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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

#701

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 differ…

> 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).

some good points, but I wanted to call this out specifically. when we're discussing at a high level what career paths should be encouraged, possibly via policy, I don't think we should price in the ability to evade taxes.

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

#702

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. Many trades also pay like crap and have a very limited window in which you can do it. I'm not sure what you mean by limited window unless we are talking about professional athletes and some categories of manual laborers. > In addition many are not welcoming to women at all, regardless even if you take the highest paying trades This is rapidly changing. Also, there are also skilled trades that are mostly women (e…

> I'm not turning this into an ad for the school my daughter went to. Cost was literally 1/2 of he first year salary over $40,000. It was capped at a maximum amount. She ended up paying about $6k, but it was contingent on her getting a job that payed better than $40k. You already have. I want to see the graduation stats. > It didn't matter what education level they attained, across the population the outcome was cons…

I can provide hard data on this if the original commenter doesn't want to. I went to a bootcamp called Hack Reactor.

My salary immediately doubled and has since quadrupled in the 5 years since I attended. It isn't be a great option for everyone, and not every attendee has had a great outcome. But it can work for those with an affinity for analytical work and willingness to work 70-hour weeks for 12 straight weeks.

Hack Reactor has made their outcome statistics public. https://www.hackreactor.com/outcomes

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

#703

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've lived in the U.S. my entire life, and I agree with you. Our culture somehow misses the fact that as a society we benefit from educated citizens. There's even a segment of the population that fetishizes ignorance as a virtue, and knowledge as leftist indoctrination. There also seems to be a deep seated fear that any sort of public investment in people is seen as a slippery slope to soviet-style authoritarian gove…

> knowledge as leftist indoctrination. Almost all of my classes had leftist brainwashing. In my machine learning class, the professor would use voting republican as a classifier making the wrong decision. Given that people had made it this far in education to be good at repeating and learning what ever the professor says and that the professor is in a position of power over the students, this is very bad. > There als…

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

#704

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.

https://www.history.com/news/coding-used-to-be-a-womans-job-... is a bit superficial but gives a decent summary

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

#705

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…

This is a particularly pernicious misunderstanding because it leads people to believe that they have to take out loans to go to college or they will earn less money. Saying "People who do X make more money" can have consequences if that statement isn't necessarily true.

What you want is a study that shows that people from lower income quintiles that go to college have a higher lifetime earning than people from the same quintile that didn't go to college. Maybe that exists? if it did, I'd imagine the pro college people would be waving it around everywhere.

Using Google Scholar to find relevant research is a great habit. but you really have to read it to make sure it says what you think it says

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

#706

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…

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…

Obligatory Shop Class as SoulCraft drop - https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/shop-class-as-so...

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

#707

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Government needs to get out of the student loan game entirely.

Medicare in the US has negotiated rates they will pay for medical services. The "retail" price is very often extremely high but knocked down to what the government agrees to pay for Medicare patients. A similar system for college loans would allow the government to still offer loans but with caps on how much colleges could charge for tuition to students with government loans. The problem is uncapped tuition and loan…

Many of the largest schools in the US are government institutions. There's no need to negotiate prices, state legislatures can just set the price.

https://c0arw235.caspio.com/dp/b7f930003542e89a6fb844548260

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

#708
post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hanlon's Razor: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity". It's enough to assume elites were greedy (and/or dense) and didn't consider long-term effects, you don't even need a decades-spanning conspiracy for it. The elites won't be as fine once they realise much of their wealth stems from the rest of the republic, but that seems to be the circle humanity is caught in for eternity.

it is my vague impression from history that in real yet slow-moving crisis, those that are able to command and control high-value resources do in fact continue to thrive while others fail in increasing numbers. This works, until it doesn't, to make a cute phrase, because in dynamic systems, either the system re-stabilizes in a new and different composition, or there is sudden, increased failure.

True, and you might be interested in Peter Turchin's "Ages of Discord" for a more in-depth investigation into how and why that happens.

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

#710

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 2) There are better options than college for many. I agree there are better options than college for many. Thought if I were a betting man, on average, College is the better decision. > One of my daughters did a six month digital marketing bootcamp. She made $45k year one, and a year later is the director of marketing at her company making over $100k/yr. I'm curious how old she was when she completed that bootcamp,…

Chances are she is working at a very small company, so "Director" doesn't carry much weight. Otherwise I would be similarly baffled.

The title inflation would make sense, but also paying director of marketing at a small company $100,000?

Glassdoor has that salary around $75k on average for a small company.

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