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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

#691

Post by taylodl »

echelon wrote: post #217
taylodl wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Things are just going back to the way they used to be: higher education is for the elites. Once upon a time we understood that higher education was important for all and having a well-educated public was good for the Republic. Now that view no longer holds - the politicians have learned that their flim-flam doesn't work as well on a well-educated public and so they've been making cuts to higher education for the…

That's an interesting take, but I disagree. The reason colleges cost so much is that they've expanded their administration, facilities, and sports programs to soak up all of the available loan money. I went to a state school that focused on STEM. The acceptance rate was low, class sizes were small, and the tuitions were reasonable. The buildings dated from the 60's. We didn't have extensive athletic programs, and our…

The administrative bloat helps cover the fact that their graduates aren't able to get jobs upon graduating. Parents and prospective students feel good that 99.7% of the graduates got a job within their first year of graduation and don't realize 7% of that was as an administrator for the college.

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

#692

Post by AlanSE »

archy_ wrote: post #344
HWR_14 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just loans, it's COVID. If I were college-age and I were planning on going to college I would certainly do one of two things. I would postpone college until the COVID issues died down -or- I would use the fewer applicants to get into a more prestigious school banking on a better 3 year experience (out of 4) starting in the fall of 2022 and more impressive degree going forward. Either way, I can imagine admit…

This makes a lot of sense. I took a couple online classes when I was in college, and despite my efforts, I definitely didn't learn as much as I would have otherwise. THere's something about someone telling you something in person that makes it easier for my brain to absorb, even if it's in a giant lecture hall and you don't go to office hours. I can recall accounting principles (taken in person) far better than mater…

> And my online classes were explicitly taken online, with professors who had done online stuff before, not hastily moved online in the midst of a pandemic. Knowing how computer-averse some of my professors were, I can only imagine the transition to online was rough, and I bet I'd be scared away from online classes in college if I had to go through high school like that, even if I got a full ride.

Universities are moving into a new space by taking so much online, and people will realize that some institutions are better at this than others. MOOCs can be done well, but it is largely not those traditional institutions that will be doing that.

I'm very interested to see if some education disruptors come out of this time.

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

#693

Post by zaidf »

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…

The PDF you linked cites lifetime earning data collected from the previous century. It might tell you about how things were 1950-2000. But says little about our current Internet-driven world.

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

#695

Post by taylodl »

lordnacho wrote: post #239
echelon wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an interesting take, but I disagree. The reason colleges cost so much is that they've expanded their administration, facilities, and sports programs to soak up all of the available loan money. I went to a state school that focused on STEM. The acceptance rate was low, class sizes were small, and the tuitions were reasonable. The buildings dated from the 60's. We didn't have extensive athletic programs, and our…

I wonder if there's a market for schools that specifically don't have a sports program. I suspect the atmosphere at such a place would be attractive to a large minority of prospective students.

A lot of students who may not play sports competitively still enjoy playing sports recreationally and really, given the sad state of American's health these days, we really need to be promoting the development of both mind and body.

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

#696

Post by tejtm »

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.

sounds just like programming ... I know! let's invent object oriented welding to lower the barriers to being able to make a weld that holds.

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

#697

Post by prirun »

welshwelsh wrote: post #655
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…

I'm sure there are some pipefitters who make a lot of money, but we should go by averages, not outliers. The average for "Plumbers, Pipefitters, and Steamfitters" is $56,330 per year, according to the BLS. For "Software Developers, Quality Assurance Analysts, and Testers" it's $110,140 per year. For "Physicians and Surgeons," it's $208,000 per year. We also need to consider that running your own business is a lot of…

> One of the benefits of office jobs is that you get high pay, stable hours, relatively low stress and get to work in an air-conditioned room. So I would still prefer that over skilled trades even if the pay was the same.

One of the downsides is your job can be easily outsourced to a country with lower wages, and with remote work here to stay (IMO), that is going to be even easier than before.

There are no remote plumbers.

I firmly believe that if you show up on time, are pleasant, and are competent at your work, running your own business is a slam dunk and you can charge whatever you want (within reason). Because my experience is that it's nearly impossible anymore to get all of those things.

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

#698

Post by HNDen21 »

rurp wrote: post #499
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…

> 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…

If you for example do some open source projects between 15 and 18 and then get a job after finishing high school.. by the time the other person graduates college you will already have 4 years of experience and be a mid level/senior developer.. so you have a start of 4 years in terms of money as well as experience

We only look at college degrees for people without experience... for people that have experience, we don't care about the college sine it is all outdated stuff anyway... the interview will tell us what we want to know

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

#699

Post by shkkmo »

lapsedacademic wrote: post #683
hooande wrote: post #662

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Section 3.6. "Family background" of the pdf you linked to discusses the impact that parent's educational attainment has on how much money someone earns as a result of going to college, not whether they attend college. It's not used as a control in a way that's relevant to this discussion. Do you have another study? Either way, it's a fact that parental income is the best predictor of future income. Not educational at…

> best predictor But why? What are the CAUSAL relationships between parental earnings, educational attainment, and child earnings? The children of doctors are more likely to become doctors, but saying that educational attainment is therefore less related to doctoring than parental occupation is obviously a bit absurd. Just because a parent paves the path doesn't mean that educational attainment is irrelevant to walki…

> What are the CAUSAL relationships between parental earnings, educational attainment, and child earnings?

Social network, safety net, family experience with college, etc.... There are plenty of reasons why class mobility is imperfect. [Edit: I, for example, had access to summer jobs in highschool through my parents' professional network that were not as easily available to other people.]

> There's an entire literature base on exactly this question. "lifetime earnings parental earnings education" returns 130K results on Google Scholar.

Yes, but you chose a specific article to post to refute a specific claim. The article doesn't address that claim, so it is entirely reasonable to ask for a citation that does actually back up your argument. Your response here amounts to: "just go read the all the literature until you see I'm right" and is not constructive, even without the name calling.

Edit: You seem to have substantially edited your comment. Thanks for removing the name calling but generally ghost edits like this are frowned upon here.

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

#700

Post by lapsedacademic »

kodah wrote: post #378
lapsedacademic wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the social stigma of not having a college degree People have been saying this for decades, but is it still really a thing? Perhaps on the coasts? If you're in a small or mid-sized city in the midwest or the south, it's almost exactly the opposite...

It absolutely is but it depends on the field. My first few years in software were filled with questions like, "Why didn't you finish?" We also continue to interview in ways that are more accommodating for college graduates and attendees, regardless of whether it's needed or not.

I see. Makes sense. I was thinking more about "general social status", rather than job-specific stuff, because that's how I interpreted OP.

> We also continue to interview in ways that are more accommodating for college graduates and attendees, regardless of whether it's needed or not.

Wouldn't Leetcode-style interviewing be more egalitarian? Assuming self-taught people know their stuff, I guess? The alternative in other engineering disciplines is to just check the degree and do some soft interviews, right?

Or do you mean something else?

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