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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

#601

Post by [deleted] »

baiwl wrote: post #372
stack_framer wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You seriously dropped out because you didn't like one class? No. The university added other "studies" courses to my requirements that contributed to my decision. After taking gender studies, I knew I could not tolerate the other "studies" courses the university was suddenly demanding—which were not required when I first started. > Which university The University of Utah > which year was this 2014 > what was your ma…

I don’t understand this thing you do in the US of forcing you to do completely unrelated courses. You want to study computers and they put you through liberal arts or gender studies bullshit that is basically worthless. Why?

[deleted]

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

#602

Post by bfffbgfdcb »

potato3732842 wrote: post #538
maxglute wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in terms of raw productivity In terms of dubious financialized metrics of productivity, i.e. debt + fx driven growth. Which is valid indicator, but also the same inflated indicator that suggests 2025 tertiary that cost 200% 1980 tertiary (income/inflation adjusted) is somehow more productive and not parasitic. The entire problem is spreadsheet doing gangbusters is dependenant on increasingly inequitable CoL extract…

Exactly. In a man who wants to construct a septic for a house pays a man with backhoe who understands the nuances to make it happen. Concrete and diesel are bought, etc, etc, etc. Let's say $5k USD added to GDP. In US same thing happens. But the man is compelled by threat of law to pay for engineering studies, permits, as are the man with the backhoe and the man making the concrete, etc, etc. $10k is added to GDP. Ha…

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

#603

Post by Workaccount2 »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #375
apparent wrote: post #288

The downward "is it worth it" trend over the last 12 years is partly due to the continued upward climb of college tuition. Some schools are now at $100,000/yr for tuition, room, and board. In order for this to be "worth the cost" they would have to have a strongly positive expected value in terms of future earnings. And a positive EV isn't sufficient. It would also need to have a very low chance of negative EV. Other…

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…

There is an actually easy an effective escape hatch right here in the US:

Community college to state school path.

You can get a full bachelors degree for ~$35k. All four years, $35k. Not per year. Full degree. $35k.

And that's before any scholarships or grants.

Kids and parents are just insane though, and want to flex about the college they are going to from day one. Its become a ritualistic practice with social shame attached to going to community school.

Even though the end result is exactly the same.

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

#604

Post by standardUser »

The question actually asks "...worth the cost because people have a better chance to get a good job and earn more money over their lifetime".

The value of college to me was mostly social and intellectual, not economic. It's an irreplicable experience. There's certainly some logic to skipping that experience, but I couldn't recommend it.

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

#605

Post by softwaredoug »

I find this stage is more important for social development than intellectual development. An early adult stage where you go some place away from home in a relatively easy, same aged social experience, with people of diverse backgrounds is a net social good.

There are other ways of getting the same thing. Like if your country has some kind of compulsory service.

But maybe let’s stop pretending college is just about the intellectual stuff and see it as a social good.

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

#606

Post by throw-the-towel »

ta20240528 wrote: post #570
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Information is not culture. Universities teach culture - moral attitudes. They don't just transfer information. This applies to science and engineering as much as it applies to the arts, but you need a good education to understand what "morality" means in this context. The collapse of the West started when the old Enlightenment morality - education of all kinds as a collective good - was replaced by the MBA culture o…

The chemistry department teaches culture? nonsense.

Everything humans do is about culture. (Not to be confused with the arts.)

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

#607

Post by Xelbair »

locknitpicker wrote: post #475
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.

> 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. I think this is a textbook example of correlation not implying causality. The US was awarded a unique competitive advantage with WW2, which allowed it to become the world's hegemon. Much of the reason that the US was…

>The US was awarded a unique competitive advantage with WW2, which allowed it to become the world's hegemon.

That advantage was: being the only country that wasn't ravaged by war, and that profited for a while by trading with every faction.

Some of countries were also severly kneecapped by US betrayal of promises, made by allies - to restore pre-war borders, and handover of them to USSR - that means less competition.

That also lead to US dollar becoming world's reserve currency, which may have affected the measured drop afterwards.

There are so many factors involved in that that attributing it to just investment in higher education and GI bill is a gross oversimplification, so is previous post's attribution of the drop afterwards.

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

#608

Post by potato3732842 »

mlinhares wrote: post #550
potato3732842 wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. In a man who wants to construct a septic for a house pays a man with backhoe who understands the nuances to make it happen. Concrete and diesel are bought, etc, etc, etc. Let's say $5k USD added to GDP. In US same thing happens. But the man is compelled by threat of law to pay for engineering studies, permits, as are the man with the backhoe and the man making the concrete, etc, etc. $10k is added to GDP. Ha…

I haven't been in a car accident for 15 years, not even fender benders, that doesn't mean I shouldn't take insurance. As someone from a random developing nation car accidents deliver crippling debt and destroy lives there frequently because insurance is not mandatory. The developing nation blindly ignore the externalities of not having insurance (instead of spreading the cost throughout society, only a few people bea…

It comes down to the amortized cost of insurance vs amortized cost of not. Say nothing about how incentives get fucked all to hell by breaking things across many parties (principal agent problem) and the money distorts things.

And this isn't just insurance. Just because someone who work is being made for by law or by rule says that their work output reduces the failure rate from X to Y doesn't mean that the cost of their work when applied to everything isn't a massive loss compared to just not paying for that and cleaning up the mess X times instead of Y times.

You can appeal to emotion all you want but it's a very simple calculation. Heck, health insurance (in the US) serves a pretty obvious counterpoint.

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

#609

Post by Workaccount2 »

immibis wrote: post #505
bojangleslover wrote: post #498

Supply and demand. It's no surprise that when we had 10% of people going to university in the 1960's and now we have over 38.8% [1] that the economic value of a degree seems to be getting watered down. No different than any other form of inflation from the government blowing on the fire (subsidizing with money) without adding any actual fuel (intrinsic value). Just like housing and healthcare. [1] https://educationda…

A degree isn't SUPPOSED to be an arbitrary differentiator. It's supposed to signal that you know a certain thing because you studied it for 4 years. Whether that's currently true in America I couldn't say.

The problem is the funneling of dispassionate kids into college who just pick something and then game their way as much as possible to that piece of paper.

Employers want passionate and self-motivated workers, instead they have gotten a mountain of applicants who routinely forget everything they crammed the moment the test is over.

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

#610

Post by cindyllm »

humanlity wrote: post #573
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.

old chinese proverb: Suffering is living, happiness is death(生于忧患，死于安乐)

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