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America's College Towns Go from Boom to Bust

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Re: America's College Towns Go from Boom to Bust

#61

Post by alex43578 »

keiferski wrote: post #42
alex43578 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. The changes a school would need to make to the school, the curriculum, and the faculty to switch from teaching accounting or gender studies to welding or HVAC would mean you'd be pasting an expensive University of Misc State logo and mascot onto a whole new enterprise, implicitly putting a premium on an educational path that's really all about ROI.

I think many people would be willing to pay that premium for a college experience. And from the college's point of view, changing focus is certainly better than shutting down completely.

What is the college experience in this context? Networking? The library and research efforts? Socialization? Parties? Frats? Sports teams?

On the "academic" side, I don't see how the college experience would work for a trade school, while on the "social" side, it's crazy to think you'd pay the premium for most of these things (except networking, as people often point out for "regular" colleges) when there's other avenues for socialization or sports.

Re: America's College Towns Go from Boom to Bust

#62

Post by mmooss »

whatever1 wrote: post #37
mmooss wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why would you fork out a lot of money for a diploma that's worth little and won't even connect you with local job opportunities? To learn, to sharpen your mind, to grow and change yourself.

I think after industrialization we started realizing how advanced knowledge of complex topics can multiply our impact and wealth. No wonder all nations strived to educate their people and their people aspired to go to colleges and get higher specialized degrees. The reality is that the economy cannot occupy all these specialists and still requires a ton of fungible generalists. In fact we made so many specialists tha…

> The reality is that the economy cannot occupy all these specialists

What is that based on? I haven't heard of any such problem, other than from people who are trying to cut education funding or social mobility.

> and still requires a ton of fungible generalists.

Undergraduate college degree holders are generalists. Nobody considers you a specialist, or will hire you as such, because of your undergraduate degree. Maybe some engineering degrees, but really you need a masters degree for almost every specialist job.

> even from a societal perspective you would think that with more knowledge we would become more tolerant, more rational etc etc. Well how did that work out?

Despite the recent reactionary backlash, we still far ahead of where we were 50 years ago and even more ahead of where we were a century ago. The evidence is overwhelmingly the other way.

Re: America's College Towns Go from Boom to Bust

#64

Post by mmooss »

glimshe wrote: post #45
mmooss wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why would you fork out a lot of money for a diploma that's worth little and won't even connect you with local job opportunities? To learn, to sharpen your mind, to grow and change yourself.

Which you can also do through reading and even YouTube nowadays. College is great but 1) Not for everybody and 2) only the rich can pay 50K-400K to "sharpen their minds" without a high-paying job in the other end. We need more middle class jobs that don't require a 4-year college degree

> Which you can also do through reading and even YouTube nowadays.

You cannot. Very few people - geniuses - could learn on their own what a typical person learns with a teacher, and even the geniuses are far better off with a teacher working at their level.

> 1) Not for everybody

That's such a general statement that it's meaningless, not falsifiable. It's for most people.

> only the rich can pay 50K-400K

Yes, I strongly agree that's an enormous problem.

> We need more middle class jobs that don't require a 4-year college degree

That's what the people who want to cut opportunity and education say. But middle-class / poor people have dreams and want to fulfill their potential too, and are also an enormous pool of talent.

The solution is to make college affordable. Multiple presidential candidates have offered ways to do it. There's no reason we can't.

Re: America's College Towns Go from Boom to Bust

#65

Post by somenameforme »

999900000999 wrote: post #57
somenameforme wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your article seems to be describing citizenship scams. Quoting it: "In 2022, out of the 792 South Korean women who entered into marriage with Vietnamese men, 556 were remarriages. Among these, 482, or 86.7%, were women who originally came from Vietnam and had become naturalized South Korean citizens. They acquired South Korean nationality through their first marriage with local men, then divorced, and later remarried…

>But wouldn't it be rather less extreme to simply push for sustainable cultural values to begin with? Completely change a culture that's developed over hundreds of years to make life too stressful to raise a family ? The moment people(women) had the agency to opt out they did. >Most Western nations are still fairly close to sustainable levels. >Summary: U.S. population growth is projected to decline, and the populati…

You're intuition's a bit off on this issue. Here [1] is one poll on American's preferences in terms of fertility, among countless others you can find. They all tell the same tale: Americans want to have children, but aren't. And even those that have children aren't having as many as they want. The overall number that do not want to have children at all (8%) is verging on statistical noise.

And the motivation for having a stable, and ideally growing, population isn't about economics - it's about culture. Countries aren't defined by borders, but by the people within those borders. If you simply swap the populations of America and Saudi Arabia they're not going to start acting just fundamentally different. The two countries would begin to rapidly resemble the countries the people came from, even if the old rules and establishment initially remained in place.

And Western culture has currently found itself in an unsustainable place which means that if things don't change, it will simply die only to be replaced. And I think that'd be a shame, because while it has its own deep flaws, it's undeniable that Western culture has had an extremely positive overall influence on the world.

[1] - https://news.gallup.com/poll/511238/americans-preference-lar...

Re: America's College Towns Go from Boom to Bust

#66

Post by whatever1 »

mmooss wrote: post #62
whatever1 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think after industrialization we started realizing how advanced knowledge of complex topics can multiply our impact and wealth. No wonder all nations strived to educate their people and their people aspired to go to colleges and get higher specialized degrees. The reality is that the economy cannot occupy all these specialists and still requires a ton of fungible generalists. In fact we made so many specialists tha…

> The reality is that the economy cannot occupy all these specialists What is that based on? I haven't heard of any such problem, other than from people who are trying to cut education funding or social mobility. > and still requires a ton of fungible generalists. Undergraduate college degree holders are generalists. Nobody considers you a specialist, or will hire you as such, because of your undergraduate degree. Ma…

> What is that based on? I haven't heard of any such problem, other than from people who are trying to cut education funding or social mobility.

Check any South/Eastern European country. Tons of degrees, insanely high youth unemployment. Devastating lack of labor for businesses. Of course an engineer will prefer to stay home with their parents instead of going to work as a barista.

> Undergraduate college degree holders are generalists. Nobody considers you a specialist, or will hire you as such, because of your undergraduate degree. Maybe some engineering degrees, but really you need a masters degree for almost every specialist job.

With generalists I meant unspecialized labor: servers, farm workers, construction workers etc

Re: America's College Towns Go from Boom to Bust

#67

Post by mmooss »

whatever1 wrote: post #66
mmooss wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The reality is that the economy cannot occupy all these specialists What is that based on? I haven't heard of any such problem, other than from people who are trying to cut education funding or social mobility. > and still requires a ton of fungible generalists. Undergraduate college degree holders are generalists. Nobody considers you a specialist, or will hire you as such, because of your undergraduate degree. Ma…

> What is that based on? I haven't heard of any such problem, other than from people who are trying to cut education funding or social mobility. Check any South/Eastern European country. Tons of degrees, insanely high youth unemployment. Devastating lack of labor for businesses. Of course an engineer will prefer to stay home with their parents instead of going to work as a barista. > Undergraduate college degree hold…

> Check any South/Eastern European country.

I thought we were talking about the US - note the headline. I understand some less wealthy countries have that problem; I don't know why but it's an interesting question.

Re: America's College Towns Go from Boom to Bust

#68

Post by 999900000999 »

somenameforme wrote: post #65
999900000999 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But wouldn't it be rather less extreme to simply push for sustainable cultural values to begin with? Completely change a culture that's developed over hundreds of years to make life too stressful to raise a family ? The moment people(women) had the agency to opt out they did. >Most Western nations are still fairly close to sustainable levels. >Summary: U.S. population growth is projected to decline, and the populati…

You're intuition's a bit off on this issue. Here [1] is one poll on American's preferences in terms of fertility, among countless others you can find. They all tell the same tale: Americans want to have children, but aren't. And even those that have children aren't having as many as they want. The overall number that do not want to have children at all (8%) is verging on statistical noise. And the motivation for havi…

>And Western culture has currently found itself in an unsustainable place which means that if things don't change, it will simply die only to be replaced. And I think that'd be a shame, because while it has its own deep flaws, it's undeniable that Western culture has had an extremely positive overall influence on the world.

Your not wrong, but I think your dealing with an overly optimistic view of things. Just because someone says in a poll they want a family doesn't mean they have the means to start one.

At 19 my first girlfriend wanted twins, but it would have completely infesible for that to happen.

If we want this dream world to happen, it would need to be one where you can graduate highschool, buy a house and support a family. This mythical time has only existed once in American history.

Less people are making it. When you can barely eat, getting married and having a family isn't likely. And the decline in marriage rates supports this.

>We find that marriage rates among the middle class have declined significantly over the past 40 years and have now fallen below those in the top income quintile.

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/middle-class-marriage-is-...

Re: America's College Towns Go from Boom to Bust

#69

Post by somenameforme »

999900000999 wrote: post #68
somenameforme wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're intuition's a bit off on this issue. Here [1] is one poll on American's preferences in terms of fertility, among countless others you can find. They all tell the same tale: Americans want to have children, but aren't. And even those that have children aren't having as many as they want. The overall number that do not want to have children at all (8%) is verging on statistical noise. And the motivation for havi…

>And Western culture has currently found itself in an unsustainable place which means that if things don't change, it will simply die only to be replaced. And I think that'd be a shame, because while it has its own deep flaws, it's undeniable that Western culture has had an extremely positive overall influence on the world. Your not wrong, but I think your dealing with an overly optimistic view of things. Just becaus…

You're spinning in 180s fast enough to make somebody dizzy. It's clear that what's happening isn't some "triumph of individual liberty". So why is it happening? Economics is often given as a reason, but that's also not supported by data.

There is an extremely strong inverse relationship between fertility and income. And the reason for that, as you seemingly were already acknowledging yourself not long ago, is culture. We live in a wasteful culture where people are trained to want new things, and especially expensive things, solely because of advertising and culture.

Poor kids with Jordans that they can't tell apart from regular shoes blind, and mid class kids with the $1000 phones that they couldn't tell apart from a free-with-plan one for what they use them for, are the same sort of nonsense. These people are seen as gullible exploitable idiots by the corporations selling them product, and that is how all of society should see them, because it's true.

And I think people chase these things under some fantasy that it'll make them happy. But it never does - not beyond the length of time that e.g. you stick to a consistent argument, so they're left chasing carrots forever. Always planning to start that family once they finally catch that carrot. But they never do.

Re: America's College Towns Go from Boom to Bust

#70

Post by 999900000999 »

somenameforme wrote: post #69
999900000999 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And Western culture has currently found itself in an unsustainable place which means that if things don't change, it will simply die only to be replaced. And I think that'd be a shame, because while it has its own deep flaws, it's undeniable that Western culture has had an extremely positive overall influence on the world. Your not wrong, but I think your dealing with an overly optimistic view of things. Just becaus…

You're spinning in 180s fast enough to make somebody dizzy. It's clear that what's happening isn't some "triumph of individual liberty". So why is it happening? Economics is often given as a reason, but that's also not supported by data. There is an extremely strong inverse relationship between fertility and income. And the reason for that, as you seemingly were already acknowledging yourself not long ago, is culture…

Ok.

You get to be king of a hypothetical Western country.

How would you reverse dropping fertility rates while respecting individual freedom?

I’m open to being wrong.

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