5 ms·

The new economics of higher ed make going to college a risky bet

20 points by michaelrkn 3y ago

shortrounddev2 3y ago
Knowing what I know now, if I were Gen Z I would definitely think twice about going to college, unless I was very passionate about a field which required a degree and paid well. I wouldn't go "for the experience". You can bum around in a van on a college campus for free
- AtlasBarfed 3y ago
  I would like to bridge year my kiddo in a trade like electrician or plumbing, then have him go to college (I'm assuming he's smart enough to make it worthwhile). But that's over a decade away, who effing knows what things will look like.
  - rawgabbit 3y ago
    If I had money, I would purchase an HVAC installation/repair company. I would hire some senior certified folks whose main jobs is to teach/supervise. I then would hire a bunch of high school graduates to five year contracts. My pitch would be I will train you and pay your a fair wage but you promise you will work for me for five years.
  - shortrounddev2 3y ago
    If I was 18 again, I'd take a gap year slumming it in Europe or Asia before continuing with career stuff
rawgabbit 3y ago
Quote Webber next considered the impact of a student’s major. If you choose a business or STEM degree, your chance of winning the college bet goes back up to 3 in 4, even if you’re paying $50,000 a year in tuition and expenses while you’re in college. But if you’re majoring in anything else — arts, humanities or social sciences — your odds turn negative at that price; worse than a coin flip.
lapcat 3y ago
From 2010 opinion polls: > Ninety-six percent of parents who identified as Democrats said they expected their kids to attend college — only to be outdone by Republican parents, 99 percent of whom said they expected their kids to go to college. This is why, when we talk about student loan debt forgiveness, the condescending people who yell "You made a choice! You signed a contract!" are completely missing the reality. Every adult is pressuring these kids to go to college. Their own parents, their school teachers, potential employers, etc. The kids have been lectured practically from birth that they need to prepare to go to college. It's massive social conditioning, almost a religion.
- johngladtj 3y ago
  Yeah, and they must have some personal responsibility to resist that pressure
- Georgelemental 3y ago
  Even if you go to college, you can choose between majoring in something that will give you job opportunities later on, versus a useless boutique major. Or you can choose to go to a state school, versus a private college. (That being said, I think the financial aid/loan practices of universities are predatory; we certainly shouldn't be rewarding the predation with a government bailout, though. Make student loans dischargeable in bankruptcy!)
  - lapcat 3y ago
    There are a couple of issues here: 1) Nobody seems to ask the question, why do schools charge the same tuition for every major, even though the schools themselves know that the financial outcomes tend to be dramatically different for those majors? We might even ask, why do schools offer "useless boutique" majors that aren't financially lucrative? Isn't that educational malpractice? 2) Let me ask you a serious question. I have my own ideas about this, but I want to hear yours without prejudice. Why do you think it is that students choose "a useless boutique major"? And why do you think it is that students choose to go to an expensive private college rather than a state school? You might claim that these kids are just "dumb", but if you can get admitted to an expensive private college, then you're probably not dumb but rather quite smart. And let's also assume we're talking about "A" students in a "useless boutique major", so kids who apparently quite smart too.
j7ake 3y ago
One thing I never understood were people who paid money to go to an American university to major in a language like French, German, or Japanese. Why don’t they just take their 60k a year tuition and spend it living in the country that actually speaks that language? I’ve seen third or fourth year students majoring in French with worse language abilities than the engineering students who spent a semester on exchange to France or Switzerland. Some majors are a complete waste of time and money.
- allturtles 3y ago
  You should think of the French department at a college as being analogous to the English department; they are literature departments and the professors are specialized in particular domains of literature and the coursework is centered on literature. e.g. see e.g. see this schedule of course requirements [0]. It requires just 1 year of advanced study in learning to speak and write the language itself, the rest is on reading, criticism, and specialized areas of French literature. One could argue that learning about 17th century French drama makes this even more of a waste of time and money. Personally I think it's great that society has enough surplus wealth that people with a passion for particular topics can 'waste' their time in this way. [0]: https://www.ohio.edu/cas/modern-languages/undergraduate/french-major https://www.ohio.edu/cas/modern-languages/undergraduate/fren...
  - j7ake 3y ago
    Maybe for French. But I doubt this is the case for more distant languages like Japanese and Russian. Are American undergrads studying Tolstoy in Russian in the Russian department?
- foxyv 3y ago
  Getting a loan to attend a 4-year university is obscenely easy. Getting a loan or grant to visit a foreign country is difficult. However, if you want to visit a foreign country as an English teacher, having a 4 year degree in the native language of that country makes it MUCH easier.

20 points by michaelrkn 3y ago

Knowing what I know now, if I were Gen Z I would definitely think twice about going to college, unless I was very passionate about a field which required a degree and paid well. I wouldn't go "for the experience". You can bum around in a van on a college campus for free

AtlasBarfed 3y ago
I would like to bridge year my kiddo in a trade like electrician or plumbing, then have him go to college (I'm assuming he's smart enough to make it worthwhile). But that's over a decade away, who effing knows what things will look like.
- rawgabbit 3y ago
  If I had money, I would purchase an HVAC installation/repair company. I would hire some senior certified folks whose main jobs is to teach/supervise. I then would hire a bunch of high school graduates to five year contracts. My pitch would be I will train you and pay your a fair wage but you promise you will work for me for five years.
- shortrounddev2 3y ago
  If I was 18 again, I'd take a gap year slumming it in Europe or Asia before continuing with career stuff

rawgabbit 3y ago

Quote Webber next considered the impact of a student’s major. If you choose a business or STEM degree, your chance of winning the college bet goes back up to 3 in 4, even if you’re paying $50,000 a year in tuition and expenses while you’re in college. But if you’re majoring in anything else — arts, humanities or social sciences — your odds turn negative at that price; worse than a coin flip.

lapcat 3y ago

From 2010 opinion polls: > Ninety-six percent of parents who identified as Democrats said they expected their kids to attend college — only to be outdone by Republican parents, 99 percent of whom said they expected their kids to go to college. This is why, when we talk about student loan debt forgiveness, the condescending people who yell "You made a choice! You signed a contract!" are completely missing the reality. Every adult is pressuring these kids to go to college. Their own parents, their school teachers, potential employers, etc. The kids have been lectured practically from birth that they need to prepare to go to college. It's massive social conditioning, almost a religion.

johngladtj 3y ago
Yeah, and they must have some personal responsibility to resist that pressure
Georgelemental 3y ago
Even if you go to college, you can choose between majoring in something that will give you job opportunities later on, versus a useless boutique major. Or you can choose to go to a state school, versus a private college. (That being said, I think the financial aid/loan practices of universities are predatory; we certainly shouldn't be rewarding the predation with a government bailout, though. Make student loans dischargeable in bankruptcy!)
- lapcat 3y ago
  There are a couple of issues here: 1) Nobody seems to ask the question, why do schools charge the same tuition for every major, even though the schools themselves know that the financial outcomes tend to be dramatically different for those majors? We might even ask, why do schools offer "useless boutique" majors that aren't financially lucrative? Isn't that educational malpractice? 2) Let me ask you a serious question. I have my own ideas about this, but I want to hear yours without prejudice. Why do you think it is that students choose "a useless boutique major"? And why do you think it is that students choose to go to an expensive private college rather than a state school? You might claim that these kids are just "dumb", but if you can get admitted to an expensive private college, then you're probably not dumb but rather quite smart. And let's also assume we're talking about "A" students in a "useless boutique major", so kids who apparently quite smart too.

j7ake 3y ago

One thing I never understood were people who paid money to go to an American university to major in a language like French, German, or Japanese. Why don’t they just take their 60k a year tuition and spend it living in the country that actually speaks that language? I’ve seen third or fourth year students majoring in French with worse language abilities than the engineering students who spent a semester on exchange to France or Switzerland. Some majors are a complete waste of time and money.

allturtles 3y ago
You should think of the French department at a college as being analogous to the English department; they are literature departments and the professors are specialized in particular domains of literature and the coursework is centered on literature. e.g. see e.g. see this schedule of course requirements [0]. It requires just 1 year of advanced study in learning to speak and write the language itself, the rest is on reading, criticism, and specialized areas of French literature. One could argue that learning about 17th century French drama makes this even more of a waste of time and money. Personally I think it's great that society has enough surplus wealth that people with a passion for particular topics can 'waste' their time in this way. [0]: https://www.ohio.edu/cas/modern-languages/undergraduate/french-major https://www.ohio.edu/cas/modern-languages/undergraduate/fren...
- j7ake 3y ago
  Maybe for French. But I doubt this is the case for more distant languages like Japanese and Russian. Are American undergrads studying Tolstoy in Russian in the Russian department?
foxyv 3y ago
Getting a loan to attend a 4-year university is obscenely easy. Getting a loan or grant to visit a foreign country is difficult. However, if you want to visit a foreign country as an English teacher, having a 4 year degree in the native language of that country makes it MUCH easier.