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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

#971

Post by throwaway2331 »

rmbyrro wrote: post #925
throwaway2331 wrote: post #862

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of things wrong with doing manual work: Pay sucks dick. Unless you bust ass and work overtime/meet management's obscene expectations (you won't unless you're on meth), your pay is going to suck. If you want a more relaxed environment (residential stuff, "small," few employees, lifestyle biz) your pay is going to be even lower. Commercial pays better, but it's more soul-sucking and kills your body quic…

Question is: did you go to college?

Went. Dropped out for a variety of reasons. Never went back. Don't have a degree.

Definitely made finding a job as a SWE difficult. Pretty hard to break in. I got lucky.

I never had any connections/family worth anything, so I learned how to sell/market myself, and I talked my way into all of my early jobs.

Pretty straightforward once you figure out the process. Took a long time of eating shit to get there though.

I'm also lucky that I was adopted into an upper middle class family, and went to good schools, and interacted with children from successful families.

Even if those relationships have done zero for my career prospects, being surrounded by those sorts of people rubs off on you. If I grew up in a working class area, around working class people, my sense of values and my perspective on the world and so on would be a lot narrower, and less likely to lead to great financial success.

Some people never had a chance. The communities they're born into, and the people that imprint onto them, can snuff out any hope of moving up and out.

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

#972

Post by HWR_14 »

1123581321 wrote: post #216
epistasis wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If "makes perfect sense" solution to college is usury, we have serious problems with our higher education system. It's time to start funding these schools adequately so that they do not immiserate everyone except those with wealthy parents. It's the opposite of a meritocracy.

Schools will increase their expenses and tuition to fill loan capacity plus public funding, as they've already been doing.

> Schools will increase their expenses and tuition to fill loan capacity plus public funding, as they've already been doing.

I'm not sure there is evidence of that at all. Do you have some statistics?

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

#973

Post by HWR_14 »

eduhec4teawayyy wrote: post #842
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…

Sadly, the ship has sailed on that one. Apparently college applications have been unusually cutthroat this year. The problem is, the pandemic has been in full swing for the past two application seasons, and you can only take so many gap years. There is a large backlog of very talented students. It's not a good time to be an applicant.

I suppose a lot of people opted for a gap year in the 2021-2022 school year for the same reason, and they're applying now.

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

#974

Post by IntrepidWorm »

pyuser583 wrote: post #895
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…

Software development is a team sport. It’s as much about having proper work cadence, communication, etc. It’s really hard to outsource.

That doesn't stop management from trying, though.

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

#975

Post by lumost »

bigthymer wrote: post #908
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.

Do they though? All of them are financed via debt at some point in the chain. Healthcare through insurance providers, education through student debt, and housing via mortgages.

If our monetary system is broken, and debt is artificially cheap - then you would expect price of these goods to rise above what consumers can pay.

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

#976

Post by [deleted] »

jeremy_wiebe wrote: post #721
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…

> 4) Student loans are a horror that needs to stop. Young people should not be put in debt-bondage. Imagine America's financial health if we let young people start families and careers debt free. Nobody has forced anyone to take a student loan. In fact, many young adults would probably learn a lot about life, financial management, and restraint if they saved for college and waited till they could afford it instead of…

[deleted]

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

#977

Post by diob »

moonchrome wrote: post #944
diob wrote: post #903

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Just because you own a business doesn't mean you're a manager, I know plenty of people who work independently and work alone or have one or two guys working with them. It's surprisingly similar to software development in that regard, once you get skilled enough you can get better money contracting than being employed and right now there's so much work that the "safety net" doesn't concern you.

I'd really like to do the same, although the lack of healthcare in the USA makes me hesitant. I'll probably do it anyways and just roll the dice, but hoping things change here soon.

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

#978

Post by thehappypm »

danny_codes wrote: post #874
thehappypm wrote: post #773

Expensive, but low tier, private schools are the problem. They’re all over the Northeast. Schools that cost as much as Harvard, with way worse financial aid, with worse programs than Rutgers. It’s a scam with a quad.

This is just a symptom. College in America is an example of a market failure induced by government intervention. Federal loan guarantees and special rules around student loans (critically, they are not absolvable via bankruptcy) have caused a distorted market, whereby the colleges are incentivized to compete with each other for these guaranteed loans. Remember the student is a child, likely 17. They almost certainly…

I’m surprised nobody has proposed tuition caps, with the consequence of not being allowed to give out loans if total costs exceed some amount.

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

#979

Post by kube-system »

ptero wrote: post #888
kube-system wrote: post #714

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public schools in the US vary from "absolutely atrocious" to "absolutely great" depending on where you live. The colleges that select students only from the latter do not waste time re-teaching high school material.

I think I did not express myself well. The problem I was referring to with the schools is not that some teachers are better and some are worse, class features, etc. This matters, but there are bigger problems as US lacks a uniform school program. The selection of materials is done more or less at the teacher's discretion. This means that even in the same school the math teacher for kids entering grade 8 does not know…

Every state I've lived in has official curricula required by state governments, and the AP courses that are typically recommended to college-track students are standardized across the entire country.
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