More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years • Hacker News Board

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

#911

Post by grog454 » Fri, Jan 14, 2022, 6:05 AM UTC

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…

>Eating buttered potatoes for the rest of my life isn’t a win to me

Speak for yourself!

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

#912

Post by xeromal » Fri, Jan 14, 2022, 6:10 AM UTC

awb wrote: post #147

I’ve been recruiting for US startups since 2008, probably recruited over 100 folks from engineers to C-level. I have never considered a candidate’s college or if they even attended one. The only thing I evaluated is what they accomplished in the last 1-2 years. That meant hiring some brilliant engineers straight out of high school. Most of these candidates were early stage hires for dozens of companies that went on t…

That might be true for CS but it's incorrect for Engineering specializations.

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

#913

Post by ineedasername » Fri, Jan 14, 2022, 6:22 AM UTC

In my geo-region this trend extends back at least 7 or 8 years in Community colleges. Roughly a 20% decrease. Only about 1/3 of that since COVID. At the same time traditional 4-year schools have been mostly flat on enrollment.

Whatever is causing this, it's ok part of a much bigger trend than can be explained by COVID, which has exacerbated but not caused this trend.

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

#914

Post by acchow » Fri, Jan 14, 2022, 7:01 AM UTC

skrbjc wrote: post #606

abeppu wrote: post #449

The bizarre thing with higher education costs that no one's really explained to me is why schools simultaneously spend more and more on administrators (who are full time staff), and push more and more teaching to adjuncts. The claim I've heard justifying the growth of administration staff is that regulatory compliance becomes more onerous over time. But no school is judged on their regulatory compliance. In industry,…

It’s interesting because universities over-produce academics for the number of tenure-track jobs available, so they then hire those phds back into adjunct positions, which is often the only academic job available to them, especially if they don’t want to move across the country to some small college in the middle of nowhere. So many phds just suck it up and take the adjunct jobs teaching undergrads. Actual professors…

> Berkeley has 1 staff member for every 2 students at this point.

Fascinating. Got a citation for this?

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

#915

Post by unobatbayar » Fri, Jan 14, 2022, 7:04 AM UTC

Not sure how to feel about education and healthcare being a trillion dollar industry. When will we realise that people's lives are far more important than money.

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

#916

Post by hardwaregeek » Fri, Jan 14, 2022, 7:17 AM UTC

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…

Yeah the parent comment is trying to make college very cut and dry as a bad choice. That’s not true and removes the complicated aspect: college is still a very very good choice for most, and yet it’s horribly overpriced. Besides if you read the article, it’s not like kids are making hyper rational decisions about their future earning potential. They just want to avoid online classes and got hooked on making cash.

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

#917

Post by darkerside » Fri, Jan 14, 2022, 7:19 AM UTC

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…

Just have to say, what a shitty way to end your comment. You've poisoned the conversation, and I think you read into something that wasn't there. The other commenter took the high road by ignoring it.

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

#918

Post by softsound » Fri, Jan 14, 2022, 8:00 AM UTC

Why go to college when bootcamps can be faster and less risky? They can have better terms then a lot of college debt with set time limits and payment amounts for debt. Colleges are so behind the times... I'd recommend them more for social skills and networking then anything though. I'm not against colleges just think a lot of them are out of touch and not worth it. I make a good salary now in STEM but never got around to a 4 year degree. I'm not against it but certainly understand why people don't go, it just takes a while and can be hard to tell if it's worth it. If it's affordable and you have don't have much else to do I'd recommend it, moreso if you come from a well off background. If you don't have a lot going for you though, take a trade school route or find a bootcamps with terms you think are agreeable and do a lot of side projects. Then decide if college is worth it. The eariler you make money the less stress you'll have long term.

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

#919

Post by lmm » Fri, Jan 14, 2022, 8:24 AM UTC

brandall10 wrote: post #869

zzbzq wrote: post #730

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a lot of misleading information out there. On this site I once saw a carpenter say he was making more than he used to make as a $300k software developer. But I had some carpenters working for me and somehow I figured out they made around a tenth of that. In reality some of the outliers making a ton of money are wearing many hats as sales/marketing people, employing and managing subcontractors and employees, p…

My dad has run a skylight installation business since 1979, and at least over the past 30 years, has kept a payroll of about 10 employees. His business grosses about $2M per year, apparently after payroll and supplies he nets $500k. He was claiming something like $300k back when my mom stopped working in the late 90s. For some odd reason, my folks have next to nothing to show for it, at least not to retire comfortabl…

Maybe you don't know about his drug/gambling/hooker habit?

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

#920

Post by lordnacho » Fri, Jan 14, 2022, 8:28 AM UTC

dragonsky wrote: post #901

lordnacho wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In Europe all the football teams have their own junior teams that are separate from education. Eg there are Chelsea/Real Madrid/Bayern under-10s teams that kids attend after school and feed up to the seniors. In addition, the leagues in Europe are a pyramid. Part-timers play at the bottom, superstars at the top. There's relegation and promotion, and players can develop at lower league teams to get bought by the top clubs later.

In the US they don't have that. AFAIK, there's no "Green Bay Packers U-18s" football team that is integrated with the professional club and promotes young players. Baseball does have a farm team system called the Minor Leagues.

The NCAA which runs university athletics in the US managed to make a junior league feeding all the professional leagues in various sports. The progression for an American athlete is then to get a scholarship to play at some university, and then get drafted by a professional team once they finish.