In absolute numbers, college is still 100% a good deal, provided you have some kind of scholarship or go to an in-state institution. The problem is that some of these places (and I hate to be that guy), especially small elite liberal arts colleges, seem to exist these days to basically drown young people in debt while they get into a job they could have had with the same English degree from the dependable community college + state school combo. We really need to look at the morality of allowing young adults access to an essentially unrestricted credit line.
The universal credit line was created a few decades ago when Congress decided to make student loan debt very hard to discharge (you basically can only get out of it by dying, becoming so disabled you cannot hold a job, or leaving the country). This encouraged lenders to put money into what is effectively a risk free investment.
Suddenly, everyone had infinite money, and there was no pressure to keep university costs low (as most states don't have the political will to cap their public education costs in a meaningful way). Colleges started investing more into attractions for their students - fancy gyms, rec halls, new dorms, etc. Both combined to "require" that schools raise the price.
And on the other side, now that everyone could afford college, public schools started to heavily encourage everyone to go to college - degree holders make more on average after all. Which is how people go into college for degrees they have no practical use for (picking on philosophy, it is great and gives a very valuable set of critical thinking skills, but do you really need those skills if you're not going to be an author, professor, lawyer, etc?). It also led to lots of folks going into college as "undecided" majors, paying tens of thousands per semester without any plan.
> It also led to lots of folks going into college as "undecided" majors, paying tens of thousands per semester without any plan.
A lot of universities won't let you select a major until you are toward the end of your sophomore year. Many majors have pre-requisites that you have to satisfy, and acceptance isn't guaranteed (even if you are already accepted to the university).
Is it fixable if they simply make the debt dischargeable and impose a tuition ceiling or is that one act sufficient to rein-in the prices without affecting access to what all students basically are: low income future worker citizens just starting out
Ivy League schools are so good at marketing that they have brainwashed the youth into thinking community colleges are worthless.
Spoiler: all bachelors are foundational, meaning they are taught basically the same not only in the US but around the world and don’t require any fancy equipment or laboratory to complete
> Spoiler: all bachelors are foundational, meaning they are taught basically the same
That is just really really not true. Variance in quality of professors is huge. Also they clearly don't all follow the same textbooks or course syllabus.
For the hard sciences things lab lab equipment can matter even for undergrad. The ironic thing here is that in the US large public universities often have far better labs and equipment that the Ivies. A few are decent at science but many others very much not so. I’d take a Chemistry undergrad from a UC Berkeley, UCLA, or Penn State over one from Brown or Dartmouth all day long. You’d literally be paying a ton more for an objectively less good degree.
90% of students are not aiming to go to a top school, and of those that do, they know the benefit is networking with peers at the top schools, not the labs or fancy equipment.
I have to disagree. I did both community college and a top ranked tech school for undergrad. I also know someone who attended some CS classes at this school but went on to get a CS degree from a mid ranked school (he was a chem engineering major first).
The difference between the CS classes at the community college and the high ranked university were night and day. If you try at a CC you'll get an A and you really have to fuck up to fail. Those classes were basically lectures, reading and tests. The curriculum at the top ranked school was far far more robust and As were hard earned. The labs, office hours and other learning I did with other people was vital.
The difference between the mid and top ranked program was mostly students. My friend said the curriculum was similar but the curves were different so the expectations were lower.
Fair or not, connections also matter. Interning for Intel was a big deal for future prospects and being at a top university put me in a better position for that. Ivy league isn't dominant in tech but they are in plenty of other fields like law.
Having taken some community college courses and also having audited at an Ivy, the latter really do have superior professors. Whether that improvement is worth it is another question.
Oh, and the community college professors were entirely competent.
Super-spoiler: This is absolutely, completely incorrect.
1) Teaching quality doesn't correlate much with quality (if anything, the inverse), so an Ivy is likely to have similar or worse teaching than a community college.
2) There is a HUGE difference in a community college bachelor degree and a proper university. Look at the curriculum. Much of what's covered in community college, Ivy students will have done in high school, and a community college will have (quite literally) NO advanced courses, equivalent to what university juniors and seniors might take.
If you want identical, you can compare elite schools to large state universities (University of Texas, University of California, ASU, etc.). At that point, classes are more-or-less identical to elite schools. Major remaining difference is brand stamp and network (which, coming from an elite school, I can say matter a lot).
However, community colleges serve a different purpose, and do not try to accomplish the same thing. They give a leg up into basic professional work. If you work at McD's or the local supermarket, and want a living income as a nurse, IT technician, AV work, or similar, community colleges will do a very good job for not a lot of money and with experience about being practical for people with the kinds of real-world constraints that come with e.g. minimum wage labor.
You will NOT be on a path to a job as a doctor, engineer, or similar. However, a community college education can allow you the basic standard of living to provide that kind of socioeconomic mobility to your kids.
I do feel where there was a weird transition where small liberal arts schools used to just be for rich people - but then they became for all people (it just meant debt for the non-rich ones)
I come from a highly educated but not super wealthy family. Even 15 years ago, my family told me unless I got into an Ivy or similar school I should just go to my state university. I feel like that, as the starting point for conventional wisdom, would help more people.
First two years in community college, transfer to state university is by far the best return on investment. In part because some kids after two years of college decide it's not for them.
You seem to be basing the value of education solely on employability, but that misses a huge amount of the value of a liberal arts education -- not just to the individual, but even more so to society at large.
Well, that is a problem with government and banks, not the universities.
I think liberal arts degree is a good thing if you are already set for life. Getting it on credit and expecting to repay that credit with job is of course, crazy.
Well, I'd say that while it might be a problem to be solved by governments and banks, it certainly ends up being egg on the Universities' faces. Anecdotally, almost all of my college friends and acquaintances held the university just as responsible for charging the prices it did, thus requiring them to go into further debt. (It was a technical school and most of my social group had jobs-focused degrees)
None of what you just wrote has anything to do with the students themselves; and that's the problem.
College was 90% a waste of time and effort for my ADHD self. The overwhelming majority of value-to-be-had is gated behind the bureaucracy and traditionalism of the system itself.
The only value I ever found at college was to casually be around people who are in the mindset of learning. That value was minimized by the tedious and time-consuming work that school is designed from the ground up to be.
Forgive my quip but college is the absolute worst way to improve your job prospects except for all the other ways.
I get that if politics is important to you, you won't like a place that includes your political opponents. So some people don't let their kids go, or they resent that their kids have to mix with political opponents.
Though as pointed our here already, most kids are not politically inclined and are trying to have fun.
If they are elite, they should pay for themselves. They are not actually elite. Everyone wants to feel elite, so everyone pretends to have some prestige even if the school is mid/low.
Most of the issue is that unrestricted credit line.
Federal loans aren’t unrestricted. The problem is that private banks are willing to loan large amounts because you can’t bankrupt out of student loans (in most cases).
I’ve been saying that college is doomed, for a while. I say this as a man with 2 graduate degrees so I am obviously not anti education.
Let’s think first principles. A hundred or even 50 years ago, going to college was a real signifier. You were someone who invested in scholarship, survived the rigor, etc. In the absence of other signifiers, that meant something about you. And obviously also you learned something.
Today “everyone” goes to college but it’s also trivial to graduate college with no useful skills or mind expansion because it has become more accessible and the bar is lower. So your degree no longer signifies much about you. It’s kinda sad to see college educated adults working in Starbucks but yeah it’s trivial to be half a million dollars in debt and not come out with much.
So the signifier value is gone. Meanwhile your opportunities to learn and prove yourself outside of a college degree are more present than ever. Online education options, easy testing, online portfolios etc being some examples of that.
So college gives you less, charges you a lot, and competition is rising. That’s not a tenable situation.
And the pill about decreased confidence resonates. In the prior generation maybe you can make some argument about college educated people being smarter (and worth listening to) in contrast to others. But now, it’s kinda obvious that electricians, plumbers etc are pulling in 300k a year are smarter and wiser than a liberal arts grad pulling 45k at Starbucks and yeah it’s becoming hard to justify giving more weight to the later in anything.
I find this a bit sad - I got a lot out of my education and if that was available to my son and daughter in 17 years that would be great but I suspect it will be so watered down if it exists at all that it would be a hard to justify option.
>Today “everyone” goes to college but it’s also trivial to graduate college with no useful skills or mind expansion because it has become more accessible and the bar is lower. So your degree no longer signifies much about you.
In Heinlein's Friday, the heroine visits a future California. The government, having found that those with college degrees earn more money, promptly issues every citizen a bachelor's degree to correct this inequitable situation.
Haha fair enough! Or more specifically - NYU recently (2022/2023) fired an organic chemistry professor for teaching a too-hard course - which he had taught the same way for decades - because now that SATs aren't a must for admissions, the student body can't hack it.
You're not making 300k as a tradie unless you run your own business. I don't know if I'd take it over blowing out my back and knees before I can retire.
Troof. I know a guy, friend's dad, who was pulling north of $300k running his own plumbing company. Corp plumbing, new builds mostly on construction sites. This was Northern VA / DC area.
His guys were making around $50-70k, though friend implied some could pull ballpark of 100k with long hours / 6 days.
I used to run data centers, and the master electricians who worked on my generators and ATS systems would pull 80-120, with no shortage of work. I seriously considered switching at one point, though in the long run network engineering is a better call.
This feels like a feedback loop where political parties defund public colleges, it becomes worse, they say "look how bad it is" to justify more cuts. It becomes worse...
EDIT. I do think there is also a phenomenon that over time corruption (administration) seeps into organizations. Wish we could tackle that directly instead of defunding which may be short sighted.
Dumping more money into college is like dumping more raw garbage onto your kitchen floor and complaining that it didn't solve the rat problem.
The problem with higher education is that the trough of unaccountable money is bottomless, and it attracts grifters, ideologues, lazy bureaucrats, and all other types of useless drains on society. None of the major problems in higher education are something you can pay to make go away.
This is definitely a problem. But we still need higher education as a society. I think there must be some third way between just throwing money into the pockets of university presidents and defunding it and creating an anti-intellectual society at a crisis point for America.
There's nothing special about higher education. Most departments have to fight for their budget. Higher education should pay more so it can compete. Hell, if you ask me, more universities should act as developers and landlords for student housing.
The Ivy Leagues maybe, but those aren't the schools worried about a lack of public money.
“If money doesn’t solve the problem, you aren’t using enough” seems to be the watchword. I wonder if there is some upper limit of spending where proponents of public schools, transit, police, universities, or healthcare will say “okay, you’re right. Spending didn’t help”.
> This feels like a feedback loop where political parties defund public colleges, it becomes worse, they say "look how bad it is" to justify more cuts. It becomes worse...
What cuts? Spending on public college is up and spending on private colleges is way up.
It's interesting that administration and spending has gone up at the same time funding has gone down.
My argument is that defunding isn't doing anything to combat the higher ed corruption. It's hurting students and leading to folks (rightfully) questioning the value of college. This leads to a society that isn't educated and makes it difficult to compete globally.
Would love if we could have public pressure to both fix higher ed corruption and also fund public schools as an investment in America's future (and maybe even self defense).
It was “defund education, replace and enhance current funding with students’ and parents’ future funds, enjoy lower taxes (during the first half of scheme)”. During the latter half, you get to watch the purchasing price of the dollar go down as the untenable debt is papered over.
My advice to all high school graduates is that you should not go to college if you don't already know exactly what you want to major on, and have at least some idea of what career path you plan to pursue.
This is how I started my collegiate journey. I made enough money at my minimum wage job to pay for my entire community college's quarter's fees up front. It really helped me figure out how and where I wanted to pursue higher education.
Did my first two years there to get an associate's and then transferred to an in-state school where the tuition was a bit more expensive but much less than the average college student's.
I took an intro to philosophy course in community college where the professor was passionate about teaching it, and would happily play with ideas with students. We had 15 students in our course, and he'd sit us down and discuss our papers on the books and readings assigned for the course, and generally loved it. He had to - he wasn't being paid a lot for teaching at the community college, so it had to be a passion.
I had to take another intro to philosophy course at the university. There were 90 people in the course in a small lecture hall. We were assigned many of the same books and readings, but they weren't discussed in any detail or with any insight, our papers weren't carefully marked, and it felt like not even the professor cared as this was a course that checked a humanities requirement everyone had to take. The professor was tenured, and had to teach at least one course in addition to whatever else he did for the school (which wasn't clear to use as students).
I learned more for less at community college, and some of the readings and discussions we had still float into my mind sometimes. The only thing I remember about my university philosophy professor is that he'd sometimes pace at the front of the lecture hall with a baseball bat and when he made a point he thought was good he'd pretend he was hitting a home run with the bat.
Never say never, but I do agree a gap year working with a bit of travel can help people get a much more realistic perspective on what they are embarking upon before going to college.
One thing people always seem to overlook is that college is really, really, really super fun. I'm not being facetious! It's uniquely fun and interesting opportunity that was easily worth the ~$100/mo I'll be paying for the rest of my life.
So is maxing out your credit card and going on an epic Spring Break, but we don't pretend that those kinds of vacations should be subsidized by the state and given special tax privileges like Colleges.
Most people I know treat a 4 year degree as some form of blue collar work placement program. There is no consideration for education, but instead just minimum required criteria to qualify for a job exactly matching the educational major. No wonder so many people are disappointed and that they lack passion and competence for their work.
This is why I tell people if they really want to learn to program learn on their own. Get a degree in the humanities (English, Art History, Literature, History) to learn composition and more formally correct communication. If they really want to learn computer science theory do it as a masters. I get the feeling most people don't really want to learn to program as instead they want to jump straight into higher paid employment.
I had this mindset when I went to UNC Chapel Hill 20 years ago and studied humanities. As a software engineer for 15 years now, I wish I'd studied something more in the vein of your work placement program. Having in-person instruction and academic rigor for a subject like Chemistry, Engineering or Computer Science is the key to really mastering it. Everything I learned in my Philosophy and Art History courses I could have gained independently through reading, debate, and conversation with friends or in other extra-curricular settings.
If I'd pursued a career in academia, or maybe law, I might feel differently but even then I'm not sure an undergrad English or Art History degree is worth anything approaching the typical cost.
Readit News
Suddenly, everyone had infinite money, and there was no pressure to keep university costs low (as most states don't have the political will to cap their public education costs in a meaningful way). Colleges started investing more into attractions for their students - fancy gyms, rec halls, new dorms, etc. Both combined to "require" that schools raise the price.
And on the other side, now that everyone could afford college, public schools started to heavily encourage everyone to go to college - degree holders make more on average after all. Which is how people go into college for degrees they have no practical use for (picking on philosophy, it is great and gives a very valuable set of critical thinking skills, but do you really need those skills if you're not going to be an author, professor, lawyer, etc?). It also led to lots of folks going into college as "undecided" majors, paying tens of thousands per semester without any plan.
A lot of universities won't let you select a major until you are toward the end of your sophomore year. Many majors have pre-requisites that you have to satisfy, and acceptance isn't guaranteed (even if you are already accepted to the university).
Spoiler: all bachelors are foundational, meaning they are taught basically the same not only in the US but around the world and don’t require any fancy equipment or laboratory to complete
That is just really really not true. Variance in quality of professors is huge. Also they clearly don't all follow the same textbooks or course syllabus.
The difference between the CS classes at the community college and the high ranked university were night and day. If you try at a CC you'll get an A and you really have to fuck up to fail. Those classes were basically lectures, reading and tests. The curriculum at the top ranked school was far far more robust and As were hard earned. The labs, office hours and other learning I did with other people was vital.
The difference between the mid and top ranked program was mostly students. My friend said the curriculum was similar but the curves were different so the expectations were lower.
Fair or not, connections also matter. Interning for Intel was a big deal for future prospects and being at a top university put me in a better position for that. Ivy league isn't dominant in tech but they are in plenty of other fields like law.
Not everyone gets a CS or math degree.
For things like ME/EE/Civil Eng, equipment absolutely matters. And they aren't cheap.
Oh, and the community college professors were entirely competent.
1) Teaching quality doesn't correlate much with quality (if anything, the inverse), so an Ivy is likely to have similar or worse teaching than a community college.
2) There is a HUGE difference in a community college bachelor degree and a proper university. Look at the curriculum. Much of what's covered in community college, Ivy students will have done in high school, and a community college will have (quite literally) NO advanced courses, equivalent to what university juniors and seniors might take.
If you want identical, you can compare elite schools to large state universities (University of Texas, University of California, ASU, etc.). At that point, classes are more-or-less identical to elite schools. Major remaining difference is brand stamp and network (which, coming from an elite school, I can say matter a lot).
However, community colleges serve a different purpose, and do not try to accomplish the same thing. They give a leg up into basic professional work. If you work at McD's or the local supermarket, and want a living income as a nurse, IT technician, AV work, or similar, community colleges will do a very good job for not a lot of money and with experience about being practical for people with the kinds of real-world constraints that come with e.g. minimum wage labor.
You will NOT be on a path to a job as a doctor, engineer, or similar. However, a community college education can allow you the basic standard of living to provide that kind of socioeconomic mobility to your kids.
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they brainwashed parents of the youth, they hold the purse strings
Dead Comment
I come from a highly educated but not super wealthy family. Even 15 years ago, my family told me unless I got into an Ivy or similar school I should just go to my state university. I feel like that, as the starting point for conventional wisdom, would help more people.
College was 90% a waste of time and effort for my ADHD self. The overwhelming majority of value-to-be-had is gated behind the bureaucracy and traditionalism of the system itself.
The only value I ever found at college was to casually be around people who are in the mindset of learning. That value was minimized by the tedious and time-consuming work that school is designed from the ground up to be.
I get that if politics is important to you, you won't like a place that includes your political opponents. So some people don't let their kids go, or they resent that their kids have to mix with political opponents.
Though as pointed our here already, most kids are not politically inclined and are trying to have fun.
If they are elite, they should pay for themselves. They are not actually elite. Everyone wants to feel elite, so everyone pretends to have some prestige even if the school is mid/low.
Most of the issue is that unrestricted credit line.
Let’s think first principles. A hundred or even 50 years ago, going to college was a real signifier. You were someone who invested in scholarship, survived the rigor, etc. In the absence of other signifiers, that meant something about you. And obviously also you learned something.
Today “everyone” goes to college but it’s also trivial to graduate college with no useful skills or mind expansion because it has become more accessible and the bar is lower. So your degree no longer signifies much about you. It’s kinda sad to see college educated adults working in Starbucks but yeah it’s trivial to be half a million dollars in debt and not come out with much.
So the signifier value is gone. Meanwhile your opportunities to learn and prove yourself outside of a college degree are more present than ever. Online education options, easy testing, online portfolios etc being some examples of that.
So college gives you less, charges you a lot, and competition is rising. That’s not a tenable situation.
And the pill about decreased confidence resonates. In the prior generation maybe you can make some argument about college educated people being smarter (and worth listening to) in contrast to others. But now, it’s kinda obvious that electricians, plumbers etc are pulling in 300k a year are smarter and wiser than a liberal arts grad pulling 45k at Starbucks and yeah it’s becoming hard to justify giving more weight to the later in anything.
I find this a bit sad - I got a lot out of my education and if that was available to my son and daughter in 17 years that would be great but I suspect it will be so watered down if it exists at all that it would be a hard to justify option.
In Heinlein's Friday, the heroine visits a future California. The government, having found that those with college degrees earn more money, promptly issues every citizen a bachelor's degree to correct this inequitable situation.
His guys were making around $50-70k, though friend implied some could pull ballpark of 100k with long hours / 6 days.
I used to run data centers, and the master electricians who worked on my generators and ATS systems would pull 80-120, with no shortage of work. I seriously considered switching at one point, though in the long run network engineering is a better call.
EDIT. I do think there is also a phenomenon that over time corruption (administration) seeps into organizations. Wish we could tackle that directly instead of defunding which may be short sighted.
The problem with higher education is that the trough of unaccountable money is bottomless, and it attracts grifters, ideologues, lazy bureaucrats, and all other types of useless drains on society. None of the major problems in higher education are something you can pay to make go away.
The Ivy Leagues maybe, but those aren't the schools worried about a lack of public money.
What cuts? Spending on public college is up and spending on private colleges is way up.
The problems aren’t related to funding deficits.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/education/most-americans-dont-r...
e.g. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/education/most-americans-dont-r...
My argument is that defunding isn't doing anything to combat the higher ed corruption. It's hurting students and leading to folks (rightfully) questioning the value of college. This leads to a society that isn't educated and makes it difficult to compete globally.
Would love if we could have public pressure to both fix higher ed corruption and also fund public schools as an investment in America's future (and maybe even self defense).
It was “defund education, replace and enhance current funding with students’ and parents’ future funds, enjoy lower taxes (during the first half of scheme)”. During the latter half, you get to watch the purchasing price of the dollar go down as the untenable debt is papered over.
Did my first two years there to get an associate's and then transferred to an in-state school where the tuition was a bit more expensive but much less than the average college student's.
I took an intro to philosophy course in community college where the professor was passionate about teaching it, and would happily play with ideas with students. We had 15 students in our course, and he'd sit us down and discuss our papers on the books and readings assigned for the course, and generally loved it. He had to - he wasn't being paid a lot for teaching at the community college, so it had to be a passion.
I had to take another intro to philosophy course at the university. There were 90 people in the course in a small lecture hall. We were assigned many of the same books and readings, but they weren't discussed in any detail or with any insight, our papers weren't carefully marked, and it felt like not even the professor cared as this was a course that checked a humanities requirement everyone had to take. The professor was tenured, and had to teach at least one course in addition to whatever else he did for the school (which wasn't clear to use as students).
I learned more for less at community college, and some of the readings and discussions we had still float into my mind sometimes. The only thing I remember about my university philosophy professor is that he'd sometimes pace at the front of the lecture hall with a baseball bat and when he made a point he thought was good he'd pretend he was hitting a home run with the bat.
Not 100% true, but worth thinking about.
5 stars, would be educated again.
This is why I tell people if they really want to learn to program learn on their own. Get a degree in the humanities (English, Art History, Literature, History) to learn composition and more formally correct communication. If they really want to learn computer science theory do it as a masters. I get the feeling most people don't really want to learn to program as instead they want to jump straight into higher paid employment.
If I'd pursued a career in academia, or maybe law, I might feel differently but even then I'm not sure an undergrad English or Art History degree is worth anything approaching the typical cost.