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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

#681

Post by zmgsabst »

pjmlp wrote: post #411
rayiner wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you take nukes off the table, the U.S. doesn’t have a 100x military advantage. If China seriously mobilized its industrial capability, the U.S. may not have even a 2x advantage. Remember that, right before World War II, the US didn’t even have a top-10 military, having demobilized it after World War I. It’s vast industrial capacity is what enabled it to build a larger military than all of Europe combined within a…

The most important fact, that people overlook, is that its industrial capacity was never bombed during the war, and Pearl Harbour was the only time the country got directly attacked.

Actually, Alaska and the West Coast were attacked during the war — but only relatively lightly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleutian_Islands_campaign

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fu-Go_balloon_bomb

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombardment_of_Ellwood

That last one, in which a Japanese sub bombarded Santa Barbara, played a role in the later Japanese internment by escalating fears of an invasion.

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

#682

Post by insane_dreamer »

nashashmi wrote: post #122

Total cost of ownership is 4 years x $15k-$25k (for a cheap public school) + missed income from working that same four years ($35k x 4 years). This is equal to $220k +/- $20k of lost money. Now compare this to income differential. Starting grad income is $80k(?). At 4% raise per year compared to 3.5% raise per year for a non-college employee. Over 43 years. My math comes out to the college grad is still making more m…

Are you assuming $55k salary differential? ($80k for starting graduate vs $35k for non-graduate)? That seems a bit high.

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

#683

Post by jamesmontalvo3 »

pdonis wrote: post #176
venturecruelty wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Teaching is a deliberate act, and it cannot be replaced by a Google AI summary.

> a Google AI summary That's not the online material I was referring to. Many universities have their course materials available for free online. Not to mention other online learning sites.

I think the point is that if you’re going to get a degree in mechanical engineering, you need to study differential equation, and if you’re going to have a well-rounded education, you need to study some history. Both were a requirement in the past, but we’re moving more towards only the former being considered important.

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

#684

Post by seec »

tovej wrote: post #377
seec wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least the good part about the US situation is that people are still free to choose for themselves. The cost isn't redirected to the whole population at large via taxation. In the EU it's much worse, because the same reality is materialising, but it is still advertised as "free". Of course, this is the path to a form of soft communism and all systems are becoming dysfunctional and unable to create real value at the…

The EU is aggressively neoliberal or liberal-conservative, and that is the reason universities have begun to be more expensive. It's related to austerity, privatization, the aggressive revision of tax codes, and New Public Management. The left has not been popular in the EU since the 70s, which is why this development has gotten increasingly aggresive in the last few decades. You cannot seriously suggest that the EU…

Ah yes, the neoliberal boogeyman.

Here is what Wikipedia has to say on the matter. > Neoliberalism is often associated with a set of economic liberalization policies, including privatization, deregulation, depoliticisation, consumer choice, labor market flexibilization, economic globalization, free trade, monetarism, austerity, and reductions in government spending.

Do you agree with that definition ? If so, none of what is happening in the EU is consistent with that description. If not, I'm all hears for what you think it means.

> The left has not been popular in the EU since the 70s What constitute the left has mutated and is not called as such anymore. It is now found in the "green" parties and adjacent. The hard left is actually very popular, at least as much as the right wing, but I'll grant you they are becoming less desirable because people are pushing back on the immigration the hard left is very much for that. It is incoherent because it mechanically reduce the power/earning of their supposed electorate but on the other hand it grants them dominating power in key places and they get the votes of the bourgeoisie.

Here is some data on public government spending in the EU. https://www.statista.com/statistics/263220/public-spending-r... https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/government-spendin...

Most of the rich countries are over 50% and approaching 60% very fast. After COVID, spending has increased at an insane rate, via debt creation. It's basically like a poor family using credit to buy an ultra expensive fancy car but I guess that's very austere to you.

It's balsy to pretend that the EU suffer from austerity when the data readily show the contrary. The only tax revisions to be found are to raise them, not the other way around.

To be clear, I'm all for the targeted raising of taxes on the boomers, who got us into this mess. I also think some of the regulations goals are laudable (notably transition to electric everything and building improvements but I disagree that regulation is the way to get there. Considering that the EU economy is basically in the dump, I'll say that the world largely agree with me.

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

#685

Post by somenameforme »

snowwrestler wrote: post #663
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 don’t want “cheap healthcare,” people want to be healthy. And people don’t want “job training,” people want to be educated and have a fulfilling life. Of course college looks too expensive if it is just “job training.” But that is not what college is. College proved its immense value first , and then because of its obvious value, employers started looking for it. But you’ve let the cart get in front of the hor…

This [1] is a graph of educational attainment in the US. And the percent of people into the 60s who had a college degree was in the single digits, with it being near zero in times past. It then started ramping up extremely quickly. The main thing that changed is a lot more jobs started requiring degrees around that time.

If people were genuinely pursuing college for self betterment, then you'd think the numbers would have been dramatically higher in the past, especially back in the day when you could comfortably afford college even on just a part time job. The increase in enrollment also came right alongside sharp increases in cost.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_...

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

#686

Post by weakfish »

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…

Can we name this "HN's Law," where any thread remotely related to economics will have someone attributing everything to supply and demand?

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

#687

Post by insane_dreamer »

markus_zhang wrote: post #435

IMO most of the stuffs in colleges can be self taught nowadays so the only two benefits are 1) that piece of paper and 2) networking. And good network only exists for certain colleges so for the majority out there it’s just that piece of paper.

That's true, but without that piece of paper you're not getting past the hiring filters to even hope of landing an interview to showcase your skills to even get the lowest entry level job that's not flipping burgers. A college degree is the new high school degree.

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

#688

Post by crossbody »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #669
crossbody wrote: post #649

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I asked Gemini 3 if your statement is true and got this, as expected: "That statement is false. In fact, the prediction that wages will rise in low-productivity sectors is the central mechanism of Baumol’s Cost Disease"

Somebody asked Gemini 3 yesterday about a piece of music I was looking for. It said: > Based on the details you provided—specifically the overlap with the poem "AM" (from Be Bop or Be Dead) and "Set The Tone" (from Bernie Worrell's Blacktronic Science)—the track you are most likely looking for is: "Music" by DeadbEAT (featuring Umar Bin Hassan) Released in 1992/1993 on the album Wild Kingdom, this track was a cult hi…

LLM hallucinations are still a thing for ultra niche topics. Not a problem for topics that have sizeable wiki pages, like Baumol Effect. Here is the first paragraph from wiki: "...tendency for wages in jobs that have experienced little or no increase in labor productivity to rise in response to rising wages in other jobs that did experience high productivity growth"

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

#689

Post by crossbody »

curcbit wrote: post #406
crossbody wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did Europe find a cheat code that gets free $$$ for education? Nothing is free - once you graduate you are hit with 50% tax that gets back all you "free" tuition costs many, many times over. Not saying education should not be subsidized via taxes (I think it's good overall), but it's not free at all - the price is just hidden and spread out over many years (similar to student loans but less visible).

> once you graduate you are hit with 50% tax that gets back all you "free" tuition costs many, many times over. This is plain false.

In EU? What is false about it? I paid the 50% income tax after getting my "free education"

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

#690

Post by selimthegrim »

alephnerd wrote: post #248
givemeethekeys wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> like Florida If Florida is "backwater", then so is most of the rest of the country outside of a handful of overpriced cities where earning 80k is required to be able to afford a room in an apartment - not the whole apartment, and certainly not buying one.

I mean yea, they absolutely are economically speaking - especially when looking at where new grad college educated jobs are located [0]. Heck, most states have fallen into a technical recession [1]. Florida is weird simply because of how much tourism and retirement adjacent industries skew it's economy (eg. Elderly care, primary care, etc) - in fact, healthcare services (as in elderly care, hospice care, and homecare…

Living in Louisiana, salaries here are in the same bucket as FL.
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