Yep it's going to get worse as well and it's not trades its inequality, how can someone making $10-15/hr pay for $10k tuition and astronomical rise in CoL..
More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years
851–860 of 1001 posts
Re: More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years
#852Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 plu…
> can be easily outsourced to a country with lower wages
There are shops that specialize in "re-shoring" projects after cheap offshored contractors end up spending the complete project's budget without shipping anything working.
Their salespeople would talk to potential clients, get the project's duration, then quote them a reasonable price for domestic developers, get laughed out of the room as the company decide to go with much cheaper "best cost countries". Then a few months before the end of the contract they would contact the same company again and most of the times (assuming the company was still alive, a lot of badly capitalized startups just shut down at this point after having wasted all their runway) end up re-doing the project.
But hey, this time, it’s going to be different!
Re: More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years
#853Earlier quoted context omitted.
Read this: > "Before they attend, students that go to college, on average, demonstrate better analytic skills than the students that do not go to college. They also, on average, have access to more existing wealth and other resources through their family." This is a classic example of the concept of "correlation does not equal causation". This is when two things are related, but one does not lead to the other.
Read this: > "But refuting the data which is clear on this across time and many countries requires more than a good story." We all know correlation does not equal causation because we went to college. Or have read a single thread here. But it's still empirical data and, as such, slightly better than motivated storytelling.
> slightly better
Re: More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years
#854Down 28% since 2012 (19.8 M to 14.4 M) as stock market booms. Long term issue.
Re: More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years
#855This is nearly a strictly American problem. Much of the rest of the world has realized that society requires and is capable of supporting advanced education for all -- after all we want humanity to be advancing , right? America is still stuck in this alternate universe where it's a great privilege to have the opportunity to learn, which is of course true to some extent, but they really put it on a pedestal there. Com…
>Much of the rest of the world has realized that society requires and is capable of supporting advanced education for all -- after all we want humanity to be advancing, right? the number of STEM degrees in the US has basically been flat for decades, majority of degrees being handed out are effectively useless in terms of boosting productivity and "advancement". Go around and ask people with college degrees how often…
Paying for the Party is a good book about this issue of STEM degrees being flat and money being pumped in by students doing marketing, PR, communications, and business management degrees.
Re: More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years
#856Earlier quoted context omitted.
That completely shifts the blame to bureaucracies, and that isn't fair. Loans are where they are because students prefer newer dorms, amenities, programs, and research opportunities. Student competition leads to prestige, leads to demand from employers for graduates from a specific institution. It is a self-reinforcing dynamic. The fact student loads have special bankruptcy treatment is bad. But absent Sallie Mae (or…
This is an institutional problem and they should be blamed though. It doesn't really matter what students "prefer", if a bank doesn't do their due diligence and a student isn't able to repay their loan, then the bank should be losing that money as a bad investment. They won't give a $1M mortgage loan to buy a 50k lot, and likewise won't give it to someone that doesn't seem like they could pay it back. I do think ther…
I agree with you except for your thoughts regarding paying to educate doctors. Indeed we do benefit from people becoming doctors and they are well paid, have prestige, and are generally one of the most well respected professions. This should be plenty to incentivize one to pursue medicine. You will be paying them when you receive care, exchanging money for their service, directly via billing or indirectly via insurance.
Re: More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years
#857Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think the first two are problems colleges need to fix I think its more of a matter that we need to change our mindset about who should be attending college maybe some people would be better off going the trade school route.
Yeah we I read somewhere that in Germany 60% of students go into trades and they have seriously beefed up their programs. But yeah there is a stigma here in the US about trades, I think that's partly due to the social consequences of having insane wealth gaps and worshipping billionaires.
Asian migrants (east, south) lok down on trades. Not core US middle class looks down on such.
Re: More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years
#858Earlier 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…
The study you linked is over 10 years old. Furthermore, it is using lifetime earnings as the core metric, which means they are pulling in data about people who earned their degrees like 50 years ago. All the data that currently exists shows better outcomes for students that go to college. One would expect this even if college had no benefit to students because the population of students that go to college is pre-sele…
That is why it may be better to evaluate the statement "college improve your lot using median outcomes" using outcomes for college graduates that do not come from wealth and that are not skilled enough to get into top-tier universities on merit (use median to avoid outlier sub-groups skewing the average).
Basically, if you do not already have a force multiplier is the reward of college worth the huge loan that can't be dismissed in bankruptcy?
Re: More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years
#859Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not for most people there isn't, degree or no degree. Most people lack imagination, live boring lives, and want financial stability and a rewarding family life. Your last statement is very condescending. If your goal is generational wealth , leaving your kids better off than you, return on capital investment and things like that, owning property as early as possible that you can afford to own puts you miles ahead of…
I don’t think it’s condescending at all. It’s a tough pill to swallow at best. I’m not saying those things are wrong to want or that they have no value, only that doing it as soon as possible will have you miss out on a lot of experiences and opportunities that may not be present after you settle down. Therefore, doing it earlier is not a win, as implied in the original comment. Edit: This is an example of the classi…
Yes it is an example of the marshmallow test, but not in the way you think. You failed the test, and the people you mock passed it. They are willing to make sacrifices in the present in order to create a better future, while you chase instant gratification.
Re: More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years
#860Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There's so much more to life than pumping out kids I think it's pretty hard to argue this is true while literally making "life." Yeah you don't usually get a shiny new car and an unnecessarily large house having kids at 21, but the life you're talking about is a negative for humanity. What does it matter when you're happy and have everything you need to survive and provide anyways? That's what a "win" is.
>Yeah you don't usually get a shiny new car and an unnecessarily large house having kids at 21, but the life you're talking about is a negative for humanity. This is so far from what I’m talking about that it’s closer to what I’m arguing against than for it. I am not talking about materialistic things. I am talking about experiences, relationships, and outlook-defining memories. > What does it matter when you're happ…
> I am talking about experiences, relationships, and outlook-defining memories.
And "pumping out kids" as you put it does this for many people. Sorry it doesn't for you, but saying that it isn't a "win" for some people is short sighted.
> You can do more. You can be more. You can experience more.
Many would say the same of those in their 30s and 40s with kids.
> Sad.
Again, many would say the same about your aspirations. Insulting, isn't it?
My point being, what makes you happy, doesn't make others, so don't cast someone who has kids at 21 with a home and ability to provide for them into a bucket of not "winning" at life.