US college enrollments are falling, except for graduate degrees

https://qz.com/1909880/us-college-enrollments-are-falling-except-for-graduate-degrees/

by lxm • 6 years ago

213 421 6 years ago

MattGaiser3• 6 years ago

Well, every degree is essentially an online degree now. Unless you are in a field where the degree itself is the most useful part of your education, you would defer.

However, if you are unemployed right now, you want to avoid becoming long term unemployed. Therefore you go and get a graduate degree.

denkmoon• 6 years ago

Most of us just want certificates of employability. I got a BSc Biol and immediately became a developer. The education wasn't important, merely the certification that I can complete work to a reasonable standard according to a deadline. To that end, an online degree is fine (as long as it holds its value to employers/HR bots)

itqwertz• 6 years ago

It’s about time this industry gets “disrupted”.

awat2• 6 years ago

It’s getting more and more difficult to justify undergrad 4-year degrees I don’t find it all that surprising that when you strip out the facilities and don’t drop tuition it’s causing this effect.

It’s essentially a luxury service in many ways without the ability to provide the luxury.

throwawaygh2• 6 years ago

Yup. The only reason colleges aren’t facing the wipeout of gyms or restaurants is that education is extremely counter-cyclical

legerdemain3• 6 years ago

The effect of... unchanged enrollment in four-year programs? Did you read the linked article?

Bachelor's degrees are not significantly changed, post-bac programs are up 20% or more, and master's programs are up as well. This suggests that students with money are seeking more schooling and more expensive schooling, not less. It's the poor people who get two-year degrees who are dropping out.

unishark6• 6 years ago

There is typically more of a counter-cyclic effect expected from recession, however. At the school where I work, enrollment this semester set a new record. Apparently that came at the expense of some other school(s).

But I agree with your point generally, this probably has nothing to do with a backlash against college itself, and instead seems to be something more specific to "college-adjacent" degree programs.

acjohnson55• 6 years ago

I can't help but wonder if the pandemic will serve as a irreversible shock to a status quo that can't have been sustainable. As much as college was a life-redefining experience for me, I also think it's incredibly wasteful and indulgent to send most 18 year olds to college. I had no idea what I wanted out of the experience, other than the experience itself.

I think a better future would be focused, shorter-term educational programs, taken flexibly through one's early career years. There simply have to be better ways to unbundle the positive aspects of the college experience to make them more responsive to people's individual journeys to their serious careers.

ruph1234• 6 years ago

Maybe going off on a tangent but as a German I never understood why in the US people have to study for some very basic jobs. Jobs like nurse, pharmacist, physical therapist, etc. are 3 year apprenticeships in Germany. You apply directly at a company that is educating you on the job and you go to “work school” in alternating fashion.

On the other side you need some kind of education for almost any job here. Car mechanic, etc. So it is not as flexible.

I just always cringe when I hear someone is going to university to study for a job. Many jobs just require more practical experience than knowledge. In the US the choices are extrem: either go to some university or do nothing at all and try your luck.

rayhendricks• 6 years ago

We do have that here too, you can apply to be an electrician (IBEW I think) and other trades and be paid on the job to learn. Unfortunately high paying jobs like IT or pharmacy you have to pay first.

est31• 6 years ago

The percentages of university graduates for an age cohort are growing yearly in Germany as well. 25.5% in 2008, 31.5 in 2018. The US is just further ahead in this trend. It has similar effects in Germany. Brace yourself, Akademikerproletariat is coming :).

https://www.datenportal.bmbf.de/portal/de/Tabelle-1.9.5.html

TomVDB2• 6 years ago

pharmacist

Only 3 years for a pharmacist?

I think Germany is the exception here, not the US.

unishark6• 6 years ago

I believe the US requires internships for professional jobs like nurse and pharmacist. Also professional schools are required by licensing and accreditation boards (which are composed of practitioners in the field, not teachers who never leave the ivory tower) to be extremely "hands on". E.g. engineering schools have labs where students make things. Dental schools have clinics where students can serve patients under supervision. Etc.

Also bachelor's degrees get all the attention, but there' associates degrees, two-year degrees offered both by colleges and (very cheap) junior colleges. These include a lot of "less theoretical" stuff like dental hygienist or working with other kinds of specialized technology.

topspin• 6 years ago

Training employees use to be common in the US. Companies trained their workforce and marketed the quality of their training programs to both customers and potential employees.

US employers didn't do this out of the goodness of their shareholder's hearts or (as in Germany) any regulatory obligation. They did it for competitive advantage; skilled labor was scarce and worth investment.

Those days are long past. Contemporary workers are oblivious to this history as it has been more than two generations since this situation prevailed in the US. The reasons for this change can no longer be discussed in a candid manner without triggering people so I won't attempt it.

throwawaysea9• 6 years ago

Some of that is due to regulatory capture. A big role of government certifications and minimum requirements and private accreditations is to artificially limit supply. For example consider the ADA (a private “professional organization”) fighting the introduction of a lower cost role called “Dental Therapist” to perform the most common mechanical procedures cheaply: https://reason.com/2017/02/22/the-nonsensical-argument-again...

Another part of it is that American college education has low upfront costs typically, due to the high supply of government loans and grants. This lets students access college with low short term financial burden and removes the immediacy of considering the cost benefit tradeoff. This is why we have tens of thousands of students graduating every year with degrees in fields with no economic value. There isn’t a clear incentive and feedback signal to tell students “get a degree in what society values” instead of “get a degree in your area of interest”. And then later when they’re unemployable or paid less than they’d like, they act confused as if the system is broken even though it was their choice to not study something that others value enough to pay for. That shows up in various political struggles 10-20 years later, as large quantities of those very same students now feel left behind.

Germany is different not only because of the availability of diverse education paths (like vocational programs), but due to its culture. The trades are respected in Germany. In the US that cultural value on trades has diminished. And now we are seeing many of those trades compensated heavily due to reduced supply.

thordenmark2• 6 years ago

True. Practical hands on beats book learning by orders of magnitude. Apprenticeships need to become the norm again. It is ridiculous to get deep in college debt that will take a major portion of your wage earning years to pay back.

jd24• 6 years ago

In the US a degree is often used as the first filter. Without a degree your resume could just be rejected by a computer before a human even looks at it.

irrational2• 6 years ago

I think mostly because most high school graduates have no idea what they want to do for a job. I really didn't figure out what I wanted to do for a career until I had 2 bachelor degrees and a masters degree. The career I have been doing for the past 20+ years has nothing to do with any of those degrees (fortunately I was smart enough to get academic scholarships every semester so I was able to graduate with no debt). But if you had asked me when I graduated from high school if I could have seen myself doing what I now do I would have laughed at you for the ridiculousness of even suggesting it.

C1sc0cat7• 6 years ago

Does depend some countries treat nursing for example differently and is there a path to a degree at the end.

I recall over hearing two specialist nurses discussing what their "first" degree was - this was in a transplant ward.

Three years sounds short back when I was doing my higher level apprenticeships in the uk it was 4 years and it was assumed that some if not all would have done a full craft aprticieship first.

rgblambda2• 6 years ago

Jobs like nurse, pharmacist, physical therapist, etc. are 3 year apprenticeships in Germany.

Germany is unique among European countries in having apprenticeships for nursing.

raxxorrax2• 6 years ago

We should be glad to have this, especially in these times. One problem is that people often leave the company after completing the apprenticeship and they even get encouraged to switch employers. Every healthy company I worked for didn't like company hoppers and tried to retain employees. Some departments always have some fluctuation, but it is one of the best quality markers for a company in my opinion.

But as you said, lateral entrants might have a difficult time since there is a profession for everything. It is a transient education system though. Even if you only got the lowest kind of basic education, you can do an apprenticeship to get access to university or any higher education. Some people need some time to find motivation.

gumby4• 6 years ago

Two factors:

1 - a high school education in the US no longer results in someone functionally prepared for citizenship (manage a budget, understand how to vote, keep themselves fed and clothed, understand a newspaper etc). It’s also only 12 years. The first year of the 4-year undergrad program at most schools is leveling all the kids to the same base.

2 - despite my criticism above, the US undergraduate design is, by and large, intended to be broad rather than deep; while in most countries you can get an undergrad law or medicine degree and then be a lawyer or physician, in the US undergrads are expected not only to study their subject (“major”) but also some literature, maths, perhaps a foreign language etc. Actual profession comes in many cases from an advanced degree. I think this is a better system though not always well implemented.

There is also a Berufsschule- like system called an associates degree for basic accounting, dental assistant, etc.

My son attended German Grundschule and Gymnasium track, but did some US high school and US undergrad. I did US high school and US undergrad, but my exposure is to a different system. So while I think the us educational system is in a parlous state, it has some strengths as well.

krautsourced• 6 years ago

Not sure what you mean by pharmacist but a real pharmacist aka 'Apotheker' has to do a full university study of pharmacy. The people selling the medication over the counter don't, but they aren't pharmacists.

mschuster91• 6 years ago

Jobs like nurse, pharmacist, physical therapist, etc. are 3 year apprenticeships in Germany.

You're wrong about the pharmacists (it's a study program almost as hard as medicine), and the fact that nurses are not an academic study in Germany is something that is often criticized.

m0zg• 6 years ago

It's purely gatekeeping, just like in a lot of other fields. A lot of people make a lot of money from it, so it's not going anywhere anytime soon, unfortunately. I too don't see why one would need a degree to give me a bottle of pills (dispensed by a robot) and read the label (printed by the same robot). I can read it myself, and I'd prefer if human was optional - this reduces the probability of a screw-up.

dalbasal3• 6 years ago

Germany and the US are opposite ends of the spectrum. The US values general education highly. Germany values specialisation highly. Most places are somewhere in between. I often wonder why certain things require specialization in DE.

blablablerg• 6 years ago

I don't think a pharmacist in Germany just has to do an apprenticeship for 3 years? More like 4 years college + 1 year internships.

C1sc0cat7• 6 years ago

Apprenticeships are Education

Diederich• 6 years ago

nurse, pharmacist, physical therapist, etc. are 3 year apprenticeships in Germany

I wasn't aware of that, thank you. This seems like an amazingly better way of doing things.

kube-system7• 6 years ago

We have many similar vocational programs in the US (ours are usually 1 or 2 year), but they have been historically stereotyped as being inferior options that are suited only for people who are incapable of studying at a university.

It is typical for grade-school teachers and advisors to discourage everyone but their least-performing students from considering those options.

programmertote• 6 years ago

Do you know how many years do doctors in Germany have to study before they become fully-fledged doctors?

In the US, it's 4 years of undergraduate college + 4 years of medical school + 3 years (minimum) of medical residency training.

In my native country in SE Asia, it's 5 years of medical school + 2 years of medical residency training + 1 year of remote posting (go to a remote area to work in order to get medical license). And the medical school is publicly funded, so it's pretty much free (you have to buy books yourself, of course, and pay a small amount for lab fees etc. for chemistry, anatomy labs).

To me, the system in the US is unnecessarily complicated/long and it not only burdens wanna-be doctors with debt (not to mention that because of the high cost, mostly the affluent/well-off kids--mostly the kids of doctors/lawyers/well-paid professionals--can now afford go to to medical school), but it helps them justify the $250K+/year salaries (part of the reason why the healthcare is expensive in the US) that they earn right after their residency programs.

ta5092581592• 6 years ago

Because Americans are sold bullshit narratives about university educations intended to justify the mountains of debt required to finance the lifestyles of the people who run those institutions.

joncrane2• 6 years ago

Agreed. I have heard many positive things about Germany's "career funnels," for want of a better term. Something they could definitely improve on in the USA.

gonehome2• 6 years ago

Lambda School’s ISA model is extremely good for the software training niche.

I think there are a lot of other models that could work if degree status gets separated from it’s theoretical purpose of education.

Why are all degrees for years? Why do all degrees cost the same?

A lot of the existing model doesn’t make much sense.

https://zalberico.com/essay/2019/04/08/lambda-school.html

gogopuppygogo2• 6 years ago

I’m so inspired by Lambda I’m working on a startup where we use it in another non-tech field.

Time will tell.

vegetablepotpie• 6 years ago

Degrees cost the same because Universities don’t understand the value of their degree programs and they don’t understand the costs of each one.

Colleges also have a lot of issues around cost. They haven't been good at tracking their costs or really knowing what their programs cost. For example, a lot of colleges don't know what it costs them to graduate a nursing major, versus an English major, versus a business major. And that's in part because the college business model is so complicated. https://www.npr.org/2020/09/16/913500758/as-campuses-become-...

victor9000• 6 years ago

This already exists, it's called community college.

unishark6• 6 years ago

Interestingly, junior colleges appear to be suffering the worst of this drop according to the data linked by the article. BS enrollments are barely hit while enrollments for advanced degrees, the biggest risks of all, are seeing increases.

MattGaiser3• 6 years ago

The problem is that employers would need to value those programs and see them as an effective signal that graduates are of high quality.

We have a lot of those short type of programs in my city in Canada, but employers generally seem to treat them as where you end up if you couldn't get a real degree. There is no signal and thus it is often hard to use it to get a job.

mulmen2• 6 years ago

I completely reject the idea that college is a job training program. Making connections between a "career" and an undergraduate degree is exactly how we got where we are today.

I'm in support of continuing education but I don't think it needs to be tied to jobs. People should continue learning and pursuing their interests for their whole lives.

If we want job training trade schools exist and do a great job.

nickff5• 6 years ago

College isn't about job training, it's more about demonstrating that one is good prospective employee (signalling).[1]

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Case_Against_Education#:...

throwawaysea9• 6 years ago

Sure people should continue learning and pursuing their interests their whole lives. But why do taxpayers need to subsidize it? If someone has an interest in something as a hobby, they can finance it themselves.

bnralt2• 6 years ago

People still pursue their own interests, but usually it's outside of a university setting. Mixing these things with job training and then siloing them into an expensive and overly bureaucratic[1] system called "college" is of questionable value.

[1]Compare signing up for a college foreign language course with signing up for a foreign language course outside of college.

WA• 6 years ago

I think a better future would be focused, shorter-term educational programs, taken flexibly through one's early career years.

A better future would be free education. Get knowledge and experience without the financial burden. College is more than studying. It's also about making friends, connections and getting to know yourself.

dfischer• 6 years ago

College has been a racket for a long time. There have existed huge issues on incentive structures and expectations. The hollywood dream of college life combined with the promise of adding value to an economy with a learned discipline.

The chasm that has grown between that fantasy and what the economy demands has been massive in the past few decades and the university system only increased it with political red tape.

I certainly agree that a layer that connects businesses with potential is the right shape. Something closer to the “apprentice” structure of before.

dalbasal3• 6 years ago

Practically, there are plenty of ways to unbundle college. Culturally... it doesn't work like that.

Compare to other cultural institutions, like religion. When religion receded, it wasn't "unbundled." It just receded. The belief in God, the community ties, the source of leadership, the welfarism, moral support, etc.

Same for tribes, villages.

There was a Louise Theroux line about Scientology. Dissident scientologists tried to continue the practices, without the totalitarian cult stuff. It didn't work. All that was left was some squishy, gimmicky, self help stuff that people quickly drifted out of.

That said, change is coming. College is no longer a very good way of being educated, and in the US, the price is crazy high.

What still locks college I to place is that it works for the upper classes, and for the high achievers. They pay less, get more and have the most cultural influence.

non-entity3• 6 years ago

Practically, there are plenty of ways to unbundle college. Culturally... it doesn't work like that.

Yep. And you can replace college with a lot of things in that statement and aptly describe why I have nope hope for anything anymore.

mumblemumble• 6 years ago

I think a better future would be focused, shorter-term educational programs, taken flexibly through one's early career years.

Drop the word "early" and I agree 100%.

bnralt2• 6 years ago

Indeed, we shouldn't have this huge discrepancy between training to get a job and training once one has a job. There's also a lot of advantages to having a diverse group of individuals rather than separating people out into age cohorts or by lack of professional experience.

trentnix• 6 years ago

As much as college was a life-redefining experience for me, I also think it's incredibly wasteful and indulgent to send most 18 year olds to college.

To add to the parent's point, one doesn't need to go to college to have an equally valuable "life-redefining experience". You'll hear similar stories and nostalgia from others who went to trade school. the military, mission, Peace Corps, or even just going straight to work. The "life-redefining" experience has more to do with being 20-ish than with being in college.

sanderjd• 6 years ago

I totally wish I would have gone to college when I was like 24 or 26 rather than 18. I would have been a great student with a much better idea of what I wanted and how to get it, rather than lazy and aimless.

dleslie• 6 years ago

I'm not sure if this is a bad thing.

There are far too many degree programs with dismal graduate employment rates in their field of study. It pains me to think of the many who are shouldering student loan debt for degrees that are barely employable.

caterama• 6 years ago

I'm sure the reasons for this trend are incredibly complex, but I suspect that undergraduate degrees are increasingly failing to accurately signal competence, pushing those wishing to distinguish themselves to pursue graduate studies.

So many factors are leading to increased number of undergraduate degrees... not limited to degree mills, grade inflation, standardized testing, and availability of virtually everything in undergrad curriculum available for "reference" online. This simultaneously increases the number of undergraduate degrees while decreasing the average quality. Institutions that rely on the formerly strong "has a degree" signal are finding that the signal is weakening. Undergraduates now failing to signal are somewhat forced to pursue more education.

I see the same thing happening with masters degrees. Universities seem to increasingly offer combined BS and MS programs. I don't believe strong MS students are formed by tacking on just an extra year to a BS program.

Finally, another observation on STEM fields: due to the funding situation and glut of PhD's it appears to be incredibly difficult to build a solid STEM career without a PhD. Undergrads in certain STEM areas try to leave university only to find out that they actually need more credentials to meaningfully work in the field they just spent 4 years studying for.

awat2• 6 years ago

Your point about PhDs is spot on. I’m increasingly seeing job postings with PhD asks for software and ent architecture roles that don’t seem to articulate the need for the PhD. Anecdotally it seems PhDs are also getting dragged into the credential race.

klipt• 6 years ago

Maybe that will at least encourage some US universities to offer shorter PhDs like in Europe, where one year masters degree followed by two years PhD for a total of three years postgraduate isn't uncommon.

bananaface5• 6 years ago

Hiring someone who's spent ten years in academia to design the architecture of real-world systems sounds like a very reliable way of getting terrible architectures. What are they smoking, are people with actual experience just way too expensive?

PhDs seem to me to be for quantifiable knowledge. They imbue highly specialised skills and imply a huge understanding of technical literature. But they structurally can't imbue skills that are nebulous. They can only teach things that are either consensus, or easy to evaluate academically.

raverbashing• 6 years ago

Agreed in most part

The only winning move is not to play. See what's best for you and don't worry about the alleged perks of a "better university" so much (especially not so much as to get into crippling debt)

Universities want your money but it's not educational quality that's bringing students, it's the fluff, the facilities and the "connections". Meanwhile some janitors are making more than some faculty members.

And you can definitely build a stem career without a PhD, don't buy into the hype

acwan93• 6 years ago

I remember hearing this back in high school:

Bachelors are the new high school diploma, cause “everyone” has a diploma

Masters are the new Bachelors, cause you need one to live a comfortable lifestyle

PhDs are the new Masters, to stand out amongst the rest

Of course, I don’t agree with some of that statement, but it does hold some truths.

MattGaiser3• 6 years ago

Some 90% of people have a high school diploma now. All it means at this point is that you were not thrown out of school or locked in jail, and even then a lot of those people have it.

If someone said "I have a high school diploma" to you, what could you reasonably infer about their skills and abilities? Next to nothing.

imtringued2• 6 years ago

The value from a degree arises from the fact that it is difficult and you can fail to acquire one. If everyone has a degree then not only does the signaling component of the degree disappear, the competitive advantage is also disappearing because everyone has the same baseline of competence. Electrical engineering or software engineering might be lucrative industries but only because companies can't fill all their openings. Once there are more workers than jobs we get the usual "McDonalds" hiring patterns.

bonoboTP3• 6 years ago

What is the new PhD? Assistant prof? Ivy League PhD?

commandlinefan• 6 years ago

Masters are the new Bachelors

And then you have people like this (https://blog.alinelerner.com/how-different-is-a-b-s-in-compu...) saying that a Masters degree is an indicator of incompetence...

bananaface5• 6 years ago

How much of this is just that most people coming out of these institutions are not prepared for the jobs they're applying for? A programmer with two years experience in industry is probably better than the same programmer coming out of a two-year masters.

Like, from what I can tell, most BSc graduates... suck. They're not able to program professionally, they damage your codebase. The credential just isn't a signal of adequate ability. Any hiring managers able to chip in here?

nemo44x2• 6 years ago

It’s a spectrum. Some are brilliant and incredibly motivated while being humble and open to learning. Others not so much. I’d say the majority aren’t very good out of the box. And I include myself in that category when I started in the industry.

Mentoring is important and finding the people in your org that enjoy doing that and are good at it is the challenge. I’ve also found as a manager you need to find some quick wins for the new professional. Low risk things that get them experience with you services and systems.

Here is what I find most difficult for new devs in the workforce: understanding what the business does. Going beyond the technical abstractions and understanding the nuance of the business. Our best devs are in lockstep with the business side of things. They know how to translate business requirements into technical requirements. And they understand at a higher level how the business functions.

908B64B1975• 6 years ago

A programmer with two years experience in industry is probably better than the same programmer coming out of a two-year masters.

There's a possibility the programmer who did the masters was simply unable to get a job after his BSc.

Like, from what I can tell, most BSc graduates... suck. They're not able to program professionally, they damage your codebase. The credential just isn't a signal of adequate ability. Any hiring managers able to chip in here?

You can't expect college hires to be productive on day one. There's a learning curve between programming in college and programming professionally. If you want guys that have already completed this learning curve, you need to hire them with a few years of experience.

But keep in mind that right after college is the only time where almost everyone will be on the job market at the same time. After that, some of the best engineers simply disappear. FAANGs hire them and they basically never actively look for a job after that. [0]

[1] https://www.inc.com/magazine/20070501/column-guest.html

DrAwdeOccarim• 6 years ago

On your last point, I would like to comment so anyone coming here feeling discouraged: I am at a mid-sized biotech and manage a team of 15, one has a masters, and all the others started right out of college with BS degrees. I look for right out of college BS degree holders! The key to finding these types of jobs is moving to a city with a robust industry because it means there is a ton of upper level jobs that need supporting help.

My company is headquartered in Cambridge, MA, but the main campus is now in Norwood, MA (30 min outside Boston). There are more jobs than you'd expect within 1h rail commute of cheap housing. If you're about to graduate with a BS in biochem, chem eng, or mol. bio, drop me a line. I would love to help you discuss your career!

jseliger• 6 years ago

There are more jobs than you'd expect within 1h rail commute of cheap housing

The Boston area has among the most restrictive zoning regimes in the country and that's consistently driven up the cost of housing: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-19/how-to-bl...

The cost of housing is driving up the cost of salaries. Until Boston/Cambridge/Somerville and so forth build more housing, housing is going to remain very expensive relative to locations that have legalized the building of housing.

grumple• 6 years ago

I agree that the signaling ratio of undergraduate degrees is low, but I suspect that's been true for a long time. The education is too unfocused, and employers no longer want to train people. So any degree must have you work-ready. General education is great for conversational ability, but useless for work, especially in STEM.

As for requiring PhDs - I have built my career without a CS degree at all. But I've worked with a lot of PhDs, and I think the signaling ratio they offer isn't any better than undergraduate degrees, I've worked with too many semi-competent, lazy PhDs to let them hold much weight with me.

Some of the best people I've worked with were those who dropped out of their PhD programs; it seems these people didn't care for the academic publishing circus, but were passionate about the work. But again, it's a poor signal.

The best signals are work experience and references - which doesn't help much for entry-level positions. But it does lend credence to programs that incorporate co-ops and other work-like experience.

gogopuppygogo2• 6 years ago

Good. Hope it’s permanent.

Lambda is pioneering an ISA that only gets repaid if you find work in your field.

Let the schools fail that graduate burger flippers and retail sales clerks with $50k in debt. Nothing wrong with those jobs if you need work but you shouldn’t have a system setup to saddle young people with $50k in debt to do that kind of work.

legerdemain3• 6 years ago

Lambda was repeatedly in the news about reselling ISAs contra their marketing claims.[1][2]

They also engage in puffery misrepresenting mixed-to-bad student outcomes.[3]

I know Austen Allred can only fall up into more money, but my read on Lambda by this point is that it is a predatory institution.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/12/21135134/lambda-school-st...

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22313474

[3] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/02/lambda-schools-job-p...

throwawaygh2• 6 years ago

For profit Ed? Predatory?! No! Who could have ever guessed?!

imtringued2• 6 years ago

The only conflict of interest I see here is that lambda school could increase their student body within a single year by admitting worse students to sell the ISAs and then close up shop to run away with the money. The biggest victims would be the investors. Although it's possible it sounds very unlikely. You'd expect this from a Bitcoin exchange.

sJ646U9k6c6gME9• 6 years ago

The idea of Lambda is great, but their execution has been shit. First off, the ISAs are securitized and resold. Lambda has zero incentive to do anything above and beyond pushing students through some percentage of the program.

Second, Lambda’s level of instruction in the software tracks is abysmal. I’ve witnessed someone in my household go through Lambda. Day after day she struggled to stay on top of a constantly shifting and poorly organized curriculum. It was taught by an incredibly inconsistent and constantly rotating cast of instructors.

The only thing Lambda did provide with some consistency is structure & discipline. There are certainly people who won’t study anything on their own outside of an externally imposed framework that provides a daily cadence of learning as well as regular milestones. In this sense Lambda is a calendar priced like a mid-size family sedan.

Third, Lambda’s career guidance and job placement assistance - both of which are advertised as part of the package - are simply laughable. It consists mainly of asking newly hired alumni to post their job offers in a highly visible Slack channel. This is meant to encourage participants to look for jobs “because surely you can do it if those other people can”. Otherwise Lambda doesn’t do anything to help one polish their resume or find jobs through networking.

Last but not least, the ISA’s monthly payment is calculated based on gross pay before taxes are netted out. When viewed through this lens, the payment is a lot steeper than originally advertised. Buyer beware.

mrfredward• 6 years ago

ISAs are securitized and resold. Lambda has zero incentive to do anything above and beyond pushing students through some percentage of the program.

I disagree with your analysis of the incentives here. The price people pay for tomorrow's securitized ISAs depends heavily on how well today's ISAs pay off. It's a delay in the feedback loop, but it isn't broken.

That being said, this incentive alone is likely weaker than the prevailing incentives in for-profit education, which seem to encourage saving a buck wherever possible and over-promising, under-delivering.

908B64B1975• 6 years ago

I'm extremely skeptical of bootcamps, especially after learning that some of the TA's at Lambda are hired to help with teaching as little as two months into the program as students[0].

It's no better than some diploma mills but any state school with half a decent curriculum sounds better than this.

[0] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/02/lambda-schools-job-p...

Qub3d• 6 years ago

FYI for others, ISA in this context means "Income-Sharing Agreement", not "International Study Abroad", which is what springs to mind when I read ISA in an educational context.

abdullahkhalids• 6 years ago

The core idea of an ISA is good, but I don't think anyone but the smartest people can be taught software engineering at the good level in just 6 months.

Any job that requires creativity for large parts of it, cannot be learned in 6 months. The human brain requires a couple of years to play with various projects, to reflect on them, to digest lessons before you start getting mastery over the job.

marcell• 6 years ago

I'm always surprised by the negative comments about US colleges. Sure, they are expensive, and many students pursue useless degrees, but is it that big of a deal? Most people really enjoy going to college for the social experience. It's the first away from home experience for most young adults. I doubt that Lambda Schools or Devry will offer anywhere close to the social experience that a typical US college offers, even if they give better economic results. It would be a sad outcome if college saw a huge decline and wasn't an institution available for future students.

scarface74• 6 years ago

Do you think that people should get in tens of thousands of dollars of student loan debt for the “social experience”?

benrbray• 6 years ago

College campuses are the closest many people get to living in a proper city center (in the spirit of Europe or Japan), as opposed to the suburbs we all flee too later in life.

At face value, you're right--but shouldn't we focus on building places people (young and old) can feel a sense of community beyond just college?

cm2012• 6 years ago

Being able to waste money on a fun social experience is an enormous privilege for the upper middle class.

For the other 85% of Americans, getting a job with an investment that doesn't put you into debt is super important.

seibelj• 6 years ago

Rather than send child to college, I let him party in Asia for a year then he gets a Porsche when he lands back in the states. And I still come way out ahead! A far more useful social experience for a lower cost IMO.

erik_seaberg• 6 years ago

I'm reminded of https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/college-level-mathematics which contemplated adjunct professor pay …

watwut4• 6 years ago

Sure, they are expensive, and many students pursue useless degrees, but is it that big of a deal? Most people really enjoy going to college for the social experience. It's the first away from home experience for most young adults.

Yeah, the thing that it is expensive and simultaneously all too often primary referred to as "social experience" is issue. Because people don't want to pay that much money for social experience. Experience of being away from home, frankly, is absolutely not worth that much money. It just does not give that value. If you ever leave town, there is gonna be time when you are away first time. And if you dont leave town, well then you dont.

Non college educated students, which is the majority of population actually, somehow so without expensive social experience. So I think that college educated minority should seek more and colleges themselves should provide more to be worth the price.

lr4444lr• 6 years ago

I think Scott Galloway has already covered this authoritatively[0]

[0] https://www.profgalloway.com/higher-ed-enough-already (and other articles)

baskire• 6 years ago

I suspect lots of incoming freshmen are taking a gap year program.

All the party schools with questionable degree value must also be hurting

thordenmark2• 6 years ago

I hate to say this as most of my income is from teaching at a University, but this pandemic has shown us that you can get a quality education remotely. Also, most of college can be learned free online or in books these days. The only real value anymore are the friends you make who will one day be people who will help you get work.

nickff5• 6 years ago

If people really wanted to learn, they could have been auditing courses. The obvious reality is that most students don't 'learn' much, and it doesn't matter. You needn't fear, because your university (like all the others) is in the business of providing a scarce resource (degrees).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Case_Against_Education#:...

alextheparrot2• 6 years ago

I’m a bit confused by this - are you asking people who have an otherwise full course load to additionally audit courses or asking people out of school to continue education by auditing courses?

Maybe I’m a bit of an outlier, but I still watch lecture series on YouTube long after graduating college and didn’t really have time to audit courses alongside my other courses in college.

sjy2• 6 years ago

This is far from obvious. Caplan’s thesis is contrary to the common sense view accepted by the vast majority of people – the purpose of formal education is to learn stuff, and it works. Of course, that doesn’t make it false, but the argument is so far from obvious that even other libertarians have challenged it: https://reason.com/2018/03/24/bryan-caplans-case-against-edu...

lordnacho• 6 years ago

I think this is true in the pure educational sense. There's nothing in most non-research degrees that you need a particular person or scarce resource to learn. Everything is public and nowadays online. It's even better: If you don't understand one guy's explanation of vector calculus, you can get another guy's without getting out of your seat.

The problem is there are so many people with degrees, and there's a vague but established pecking order of universities. People still would rather hire someone from a top uni, especially in the Anglosphere. For most things that aren't dev work it's like the old IBM quote, you won't get fired for hiring the Harvard grad.

For not-top unis that teach you the same stuff, I think they're gonna be in trouble. The mini-mill has already been built, and there's a huge gap in price that will only make it more attractive to just do a degree online.

Even looking at my own education, it could have been done a lot faster. In terms of time it added up to 96 weeks of class time. At the time you needed professors meaning it had to be spread over 4 years, so you got a bit of socialising as well, but it's have loved to just do a massive intense 2 year course and be done with it. Fact is you socialise better at work: you'll have more varied people and a bit of cash to pay for stuff.

amaajemyfren• 6 years ago

I like your statement 'the mini-mill has already been made'. The thing is though not everyone needs an employee with Harvard degrees. Small companies may be happy with a finance person with a 4 year degree from a smaller university for example.

klunger• 6 years ago

If you need help or someone to ask questions about the material, than it is very valuable to have access to a teacher or tutor. Sure, a lot can be self-taught. But some material is just hard and many people will require a more knowledgeable/experience person in that subject to help them grasp it.

However, if online learning could be paired with effective online tutoring, than I think you are absolutely right.

read_if_gay_2• 6 years ago

this pandemic has shown us that you can get a quality education remotely

It might just be my university, but to me that reads like a joke. The last semester has been utterly useless to me. I might as well have taught myself (actually, I mostly did.)

manquer• 6 years ago

Even 12-15 years ago when I attended University, a lot of times Khan academy and youtube was better way to learn than the faculty from my university, And I attended schools from global top 100-200 range .

You are always self-taught. That's the only way to actually learn . University only does three things

1) pacing and structure ,

2) grouping you with other similar level peers you learn along with

3) giving access to experts who can help when stuck in a complex topic.

Some people don't need a lot of this , some do. Most attend to get a job after graduation not because they may or may not need assistance to learn.

hobofan• 6 years ago

Also, most of college can be learned free online or in books these days.

Very much depends on the subject. And sure you could've always learned via books, but if you go that route you will be spending a big multiple of the time to gain the core knowledge than you would have at university, because as a non-subject matter expert, you can't judge yet what's going to be important or not.

It might work well for computer science, as that's more or less a subject native to the internet, but for most other subjects there is basically nothing there. I'm currently studying biochemistry as an undergrad, and for every course beyond the second semester, there are barely any resources available. I wouldn't even dare and dream of a full open source(/access) curriculum like they exist for CS.

Ologn• 6 years ago

My college said I should spend at least three hours studying for every hour in class. So in a sense, three of my four years at college were getting "a quality education remotely. Also, most of college can be learned free online or in books these days."

There is a pedagogical and psychological question of how much one learns from reading books on ones own, at one's owns pace and reading order - and how much one learns from lecture, from speaking to the professor before, during and after class and during office hours, and from working with and talking with other students taking these classes. Plus access to the library, the computer network and different servers, computer rooms, internships, student computer club meetings and open talks etc. Plus the usual of making friends, growing as a person, having access to a nice gym and swimming pool etc.

Does the unguided student even know what to study? I took graph theory for a semester and wondered why it was a prerequisite until my data structures course where I dealt with trees, graphs etc. How many people without a Bachelors in Computer Science can explain the difference between O(n) and O(log n), other than maybe they know O(log n) is faster? Yes, having a BSCS doesn't guarantee you can, but I rarely meet people without a BSCS who have any kind of theoretical basis in computer science. Maybe they went to a bootcamp for a few weeks/months and can code CRUD apps in Javascript.

I can go on...I took a writing class from a very good teacher. Although this would probably fall off the path of any focus on STEM, it improved my writing skill. Reading e-mails, instant messages, documentation, code review comments, code comments, architecture plans, presentations etc., I think a lot of people can do with a good course in writing, and it would help more IT projects get on track if people knew how to write and communicate clearly. It is not something on the clear path of STEM, but in a sense it is, and is just another thing college helps at. It can refine people in a way that helps them go on to professional work.

908B64B1975• 6 years ago

It's not just the textbooks and lectures.

The amount of learning that happened outside of classes, during labs with my peers, was on par with lecture halls if not more. I've seen side projects, discussed random technologies, even startup MVPs on Campus. That will be hard to replicate going fully remote.

legerdemain3• 6 years ago

Notably, the enrollment in bachelor's degree programs is flat. It is enrollment in two-year programs that has declined. That includes associate's programs in "practical," "hands-on" things like car repair and dental hygiene.

sorwin• 6 years ago

The most obvious and direct reason for this is corona - what's the point of attending college if you don't get the full experience? I imagine despite your political affiliation, you want your kids to actually experience college for all it is and not just attend a bunch of self-help courses where you're responsible for teaching your self.

OliverJones• 6 years ago

The epidemic has obscured the biggest problem faced by the higher education industry: it's far too expensive.

For the last couple of decades the industry has been in a debt-fueled frenzy of higher executive pay and shinier facilities. The debt has been incurred not by the service providers but by their customers.

People graduate with good preparation to be a schoolteacher, health-care worker, librarian, social worker. That's great. They graduate with many tens of thousands of dollars of debt. That cripples them and messes up their lives.

The so-called reform of the bankruptcy system in 2005 made it hard for graduates to declare bankruptcy. That shifted the risk from the lenders to the graduates.

There was a time when student-loan officers would call university executives and say "Jack here wants to borrow $70,000 to pay your tuition so he can be a schoolteacher. Are you serious? We both know that's far too much debt for the pay he expects. We'll loan him $30K, and you better come up with the rest in grants or lower tuition." Those conversations kept a lid on education prices.

But that doesn't happen any more. Education lenders are dangerous predators and students are their lawful prey. No wonder would-be students are refusing to play the game.

non-entity3• 6 years ago

I looked at going back to school for about a year and and no matter how I spun the numbers I wouldn't be able to afford it. I dont have the time, space or likely the coherency to explain it all in a single HN comment, but the way the costs were structured and the financial aid system struck me as quite blunty, incredibly stupid.

MrPowers3• 6 years ago

Both private institutions and the government are student loan lenders in the US. The government also guarantees a lot of private loans.

It's good to clarify which lenders you're referring to when you say "Education lenders are dangerous predators". Do you think that the Federal government is enabling private lenders by guaranteeing their loans?

vonmoltke• 6 years ago

The government also guarantees a lot of private loans.

No, they don't. A rider to the ACA removed government subsidies of private loans. The federal government is now solely an issuer (though I believe their portfolio still includes some loans that were originally private but later bought out by the government).

save_ferris• 6 years ago

It's also important to point out that state governments are contributing less and less to public education across the board, which also impacts the financial situation of public universities.[0]

Universities see the writing on the wall: that state money is dwindling and therefore more financial burden needs to be placed on students. I agree with your main points, though.

0: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/state-colleges-receive-the...

lotsofpulp2• 6 years ago

Education lenders are dangerous predators

Which is the US government, who will rubber stamp any loan amount as long as a college is getting the money. Which is eventually the US voters’, who love to vote for the politicians who cut taxes, who can do so by reducing the amount government contributes to the the colleges.

Politician that cuts spending on education and increases lending to students is hailed for cutting taxes and assisting students in obtaining education. This is the end result after decades of gutting society.

AlwaysRock• 6 years ago

The only actual skill I gained in college came from my own efforts outside of class. I paid for the chance to be in a learning environment on my own for several years.

strawberrypuree• 6 years ago

Isn’t the average student loan debt ~$36k? That’s not much more than a new car. And there’s income based repayment. And it gets forgiven after 20 years. The interest rates aren’t too bad (I recall having one at 6%).

I really don’t see what all the fuss is about.

torgian• 6 years ago

They mention International students in the article. I'm not surprised at all that those numbers have dropped, but it probably didn't gain much attention until this year.

Every student, or friend of mine, that I've talked to in China, Korea and Taiwan have told me they aren't applying to US universities for any number of reasons:

1) Too expensive 2) Crime / Danger ( debatable here, but the school shootings in the past few years hasn't helped ) 3) Racism

Out of the three, fear of racism was the least mentioned. The biggest reason was cost. Crime fear of major crime was also mentioned in most conversations I've had.

In the past I've always tried to downplay the danger / gun violence, but nowadays I don't even bother. Unless they want to go to MIT or Harvard, I really don't think there's much value in the 4-year degree in the US when you consider the cost ( and international students almost always pay more unless they get scholarships ).

madboston• 6 years ago

Work visa after school is also messed up for international students. They are expected to spend full tuitions and it doesn't get easier to get a job which is willing to sponsor visa and then go through a literal lottery.

deeeeplearning• 6 years ago

2) Crime / Danger ( debatable here, but the school shootings in the past few years hasn't helped

How is this debatable? The US is likely more dangerous than any comparable European country. Not just shootings but crime across the board.

Medicalidiot• 6 years ago

Bachelor's degrees only went down slightly, which isn't too surprising. What's worrying to me is that associates and certificates have dropped significantly. Both are primarily for individuals who are in lower socioeconomic status categories, which is more emblematic that there is a problem than anything else.

leftyted• 6 years ago

It's interesting to me that most people in this thread view colleges as jobs programs. In other words, many of us seem to view universities as machines that take in undergraduates at one socioeconomic level and graduate them at a higher socioeconomic level.

If this is how we come to view "higher education," we should be careful because that's not the ideal that gave birth to the university in the form that we recognize it. And so it's not clear to me whether universities as we recognize them will continue to exist if we continue to view them as a jobs programs.

x87678r• 6 years ago

that's not the ideal that gave birth to the university in the form that we recognize it

True but originally it was just a small subset of people that went to university.

debacle• 6 years ago

Starkly, incredibly small.

macspoofing3• 6 years ago

It's interesting to me that most people in this thread view colleges as jobs programs

What else would it be for the vast majority of people? You're investing thousands of dollars (either directly, or through opportunity cost) and huge chunk of time. If you can't make back that investment, then it just isn't worth for most people. The number of people that could make a living from pure research is always going to be miniscule. The number of people that could justify the expense (or opportunity cost) to just learn something for pleasure, is miniscule.

that's not the ideal that gave birth to the university in the form that we recognize it

Right. Because originally universities were for the ruling and religious class that could justify the expense of education for its own sake. In modern world, many more people could make that calculation too, but lots of people could not justify the expense ... especially if you put this in these kinds of stark terms.

And so it's not clear to me whether universities as we recognize them will continue to exist if we continue to view them as a jobs programs.

They could not. And that's a good thing. Humanities are a mess just for the reason that they take tuition and time from students and leave them hanging out to dray, after they graduate with no direct job prospects (i.e. a way to make a living).

WhompingWindows• 6 years ago

Many of these universities would state the point: university education enriches the mind, introducing students to a broad range of topics, perspectives, and readings that were pivotal to human history and human civilization. For example, at UChicago, the Core Curriculum has most of the students reading Das Kapital by Marx, a text with profound implications for the history of the 20th century.

I'm agnostic about the value of this: on the one hand, we need informed citizenry who can dissect media and think critically. On the other hand, we need practical skills and we don't need a massively indebted younger generation.

The DIRE push for undergraduate education in many K-12 schools has probably undervalued solid vocational training. What does it say that I'm now into woodworking and making things, but in my entire 22 year education, no one ever showed me how to use a single power tool.

JeremyNT• 6 years ago

What else would it be for the vast majority of people? You're investing thousands of dollars (either directly, or through opportunity cost) and huge chunk of time. If you can't make back that investment, then it just isn't worth for most people. The number of people that could make a living from pure research is always going to be miniscule. The number of people that could justify the expense (or opportunity cost) to just learn something for pleasure, is miniscule.

You describe the function of the current system, it's not an inevitability. There's massive wealth in the US, and it could absolutely subsidize a different kind of education which is intended to produce an educated and informed citizenry. It's telling that this is not a priority. (One could also imagine a hypothetical culture that does not prioritize earnings so highly, and could value other attributes of service or community more highly than earning high incomes, but let's not get too crazy here...)

In reality, and sadly, higher ed is a series of moats. At the highest tier, the expensive schools protect the oligarchy by keeping their children in different social spheres than the rest of the population. At the level of state schools, it's a zero sum game that people feel forced to enter because their ability to make a living is otherwise severely impaired.

Valgrim• 6 years ago

The number of people that could justify the expense (or opportunity cost) to just learn something for pleasure, is miniscule

I disagree with that. Most people who enter college in "soft sciences" or "humanities" these days understand very well that it's a risky investment that will probably not get them rich, or not even get a job. Still they enroll into it, because the knowledge and understanding they seek, the relationship they want to build with the world, is not tied to the brand of their car or the size of their house.

kube-system7• 6 years ago

The alternative to viewing college like a jobs program is not "pure research".

There is still a stark difference between someone who has the expectation that: "college will get me a job" and "college will give me the education I need to be successful". And that difference is not whether or not someone is employable.

There are many activities that universities facilitate, which are of upmost importance to society, but are not vocationally important. These activities should not be undermined. If you want a vocational education, you really should be attending an institution with that goal.

The vast majority of people leverage their liberal arts education in furtherance of not only their career, but their quality of life in general. Narrowing that scope is a regression, not an improvement.

If vocational schools aren’t offering the types of educations that job seekers are looking for, that’s a a failure of our vocational schools, not a failure of our universities.

lumost2• 6 years ago

The cost of universities has also ballooned in both raw costs and risk adjusted terms in the last few decades, likely driving out most people who historically would have viewed their "opportunity cost" as worth it.

In the 1970s one could earn ~$2.75/hr as an entry level employee at a union job in a factory (~$20/hr today). UVA instate tuition and fees were only $484/yr, meaning that over a summer a student could earn ~2 years worth of tuition and fees.

At the time, spending the opportunity cost also opened doors just from having done it - substantially lowering the risk.

munchbunny2• 6 years ago

Right. Because originally universities were for the ruling and religious class that could justify the expense of education for its own sake.

That doesn't sound right to me. That may have been partly true, but education was also just necessary training because the jobs demanded literacy and other specialized training.

pelliphant5• 6 years ago

Democracy requires an educated population. If you want to live in a democratic society, then subsidizing education is pretty much a requirement.

austincheney• 6 years ago

What else would it be for the vast majority of people?

Its supposed to be to attain an education, but judging from the communication capabilities of many college graduates education was clearly not the top priority.

Humanities are a mess just for the reason that they take tuition and time from students and leave them hanging out to dray, after they graduate with no direct job prospects (i.e. a way to make a living).

If you wanted job prospects you would instead focus upon a professional license, which is not education. In addition to better job prospects it's also cheaper and substantially less time consuming to attain.

sokoloff5• 6 years ago

The number of people that could justify the expense (or opportunity cost) to just learn something for pleasure, is miniscule.

When you make this argument for college, it seems reasonable to also ask “is grade 12 the ideal point at which this fitness function is optimized for most?” Maybe it should be after grade 14. Maybe it should be after grade 10.

ianmobbs2• 6 years ago

> And so it's not clear to me whether universities as we recognize them will continue to exist if we continue to view them as a jobs programs.
They could not. And that's a good thing. Humanities are a mess just for the reason that they take tuition and time from students and leave them hanging out to dray, after they graduate with no direct job prospects (i.e. a way to make a living).

Why is that a good thing? Just because the humanities don't funnel into jobs the way STEM does doesn't mean that they should cease to exist. Every book you've read, movie you've watched, song you've listened to, play you've seen, etc. has been a direct result of our journey through the humanities, and I'm positive nobody thinks those forms of entertainment should just "cease to exist". It's the same thing for countless other fields of study universities offer. The problem is not that these fields don't have the ROI of STEM, it's that the cost of education is way too fucking high.

post-• 6 years ago

Humanities are a mess just for the reason that they take tuition and time from students and leave them hanging out to dray, after they graduate with no direct job prospects (i.e. a way to make a living).

It seems like this is a rumor that refuses to die. Humanities majors do just fine.

According to a 2018 ACS survey,[0] humanities majors are looking at 2.13% unemployment, which is comparable to other fields. The same survey shows that people who majored in the humanities earn comparable salaries to their peers in other disciplines.[1]

A 2014 study in Forbes found that humanities majors go on to earn even more than their peers in other disciplines as they all advance on their chosen career paths.[2]

I'm curious why the image of the deadbeat humanist persists, especially in an era where we need people who have been trained to look at potentially misleading information, identify why it is misleading, and point us towards better sources. Rampant misinformation in this social media age has shown us that "the facts" are much more slippery than anyone would like, and we need people who have been trained in the subjective arts of parsing contradictory information and -- even more importantly -- justifying their interpretation to others.

[0] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ld4Ki99C_0WFUcyBXyix...

[1] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ld4Ki99C_0WFUcyBXyix...

[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffreydorfman/2014/11/20/surpr...

SpicyLemonZest• 6 years ago

I'd argue that universities as we recognize them are already an unstable hybrid of their original purpose with jobs programs. Institutions of pure academic curiosity are valuable, but not so valuable that the US needs thousands of them, so a return to the original vision would probably mean closing most colleges.

autocorrect26• 6 years ago

This sort of thinking that “universities are only a function to get jobs” is the sort of thinking that can allow other countries to supersede the technological and scientific advancements of that particular country, because so little emphasis is put in higher learning and research. This dismissal of higher education and research is a bit troubling.

Sure, this country with that thinking might be able to attract the best talent from other countries to innovate and do research, but politically it might not be wise to always count on it.

When a populous has the mindset of dismissing universities and education to just get a job, then don’t be surprised when they fail to keep up with the latest advances in AI and science.

seg_lol• 6 years ago

The human mind is one of the most wonderful things in the whole known universe. That we have saddled most of them with meaningless toil and vapid entertainment is disappointing.

The shift to the right coincides with a decades long attack on academia and intellectualism. Change incentives, allow the structures to corrode and the weight to shift and the bridge will come down on its own.

If one is only outcome based and based on simple linear line of sight, we will never make the discoveries. But if that statement is outcome based, we should be settings these minds free to discover everything they can, not just STEM advancements.

hoorayimhelping2• 6 years ago

that's not the ideal that gave birth to the university in the form that we recognize it.

I get it when people say this, but at the same time, I don't. Why are you basing the effectiveness of the institution in modern times on what it was designed for half a millennia ago? The world has changed since universities were introduced. Do you do the same thing with other institutions that were around at the same time? Do you talk about how marriage customs were different in the middle ages and what we call marriage now is not originally in the spirit of marriage the way it was practiced in the middle ages? Do you talk about how the catholic church was run in the middle ages and how organized religion is different now, and how we should consider what religion was used for centuries ago? Why are universities some special exception that get to be downright reactionary and not move forward with the times?

michaelt2• 6 years ago

That's because college-as-increasing-earnings-potential is the simplest way to rationalise taking on a lifetime of debt.

Spending $100,000 to boost your income by $20,000 per year for life is a very simple argument.

On the other hand, to argue a manual labourer with a $100,000 philosophy degree that didn't boost their income at all had nonetheless made a good investment requires much more complex arguments about the nature of human happiness and the inherent value of knowledge to the individual and society. Which in turn leads to a wealth of follow-on questions which can't be answered with any finality.

6gvONxR4sf7o2• 6 years ago

Consider knowledge as a strict tradeoff against things like interesting vacations and buying a house N years earlier, and it's genuinely tricky. Would you trade buying a house at 30 with less knowledge of liberal arts for buying a house at 40 and knowing a BS worth of liberal arts?

Luckily (unluckily) the decision is easier because to buy a house at 30, you likely need the degree too, so the question is flipped.

malandrew7• 6 years ago

Philosophy majors are about the only humanities major with a marketable skill: actual skills in critical thinking and not largely an illusion of critical thinking

As such they do better financially than other humanities majors:

https://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2015/09/philosophy-majors-...

dantheman• 6 years ago

Yeah, I mean I'd say that a philosophy degree shouldn't cost 100k and that's the problem.

simonsarris• 6 years ago

If colleges are simultaneously marketed for the average person and carry large bills (not just in $$ but in taking 4 years of your life), they better be jobs programs at a bare minimum.

SuoDuanDao8• 6 years ago

You're right, but I'd say that the damage has been done.

There was an ugly truth even to the ideal that it allowed scions of rich families to network - so even when it was a jobs program in neither practise nor theory it upped one's chances of success later in life dramatically.

Once that game was known, the attendant success became desired and colleges were flooded with applicants. Colleges optimised for large numbers of undergraduates motivated by socioeconomic mobility, their marketing efforts and staffing levels are optimised for that reality.

I'm not sure when you encountered universities, but I was never aware of them being marketed as anything but jobs programs, and I'm closer to an X'er than a Zoomer.

neutronicus• 6 years ago

The "ideal that gave birth to the university in the form that we recognize it" is inherently aristocratic.

If the financial investment in university doesn't provide social mobility, if it's a nebulous "preparation for citizenship," then you're essentially asserting, by default, that people who are blind to the financial ROI of university are better citizens.

tharne5• 6 years ago

The ideal that gave birth to the university in the form that we recognize it was tied to the fact that until very recently, the university was an intellectual playground for the wealthy. Most of these folks either didn't need to work for a living or already had good jobs waiting for them via well-established social connections among their fellow elite.

The vast majority of people need to work for a living and need practical skills that others are willing to pay them for. The idea that the university should exist for "learning for the sake of learning", and the idea that "everyone should go to college" is incompatible. You can have one, you can have the other, you can't realistically have both.

If you want to learn for the sake of learning (I know I do), there's never been a better time to do it. The average person with a $200 laptop and an internet connection has access to more and better information than a Harvard graduate student did 50 years ago. We need to rid ourselves of the notion that college == education and that education == college. At this point a college degree is mainly just proof that you are diligent and were able to follow directions for four years while meeting deadlines.

Nbox93• 6 years ago

I think university should exist for “learning for the sake of learning” and that “everyone should go to college.” I don’t think it’s incompatible. I think someone becoming more educated has a lot of positive externalities. I think the list of positive externalities is so great that we should provide free tuition, room, board, and even a stipend to anyone willing and able to attend college. This should be funded from tax dollars, and seen as an investment in people. All of the money _will_ be returned by increased tax revenue from a more educated populous but this is just a side effect. The real benefit comes from having a more educated community capable of a high level of critical thinking.

officehero• 6 years ago

Disagree on the "playground" historical note students hundreds of years ago would probably not agree at all, basically since life back then was tougher for everyone including elite compared to tosay. Somewhat agree with 2d and 3d paragraphs though

JSavageOne• 6 years ago

So long as universities are charging tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars for degrees that employers are requiring, university will always be a jobs program. It's very sad, particularly since it's not a very good one at that.

pratik661• 6 years ago

Higher education is seen as a means of both economic AND social mobility. I think most economic models fail to capture the latter. This explains why so many people get into debt to attend a “prestigious “ university for little apparent financial gain.

yowlingcat• 6 years ago

I always get a lot of pushback when I express this sentiment but I think you're spot on. To me, this situation is another symptom of the weakening social contract I see between societies and their citizens. The responsibility of a society to educate its populace extends beyond mere vocation. It's frighteningly naive and optimistic for societies to assume that flattening that responsibility to such a small fraction will not result in horrific second order consequences.

justinmeiners2• 6 years ago

I agree with you, but unfortunately our government is using them for that purpose.

Digory• 6 years ago

The ideals -- "liberal arts" -- were agreements about what enabled people to live a "free" life.

We've lost those as ideals. Instead, we interpret all the liberal arts through racialist-socialist lens, and find they required us to adopt norms outside ourselves.

The ideal we do hold together is hating authority and norms outside ourselves -- whether that's racial, religious, political, sexual, biological, musical, literary, fashion, filmmaking, etc. Just Do It. Have It Your Way. Think different.

So, the jobs part is the part we hold in common. The ideals dispute is leading to violent protests in the streets.

okprod• 6 years ago

Responses to your insightful post demonstrate why we'll never achieve Roddenberry's dream of a post-scarcity economy. Because in my day I walked 100 miles in the snow so I could get to school to study and become an engineer to pay the bills.

zcw100• 6 years ago

Care to elaborate on how football and basketball fit into your view of "higher education"?

quicklime• 6 years ago

What's interesting to me is that so many people believe that tertiary education should be nothing more than a jobs program, but they're happy to let students "waste" time in secondary and primary school on useless (for an office job) activities like sports, camping and reading fiction books.

The vast, vast majority of high school graduates aren't going to be professional athletes. But everyone (I hope) understands that we don't have PE in schools just so that schools can supply professional sports leagues with athletes. We have it because it helps people live better lives, even if it doesn't prepare them for a job.

jldugger• 6 years ago

I mean, universities were born out of the need to train Christian ministers in the faith. Even the earliest American universities were of that form; Harvard was founded by the Massachussets colony to train clergymen.

So in a sense, they were always jobs programs. If today they seem secular, it's because society was able to reshape the institution over time. For example, the Morril Act, which established the land grant universities, made it's utilitarian purpose explicit:

without excluding other scientific and classical studies and including military tactic, to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts, in such manner as the legislatures of the States may respectively prescribe, in order to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions in life.

But it's not clear to me that universities _should_ exist as we commonly imagine them. Why are the worlds top researchers presumed to be the worlds top educators, when we have all the evidence in the world they are not and generally believe being recognized as a good educator is a career curse? And even if they were at least good at the job of educating, why are there 100+ courses independently designed without meaningful comparison?

gwbas1c2• 6 years ago

In the late 1990s my school sold itself mostly as a way to get a high paying job. There was a clear disconnect between admissions (the salespeople), the professors, and the students.

The salespeople: College is a way to get a high paying job.

The professors: College is about exploring academic subjects.

The students: College is a rite of passage to be part of the upper-middle-class.

IMO, the only way to fix the system is to be stricter about who gets into college, and more lenient about who's hired for professional jobs. Also, we need more trade schools.

sushshshsh2• 6 years ago

Then don't charge 60k per year LOL

sushshshsh2• 6 years ago

Then why do jobs say "BACHELORS DEGREE REQUIRED"

mcavoybn• 6 years ago

It shouldn't surprise you, public schools and universities sell themselves as jobs programs. Ignorance is not an excuse, and I'm going to go ahead and venture a guess that your surprise comes from arrogance and not ignorance. "We need to be careful" is not a solution. The article itself is about the fact that universities are dying out, so you being "unclear" on the abstract nature of western education itself doesn't add anything to the conversation.

LockAndLol• 6 years ago

Maybe it will be time for the world to massively move towards online education. Khan academy and other MOOCs are already doing a fine job. If universities finally move towards online certificates that can be recognized like or more than degrees, we might finally be able to drop the costs for education and enable more people worldwide to get a good education.

A skill tree map like in Path of Exile for education would be a major step forward, but small steps first...

SketchySeaBeast3• 6 years ago

Aren't we all treating this like some sort of emerging trend when it seems directly in response to COVID? Is the assumption also that masks are going to become common after this is over because we saw a mask wearing trend this year?

Time will tell if this is a real problem or just a blip, but I think it may be too soon to raise the alarm of a socioeconomic shift during a pandemic.

benmller313• 6 years ago

It wouldn't surprise me if mask wearing did become pretty common place after this. I think some people view it as such a minor inconvenience that it would be worth it to wear during flu season.

SketchySeaBeast3• 6 years ago

While I'd like that as well (I haven't had a cold since January), there's so much pressure against it in the middle of the pandemic I can't help but think won't last when the pandemic ends.

dehrmann2• 6 years ago

I halfway see people in the US using it to show their political preference.

dehrmann2• 6 years ago

If it's sporadic for someone who thinks they might be sick, I can understand, but I'm already worried about unintended consequences of so many people giving their immune systems a vacation, and the longer this goes on, the more likely it is that a Covid mutation that bypasses masks takes hold. We've never fought a disease like this on this scale, so these are pretty big open questions that I'm surprised I'm not hearing more about.

pgcj_poster• 6 years ago

I love how the bar graph uses the darkest color to represent white people.

theyCallMeSwift• 6 years ago

The growth specifically in Post-baccalaureate Certificate program enrollment while general Certificate programs drop is really surprising to me. I wonder if undergrads just have less faith in certificates or if graduates are more worried about CV gaps.

Anyone have thoughts on why this might be happening?

francisofascii• 6 years ago

Part of the cause is the US birth rate fell after 9/11 and stayed lower for a couple of years, and so we are now 19 years later and seeing lower enrollment. The financial crisis had a much more dramatic effect on birth rates, so colleges will really be struggling 8 years down the line. https://www.statista.com/statistics/195943/birth-rate-in-the...

inamberclad• 6 years ago

It's probably because most colleges are waiving GRE requirements right now.

gwbas1c2• 6 years ago

Two examples:

1: My 18-year-old nephew decided to attend classes online. No sense paying for room and board if he can't do anything fun while he's there.

2: My neighbor's son decided to delay his senior year. No sense paying full tuition if he can't be there in person.

anm89• 6 years ago

One interesting thing that might not be obvious on the surface is that this is a massively deflationary trend (in the sense that debt is money and educational loans increase the money supply) a time when we are already fighting deflation and have run out of traditional monetary tools to fight deflation (with interest rates already approaching 0)

I actually think less people enrolling in college as it currently exists is a good thing but in the sense above it has the potential to have very damaging side effects (I'm not arguing we should continue the lending just because getting rid of it will cause some pain though)

US college enrollments are falling, except for graduate degrees

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