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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

#61

Employers just hire experienced h1bs instead, they won’t leave after being trained, no reason to hire an American

There are ~700k h1bs out of ~157 million American jobs. So about 99.6% of jobs in America are held by Americans and 0.4% by h1bs.

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

#62

Most of you here assume the "Human Capital" model (i.e. you pay to acquire skills), but that entirely misses the actual point of a college degree! 2001 Nobel Prize went for demonstrating that college is basically a quarter million dollar IQ and Marshmallow Test. It's a filtering mechanism that allows employers to tell who is smart and conscientious enough to be productive at work. Offering education to more and more…

Those degrees also don't lead to the jobs they want. My former boss would hire people with degrees in, to do basic admin tasks. I quit because a they hired a guy to be my manager, with a lawyer degree and paid him $20k more than me, to do the same job. But he would spend the whole day on his phone. I'm in a new job, hiring people, and I'm not looking at degrees when it's for a dispatch role.

That's the sad outcome of everyone getting _some_ degree in recent years. Something like 50 years ago 10% had college degree, now it's close to 50%. Meanwhile population IQ score stayed rather stable while willingness to work hard declined. So of course the quality of employees with degrees has dropped and hence the degree is no longer a good signal to employers

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

#63
post #7

I feel the same fallacies happen with money and degrees: - People with more money live better lives, so let's just print/hand out money and everyone will live a better life! - People with college degrees live better lives, so let's just push more people through college and everyone will live better lives! In both cases, of course, completely missing the underlying reasons money/college degrees provide(d) better lives…

The difference is that printing money creates more money, but doesn't create any more stuff. College degrees (theoretically) create more educated people. If you just "hand out" degrees, that doesn't happen, but if you actually teach people, then it does.

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

#64
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a university's administration overlooks a complete failure of the student selection process, it's easy to imagine that it may well overlook a complete failure of the professor selection process. The price of admission is also way too steep to wind up being the peer of mental 8th graders.

Is it a failure of the process? The selection process is to pick people who willing to pay, not who can solve equations.

It's a failure for higher education, yes.

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

#65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did Europe find a cheat code that gets free $$$ for education? Nothing is free - once you graduate you are hit with 50% tax that gets back all you "free" tuition costs many, many times over. Not saying education should not be subsidized via taxes (I think it's good overall), but it's not free at all - the price is just hidden and spread out over many years (similar to student loans but less visible).

Was it much more subsidized in the US when it was much cheaper, though?

I'd reword the question: "was college paid for via higher income taxes for graduates (and others) or via a more direct approach of student loan taking?". I believe the latter but I don't see the fundamental difference. It's the same student loan but hidden from sight, as it's packaged as higher tax %

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

#66

Employers just hire experienced h1bs instead, they won’t leave after being trained, no reason to hire an American

There are ~700k h1bs out of ~157 million American jobs. So about 99.6% of jobs in America are held by Americans and 0.4% by h1bs.

Now do the tech industry (high paying American jobs)

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

#67
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can provide the piece of paper at a fraction of the cost too. Nearly all of Europe does, I believe.

Did Europe find a cheat code that gets free $$$ for education? Nothing is free - once you graduate you are hit with 50% tax that gets back all you "free" tuition costs many, many times over. Not saying education should not be subsidized via taxes (I think it's good overall), but it's not free at all - the price is just hidden and spread out over many years (similar to student loans but less visible).

That's what taxes are for. Subsidizing public good.

Affordable access to good education is a good outcome from the heavy taxation I pay.

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

#68
post #7

I feel the same fallacies happen with money and degrees: - People with more money live better lives, so let's just print/hand out money and everyone will live a better life! - People with college degrees live better lives, so let's just push more people through college and everyone will live better lives! In both cases, of course, completely missing the underlying reasons money/college degrees provide(d) better lives…

The difference is that printing money creates more money, but doesn't create any more stuff. College degrees (theoretically) create more educated people. If you just "hand out" degrees, that doesn't happen, but if you actually teach people, then it does.

I agree with you.

The problem is that many young Americans for the past 30+ years has been told that a bachelor’s degree is the prerequisite for a job that pays well enough to afford a middle class lifestyle, which I’ll define as being able to afford owning a home in a safe neighborhood and being able to provide for a household without living paycheck-to-paycheck.

What happens when a large number of college graduates enter a tough hiring market while they have five- (or even six-) figure student loan balances? It’s one thing to work at McDonald’s debt-free with a high school diploma; it’s another thing to end up at McDonald’s with tens of thousands of dollars in debt with a bachelor’s degree.

Of course, there’s more to going to college than career prospects, and there’s also the reality that no one is owed a job. Still, given the amount of adults struggling with paying off their student loans, it’s no wonder more people are reevaluating the economic value of going to college.

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

#69
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are ~700k h1bs out of ~157 million American jobs. So about 99.6% of jobs in America are held by Americans and 0.4% by h1bs.

Now do the tech industry (high paying American jobs)

Why is tech high paying exactly? Maybe low supply of qualified labor? Maybe that can be solved with qualified immigration? We can call such a program H1B, for example, and it would benefit the American economy overall at the cost of slightly reducing compensation fir the already extremely highly paying tech jobs.

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

#70
No shit, half the people who got college degrees are in debt over it and mostly just lost out on prime years of their life doing busy work for little to zero benefit. Was my class about pre-colombian society interesting? Yes. Has that knowledge helped me in any way related to my job or career or life? No. It certainly wasn't worth the thousands of dollars it costs to take that class to meet some arbitrary requirements. I could of gotten the same knowledge and enjoyment from watching some youtube videos or reading the published book that class was 95% based on.
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