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

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

#611

Post by mabub24 »

abeppu wrote: post #449

The bizarre thing with higher education costs that no one's really explained to me is why schools simultaneously spend more and more on administrators (who are full time staff), and push more and more teaching to adjuncts. The claim I've heard justifying the growth of administration staff is that regulatory compliance becomes more onerous over time. But no school is judged on their regulatory compliance. In industry,…

A lot of universities are openly hostile to tenured professors, unless those professors are gigantic names in the field they can use for marketing. Many Universities would be a-okay with ditching tenure all together.

The reality is many universities have gotten out of the game of offering quality education. They still offer education, but they are largely indifferent to the quality of the education, so adjuncts will do just as well as any professor.

Instead, universities have spent enormous money and effort to protect and emphasize the college/university "experience." Thus you get an enormous amount of handholding and bureaucratization in higher-ed because they're functioning like giant weird resorts with health services, legal services, financial services, extra curricular services, and a whole lot of other crap with education as only the implied "reason" the students are there.

> But no school is judged on their regulatory compliance.

To a certain degree this is untrue. Student complaints and/or payee (parent) complaints for things like Title IX violations, as one example, mean a potential loss in federal/state funding and negative press. So institutions seek to bureaucratize the whole process from the tip of the root to the highest leaf. Higher-ed in the US has become a kind of ride into adulthood.

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

#612

Post by dionidium »

nathanyz wrote: post #520
dionidium wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A substantially higher proportion of Americans obtain a bachelors degree than have a job before age 18. Is this true? I got a job as soon as I was legally allowed to and so did every one of my friends in high school. Where I'm from you were seen as kind of a loser if you didn't work over the summer, at least. I'd guess it was something like 90% of kids at my school worked at some point in high school. Edit: Here's…

Wonder what the cause is for the drop off from ~30% to under 20%? Speculation but maybe boomer money allows their kids not to need to work as much as past.

Maybe it's whatever is causing a more general decline in labor force participation?

https://twitter.com/AlecStapp/status/1481468372911116295

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

#613

Post by voz_ »

I know a lot of the comments here are from the lens of money input (as a cost, to pay for education) and output (as a return, on the investment, in the form of a job / career).

However, I wanted to take a step back and offer a different perspective. College does more than teach one a trade. It should, ideally, help the student become a better citizen of their own culture, of the world, and of their community. College taught me deeper empathy, and different kinds of empathy, it taught me more about literature, history, cultures, anthropology. There is so much today that could be improved if, for example, philosophy was a core requirement of every CS curriculum.

Outside of coursework, It taught me how to make friends, and how when I did bad things, I would lose friends. In a way, it is a continuation of high school except with the training wheels off, with all the consequences of adulthood to be tasted for the very first time.

I know it is a privilege to say this, and it is why I am such a huge proponent of free education, but to miss college is to miss more than some academic study in a field. It is to miss a whole chapter of life. To go from high school to labor, without that sweet blissful blend of freedom, stress, and discovery feels like a life not fully lived.

I would love for everyone to experience this, so from this personal perspective, I find that this framing (of money), on the whole, a rather negative thing.

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

#614

Post by jackfruitpeel »

halpert wrote: post #598
snomad wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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).

European here — that is an insane cost for college fees from my POV. I attended one of the most highly rated courses for my profession in Europe and only paid about €3K per year.

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

#615

Post by lend000 »

indymike wrote: post #314

There are three problems that colleges need to fix. 1) Skilled trades pay better than most bachelor's degree track jobs. My kids can make more money with a six month apprenticeship than they will with all but a few 4 year degrees. If you can drive a forklift, you can make $45K/yr... which is identical to what an firsty year teacher makes. 2) There are better options than college for many. One of my daughters did a si…

Re: numbers 3) and 4). It's a hard trade-off. I believe in equality of opportunity in education, which infinite guaranteed government loans do provide to someone willing to take on that burden (which often ends up being a bad decision for most people). However, the very act of guaranteeing unlimited loans to everyone creates a very simple economic effect in which colleges will grow in expense to meet the supply of money. Look at all the ridiculously nice buildings, statues, grounds, and administrator salaries at even C-tier colleges.

The alternative, IMO, is to make state run schools tuition free, but there's no guarantee you'll get in. Use some relatively objective metrics like the SAT and relative standing in high school class to determine eligibility. Then get rid of federal lending altogether. Apparently this is more similar to some of the European models. Under this model, any highly gifted but poor person worried about debt can get a higher education. Granted, the gifted person is also generally okay in the current model, because they probably end up making enough to handle their debt. It's the less gifted person who still wants and benefits from a higher education, but can't get into the free state school, who benefits in this model, because the removal of unqualified lending will bring down prices of less competitive colleges.

But in the end, college as we know it, as great of an experience as it is for many of us, is likely becoming obsolete (in its current form, that is) with the rise of the internet and the ability to learn just about anything in your garage with an internet connection and a computer.

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

#616

Post by RealityVoid »

jorblumesea wrote: post #363
indymike wrote: post #314

There are three problems that colleges need to fix. 1) Skilled trades pay better than most bachelor's degree track jobs. My kids can make more money with a six month apprenticeship than they will with all but a few 4 year degrees. If you can drive a forklift, you can make $45K/yr... which is identical to what an firsty year teacher makes. 2) There are better options than college for many. One of my daughters did a si…

The purpose of college is partly workforce training but also just general education. To see college as solely providing competitive dollar careers seems to misunderstand a large part of higher educational purpose. In theory at least, the liberal arts are something far more than just "can I work at FB".

Yes, thank you! I find the point of view where college is just job training so myopic.

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

#617

Post by halpert »

jackfruitpeel wrote: post #614
halpert wrote: post #598

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

European here — that is an insane cost for college fees from my POV. I attended one of the most highly rated courses for my profession in Europe and only paid about €3K per year.

But your taxes are also much higher. You would pay more than 30K over 18 years most likely.

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

#618

Post by betwixthewires »

fuzzer37 wrote: post #604
endisneigh wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not turning this into an ad for the school my daughter went to. Cost was literally 1/2 of he first year salary over $40,000. It was capped at a maximum amount. She ended up paying about $6k, but it was contingent on her getting a job that payed better than $40k. You already have. I want to see the graduation stats. > It didn't matter what education level they attained, across the population the outcome was cons…

Do you like to argue just to argue?

I'm pretty sure not, I'm pretty sure this person is going to argue until someone helps them justify their education expenses to themselves, or their teaching profession. They're fishing for a "you're right, college is the only thing that's worth it."

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

#619

Post by emaginniss »

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.

You literally said "look at most state schools." How can most state schools have a cost that is higher than the average. Also, even your own case proved it. These schools are charging 56k or 34k respectively for 2 semesters. Therefore, a single semester would be 28k or 17k. Far from the 45k you allege in the original post.

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

#620

Post by FredPret »

MikeTheRocker wrote: post #311
DebtDeflation wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tend to agree. I did my Masters degree (pre-Covid) as part of a predominantly online program at a large university. It worked out well, but I cannot even begin to imagine doing an undergraduate program remotely and missing out on the campus experience. There's much more to "going off to college" than taking classes, and I fully understand why 18-22 year olds would not want to shell out tens of thousands of dollars to…

I'm currently about 2/3 through an online Master's degree: Georgia Tech OMSCS. Same as you? For me it's been a drastically different experience compared to my in-person undergrad. Whereas my Bachelor's degree was full of camaraderie and formative life experiences, my Master's has been more or less bereft of social or personal growth and focused entirely on course material. This is okay for me since my primary goal is…

Agreed. About 50% of the value I got out of uni was outside the classroom. Though now I’m good to take online courses as I’m looking for skills, not personal transformation
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