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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

#631

Post by anonymars »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #258
anonym29 wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can't solve FizzBuzz in half an hour with a language of your choice while being able to look up syntax, your problem isn't that you failed to cram for leetcode, it's that you don't know how to write code. There's nothing inherently wrong with not being able to write code, but you probably shouldn't be applying for software engineering roles where the main responsibility of the job is ultimately to write workin…

Just to be clear I have no problem passing these interviews, I just spent a few weeks cramming leetcode and got a job at Google. Leetcode wasn’t the main reason I was hired, but it was a filter that I had to get through (I’ve never been given fizzbuzz before, but I assume that is just because it’s no longer in style and hasn’t been for more than a decade). You just don’t throw yourself into on the fly coding, you pra…

This is FizzBuzz:

1. Output the numbers from 1 to 100

2. If the number is a multiple of 3, write Fizz instead of the number

3. If the number is a multiple of 5, write Buzz instead of the number

4. If the number is a multiple of 3 and 5, write FizzBuzz instead of the number

Does that really sound like something requiring special practice and preparation? Assuming a decent interviewer would help out with the modulo operator if that was unfamiliar

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

#632

Post by esrauch »

lurk2 wrote: post #412
overfeed wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The conservatives are right about the partisan bias of universities Yes - and? Police forces and catholic churches skew conservative, but I figure it's an emergent property based on the self-selected group who join the respective organizations plus some exposure to new ideas. You seem like you expect political "neutrality", but if you look at at any institution, you'll find "bias": theatre fook, country music, poet…

> I figure it's an emergent property based on the self-selected group who join the respective organizations plus some exposure to new ideas. There are plenty of conservatives interested in anthropology; there’s no reason to think they’ve self-selected out of the pool, so then we have to consider if conservatives enter the field but are exposed to new ideas such that none remain conservatives for long (this seems unli…

I'm not sure what evidence you would expect to see if it was self-selection because of an in-group mentality versus explicit hostility to intentionally keep some out.

By comparison, is there some affirmative evidence for the reason why there are so few liberals in the FBI is because they self-selected out, instead of that the FBI being perceived as a conservative institution causes them to self-select out?

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

#633

Post by h2zizzle »

MengerSponge wrote: post #160
creato wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The scarcity in Europe (at least the two countries I'm familiar with) comes from a standardized test. If you don't do well on the test, you don't go to college.

America used to do that, but Jewish students started taking (and doing well on) the test, and later Black and Asian students had the audacity to be brilliant too. This led to America's "holistic" college admissions process. For what it's worth, the USA isn't unique in adapting admissions to reject an unwanted minority. The most interesting mechanism has to be Moscow State University's Jewish Problems: https://arxiv.o…

The Chinese national entrance exam (gaokao?) is notoriously grueling, but doing well pretty much guarantees you a spot in a top university. Would have been useful to me, having grabbed a middle-of-the-road SAT score for Ivies but having failed to apply to one. There's definitely a multi-pronged strategy for ensuring exclusivity.

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

#634

Post by ojosilva »

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…

As far as the data goes, adjusted for inflation, tuition and fees have eased up in the last ~5 years [1]. But overall, college enrollment has been going down anyway [2], except for 2025, where it hints at a slight rebound.

So I'd say we have to consider the full set of drivers that can correlate: overall rising cost of living making it very expensive to be at a university full-time, general labor market sentiment which is mostly down since covid, interest rates and debt risk which are still high despite recent cuts, etc.

1. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/education/college-costs-working...

2. https://educationdata.org/college-enrollment-statistics

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

#635

Post by randerson »

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…

There is still $5K more _economic_ value created, in that +$5K went to people who might otherwise be jobless. They'll in turn spend that money at businesses in the private sector, reaching more people, and so on. If the man with the septic tank runs a coffee shop, he will see extra value from more coffee sales.

The extra taxes paid by all will (theoretically) improve the schools, roads, military, and services. The regulations will (theoretically) decrease the risk of poisoning ground water and injuring someone, which adds even more value to the local community.

The distinction is just that the septic tank is twice as expensive in the developed country. But that money can lift people out of poverty. The exception is when the company owner is hoarding the majority of the money tax-free instead of paying it to people who will spend it.

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

#636

Post by csa »

armchairhacker wrote: post #362
kopirgan wrote: post #351

IIRC Mark Andreessen once said colleges esp ivy league ones, simplify the job of recruiters by acting as filters. Saves them the bother. So they attached lots of value. I guess that's true even now but in a perverse sort of way. As markers of indoctrination and unsuitability for productive corporate roles. Employers probably decided to avoid them. That's not fair to a large number of students but the old system of co…

Do you know any employers actively avoiding students from Ivy-league colleges? I agree that colleges have acted as filters, but the value of degrees has been deflated, even in Ivy leagues, because they’re easier and more common. I think a degree still acts as a filter though; getting a job is hard with a degree but nearly impossible without. EDIT: There’s the Thiel fellowship, which requires not having a degree, but…

> Do you know any employers actively avoiding students from Ivy-league colleges?

Yes.

The Ivy grads are often considered over-qualified (rightly or wrongly). Especially for government positions that don’t normally hire elite school grads and smallish local/regional businesses.

I know plenty of people who work in different government positions (federal, state, local) who will not hire grads from an elite schools (Ivy, Stanford, Berkeley, etc.) because they think something must be wrong with them (“why would they apply for this job?”), or they think that the applicant will jump ship at the first opportunity.

I agree that those can both be issues, but I’m not sure those issues are limited to or are more likely in elite school grads.

I’ve certainly seen situations in which elite school grads have worked at an org that didn’t normally hire any of them, and the quality and quantity of work produced caused there to be some tough conversations in terms of standards and evaluations (they basically “crushed the curve”). In the two cases I’m most familiar with, the people in question were relatively non-ambitious female employees who just cranked out high quality work. They took those jobs because they were decent jobs near their respective families. In both cases, the companies had bittersweet feelings when said employees left —- they lost productivity, but they no longer had the manage outlier performers.

One of these ladies left her job to become a stay at home mom. The other joined a more prestigious privately-held company who seemed to know how to harness her abilities (she moved up quickly).

So… it happens.

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

#637

Post by orangecat »

carlosjobim wrote: post #462
eli_gottlieb wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As with a lot of things, such as vacation time, Americans seem to prefer to provide certain social goods as employer benefits because that way it seems more like a reward for competitive merit, which one can show off as a status symbol, than like a universal social good.

Another way to see it is to ask why a company should be able to reap the labour benefits of their workers and then force other people to pay for their basic needs?

Should your employer be required to pay for your housing, food, transportation, and clothes? Company towns turned out to be a bad idea.

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

#639

Post by IncreasePosts »

randerson wrote: post #635
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…

There is still $5K more _economic_ value created, in that +$5K went to people who might otherwise be jobless. They'll in turn spend that money at businesses in the private sector, reaching more people, and so on. If the man with the septic tank runs a coffee shop, he will see extra value from more coffee sales. The extra taxes paid by all will (theoretically) improve the schools, roads, military, and services. The re…

The person who wanted the septic tank almost certainly would spend that $5k somewhere else if he had it. Except in that circumstance he would spend it on something that he thought provided him value, instead of overbearing regulation.

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

#640

Post by jvvw »

ajashdkjhasjkd wrote: post #223
jswelker wrote: post #102

Higher ed is like employer based health insurance in that they are both weird path dependent historical accidents. People want cheap healthcare, and it got shoehorned into an odd employer fringe benefit system that really is not at all related healthcare in any intrinsic way. People want job training, and it got shoehorned into extra departments at liberal arts universities intended as aristocrat finishing schools. J…

> People want job training, and it got shoehorned into extra departments at liberal arts universities intended as aristocrat finishing schools I really wish the computer science degrees and even online courses spent like 30 mins on the history of computer science. The entire existence of this field has been dependent on those non job-training liberal arts degrees.

Perhaps the people teaching thec purses don't feel qualified to talk about the history?

I taught university-level computer science and I'm not a historian by any stretch of the imagination. I know something about the history and might mention things in passing but I don't think I could legitimately teach it to other people!

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