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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

#591

Post by hylaride »

jswelker wrote: post #193
nradov wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, the federal tax code is structured to give advantages to employer sponsored health plans. But it doesn't have to be that way. A better approach would be to eliminate those plans and force everyone to purchase individual or family plans through state ACA marketplaces using pre-tax dollars.

Not sure why the down votes. Severing health insurance from employers would be a huge win. It's just such a massive task that the efforts to address it like Obamacare aren't enough even remotely.

As a Canadian, for all the faults of our healthcare system, the fact that I don't have to stick with a job to maintain healthcare for myself or my family is a massive amount of freedom I take for granted.

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

#592

Post by inemesitaffia »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #470
lurk2 wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I figure it's an emergent property based on the self-selected group who join the respective organizations plus some exposure to new ideas. There are plenty of conservatives interested in anthropology; there’s no reason to think they’ve self-selected out of the pool, so then we have to consider if conservatives enter the field but are exposed to new ideas such that none remain conservatives for long (this seems unli…

Being interested is not the same as being competent. Conservatism is not a doctrine of competence. Experience shows time and again that conservatives can't think, can't plan, and can't govern. They act in emotional and purely self-interested ways to promote rigid hierarchies, and are reliably surprised by consequences that are obvious and predictable to rational educated actors. Brexit. Anti-vax campaigns. Anti-maski…

I've seen this exact claim in the NYT and it doesn't hold muster.

You're just othering.

The organizations we're talking about aren't diverse, inclusive or representative.

Nor is conservativatism a Western only thing.

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

#593

Post by inemesitaffia »

watwut wrote: post #576
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being segregated into different universities is exactly the thing you need not to happen, and your attitude is the exemplification of the problem. Who is going to feel welcome if their concerns are blindly maligned as prejudiced and in bad faith by default?

It is not like liberals would created religious colleges. Religious colleges were created by evangelicals and they have rules that explicitly punish things like "woman having male visitor" or "being gay" or "not being religious". If what you want is ideological purity of evangelical Christianity, then yes, you have to create own institution. Which is exactly what conservatives did. Because it is extremely valid for o…

This is nonsense though.

When academics were pushed out of Soviet and Chinese universities they had to leave to other locations or stop being productive.

The fact they can set up their own schools is a plus in the USA.

The disparate impact is clear.

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

#594

Post by earlyreturns »

Why pay to get a degree in the US when you are competing for jobs not based on merit or qualifications? I can see why those in h1b’d industries like cs don’t see any point, and those are the industries where the most jobs and money have historically been. As goes the STEM labor market so goes the market for stuff like accounting, communications, sociology. A fair and secure labor market is a necessary condition for higher education to pay off. American workers compete for jobs with a global workforce, therefore American universities must be cost competitive with those in India, China, etc…. Tenure is like tarrifs, the cost of protectionism is paid by the consumer.

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

#595

Post by plastic3169 »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #454
plastic3169 wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could China attack US? Why would US try to attack China in asia? Not an expert but that feels like losing proposition. I think people confuse proxy wars with wars. US is under no threat of being actually attacked.

You could ask the same question about Japan attacking America but they did do it. If they think conflict is inevitable then they may well feel they will get an upper hand by moving first.

It counts as an attack, but how close was US to actually being taken over? Usually when you fight a war the real risk is that you cease to exist as a country. I know nothing about war strategy, but seems to me US is in a great position as long as you get along with Canada and Mexico.

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

#596

Post by Workaccount2 »

mystraline wrote: post #534
jleyank wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

An occupied territory, sure. The Japanese only attacked the occupiers (USA). They didn't go after any of the native peoples' cities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaiian_Kingdom In 1887, King Kalākaua was forced to accept a new constitution after a coup d'état by the Honolulu Rifles, a volunteer military unit recruited from American settlers. Queen Liliʻuokalani, who succeeded Kalākaua in 1891, tried to abrogate th…

On geopolitical scale, you either need to have big guns or big friends. No one has any true right to any land. If you don't have the foresight to recognize that, you probably don't have a place in the future.

This isn't even something only cold imperialist superpowers adopt. Hawaii itself was populated with warring chiefdoms that were killing each other and taking land for centuries before a bigger fish showed up. Small fish happily eating smaller fish but then are upset when they get eaten...

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

#597

Post by thinkingtoilet »

earlyreturns wrote: post #594

Why pay to get a degree in the US when you are competing for jobs not based on merit or qualifications? I can see why those in h1b’d industries like cs don’t see any point, and those are the industries where the most jobs and money have historically been. As goes the STEM labor market so goes the market for stuff like accounting, communications, sociology. A fair and secure labor market is a necessary condition for h…

I work for a small Us-based med-tech company that is growing. We are paring down our offshore devs and hiring only US based devs now. I can assure you that if you have a good school on your resume it puts you at the top of the list. All things being equal, if you went to University of Vermont (like I did) and and someone else when to Harvard, you better believe I'm interviewing the Harvard kid first.

>Why pay to get a degree in the US when you are competing for jobs not based on merit or qualifications?

This is one of those things that people just say and while of course there are issues with our current system, this provably false and patently absurd. Do you not do a technical interview for new devs? You don't check their merit or qualifications? You just do a lottery? It's frustrating to hear comments like this because it reeks of people thinking they're so smart while ignoring reality.

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

#598

Post by otabdeveloper4 »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #189
anonym29 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've interviewed Harvard CS grads for SWE roles at big tech who couldn't write a working program for fizzbuzz, for defanging an IP address, or for reversing words in a sentence, in a language of their choice, with leetcode's provided instructions, in half an hour, with unlimited attempts, gentle coaching from me, and the ability to use the internet to search for anything that isn't a direct solution (e.g. syntax). Ye…

If you don’t cram for leetcode, you won’t pass a leetcode interview. It takes some kids a few interviews to figure that out, even they are from elite school like MIT. You were just their learning experience.

> FizzBuzz is now a "leetcode question"

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

#599

Post by carlosjobim »

venturecruelty wrote: post #114
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can provide the piece of paper at a fraction of the cost This isn’t socially useful.

And what we're doing now is? Telling 17-year-olds to take on six figures of debt and then replacing them with ChatGPT while making it impossible to discharge their debt?

That's easily solved with labor market reform. First implement federal and state law that requires every worker performing any profession to have a college degree in that field.

Then companies are evaluated on how much work is produced in their business (for example by revenue), and they have to either contract the equivalent number of people with college degrees, or even better - license the degree from a college graduate. This can also be used to pay for tuition. The student gets a mortgage that pays for her education when she enters college, and then the lender has the right to part of either her salary, or the licensing fee for her degree to companies that need it, or to people who need it.

Let's say a chef who hasn't gone to culinary college, he can pay a culinary college graduate 20% of his salary to use their degree, which is a professional license. Or a company needing programmers. They can hire immigrants or an AI to program, and pay licensing fees to computer science graduates who have the degree.

Think what I thriving market for banks, investors, and insurance companies! They will be able to package these licenses and offer them on the market to individual workers or to companies for competitive and efficient rates. The college student of course gets rewarded as well, as they can rent out their degree, or even sell it. So a good student can get several degrees, and have a very good income from both his own work and from degree licensing fees. Of course we'll make sure that students belonging to an oppressed class be allowed to license their one degree to several places at the same time.

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

#600

Post by tim333 »

somenameforme wrote: post #558
tim333 wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't agree on the Russia Ukraine motivations. Ukraine is not part of NATO and was not going to become part of NATO. There were already two NATO countries bordering Russia near Moscow and St P if NATO had wanted to invade which they had no thoughts of doing. Russia lies constantly on this stuff. I think they basically regarded Ukraine their land as part of the Russian empire they were restoring.

It's not about immediate intentions, but about strategic options. Imagine Russia decided to form a military alliance with Mexico with the expected intention of deploying weapons on the Mexican border. If Mexico agreed to this, it would take approximately 0 seconds before the US invaded them under some whimsical pretext (drug gangs probably) and overthrew their government to prevent this. In fact this is, more or less…

I still think Ukraine wasn't primarily about Russia's military security though. I mean the US/Nato could stick missiles in Estonia if they wanted.

It may have been about political security. If Ukraine which is basically at least part Russian had become a prosperous democracy on Russia's doorstep it would make it harder for Putin to justify his autocracy. In fact that one may come to pass.

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