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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

#641

Post by bluGill »

Miraste wrote: post #575
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…

This is why the GP linked a source with the national average for college graduates and non-grads. Certainly there are tradespeople who make a ton of money, but usually they make less than degree holders.

Average isn't useful though. Your expected pay after med school is very different from a music degree. Sure a few in music make millions per year, but most struggle to make anything, and a significant number who do get a good income are not in anything related to music.

There are many different trades, with different income expectations. And of course if you are willing to own the business (not easy) is a factor, some business are more conductive to owning your own business.

We need to be honest with kids: it matters what degree or job you presue. While I can't predict the future perfectly I can look at trends and say some engineering jobs are better than others. Med school looks really good too. Music on the other hand should be a second major or a minor if you study it at all. Likewise in the trades some are better than others, though I'm not sure what to get into.

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

#642

Post by just-ok »

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 can’t say “most state schools” and then cite UCLA, which is one of the top public universities in the world.

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

#643

Post by pb7 »

betwixthewires wrote: post #618
fuzzer37 wrote: post #604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

As opposed to the other person, who laid out their anecdotes to make themselves feel better by not providing sufficient information to refute it?

Come on. The stats support colleges. You need to provide more than anecdotes to be taken seriously. I could just as easily blurt out that I make more than all of his 5 kids combined because I went to college and boom, anecdote refuted. This isn’t how it’s done in conversations worth having.

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

#644

Post by bluGill »

chaostheory wrote: post #596
endisneigh wrote: post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are skilled trades that don’t pay well. In any case there’s no canonical list of “skilled trades” to begin with. I fail to see how you can be an electrician longer than a software engineer, but even if that was true there are far more careers a college degree enable that pay more.

imo a "skilled trade" involves a hard to learn skill that is in high demand. Consequently, the demand yields a higher salary than a commodity "non-high skilled" trade that is not high in demand. > I fail to see how you can be an electrician longer than a software engineer Because electrical components and systems do not evolve and change as fast as software constructs, neither does plumbing. > but even if that was tr…

Many skilled trades are not that hard to learn, those who know it just pretend they are hard to keep people out.

Of course with an engineering background I know how to read all the different tables and understand where the numbers came from. That might give me an advantage, but I can learn to do most of them pretty quickly if I want. (they are faster than me because they tend to have the tables memorized)

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

#645

Post by throwaway675309 »

halpert wrote: post #617
jackfruitpeel wrote: post #614

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You'd be surprised at how in some places in Europe the differential in taxes compared to the United States is not as significant as you would expect. When you factor in state and federal taxes it's not that unusual to pay upwards of 35-40% in annual taxes. The difference is at least a lot of the European countries have something to show for it (subsidized education, universal healthcare, etc).

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

#646

Post by gorbachev »

rootusrootus wrote: post #57

Maybe it just got too damn expensive. I make pretty good money and I'm still planning carefully for how I'm going to deal with it for my kids (who still have 7-9 years left before college). I'm hoping that online school really takes off, and that colleges follow Georgia Tech's lead on pricing for it. OSU still wants full price for online classes, which is bogus. Beyond that, I'm going to strongly incentivize my kids…

I'm keeping my fingers crossed for scholarships.

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

#647

Post by bluGill »

serverholic wrote: post #640
hardtke wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Back in the 1930s - before computers existed it was considered boring women's work (sexism intended). There wasn't much demand because of course computers were a room full of people running this by hand. In the 1950s when computers were invented males discovered programming was interesting and took over.

As such it is more the image is programming will be women's work than a reality because the reality is there weren't many programmers.

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

#648

Post by hooande »

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…

> Average College grads make more money over their lifetime, period.

Stop this. The most accurate predictor of a person's lifetime income is the income of their parents. Children of wealthy parents are more likely to go to college. It's like saying "People who drive expensive cars in high school make more money over their lifetime, period".

I question the statistical literacy of people who make the argument that going to college has a significant causal impact on future earnings.

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

#649

Post by throwawayboise »

sjostrom7 wrote: post #580
rurp wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> kids that had a job, any job before age 18 make 35% more than their peers over their lifetime regardless of degree. I'm surprised by the magnitude but I can see why this would be the case. Working teenagers probably correlate with having parents who value work. Plus it teaches some valuable skills early on. An entry level job can throw all sorts of uncomfortable challenges at you, which you are expected to handle i…

You're probably also more able to work if your folks make enough money to have a stay-at-home parent (so you don't have to watch your younger siblings), buy you a car to get back and forth from your job, etc. Without seeing how they actually did this study, I'll go ahead and chalk most of this up to generational privilege.

My first job as a teen was delivering newspapers (not sure that's really an option anymore, though). I also cut lawns in the summer. All of that was on foot or bicycle. Didn't have a car until I was 18.

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

#650

Post by endisneigh »

hooande wrote: post #648
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…

> Average College grads make more money over their lifetime, period. Stop this. The most accurate predictor of a person's lifetime income is the income of their parents. Children of wealthy parents are more likely to go to college. It's like saying "People who drive expensive cars in high school make more money over their lifetime, period". I question the statistical literacy of people who make the argument that goin…

I didn’t say there’s a causal impact, I said that average college grads make more money.
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