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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

#631

Post by jjulius »

ChicagoDave wrote: post #28

I have 3 college-aged kids and one nearly there. Their universal concern is the cost. It has become prohibitive. Colleges assumed the trend of charging $25k to $50k per year would be sustainable. They were dead wrong, especially given the horrendously predatory loans backed by the government and barred from bankruptcy. If we fix the college financial system, enrollment would likely skyrocket.

Cost is the primary reason I dropped out of college, with not knowing what I wanted to do with my life being the secondary reason.

It was about 15 years ago, I was 19. At the time, I was attending community college because I had no idea what I wanted to major in, or what I wanted to do with my life as far as careers go, but I had so much societal pressure telling me that I had to go to college in order to be successful. I'd tried steering myself towards a few subjects that were hobbies/passions of mine, but every time I dipped my toes into doing something with them professionally, I quickly became concerned about money/profit/work/bosses bastardizing my love for them and opted to keep them as hobbies/passions. 15 years later, I am still enamored by some of those same hobbies and am happy I kept them as such.

While the "goal" was to transfer to a university from the community college, I consistently found myself thinking, "I'm seeing a ton of my friends, and people who graduated HS a few years before me, taking out these massive loans. Why am I going to go into debt if I don't even know what I want to do?". It just made no sense to me, so I stopped. I've been incredibly lucky that I found a career path in an area that I'm good at, and have risen to a level in my career that I'm happy with, but I absolutely did have to work really hard to get here.

All that is to say, not only do I think we put far too much pressure on people to know what they want to do when they're still too young to truly have that figured out, but I also completely agree with you that cost is the primary concern here. If I didn't have to go into so much debt in order to have continued my college education, I have a feeling I would've opted to keep at it and figure out what I wanted to do along the way.

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

#632

Post by throwawayboise »

RC_ITR wrote: post #480
silisili wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re 1, at least in the US, it's very dependent on market and path. I have two family members who have been pipefitters for 20 years. Both make more than I do as a software engineer. Another is a doctor, and makes more than they do. But another does boat repair, and makes more than the doctor. If the last decade is any indication, skilled labor - especially those not afraid to own their own business, are set to make a…

It's kind of a political meme that welding is the key to everyone getting a middle class lifestyle, because good welders get paid a good amount. The joke ofc being that there is a 'shortage' of welders because it's actually very hard to become a good welder. If, somehow, we got a bunch of people to become really good welders, it would just go to being a low paid profession.

The best people in any field make the most money in general, and it takes a lot of experience and work along with intelligence and natural ability to be among that group.

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

#633

Post by julienb_sea »

xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #108

This is nearly a strictly American problem. Much of the rest of the world has realized that society requires and is capable of supporting advanced education for all -- after all we want humanity to be advancing , right? America is still stuck in this alternate universe where it's a great privilege to have the opportunity to learn, which is of course true to some extent, but they really put it on a pedestal there. Com…

I don't know in which non-American worldview you subscribe, but America has a higher rate of tertiary education achievement than practically every European nation (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiary_...). European countries have more selective and restrictive advanced education requirements, they just don't charge for them. This is the literal opposite of "supporting advanced education for all".

To be clear, I think this is a more sensible system than what we do here in America, where anyone can get an advanced education because even if you can't afford it, the government will guarantee loans of arbitrary size.

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

#634

Post by thebradbain »

endisneigh wrote: post #482
silisili wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re 1, at least in the US, it's very dependent on market and path. I have two family members who have been pipefitters for 20 years. Both make more than I do as a software engineer. Another is a doctor, and makes more than they do. But another does boat repair, and makes more than the doctor. If the last decade is any indication, skilled labor - especially those not afraid to own their own business, are set to make a…

How old are you and how old are they? If we’re talking anecdotes I guarantee I know people that make more than all the people you’ve mentioned combined and went to college. It doesn’t mean anything. Let’s talk medians here.

Median income and age don't paint the whole picture, though, either -- you need to take into account things like student loan debt, or benefits, or even taxes (because it is not uncommon for trades, even for those personally pulling in 6+ figures, to be paid a good chunk of their compensation in cash that's not necessarily recorded anywhere).

Learning a trade and going to college for a white collar job are two different routes entirely, in my opinion. Even assuming that the skillsets were interchangeable, a lot of trades people would never trade their job for an office job and vice versa.

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

#636

Post by tinalumfoil »

WalterBright wrote: post #621
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…

> which is identical to what an firsty year teacher makes Education degrees and Journalism degrees rank near the bottom of pay. If you want a good starting salary, invest in a STEM major. Above all, google "starting salaries for major XXXXX" before picking one. Sheesh!

> She made $45k year one, and a year later is the director of marketing at her company making over $100k/yr

If OP's daughter got a CS degree after two years she'd have made $0 and be $30k in the hole for state school tuition ($100k+ for private school). By my calculation she's $100k minus boot camp cost out of the hole.

According to Google the median income for a bachelor's degree is $100k, which includes experienced people in their working prime. So I think OP has a pretty good counterexample.

Also, not everyone wants to maximize their income. Comp sci now is what finance used to be, but not everyone has the moral framework or dedication to money where they can just Google highest paying jobs and choose the top one.

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

#637

Post by throwawayboise »

ravitation wrote: post #522
endisneigh wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Im very skeptical of this post: 1. Many trades also pay like crap and have a very limited window in which you can do it. In addition many are not welcoming to women at all, regardless even if you take the highest paying trades, do they pay more than the highest paying careers that require higher education? 2. Which boot camp? How many people ended up like your daughter? How much was it? Without these facts no compari…

> 1. Many trades also pay like crap and have a very limited window in which you can do it. In addition many are not welcoming to women at all, regardless even if you take the highest paying trades, do they pay more than the highest paying careers that require higher education? Exactly. These types of post often ignore the actual work being done. A graduate student might make a comparable hourly rate to an amazon ware…

Working in an Amazon warehouse would not be considered a "trade" by most definitions. It doesn't require much if any training and amost anyone in normal physical condition can do it. It's more of a pure "laborer" job, these have always paid less than skilled trades.

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

#638

Post by FredPret »

vgeek wrote: post #312
connorgreenwell wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Armies of administrators, shiny new amenities to attract more students (competing on quality of education is too difficult / more expensive). There's probably some good that it goes towards too, but its hard not to be cynical about it.

I was a one of two developers at a small relatively unknown private college (costs over $70k and wasn't even top 5 in this state) in a communications (see: marketing B team for admissions, mostly PR and crisis response) department of around 15. I cannot emphasize how inept and slow everyone was. Simple tasks took 10x longer than they should. There were 3-4 people dedicated solely to managing contractors for the bi-an…

In the past, people with sinecures could just go home and spend their time painting or composing poetry or inventing scientific disciplines or something else not-entirely-useless. Now they’re managing contractors by committee! How soul-deadening.

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

#639

Post by paulpauper »

endisneigh wrote: post #444
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…

Im very skeptical of this post: 1. Many trades also pay like crap and have a very limited window in which you can do it. In addition many are not welcoming to women at all, regardless even if you take the highest paying trades, do they pay more than the highest paying careers that require higher education? 2. Which boot camp? How many people ended up like your daughter? How much was it? Without these facts no compari…

>2. Which boot camp? How many people ended up like your daughter? How much was it? Without these facts no comparison can be made.

Bootcamps charge a lot upfront and success rates as measured by good-paying jobs are low.

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

#640

Post by serverholic »

hardtke wrote: post #537
endisneigh wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Im very skeptical of this post: 1. Many trades also pay like crap and have a very limited window in which you can do it. In addition many are not welcoming to women at all, regardless even if you take the highest paying trades, do they pay more than the highest paying careers that require higher education? 2. Which boot camp? How many people ended up like your daughter? How much was it? Without these facts no compari…

> In addition many are not welcoming to women at all Economists are now finding that as more women move into a profession, the pay goes down. Similarly, when computer programming moved from a female dominated profession (early days) to male dominated (now) the pay went up. Medical fields that have higher proportions of women have lower pay. Along these lines, as college skews more female (college grads are like 60/40…

Source on programming starting out female dominated? Also, I'm curious what a programmer's job looked like in the beginning.
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