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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

#991

Post by telxosser »

inglor_cz wrote: post #952
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…

"Average College grads make more money over their lifetime, period." Your "period" makes me think about more questions, not less. 1) Will that still hold in 2070? Kids who are now 18 are likely to be working at least until then. How do the developments over time look like? Won't the increasing shortage of tradespeople drive up their compensation? 2) How does a finer division by majors look like? I would be surprised…

It is obviously a bogus statistic. You would need to compare those that went to college vs vs those in the exact same situation but didn't.

"On average, smarter people make more over their lifetime than less smart people bro, that is a fact!"

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

#992

Post by meatsauce »

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…

So why are the babies crying that they can't afford their loans?

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

#993

Post by meatsauce »

throwaway2331 wrote: post #862
endisneigh wrote: post #805

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, the overemphasis of anecdotes is why so much misinformation is running rampant these days. Nothing is wrong with going to trade school or boot camp or whatever, or even just being a laborer.

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…

Another reason why unions are cancer. Why should some suit get to tell me if I can work in a trade?

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

#994

Post by rgrieselhuber »

brewdad wrote: post #891
rgrieselhuber wrote: post #837

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One question I’ve had is if tuition paid via student loans can go to a college endowment. That should end immediately, if so.

Tuition money is fungible. If a school gets 20% of it's funding from loans (no idea what the real number might look like) and uses 30% of tuition money to fund their endowment, then the accounting will show that all of the loan money went to fund operations and only cash payments went to the endowment. We've already seen this in every state where lottery funds "go to education." The new money doesn't increase the bud…

I’m sure that no moral hazards emerge out of that arrangement.

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

#995

Post by UltraViolence »

People are weighing the worth of a college degree versus the cost of obtaining one (both time and money) and the scale is tipping towards going to work without one.

This is probably because the tuition fees have become so inflated that most people cannot recuperate the costs during their working career.

Whether this is good or bad is still an open question. I'd claim that we have too many college-degree professionals and that companies claim they need them, when they really don't.

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

#996

Post by patrick451 »

silisili wrote: post #471
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…

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…

My dad owns a business (one man shop) adjacent to the construction industry. He makes as much as I do, and I work for FANG with a PhD. My dad trained a family friend to do the same thing in under a year. He now makes substantially more than I do. Nine extra years of school is a pretty substantial opportunity cost, debt or not.

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

#997

Post by prawn »

brewtide wrote: post #987
prawn wrote: post #815

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What then should a residential client do? (Assuming they haven't yet found "their electrician" that they have rapport with.) Get a recommendation, overpay if necessary, pay promptly, then hope they'll take your call and not overquote next time? Two of my tradies (painter and gyprocker) I actually found by having them do work at my office building, and then contacted them for work at home.

As a self-employed painter (and a good list of other trades prior to), I'd say that references work both ways -- You, as the client, want the tradesman to have good references, but in my little neck of the woods, everyone knows everyone -- And we also use references to 'feel out' if we even want to work for someone. Who do I want to work for? Someone who appreciates the end result, but is reasonable about timelines a…

The last time I used "my" painter, he was a day short of finishing the job and had to duck off for a charter fishing trip for a friend's bucks party. He came back and finished the job when that was over. Fine by me! He's a great guy, does the job, quotes fairly and is easygoing - happily recommend him to anyone.

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

#998

Post by importantbrian »

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…

My purely anectodical experience with this is that when people that own these kinds of businesses say they make $500k a year they mean in their best year they made $500k. What they don't say is that for every year they made $500k they had 4-5 years where they were just barely scraping by. Construction is incredibly cyclical and there are a lot of lean years. I've also found a lot of them aren't great at managing the financial side of the business. A lot of the time they don't actually know how much they're making.

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

#999

Post by bagacrap »

joconde wrote: post #500
bagacrap wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The loans are exactly why the colleges were able to continue jacking up the prices. As with homes, people will pay as much as institutions are willing to loan them. In both cases the currently low interest rates allow the loan principal to be much higher (given that folks calculate cost based on recurring payments). If you remove the student loan system then tuition would become cheaper. However that does unfairly im…

> Also, in-state tuition for state schools is much less than $50k/yr so try going to Cal and/or your best local public school and supplement with self teaching (e.g. via public/free lectures from MIT)? Unrelated question: does "Cal" mean Berkeley here? Do you really need to "supplement it with self-teaching"? I don't really understand why state schools are viewed that way, since Berkeley consistently ranks world top-…

Right, that suggestion was more for folks in states with lesser public school systems.

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

#1000

Post by upsidesinclude »

BigRedDog1669 wrote: post #572
upsidesinclude wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? you slam that post for not supplying the information and yet state >[trades] are not welcoming to women at all / last time I looked at ANY trade, they are begging women to come WORK. Maybe that's what you meant though

What do you mean by "last time I looked at ANY trade, they are begging women to come WORK."? By looking at trades, do you mean look at a website claiming to want women to work in them? The PR/advertising spins on jobs don't always align with the working conditions driving anyone with standards or a family away. See how "essential" workers have been treated during the pandemic. If you listen to the radio, they are bei…

Working in the trades and seeing tradesmen. Specifically large scale commercial construction. The more laborious the work the lower the participation rate by women. But, there were many women working as electricians and project managers.
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