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

https://www.npr.org/2022/01/13/1072529477/more-than-1-million-fewer-students-are-in-college-the-lowest-enrollment-numbers-

by Takizawamura • 5 years ago

717 1128 5 years ago

npr.org

Bostonian• 5 years ago

I've read that more Americans start college than in other developed countries but that the fraction of college graduates is similar. This suggests that there are too many unqualified students attending college in the U.S., and if the declining enrollments are coming primarily from that group, it's a good thing.

fortran77• 5 years ago

And now there are movements to eliminate SATs or similar standardized tests, allowing more unqualified students to enter college.

Enrollment might also be down because of COVID. For many, I think, college is more about getting away from home and living in a fun-filled alternate world for a few years with dorm rooms, frat parties, etc. With remote classes and restrictions, why bother?

(I'm imagining here -- I commuted to a local 4-year college on a public bus while also working. Then got my Master's degree in the evening while working full-time, in the early 80s.)

jack_pp2• 5 years ago

Those student lones are worth a lot to the govt, lifetime additional tax.

rjzzleep• 5 years ago

SATs are the dumbest thing I've encountered in testing. In the US scoring high in some SATs will even qualify you for Mensa(gifted stamp).

There are a handful of companies that own a huge margin of the standardized testing market(Pearson being one of them). From selling new test learning books every year, to the massive global standardized testing training market.

Maybe the movements to eliminate SATs have a different agenda, but generally the main reason you need those SATs is because the average education level in the US is so horrendous. Instead of fixing that problem there are a handful organizations acting as money printing machines and gatekeepers for higher education. It's frankly disgusting.

If you ever had to take ANY kind of industrialized generalized test, whether it's ISC2, PMI, 6 Sigma, TLA+ or just SAT's or IELTS/TOEFL GRE or even just normal US university multiple choice as a non American you might find the whole ordeal infuriatingly insulting(unless you studied medicine, in which case it's similar across the globe)

It's a lazy cop out for not giving teacher enough resources to actually teach.

ghaff3• 5 years ago

I would have had a hard time recommending that someone start college during the pandemic given the option to defer for a year (or more). Of course, alternative activities weren't in a great place either.

I also have first-hand knowledge of a fair number of students who took some time off during the pandemic.

mistrial92• 5 years ago

... friends, a comment from Boston, Massachusetts

    Welcome to Merry old Boston
    The Land of the Bean and the Cod
    where Lowells speak only to Cabbots
    and Cabots speak only to G*d

astura2• 5 years ago

Maybe.

Some people fail out of college because the work is beyond their capabilities, but I think a significant percentage of people who start college but don't graduate do so for reasons other than being simply unqualified.

I admit it's anecdotal, but very few people I know who started college but didn't finish didn't finish due to academic reasons.

claytonjy• 5 years ago

I am rather certain that, at least when I attended a decade ago, my university leaned into this as a revenue source.

My school, Michigan Tech, is in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, a remote location averaging over 200" of snow per year with the nearest major city over 5 hours away, and most students traveling 8+ hours from their parent's homes in SE Michigan. The application was 4 pages long: 1 page of info, 2 pages for me to fill out, 1 for my guidance counselor. No essays. So, very easy to be accepted to, 90%+ acceptance rate.

The second year return rate was below 70% at the time, and anecdotally many freshmen didn't return for second semester after going home for Christmas. Not only is it remote, cold, and not sunny, but there was a dearth of women and some tough weeder classes (chemistry, calc 2).

If you can finish, you're in a great spot. Eng degrees from there are quite well regarded regionally (competitive with University of Michigan) and graduates had lower debt than any other school in the state. It seems obvious that the university avoided a more stringent up-front filter so it could soak kids for a year or two before forcing them out due to grades or environment.

I'm not sure that's entirely unreasonable, as I'm not sure how they could predict who would leave due to environment, but I also knew many freshmen who were obviously not setup to succeed academically, and didn't.

leetcrew3• 5 years ago

I went to a state school with a similar strategy: accept basically everyone then thin the herd with some brutal weed out courses. I don't think it was some cynical strategy to raise revenue though; they also offered tons of remedial courses to give ill-prepared students a chance to catch up.

imo this is an appropriate way for a public school to operate. everyone gets a shot, but people that can't make it get failed out early. way less debt for the student than dropping out years later, and more frugal with public funds too.

ducharmdev• 5 years ago

Where did you read this? Just curious, I'd like to share with someone I know that works in this field.

jack_pp2• 5 years ago

A big reason for going to college is socializing so.. makes no sense to go now.

chrisseaton3• 5 years ago

Socialising, sport, arts, drama, many people meet their spouse at university, yeah lots of reasons that don't apply any more.

brtkdotse• 5 years ago

You can do all of those without incurring crippling debt.

LanceH• 5 years ago

I have a son in college. The services that his school offers are greatly reduced, but the tuition continues to climb year on year.

If his major/career had the choice of degree vs work, the latter would be a really good choice right now.

tootahe452• 5 years ago

I believe the socializing/networking thing is over-sold unless you go to a top-tier uni where students may be from wealthy families and are therefore well socialized, or do something non-cs like business studies. Everyone i studied with were introverts (gamer-types). High school was way better for socializing. Oh and there were like 2 females total in all of my CS classes.

chrisseaton3• 5 years ago

Everyone i studied with were introverts (gamer-types).

Trick is to find ways out of the engineering department. I did Latin as an optional, and I was in a sports team where nobody was an engineer. Plus presumably you aren't living in an engineering-specific halls?

goodpoint• 5 years ago

No no no, the decline predates covid by many years.

goalieca• 5 years ago

I feel sad for those doing a fully remote learning experience.

sAbakumoff2• 5 years ago

why bother? you enroll to a college, you collect a huge debt that the government is not going to cancel - they prefer to give money to corporations instead. covid-19 disrupted in-person education and it's not gonna away any time soon. at the same time there are plenty of crypto startups that don't give a sh*t about education and could be pretty lukrative

reaperducer2• 5 years ago

I always chuckle when someone on HN inevitably rails against education in a post with bad spelling, grammar, and expletives.

qlm• 5 years ago

You think expletives are a sign of poor education? How dull.

CountDrewku3• 5 years ago

Expletives are a sign of creative intelligence.

Bad spelling/grammar are mostly just due to modern technology where people communicate differently. Those things aren't as important as they once were. You'll see "highly educated" individuals making the same mistakes.

Lastly, there's the possibility you're speaking with someone who is not a native English speaker. Obviously, with your high IQ you should have been able to consider that scenario though ;)

micromacrofoot• 5 years ago

the government will actually cancel your student debt eventually (25 years) if you're on an income-based repayment plan

pacbard• 5 years ago

This is probably related to teenagers enrolling in college not only for an education but also for the amenities that come with college life (think of greek life, moving away from parents, college sports, freedom to explore your identity, etc.) The pandemic has put a stop on most of all non-academic stuff, making enrolling in college less appealing to this group of students.

It will be interesting to see a follow-up analysis that parses out enrollment behavior by subgroup (e.g., by SAT/ACT score) as it will be easier to understand who is choosing not to enroll in college.

Another follow-up could be to see which institutions are losing students. It is known that college enrollment is counter-cyclical to the economy and that enrollment declines at community colleges and open access universities when people can get a job right out of high school.

stinkytaco• 5 years ago

Most of the amenities you speak of are not available at community colleges, which have seen the biggest decline. The pandemic definitely figures into this, but I don't think amenities can account for the large decline in certificate and vocational training this represents.

jdavis703• 5 years ago

Community college has also gotten really expensive. I was looking at the price for my alma matter, tuition has more than doubled since I graduated in 2010. The price has gone up faster than my university’s tuition, making the community college less competitive. I wouldn’t be surprised if economics also is contributing to declining community college enrollment.

coolso• 5 years ago

Community College still absolutely offers a social experience even if it’s just being in the same classroom as other people.

And Zoom interactions are still terribly inferior to real life in-person ones regardless of what kind of college you go to.

mfer• 5 years ago

US colleges have many students from foreign countries on visas. I wonder what the impact of the pandemic is on that segment of the student population.

This isn't likely to hit community colleges, which the article touches on. Just trying to point out that digging deeper might show some interesting details.

tuankiet65• 5 years ago

From what I've seen , international students who are supposed to attend colleges in 2020 were affected the most:

* Some abandoned their international studies plan and attended local colleges instead.

* Some took a gap year to wait until 2021.

* A minority pushed on and took classes online until they're able to come to the US.

rossdavidh5• 5 years ago

Certainly has to be a factor, but not many of them were headed to community college, which has seen the biggest drop.

rkk32• 5 years ago

US colleges have many students from foreign countries on visas. I wonder what the impact of the pandemic is on that segment of the student population.

The elephant in the room is that those foreign students are also the ones paying sticker price and subsidizing college for the other students, even at public schools.

tootahe452• 5 years ago

"It's very frightening,"

No, it isn't. A tight labor market which provides more opportunities for on-the-job training is positive for everybody except those who made their money selling fake tickets.

baby-yoda4• 5 years ago

colleges have been expanding with zero constraints for 20+ years - demand for degrees increased significantly, enrollment went up and up, student loans being federally backed were given out to anyone for any amount so tuition naturally increased substantially. seemingly limitless growth opportunity?

now many are massively bloated organizations with declining utility and the need to maintain their perpetual growth - who wants to cut costs? the downward spiral is only going to accelerate, IMO. and that doesn't even account for declining birth rates. my feeling is the next 20 years will see the higher ed industry contract rather quickly and the universities that remain will deliver either on quality (increasingly difficult to hold an advantage) or accessibility (inexpensive, contemporary workforce training since employers no longer do that).

pm90• 5 years ago

The population of the US has increased all this time too, and so has foreign student enrollment.

rossdavidh5• 5 years ago

Not the college-age population, however.

syki5• 5 years ago

Enrollment in higher ed decreased 7% from 2008 to 2018. It’s not true that colleges have been expanding with zero constraints. The increase in tuition at public colleges and universities has occurred with the decrease in public funding per student. At my system 20 years ago roughly 60% of the cost of education was publicly funded and now it is 40%. We’ve correspondingly increased tuition.

https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d19/ch_3.asp

baby-yoda4• 5 years ago

thank you for linking stats. going back to 1998 there is clearly huge growth. total enrollment might already be taking a hit but i am referring more to the expenditure side of things - dorm buildings, campus luxuries, etc. the figures from your link display this, IMO. especially the expenditures.

https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d19/figures/fig_12.asp

but to be fair, yes the stats do indicate a decrease in enrollment. however degrees conferred has increased despite a decline in enrollment, any guesses as to that?

asdff2• 5 years ago

That's average, but when you look at what happens on the ground, the winners, like the name brand schools you've probably heard of before, are all expanding and building new dorms and labs and athletic facilities, and the losers, those random liberal arts schools in the middle of nowhere in new england and such, are closing down and selling off their property. It's hard to find a major university that isn't constructing some massive donor-backed capital project as we speak, and acceptance rates at major state schools across the board has been dropping like a stone; even schools like Cal State are becoming very competitive.

fasteddie31003• 5 years ago

Might be a good think. You're not going to be overburdened by debt. You don't have to spend some of your time learning worthless topics. You might not meet as many women, which let's face it is a big reason to go to college. At least in programming you can train yourself to make well over 6 figures without any formal education. You might need a mentor. If there are any high school grads not going to college who are looking for a tech mentor, reach out.

disambiguation7• 5 years ago

Less than 3k kids under the age of 24 have died from covid since the start of the pandemic [0] yet they have some how wound up with the harshest restrictions.

These kids will never get these years back. What a disgrace.

[0] https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Deaths-by-Sex...

johnebgd• 5 years ago

The problem with highly infectious diseases is those who get it also infect others. The professors are likely in the age bracket that has a higher risk than the student.

ars4• 5 years ago

The Professor is guaranteed to get it. A Professor comes in contact with way too many people to even have a chance of not getting it.

You're just pretending that you can actually do something by making restrictions, you actually can't.

ChicagoDave4• 5 years ago

Like that number isn't horrendous in and of itself, but let's not forget that many young adults that have had Covid likely gave it to someone vulnerable as well.

It's not just who dies directly from Covid. It's also the spread of it to vulnerable populations.

It boggles the mind that this still has to be repeated. How many 22 year olds coming back from spring break will kill one of their parents or grandparents?

ars4• 5 years ago

That's what the vaccine is for.

And if you're really concerned about spring break, then add all these restrictions 2 weeks before spring break.

kd9134• 5 years ago

I can understand your opinion to a perspective, but I feel the position has changed dramatically. At this point, vaccines are available.

There is almost no feasibility in eliminating COVID at this point in time. It will mutate, and hence we need to be talking about the possibility of 'living with the disease'.

As such, how much damage are we doing damaging the education, and critical periods for these youths?

If the problem is protecting the parents and grandparents, why not do that, and isolate them rather than permanently damaging the youth.

syki5• 5 years ago

In my college system I’m responsible for cleaning my classroom after each use. If I forget to do this and a student gets sick then I’m personally liable. I’m not paid enough to clean classrooms and teach and I’m not taking on the liability. Thus, I haven’t taught in the classroom for the last 2 years.

modernpink• 5 years ago

That is outrageous if true. An airborne virus is best treated with ventilation (i.e. opening windows). Surface transmission almost never happens [1]. The irony of course being that having a cleaner go in and out of rooms poses much greater risk of spread.

[1] COVID-19 rarely spreads through surfaces. So why are we still deep cleaning? https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00251-4

disambiguation7• 5 years ago

that's too bad, surface transmission has been debunked for almost a year now.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/more/science-and-r...

the relative risk of fomite transmission of SARS-CoV-2 is considered low compared with direct contact, droplet transmission, or airborne transmission

bart_spoon8• 5 years ago

How on earth could they possibly identify your lack of cleaning with someone's infection? Seems like something that sounds scary but the real world implications are meaningless.

inanutshellus• 5 years ago

"I'm young and healthy, I should be allowed to spread a new virus to the entire planet. The health of my society is not my responsibility. What a disgrace."

bopbeepboop• 5 years ago

You’re missing two key points:

1. COVID was always going to become endemic to humans.

2. Young people are part of society — and you’re blatantly disregarding harm to them in your appeal to the “health of my society”.

disambiguation7• 5 years ago

In other news, "Children are Infrequently Identified as the Index Case of Household SARS-CoV-2 Clusters"

https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/72/12/e1146/6024998

In analysis of the cluster index cases ... only 3.8% were identified as having a pediatric index case.
These pediatric cases only caused 4.0% of all secondary cases, compared with the 97.8% of secondary cases that occurred when an adult was identified as the index case in the cluster.
Clusters where the asymptomatic/symptomatic status of the contact cases was not described were excluded from the analysis. Even with this broader definition, 18.5% children were identified as the index case in the household clusters.

treis6• 5 years ago

I don't think it's Covid related. The graph in the article clearly shows a steady decline that pre-dated Covid. Covid may have accelerated it a bit, but it's not a fundamental shift.

disambiguation7• 5 years ago

eye-balling from the graph: the drop in the past 2 years is as much as the drop in the 4 years before that (2015-2019)

but yes, I agree education was in a sorry state prior to the pandemic as well

Bhilai• 5 years ago

I dont disagree with the sentiment on lost years but I think its very easy to say that in retrospect. At beginning of 2020, no one knew how severe the pandemic is going to be. We did not have a vaccine and we did not know which age groups are going to be most vulnerable.

disambiguation7• 5 years ago

I think that's a fair point.

epistasis10• 5 years ago

I'm trying to imagine some other cause of death where 3000 over a couple years is regarded as acceptable. I think covid has broken people's brains, because we have gone to war, spent trillions, and sacrificed the lives of thousands of people in the US for about that size of human loss, within recent memory.

disambiguation7• 5 years ago

Covid is a one time risk. Overtime the average risk of death goes to zero.

People's brains were already broken. People are bad at statistical risk.

People are afraid of flying despite driving be much more dangerous.

https://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/usa-cause-of-death-by-ag...

https://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/pdf/leading_causes_of_dea...

Under the age of 24, vehicle fatalities, suicide, and homicide lead in >3k deaths each year.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/fentanyl-overdoses-leading-cause-...

Meanwhile, 18-45 79k have died from fentanyl overdoses in the past 2 years vs. ~50k covid deaths in that time frame.

You don't need to imagine 3k deaths being acceptable, it's in the data for all to see.

ChicagoDave4• 5 years ago

I have 3 college-aged kids and one nearly there. Their universal concern is the cost. It has become prohibitive.

Colleges assumed the trend of charging $25k to $50k per year would be sustainable. They were dead wrong, especially given the horrendously predatory loans backed by the government and barred from bankruptcy.

If we fix the college financial system, enrollment would likely skyrocket.

sylens• 5 years ago

Yes, it's quite clearly this.

Millennials have been out there for nearly a decade yelling on social media about how ridiculous their student loans are. Kids on the precipice of college have started paying attention. Combine that with the restrictions for Covid, and you have a lot of kids who don't think that taking on tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of dollars in debt is worth it for some Zoom classes.

bart_spoon8• 5 years ago

Plus the amount and quality of alternative learning resources is very high, at least in some fields. I know coding bootcamps get a bad rep, often justified, but at the same time my buddy went to college for a degree in HR and I went for STEM. He ended up hating HR, did a 9 week boot camp, managed to get a job, and after a few years of experience is in roughly the same place as me and is thriving. It took him a little longer because of the time spent in HR, but ultimately he ended up with the same skill set I did between the 9 weeks of intensive study combined with on the job experience. Meanwhile I got a broader education, but the majority of it isn't very relevant on a day to day basis, if ever.

It's a single anecdote, but between online resources and alternative training programs, it seems harder to justify spending tens of thousands of dollars on college.

samarama3• 5 years ago

Are student loans really such an issue?

85% of graduates have less than $50,000 in student loans. Paid off over 20 years, that’s really not much. https://www.rclco.com/wp-content/uploads/advisory-student-de...

Additionally, those that have much higher loans are usually medical students who make $200,000/year at the entry level.

paulpauper11• 5 years ago

you have a lot of kids who don't think that taking on tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of dollars in debt is worth it for some Zoom classes.

Yeah, but you are assuming people only go to college for its educational value , ignoring that college grads tend to have much higher wages and lower unemployment compared to high school grads. If you look at FIRE subs for example, almost everyone who attains early retirement has a degree. The college wage premium is amplified by both higher wages and higher returns from investments by investing said wages in rapidly appreciating stocks and real estate (the post-2009 bull market in real estate and stocks, on an real basis, exceeds even the '80s and '90s).

cpascal• 5 years ago

I'm glad that there is much more awareness and consideration around cost.

When I was in high school and applying to colleges around 2011, the advice given to us was to not take cost too seriously. Many authority figures (like high school counselors) told my peers and I to, "follow your heart" or "go where you think you'll fit in best".

On top of that, student loans and interest rates where not explained to us very well. Very few of us understood that borrowing 160k-200k to go to an out-of-state/private school could very well mean you were signing up for a lifelong debt.

Looking back, its insane we could make such a life altering/hindering decision with so little oversight from the "adults".

ryanSrich• 5 years ago

It’s mind boggling how bad student loans are looking back at it. It was just normal to spend $100k over 4 years.

I finally paid mine and my wife’s off in 2020 and when I did the math, combined we paid $216k over 7 years post college. We were both lucky enough to have well paying jobs, but so so many people don’t. Some of these people even with decent jobs will be paying $500-$1000/m for nearly the rest of their lives.

epistasis10• 5 years ago

I've heard tales of people with interest rates of 7%+ on student loans, and the official rates are not incredibly low either:

https://studentaid.gov/understand-aid/types/loans/interest-r...

Any loan that is charging 6.28% interest and also cant be discharged by bankruptcy is just usury with current interest rates.

lumost7• 5 years ago

This Happened to me on loans taken out between ‘07 and ‘10. The liquidity crises meant that banks stopped lending to students, and everyone assumed that interest rates would rise. I got locked into 7.25-8% fixed on roughly 80k in debt which I paid off over the next 10 years. Unfortunately a bout of unemployment in 2010 prevented me from refinancing.

HWR_147• 5 years ago

Any loan that is charging 6.28% interest and also cant be discharged by bankruptcy

The interest rates are high because so few loans can be discharged by bankruptcy. You can refinance your mortgage with anyone. Far few companies will refinance your student loans.

Meanwhile, it makes prefect sense that bankruptcy cannot discharge student loans. Otherwise, every single student would have crappy credit from 21-28 and no student loans ever.

sokoloff7• 5 years ago

An interest rate on something that is entirely uncollateralized and granted to someone with no income and often no credit history nor assets is usurious at a rate of around 2x that of an owner-occupied house with 20% down, an income of >3x the monthly payments, and a 740+ credit score? That is quite far from obvious to me.

agentdrtran• 5 years ago

I had 11% interest rates my first two years, but I had to take out private loans.

pkage• 5 years ago

I recall that in 2016 First Marblehead (now Cognition Financial) was offering interest rates of up to 13% (!) and averaging 11% (!!) on NYU tuition ($60k/yr for a 4 year degree). I recall during my application that they were very heavily pushing for me to finance my degree there. Thankfully, I went elsewhere.

The chair of NYU's Board of Trustees at the time was William Berkley. Perhaps coincidentally, he also headed the board of First Marblehead. I'm sure there was no conflict of interest, though.

MattGaiser• 5 years ago

Aren't state colleges must cheaper than that?

epistasis10• 5 years ago

Without room and board, University of California fees are around $20k. And none of the college towns have adequate housing, so any sort of housing is absolutely through the roof.

eschewobfuscat• 5 years ago

When I went to Colorado State University (by no means prestigious) tuition ran around $2,300 [1] and is now almost triple [2] per semester, I could rent a 2 bedroom apartment and live alone for $735, where as that's now sharing a 3 bedroom apartment. Renting the apartment I had is closer to $1,300 per month, or nearly double what I paid. It's not very affordable, whereas I could relatively easily afford it.

[1] http://irpe-reports.colostate.edu/pdf/tuition/Tuition_Fees_H...

[2] https://financialaid.colostate.edu/media/sites/38/2018/05/Un...

yakz• 5 years ago

State colleges can be cheaper, but they're not as cheap as they used to be in a lot of places. Many states cut back funding for their universities.

"Overall state funding for public two- and four-year colleges in the school year ending in 2018 was more than $6.6 billion below what it was in 2008 just before the Great Recession fully took hold, after adjusting for inflation."

"Between school years 2008 to 2018, after adjusting for inflation:

    * 41 states spent less per student.
    * On average, states spent $1,220, or 13 percent, less per student.
    * Per-student funding fell by more than 30 percent in six states: Alabama, Arizona, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Pennsylvania."

https://www.cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and-tax/state-hig...

taylodl5• 5 years ago

There's tuition and there's room & board. In my state the tuition is $10K/yr but the room & board is $15K/yr. It doesn't help that the largest public college in my state doesn't have enough dorm rooms for all their students so by Junior year you have to have moved out. Have you seen rent lately? Taken a look at your grocery bill? There are many costs factoring in to the high cost of higher education.

jrsj2• 5 years ago

Many now make room and board mandatory and when you factor that in with tuition, books, etc you can get to $25k total cost even with in-state tuition. I don’t know how common this is exactly but Ohio State does this for freshman and sophomores now.

monkeynotes6• 5 years ago

In addition there is COVID which means a lot of online learning and none of the college social experience. I know of a coop on my team is considering pausing finishing his degree because he hates online learning and does not feel like he's getting the education he paid for.

taylodl5• 5 years ago

What's the alternative? Wait for this to "blow over"? We've been waiting for two years now. Maybe omicron will be it. Or maybe not. We simply don't know. One thing we do know from past experience is those opting-out of college or putting their degree on "pause" rarely return to complete their degree. You simply reach a point where you're focusing on your career, maybe start a family, and so forth and the next thing you know there's simply no time (or money) for college.

bagacrap2• 5 years ago

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

Also, in-state tuition for state schools is much less than $50k/yr so try going to Cal and/or your best local public school and supplement with self teaching (e.g. via public/free lectures from MIT)? The self directed learning/motivation is the hard part for many people of that age, but few have said living frugally should or would be easy.

lumost7• 5 years ago

Would it really penalize disadvantaged households? I’d imagine that many such students lack a co-signer for these predatory loans, or would be further disadvantaged by a 200k degree that doesn’t meaningfully change their economic outcomes in 2022. To make college work you need to pick a dwindling number of high leverage disciplines such as CS, even picking something technical like Chemistry won’t yield a return on a 200k degree.

HWR_147• 5 years ago

It's not just loans, it's COVID.

If I were college-age and I were planning on going to college I would certainly do one of two things. I would postpone college until the COVID issues died down -or- I would use the fewer applicants to get into a more prestigious school banking on a better 3 year experience (out of 4) starting in the fall of 2022 and more impressive degree going forward. Either way, I can imagine admittance numbers falling off.

VampireWillow2• 5 years ago

Here in Canada the government simply dictates to universities how much they can charge. It seems beyond insane to me to do it any other way, seeing as our entire societies are dependent on getting enough people educated to perpetuate a service economy.

To be fair, this kind of means that universities should be completely public. And although they are for all intents and purposes, in theory they are still non-governmental entities. And that's strange as well.

VikingCoder• 5 years ago

Here's what I don't get -

Where the hell is the money _going_?

Are Colleges and Universities pocketing the money? Are they publicly traded and distributing dividends? Are they building rockets?

I know some of it goes back to financial aid, and some goes to football coaches...

But we're talking about so much freaking money, and I just can't visualize where it's going.

throwaway57523• 5 years ago

That completely shifts the blame to bureaucracies, and that isn't fair. Loans are where they are because students prefer newer dorms, amenities, programs, and research opportunities. Student competition leads to prestige, leads to demand from employers for graduates from a specific institution. It is a self-reinforcing dynamic.

The fact student loads have special bankruptcy treatment is bad. But absent Sallie Mae (or Navient, whatever it is now) students would be paying whatever Harvard or Stanford asked, and that would determine pricing for the next tier of schools.

ashtonkem• 5 years ago

given that folks calculate cost based on recurring payments

That’s very true for mortgages, but in my experience this isn’t how student loans work. Nobody I knew before college had any idea what their loans would cost on a monthly basis once they went into repayment, and I don’t think it was disclosed to me (or I forgot).

Also unlike my mortgage, my loans have trivially changed repayment plans. I changed some of them several times based on my economic circumstances without refinancing, which makes nailing down a single payment kind of hard, even if the interest rate hasn’t changed.

2OEH8eoCRo0• 5 years ago

I wonder what would happen if banks could deny student loans. Students would need to prove that they are a good investment but it also means that colleges would have to prove they are good investments as well.

mdavis6890• 5 years ago

Yes, exactly. One way to help college-age kids go to college if they want to without having the impact that you describe is to just give everybody ages 18-22 $20k per year in cash to do what they like with it. This still preserves their incentive to choose wisely, compare prices and consider alternate options.

honkycat3• 5 years ago

The loans are exactly why the colleges were able to continue jacking up the prices.

This is partly true. The US also DID use to subsidize more University tuition.

However: Agreed. The loans are dumb. They feed into the issue in exactly the way you describe. They should be interest free as long as you are making regular payments.[1]

Also, in-state tuition for state schools is much less...

This is so thorny... I have a younger cousin, and what he ended up doing was going to a community college for two years, then transferring. It worked out well for him! But it was a gamble.

When I was in school my parents were very obsessed with me "having the college experience" even though we were much less well-off than they were in uni and were not able to support me financially[0]. I say this to point out: I am not advocating for this. College should not be fun! If it is: Great! Glad you had a good time. But that is not necessarily the reality you should expect.

However: I have noticed a lot of people made a lot of friends in Uni, and those develop into professional relationships later in life.

Additionally, if you are an ambitious person, going to community college has the risk of failing to prepare you for higher level university teaching.

Finally: I am an extremely extroverted person. I found the community aspect of going to class, studying with friends, etc. extremely helpful in my motivation and understanding of the material. I've tried to do the MIT classes and such, but it rarely sticks.

0: Not their fault, not whining. Shit happens!

EDIT:

1: AS A VERY MODERATE ACCOMMODATION. I'm not advocating for this policy as the end-all-be-all, but I feel like this is a very reasonable suggestion.

zip1234• 5 years ago

At least in a house loan they will check your income and job before giving you the loan. For college they will give anyone a loan for an immense amount of money without verifying anything.

joconde• 5 years ago

Also, in-state tuition for state schools is much less than $50k/yr so try going to Cal and/or your best local public school and supplement with self teaching (e.g. via public/free lectures from MIT)?

Unrelated question: does "Cal" mean Berkeley here? Do you really need to "supplement it with self-teaching"? I don't really understand why state schools are viewed that way, since Berkeley consistently ranks world top-10.

wheelinsupial2• 5 years ago

Also AP classes and dual enrollment while in high school. You can knock off 1 - 2 semesters of college level coursework in high school that way.

I’m not American, but there are lots of stories on here I’ve seen of people being able to dual enroll in a local community college or university in grades 11/12 and shorten the time spent in college.

the_only_law• 5 years ago

I’ve been looking at going back to school for some years, and it’s finally looking like I’ll be able to begin the process this year.

I can do the first two years of undergrad, through a community colleges while still working, and grad school can be figure out later if I decide on it, but I’m still concerned about how much I need to save for those last two years of undergrad.

Tuition is one thing, while generally expensive, I’m in a state that’s not too bad if you can get in-state tuition. It’s still probably expensive, but nothing unmanageable (doesn’t seem much worse than financing a new car). The main concern is living expenses.

The financial aid system is a bureaucratic joke as far as I’m aware, and “estimated family contribution” seems like a delusion in the case of most people. I half-joked with some friends about living in a car for the last couple years, and one thought I was crazy, responding with an anecdote about how “you don’t have to do that, I worked 3 jobs to pay for my education” which to me almost seems more miserable at this point.

devwastaken4• 5 years ago

Yes, this is the issue right on the head. At a $0 income, federal and state grants + student loans will not cover tuition and housing costs at the most affordable of in state universities.

We can't just look at tuition, but housing costs. The cost of housing sometimes rivals tuition. A fun fact is they make freshmen have to buy $2200 meal plans for their first year. They also prevent freshmen from better housing where they can cook for themselves and save money through food stamps.

Ontop of this part of those grants are work study, you have to work to receive that money. This is again even if you're dirt poor with nothing. You will have to take a second job if you need to buy personal items like deodorant.

The vast majority of students don't fit into this, they come from middle class parents and have to take out private loans. Students have to pay on private loans, so, again, more and more work. I know students working 30 hours a week just to meet living costs and pay what they owe to the University so they are not barred from signing up for classes. These students are not learning what they should be, even though they are very bright hard workers it's wasted because we let universities charge these ridiculous amounts.

It's not as if the unis are using it responsibly, either. They're not funding extracurriculars or programs students can learn more by being involved in. I recall one of our programs having to be funded by professors themselves to go anywhere. There are many different administrative workers that simply don't need to exist. The system has become lazy and inefficient. I recall in HS teachers spent hours grading. In uni - it's largely automatic. Yet we continue to have multiple teachers per subject and give professors just 1 or 2 classes.

If we defund universities they will shape up quickly. Defund, regulate, start firing people.

sarchertech5• 5 years ago

The vast majority of students don't fit into this, they come from middle class parents and have to take out private loans.

Private loans only make up about 8% of total student loan debt

https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/loans/student-loans/stude... https://educationdata.org/student-loan-debt-statistics

BingoAhoy2• 5 years ago

I've always been curious about who's winning the lionshare of the pie of these gluttonous institutions. Is it administrators? they're an easy scape goat. Does it fund more research, so presumably the PHDs and their research assistants?

rch• 5 years ago

It would also help to encourage and support people choosing to attend regional colleges for many fields of study, particularly given that educational content from state universities can easily be made available at the local level.

hammock3• 5 years ago

College was once to be reserved for the rich elite.

But central bank and government policies starting in the 70's gutted US manufacturing and took away most of the non-information worker jobs - so there was little else for the middle class to go for a career except first to college.

Hence today.

However, today it's easier than ever to live off the nanny state WITHOUT a career.

What should the role of college be today?

matt_mb• 5 years ago

However, today it's easier than ever to live off the nanny state WITHOUT a career.

In what way?

_fat_santa2• 5 years ago

Thought it's not as glamorous as a 4 year college experience, I highly suggest going to a Community College for the first two years and then transferring to a state school.

I did this and through I resented it at the time, I existed college with around $30k in student debt versus my friends that all has something in range of ($40k to $80k). IMO 30k in student debt is very manageable, currently have the thing paid down to like $12k and I like knowing I can reach into savings at any time and wipe out this debt if need be.

wombat-man• 5 years ago

yeah, plus you have to knock out some random 100 level courses anyway. If you end up burning a semester of cc on some topics you end up hating it's a less expensive mistake.

ejb9994• 5 years ago

>IMO 30k in student debt is very manageable, currently have the thing paid down to like $12k and I like knowing I can reach into savings at any time and wipe out this debt if need be.

Absolutely - $30K in debt is completely reasonable imo; if after 4 years in college you have not improved your job prospects enough to cover that payment, then you probably didn't work very hard, or didn't pick a marketable major.

Most of these 'college debt is out of control' stories being pushed in the press, are usually focusing on outliers - i.e. people that borrowed $250K for multiple useless majors and now work at Starbucks because they chose badly. Public policy shouldn't be based on edge cases like this; not do we want to reward people for making bad decisions.

Last I read, the median college debt that people owe is less than $20K, and should be more than manageable for most people.

If we want to fix the college debt problem, focus on getting the college costs down - anything that tries to make it easier to pay for, without controlling the cost side of the equation, will almost certainly cause the cost to go up even faster then before.

vanilla_nut• 5 years ago

If you happen to live near a decent community college, this isn’t a bad idea. But I know a lot of people who did 2 years at community college, and then got screwed over by transfer credits enough that they ended up doing 3 years at a normal college. So the savings isn’t quite ideal. I actually went to community college instead of a senior year at high school, and think you should really inspect the quality of the programs at your community college before trying this. For instance, my community college only had a couple of token CS classes, and they basically taught C++ in a C-style (all declarations at the top of the file, no object orientation) as the only style of programming. Not a great way to get a head start on a CS degree. But the math, humanities, science, and social science programs could probably give you a very cheap head start on those degrees.

For the truly frugal student, I would probably recommend something like what I did: take community college or AP classes aplenty in your senior year. Go straight to a college that has the best program for your interests (keeping in mind your interests may change). Graduating in three years is easy enough if you have a semester’s worth of transfer credits for gen eds, and classes like calculus and linear algebra in particular are really easy to cover before you go to college. Administration will probably try to make graduating early as hard as possible, but they really won’t be able to stop you if you have the credits already.

jonnycomputer• 5 years ago

I did community college, got a guaranteed transfer agreement to UC Davis, but was admitted to UCLA and so went there instead.

The quality of teaching at the community college often exceeded that at UCLA. Researchers are not necessarily the best teachers.

In my department there were a number of community college transfer students. They were almost always the most ambitious, and ended up going the furthest. YMMV.

ryathal4• 5 years ago

If you can reach into savings and wipe out your student loan, you absolutely should before they start charging interest again.

hourislate• 5 years ago

Colleges assumed the trend of charging $25k to $50k per year would be sustainable.

I understand that commuting to schools is not available to everyone but State schools are affordable. Entertaining the idea to go away for school either leads to higher costs or more debt. A 4 year degree from UT Dallas landed my oldest a 110k + first job in DFW. His entire degree cost approx 45-50k and that included gas, books, etc.

sarchertech5• 5 years ago

horrendously predatory loans backed by the government

What's predatory about public loans. They all qualify for income based repayment, which means you'll never pay more than 10% of your disposable income (any income over 1.5x the federal poverty level). If you make below that amount, you'll never be required to pay back anything. And they are cancelled after 20 years.

Theoretically you'd owe tax on cancelled debt, but only up to the point of solvency. And a borrower who hasn't made enough income to pay back a student loan after 20 years probably isn't solvent, so won't pay anything. This also assumes that as more and more people reach this point, there isn't demand for congress to change the tax code.

Public loans make up about 92% of all student loan debt as well, so the vast majority of loans are going to qualify.

HWR_147• 5 years ago

You also get credit for going into public service as well.

ejb9994• 5 years ago

>What's predatory about public loans.

To some folks, having to pay off their loan, is considered predatory.

lotsofpulp7• 5 years ago

What's predatory about public loans.

It distorts prices and results in a suboptimal allocation of society’s resources, and results in people complaining about having a “degree” and having to sling coffee cups as their career.

jrsj2• 5 years ago

I honestly think keeping people in debt so they have to work more & for longer is considered a feature of the system by a majority of the people running it

xhkkffbf3• 5 years ago

Absolutely true. And many of the degrees don't lead anywhere. The smart kids are the ones that aren't in college.

When I hire now, I always look for kids who are willing to teach themselves and learn from all of the good sources on the Internet. Places like Coursera, Udemy or even YouTube. They're reasonably priced.

standardUser2• 5 years ago

Public schools average about $10k per year for in-state students. That's a far cry from the $25k-$50k per year people tend to quote when arguing against the cost of college. How important that difference is depends on which state a student lives in. In California there are literally dozens of options including several prestigious ones, whereas many states only have a couple of middling schools to choose from, and out-of-state public tuition averages around $25k/year.

xhkkffbf3• 5 years ago

You're thinking of 20 years ago.

Most state schools are easily $20k for in state students once you add in the room and board. Then they try to get $50k from the out-of-staters. Top flight state schools like Michigan, Cal Berkeley and Cornell start at $75k+ for out-of-staters. Of course financial aid does enter the picture for many students.

simplestats3• 5 years ago

Depends how you look at it. If you're from a poor state, you can get into a solid flagship school (including medical school) even if you could never get in to places with single-digit admissions (like the top tier ofCalifornia schools). Whereas people who would be able get into the high-ranked California Universities can probably get full scholarships to solid out-of-state private schools too.

Goronmon4• 5 years ago

Public schools average about $10k per year for in-state students.

That seems low to me. Are you only counting the cost of tuition (and not books, room and board, etc)?

I just grabbed some numbers for NH, one site says the average for tuition alone is $10k, with another $1.5k for books/etc, and another $15k for room/board. So, unless you are able to commute from your parents, looking at closer to 25k+ in loans, per year.

I also checked UNH specifically, where the numbers are roughly $20k for tuition/fees and $33k all in.

NobodyNada• 5 years ago

Public schools average about $10k per year for in-state students.

Where is that? At my school (Oregon State University) in-state tuition is $13k, and room & board is an additional $13k (which is way overpriced -- more than double what you'd pay in rent & groceries living off-campus, but all first-year students are required to live in the dorms). And out-of-state tuition is triple the in-state rate. So that $25k-50k estimate is exactly on-point here.

paulpauper11• 5 years ago

College cost less than a brand new car, yet does not lose a third of its value when you drive it off the lot, but rather gains value due to the wage premium and better job prospects overall. There is no crisis of car affordability yet people talk about college being unaffordable even though student loans are cheaper and have much better terms than car loans. Same for credit card debt. Also the price actually paid on tuition , especially after accounting for generous aid and other programs, is much less than the sticker price.

snambi• 5 years ago

Knowledge and education should be free of cost and barriers. Any society that thinks otherwise, will not be able to sustain and expand knowledge in the long run.

PragmaticPulp• 5 years ago

Colleges assumed the trend of charging $25k to $50k per year would be sustainable.

Barely anyone pays full tuition.

Look up the statistics for any of the big colleges that share numbers. It’s usually less than 10% of students paying full tuition. Significant numbers of students pay under $10K and many pay basically nothing at all.

It’s still too expensive, but the myth that everybody is paying $50K/year at these colleges needs to die. It ends up convincing a lot of people who shouldn’t be paying that much that everyone else is doing it and therefore they should too.

ljhsiung2• 5 years ago

Can I see your source?

Here's mine [1] -- at UIUC, full tuition is 35-50k depending on residency. 30% get free tuition (given their family's net worth <50k/gross income < 67k) and 40% got some form of a loan averaging 20k.

Assuming very generous loans (unlikely), 30% of people paid full price, or about 10,000 students (undergrad class size is 30-35k). That's not trivial, but definitely off your 10% claim.

(Here [2] it is more succinctly, and not in a large picturesque landing page advertisement fashion)

Now some anecdata-- I paid 35k. Every college friend I knew also paid full, except one, who had crazy interest rates on her loan. I recognize my friend group may be a bubble, so I preface this with "anecdata" and gave you some sources on my own.

[1] https://admissions.illinois.edu/invest/financial-aid

[2] https://osfa.illinois.edu/other-financial-aid-options/

Dig1t• 5 years ago

Doesn't it vary pretty wildly depending on the school?

I also was very concerned about cost when going college, so I went with the cheapest route possible and also worked a job during college. I went to community college for 2 years while living at my parent's house, which was very cheap, it cost about $1000 per year for that. Then I transferred to a cheaper in-state school, in my case it was one in the California State University system (CSU) which is way cheaper though not quite as well known as the UC system (UC Berkeley is part of that system), which cost me about 10k per year for the final 2 years.

In all I was able to get through college with no debt and a degree in Computer Science for a total cost of 22k. I think there is a mindset that students should always attend the best possible school that they are admitted to, but this seems pretty dumb to me as they are usually expensive for big brand names and in the end you receive the same degree and learn the same things.

What I did also happened in California, I think some states have even cheaper paths through college if you go with the community college + in-state university route.

ahoho• 5 years ago

If you go to a big name school the aid packages are usually much more generous, so total cost may even be below $22k (depending on your circumstances). Also, I’d push back on the idea that outcomes are comparable across schools. A degree from most Ivies has a measurable impact on future earnings, even controlling for parental income and academic aptitude.

commandlinefan• 5 years ago

Their universal concern is the cost.

I have a senior in high school right now and although I think you're right - he's concerned about a potential quarter-million dollar tuition bill before this whole thing is over - he's also concerned about the whole selectivity of it all. From the outside looking in, you never know what's important and what's not. He has this feeling (and I'm not sure I can dispute it) that the only degrees that matter are degrees from hyper-selective ivy league schools and if the only school he can get into is Texas Tech, he might as well just give up and go into a trade. I remind him that I went to a no-name school and I'm doing fine but he says "things are different than when you were young", and I'm not 100% sure he's wrong.

paulpauper11• 5 years ago

The average debt for recent college grads is around $30-40k, quarter-million figures are outliers . Doctors may accumulate hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt, but they easily make up for it in income.

yoyohello13• 5 years ago

They are not that different. I graduated from a no name school a few years ago and am doing fine.

kd9134• 5 years ago

I feel the key bit here is to look at the outcome of the education. He is right to be worried about a quarter-million dollar tuition bill, and there is absolutely no point in doing so for a path with poor job prospects.

There are some paths where the university choice does matter, others that don't.

Going into the trades is not a bad idea I think, but again it needs to be a conscious decision for the pros and the cons.

I think the key bit is do some research, try and get a week long internship in the job that he is looking for and/or try to speak with seniors/grads.

ngc248• 5 years ago

How many people are getting into selective schools? It cant be more than a few thousands, so indeed there are opportunities for those who go to non-selective schools. It depends in the end.

Problem is we always keep hearing about these selective schools in the media and that colours out perception a lot. Of course try as much as possible to get into a selective school, but if one is unable to, there are still opportunities.

ryathal4• 5 years ago

If you want to be a college grad hired by Google, college name matters. If you want to move across the country, college name matters. If you want to stay in the region/state, not choose a garbage tier college is all that matters. It's not Ivy league or bust, but choosing top 100 university for chosen field is a good bet.

hallway_monitor• 5 years ago

give up and go into a trade

Exactly this, without the "give up" part. Why is going into a trade giving up? It's choosing a different path than the one that has been shoved down all our throats like it is the only respectable option. University is not for everyone, and not everyone can go there. There's simply not enough room.

I think going into trades is what I want my son to do. I love Mike Rowe's thoughts on this - you can make excellent money, get started fast and be working for yourself by the time you would get a precious 4-year degree. And trades are in serious need of new people; seems like a great opportunity.

sosborn• 5 years ago

If he doesn't want to be in the trades, he should go to Texas Tech. The degree will serve him just as well as a degree from any other school, bar a handful of elite institutions.

selimthegrim6• 5 years ago

I know some pretty good biotech start ups spun out from Texas Tech - I wouldn’t dismiss it out of hand

lapsedacademic20• 5 years ago

Texas Tech is a fantastic school. If he chooses to go there and majors in a STEM field, he'll have a bright future.

munificent• 5 years ago

The degree is only part of the value proposition of a college, though. The actual education you get (not just the paper proving it), the meaningful experiences you have, the social connections you forge, and the opportunities you encounter in the environment are all hugely important.

I went to college and dropped out, so the value of my non-existent degree is literally zero. But I got a ton of value out of my time there. I met a lot of friends, grew significantly as a person, and found a job opportunity that started me on my career path.

I still think college is way too expensive these days, but if you think of it as only purchasing a degree, you're missing a lot.

owlbite• 5 years ago

My cousin seemed to have it worked out. Do as many relevant AP classes for credit as possible, finish the first two years worth of credits at a community college for $cheap and then transfer to a brand-name school for the final part.

My general impression is "has a degree with min GPA x.y" is a HR check-box that is necessary to get past an initial screen for a lot of large company roles. After you've got a couple of years experience no-one on the interview panel likely cares about the school you went to (and if they do, maybe give that firm a miss) compared to what you've done in the past 3 years.

Eridrus• 5 years ago

There is a lot of defeatism floating around these days that isn't really warranted, there's good evidence that what you study matters as much as where, e.g. https://www.air.org/news/press-release/when-it-comes-your-pa...

Barely scraping through an engineering degree or getting a degree in architecture at texas tech is certainly a bad idea, but the average engineering graduate is doing better than the trades.

More of this data is public now on graduate outcomes, e.g. https://www.collegesimply.com/colleges/texas/texas-tech-univ...

mywittyname3• 5 years ago

If we fix the college financial system, enrollment would likely skyrocket.

Enrollment was at record numbers immediately preceding the pandemic, and this was a trend that held for several years prior as well. Lots of colleges had been expanding their campuses like crazy in the Before Times.

I don't think the pandemic will result in a long-term shift away from this trend. By-and-large, college education remains is a worthwhile expenditure, despite the costs. You even agree, hence why you have three kids in college!

I can appreciate not going to college right now. Classes have been randomly cancelled, there have been lockdowns/classes going remote, professors aren't grading/lecturing at the levels they should be, students are doing the work, etc, etc. But once society reaches some level of normalcy again, I believe enrollment numbers will explode back to record levels.

Plus, cost-conscious students have more options than ever. A lot of community colleges are starting to offer 4 year degrees.

lvl100• 5 years ago

I am convinced college is more or less priced off of prestigious private high schools where the parents simply pay cash. For the wealthy it is acceptable to pay 60-70K per year for their kids. Clearly this represents the wealth gap in this country.

jeffalbertson• 5 years ago

in addition to cost, there is also a feeling I didn't get ANY value from the curriculum. Some majors are great but many give you 0 skills for the real world. I majored in communications cause I had no idea what I wanted to do in life. By the time I figured out I loved software, I had graduated.

The best lessons I learned in college were off campus and developing my social skills (which is important).

shockeychap• 5 years ago

I remember reading a while back something like, "It used to be that you could mostly pay for college with a summer job. Today, the only summer job that could pay for college is being Elon Musk."

soheil• 5 years ago

The administrative fees are outrageous. Administration staff effectively getting paid from student loans just to set more guidelines and procedures in place for students to follow and for themselves to gain more power is perverse incentives.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/stop-feeding-college-bureaucrat...

bastardoperator• 5 years ago

My nephew did community college (free) for two years and transferred in state to the UC system which is about 14K a year. He qualified for some grants/scholarships which covered more than half the cost for each semester. He was able to pay off his school loans in his first year out of college. School costs are insane, but there are easy ways to save considerable amounts of money.

WoodenChair• 5 years ago

Colleges assumed the trend of charging $25k to $50k per year would be sustainable.

It's worth noting that the vast majority of students don't pay the sticker price because financial aid is provided early and often (beyond just loans). Very few students are actually paying $50k.* [0]

The average net price at a public college last year is $19,230 and the average net price at a private college is $33,720. Note that this doesn't just include tuition, but also room and board. So if you're going to public college you're probably paying $20k to eat, sleep, and learn. Plus you generally get some kind of health insurance too.

These averages can be significantly lower still for in-state public colleges and community colleges.

No doubt the massive inflation in college prices is driven by the government loans, and the federal government's policy around them should be modified at best. But we should speak in reality instead of the hyperbolic articles that often just look at tuition which is what most people are familiar with. Colleges below the top tier compete on their "discount rate" which is what percentage of the sticker price does the average student actually pay because almost no students pay the sticker price.

* "The average grant aid awarded per student was $8,100 at public colleges and $23,080 at private schools."

0: https://www.collegedata.com/resources/pay-your-way/whats-the...

jjulius2• 5 years ago

Cost is the primary reason I dropped out of college, with not knowing what I wanted to do with my life being the secondary reason.

It was about 15 years ago, I was 19. At the time, I was attending community college because I had no idea what I wanted to major in, or what I wanted to do with my life as far as careers go, but I had so much societal pressure telling me that I had to go to college in order to be successful. I'd tried steering myself towards a few subjects that were hobbies/passions of mine, but every time I dipped my toes into doing something with them professionally, I quickly became concerned about money/profit/work/bosses bastardizing my love for them and opted to keep them as hobbies/passions. 15 years later, I am still enamored by some of those same hobbies and am happy I kept them as such.

While the "goal" was to transfer to a university from the community college, I consistently found myself thinking, "I'm seeing a ton of my friends, and people who graduated HS a few years before me, taking out these massive loans. Why am I going to go into debt if I don't even know what I want to do?". It just made no sense to me, so I stopped. I've been incredibly lucky that I found a career path in an area that I'm good at, and have risen to a level in my career that I'm happy with, but I absolutely did have to work really hard to get here.

All that is to say, not only do I think we put far too much pressure on people to know what they want to do when they're still too young to truly have that figured out, but I also completely agree with you that cost is the primary concern here. If I didn't have to go into so much debt in order to have continued my college education, I have a feeling I would've opted to keep at it and figure out what I wanted to do along the way.

asdff2• 5 years ago

In state tuition at public schools has still been reasonable all this time

strict9• 5 years ago

This is a good thing. Too many people are entering college and taking on enormous debt to get something which is less of an edge for getting a job.

Worse, many get saddled with debt and don't finish for various reasons.

Meanwhile tuition and books keep skyrocketing as schools divert more of their attention away from academics and toward more profitable uses of institutional time and capital.

But in a bit of good news, more jobs are ditching the degree requirement as workers as more scarce. I am glad the pandemic has opened the eyes of employers to realize that a degree is not the indicator it once was.

Opinion: the self-taught are just as capable in the workforce and college degree requirements are gatekeeping.

9dev3• 5 years ago

Sure they are gatekeeping, but that's the problem. The gatekeeping will continue, artificially limiting access to highly paid jobs to the upper class.

chickenpotpie• 5 years ago

Strongly disagree, a less educated society is nothing to celebrate. This isn’t a problem being solved, it’s a country giving up.

Rd6n6• 5 years ago

The news has also been about record numbers of people quitting, changing careers, and going to school. Something is being misreported

lanecwagner• 5 years ago

College simply isn't the most effective way to be learning these days. Especially for undergraduate degrees, places like Kahn Academy, Qvault.io (mine) and FreeCodeCamp are working really well

GnarfGnarf• 5 years ago

Start by lowering tuition fees. University administrations have become bloated, profiteering from the truism that you gotta go to college to get a good job.

I got my B.A. in 1968; I owed $800 balance on my student loan ($6,400 today).

My plumber just charged me $430 to install a sink, about an hour and a half's work. That doesn't include the cost of the sink. Are Gender Studies majors making this kind of money?

maxerickson• 5 years ago

Government dollars went a lot further when a smaller percentage of people were enrolling in college. And there was unmet demand for college educated professionals (which is true in some fields today, but probably not as broadly true), so there was more willingness to spend government dollars educating people.

pingeroo2• 5 years ago

I realized the absurdity of this when I found out that my university's president earns more than the president of the United States

rossdavidh5• 5 years ago

As the father of a 16-year old, I can say that the current generation of teenagers has heard a lot more about the issues of college debt than previous generations did. Partly because it's a lot higher, partly because even if newsmedia doesn't report on it, there are enough adults out there saddled with it that they just hear about it from a relative or friend. It used to be a no-brainer; you go to college if you can. No longer.

Any industry that sees nothing but expansion for decades, has a rough time when it stops. I think higher ed is in for a rough time.

taylodl5• 5 years ago

No. Things are just going back to the way they used to be: higher education is for the elites. Once upon a time we understood that higher education was important for all and having a well-educated public was good for the Republic. Now that view no longer holds - the politicians have learned that their flim-flam doesn't work as well on a well-educated public and so they've been making cuts to higher education for the past 20 years. We're just now getting to the point where the cuts are having a serious impact to the middle class being able to afford college. Don't worry though - the elites will be just fine.

9dev3• 5 years ago

Hanlon's Razor: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity".

It's enough to assume elites were greedy (and/or dense) and didn't consider long-term effects, you don't even need a decades-spanning conspiracy for it.

The elites won't be as fine once they realise much of their wealth stems from the rest of the republic, but that seems to be the circle humanity is caught in for eternity.

echelon• 5 years ago

That's an interesting take, but I disagree.

The reason colleges cost so much is that they've expanded their administration, facilities, and sports programs to soak up all of the available loan money.

I went to a state school that focused on STEM. The acceptance rate was low, class sizes were small, and the tuitions were reasonable. The buildings dated from the 60's. We didn't have extensive athletic programs, and our gym was falling apart. The school didn't spare expenses on things that didn't contribute directly to education.

We still had access to full machine shops, doppler radar installations, flow cytometers, BSL-3 labs, electron microscopes, wind tunnels, robotics facilities, and a boat load of really cool stuff. But it certainly didn't feel like an ivory tower.

Though our school wasn't losing money, the state board of regents decided to merge it into a much larger "liberal arts" school. This was done so that it could hit the student body requirements in order to qualify for building its own division I football program.

They built lots of fancy buildings for their dance program and theater productions. I can't even count how many stadiums and sports facilities they've constructed - it feels like two dozen! They're also purchasing lots of expensive real estate to enhance the size of the main campus. Meanwhile tuition has quadrupled and fees have gone up 1,000%.

It's bloat. That's why everything costs so much.

whywhywhywhy2• 5 years ago

the politicians have learned that their flim-flam doesn't work as well on a well-educated public

Looking at recent graduates are we sure that this system is truly preparing them for the realities of the real world and how to understand it.

Feels more to me that a whole generation is being scammed into paying for broken tools.

strikelaserclaw2• 5 years ago

not only the higher costs of education but my generation (millennial) learned that most degrees offered provide no real jobs that can contend with massive rise in cost for every significant thing that constitutes a decent life (housing, childcare etc...). Things look even bleaker for younger generations. The people who were born just in time to ride the swelling wave greatly benefited, if you were born when the wave is crashing down, unfortunately your life will be much much harder. We have this notion that everything we earn is based on merit but as i get older i see how much external context greatly influences the opportunities for merit as well as the outcomes.

l8rpeace• 5 years ago

I can relate to info/knowledge about that edu debt, went to undergrad in the 90's and while I might be naive, I can say I didn't comprehend the debt side of things. And my edu debt pales in comparison to today's students. Fortunately I grew up, buckled down, and paid it off but there were some lean years right after school. Now? I can't even imagine.

And I also agree: how will these institutions scale back? What if tuition was cut significantly? What programs are on the chopping block?

rossdavidh5• 5 years ago

Businesses and industries that have never had layoffs (or not in a long time), tend to do them badly (more unfairly and in a more disorganized manner) than ones which have had them recently.

cush2• 5 years ago

Exactly. 1M fewer people will be in poverty from student loan debt

rootusrootus3• 5 years ago

Maybe it just got too damn expensive. I make pretty good money and I'm still planning carefully for how I'm going to deal with it for my kids (who still have 7-9 years left before college).

I'm hoping that online school really takes off, and that colleges follow Georgia Tech's lead on pricing for it. OSU still wants full price for online classes, which is bogus.

Beyond that, I'm going to strongly incentivize my kids to stay home the first couple years and hit the local community college for the first half of their degree, just because it's dramatically cheaper than what it'll cost to send them to live at a university.

I thought college was expensive when I was going in the 90s. Now it's just ridiculous.

Aperocky2• 5 years ago

Aren't state colleges relatively affordable (while mostly OK academically)?

rootusrootus3• 5 years ago

Relatively, yes, I believe so. But Oregon State still tells me to budget 30K/year for a resident undergrad. About half of that is living expenses, half is school.

astura2• 5 years ago

I started college almost 20 years ago, so I don't know the current situation. Back then the state schools had acceptance rates of only 20%-30% because so many people wanted to go to state schools to save money. There wasn't nearly enough supply to meet demand.

I never applied to any public school, but I was legitimately worried about not being accepted. I wouldn't depend on it.

I'm really glad I went to a private college in the end. People who went to state schools said class sizes were huge (like 150 students per class) and they were being taught by TAs. I really don't think I would have succeeded in that sort of environment - At my private school we didn't have any TAs and I never had a class over ~30 people, which was important because classes were very interactive.

felistoria• 5 years ago

My state school (Washington State) nearly doubled while I was attending. Of course I was there between 2009 and 2013 which is where all colleges really jacked their prices up.

SamuelAdams• 5 years ago

Yes and no. I used to work at a state university recently. The cost of most state universities (in my state) has stayed largely the same over the last 10 years. However state appropriations (tax dollars from the state government) has been going down each year. So students are responsible for more of the bill.

Back in the 70's and 80's state appropriations covered between 70-80% of tuition. Now my state covers roughly 35-40% of funding for most public universities [1]. Part of this is the university offering more programs - athletics, counseling, therapy, other student services, which all need additional funding. The other part is that state funding is going down due to a variety of political budget reasons.

[1] https://www.house.mi.gov/hfa/PDF/Summaries/21h4400h2cr1_Educ...

gorbachev• 5 years ago

I'm keeping my fingers crossed for scholarships.

lordnacho4• 5 years ago

We have to do something about what people think college is to an employer. I'm excluding courses where you specifically need the degree: medicine, law, and maybe some others. Clearly you can't be a doctor or lawyer who hasn't passed his exams. Also if you are going to be a professor or phd naturally you will need to have studied whatever it is.

For everyone else, all college does is shows people that you are diligent: you read the books, wrote the essays, passed the quizzes.

Now, the thing is most jobs are not directly related to any particular degree. For example if you become an option trader like I did, nothing on my Engineering/Econ/Mgt was relevant. Even the finance parts of the management course were not relevant. You learn on the job. Think about it, you are at work 50-70 hours a week the whole year vs splitting your time at uni over a much shorter calendar. At work you sit next to an expert, at school you sit next to novices.

So the whole idea that college qualifies you to do something is bogus. It's mainly a signal that you're teachable, and a weak signal that you're interested in some particular broad area.

I would guess that the great majority of jobs that people with degrees take could have been done by the same people without their degree. You'll never get people to admit that if you aren't friends with them, but that is generally what people think as well.

Are there other benefits to college? Certainly. You get to socialize, mature a bit away from home, and for most people it's the last time they are exposed to the great ideas that mankind has found over the centuries. Those things can all be done separately without paying for it, but currently the system is broken and everyone uses degrees as a social status marker, which is self-reinforcing: you still need a degree because if you don't have one you can't get those jobs that you don't need a degree to perform.

ls15• 5 years ago

Are there other benefits to college?

I think I learned a thing or two at university.

nslice• 5 years ago

A degree is just a filter. If you get 200 applications for a job listing, you are going to prioritize those with relevant degrees.

lordnacho4• 5 years ago

A huge number of jobs have no relevant degree. What's the degree for being a management consultant? Or a pharma sales person?

The number of jobs that are just "general business role" is enormous.

mensetmanusman• 5 years ago

I hope this catches on: https://www.wsj.com/articles/instead-of-tuition-students-giv...

If we can align the incentives of colleges and students to find jobs, it will also be a win for the economy. Let students bargain with their future earning potential, if they don’t make anything, the school doesn’t make anything.

Afforess• 5 years ago

Here's my counter: what if, instead of taxing students after their graduation, we taxed all adults income, then used the tax proceeds to make university tuition cost-free. The advantage would be that more students would attend, we'd have a more educated society, and alumni would not be worried about having to take the best paying job instead of one that they desire.

It's win-win-win, taxpayers get free access to universities for themselves and their children, students avoid debt or garnished wages in the future, and universities get government support and can shut down complicated administrative overhead for helping students navigate financing.

Now I know your thinking - does it scale? Yes! We have data from secondary and primary schools with the same cohort of students, who attend school for no cost. Attendance and graduation of these schools is closely correlated with life outcomes and success! We could apply this existing financing model to universities and solve the problem of tuition fees with by reusing the ideas from other tuition-free primary and secondary schools.

Prob a bit long for an elevator pitch, but hey.

leetcrew3• 5 years ago

the linked article describes a percentage-based income sharing scheme. the student isn't necessarily incentivized to get a higher paying job than they would otherwise. the school definitely is incentivized to guide students into more lucrative jobs, but that's probably a good thing for the median student.

as for the free college idea, this seems like a solution for the wrong problem. I'd argue a large chunk of students are already wasting their time getting a credential that shouldn't be necessary for the work they plan to do. I'm not convinced it's automatically good for more people to graduate college. four years is a long time to spend doing something without a clear, concrete reason to do so.

baby-yoda4• 5 years ago

skin in the game exposes what outcome a particular party is truly interested in. schools will avoid this like the plague, IMO.

twox2• 5 years ago

The cost is simply not worth the value, but some state/community schools are more affordable.

sys_64738• 5 years ago

Cost and COVID hitting guaranteed in person learning is what I imagine. I remember thinking online learning was as waste in the mid-2000s. Has it improved?

racl101• 5 years ago

- It got very expensive

- Depending on what you choose it might not even be rewarding

- You'll be saddled with crippling debt forever

Nah.

You're better off paying a couple of thousand for a coding bootcamp and have a better chance of finding some work and actually pay off the smaller debt you might have incurred.

xyzzy_plugh• 5 years ago

This is nearly a strictly American problem. Much of the rest of the world has realized that society requires and is capable of supporting advanced education for all -- after all we want humanity to be advancing, right?

America is still stuck in this alternate universe where it's a great privilege to have the opportunity to learn, which is of course true to some extent, but they really put it on a pedestal there.

Compared to the rest of the world, I think they over index on attending prestigious out-of-state and thus expensive, regardless of public or private, instead of building a really strong system for locals.

I think of my (non-US) classmates, maybe 1-2 per 100 were from a different region or country? I paid a total of $20k over five years which I easily covered with internships/summer jobs. Can you say the same in the US?

JumpCrisscross5• 5 years ago

after all we want humanity to be advancing, right?

I don't know how much our reams of communications, generic business and English majors are advancing humanity. (Granted, I studied finance [and engineering] in undergrad.)

long_time_gone5• 5 years ago

Communicating with eachother, knowledge of business, and understanding language seem like things we would want more of in society. Not sure why they would be demonized. Is the goal of higher-education to promote learning and build a well-rounded citizenry or to create worker drones?

BingoAhoy2• 5 years ago

Stephen King was an English major. Word art, literature, helps people advance cognitively.

English is an unowned cultivated intellectual property that greases communication which greases all other human endeavors. I think its underappreciated.

Not all education needs to advance the frontier, much of it is about maintaining what we've already claimed and passing it on to new generations.

11101010001100• 5 years ago

For those who work in adtech now, there's some hubris to be had. That industry was founded by people with those very degrees.

wil4212• 5 years ago

Yes I can say the same in the US. My state paid full tuition for B average and above students if you went to a college in the state. After a little over a year I took off and went back to school while working at a later point. By that time I qualified for federal tuition aid but lost my state one. It wasn’t much over $20k for 5 years out of pocket for me.

upbeat_general• 5 years ago

What state does that? B average and above is probably ~50% of high school students so that’s full tuition for half of all high schoolers.

gorjusborg2• 5 years ago

I've lived in the U.S. my entire life, and I agree with you. Our culture somehow misses the fact that as a society we benefit from educated citizens. There's even a segment of the population that fetishizes ignorance as a virtue, and knowledge as leftist indoctrination.

There also seems to be a deep seated fear that any sort of public investment in people is seen as a slippery slope to soviet-style authoritarian government.

autokad• 5 years ago

knowledge as leftist indoctrination.

Almost all of my classes had leftist brainwashing. In my machine learning class, the professor would use voting republican as a classifier making the wrong decision. Given that people had made it this far in education to be good at repeating and learning what ever the professor says and that the professor is in a position of power over the students, this is very bad.

There also seems to be a deep seated fear that any sort of public investment in people is seen as a slippery slope to soviet-style authoritarian government.

Well, we now have to show our papers to go to restaurants, bars, work, etc and are now required to mask our faces in public. its considered an act of terrorism to raise your voice at a school board meeting, and we're being censored on internet platforms. so yeah, you already accomplished your soviet-style authoritarianism.

chrisco255• 5 years ago

Academia is a hostile environment for a right-leaning person. When less than 5% of professors identify as conservative, why would you gravitate to it, as a conservative? That's half the country, by the way. Maybe that has something to do with low engagement. Consequently, the institution suffers dramatically from its own groupthink.

That being said, there's a difference between academic education and other forms of education, such as vocational or work experience. One is not better than the other. I'm weary of people that think they're smarter or better than someone else on the basis of what school they went to or how long for. Academia does not have a monopoly on knowledge. Particularly in the information age, but even well before the age we find ourselves in, there's always been value in the pragmatic experience of less intellectual pursuits.

I'd say the U.S.'s slant towards pragmatism and away from intellectualism is one of my favorite things about the country. I'd say it showed itself pretty well on the Covid response. Red states were more quicker to re-open, quicker to drop restrictions, and quicker to move on to living with Covid and in spite of it. People knew intuitively that you wouldn't be able to control a virus more infectious than the common cold.

And many people know this, intuitively as well, that's why New York loss record population last year and why Florida and Texas grew dramatically. The intellectuals running New York and New York City probably have tons of education and not one bit of common sense, because all they know is conformity. When an ordained expert says jump, they ask how high?

That doesn't even begin to cover the other part of it, which is how poorly adapted academia is for the 21st century. Even if it were free, it wouldn't fix that problem.

jackson14422• 5 years ago

I’m attending a state school in the US, and my degree costs about $13k/year + books + housing.

contravariant• 5 years ago

Some of the 'let's saddle students with debt' vibe seems to have pollinated the Netherlands, though for reasons that I applaud but don't quite understand pretty much everyone now considers it a bad idea.

mettamage• 5 years ago

I have no data, I'm simply stating my beliefs to give you an understanding, since I feel I'm one of the people you happen to be surprised about.

Free education levels the playing field. Moreover, I feel guilt. I have been a beneficiary of free education. Free transport, free college tuition, free books and some paid assistance with living somewhere else. Coming from a working class family it has given me an amazing boost in:

* Career (master computer science)

* Spiritual knowledge (one Buddhism course was enough)

* Outlook on the world

* Network

University isn't perfect, but if I wasn't given this chance then I would not be able to replicate certain pivotal experiences simply by using the internet and my own wit. In that sense, I still believe it levels the playing field by quite a bit.

School was always meant as the great equalizer and I think it still should be, as imperfect as it is.

paulpauper11• 5 years ago

I think foreign colleges have stricter entry requirements and fewer amenities compared to American colleges. So yes, college may be free in Japan, but also much harder to be accepted.

chaosbolt• 5 years ago

I think foreign colleges have stricter entry requirements and fewer amenities compared to American colleges. So yes, college may be free in Japan, but also much harder to be accepted.

Yeah this is problematic, on one hand you have people who work harder for it pass the entrance exams and get in (like in France for example where some engineering schools like Polytechnique and ENS have a super difficult entrance exam but then you know everyone studying there earned it), but on the other hand you get some people who are just lazy or not good at physics get filtered from top tier positions in CS because the entrance exam had Math and Physics equally attribute to your grade.

bernulli• 5 years ago

In Germany, the overall entry requirement is a not horrible high school degree (type of high school intended to prepare for an academic career) for engineering. You can just go and sign up to the university of your choice. The flip side is that you then sit there with hundreds of other students that will be weeded out by a harsh curriculum and zero advisement. That said, whoever gets through that system will be worth their price later on when you hire them.

tkgally• 5 years ago

College is, overall, cheaper in Japan than in the U.S., but it isn’t free [1]. You might be thinking of some countries in Europe.

The top schools in Japan are indeed quite competitive, but there are also universities that admit almost any high school graduate. A few decades ago, a lot of new universities were established just when the birthrate was starting to drop. Now some lower-tier private universities are struggling to attract enough students to survive.

[1] https://schoolynk.com/media/articles/245ea105-7e5e-49db-ad13...

ren_engineer• 5 years ago

Much of the rest of the world has realized that society requires and is capable of supporting advanced education for all -- after all we want humanity to be advancing, right?

the number of STEM degrees in the US has basically been flat for decades, majority of degrees being handed out are effectively useless in terms of boosting productivity and "advancement". Go around and ask people with college degrees how often they actually use them, probably 90% admit it was worthless, I know mine was. Luckily I had academic scholarships so I didn't have any debt

kids are effectively being propagandized and brainwashed into chasing worthless credentials while racking up debt that will impact their lives for years. The amount of emotional manipulation around college is disgusting

AlwaysRock• 5 years ago

My theatre degree has been useless from a compensation standpoint for me. It was somewhat helpful when I was in sales but I only got it because it was the easiest degree that required the least amount of maths.

I went to college because my parents forced me to. Thankfully I got out without any debt. I cant imagine how upset I would be if I racked up 100K is debt and ended up with a useless degree like many of my friends did.

That being said... I cant really blame my parents for forcing me to go. It did seem like the best option at the time. No one told me, or I guess them, about alternative educational programs or trade schools. I'd probably be a carpenter now if someone had. I had pretty much zero plans for my life post high school so college at least gave me something to do while I figured it out.

acchow2• 5 years ago

kids are effectively being propagandized and brainwashed into chasing worthless credentials

They also force each other into "worthless credentials", as many college graduates will only date other college graduates.

thundergolfer• 5 years ago

Paying for the Party is a good book about this issue of STEM degrees being flat and money being pumped in by students doing marketing, PR, communications, and business management degrees.

mcguire2• 5 years ago

"the number of STEM degrees in the US has basically been flat for decades"

Between 2008 and 2015 the number grew by nearly 50%.

https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d16/tables/dt16_318.45.a...

feoren2• 5 years ago

after all we want humanity to be advancing, right?

Hell no! Life is a zero-sum game, so if I'm hurting other people, that must mean I'm winning! Besides, if we all collectively come together to make the world better, those people might have nice things too! That would make me so angry! I'd rather live in poverty than see those people do well in life!

Sarcasm, obviously, but at least 100 million Americans believe all of the above. They are single-issue voters, and their single issue is hurting other people.

banannaise• 5 years ago

There is a rapidly growing list of increasingly dire "strictly American problems". I wonder when and how it will break.

timmg• 5 years ago

Much of the rest of the world has realized that society requires and is capable of supporting advanced education for all...

I don't know about all of the rest of the world, but many countries require you to "test in" to college (and then it's free). The US basically lets anyone go to college if they can pay.

You can argue one is better than the other. But you should be honest/aware of the difference.

armchairhacker• 5 years ago

Some people hate college and only go for the degree. College should be accessible to everyone but not everyone needs to go to college.

ryan936• 5 years ago

How is it not accessible? Federal loans are given no questions asked. Where are these good students who can’t get into college

AlchemistCamp• 5 years ago

I paid a total of $20k over five years which I easily covered with internships/summer jobs.

You paid with five years of your life. Even if college were "free", it still wouldn't be the optimal thing for everyone to do. It is the best choice for some, but unfortunately those who make other choices are often looked down upon in much of the world unless they're an outlier success.

The cost of US schools is a massive problem, but the increasing assumption that everyone needs to take multiple years out of what could be the most productive phase of their life to engage in a tracked cookie-cutter experience is an even bigger problem.

Schooling and education aren't the same thing and the first doesn't always lead to much of the second.

betwixthewires12• 5 years ago

This is an important point that isn't being made enough in this thread. Must we all trade our youth for what amounts to a cost sunk fallacy that commits us to a path we may not even like?

joey_bob• 5 years ago

Our state has a program that covers tuition if you are in-state, received good grades in high school, and continue to maintain those.

Of my (undergraduate) classmates, I believe 60% were out of state, including out of country. Unfortunately, most that came from states with similarly ranked public schools did not have access to a similar program in those states.

My payments to the university totaled $60k for 7 years, undergraduate and masters. (I lost full tuition coverage my first year.)

abeppu3• 5 years ago

America is still stuck in this alternate universe where it's a great privilege to have the opportunity to learn, which is of course true to some extent, but they really put it on a pedestal there.

I think the facts don't really support the idea of it being a "great privilege" in the sense of being inaccessible to most. E.g. if you look at this table of tertiary education by country, in OECD countries plus a few others, the US is in the top 10. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiary_...

In the section below that, if you look at 4-year degrees or higher, more Americans have a 4-year equivalent than Israelis, Swedes, Canadians, Norwegians, French, German etc.

We're not an outlier in how many of us go to college, just in how much of people's lives they end up paying for it.

julienb_sea• 5 years ago

I don't know in which non-American worldview you subscribe, but America has a higher rate of tertiary education achievement than practically every European nation (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiary_...). European countries have more selective and restrictive advanced education requirements, they just don't charge for them. This is the literal opposite of "supporting advanced education for all".

To be clear, I think this is a more sensible system than what we do here in America, where anyone can get an advanced education because even if you can't afford it, the government will guarantee loans of arbitrary size.

csomar2• 5 years ago

For the 25-64 Segment but try the 25-34 and suddenly you have a different picture.

kgin• 5 years ago

Americans have one of the highest rates of higher education in the developed world.

America just wants new grads to be indebted to motivate them to get to work.

beepbooptheory4• 5 years ago

There is little hope anymore for actual advancement anyway, just a tendency downwards, punctuated by small spurts of different kinds of enthusiasm.

We get a new iPhone every once in a while, or a UI refresh of twitter, to simulate a feeling of advancement, but we all, deep down, know it's just that, a feeling.

How could anyone even really want advancement when we know that finance thrives on predictable cycles.

The word for the next centuries should be 'humility,' not 'progress'. Humility is the only thing I think we can possibly achieve anymore

maccolgan• 5 years ago

This is nearly a strictly American problem. Much of the rest of the world has realized that society requires and is capable of supporting advanced education for all -- after all we want humanity to be advancing, right?

Yeah subsidization of education, of mostly useless degrees will solve all problems of humanity, totally.

mcguire2• 5 years ago

Which country? I don't know of any that get close to "advanced education for all".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiary_...

ngngngng• 5 years ago

It's different and worse than you say. We put it on a pedestal, decided it was worth any cost, decided everyone should have the ability to go, but that they should all have to shoulder that burden themself. A large part of the issue right now is the system we've built allows any student to obtain a predatory loan to cover the entirety of the outrageous costs, and any political effort to change this is likely career suicide because it will be seen as keeping underprivileged students out of the best programs and therefore stunting their futures.

dpierce93• 5 years ago

There are a lot of people blaming federal loans for the inflation in college costs, however, private secondary school (high school) tuition has also grown at a comparable rate (maybe even faster). There are not, to my knowledge, federal loans for private secondary schools. Does anyone have an explanation for this?

Edit: clarified that private secondary school = private high school. Of course federal student loans are available for accredited private colleges/universities.

Not sure the reliability of this source but the trend is there across sources: [0] https://educationdata.org/average-cost-of-private-school

jackson14422• 5 years ago

There do appear to be federal loans for private schools- Baylor is a private school in Texas, here’s their site on loans: https://www.baylor.edu/sfs/index.php?id=963417

dpierce93• 5 years ago

Baylor is not a secondary school. Secondary school = high school.

zactato• 5 years ago

When I was in school the loans were called stafford loans: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stafford_Loan

I guess they've since changed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Direct_Student_Loan_Pr...

They are very much for private schools. There's no real limit on them. They tend to cover the difference between what a family can pay and what the tuition is. They're generally low interest and you don't need to start paying them back until you're done with school.

Since the loans always cover the difference the impact of tuition costs going up isn't immediately felt

dpierce93• 5 years ago

These are for college, not high school.

Private high school costs have gone up as fast or faster than college. This cannot be explained by the availability of federal loans.

999900000999• 5 years ago

Theirs a few factors.

First birth rates are generally down. Not only in America,but worldwide.

Wages at the bottom of the economy have increased dramatically, making minimum-wage jobs especially appealing to young people as an alternative to college.

This isn't an ether or situation. I worked full time while going to school full time. In fact this was my entire senior year of college.

I actually got to 6 figures without a degree, but the entire point of college for me was getting away from my horrible family. It's still a good way to get distance.

This is great news overall. Tuition will have to drop and schools will offer more flexibility to working students.

In my home state of California the UCs are hostile to anyone with a 9-5, I hope this changes.

gr1zzlybe4r• 5 years ago

The only reason you should go to college if you're not getting a pre-professional degree is to network.

I made the mistake of thinking that the purpose was to get what is essentially a certificate stating that you went to a good school and got good grades.

I do think it was a net positive overall, but in reality I think I would've done just the same by going to school and networking, partying my ass off for 4 years, and then figuring it out after.

If you can do those things without going to college then it's a no brainer _not_ to go.

mmmmkay• 5 years ago

because it's a joke lol

noasaservice3• 5 years ago

1. School loans are not dismissable in bankruptcy. This is only shared with criminal monetary punishments.

2. Interest is charged, which is abhorrent at any rate. Especially the 8%.

3. PPP "loans" to the tune of almost 1t$.. which were forgiven. Just run a few sham job ads for software engineers at 10$/hr and NobOdy wAnTS tO wOrk!

4. University doesn't really provide job skills. They allude to, but then say they dont.

5. Jobs say they need a degree, but that's primarily due to https://www.naacpldf.org/case-issue/griggs-v-duke-power-co/ and easier to exclude black people with a 'degree'.

6. Most programs do NOT need expensive schools, labs, etc. Non-lab based classes can easily get by online.

7. School costs are stupid, because "Its what the market will bear"

8. Even public higher ed schools are stupid priced, because the public aspect has been surely ripped away from them.

9. Even if you DO go, you're guaranteed only one thing: undismissable debt. I failed out due to medical reasons. I have the debt, and no degree to show for it.

As a millenial, higher ed is a bad bargain. And if you're younger, DO NOT LET HIGH SCHOOL threaten you with "if you dont go to school you will work as a grocery bagger for the rest of your life". Teach yourself IT. Get into an area, double down, learn it inside and out. Find a few hot tech areas. Learn them well. And off you go.

endisneigh26• 5 years ago

I love how the solution is always to do tech. What about the other things?

renewiltord• 5 years ago

Well, the other things are likely not worth it. You can tell because they try to hide outcomes from prospective students. The things that will yield good outcome for an individual all lead with the outcome. The things that don't always lead with some sort of identity-nonsense: "You will be a well-rounded individual" but don't actually show the median example of this well-rounded individual post-degree.

noasaservice3• 5 years ago

CS and IT have very low barriers of entry.

Hardware is cheap, especially if going back a gen or 2. Software is free if open source'ing it. Piracy is also cheap too. Books and resources are plentiful, and predominantly cost time to experiment and do. And you can get hold of the developers pretty easy in open source, or dev with them.

Science has costy expensive lab equipment, knowledge is less shared and more guarded for their guild, people are harder to get to.

Engineering, depending on discipline, isn't even legal to teach yourself (professional engineer). Or it requires more expensive lab equipment in the ranges of 10's of thousands (think good oscilloscope, signal generator, rf anything). It's possible but really hard.

Math is possibly just as 'easy' as CS/IT. However, it's a super elite group. They have their own in-language that's near impenetrable for outsiders. And the people who excel are not at all easy to get in contact with.

Outside of STEM, there's other possible avenues. But given that Marx said that a capitalist society trends towards money-making activities in mathematics, science, and technology (STEM), the other avenues are probabilistically a bad bet. And yea, that sucks. But we also like to have enough money to live and enjoy life.

ravenstine2• 5 years ago

Most of the college graduates I know ended up not using their degree because they majored in something no one cares about like communications, philosophy, journalism, etc. Maybe some people are figuring out that flipping burgers or literally just hanging out at home is a better use of their time from a financial standpoint than spending 4 or more years taking various prerequisites to get a degree that only results in more debt. Bell curves gonna bell curve, so it's not like all of these people are gonna have what it takes to instead become doctors, lawyers, and politicians.

As far as I'm concerned, besides the fields that deal with the fate of a person's life (like doctors and lawyers), the whole idea of going to college and getting a masters in whatever your heart's desire deserves to be imploded. I see no sense in those saying that we need to "fix universities". Honestly, fuck universities for acting they're worth as much as they are while still pretending their priority is the students. Everything I learned in college and the different schools I went to can now be learned online or at the library for free or for $29.99. In a few generations, universities will be naturally replaced with more practical alternatives. So why try to prop up these archaic institutions for the sake of the average person rather than the exceptional? Such a desire is more of a fetish for an image of what universities represent.

reilly30003• 5 years ago

something no one cares about like communications, philosophy, journalism, etc.

Excuse me? No one cares about fields that employ 2.8 million workers [BLS.gov 2020] ? No one cares about work that provides information, entertainment, and shapes political views? FYI your doctors, lawyers, and politician's biggest expense line items usually include money going to communications and media professionals.

I and many others resonate with the notion of 'useless degrees', but you chose some terrible examples. That said, there is more value to education than vocation, and your inability to see that shows that you missed quite a bit in yours. The classical liberal arts education could and should be continually reimagined for a changing world, but to wholly discount its importance is capitalist orthodoxy that misses much of what life is about. Read a goddamn book.

ravenstine2• 5 years ago

Read a goddamn book.
[...] to wholly discount its importance is capitalist orthodoxy

Touched a nerve, eh? You have no clue what books I've read or how many.

I didn't "wholly discount" the importance of so-named classical liberal arts. But there aren't many good reasons for putting one's self into debt to get a degree in such things. Be honest, liberal arts isn't heart surgery. Liberal arts can be learned for free if it is the knowledge itself that is of highest importance. The cost of majoring in these areas of studies are hardly congruent with how well they prepare someone to become a part of the world outside of academia and the cost that they bear. Perhaps to certain individuals the cost still is justified by the end result they are aiming towards, but to assume that everyone going into the liberal arts is in college not because society is cajoling them into it would be highly ignorant.

You're mistaking my valuation of the degree for a valuation of the subject mater itself. Are you familiar with the growing amount of student debt in the United States? Liberal arts are no exception, and there's nothing I'm aware of about fields it encompasses that justifies the expense in both time and debt. It appears to be a racket.

anm89• 5 years ago

this type of discourse doesn't belong on HN. you should take it somewhere else.

awb• 5 years ago

I’ve been recruiting for US startups since 2008, probably recruited over 100 folks from engineers to C-level.

I have never considered a candidate’s college or if they even attended one. The only thing I evaluated is what they accomplished in the last 1-2 years. That meant hiring some brilliant engineers straight out of high school.

Most of these candidates were early stage hires for dozens of companies that went on to become billion dollar public companies or get acquired for 8-10 figures.

As far as a springboard for a career, I haven’t seen colleges come close to worth the price of admission.

Almost your entire career value is dependent on how well you can self-learn and self-motivate. The one important piece that school might teach or give you exposure to is how to collaborate effectively with others.

ryanmarsh2• 5 years ago

As far as a springboard for a career, I haven’t seen colleges come close to worth the price of admission.

This right here.

The strongest argument against the status quo is that the juice isn’t worth the squeeze.

In aggregate college graduates could achieve equal or greater levels of learning, relative to their chosen profession, and cost, with education regimes other than the typical four year state college experience.

netsec_burn• 5 years ago

I can attest to universities not being useful for helping you get in to a career, besides resume writing. I attended one career fair sponsored by a university I attended. There were about 60 different booths, and two of them were tech companies. The first offered 40k/yr. They had already reached out to me prior to the career fair and I declined to move cities for a 40k/yr position, there were plenty of state jobs paying that. The second was Amazon. I asked if they had any SWE roles. They said there were only warehouse jobs.

strikelaserclaw2• 5 years ago

My ideal college would be 2 years of straight up technical computer science/math, followed by straight going into the industry. If you want to learn theory in depth, that is what grad school should be for.

cryptolake• 5 years ago

That's exactly what I'm studying right now at holberton school in tunisia, it's project based and we dive into the fundamentals pretty well for a year and then choose a specialization in the other year, it's pretty good so far.

xeromal• 5 years ago

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

lwhi• 5 years ago

Feels sensible to not go to college in a pandemic though?

ryanmarsh2• 5 years ago

My oldest daughter is in pre-nursing and is applying to nursing school at her university for next year. I know of no other way to get into nursing but though a typical university. Thankfully the state of Texas is paying for her education due to the Hazelwood Act.

My middle daughter wants to study art (she is an artist and sees a future in it for herself). My benefits will expire by the time she applies to college. So she’s not likely to end up at a four year university.

I have a hunch my youngest daughter may want to study computer science. Unless the cost of school changes I may put together a program for her myself mixed with online schools and traditional CS resources.

wintermutestwin• 5 years ago

My kids are going to college in an EU country where their BA degrees take three years, but each class is related to their major. In the US, our inane curriculum wastes two years retaking general ed classes that they should have learned in HS.

Borrowing to pay tuition to take general ED classes is dumb, and yet, this is the path that is pushed on our best and brightest.

At the least, kids should gen ed in Community College. At the best, we should reform or horrible curriculum.

panzagl2• 5 years ago

The dean of students at my daughter's university (Montana State) has been pretty upfront about this mostly being demographics- Gen Z is smaller than the Millennials.

That being said, both of my daughter's had drilled into their heads how expensive college would be by their HS teachers and staff. We're continually telling them not to worry about it, it's our responsibility to pay, not theirs, don't feel bad for not going into STEM, etc. Doesn't help that we live out west where anti-intellectualism is the default and a degree is just seen as a piece of paper.

starwind3• 5 years ago

I live in Colorado. I don't see a lot that I would "anti-intellectualism" since I live close to Denver but I definitely see a much higher value placed on skills than degrees

panzagl2• 5 years ago

Well, it won't surprise you that I live a little south of you. But even in Denver try telling people that your daughter is double majoring in history and classics- the looks I get mostly range from "she's crazy" to "you're an idiot for letting her do that". Nevermind that her 'hyper expensive education' will cost less than their dually F-250...

mmaunder• 5 years ago

Good. It’s a scam. It is a horrifically inefficient knowledge delivery system enabled by predatory loans, with tremendous societal pressure to participate, and a tribal mentality that causes former participants to pressure their kids and friends into making the same mistake they did.

blululu• 5 years ago

It’s easy to say that the crippling cost of higher education is behind this drop. And while college admins are slowly turning the screw on American students, this is more of a gradual process. The immediate drop here is from foreign students deciding to stay closer to home as a result of the pandemic, visa restrictions and a drop in value of actually getting to experience the culture: https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/decl...

w-m• 5 years ago

For some perspective, in Germany we've seen rising number of university students since 2007: 1.94M students in 2007, 2.94M in 2020. From 2020 to 2021, numbers have stagnated (+0.1%).

There's few private colleges (mostly international business schools I guess?), a large majority of students goes to the public universities. The eduction is free, but you pay a few hundred Euros per semester in administrative charges, which usually includes a ticket for city or state public transport.

You can get a loan from the state (BAföG) to cover living expenses, which you will pay back after finishing, when you have a job (well of course things are more complicated, but that's the gist). The maximum amount you have to pay back is 10.000 Euros, even if the size of the loan was larger.

parkingrift• 5 years ago

Most of the comments here are attributing this to costs, but that isn't clearly true (at all) from the article. This seems to be the result of a long term downward trend in enrollment which has rapidly accelerated during the pandemic. The fact that it has accelerated so rapidly during the pandemic is not likely due to costs, but due to other factors.

The article itself posits that it is tangentially related to costs as kids are choosing to work rather than pay for school. However, that association feels pretty shaky and doesn't hold up to scrutiny as to why these changes accelerated so rapidly during the pandemic.

I don't have a data-driven answer, either. However, my guess would be that students are uninterested in an online college experience and don't see the value in spending to attend a lucrative school so that they can then sit at home on their laptop. If I had to bet I would guess that enrollment ticks back once all these restrictions are abandoned.

Brybry• 5 years ago

The article doesn't mention population changes either.

A significant part of the recent downward trend could be because there are fewer college age people in the population. Just eyeballing it looks like fewer 18 year olds every year for the last 15 to 30 years? [1]

A more interesting statistic might be students per capita within the college age bracket.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Sta...

indymike6• 5 years ago

There are three problems that colleges need to fix.

1) Skilled trades pay better than most bachelor's degree track jobs. My kids can make more money with a six month apprenticeship than they will with all but a few 4 year degrees. If you can drive a forklift, you can make $45K/yr... which is identical to what an firsty year teacher makes.

2) There are better options than college for many. One of my daughters did a six month digital marketing bootcamp. She made $45k year one, and a year later is the director of marketing at her company making over $100k/yr.

3) College is way over priced. They claim graduates make 40% over their lifetime vs. non grads. JP Morgan Chase did a study two years ago that shows kids that had a job, any job before age 18 make 35% more than their peers over their lifetime regardless of degree.

4) Student loans are a horror that needs to stop. Young people should not be put in debt-bondage. Imagine America's financial health if we let young people start families and careers debt free.

jimmyjazz142• 5 years ago

I don't think the first two are problems colleges need to fix I think its more of a matter that we need to change our mindset about who should be attending college maybe some people would be better off going the trade school route.

granshaw• 5 years ago

Part of the problem is the social stigma of not having a college degree. Not sure how to fix that

zapataband12• 5 years ago

Yeah we I read somewhere that in Germany 60% of students go into trades and they have seriously beefed up their programs. But yeah there is a stigma here in the US about trades, I think that's partly due to the social consequences of having insane wealth gaps and worshipping billionaires.

fnord772• 5 years ago

there's been a proliferation of administrators in colleges. the ratio of administrators to professors/instructors has been steadily climbing since the 70s. I see this as a form of corruption.

moneywoes• 5 years ago

Apparently this is where most of the tuition cost is going

newfonewhodis• 5 years ago

While your (completely valid) points address the economics of college, it misses the connections and friendships you make through college. It's the best way for most people to be thrown around thousands of people to find and build their community.

All that to say, if the economics of college were better, even I (mid-career) would consider going back for a couple of degrees to continue expanding my community.

vmception3• 5 years ago

There aren't colleges problem. Its coincidence that for the last 60 years people felt like they needed college, while colleges insist that people want to be there for obscure higher education for the sake of pursuing obscure higher education. Turns out this was true for hundreds of years before inclusion was even a concept, and will exist for the next hundreds of years as people find another option.

rPlayer6554• 5 years ago

The colleges were willing to jack up the price to take advantage of the government giving out loans. They are a major part of the problem as well.

jjulius2• 5 years ago

There aren't colleges problem. Its coincidence that for the last 60 years people felt like they needed college...

Colleges - especially for-profit colleges - have certainly contributed to that feeling.

raxxorrax• 5 years ago

There is evidence that there is an educational benefit for everyone just alone to the fact that people get challenged with academic problems.

But people should also be made aware that universities do not train a craft and not every academic discipline translates to an occupation. The final training will probably happen in the companies that want to invest in academics.

jorblumesea• 5 years ago

The purpose of college is partly workforce training but also just general education. To see college as solely providing competitive dollar careers seems to misunderstand a large part of higher educational purpose. In theory at least, the liberal arts are something far more than just "can I work at FB".

RealityVoid2• 5 years ago

Yes, thank you! I find the point of view where college is just job training so myopic.

betwixthewires12• 5 years ago

Which is why far fewer people should be getting them. The immediate needs of most people far outweighs the desire to learn about liberal arts.

Which is why these degrees were sold with the promise of good pay. If you want to blame someone for framing college solely from a wage earning potential perspective, point the finger at the people selling college degrees to kids.

There should not be guaranteed student loans for degrees that don't provide competitive dollar careers.

starwind3• 5 years ago

There shouldn't be a divide between skilled trades and bachelor's degrees. If I could add a creative writing minor to math degree, why was it impossible for me to add an aircraft maintenance certification through my school?

lapsedacademic20• 5 years ago

why was it impossible for me to add an aircraft maintenance certification through my school?

Because schools can't bullshit maintenance certification curricula and aren't willing to pay qualified faculty.

See also: the alarming number of schools where CS and Data Science courses are still taught by mathematics faulty (because they can't find CS faculty who are willing to work for $70K).

This model of "pay unqualified people to teach a good enough version of the course and hope our consumers don't notice they're being shafted" only works in unregulated fields. Most trades are not unregulated.

sokoloff7• 5 years ago

Because the AMT course is typically 24 months long by itself (for a combined airframe and powerplant certificate)? It’s 30 months of relevant, supervised maintenance work experience or a qualified AMT school program, which are often 24 months full-time.

That’s far more time than a typical creative writing minor.

honksillet• 5 years ago

Government needs to get out of the student loan game entirely.

mmcconnell1618• 5 years ago

Medicare in the US has negotiated rates they will pay for medical services. The "retail" price is very often extremely high but knocked down to what the government agrees to pay for Medicare patients. A similar system for college loans would allow the government to still offer loans but with caps on how much colleges could charge for tuition to students with government loans. The problem is uncapped tuition and loan terms that allow lenders to offer tremendously large sums of money to students in a low risk way because the students can't declare bankruptcy or discharge the loans in any easy way.

jacobolus3• 5 years ago

kids that had a job, any job before age 18 make 35% more than their peers over their lifetime

Just as with claims about college, there is a huge selection bias in this observation. (A substantially higher proportion of youngish Americans obtain a bachelors degree than have a job before age 18.)

Edit: Let’s be clear: there is obviously a huge selection bias when talking about college as well, which should not be ignored.

texasbigdata• 5 years ago

That’s the point?

tryptophan• 5 years ago

Yes, but it is interesting which bias gets ignored and which one gets pointed out.

Collage increases earnings!

"Yay lets send everyone to collage and give out >1T$ of loans"

Early work experience increases earnings!

"Confounding factors and selection bias!"

dionidium2• 5 years ago

A substantially higher proportion of Americans obtain a bachelors degree than have a job before age 18.

Is this true? I got a job as soon as I was legally allowed to and so did every one of my friends in high school. Where I'm from you were seen as kind of a loser if you didn't work over the summer, at least. I'd guess it was something like 90% of kids at my school worked at some point in high school.

Edit: Here's a chart [0]. These numbers are much smaller than I expected (although keep in mind this is a snapshot, not the percentage who at any point in high school will have had a job), but what's really surprising is that the number of high school kids working has collapsed since I was in high school.

[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/477668/percentage-of-you...

throw109202• 5 years ago

Your first three points are very strong and insightful, but I somewhat object to your fourth. Individuals get loans for things that pay off in the long-term regularly - cars and houses, for the most part. I don't see any reason why college should be different, especially because the alternative is for taxpayers to subsidize it.

The real issues are twofold: first, student loans are underregulated and very predatory in a way that car loans and mortgages are not; second, like you said in your third point, college is way overpriced, with the cost of it going up about an order of magnitude over the past few decades with no discernable increase in quality (see the excellent Consideration On Cost Disease for more[1]).

If education was 10x cheaper and student loan rates were 3-5% a year, you wouldn't need the public to fund education - and even if you wanted to, it'd be a far easier time selling that idea than trying to convince people to fund undergraduate degrees to the tune of $100k+ per student.

[1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/considerations-on-cost...

artful-hacker• 5 years ago

I think a third real issue is also important, the 'undue hardship' burden necessary to get rid of student loans through bankruptcy needs to be dropped.

ClumsyPilot3• 5 years ago

"the alternative is for taxpayers to subsidize it."

You already are subsidising it by providing loans that cannot be paid off before death.

Just need to add debt prisons and we'll be back at 18th century class society.

zoolily• 5 years ago

There's much more to higher education costs than Baumol's cost disease. Public universities have much higher tuition because state subsididies to universities have decreased. In 2005, the state paid 3/4 and students paid 1/4 of the cost of instruction at my university. By 2019, those numbers were reversed, with students paying 3/4 of the cost. Total cost of instruction remained the same within a couple percent over that time period.

On the other side, elite private universities are in ever greater demand, driving higher tuitions. Higher tuition is a signal of their elite status, and such universities want to keep their tuition close to that of their competitors. They use financial aid to produce a sliding scale to collect as much money as they can from those who can afford to pay. On the other side, because of that financial aid, raising tuition an amount x may only produce an increase of income of 1/2 x, because the rest goes to increased financial aid. That factor increases the rate at which they raise tuition.

throwaway75787• 5 years ago

Out of interest, could you please point me in the direction of the digital marketing bootcamp that your daughter toook?

endisneigh26• 5 years ago

Im very skeptical of this post:

1. Many trades also pay like crap and have a very limited window in which you can do it. In addition many are not welcoming to women at all, regardless even if you take the highest paying trades, do they pay more than the highest paying careers that require higher education?

2. Which boot camp? How many people ended up like your daughter? How much was it? Without these facts no comparison can be made.

3. Some colleges perhaps, smart people can get full scholarships and even without that community college plus a cheap state school isn’t expensive. Link to your study? Did these people not go to college?

4. As you’ve already demonstrated college is hardly required let alone loans.

I’m surprised this is the top post.

Average College grads make more money over their lifetime, period.

https://www2.ed.gov/policy/highered/reg/hearulemaking/2011/c...

zebraflask2• 5 years ago

I think #1 needs to factor in cost of living. In many urban areas, 45K is near or even below the poverty level for a single worker.

silisili2• 5 years ago

Re 1, at least in the US, it's very dependent on market and path.

I have two family members who have been pipefitters for 20 years. Both make more than I do as a software engineer. Another is a doctor, and makes more than they do. But another does boat repair, and makes more than the doctor.

If the last decade is any indication, skilled labor - especially those not afraid to own their own business, are set to make a killing. It's nearly impossible to even get people to come out for normal household jobs anymore - they're all way too busy with more lucrative clients.

rootsudo2• 5 years ago

I'm not surprised at all - people with degrees try to find reasons to think they're better then the rest.

1. Many trades also are your own business, and can immediately scale for income - many plumbers, electricians, etc are millionaires with a small team of employees less than 15.

2. Google offers free marketing certification for this reason as well, it's not impossible for marketing/seo people to make 100k annually. It's very, very common.

3. Many colleges are not worth it and is debt- look at most state schools and you'd see a semester costs minimum $45,000. Yes there's community colleges.

4. Even community colleges require loans, and have programs of financial aid that is really "apply for fafsa, apply for stanford loans and then have pipelines for private debt.

light_hue_1• 5 years ago

2. Which boot camp? How many people ended up like your daughter? How much was it? Without these facts no comparison can be made.

Plenty of coding bootcamps have great placement rates and great salaries. For example, the median salary at Boston's Launch academy is $72k. The median salary for Fullstack Academy Grace Hopper in NY is $90k.

https://static.spacecrafted.com/b13328575ece40d8853472b9e0cf...

This organization verifies outcomes independently: https://cirr.org/data

I know several people who have gone to both of these, the data is legit, that's the outcome I saw from the graduating class.

3. Some colleges perhaps, smart people can get full scholarships and even without that community college plus a cheap state school isn’t expensive. Link to your study? Did these people not go to college?

Even "cheap" state schools aren't so cheap https://educationdata.org/average-cost-of-college We're still talking on average $25k/year. But that depends heavily on the state. In some states, you pay $14k in others $30k. Either way. Not cheap.

The rise in cost has been amazing: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d07/tables/dt07_320.asp In the 1960s total tuition + room + board inflation corrected was only $1000!

nindalf• 5 years ago

A comment doesn't necessarily need to be accurate to reach the top, it could merely confirm the biases of enough people so they think "yeah, sounds right to me!"

ravitation2• 5 years ago

1. Many trades also pay like crap and have a very limited window in which you can do it. In addition many are not welcoming to women at all, regardless even if you take the highest paying trades, do they pay more than the highest paying careers that require higher education?

Exactly.

These types of post often ignore the actual work being done.

A graduate student might make a comparable hourly rate to an amazon warehouse employee, but he or she can also go to the bathroom and sit down.

indymike6• 5 years ago

1. Many trades also pay like crap and have a very limited window in which you can do it.

I'm not sure what you mean by limited window unless we are talking about professional athletes and some categories of manual laborers.

In addition many are not welcoming to women at all, regardless even if you take the highest paying trades

This is rapidly changing. Also, there are also skilled trades that are mostly women (e.g. cosmetologist, many medical roles).

do they pay more than the highest paying careers that require higher education?

When we factor out jobs that require 8-12 years of education, in general, yes the trades aren't a bad deal.

2. Which boot camp? How many people ended up like your daughter? How much was it? Without these facts no comparison can be made.

I'm not turning this into an ad for the school my daughter went to. Cost was literally 1/2 of he first year salary over $40,000. It was capped at a maximum amount. She ended up paying about $6k, but it was contingent on her getting a job that payed better than $40k.

3. Some colleges perhaps, smart people can get full scholarships and even without that community college plus a cheap state school isn’t expensive.

I have five kids. My first was straight As, great test scores, and we still ended up with $6-8k of expense per semester after the full ride scholarships paid for tuition at a small private college.

Ok, here is the biggest community college in the US: Ivy Tech. $2,400 per semester for 12 hours, plus fees. It's not that expensive, but they also have less than 20% of students complete their degrees...

Link to your study? Did these people not go to college?

It didn't matter what education level they attained, across the population the outcome was consistent. Having a job while young made a huge difference - almost as much as having a degree.

4. As you’ve already demonstrated college is hardly required let alone loans.

Yep.

chaostheory7• 5 years ago

1. Many trades also pay like crap and have a very limited window in which you can do it.

Which is why the parent comment specifically mentioned "skilled trades". If you're not familiar with the term, think plumber or electrician instead of roofer or outdoor landscaper. The working window for skilled trades is also far greater than software engineering.

upsidesinclude2• 5 years ago

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

hardtke• 5 years ago

In addition many are not welcoming to women at all

Economists are now finding that as more women move into a profession, the pay goes down. Similarly, when computer programming moved from a female dominated profession (early days) to male dominated (now) the pay went up. Medical fields that have higher proportions of women have lower pay. Along these lines, as college skews more female (college grads are like 60/40 female/male now) the "college grad" professions are having a declining wage premium compared to non college grad jobs.

devwastaken4• 5 years ago

1. Trades are overwhelmingly what people do when they don't go for a BA, and often have houses and children far before college graduates. Many more mechanics, plumber, hvac, electrical, welders, pipfitters, etc than we give credit for.

3. Scholarships are not based on intelligence. They are based on access to resources. Many good scholarships require references, achievements, good writing, and lower income. Hard to do that in a city school, if at all. Those that get the scholarships come from parents that know how to game the system. This leaves first generation students far out of the equation. To add to that, judging students based on their high school is a terrible method of educating.

4. A degree has become more required if you don't have the resources to already live in a major city for your work. For example, you can work in software if you live in cali cities far easier than if you live in Utah. If you're coming from Utah, you have to pass the "I'm a drone" test of getting a degree. Many people would like to work in something other than trades, hence university.

University no longer functions like we think it does. Large amounts of it are now online, auto-graded, with instructors barely doing any work other than showing up. Housing and tuition costs have skyrocketed with far less scholarships than ever before. I recall a 40,000 scholarship 8 years ago that simply doesn't exist anymore, along with a number of others. Many of these are funded by various communities or collaborations of companies, and over time the over corporatization, lack of funds and lack of community have lead them to just not offer scholarships anymore. Why give away free money? A really easy way to upset a number of teachers, especially high school teachers, is to tell them to try to locate applicable scholarships for their students. They can't. Perhaps a couple that maybe add up to $800 one shots. Half of that being a local scholarship. They get very hand wavey and think 1 of 3 scholarships from Microsoft or Google is reasonably obtainable, yet realistically it would be similar to winning the lottery.

There are many bright and hard working students I meet daily that simply cannot get the support they need and cannot devote their time to learning what they need to. It is absolutely brutal the number of hours some of these students are working just to survive. We give the largest amount of support to students whom are already well off and tell those that have to work for what they have to go away. That's American education as I see playing out as we speak.

mikepurvis• 5 years ago

In addition many are not welcoming to women at all...

There's a long way to go on this, but there are definitely people pushing back on it in various ways, including a number of women welders, electricians, bricklayers, etc all posting about themselves and their experiences on Tiktok:

https://www.tiktok.com/discover/women-in-trades

zetta0• 5 years ago

I feel like another caveat to college is that it is mentally exhausting. I went to a state college for 2 years and dropped out and pursued IT certifications. In my career and I am currently sitting at 75k after a year of experience. I'm also more knowledgeable than my coworkers who finished their graduation by a longshot. My 6 certifications covered more than their entire curriculum. The current college system is very broken.

pvarangot• 5 years ago

Average College grads make more money over their lifetime, period.

So that doesn't mean that if those people hadn't gone to college they wouldn't be making that extra money.

No one is saying that people that go to college are less valuable, what's in question is exactly what is college attendance adding that can't just be created in a less expensive, less elitist and more efficient environment.

Period.

snomad• 5 years ago

without that community college plus a cheap state school isn’t expensive.

UCLA is 13k per year, *if* you are from California. Classes are likely impacted (even upper division) so even if a person goes to UCLA just for the last 2.5 - 3 years they could easily owe > 30k

The real cost

- rampant corruption (in california, if they ever opened the books on the non-profit entities it would be a major stunner and awakening for many people). Last I saw there was ~100 non-profits serving ~20 campuses . You can read more https://www.calstate.edu/csu-system/auxiliary-organizations/.... But what they don't tell you, those books are private and not shared with the public. Rest assured, they are money laundering machines.

- rent seekers like Pearson and Mcgraw Hill (fun fact, did you know the 2 joined forces to run a company called Follets that runs most campus bookstores (how is that allowed?)

- administration bloat

greedo3• 5 years ago

"cheap state school"...

The state school where I live charges $18K/year for tuition and housing. That sure isn't cheap, especially for a mediocre school. Graduating with $72K in debt from this school would be a waste of money if you aren't doing a STEM program, and if you are, there are far better schools.

paulpauper11• 5 years ago

2. Which boot camp? How many people ended up like your daughter? How much was it? Without these facts no comparison can be made.

Bootcamps charge a lot upfront and success rates as measured by good-paying jobs are low.

hooande6• 5 years ago

Average College grads make more money over their lifetime, period.

Stop this. The most accurate predictor of a person's lifetime income is the income of their parents. Children of wealthy parents are more likely to go to college. It's like saying "People who drive expensive cars in high school make more money over their lifetime, period".

I question the statistical literacy of people who make the argument that going to college has a significant causal impact on future earnings.

zaidf• 5 years ago

The PDF you linked cites lifetime earning data collected from the previous century. It might tell you about how things were 1950-2000. But says little about our current Internet-driven world.

jimbokun3• 5 years ago

In addition many are not welcoming to women at all

Many universities aren't welcoming to men at all.

nfw29• 5 years ago

The study you linked is over 10 years old. Furthermore, it is using lifetime earnings as the core metric, which means they are pulling in data about people who earned their degrees like 50 years ago.

All the data that currently exists shows better outcomes for students that go to college. One would expect this even if college had no benefit to students because the population of students that go to college is pre-selected. Before they attend, students that go to college, on average, demonstrate better analytic skills than the students that do not go to college. They also, on average, have access to more existing wealth and other resources through their family.

In the absence of perfect data (which is almost always the case in sociology), it is reasonable to look at case studies to try to make sense of reality. It is not bad practice. It is what Harvard Business School does. It's what product managers and UX designers do when creating products. It's what marketing teams do when selling products.

Feel free to disagree with the interpretation of anecdotal data, but statements should not be dismissed out-of-hand because no p-value accompanies them.

csomar2• 5 years ago

1. So does many degrees (ie: Art and Humanity?). At the upper-level with Skilled Trades, you usually go by your own company/name and then you can make substantially more.

2. Probably a little. These boot camps are mostly a scam like many colleges today.

3. You can do college cheap. You can also get a scholarship if you qualify. You can do college the expensive way if your parents will pay for it. Taking a $100-200k loan for it is stupid.

4. Yes.

Which leads me to the conclusion: College degrees used to get you higher pay, people overbought that and someone filled the market, people now can't sell their college degrees for money. Worse, many of them have raked up debt to get that college degree.

Sounds familiar? This is like people buying the top in a crypto, realestate, stock-market bubble. But you add a few steps and the thing sounds legit. (Did you ever wonder why people buy MLM and not go directly and buy a Ponzi Scheme).

tmule• 5 years ago

For someone who is finding holes in the OP’s reasoning, unfortunately, your linked post and statements lack rigor.

“ Average College grads make more money over their lifetime, period.”

There are huge selection effects in play. It is true that even after controlling for these effects, college has economic value. But the statement about making more money isn’t the right framing at all. There’s a whole chapter on this in the book called “Mastering metrics”. You might want to pick that up - it’s a coffee-table book for the quantitative-minded person.

muslikcat• 5 years ago

Yea, I am skeptical about top comment also. This is anecdotal, but I have a brother who is a welder w/ bunch of AWS certifications. For several years he worked at union and non-union shops here in Los Angeles. His experience is virtually the same in every shop - low pay (~$25-27/hr), physically challenging work, very limited vertical mobility. It was a sad struggle to observe from a position of someone w/ a FAANG job.

I ended up loaning $80K to him, so that he can open his own small welding shop. It is likely that money is gone forever without return. Even now with his own welding/metal fab business it is a constant struggle - winning bids inconsistently, short cash runway, $28/hr, can't afford to pay for his medical insurance, late night work to ensure new projects are coming in, abuse from general contractors who exploit small subcontractor welders, big boys clubs (small subs can't get those projects), etc.

hardwaregeek• 5 years ago

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

dna_polymerase• 5 years ago

Average College grads make more money over their lifetime, period.

That's a claim none of you sources can or even could support. Past performance is no guarantee of future returns.

randomdata7• 5 years ago

Average College grads make more money over their lifetime, period.

And yet incomes have held stagnant through the entire rise of college attainment. That contradicts the notion that there is more money to be made.

Within a given population, those who are born more capable will earn more than those who are less capable. Those who are born more capable are able to go further in school and be more productive in the workplace for the same reasons. Someone born with a crippling disability that forced them to drop out of high school also struggles to find gainful employment for the same reasons.

However, over time, those in similar standing seem to end up making the same amount of money no matter what. If the existence of college and everything associated with it were to magically vanish, those born more capable would still earn more money over their lifetime than those born less capable.

inglor_cz2• 5 years ago

"Average College grads make more money over their lifetime, period."

Your "period" makes me think about more questions, not less.

1) Will that still hold in 2070? Kids who are now 18 are likely to be working at least until then. How do the developments over time look like? Won't the increasing shortage of tradespeople drive up their compensation?

2) How does a finer division by majors look like? I would be surprised if every major out there made more money than, say, an electrician.

3) Lifetime is a very long timespan. College grads are deeply in their debt in their 20s and 30s, so they can afford starting a family less. They will be better off when they are 50, but in the meantime they possibly sacrificed a an unborn kid or two to their tuition debt. This is a nasty tradeoff.

meatsauce2• 5 years ago

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

ptero2• 5 years ago

One big issue with making a no-college a viable option is that in the US the school education is absolutely atrocious. In many colleges the first year of science or engineering degree classes focus on providing a decent background that should have been taught at schools.

This needs to be fixed for the school-only path to be viable.

kube-system10• 5 years ago

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

lokar• 5 years ago

What do teachers and forklift operators make after 10/20/30 years?

carlmcqueen• 5 years ago

My wife has a doctorate in occupational therapy and works as a hand therapist, when pay is the only metric looked at you really do miss a lot.

The body condition of construction workers, fork lift operators and even welders is worn down and in pain.

Not to mention, they have to live with unfair medical standards. When she does hand strength assessments for workers comp the number is based on natural average. So lets say a normal office worker squeezes on the test at a score of 100, a construction worker squeezes at 320. Workers comp says they can return to work if they can squeeze at like 120. Which terrifies the construction workers but they won't get any more time off.

spaetzleesser2• 5 years ago

"Skilled trades pay better than most bachelor's degree track jobs. My kids can make more money with a six month apprenticeship than they will with all but a few 4 year degrees. If you can drive a forklift, you can make $45K/yr... which is identical to what an firsty year teacher makes."

With the forklift you will stay at 45k forever and probably make less every year whereas for the teacher this is a starting salary and will go up. Talk to real blue collar workers and from most you will hear a not very rosy picture. Pay stagnates, management treats them like crap, terrible working conditions, very hard on the body so getting older is difficult.

Unless you are a business owner or in a very good union blue collar jobs aren't much fun.

atlgator• 5 years ago

I mean, ok, but let's not base our entire view on one trade, if you can even call forklift operation a skilled trade. Plumbers, electricians, carpenters, HVAC techs all have upward mobility from apprentice to journeyman to foreman to owning their own businesses. Apprentice level electricians make about $75k in Alaska with zero experience. Foreman electricians managing commercial electrical jobs make about $175k. YMMV per state or metro but that's some decent growth IMO, especially considering no college education requirement.

I agree that the jobs are tough in the apprentice years. You are literally doing the grunt work for that trade, but a) you are getting paid to learn, and b) if you start right out of high school you are still young and able-bodied. Apprenticeships only last 2-4 years typically. You could be a licensed electrician at 22 years old.

rurp4• 5 years ago

kids that had a job, any job before age 18 make 35% more than their peers over their lifetime regardless of degree.

I'm surprised by the magnitude but I can see why this would be the case. Working teenagers probably correlate with having parents who value work. Plus it teaches some valuable skills early on. An entry level job can throw all sorts of uncomfortable challenges at you, which you are expected to handle in stride.

I'd say there's a societal benefit as well, due to the empathy it promotes. Most people work very different jobs as an adult than they would as a teenager. Having more perspective on what other workers experience makes one more kind and reasonable in general.

sjostrom7• 5 years ago

You're probably also more able to work if your folks make enough money to have a stay-at-home parent (so you don't have to watch your younger siblings), buy you a car to get back and forth from your job, etc. Without seeing how they actually did this study, I'll go ahead and chalk most of this up to generational privilege.

HNDen21• 5 years ago

If you for example do some open source projects between 15 and 18 and then get a job after finishing high school.. by the time the other person graduates college you will already have 4 years of experience and be a mid level/senior developer.. so you have a start of 4 years in terms of money as well as experience

We only look at college degrees for people without experience... for people that have experience, we don't care about the college sine it is all outdated stuff anyway... the interview will tell us what we want to know

criley2• 5 years ago

3) College is way over priced. They claim graduates make 40% over their lifetime vs. non grads. JP Morgan Chase did a study two years ago that shows kids that had a job, any job before age 18 make 35% more than their peers over their lifetime regardless of degree.

Having a job before 18 and getting a bachelors degree are not mutually exclusive, in fact, recent data suggests that about half of all people attending undergraduate school are employed. I personally was employed by 16 and went to college at 18, keeping a job for the entire time to offset some of the costs.

I do agree that student loans are a heinous tool though, even moderate loans accrue huge interest during a formative time in your career and prevent you from saving for retirement during the vital years when your investments have the most time to mature.

varelse• 5 years ago

In the short term I agree with you that trades pay very well, $250,000 a year even at the higher end. Even more if you're willing to risk your life on power lines or windmills.

But that's a starting wage in tech in Seattle or the Bay area for an engineer that's in demand and it only goes up from there. Those engineers that are in demand all have undergraduate degrees, it's a huge virtue signal for hiring for now. A new college graduate with one year of industry experience got poached for $400k by a competitor. And that doesn't begin to cover what AI superstars make straight out of school.

Ironically as someone in the later phases of my tech career, I am increasingly interested in trade skills over tech skills. And doubly ironically there's a lot of intellectual overlap.

UncleOxidant• 5 years ago

Skilled trades pay better than most bachelor's degree track jobs.

Is this a problem that needs fixing? We don't have enough plumbers & electricians (for example), many in those fields are retiring and until lately there haven't been enough people entering those trades to replace those retiring. Now we're probably going to start seeing people enter those trades at a higher rate than in the recent past. These are very good paying jobs and often it's hard to find a plumber or electrician when you need one.

lend000• 5 years ago

Re: numbers 3) and 4). It's a hard trade-off. I believe in equality of opportunity in education, which infinite guaranteed government loans do provide to someone willing to take on that burden (which often ends up being a bad decision for most people). However, the very act of guaranteeing unlimited loans to everyone creates a very simple economic effect in which colleges will grow in expense to meet the supply of money. Look at all the ridiculously nice buildings, statues, grounds, and administrator salaries at even C-tier colleges.

The alternative, IMO, is to make state run schools tuition free, but there's no guarantee you'll get in. Use some relatively objective metrics like the SAT and relative standing in high school class to determine eligibility. Then get rid of federal lending altogether. Apparently this is more similar to some of the European models. Under this model, any highly gifted but poor person worried about debt can get a higher education. Granted, the gifted person is also generally okay in the current model, because they probably end up making enough to handle their debt. It's the less gifted person who still wants and benefits from a higher education, but can't get into the free state school, who benefits in this model, because the removal of unqualified lending will bring down prices of less competitive colleges.

But in the end, college as we know it, as great of an experience as it is for many of us, is likely becoming obsolete (in its current form, that is) with the rise of the internet and the ability to learn just about anything in your garage with an internet connection and a computer.

WalterBright2• 5 years ago

which is identical to what an firsty year teacher makes

Education degrees and Journalism degrees rank near the bottom of pay.

If you want a good starting salary, invest in a STEM major.

Above all, google "starting salaries for major XXXXX" before picking one. Sheesh!

tinalumfoil• 5 years ago

She made $45k year one, and a year later is the director of marketing at her company making over $100k/yr

If OP's daughter got a CS degree after two years she'd have made $0 and be $30k in the hole for state school tuition ($100k+ for private school). By my calculation she's $100k minus boot camp cost out of the hole.

According to Google the median income for a bachelor's degree is $100k, which includes experienced people in their working prime. So I think OP has a pretty good counterexample.

Also, not everyone wants to maximize their income. Comp sci now is what finance used to be, but not everyone has the moral framework or dedication to money where they can just Google highest paying jobs and choose the top one.

balls1873• 5 years ago

2) There are better options than college for many.

I agree there are better options than college for many. Thought if I were a betting man, on average, College is the better decision.

One of my daughters did a six month digital marketing bootcamp. She made $45k year one, and a year later is the director of marketing at her company making over $100k/yr.

I'm curious how old she was when she completed that bootcamp, and if she had a degree in another field, and/or experience. I just cant fathom a 20 year being a marketing director making $100,000.

In nearly 20 years professionally, I have worked with MANY people between the ages of 18-22 (many of which themselves attend or attended prestigious schools), and none showed the aptitude, skill and leadership required to be director at that time.

ZephyrBlu• 5 years ago

Chances are she is working at a very small company, so "Director" doesn't carry much weight. Otherwise I would be similarly baffled.

baumandm2• 5 years ago

It's just a combination of being in the right place at the right time, knowing the right people, and making a good impression. There are a lot of people in the world, some of them are going to fall upwards.

The real question is whether or not this path is scalable for an entire generation to successfully replicate. I suspect it's not.

j_autumn• 5 years ago

May I ask which Bootcamp that was? I’m interested in learning more about marketing :)

elihu• 5 years ago

Skilled trades pay better than most bachelor's degree track jobs.

The impression I get from hanging out a bit in the welding subreddit is that a lot of people get into welding thinking it'll be a lucrative profession (because that's what people on the internet say about plumbers and welders and electricians and so forth), and what they eventually discover is that while it's possible to make a lot of money as a welder, that really only works if you own your own business. If you take a job working as someone else's employee, the pay usually isn't all that great.

That isn't to say that people shouldn't get into welding, it's just that they should have the right strategy and expectation going in.

diob2• 5 years ago

Exactly on the dot. In the trades you _have_ to move up to management / or above in short order due to the toll it takes on your body.

But not everyone can be a manager, I think we need better protections for the doers (unions, etc.). A lot of naive kids go into trades and trash their body only to end up with nothing or a life addicted to painkillers.

cascom• 5 years ago

You don’t need to be an owner management in welding (though that is definitely the better path), but you have to be great welder and you have to be willing to work long and hard (most people I know wouldn’t make it through a shift working on a refinery turnaround in PPE on the gulf coast in September).

jimbokun3• 5 years ago

She made $45k year one, and a year later is the director of marketing at her company making over $100k/yr.

That...is one heck of a promotion. Good for her!

jeremy_wiebe• 5 years ago

4) Student loans are a horror that needs to stop. Young people should not be put in debt-bondage. Imagine America's financial health if we let young people start families and careers debt free.

Nobody has forced anyone to take a student loan. In fact, many young adults would probably learn a lot about life, financial management, and restraint if they saved for college and waited till they could afford it instead of going straight to college and going into huge amounts of debt. Generally society doesn’t condone going into debt carelessly in other situations so I don’t understand how we give (or want to give) students a free pass for racking up thousands (or hundreds of thousands) in loans.

JPKab3• 5 years ago

You're right. Nobody forced me to sign on to student loans at the age of 17. I did it voluntarily. I couldn't buy beer, or cigarettes, or lease an apartment, and my brain wasn't fully developed. But yeah, nobody forced me to make a foolish decision and give a bunch of money to an inherently corrupt, predatory industry that employs more and more administrators every year while every other industry has used technology to reduce their admin numbers. I just got tricked. And my degree was fairly good as well. I double majored in Mechanical engineering/applied economics. (I know, it's a dumb combination, but I thought I could get a job in the ME field, and found economics interesting.). I couldn't get a job at all doing mechanical engineering, and instead the degree just demonstrated to potential employers I could do hard stuff and math. Something that could have been evaluated far easier with some form of test or hands-on interview that we use in our industry to screen talent.

kube-system10• 5 years ago

I think this view is indicative of a massive failure of cultural expectations.

At what point in the past 50 years did we start expecting academic liberal arts institutions to start churning out people with vocational skills? These are entirely different things.

The fact that an average 1970's college graduate was highly employable has nothing to do with those colleges having good vocational training programs, and everything to do with selection bias of those who attended and the economics of the time.

If you need vocational skills, you should enroll in a vocational program.

eli_gottlieb3• 5 years ago

At what point in the past 50 years did we start expecting academic liberal arts institutions to start churning out people with vocational skills? These are entirely different things.

The point where they started taking in about half of each rising generation as freshman instead of 5%.

stemlord• 5 years ago

Director of marketing after one year in the field is wild. Congrats to her.

brewdad3• 5 years ago

She runs her own TikTok.

I'm kidding but really the job title doesn't necessarily mean much.

srcreigh• 5 years ago

Your point #3 just looks at two different things. They don't contradict each other at all.

Maybe had a job before age 18 implies later went to college for instance.

JPKab3• 5 years ago

My biggest regret about my 4 years at Virginia Tech is the opportunity cost. I could have been spending the years of my life where I could learn at a vastly accelerated rate compared to present learning useful things.

Instead, my double major in mechanical engineering/applied economics was heavily loaded with highly inefficient, archaic classes in subjects I cared about combined with a heavy dose of mandatory humanities type courses that were essentially ultra-leftwing indoctrination courses. For example, my Latin American history course was a non-stop "Latin America is a crappy place because it doesn't have enough Marxism" course.

I was assigned various books, and as long as I wrote about the books with identical conclusions to the professor, I got an A, no matter how horribly written. If I wrote eloquently about why I thought the book about Gaitan's socialist movement in Columbia wasn't as angelic as depicted in the book, I got a D. Another book that was assigned reading was "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" which is essentially a handbook telling you how to get otherwise happy people to realize they are oppressed and embrace Marxism.

This was the early 2000s, and the predictions about Columbia, for example, couldn't have been more wrong. It's a vastly improved place compared to then, despite the depiction in the class of a sinister, evil, predatory capitalist society. No matter what South American country you discussed, if it was communist/socialist, it was a paradise. If it wasn't, it was a dictatorship. The teacher wouldn't stop talking about how amazing Venezuela was, and how Hugo Chavez was "misunderstood."

Another class I took was called "Economics of Poverty". The professor is a person I can't forget, because long before I had ever heard of Elizabeth Warren, she was a fair skinned, blue-eyed white woman who claimed to be half Native American. I never believed that for a second, and it was obvious she made this claim to advance her career. My favorite moment with her was when she told the entire class that "most of you will graduate from this school and be unable to find meaningful employment. Our economic system doesn't value what you've learned, and you need to fix that." It was a soul-crushing, disempowering experience and I'm furious about how much I bought into her and her colleague's bullshit back then. Pessimistic losers who've never left their bubble ruining young minds as they themselves live off of the oppressive debt the students are taking on.

I don't have a problem with nutbag activists, but I deeply resent the Federal government subsidizing them and their foolish causes, on the backs of 17 year olds signing away their lives for debt.

AussieWog93• 5 years ago

1) Skilled trades pay better than most bachelor's degree track jobs. My kids can make more money with a six month apprenticeship than they will with all but a few 4 year degrees. If you can drive a forklift, you can make $45K/yr... which is identical to what an firsty year teacher makes.

I'm not sure universities can fix this, or want to fix this.

Many of the people opting for university degrees aren't looking to perform work that needs to be done, but seeking a role that makes them feel powerful/smart/elegant/influential etc.

In a market-based economy that rewards meeting the needs/wants of others, I'm honestly surprised that many college grads are paid anything at all.

pyrale2• 5 years ago

1) Skilled trades pay better than most bachelor's degree track jobs.

I fail to see how this is a problem, and whether it should be fixed. The very idea that people that went through college deserve more is insulting for tradespeople as well as the source of bad incentives to go to college. If anything, the society would probably benefit from colleges focusing on transmitting and advancing knowledge, rather than being paid fast-lanes for people who only give a fuck about the payckeck.

This idea that some works deserve fair pay and some work deserve abuse (the worst being "burger flipper", "student job", etc.) really need to die. If you don't think it deserves fair pay and respect, you don't deserve the service.

someguydave• 5 years ago

Fully agree, and the implication is that even fewer people should go to college.

908B64B1972• 5 years ago

1) Skilled trades pay better than most bachelor's degree track jobs. My kids can make more money with a six month apprenticeship than they will with all but a few 4 year degrees. If you can drive a forklift, you can make $45K/yr... which is identical to what an firsty year teacher makes.

For decades clueless counselors pushed kids that were not successful academically or with behavioral issues into "the trades"... Only for the kids to realize they do need good reading and academic abilities to be able to succeed as a skilled tradesman. And that it takes disciplines to work in those fields.

We keep hearing about the successful tradespeople (notice how they are all their own bosses and own their shops) who made it but not the auto-repair schools’ dropouts.

HWR_147• 5 years ago

In response to your problems:

1) Skilled trades pay better than most bachelor's degree track jobs

This is a problem that the colleges cannot fix. It's not the college systems fault teacher pay is being held back so much (unless by that you mean they should dramatically increase professors' salaries, so that the higher rates in academia trickle down.)

2) There are better options than college for many.

This is point 1 again. Digital Marketing is just a different skilled trade.

3) College is way over priced.

Isn't that because tuition has been a larger and larger portion of their income?

They claim graduates make 40% over their lifetime vs. non grads. JP Morgan Chase did a study two years ago that shows kids that had a job, any job before age 18 make 35% more than their peers over their lifetime regardless of degree.

Sure, and? That's not relevant to the discussion, because they just isolated one variable. If both statements are true, you would expect a college educated person who had a job before 18 to make 89% more than someone who did neither.

4) Student loans are a horror that needs to stop.

I agree. But it's not the college system's fault that public support (financially) nosedived over the past couple of decades.

rgrieselhuber2• 5 years ago

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

brewdad3• 5 years ago

Tuition money is fungible. If a school gets 20% of it's funding from loans (no idea what the real number might look like) and uses 30% of tuition money to fund their endowment, then the accounting will show that all of the loan money went to fund operations and only cash payments went to the endowment.

We've already seen this in every state where lottery funds "go to education." The new money doesn't increase the budget for education, it only frees up some money to be spent on something else.

asabjorn3• 5 years ago

Also, a degree may have a negative contribution. Is the ideological bend of some college degrees potentially harming mental acuity through confusions and bad mental habits?

E.g. if you take a math degree that teach "2+2 != 5" this degree is likely to reduce mental acuity. You'll be a great activist, but not a great mathematician or teacher.

asabjorn3• 5 years ago

I meant to say “2+2 != 4” :D

pwn2d2• 5 years ago

Skilled trades pay better than most bachelor's degree track jobs.

My startup is trying to help this in the flooring industry. At https://gocarrera.com we have made a platform for contractors to connect to companies and vice versa. We will roll out a feature shortly for people unfamiliar with the industry to be and to find add join other contractor teams to help them get started in the industry. It's really exciting and pretty shocking how complex the industry is.

ChrisLomont• 5 years ago

BLS lists median forklift driver salary around 37k. This is not starting, it's median. Starting is much lower everywhere I look. And forklifts are being automated by many companies right now.

Median starting pay for a 4 year degree is over $54k at the moment.

That's a massive difference.

frankfrankfrank• 5 years ago

I encourage you to reexamine your position and perspective on things. It's too much to unpacking one reply, however every one of your points suffers from a kind of perspective shift that skews your perspective on things.

Yes, the whole system is utterly convoluted, twisted, and perverted into dysfunction; but I also find it astonishing that you claim it's some kind of debt-bondage, right after clearly making the point that you can just go into a skilled trade or to a marketing bootcamp and that just alone the drive and work ethic of someone who has a job before 18 will set you up for success.

The real issue is that the upper class has colluded to corrupt the whole education system, largely for self-enrichment, which has also have an exorbitant impact on America's competitiveness by inefficient allocation of human resources into ever increasingly useless degrees. It is not a coincidence that all these changes have correlated the increase in communistic/socialistic type policies and mentalities.

pyuser5834• 5 years ago

Which boot camp? I’m asking for an interested family member.

Daub• 5 years ago

Related to #4 is the insane amount of over staffing in the average uni. The formula is…

1. Create needless procedural requirements, each alluding to serve some sort of qualitative intent

2. Hire people to service these requirements

3. Profit?

listenallyall• 5 years ago

Young people should not be put in debt-bondage. Imagine America's financial health if we let young people start families and careers debt free.

I agree college is far too expensive and the rate of inflation of college tuition is rather absurd. The reasons for such, are best debated in another thread. However, I'm skeptical that eliminating student debt would ultimately result in significantly better financial outcomes for young people. Instead, most of the "savings" would be swallowed up by higher real estate and rent costs. The pandemic should serve as prima facie evidence -- give a huge swath of the population more cash, real estate will eat much/most/all of it. Let's say that instead of student debt, the typical 22-32 year-old professional has approximately $500 more spending power. All that means is that they will compete with each other to purchase housing, pushing rents and housing costs up -- not just for themselves but also for everyone else.

This doesn't mean we shouldn't try to reduce student debt (not via forgiveness, but by reducing education costs to begin with) -- but doing so is not a panacea.

afiori• 5 years ago

There is another option, make degree status a protected class so that degrees cannot be an in-name-only qualification.

This would remove the FOMO of college and significantly increase trades and bootcamps.

An idea partially inspired by this blog: https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/06/06/against-tulip-subsidie...

austincheney• 5 years ago

Most people, both in the real world and on HN, cannot differentiate education from certification. That must be super disappointing to come to grips that you overpaid for a 4 year certificate when the self taught guy sitting next to you spent that time building out their career earning money.

A bachelors degree is not a license to practice or guarantee of employment. That is not the point of education.

wayoutthere3• 5 years ago

The problem with the trades is that they burn out your body. And quickly — you have about 25 years of good work in you, so if you start at 18 your body is done by your mid-40s. From there it’s either moving on to manage / start your own shop, take a job for less money at a hardware store / parts desk, or collect disability checks and barely scrape by in early retirement with a broken body.

shortlived• 5 years ago

My kids can make more money with a six month apprenticeship than they will with all but a few 4 year degrees. If you can drive a forklift, you can make $45K/yr... which is identical to what an firsty year teacher makes.

That's too short sighted. What's the lifetime earning potential of a forklift driver vs a teacher?

TiredGuy• 5 years ago

With interest rates so low these days, are student loans still problematic? Seems like a nice way to defer having to pay while in school, but I'd love to learn more about the issue.

pragmatic8• 5 years ago

I wouldn’t consider the rates here [1] low at all. Parent PLUS loans are sky high at 6.28%. I suppose you are talking about private loans but they have their own set of downsides.

[1] https://studentaid.gov/understand-aid/types/loans/interest-r...

oceanplexian• 5 years ago

Skilled trades pay better than most bachelor's degree track jobs

To me this is just a sign that the market is working correctly. The world needs more forklift drivers, plumbers, electricians, and mechanics than it needs teachers. The idea that teachers deserve to be paid more is elitist, IMHO. The problem is that our culture incorrectly assumes college degrees are the only way to “learn” productive and valuable skills.

Thorentis• 5 years ago

She made $45k year one, and a year later is the director of marketing at her company making over $100k/yr.

Hate to say it, but sounds like a diversity promotion to me.

jimmyjazz142• 5 years ago

I feel that for many people a good trade school would offer the best future and as we are seeing shortages in some important trade work it would be useful for society as well.

Damogran6• 5 years ago

I have two boys in post-secondary education (it would be SO much easier to say 'college', but one is in a community college and the other is in a Technical school)

During a parent/student College night, the perky 20-something group of presenters did a GREAT job of showing the schools, the perks, the ways to knock a little off the top (every student gets a scholarship! every student gets in-state tuition!)

They didn't count on me being good at math, and my reluctance to add nearly $600k in family debt over 4 years...that's double my mortgage, and I have 30 years to pay that off.

I decided as the patriarch that our family didn't need to prop up a broken system. I'm hopeful that I'm not scuttling my children's chances by doing so.

So I'm footing half the bill, and the boys are acquiring $20k or so a piece in student loans. I'm hoping that's enough for them to get their first job, because in my experience, that's the last time the sheepskin had any impact on my career.

randomsilence• 5 years ago

Why does the market not work for colleges?

There are plenty of adjunct professors who don't earn much. Why don't they join forces and create their own university?

If they focus on education and limit spending on administration and sports, they could offer high quality, affordable education.

lapsedacademic20• 5 years ago

Three things:

1. There actually aren't many low-paid adjuncts in hot fields. The CS and Eng departments subsidize the Math department, and STEM+finance+premed+nursing subsidizes all of the humanities. A philosophy adjunct is probably doing way better ad juncting than they would off on their own. And the instructional staff in the in-demand fields are generally well-paid.

2. The low paid (and usually not that low paid) adjuncts within in-demand departments are generally there as a retirement gig... if they wanted a stressful empire building type of job, they'd go into industry.

3. Runway. Adjuncts who aren't semi-retired have no access to capital and here's a really long lead time until an institution is regionally accredited. You can't take a dime of federal grant money, GI bill money, private scholarship money, student loan money, etc. until you're accredited.

nostromo• 5 years ago

Most comments here are completely missing why this is happening now.

Students don’t want to pay tens of thousands of dollars for remote learning. They could watch Khan Academy videos instead for free, and they’d be better quality.

starwind3• 5 years ago

Bingo. If I graduated in the last two years, I would have gone to work at a grocery store while taking a couple core classes online while I waited for colleges to get back to normal

saghm• 5 years ago

I was surprised how low this theory was in both the article and in this comment section! The article even opens with talking about the trend continuing fall 2020 (the first school year that began since the shutdowns hit the US), and yet it takes almost halfway down the article to mention "remote learning" and then another big chunk before the word "pandemic" is used (I didn't see "virus" or "COVID" either before then). I'm not saying all the other issues discussed in the article and elsewhere in this comment section aren't there, but given the timeline I feel like any convincing theory has to first address why that isn't the dominant factor.

pingeroo2• 5 years ago

Funnily enough me and my peers usually end up watching Khan Academy videos anyway since they do a way better job of explaining topics than university content.

throwabone33• 5 years ago

Mayhaps by design. Who would you rather hire to run through an obstacle course? One who has a certificate of having run a course of hoops for 4 years, or one that looks fit enough to run it? Arguably both may work. Can you measure which one is more likely to cost you your job? Depending on your obstacle course you may be looking for more specific qualifiers.

Gigachad• 5 years ago

While hiring for junior software devs, I found that degrees were next to worthless. People coming in with a long list of qualifications but somehow can't answer the most basic questions about the stuff they are certified in.

I found people who did self directed online learning combined with having some projects to show in the resume were the best and had real world experience rather than having memorized a hundred java design patterns from the 90s.

honkycat3• 5 years ago

Neoliberalism at its finest. Trim the fat until you cut into the bone. And we wonder why we have a staffing crisis in our medical field!

This is BAD. NEWS. for us Americans. How are we supposed to compete on an international scale if we are not training the next generation of knowledge workers[0]?

Part of the thing I always hated about Uni is that it felt very... kamikaze. You have one shot. I had to work during the day and go to school at night and going an extra year was NOT an option for me. It sucked to be on the hook for so much money when society didn't really make any room for me to actually learn and excel in that environment.

I suppose you could join the military. However, the military isn't for everyone. I don't know if would have had the mental fortitude to make it. Also, you lose out on some extremely productive years.

I know a lot of ex-soldiers who have severe disabilities, both mental and physical, from their time in training / on the field. Also, forcing everyone who wants to go into higher education into a propaganda mill isn't exactly a great idea either.

Also, the military doesn't just give you a credit card to go to any school you want. I had friends in school who struggled with the gi-bill system.

0: A term I an loathe to use, because I do not think other work is "dumb work", but it is a useful short-hand for workers who are working in jobs that require advanced education.

jdkee• 5 years ago

What is also problematic is the gender imbalance on campuses which was further exacerbated by the pandemic.

See https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/09/young-men-...

eljimmy• 5 years ago

I checked the tuition fees for my university CS degree and it's now just over $10,000 CAD per year for a bachelor. That's actually not that bad of an increase considering I was paying around $6,000 CAD about 15 years ago.

I presume there are cheap colleges and universities in the states as well that are just as educational as the big name schools.

morelandjs• 5 years ago

I think most of us can agree that the bandaid fixes aren’t work for young Americans. The system needs a significant overhaul, both financially and culturally.

supperburg• 5 years ago

Americans are such colossal idiots. I can say it because I’m an American. They think, god what kind of evil and stupid person would EVER send their kid to private high school? It’s stuck-up, snobby, and the education at the free public school is just as good! Oh but in college my children must have nothing but the best and make connections with lots of important people and if it costs us hundreds of thousands of dollars then it’s worth every penny and anyone who doubts that is a fool. The disaster that our colleges are in is caused by this fear of missing out, the mental disease of the common idiot. If I had kids it would be the best private schools and tutoring up until college and I wouldn’t pay a penny for college unless it was a physics major. If you truly educate your kids from 0 to 18 then they really don’t need college.

granzymes• 5 years ago

Down 6.6% from Fall 2019.

This is likely some combination of Covid making college temporarily less attractive (the social connections are just as important as the education) and lower-income students who have families that need them during the pandemic (community college enrollment dropped by a higher 13%).

I would expect enrollment (at least at 4-year universities) to fully recover once the pandemic is well and truly over.

tinus_hn• 5 years ago

Did people really expect no consequences of asking students to pay full price to watch videos?

hungryforcodes• 5 years ago

Is it telling that there is no breakdown by gender? Men seem to have been abandoning education for a while now.

CountDrewku3• 5 years ago

Yeah I feel the current education system is set up to support women more.

When gender doesn't exist then that breakdown no longer matters...

aquanext• 5 years ago

If I had it to do over again, I never would have taken out such big loans; instead I would have opted for the cheapest community college. But I was young and had never managed money before. I had no understanding of what I was signing up for. I actually went to a super overpriced art school ($30k/year) and realized about halfway through that I was never going to be able to pay it back. So I left and started working. That was probably the right decision because paying back $60k plus interest has been insane. I've spent all this time (15 years so far) paying back everything and still have $30k left (all interest!) and I can't imagine if I had to pay back $120k + interest. If I had stayed, by this point, I would have fled to a third-world country and changed my identity to avoid having to pay it back long ago – or killed myself.

It is criminal what they have done to people. Absolutely criminal.

muaytimbo• 5 years ago

Easy explanation, who wants to pay for a masked/zoom college experience? Add jab requirements every couple months, “covid” surveillance and contact tracing, and intentionally minimized social activities/opportunities and why would anyone pay 50k/yr for that?

hbn• 5 years ago

I also think millennials were the sacrificial generation who were forced to find out the hard way that college isn't the magical path to a great, well-paying career like they were promised. They did everything right, exactly as the generation before them who it worked for. They got expensive degrees, sunk themselves into crippling debt right as they were entering adulthood, only to find out most of the degrees they were sold are worthless. The new generation that's supposed to be entering college now can clearly see how badly millennials got scammed, why would they do the same thing as them? Not to mention the absolutely deranged politics that are taking place in academic institutions these days.

The current sales pitch of college is "give us tens of thousands of dollars so you can watch some online classes with information you could find freely on the internet, we'll occasionally get you to write essays about how you were born inherently toxic as a person, and then at the end we give you a piece of paper that won't get you a job." No shit, attendance is going down.

Unless you have a very specific plan for a career you want to get into, and you know it's a job that would actually be worth the money spent (like a computer science degree so you can get into a software career), it's just such an obviously horrible deal.

jimmar• 5 years ago

Children of affluent parents are still going to college at very high rates. The people suffering most from the expense of college are those who would benefit most from a college degree. Whatever the causes, people with college degree earn much more over their lifetimes than people without degrees. The trend in lower college enrollment seems like it will only exacerbate wealth disparities.

jxramos• 5 years ago

We have a family member who's decided to sit this quarter out, they sat last quarter out too. I'm curious how universities are juggling the leaves, I know they always permitted limited leaves but the must be facilitating the process to some degree I'd think.

abeppu3• 5 years ago

The bizarre thing with higher education costs that no one's really explained to me is why schools simultaneously spend more and more on administrators (who are full time staff), and push more and more teaching to adjuncts. The claim I've heard justifying the growth of administration staff is that regulatory compliance becomes more onerous over time. But no school is judged on their regulatory compliance. In industry, we often want to make sure that the core value is staff, and stuff that you have to do but won't distinguish you, you may as well contract out. So why aren't administrative compliance obligations contracted out to some overseas firm?

We've gotten to the point where it would actually be cheaper for students to hire their own adjunct to each them 1:1, than to go to some universities.

Updating with numbers:

- USC tuition is >$60k/yr

- Adjunct professors in CA apparently earn $34-$43k/yr

https://admission.usc.edu/learn/cost-financial-aid/

https://www.salary.com/research/salary/recruiting/adjunct-pr...

skrbjc• 5 years ago

It’s interesting because universities over-produce academics for the number of tenure-track jobs available, so they then hire those phds back into adjunct positions, which is often the only academic job available to them, especially if they don’t want to move across the country to some small college in the middle of nowhere. So many phds just suck it up and take the adjunct jobs teaching undergrads. Actual professors at research universities aren’t really even doing teaching as their primary job. Their primary job is to do research and publish, which is how they progress in their career. But universities need people to teach so they hire adjuncts to teach undergrads, especially the entry level courses.

In regards to admin costs, just look at UC Berkeley, they now have a $25 million dollar diversity department that hires nearly a hundred staff, all making over $50k and getting access to the pension system. Lots of people will say departments like this are a good thing, but there’s no question these departments cost a lot of money and inflate administrative costs. Berkeley has 1 staff member for every 2 students at this point.

Look at this: “ Establishment of a Supplier Diversity Program at an institution is required when an organization is receiving federal funding for contracts or subcontracts as dictated by the Federal Acquisition Regulations (FARS). The delegation of authority to manage the program is issued through the Office of the President (UCOP) policy.” Talk about regulation causing bloat, to take federal contracts you need to establish an office that tracks and reports the diversity of your contractors. No wonder costs have skyrocketed.

https://supplychain.berkeley.edu/supplier-diversity-faqs

abeppu3• 5 years ago

But, isn't there a huge gap between:

A) tracking and reporting the diversity of your contractors (which I think a techie might accomplish with a google form and a spreadsheet),

B) "establish an office" that performs A,

C) a "$25 million dollar diversity department that hires nearly a hundred staff"?

danny_codes3• 5 years ago

It does make you wonder though whether this spending is actually bad though. IE, does admin bloat improve university outcomes? If a PI has better resources, is their research output improved?

IMO the discussion focuses entirely on cost-to-student, which is of course important, but is possibly missing some important details. A doubling of productivity among research staff at a university like Cal would no doubt correspond to some insane GDP multiplier 20 years down the road.

acchow2• 5 years ago

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

Fascinating. Got a citation for this?

mabub24• 5 years ago

A lot of universities are openly hostile to tenured professors, unless those professors are gigantic names in the field they can use for marketing. Many Universities would be a-okay with ditching tenure all together.

The reality is many universities have gotten out of the game of offering quality education. They still offer education, but they are largely indifferent to the quality of the education, so adjuncts will do just as well as any professor.

Instead, universities have spent enormous money and effort to protect and emphasize the college/university "experience." Thus you get an enormous amount of handholding and bureaucratization in higher-ed because they're functioning like giant weird resorts with health services, legal services, financial services, extra curricular services, and a whole lot of other crap with education as only the implied "reason" the students are there.

But no school is judged on their regulatory compliance.

To a certain degree this is untrue. Student complaints and/or payee (parent) complaints for things like Title IX violations, as one example, mean a potential loss in federal/state funding and negative press. So institutions seek to bureaucratize the whole process from the tip of the root to the highest leaf. Higher-ed in the US has become a kind of ride into adulthood.

LeanderK• 5 years ago

but aren't "good" universities (also) judged by their research output? Or formulated in another way...isn't the majority of the budget of a good university research where tenured staff matters?

randomsearch• 5 years ago

Well, the most obvious answer is that the administrators are the ones that hire the adjuncts, if you follow.

All uni’s I know of in the U.K. have hired hordes of admin staff. I think this is largely due to centralisation, eg rather than have an exam admin in each department, you have a team in a central building. This sounds like it will be more efficient, deduplicate effort etc, and also has the added imagined benefit of presenting all the courses in a similar way, so you can have a “uniform” and “unified” student experience.

But this is a fantasy.

The reality is that different departments and different courses need to be run according to their specific needs. So the central administration then either fails to address this or hires more people to compensate. And once you remove people from their actual job (ie take them out of the department and change the job from “helping lecturer X get this exam done” to “execute processes A B C” then the potential for bloat and empire building skyrockets. You end up with all sorts of strange initiatives, buildings, and job positions, that seem far removed from simply administering teaching and research.

At the same time the U.K. gov slashed funding, moved to a reliance on tuition fees, and pushed universities to run like businesses. Their ostensible purpose and the incentives they face are now dramatically misaligned, so it’s no surprise that the outcomes we see make no apparent sense. It’s far more important to bring in grant funding than provide good education, for example, when you know students will keep paying regardless.

irrational• 5 years ago

50 years? Weren’t the baby boomers still in college 50 years ago? Is this just natural from fewer babies being born in the early 2000s?

joshstrange• 5 years ago

I believe strongly in education but most colleges are just money grabs. They charge ridiculously high rates that most people will take decades to pay off if ever. It's quite disgusting how we trick 17-19 year olds into taking on huge amounts of debt before they really have any idea what they are getting themselves into.

On top of that, for certain professions, what is taught in colleges is an absolute joke. Computer science at my college had zero connection to what happens in the real world and I'm being completely honest when I tell you I can't think of a single thing I learned in college that I use in the real world. Even some of the more advanced types/concepts would be better taught in a ~1hr tutorial or video than how it was taught in my college.

I'm all for giving people a broad education (I think I liked my non-technical/math/science classes more than the ones pertaining to the major I was working towards) and I think college should do a better job preparing people for the "real world" (budgeting, meal planning, conflict resolution, etc - So should high schools).

I dropped out my junior year after being frustrated at feeling like I was wasting my time in classes that didn't prepare me. It was one the best decision I've ever made. I still got saddled with 3 years of debt but better than 4 and having no advantage at the end of it. I've never had an issue finding a job over the past decade+ and I'm making very good money (more than people I know who did graduate).

We need massive college reform in this country.

dillondoyle• 5 years ago

Personally I would not have gotten any value of university in COVID times where there is virtually no 'campus life' and extra curricular.

I've heard this from a lot of kids going through this and I would not be surprised if that's the main driver versus this article's main point of short term work $ versus long term career $.

One of the interviewed kids said "he was tired of remote learning."

I can't find any surveys just googling around if anyone has a source?

for me, education alone would not be worth private school $, or even University of CO money (not science or maths). I barely learned anything from my major subject classes.

I learned a ton from living on campus, doing my sport, student government, being an RA, interning and then working on political campaigns. probably some HN bias I think most here are probably more self starter, more intelligent.

Plus college is about learning about yourself. Hard to become an independent adult when you're living in your parents house doing Zoom all day.

spaetzleesser2• 5 years ago

I still haven't seen a real analysis why college has become so f....ing expensive over the last decades. I find it hard to understand why this is being accepted.

ctime• 5 years ago

"I never let my schooling interfere with my education." -Mark Twain

My biggest gripe is the astronomical cost and debt burden that has vastly outpaced inflation. The university system in the U.S. has been taken hostage by greedy interests that push all kinds of bullshit costs on to students and have lost sight of exactly why the university exists in the first place - to educate. Not to house, not to entertain, not to keep fit, but to educate those that want to learn. If universities would stop with the non-sense "campus life" and focus more on a their core mission (like universities in Germany, for example) they might not have ended up in this predictable mess.

This level of enrollment decline only means one thing for universities: Layoffs and shrinking budgets. You can't squeeze any more blood out of these students.

CountDrewku3• 5 years ago

Good. The entire college infrastructure is junk. It probably has its place but no in its current iteration.

The onus for training needs to be put on the businesses themselves. This is better for everyone including the businesses themselves. Putting in training requirements and a probationary period where new hires have to meet a certain threshold or be let go. The individual can then decide how best to learn.

mproud• 5 years ago

Don’t get me wrong, parents and guidance counselors should be looking out for kids, but I agree, colleges are mostly to blame.

adolph• 5 years ago

From the source [0]: Higher education enrollment fell a further 2.7 percent in the fall of 2021 following a 2.5 percent drop in the preceding fall. Continued enrollment losses in the pandemic represent a total two-year decline of 5.1 percent or 938,000 students since fall 2019.

In the linked PDF, they note they don't have complete data on international students. "In recent years, IPEDS enrollments in the nonresident alien category have accounted for nearly five percent of all IPEDS enrollments."

   Fall 2017 Fall 2018 Fall 2019 Fall 2020 Fall 2021
  All Sectors -1.0% -1.7% -1.3% -2.5% -2.7%
  Public 2-year -1.7% -3.2% -1.4% -10.1% -3.4%
  Public 4-year -0.2% 0.0% -1.2% 0.2% -3.0%
  Private nonprofit 4-year -0.4% 2.4% -0.6% -0.1% -1.6%
  Private for-profit 4-year -7.1% -15.1% -2.1% 5.3% -9.3%

https://nscresearchcenter.org/current-term-enrollment-estima...

Animats• 5 years ago

The product colleges sell is guaranteed entry to the middle class. Since they no longer can provide that, especially at the two year college level, their market is shrinking.

What we need is a better life for the working class, not more college. Start by getting serious about wage and hour laws, and start throwing employers in jail.

dhairya• 5 years ago

This article is predicated on the assumption that immediately going to college after graduating high school is important. The pandemic skews the decision calculus greatly for many students ranging from safety to finding short-term employment enough for their current situation.

If college is important factor in improving economic outcomes, it shouldn't matter if you go to college at 18 or take a few years go at the age of 21 or even later in life. We have this stigma around adults who get a college degree later in life. I've met a several people who went to college as older adults (one at the age of 26 and the other at the age of 30) and ended up having highly lucrative careers. My mom got her masters at the age 55 (and rightfully lorded over my sister and I that if she get her degree with straight A while holding down a job, being a mom and in her 50s, then we have no excuses).

I believe college is valuable (though greatly overpriced in the US) but you don't need to be a young adult to attend. In terms of the labor effect of having fewer college graduates available for the labor market, honestly most jobs don't really require a college degree (including office and white collar jobs). Employers tend to use college degrees as cheap filtering signal instead having better hiring processes. Most entry level jobs have onboarding and training where college knowledge is not a perquisite for success.

davidw• 5 years ago

I wonder how this compares to, say, a basket of European countries, which don't suffer from some of the cost problems that US universities do.

kylehotchkiss• 5 years ago

There aren't many mentions of international students, many of whom are struggling very hard to get visa appointments abroad. US Embassies are still barely functioning and are not able to provide even the minimum of services they did before covid, if they're even open to the public at all.

henrikschroder• 5 years ago

How come none of the top comment threads talk about what a complete joke university education is currently due to ridiculous corona restrictions?

Everyone is vaccinated, everyone is boosted, everyone wears their little masks, and they're still going remote, quarantining, and forbidding students from doing pretty much anything except sit in their dorms and watch remote teaching material.

Is it any wonder that a lot of students walk away? Everything that makes college fun is forbidden. Why the hell would you put up with that? If I want to sit in my room, not party, and watch education videos all day, why would I pay $50k for the privilege?

This is bullshit, and students aren't idiots, which is why a lot of them are dropping out and postponing their education until universities get their shit together.

falcor84• 5 years ago

I just came here to complain about the grammar of "More than 1 million fewer", it took me way too much wheel-spinning to parse. I would have gone with "Over 1M fewer" or even just "1M fewer" - we can handle the lack of precision.

chiefalchemist• 5 years ago

One month it's "too much student debt...blah, blah, blah" the next month it's "a significant number of student-aged people are no longer willing invest in something that results in too much debt and not enough return."

It can't be both ways. Unless of course you're the Higher Edu Industrial Complex and you know NPR and their ilk have no memory and no integrity.

Yes, there's some concern. There always is. But that doesn't make shamelessly crafting two opposing narratives.

Goosee• 5 years ago

Here is a solution that avoids the 'noise' university environments create.

Ideally: 1. Attend an in-state university. 2. Look at your school's graduation report, which surveys students by major on their starting salary 3. Choose a program with a high starting salary 4. Take all general education classes online at a community college, starting the summer after high school graduation

This is the most probable way to achieve a high roi on college, for an average american.

voz_• 5 years ago

I know a lot of the comments here are from the lens of money input (as a cost, to pay for education) and output (as a return, on the investment, in the form of a job / career).

However, I wanted to take a step back and offer a different perspective. College does more than teach one a trade. It should, ideally, help the student become a better citizen of their own culture, of the world, and of their community. College taught me deeper empathy, and different kinds of empathy, it taught me more about literature, history, cultures, anthropology. There is so much today that could be improved if, for example, philosophy was a core requirement of every CS curriculum.

Outside of coursework, It taught me how to make friends, and how when I did bad things, I would lose friends. In a way, it is a continuation of high school except with the training wheels off, with all the consequences of adulthood to be tasted for the very first time.

I know it is a privilege to say this, and it is why I am such a huge proponent of free education, but to miss college is to miss more than some academic study in a field. It is to miss a whole chapter of life. To go from high school to labor, without that sweet blissful blend of freedom, stress, and discovery feels like a life not fully lived.

I would love for everyone to experience this, so from this personal perspective, I find that this framing (of money), on the whole, a rather negative thing.

godmode2019• 5 years ago

I don't see this as a problem. We certainly have a case of elite over production in the west. Where people study liberal arts and except a high paying job, and any job that they get will not ever pay the off the loan.

Obama explains it the best. (Ignore the right wing title its a good video of him on his first visit to Kenya)

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fItxli7-uU0

Starts at 15:13

thecatster• 5 years ago

Might be in general, but for Ivy League and higher schools, they've seen record application numbers. I got denied from MIT and was told that they won't even refer due to the enormous amounts of applicants.

malwarebytess• 5 years ago

It's Covid. Nobody wants to go to college on Zoom. People have postponed their education because of this stupid boomer shit so expect a boom when restrictions end.

crate_barre• 5 years ago

It’s just embarrassing to be educated but not well employed (a dignified job). The tide had to shift the other way.

songzme• 5 years ago

Universities are places where you go for intellectual pursuit of your interests, which is why majors like "study of russian history", "Anthropology And Archeology" exists. The major may be useless for employment, but the study helps preserve history and can be very interesting for the students who are passionate about it.

Somehow, society wrongly started associating universities for corporate job preparation.

I think people are starting to realize that if you want to get prepared for work, you should go to a trade training (like bootcamps). If you are priviledged enough to pursue your interests, then universities are a great place to be.

pandeiro• 5 years ago

Why not wait until COVID hysteria is over? Seems like the right call.

user249• 5 years ago

I'm not sure why it's so surprising that college enrollment is down when 30% of the country thinks colleges teach cultural marxism and want to turn their daughters into lesbians and their boys into girls

jjtheblunt• 5 years ago

Since statistics statements can look very misleading, I kneejerk-thought

"it could be there are fewer people and thus students, due to population growth slowing or reversing, or it could be it's unaffordable or unpromising?".

I hope it's from slowed population growth, but suppose it's the cost.

jsiaajdsdaa• 5 years ago

Even computer science education does not prep the median student for successfully passing interviews these days.

fleddr• 5 years ago

Sure enough the American college system is rotten, but let's also shed some light on financial literacy. We'll use "Brian" from the article.

Brian can't be bothered to enroll into college because he's tired of remote learning.

Yes, remote learning sucks. Doesn't mean you should stop. I'm bothered by this optionality. Later in life you're going to do a lot of things that suck, but have to do anyway. Further, at such young age, I would expect some hawkish parent to "help out" with the choice, but I guess I'm old fashioned.

Fine, though. Delaying enrollment whilst earning some cash in the meanwhile is not the end of the world. And so Brian starts work at Jimmy's sandwiches.

Then comes his mastermind move: he starts work at an Amazon warehouse for slightly more pay, yet needs to buy a car to get there. For which he takes a loan.

I imagine many Americans don't even blink at this, but it's absolutely moronic. The very point of the break from school was to earn cash. Instead of saving it up, he's now in debt for the car, works a shit job, and comes short both for his "needs" and for college.

Brian seems to have some self awareness at this point:

"It's so hard," he says. "I'm just like, 'Wow, if I go to school, I'm going to take time off and I'm not going to have any money for things I need.'"

Yeah, Brian, Wow indeed. Typical for American consumer culture: spending above your means from the very start.

WaitWaitWha• 5 years ago

I can see this being a problem for colleges & universities.

Is this a problem for society?

cush2• 5 years ago

Good. It's a waste of money for most people, and not worth literally living in poverty. It's great that students have stopped falling for the scam.

thehappypm5• 5 years ago

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

danny_codes3• 5 years ago

This is just a symptom.

College in America is an example of a market failure induced by government intervention.

Federal loan guarantees and special rules around student loans (critically, they are not absolvable via bankruptcy) have caused a distorted market, whereby the colleges are incentivized to compete with each other for these guaranteed loans. Remember the student is a child, likely 17. They almost certainly have never supported themselves financially, and almost certainly have no conception of what a $200,000 loan will look like 10 years down the road. So you have colleges who are _guaranteed_ to get $200,000 from these poor students. You'd have to be some crazy altruist not to exploit that!

However, imagine a world in which no such federally-guaranteed loans existed (and critically where absolvable by bankruptcy). In this case, no rational bank would loan a student 200k. The financials simply aren't there. Now students have to look around for funding options in the private market, which is only going to cut loans it believes will turn a profit: that is, loans to students who they believe will be able to pay them back.

We have built a flawed economic model here: it is guaranteed to fail. The only solution is to overhaul this market either via novel market design or via nationalization.

The choices of individual schools is mostly irrelevant: as market players, all they can do is play the game. The game is bad, and so the schools' decisions have bad outcomes.

thehappypm5• 5 years ago

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

rob_c• 5 years ago

And now we hit the difficult question, is every degree really worth the value people pay for it?

wnevets• 5 years ago

I'm sure this will cause Colleges to lower their admission price right... right?

jnmandal• 5 years ago

I'm not convinced this is a bad thing honestly.

lumost7• 5 years ago

I’m noticing a paradoxical trend across multiple goods where the food is somehow becoming too expensive to be used.

- Housing - Education - Healthcare

If costs are too high for students to afford, why doesn’t the price fall? If it’s scarce why isn’t more of it produced?

bigthymer• 5 years ago

Each of those is high cost for different reasons.

lumost7• 5 years ago

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

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

legohead• 5 years ago

Community college

  according to Hege Ferguson, director of admissions for Florida State University, as of January 7, 2022, they have received 67,291 first-year applications for summer and fall semesters. That is a 21.2% increase compared to January 7, 2021, when they had received 55,500 applications.

mcdermott• 5 years ago

Based on experience interviewing many job candidates over the past 5 years, college degrees are no longer an indicator or knowledge, abilities or intelligence. It seems like a four year degree today means almost nothing, I'm not sure what they are teaching these days beyond woke activism, but it's not working. On average I'd rather hire someone that received high school diploma in the 1990s and has a little experience than recent collage graduates.

michaelrhansen• 5 years ago

An estimate to replacement a house window for me was $3K. I asked if they were hiring and they were - starting hourly rate $35 / hour.

nwmcsween• 5 years ago

Yep it's going to get worse as well and it's not trades its inequality, how can someone making $10-15/hr pay for $10k tuition and astronomical rise in CoL..

peter3032• 5 years ago

Down 28% since 2012 (19.8 M to 14.4 M) as stock market booms. Long term issue.

AdrianEGraphene• 5 years ago

Wow! I don't blame today's students. The virtual environment would not be what one expects when dedicating their life to schooling.

alienalp• 5 years ago

You can't become a doctor without going med and there are many other degrees like that however for like Physics, maths, CS etc... collage is rather like a big club in its ways and it is not for everybody. Rather it is for very few people actually. In countries like mine people go to collage because job quality is seriously low. It is ridicules that in first comment someone complaints about forklift jobs pays as much as first year teacher. That is really what needed so the people who shouldn't be a teacher doesn't go to collage for economical reasons so people who should be a teachers become a teacher.

pingsl• 5 years ago

China is on the opposite, for example, there will be over 10 million college graduates in China in the coming summer.

However, Chinese graduates are in a similar situation as US college graduates.

It's hard to find a decent job with a college degree. The college degree was once the premium but now more like a baseline in many industrials. Now China wants to push more young men to go to the professional education track.

But the challenge is there are more issues in professional education than in college education here.

anovikov• 5 years ago

Finally, people got to realise the college is bs and is only designed to suck money out of them, putting them forever in debt. What's the problem about it?

It will help those who choose college, too - as demand for education falls, so will the prices.

ineedasername• 5 years ago

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

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

unobatbayar• 5 years ago

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

softsound• 5 years ago

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

viktorcode• 5 years ago

"That could be the beginning of a whole generation of students rethinking the value of college itself."

Given the cost of education in the US, the value of college is questionable indeed.

sirwitti• 5 years ago

This headline is worded in a way that makes it quite hard to grasp its meaning.

I guess I just like simple language.

kerneloftruth• 5 years ago

This isn't necessarily a bad thing. University isn't for everyone, and thankfully many instead pursue skilled trades (which benefits society as well as the tradesman).

If the mantra is that everyone should go to university, then it becomes an extension of high school, and the credentials less valuable... and mostly the student loan industry thrives.

jbergens• 5 years ago

I can interpolate. It has dropped with about 2 million students in 6 years, that is 3 millions per year. There are currently (according to the article) 14.4 million undergraduates to it will reach 0 in about 43.2 years.

Zero undergraduates in 2065. You heard it here first! /j

exdsq• 5 years ago

Good! There is an oversupply of graduates and the debt bubble is just growing. This is a step in the right direction.

UltraViolence• 5 years ago

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

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

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

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

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