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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

#901

Post by dragonsky »

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.

Could somebody explain to me (Australian) why/how sport and higher education became so closely linked? We certainly have university sporting teams here, but they are not really notable and certainly don't have the political clout that they do in US schools.

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

#902

Post by toomanybeersies »

spullara wrote: post #712
prirun wrote: post #697

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

If we can get AR/VR into the mainstream I bet there will be remote plumbers that essentially pilot you to diagnose and fix things.

Diagnose and fix things with what? Most people don't own plumbing tools.

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

#903

Post by diob »

elihu wrote: post #715
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…

> Skilled trades pay better than most bachelor's degree track jobs. The impression I get from hanging out a bit in the welding subreddit is that a lot of people get into welding thinking it'll be a lucrative profession (because that's what people on the internet say about plumbers and welders and electricians and so forth), and what they eventually discover is that while it's possible to make a lot of money as a weld…

Exactly on the dot. In the trades you _have_ to move up to management / or above in short order due to the toll it takes on your body.

But not everyone can be a manager, I think we need better protections for the doers (unions, etc.). A lot of naive kids go into trades and trash their body only to end up with nothing or a life addicted to painkillers.

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

#904

Post by throwabone33 »

pingeroo wrote: post #778
nostromo wrote: post #338

Most comments here are completely missing why this is happening now. Students don’t want to pay tens of thousands of dollars for remote learning. They could watch Khan Academy videos instead for free, and they’d be better quality.

Funnily enough me and my peers usually end up watching Khan Academy videos anyway since they do a way better job of explaining topics than university content.

Mayhaps by design. Who would you rather hire to run through an obstacle course? One who has a certificate of having run a course of hoops for 4 years, or one that looks fit enough to run it? Arguably both may work. Can you measure which one is more likely to cost you your job? Depending on your obstacle course you may be looking for more specific qualifiers.

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

#905

Post by anovikov »

Finally, people got to realise the college is bs and is only designed to suck money out of them, putting them forever in debt. What's the problem about it?

It will help those who choose college, too - as demand for education falls, so will the prices.

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

#906

Post by ngngngng »

xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #108

This 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…

It's different and worse than you say. We put it on a pedestal, decided it was worth any cost, decided everyone should have the ability to go, but that they should all have to shoulder that burden themself. A large part of the issue right now is the system we've built allows any student to obtain a predatory loan to cover the entirety of the outrageous costs, and any political effort to change this is likely career suicide because it will be seen as keeping underprivileged students out of the best programs and therefore stunting their futures.

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

#907

Post by chmod600 »

pb7 wrote: post #849
dan-0 wrote: post #827

Earlier 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…

"You can do more. You can be more. You can experience more. And most people don’t even try. Sad."

I had a lot of experiences before I had kids. Traveled the world, great jobs, career, friends.

But those all seem pretty empty by comparison. I'm glad I did all that, but a lot of it (while very exciting at the time) I see as been-there-done-that. (Though I still get a lot of satisfaction from my career.)

But at some point I realized that human relationships are just a lot deeper than a trip to a faraway temple. And, though I like my friends, marriage and kids is just a much deeper relationship, full stop.

Also, I figure it's time to let the next generation experience things for the first time. I'd rather share those experiences with my kids then do another experience for myself and my friends for the Nth time.

I suspect that you are young, and you might also change your mind at some point. For me I just got to the point where I realized that I could go pretty much anywhere I wanted -- enough vacation time and money. And I just didn't want to.

Professional accomplishments are also great, so I don't criticize you if that's where you find meaning. But retirement might be pretty painful if so.

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

#908

Post by bigthymer »

lumost wrote: post #835

I’m noticing a paradoxical trend across multiple goods where the food is somehow becoming too expensive to be used. - Housing - Education - Healthcare If costs are too high for students to afford, why doesn’t the price fall? If it’s scarce why isn’t more of it produced?

Each of those is high cost for different reasons.

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

#909

Post by somenameforme »

snomad wrote: post #590
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…

> without that community college plus a cheap state school isn’t expensive. UCLA is 13k per year, *if* you are from California. Classes are likely impacted (even upper division) so even if a person goes to UCLA just for the last 2.5 - 3 years they could easily owe > 30k The real cost - rampant corruption (in california, if they ever opened the books on the non-profit entities it would be a major stunner and awakening…

It's even worse. You're only counting tuition there: https://admission.ucla.edu/tuition-aid/tuition-fees

The current total cost for UCLA is $36,297 per year for California residents, $28,408 if you're living with relatives. That is for the 9 months per year fall/spring session, so summer school/housing/etc is not included. This is also only for your direct educational expenses. In that budget your "personal" expenditures are set at about $5/day which includes entertainment, recreation, clothing, etc.

And perhaps the biggest problem of all is that it is intentionally made exceptionally easy to take out additional loans, generally just clicking an extra button while setting up your schedule/financing for the next semester. As most college age individuals (let alone those attending a decent university) expect they're going to be millionaires at some point, it is an exceptionally exploitative system feeding off widespread completely unrealistic life expectations. It's easy to rationalize how much nicer $xxxxx would make your life today, while how little value it will have tomorrow. But for most, tomorrow will never come.

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

#910

Post by mlyle »

endisneigh wrote: post #686
hooande wrote: post #669

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The kid that's driving a new BMW at age 16 will make more money than everyone else too. Do you suggest that kids buy BMWs in order to increase their lifetime earning potential?

I don’t see the relevance - even among the poorest college grads have higher lifetime earnings: https://research.upjohn.org/empl_research/vol23/iss3/1/ again, college grads make more money across all demographic groups. Not sure what you’re arguing

Yes, but is this causal?

Is it the college education itself that explains all of the earnings difference?

Or is it that the most adept of each income block are more likely to complete college education, and some of the later income difference is because of intrinsic ability rather than the benefits and signaling advantages of a college degree?

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