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The purpose of a college degree is NOT a job... but the purpose of a college LOAN is 100% a job, and it's very important to differentiate between the two. The

The purpose of a college degree is NOT a job... but the purpose of a college LOAN is 100% a job, and it's very important to differentiate between the two. The whole point of the loan is to buy time; you don't want to wait for when you have savings to purchase the degree, you want to do it now. If you are not doing it for the job, then why the loan, what's the rush? If knowledge and prestige is all that matters, then don't take the loan, take the scenic route, get your degree slowly as and when you have the time and money, and one day you will have something to look back at. But if you are doing it so you can start earning as soon as possible, when you are still young and energetic... then you are doing it for the job, and in that case the degree better be financially worth it. You have the right to a degree in XYZ... you should NOT have the right to a taxpayer backed grant/aid/loan/whatever to gain said degree unless you're on a reasonable path to become a tax payer yourself as soon as you are done with the degree.

sscaryterry 2mo ago
> purpose of a college LOAN is 100% a job Wow, what horseshit.
- burpingtree 2mo ago
  Yes, this is slightly incorrect. The purpose of a college loan is 100% that the default rate will be low enough that the interest payments will provide a positive return for the lender. The expected default rate is given by the lendee’s expected future income. The majority of the expected income is driven by the expected job of that lender, but some of that expected income could come from other income sources such as investments especially in fields such as finance.
  - sscaryterry 2mo ago
    It saddens me that you are correct. This is just modern rent-seeking behaviour.
jclulow 2mo ago
I mean, says you? We live in a society and to some extent we decide what that means. I believe many countries outside the US have heavily subsidised loans or cost deferment mechanisms, or just outright government funding for school. Certainly in Australia you essentially don't have to pay back your HECS debt if you don't end up with a salary of sufficient magnitude, and then the rate at which you pay it back is scaled to what you earn.
- reactordev 2mo ago
  In the US, college is considered a privilege for those who can afford it or are poor enough to be granted it from poorly designed taxpayer funds. Then we set the bar for hiring to requiring a degree making it so that if you want anything above minimum wage, you’re going to have to get a degree. This is how the predatory lending prior to 2008 started with student loan debt. Glad to see that 20 years hasn’t taught us anything. Other countries where University and Education are rights or are provided via better taxpayer systems don’t understand the pure chaos the US system is.
  - anonym29 2mo ago
    >Then we set the bar for hiring to requiring a degree making it so that if you want anything above minimum wage, you’re going to have to get a degree. While this may have been true in the past, this is no longer the case, and it has not been the case for at least a decade and change now, at least in the US. If you are intelligent and self-motivated to learn in-demand skills, and you can demonstrate those skills, and adapt well to a corporate environment, there is a path for you even without a degree. Yes, not every door is open to you, but that doesn't mean all the good doors are closed. I've been on hiring committees where I interviewed Ivy League CS grads for SWE positions who couldn't do leetcode easies, tasks like defanging an IP address, in a language of their choice, with clear instructions, active guidance from me, and permission to search the web for syntax (but not solutions), and an entire hour to solve it. As a means of delivering credible social proof of competency, legacy admissions and grade inflation have all but ruined college degrees. We live in era where essentially all recorded human knowledge is available for free, instantaneously, 24/7, from a device that fits in your pocket and works from just about anywhere, and this has been the case for my entire career. As of more recently, $20/mo gets you a personal 1:1 tutor that knows more than every college professor you've ever seen combined, is available to you 24/7, never judges you for stupid questions, never gets tired of re-explaining concepts to you that you're struggling with, will write a study plan / syllabus perfectly tailored to your existing knowledge and schedule, complete with links to reading material, generate interactive quizzes and tests for you, etc. College as a means of delivering information is about 30 years out of date at this point, and college as a means of delivering a tailored education is now about 4 years out of date. In the words of Peter Gregory, college has become a cruel joke on the poor and middle class.
Arubis 2mo ago
I want my taxes to go towards a more educated populace, full stop.
- roenxi 2mo ago
  Then they don't need to tax you and you can just give the money to educational institutions. The argument for taxes is either "I don't think it is fair for me to pay for this alone since others are benefiting" or "this absolutely positively must be a group effort" (eg, the military). "I want my taxes to..." is a generally a bad start, because the point of taxes is it doesn't matter what an individual taxpayers wants to happen to them. Most taxpayers want the taxes to not be spent the way they will be. That is why they are taxes. If people had an actual choice then in all likelihood they wouldn't pay them.
  - Arubis 2mo ago
    Okay. I want all my nation’s taxes to contribute to a more-educated populace and I’m willing to vote to effect this.
  - dqv 2mo ago
    > "this absolutely positively must be a group effort" (eg, the military). Which, by extension, means education absolutely positively must be a group effort, even if taxpayers can't understand the n-order effects of severing tax money from education. If society needs the military, then it definitely wants soldiers who understand figurative language so that those soldiers don't shoot themselves in the foot. Being able to communicate well, critically think, understand history - these all come from the humanities (although the learner must go beyond the entry level courses to benefit).
- ryzvonusef 2mo ago
  I do too, but you need buy-in from your fellow tax-payers/voters if they are willing to fund it also. I live in a 3rd world country, and due to the limitation of our weak taxpayer base, we can afford to fund only limited number of seats, which are won by certain competitive exams, and anything beyond that is considered 'self-finance' (i.e. figure it out on your own). Your country will have to decide its own limits.
Vaslo 2mo ago
Very sensible take. If you want to study Latin American gender roles and it’s your own money, and a college can break even on its cost to teach you that, you should be able to. When it’s someone else’s money, the outcome changes.
- throw94949499 2mo ago
  [flagged]
  - cheschire 2mo ago
    "we seen during" This was an intentionally ironic use of poor grammar in a statement against organized education, right? Hopefully?
    - AnthonyMouse 2mo ago
      That's grammatically correct AAVE. It's a thing they teach about in university.
      - foldr 2mo ago
        Sure, but they also teach you to use SAE in contexts where that's expected (like most written work).
        AnthonyMouse 2mo ago
        They more teach you that judging people on the basis of that is cultural bias.
        foldr 2mo ago
        I agree. However, as it's clear that OP is not an AAVE speaker writing a comment in AAVE (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48880115 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48880115), I thought you were being somewhat facetious.
RandomLensman 2mo ago
If it is quite profitable to get a certain education, why would it need the tax payer to provide the loan for it? Shouldn't that be easy to fund from the private sector?
- threetonesun 2mo ago
  Assuming you’re not talking about a loan to do this (at which point you’ve reinvented indentured servitude), back when there was a smaller pool of college graduates it was easier to find a company that would pay for your education, some even offering bonuses if you completed it.
  - RandomLensman 2mo ago
    Not sure I understand: why would a loan be indentured servitude if it funds an education (not binding employment etc.)?
    - delusional 2mo ago
      If there is no expectation of future income or employment, and no collateral since you don't have any. Then who would lend you the money? I don't think anyone is stopping the private sector from extending "student loans" if they were such a good business.
      - RandomLensman 2mo ago
        Of course, there would be an expectation for loan repayment (most likely from employment somewhere). Is any unsecured/uncollateralized loan indentured servitude for you then?
        techpression 2mo ago
        So company A pays for your education to go work for company B (their competitor) and all they get is a lousy interest rate with no security? If they don’t get ten years (or whatever amount) of your output, why waste the time and energy when someone else will do it for them?
delusional 2mo ago
> If knowledge and prestige is all that matters, then don't take the loan, take the scenic route, get your degree slowly as and when you have the time and money, and one day you will have something to look back at. Do you see no value in young energetic people being educated while their brains are still maximally plastic, and society get maximal value out of the education? Is there no value in handing over our knowledge to the new generation BEFORE they act without it? Is there no value in knowing something the "free labor market" has not priced in? Rights are something we grant each other. If we see a value in an educated public, we can grant each other the right to get an education. There are no "rights" in nature, so the statement "you don't have the right" is meaningless in matters of politics, where the whole point of the discussion is to figure out if you should "have the right". Your inner world must be a dead hellscape if you believe that the only things that exist are "prestige", arbitrary "knowledge", or a job.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 2mo ago
  > Do you see no value in young energetic people being educated This is what the public school system is for. Post-secondary education was not meant to be for everyone. But the world has changed and universities and colleges only service as the gate-keepers to degrees and diplomas that every employer now has required to get a job (regardless of whether that education is needed for the actual job). It's not that young people passionate about learning as much as they can in a given field don't exist, its that university is not about them anymore.
  - LPisGood 2mo ago
    Why not expand “public school” to include post secondary education to reflect the realities of the modern economy?
    - ndriscoll 2mo ago
      If a program doesn't leave the student [economically] better off, then it wasn't about the realities of the modern economy.
lionkor 2mo ago
This is such a shitty American take (or any of the countries that somehow decide the USA is a good model to follow), it's kind of baffling that this is a popular opinion and explains a lot of the social issues (or near lack of social system) you guys have. You know that technically, people are allowed to have fun and not strive to be a billionaire, right? Its everyones right to pick a path they want, and enjoy, and if they end up providing a service with it, or just contributing to art or science, thats good for humanity and for society. In fact, this works, if you look at capitalist countries with social support systems, free universities (or very cheap), and so on. > unless you're on a reasonable path to become a tax payer yourself as soon as you are done with the degree Obviously everyone should make some money for themselves and pay taxes, but you're acting like the system falls apart if a couple ten thousand art students decide to live a bit more frugally and instead add to the local culture. It's embarrassing that we are all part of the same species. Life can be so fantastic when your society accepts that you can just go study whatever you want, and then take a job in that field (or not). Individual success doesn't need to be measured ONLY by your contribution to the tax pool. If you tax the rich and a couple large companies, spend a little less on harassing poor countries, your entire society can lean back and live a significantly better life. Instead you focus on reducing culture, removing any fun that isn't AI driven corporate data gathering slop, denying poor people health care, denying poor people an education, and leaning back and saying "well, they should try harder to contribute to society".
- frogperson 2mo ago
  Very well said. i wish I could give you 1000 upvotes, or better yet a real vote.
- tyleo 2mo ago
  I think folks would agree with you in valuing arts and humanities, just that they shouldn’t do it on someone else’s dime. I suspect you’d find that a widely held belief and not just an American one. It’s hard out there and I have some non-college educated family who also struggled in life wondering why we should pour money into degrees people can’t pay off when they received no help themselves.
sib 2mo ago
>> The purpose of a college degree is NOT a job >> If knowledge and prestige is all that matters I disagree. The primary purpose of the college degree is the job. If you don't need a job (which derives from the signaling factor of the degree == the prestige), you can just study the same material and gain the knowledge by yourself without getting a degree.
- bitmasher9 2mo ago
  Self study can only go so far, and often when someone self studies there are obvious gaps in their education compared to someone that entered a formal program. Studying in a university has the advantage of learning from experts and being surrounded by people that are also learning from experts. This has significant advantages.
  - newsoftheday 2mo ago
    > Self study can only go so far I retired last year after a career as a software engineer for several decades, 99.99% self-taught. I'm not unique. I've known many others who did the same. > Studying in a university has the advantage of learning from experts Whether they are experts is something I highly doubt when thinking about all the graduates I interviewed and worked with over the years. In my experience, the better software engineers came from the self-taught route. > being surrounded by people that are also learning from experts Homogenized learning produces likewise results; the quality of the result is highly subjective and debatable.
    - xboxnolifes 2mo ago
      Software engineering is a pretty unique field as far as self study goes. There are others since the dawn of the internet, but many domains dont have great online learning resources. And then there's labs and research.
      - treis 2mo ago
        I don't think that's really true. Big ones like medicine and law have very well developed programs. To the point where something like half of med school students attend class rarely or never. More esoteric and less explicitly goal oriented fields aren't going to have as developed options but I doubt there's any undergraduate degree that you couldn't fairly easily mimic with self study. The difference is that software engineering more or less doesn't use a comp sci degree to gatekeep.
WillAdams 2mo ago
I would argue that a child has a right to a certain number of years of education. The best school which I attended divided classes between academic and social --- the latter were attended with one's age peers (so homeroom, social studies, PE, &c.) while the former were attended at one's ability level (with a cap of four years through 4th grade, so I was in 4th grade but taking 8th grade science, English, and history classes) and for older students, some teachers were accredited as faculty at a nearby college, so it was possible to take college courses while still in high school --- it was even possible to earn a college degree (or even multiple degrees) at high school graduation. There was also a trade school track for students so inclined.
- ericd 2mo ago
  Sounds great, if you don’t mind sharing, what school was it? We have a couple of young kids that that seems like maybe a good fit for.
  - WillAdams 2mo ago
    It was a school in rural Mississippi which was next to an Air Force Base and filled primarily w/ children of base personnel --- apparently it was changed away from that shortly after my father retired, I had thought because of legal challenges, but that was from the uncertain organic memory of 10 year old me of half a century ago.
    - ericd 2mo ago
      Dang, ah well. Thanks for answering, anyway.
      - WillAdams 2mo ago
        With the wide variety of charter schools which were set up, I'm surprised it wasn't tried --- I would really like to see this educational mechanism revisited and re-tried --- seems like a good fit for remote learning (remote classes are academic and done at ability level, in-person classes are social and done by age level w/ peers.
class3shock 2mo ago
"The purpose of a college degree is NOT a job" Check the marketing literature for any college and you will find that is not true. The only people doing degrees for knowledge and prestige are the filthy rich and while they may make up a significant percentage of students at the top 5 schools, they make up a tiny percentage of all college students. The last point is where I end up aswell though and I think no matter how you look at it colleges are doing a disservice to young people and taxpayers pushing worthless degrees backed by government loans that they (the colleges) don't have to worry about repaying.
- armchairhacker 2mo ago
  I'd say the purpose is usually to get a "career" i.e. good job, possibly as a paid researcher and/or professor.
- aleph_minus_one 2mo ago
  > The only people doing degrees for knowledge and prestige are the filthy rich and while they may make up a significant percentage of students at the top 5 schools, they make up a tiny percentage of all college students. I already wrote it quite some times on HN: at least in Germany, where university is rather cheap, the situation is typically different: - The really rich kids will typically have a "career on rails", for example because of family connections. They thus often consider getting the university degree as an annoying obstacle on their way towards a certain career. - If you, on the other hand, don't come from a wealthy background, you better are very idealistic with respect to your chosen degree course (with the only typical constraint that it will not be not be some "useless degree" (including what is called in German "Orchideenfächer" (i.e. small, obscure degree courses for which there is often no real job market))). If you are not in deep love with the subject that you study, family and friends will likely "suggest" that you should drop out of university and get a form of tertiary education that is a better fit for you, such as Fachhochschule, Berufsakademie (both offer a much more applied tertiary education than universities do) or Ausbildung (vocational training). TLDR: In Germany, typically not the rich kids get a university degree for their seek of knowledge (the rich kid rather often consider attending university as an annoying obstacle on their certain career), but rather the smart, idealistic kids from a less well-off family background.
beej71 2mo ago
One thing to add to your argument is the cost of the degree, which is now 5x more (inflation adjusted) than when I went to school. None of these programs would be at risk under these new rules back in the day.
braiamp 2mo ago
> The purpose of a college degree is NOT a job Superior education is the ladder towards self-sufficiency because that's what the labor market does, it requires you to hold a degree. Now, you may be right that the degree by itself doesn't guarantee it but you are ignoring that the students don't have any choice to do so. So your solution actually punishes the students rather than fix the labor market inflated requirement values. Fix the labor market and suddenly education doesn't have to be financed to allow youngsters be able to look after themselves.
N_Lens 2mo ago
Unless you specialize in Egyptology, which then leads to getting tenured somewhere so you teach Egyptology to others. A pyramid scheme, if you will.
- ryzvonusef 2mo ago
  I actually wrote Egyptology in my comment but then deleted it and wrote XYZ instead ;p
xyzelement 2mo ago
// The purpose of a college degree is NOT a job I think we are past the age where the folks who went to higher education were scholars in pursuit of some higher truth and a broad elevation of themselves. The percentage of people who care about that is very low. As college became "a universal must." Nearly 40 percent of US adults have a bachelor's degree or higher, and obviously 40% of any population aren't inherently scholars. So yes college today is primarily either "something people just do" (I believe this is the attitude that leads to proliferation of obvious worthless degrees) or at best "a way to get a better job." An obvious internet-era reality is that a true scholar can find access to knowledge and like-minded peers outside the universe much more easily.
- ozim 2mo ago
  Really not fun part is that loads of office jobs can be done with high school education level where companies require a degree. I guess it is because there are not enough office jobs and not enough masters/bachelors level jobs so we are all at rat race.
  - nradov 2mo ago
    Right, economists describe this as a signaling mechanism. Most regular office jobs don't require skills beyond the high school level. But a college degree signals to employers that the candidate has some discipline and ability to complete tasks. That allows employers to cut down the candidate pool to a manageable size and somewhat reduce the risk of a bad hire. When labor demand is high, employers are quick to eliminate college degree requirements in order to fill critical roles.
    - ozim 2mo ago
      Big corporations or decent companies are not quick to drop requirements. Sweatshops or „Joe Shmuck” companies that will make you swipe floors after you finish filling in TPS reports are quick to drop requirements.
  - red-iron-pine 2mo ago
metaphor 2mo ago
> You have the right to a degree in XYZ... No, you don't.
- ryzvonusef 2mo ago
  As in, you and the college can decide privately if they want to teach you XYZ in return for money from you. Getting tax payers to chip in brings in a 3rd party and then they have right to decide whether you get to learn or not.
  - gottorf 2mo ago
    I think the GP's point was that the college is also bound, privately by accreditation bodies and publicly by a duty to society not to devalue the meaning of a degree, to not grant you a degree in XYZ if you fail to learn.
insane_dreamer 2mo ago
That may have been true in the past. But in today’s world the purpose of a college degree is 100% a job — it’s the entry level requirement to be considered for almost any position. It’s basically the new high school degree. So we should treat it the same way we treat high school which is taxpayer funded to ensure as many people as possible get one
- newsoftheday 2mo ago
  > So we should treat it the same way we treat high school which is taxpayer funded to ensure as many people as possible get one There are no college graduates I've interviewed in the last two decades, whose quality of output suggests to me college is something the tax payer should be on the hook for.
aleph_minus_one 2mo ago
> If knowledge and prestige is all that matters, then don't take the loan, take the scenic route, get your degree slowly as and when you have the time and money, and one day you will have something to look back at. I think there is a middle ground: If knowledge (and prestige) is what matters, you avoid taking a loan. But even if you take no or a very small loan, it does not mean that you can afford to go the scenic route and get the degree slowly.
newsoftheday 2mo ago
> The purpose of a college degree is NOT a job I agree, I think the purpose of college is supposed to teach students how to learn and the importance of commitment to lifelong self-learning. The output quality of graduates the past two or three decades suggests to me that doesn't seem to actually happen very much.
whateverboat 2mo ago
> You have the right to a degree in XYZ... you should NOT have the right to a taxpayer backed grant/aid/loan/whatever to gain said degree unless you're on a reasonable path to become a tax payer yourself as soon as you are done with the degree. you said a lot of things with a lot of assumptions in that sentence > You have the right to a degree in XYZ... you should NOT have the right to a taxpayer backed grant/aid/loan/whatever to gain said degree If it becomes unreasonable/unfeasible to have a degree without a taxpayer backed grant/aid/loan, then right to a degree implies right to that aid. > unless you're on a reasonable path to become a tax payer yourself as soon as you are done with the degree. You are assuming that the only way a person pays back that money is by tax payer account. They could also be paying back that money by being a nurse improving people's healthy making population more productive. At the end of the day, you are looking at this all wrong by being very ideological about it. You need to look at it from what's best for the country in long term.
grayhatter 2mo ago
> If knowledge and prestige is all that matters, then don't take the loan, take the scenic route, get your degree slowly as and when you have the time and money, and one day you will have something to look back at. This is a nice idea, are you younger, or older? I find younger people say you have all the time in the world, where older people more often advocate for not wasting time, and to do it now. I know neither are arguments from your comment, but the context around the difference you see is interesting. Other than compounding interest, why? Shouldn't everyone do what they find fulfilling as early as possible? Wouldn't acquiring knowledge earlier be as good as acquiring money earlier? > You have the right to a degree in XYZ... you should NOT have the right to a taxpayer backed grant/aid/loan/whatever to gain said degree unless you're on a reasonable path to become a tax payer yourself as soon as you are done with the degree. I find arguments like this incredibly stupid and shallow. The whole point of a society is to improve reality. The ability to do things together that you can't do alone. No one is owed a society, but we're all forced to live within one with dubious consent, (excluding people who've opted out completely from society). Just by the expectation that you'll obey the social contract, you're are owed the benefits of said society. I *HATE* dealing with stupid people. I'm fine with my tax dollars being used to provide free education, at every level. To quote Stewart: > How about this, you reimburse me for the [pointless war for oil] and [college education] is on me! I've gladly payed taxes; and I'll eagerly assert that everyone does have the right to taxpayer funded education. It's what I want my money to go towards.
dragonwriter 2mo ago
> The purpose of a college degree is NOT a job... but the purpose of a college LOAN is 100% a job, and it's very important to differentiate between the two. No, the purpose of a college loan is to enable a student to pay for college with future earnings. It can be perfectly rational even if the loan/degree doesn't improve job prospects (and even more especially so if it doesn’t “improve” them in a purely financial sense that ignores the borrower’s actual utility function.) The purpose of this test (like the special accounting rules imposed on the postal service) is not to better fulfill the purpose of a college degree or the purpose of a college loan. The purpose of the test is to increase the administrative compliance cost of participating in the college loan program as a means of stifling the program. Like the special accounting rules imposed on the Postal Service, its how you use the political power you have to chip away at a public program that you feel is too popular to abolish directly. > You have the right to a degree in XYZ... you should NOT have the right to a taxpayer backed grant/aid/loan/whatever to gain said degree unless you're on a reasonable path to become a tax payer yourself as soon as you are done with the degree. You have an inherent right to neither, but while any public policy must observe rights, it need not be limited to them.
- someguydave 2mo ago
  But also the taxpayers and dollar holders have a right to ask for good management of their taxes and savings
  - foco_tubi 2mo ago
    Individually-scoped education is objectively a good national investment
    - nradov 2mo ago
      Can we quantify that? Does it apply equally to every college and major?
      - foco_tubi 2mo ago
deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
1vuio0pswjnm7 2mo ago
"You have the right to a degree in XYZ... you should NOT have the right to a taxpayer backed grant/aid/loan/whatever to gain said degree unless you're on a reasonable path to become a tax payer yourself as soon as you are done with the degree." Are you a US taxpayer. Profile says you are located in Pakistan
- ryzvonusef 2mo ago
  I'm Pakistani, and I'm just stating the facts as I see them. Many countries have free college education, but at the end of the day some one has to pay for it, and those are the tax-payers. And frankly, if your country's tax payers are, for whatever reason, NOT willing to subsidise it (in whatever way or form)... what can you do? It's not like I like this situation, but those are the facts. The wave of anti-social trend going in the west is because of this belief; tax payers in those countries no longer feel program XYZ is worth it... so it goes.
  - selimthegrim 2mo ago
    I could ask you the same question about government schools. Why is it that my uncle could go to government school in Pakistan in 70s and get good education and that’s not possible now.

sscaryterry 2mo ago

> purpose of a college LOAN is 100% a job Wow, what horseshit.

burpingtree 2mo ago
Yes, this is slightly incorrect. The purpose of a college loan is 100% that the default rate will be low enough that the interest payments will provide a positive return for the lender. The expected default rate is given by the lendee’s expected future income. The majority of the expected income is driven by the expected job of that lender, but some of that expected income could come from other income sources such as investments especially in fields such as finance.
- sscaryterry 2mo ago
  It saddens me that you are correct. This is just modern rent-seeking behaviour.

jclulow 2mo ago

I mean, says you? We live in a society and to some extent we decide what that means. I believe many countries outside the US have heavily subsidised loans or cost deferment mechanisms, or just outright government funding for school. Certainly in Australia you essentially don't have to pay back your HECS debt if you don't end up with a salary of sufficient magnitude, and then the rate at which you pay it back is scaled to what you earn.

reactordev 2mo ago
In the US, college is considered a privilege for those who can afford it or are poor enough to be granted it from poorly designed taxpayer funds. Then we set the bar for hiring to requiring a degree making it so that if you want anything above minimum wage, you’re going to have to get a degree. This is how the predatory lending prior to 2008 started with student loan debt. Glad to see that 20 years hasn’t taught us anything. Other countries where University and Education are rights or are provided via better taxpayer systems don’t understand the pure chaos the US system is.
- anonym29 2mo ago
  >Then we set the bar for hiring to requiring a degree making it so that if you want anything above minimum wage, you’re going to have to get a degree. While this may have been true in the past, this is no longer the case, and it has not been the case for at least a decade and change now, at least in the US. If you are intelligent and self-motivated to learn in-demand skills, and you can demonstrate those skills, and adapt well to a corporate environment, there is a path for you even without a degree. Yes, not every door is open to you, but that doesn't mean all the good doors are closed. I've been on hiring committees where I interviewed Ivy League CS grads for SWE positions who couldn't do leetcode easies, tasks like defanging an IP address, in a language of their choice, with clear instructions, active guidance from me, and permission to search the web for syntax (but not solutions), and an entire hour to solve it. As a means of delivering credible social proof of competency, legacy admissions and grade inflation have all but ruined college degrees. We live in era where essentially all recorded human knowledge is available for free, instantaneously, 24/7, from a device that fits in your pocket and works from just about anywhere, and this has been the case for my entire career. As of more recently, $20/mo gets you a personal 1:1 tutor that knows more than every college professor you've ever seen combined, is available to you 24/7, never judges you for stupid questions, never gets tired of re-explaining concepts to you that you're struggling with, will write a study plan / syllabus perfectly tailored to your existing knowledge and schedule, complete with links to reading material, generate interactive quizzes and tests for you, etc. College as a means of delivering information is about 30 years out of date at this point, and college as a means of delivering a tailored education is now about 4 years out of date. In the words of Peter Gregory, college has become a cruel joke on the poor and middle class.

Arubis 2mo ago

I want my taxes to go towards a more educated populace, full stop.

roenxi 2mo ago
Then they don't need to tax you and you can just give the money to educational institutions. The argument for taxes is either "I don't think it is fair for me to pay for this alone since others are benefiting" or "this absolutely positively must be a group effort" (eg, the military). "I want my taxes to..." is a generally a bad start, because the point of taxes is it doesn't matter what an individual taxpayers wants to happen to them. Most taxpayers want the taxes to not be spent the way they will be. That is why they are taxes. If people had an actual choice then in all likelihood they wouldn't pay them.
- Arubis 2mo ago
  Okay. I want all my nation’s taxes to contribute to a more-educated populace and I’m willing to vote to effect this.
- dqv 2mo ago
  > "this absolutely positively must be a group effort" (eg, the military). Which, by extension, means education absolutely positively must be a group effort, even if taxpayers can't understand the n-order effects of severing tax money from education. If society needs the military, then it definitely wants soldiers who understand figurative language so that those soldiers don't shoot themselves in the foot. Being able to communicate well, critically think, understand history - these all come from the humanities (although the learner must go beyond the entry level courses to benefit).
ryzvonusef 2mo ago
I do too, but you need buy-in from your fellow tax-payers/voters if they are willing to fund it also. I live in a 3rd world country, and due to the limitation of our weak taxpayer base, we can afford to fund only limited number of seats, which are won by certain competitive exams, and anything beyond that is considered 'self-finance' (i.e. figure it out on your own). Your country will have to decide its own limits.

Vaslo 2mo ago

Very sensible take. If you want to study Latin American gender roles and it’s your own money, and a college can break even on its cost to teach you that, you should be able to. When it’s someone else’s money, the outcome changes.

throw94949499 2mo ago
[flagged]
- cheschire 2mo ago
  "we seen during" This was an intentionally ironic use of poor grammar in a statement against organized education, right? Hopefully?
  - AnthonyMouse 2mo ago
    That's grammatically correct AAVE. It's a thing they teach about in university.
    - foldr 2mo ago
      Sure, but they also teach you to use SAE in contexts where that's expected (like most written work).
      - AnthonyMouse 2mo ago
        They more teach you that judging people on the basis of that is cultural bias.
        foldr 2mo ago
        I agree. However, as it's clear that OP is not an AAVE speaker writing a comment in AAVE (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48880115 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48880115), I thought you were being somewhat facetious.

RandomLensman 2mo ago

If it is quite profitable to get a certain education, why would it need the tax payer to provide the loan for it? Shouldn't that be easy to fund from the private sector?

threetonesun 2mo ago
Assuming you’re not talking about a loan to do this (at which point you’ve reinvented indentured servitude), back when there was a smaller pool of college graduates it was easier to find a company that would pay for your education, some even offering bonuses if you completed it.
- RandomLensman 2mo ago
  Not sure I understand: why would a loan be indentured servitude if it funds an education (not binding employment etc.)?
  - delusional 2mo ago
    If there is no expectation of future income or employment, and no collateral since you don't have any. Then who would lend you the money? I don't think anyone is stopping the private sector from extending "student loans" if they were such a good business.
    - RandomLensman 2mo ago
      Of course, there would be an expectation for loan repayment (most likely from employment somewhere). Is any unsecured/uncollateralized loan indentured servitude for you then?
      - techpression 2mo ago
        So company A pays for your education to go work for company B (their competitor) and all they get is a lousy interest rate with no security? If they don’t get ten years (or whatever amount) of your output, why waste the time and energy when someone else will do it for them?

delusional 2mo ago

> If knowledge and prestige is all that matters, then don't take the loan, take the scenic route, get your degree slowly as and when you have the time and money, and one day you will have something to look back at. Do you see no value in young energetic people being educated while their brains are still maximally plastic, and society get maximal value out of the education? Is there no value in handing over our knowledge to the new generation BEFORE they act without it? Is there no value in knowing something the "free labor market" has not priced in? Rights are something we grant each other. If we see a value in an educated public, we can grant each other the right to get an education. There are no "rights" in nature, so the statement "you don't have the right" is meaningless in matters of politics, where the whole point of the discussion is to figure out if you should "have the right". Your inner world must be a dead hellscape if you believe that the only things that exist are "prestige", arbitrary "knowledge", or a job.

Eddy_Viscosity2 2mo ago
> Do you see no value in young energetic people being educated This is what the public school system is for. Post-secondary education was not meant to be for everyone. But the world has changed and universities and colleges only service as the gate-keepers to degrees and diplomas that every employer now has required to get a job (regardless of whether that education is needed for the actual job). It's not that young people passionate about learning as much as they can in a given field don't exist, its that university is not about them anymore.
- LPisGood 2mo ago
  Why not expand “public school” to include post secondary education to reflect the realities of the modern economy?
  - ndriscoll 2mo ago
    If a program doesn't leave the student [economically] better off, then it wasn't about the realities of the modern economy.

lionkor 2mo ago

This is such a shitty American take (or any of the countries that somehow decide the USA is a good model to follow), it's kind of baffling that this is a popular opinion and explains a lot of the social issues (or near lack of social system) you guys have. You know that technically, people are allowed to have fun and not strive to be a billionaire, right? Its everyones right to pick a path they want, and enjoy, and if they end up providing a service with it, or just contributing to art or science, thats good for humanity and for society. In fact, this works, if you look at capitalist countries with social support systems, free universities (or very cheap), and so on. > unless you're on a reasonable path to become a tax payer yourself as soon as you are done with the degree Obviously everyone should make some money for themselves and pay taxes, but you're acting like the system falls apart if a couple ten thousand art students decide to live a bit more frugally and instead add to the local culture. It's embarrassing that we are all part of the same species. Life can be so fantastic when your society accepts that you can just go study whatever you want, and then take a job in that field (or not). Individual success doesn't need to be measured ONLY by your contribution to the tax pool. If you tax the rich and a couple large companies, spend a little less on harassing poor countries, your entire society can lean back and live a significantly better life. Instead you focus on reducing culture, removing any fun that isn't AI driven corporate data gathering slop, denying poor people health care, denying poor people an education, and leaning back and saying "well, they should try harder to contribute to society".

frogperson 2mo ago
Very well said. i wish I could give you 1000 upvotes, or better yet a real vote.
tyleo 2mo ago
I think folks would agree with you in valuing arts and humanities, just that they shouldn’t do it on someone else’s dime. I suspect you’d find that a widely held belief and not just an American one. It’s hard out there and I have some non-college educated family who also struggled in life wondering why we should pour money into degrees people can’t pay off when they received no help themselves.

sib 2mo ago

>> The purpose of a college degree is NOT a job >> If knowledge and prestige is all that matters I disagree. The primary purpose of the college degree is the job. If you don't need a job (which derives from the signaling factor of the degree == the prestige), you can just study the same material and gain the knowledge by yourself without getting a degree.

bitmasher9 2mo ago
Self study can only go so far, and often when someone self studies there are obvious gaps in their education compared to someone that entered a formal program. Studying in a university has the advantage of learning from experts and being surrounded by people that are also learning from experts. This has significant advantages.
- newsoftheday 2mo ago
  > Self study can only go so far I retired last year after a career as a software engineer for several decades, 99.99% self-taught. I'm not unique. I've known many others who did the same. > Studying in a university has the advantage of learning from experts Whether they are experts is something I highly doubt when thinking about all the graduates I interviewed and worked with over the years. In my experience, the better software engineers came from the self-taught route. > being surrounded by people that are also learning from experts Homogenized learning produces likewise results; the quality of the result is highly subjective and debatable.
  - xboxnolifes 2mo ago
    Software engineering is a pretty unique field as far as self study goes. There are others since the dawn of the internet, but many domains dont have great online learning resources. And then there's labs and research.
    - treis 2mo ago
      I don't think that's really true. Big ones like medicine and law have very well developed programs. To the point where something like half of med school students attend class rarely or never. More esoteric and less explicitly goal oriented fields aren't going to have as developed options but I doubt there's any undergraduate degree that you couldn't fairly easily mimic with self study. The difference is that software engineering more or less doesn't use a comp sci degree to gatekeep.

WillAdams 2mo ago

I would argue that a child has a right to a certain number of years of education. The best school which I attended divided classes between academic and social --- the latter were attended with one's age peers (so homeroom, social studies, PE, &c.) while the former were attended at one's ability level (with a cap of four years through 4th grade, so I was in 4th grade but taking 8th grade science, English, and history classes) and for older students, some teachers were accredited as faculty at a nearby college, so it was possible to take college courses while still in high school --- it was even possible to earn a college degree (or even multiple degrees) at high school graduation. There was also a trade school track for students so inclined.

ericd 2mo ago
Sounds great, if you don’t mind sharing, what school was it? We have a couple of young kids that that seems like maybe a good fit for.
- WillAdams 2mo ago
  It was a school in rural Mississippi which was next to an Air Force Base and filled primarily w/ children of base personnel --- apparently it was changed away from that shortly after my father retired, I had thought because of legal challenges, but that was from the uncertain organic memory of 10 year old me of half a century ago.
  - ericd 2mo ago
    Dang, ah well. Thanks for answering, anyway.
    - WillAdams 2mo ago
      With the wide variety of charter schools which were set up, I'm surprised it wasn't tried --- I would really like to see this educational mechanism revisited and re-tried --- seems like a good fit for remote learning (remote classes are academic and done at ability level, in-person classes are social and done by age level w/ peers.

class3shock 2mo ago

"The purpose of a college degree is NOT a job" Check the marketing literature for any college and you will find that is not true. The only people doing degrees for knowledge and prestige are the filthy rich and while they may make up a significant percentage of students at the top 5 schools, they make up a tiny percentage of all college students. The last point is where I end up aswell though and I think no matter how you look at it colleges are doing a disservice to young people and taxpayers pushing worthless degrees backed by government loans that they (the colleges) don't have to worry about repaying.

armchairhacker 2mo ago
I'd say the purpose is usually to get a "career" i.e. good job, possibly as a paid researcher and/or professor.
aleph_minus_one 2mo ago
> The only people doing degrees for knowledge and prestige are the filthy rich and while they may make up a significant percentage of students at the top 5 schools, they make up a tiny percentage of all college students. I already wrote it quite some times on HN: at least in Germany, where university is rather cheap, the situation is typically different: - The really rich kids will typically have a "career on rails", for example because of family connections. They thus often consider getting the university degree as an annoying obstacle on their way towards a certain career. - If you, on the other hand, don't come from a wealthy background, you better are very idealistic with respect to your chosen degree course (with the only typical constraint that it will not be not be some "useless degree" (including what is called in German "Orchideenfächer" (i.e. small, obscure degree courses for which there is often no real job market))). If you are not in deep love with the subject that you study, family and friends will likely "suggest" that you should drop out of university and get a form of tertiary education that is a better fit for you, such as Fachhochschule, Berufsakademie (both offer a much more applied tertiary education than universities do) or Ausbildung (vocational training). TLDR: In Germany, typically not the rich kids get a university degree for their seek of knowledge (the rich kid rather often consider attending university as an annoying obstacle on their certain career), but rather the smart, idealistic kids from a less well-off family background.

beej71 2mo ago

One thing to add to your argument is the cost of the degree, which is now 5x more (inflation adjusted) than when I went to school. None of these programs would be at risk under these new rules back in the day.

braiamp 2mo ago

> The purpose of a college degree is NOT a job Superior education is the ladder towards self-sufficiency because that's what the labor market does, it requires you to hold a degree. Now, you may be right that the degree by itself doesn't guarantee it but you are ignoring that the students don't have any choice to do so. So your solution actually punishes the students rather than fix the labor market inflated requirement values. Fix the labor market and suddenly education doesn't have to be financed to allow youngsters be able to look after themselves.

N_Lens 2mo ago

Unless you specialize in Egyptology, which then leads to getting tenured somewhere so you teach Egyptology to others. A pyramid scheme, if you will.

ryzvonusef 2mo ago
I actually wrote Egyptology in my comment but then deleted it and wrote XYZ instead ;p

xyzelement 2mo ago

// The purpose of a college degree is NOT a job I think we are past the age where the folks who went to higher education were scholars in pursuit of some higher truth and a broad elevation of themselves. The percentage of people who care about that is very low. As college became "a universal must." Nearly 40 percent of US adults have a bachelor's degree or higher, and obviously 40% of any population aren't inherently scholars. So yes college today is primarily either "something people just do" (I believe this is the attitude that leads to proliferation of obvious worthless degrees) or at best "a way to get a better job." An obvious internet-era reality is that a true scholar can find access to knowledge and like-minded peers outside the universe much more easily.

ozim 2mo ago
Really not fun part is that loads of office jobs can be done with high school education level where companies require a degree. I guess it is because there are not enough office jobs and not enough masters/bachelors level jobs so we are all at rat race.
- nradov 2mo ago
  Right, economists describe this as a signaling mechanism. Most regular office jobs don't require skills beyond the high school level. But a college degree signals to employers that the candidate has some discipline and ability to complete tasks. That allows employers to cut down the candidate pool to a manageable size and somewhat reduce the risk of a bad hire. When labor demand is high, employers are quick to eliminate college degree requirements in order to fill critical roles.
  - ozim 2mo ago
    Big corporations or decent companies are not quick to drop requirements. Sweatshops or „Joe Shmuck” companies that will make you swipe floors after you finish filling in TPS reports are quick to drop requirements.
- red-iron-pine 2mo ago

metaphor 2mo ago

> You have the right to a degree in XYZ... No, you don't.

ryzvonusef 2mo ago
As in, you and the college can decide privately if they want to teach you XYZ in return for money from you. Getting tax payers to chip in brings in a 3rd party and then they have right to decide whether you get to learn or not.
- gottorf 2mo ago
  I think the GP's point was that the college is also bound, privately by accreditation bodies and publicly by a duty to society not to devalue the meaning of a degree, to not grant you a degree in XYZ if you fail to learn.

insane_dreamer 2mo ago

That may have been true in the past. But in today’s world the purpose of a college degree is 100% a job — it’s the entry level requirement to be considered for almost any position. It’s basically the new high school degree. So we should treat it the same way we treat high school which is taxpayer funded to ensure as many people as possible get one

newsoftheday 2mo ago
> So we should treat it the same way we treat high school which is taxpayer funded to ensure as many people as possible get one There are no college graduates I've interviewed in the last two decades, whose quality of output suggests to me college is something the tax payer should be on the hook for.

aleph_minus_one 2mo ago

> If knowledge and prestige is all that matters, then don't take the loan, take the scenic route, get your degree slowly as and when you have the time and money, and one day you will have something to look back at. I think there is a middle ground: If knowledge (and prestige) is what matters, you avoid taking a loan. But even if you take no or a very small loan, it does not mean that you can afford to go the scenic route and get the degree slowly.

newsoftheday 2mo ago

> The purpose of a college degree is NOT a job I agree, I think the purpose of college is supposed to teach students how to learn and the importance of commitment to lifelong self-learning. The output quality of graduates the past two or three decades suggests to me that doesn't seem to actually happen very much.

whateverboat 2mo ago

> You have the right to a degree in XYZ... you should NOT have the right to a taxpayer backed grant/aid/loan/whatever to gain said degree unless you're on a reasonable path to become a tax payer yourself as soon as you are done with the degree. you said a lot of things with a lot of assumptions in that sentence > You have the right to a degree in XYZ... you should NOT have the right to a taxpayer backed grant/aid/loan/whatever to gain said degree If it becomes unreasonable/unfeasible to have a degree without a taxpayer backed grant/aid/loan, then right to a degree implies right to that aid. > unless you're on a reasonable path to become a tax payer yourself as soon as you are done with the degree. You are assuming that the only way a person pays back that money is by tax payer account. They could also be paying back that money by being a nurse improving people's healthy making population more productive. At the end of the day, you are looking at this all wrong by being very ideological about it. You need to look at it from what's best for the country in long term.

grayhatter 2mo ago

> If knowledge and prestige is all that matters, then don't take the loan, take the scenic route, get your degree slowly as and when you have the time and money, and one day you will have something to look back at. This is a nice idea, are you younger, or older? I find younger people say you have all the time in the world, where older people more often advocate for not wasting time, and to do it now. I know neither are arguments from your comment, but the context around the difference you see is interesting. Other than compounding interest, why? Shouldn't everyone do what they find fulfilling as early as possible? Wouldn't acquiring knowledge earlier be as good as acquiring money earlier? > You have the right to a degree in XYZ... you should NOT have the right to a taxpayer backed grant/aid/loan/whatever to gain said degree unless you're on a reasonable path to become a tax payer yourself as soon as you are done with the degree. I find arguments like this incredibly stupid and shallow. The whole point of a society is to improve reality. The ability to do things together that you can't do alone. No one is owed a society, but we're all forced to live within one with dubious consent, (excluding people who've opted out completely from society). Just by the expectation that you'll obey the social contract, you're are owed the benefits of said society. I *HATE* dealing with stupid people. I'm fine with my tax dollars being used to provide free education, at every level. To quote Stewart: > How about this, you reimburse me for the [pointless war for oil] and [college education] is on me! I've gladly payed taxes; and I'll eagerly assert that everyone does have the right to taxpayer funded education. It's what I want my money to go towards.

dragonwriter 2mo ago

> The purpose of a college degree is NOT a job... but the purpose of a college LOAN is 100% a job, and it's very important to differentiate between the two. No, the purpose of a college loan is to enable a student to pay for college with future earnings. It can be perfectly rational even if the loan/degree doesn't improve job prospects (and even more especially so if it doesn’t “improve” them in a purely financial sense that ignores the borrower’s actual utility function.) The purpose of this test (like the special accounting rules imposed on the postal service) is not to better fulfill the purpose of a college degree or the purpose of a college loan. The purpose of the test is to increase the administrative compliance cost of participating in the college loan program as a means of stifling the program. Like the special accounting rules imposed on the Postal Service, its how you use the political power you have to chip away at a public program that you feel is too popular to abolish directly. > You have the right to a degree in XYZ... you should NOT have the right to a taxpayer backed grant/aid/loan/whatever to gain said degree unless you're on a reasonable path to become a tax payer yourself as soon as you are done with the degree. You have an inherent right to neither, but while any public policy must observe rights, it need not be limited to them.

someguydave 2mo ago
But also the taxpayers and dollar holders have a right to ask for good management of their taxes and savings
- foco_tubi 2mo ago
  Individually-scoped education is objectively a good national investment
  - nradov 2mo ago
    Can we quantify that? Does it apply equally to every college and major?
    - foco_tubi 2mo ago

deleted 2mo ago

[deleted]

1vuio0pswjnm7 2mo ago

"You have the right to a degree in XYZ... you should NOT have the right to a taxpayer backed grant/aid/loan/whatever to gain said degree unless you're on a reasonable path to become a tax payer yourself as soon as you are done with the degree." Are you a US taxpayer. Profile says you are located in Pakistan

ryzvonusef 2mo ago
I'm Pakistani, and I'm just stating the facts as I see them. Many countries have free college education, but at the end of the day some one has to pay for it, and those are the tax-payers. And frankly, if your country's tax payers are, for whatever reason, NOT willing to subsidise it (in whatever way or form)... what can you do? It's not like I like this situation, but those are the facts. The wave of anti-social trend going in the west is because of this belief; tax payers in those countries no longer feel program XYZ is worth it... so it goes.
- selimthegrim 2mo ago
  I could ask you the same question about government schools. Why is it that my uncle could go to government school in Pakistan in 70s and get good education and that’s not possible now.