change the trajectory of the tuition cost curve. But taking away agency the consumers in the model doesn't lead us to the insights we need to actually fix the underlying problem. I have…

I'm not trying to make it black-and-white, there's certainly some degree of personal choice weighing in here - but it's not the core issue and it's probably a distraction. When we realized cigarettes were bad it was partially about informing people, but the main thing was to change marketing laws so you could make sure that wasn't undoing all the good info.

If I give you two loan options with bad terms and you have to choose one, then that is a fiscal policy thing and your choice is ultimately pretty inconsequential. You may be slightly better off than the person who made the other choice but the bad policy is affecting both of you.

Ultimately it's both a policy and a personal choice thing, but as with most society-wide issues the personal choice aspect falls away pretty quickly and we need to get realistic and figure out what a solution is instead of just blaming individuals.