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Gaps in Alumni Earnings Stand Out in Release of College Data
- Kinnard 11y agoI think this industry is bound for massive disruption. It's one of the social pillars so . . . what happens when one of those gets moved?
- matthewaveryusa 11y agoYou work at a startup don't you?
- minimaxir 11y agoImportant notes regarding earnings from the dataset documentation (https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/assets/FullDataDocumentation.pdf https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/assets/FullDataDocumentation...): > There are two notable limitations that researchers should keep in mind for all of these metrics. First, the data are not yet available to produce program-level earnings data. Research suggests that the variation across programs within a school may be even greater than aggregate earnings across schools; for instance, STEM and health majors frequently earn more than students who study in other fields. Second, the data include only Title IV-receiving students, so figures may not be representative of schools with a low proportion of Title IV-eligible students. Additionally, the data are restricted to students who are not enrolled (enrolled means having an in-school deferment status for at least 30 days of the measurement year), so students who are currently enrolled in graduate school at the time of measurement are excluded. Although, looking at the data, the real problem is that half the colleges have PrivacySurpressed values for those fields.
- droopyEyelids 11y agoCan anyone understand the logic of the NYT releasing this article, then going into the wage gap aspect, without mentioning that the data can't be quantified by major? It also doesn't mention any steps taken to account for the willingly unemployed/underemployed- assuming both partners in a marriage will desire to work full time to maximize their earning potential seems like it's worth a disclaimer.
- TickleMeHellNo 11y ago>Can anyone understand the logic of the NYT releasing this article, then going into the wage gap aspect, without mentioning that the data can't be quantified by major? It fits a narrative that NYT has been pushing for years.
- dreamdu5t 11y ago> "students at private for-profit two-year and four-year institutions have high rates of borrowing and their graduates often have large amounts of debt." Isn't that expected? Students who go to for-profit schools by definition have to pay their way through so it would make sense they have higher levels of borrowing and debt.
- minimaxir 11y agoThere's nothing wrong with restating obvious conclusions. At the least, it ensures the data is valid.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- gkop 11y agoI wouldn't say "by definition," but yes it seems for-profits don't often offer scholarships as much as other schools. I think the real problem the article points to with for-profits is that they don't lead to good paying jobs and therefore the graduates are unable to pay off their large debts.
- minimaxir 11y agoThe data is not particularly uniform, with NULLs and PrivacySurpressed values everywhere. I wanted to play around with SAT/ACT data and create correlations with other variables...but the only values reported are 25% quantile and 75% quantile for accepted students (they derive a midpoint between the two...by averaging them, which is wrong). Hmrph.
- rglovejoy 11y ago> At Bennington College in Vermont, over 48 percent of former students were earning less than $25,000 per year. A quarter were earning less than $10,600 per year. Bennington always impressed me as as rich kids' school. I have to wonder how many of these former students are living off of trust funds.
- bwilliams18 11y agoI went to Bennington for two years, and while it has that reputation, and there are some rich kids running around (myself included), there are a surprising number of working and middle class kids going there, and then coming out of school with no prospects. Anecdotally, there are a surprising number of waiters, baristas, and other people doing jobs that are in no way informed by their years of study.
- ranman 11y agoFWIW my good friend went to Bennington and nothing she studied in school is remotely applicable to life... Let alone work. That said she had a really good time.
- bhntr3 11y agoInteresting. He also calls out Bard. That rang a bell for me so I looked it up. 31% of 2014 graduates were in the visual and performing arts. Maybe some of these schools just attract people who aren't expecting to have a strong economic return on their investment. He calls out schools where the students aren't repaying their loans later. It might be interesting to analyze the data to relate income to repayment of student loans (or lack of loans altogether.) It would be interesting to see if there are schools where the students make no money but pay back their loans on time.
- GabrielF00 11y agoI looked at the data and was struck by the fact that the top schools by ten-year earnings were medical schools. This led me to believe that the data doesn't distinguish between undergraduate and graduate programs. If that's the case, then an undergrad-focused school like Bennington is going to be penalized versus a school that has mostly grad students. If your pool of students is, say, 70% grad students, then they're going to be further along in their careers at the ten year mark than an institution where 90% of students are undergrads.
- 1971genocide 11y agoUniversity is a scam. I feel so bitter. I just graduated 1 month ago. I could have continued with my masters by I am done. I hated every second of being in university. Not because of any other reason but because of how bleak my financial prospect was. I consider myself lucky that my parents bankrolled me - but looking at the aggregate amount I spent on it - 60,000 pounds. I paid 60,000 pounds literally to read a bunch of books and write some code that could run on a computer from the 1980s, which I could have done on my own from my parent's basement. Every-time a lecturer gave a low-effort lecture I felt like punching them in the face, I could feel the the negative acceleration of my net worth everyday I woke up from sleep. How was I to recover it ? Is it even possible ? Meanwhile there is so much opportunities, so much data to explore, so much work to done. Its a crime that so many young minds are made to waste their time on meaningless stuff while they would start with small apprenticeship and allowed to grow.
- JustSomeNobody 11y ago1) I don't think you'll get too many bites after talking about hitting people. 2) If you hated it so much, why in the world would you allow your parents to bankroll it? That seems so disrespectful to me.
- 1971genocide 11y agoIts a thought - I am sure many other students who were taking actual loans would have much more terrible thoughts. Yes, I realize it was a mistake. When I was 18 I was fed the same garbage about going to university as everyone else and took it without much reasoning - It was my fault, I was an idiot. There are many other people who are in much more worse situation then I am, A lot of my friends are in much more stressful situation then me. Yes its disrespectful to my parents and that is why I quit. I felt terribly guilty since it was after all not my hard earned money but my parent's. They also brought into the whole university scam as a road to middle class life. I have never felt more relieved. Now I can go do some real studying in a much more relaxed fashion.
- droithomme 11y ago
- brandmeyer 11y agoIts hard to take the conclusions of such an article seriously, especially with regards to the gender pay gaps, when they aren't normalized for degree program. Unless you are comparing Engineering women versus Engineering men, or College of Eng. in school A versus CoE in school B, it is utterly impossible to meaningfully compare schools A and B as well.
- vlunkr 11y agoYou're right, there's not enough detail here to make any solid points. I wonder how many of these people 10 years later are stay at home moms/dads with little to no income? And is it meaningful to count them if they are?
- matthewaveryusa 11y agoMIT PhD authored article may float your boat a little more: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/11/upshot/new-data-gives-clearer-picture-of-student-debt.html?rref=upshot http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/11/upshot/new-data-gives-clea... Or http://www.brookings.edu/about/projects/bpea/papers/2015/looney-yannelis-student-loan-defaults http://www.brookings.edu/about/projects/bpea/papers/2015/loo... For those visual people like myself, this is the most telling: http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Projects/BPEA/Fall-2015_embargoed/Chart_LooneyYannelis_StudentLoanDefaults.PNG?la=en http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Projects/BPEA/Fall-2015_emb...
- douche 11y agoIt's terrifying to see so many online degree-mills sucking up that much money.
- matthewaveryusa 11y agoThe sinister in me asks "Well, who tends to make shitty decisions?" The innocent asks "How is this legal?" The realist middle-classer I am asks "Are my tax dollars going to be used to fix this shit again?" The Democrat in me says "well we should definitely introduce legislation to fix this." The Republican alter-ego laughs and says "we already fixed it because you can't get rid of that shit, even in chapter 7 and 13 bankruptcy."
- learc83 11y agoI love that to support their headline, the article states that at hundreds of colleges many students aren't earning more than high school graduates 10 years after graduation. Then in the next sentence says that those hundreds of "colleges" include barber academies, cosmetology schools, and for-profit colleges.
- stdgy 11y agoThey're certainly not institutions I would normally consider 'collegiate'. And god knows they're not Universities. They're trade schools. But, barring the fact that they're an Apples-to-Oranges comparison to typical liberal arts colleges and should be segmented as such in the data, I nonetheless think it's interesting information. Trade school expansion is often touted as a reasonable alternative to pushing more people into the higher education pipeline. To that end, we should seek to highlight and study which trades are actually worth pursuing from an economic perspective.
- snegu 11y agoThere are still plenty of traditional liberal arts colleges in that group. For my alma mater (Oberlin College) only 52% of students are earning more than high school graduates. Pretty sad.
- learc83 11y agoThat's true, but that's exactly the rhetorical trick they used to make their point seem stronger than it is. They grouped barber colleges with 4 year schools to make the overall statistics look worse. Then they combine that with anecdotes about a few poorly performing 4 year schools. To you're point about Oberlin--the data isn't separated by major, and from Oberlin's website they emphasize college and conservatory of music. It's not surprising that musicians aren't making a lot of money.
- CydeWeys 11y agoThe information they're using is also based on tax returns, and musicians are way more likely to not report their full earnings than, e.g., someone who works for a company and gets paid salary with normal withholdings. Unless you're a huge touring musician playing to thousands, you're usually getting paid in cash or checks that are below the 1099 requirement level.
- mkhpalm 11y agoAre people finally starting to ask where the DoE got its earnings numbers to increase student loan tuition caps, the resulting tuition hikes across the board, explosion in the private education market, and the zero risk (except to the tax payers) student loan interest income keg party?
- Namrog84 11y agoAnyone else find that 5 page slider of text just awful. I can only ask but WHY? Do people who make websites nowadays hate people and want to see the world(wide web) burn?
- jdmaurer 11y agoWell it is a .gov... they have never been known for their beautiful UX :P
- wslack 11y agoWe are trying to change that; I'm curious what else would have been a better choice for presenting that info: https://medium.com/@USDigitalService/under-the-hood-building-a-new-college-scorecard-with-students-cbcf21a745fc https://medium.com/@USDigitalService/under-the-hood-building...
- jdmaurer 11y agoThey have gotten a LOT better in the past few years, that's for sure.
- striking 11y agoI don't think it's that bad. It's a nice way for people to be able to read more content from the insights if they'd like, while not using a lot of vertical space on the page for those who don't want to read it. It only uses enough space to give the viewer an opportunity to read it.
- etep 11y agoI was thinking the opposite: finally a .gov website that looks good and is easy to use. Who cares if their exact design choices aren't your particular favorite. This page is much better than the average IRS web page. So the real question is: why can't the .gov web pages that really matter get up to speed?
- jdmaurer 11y agoI think the worth of a college education varies so much from person to person, as well as field to field. If you are becoming a doctor, going to college is 100% necessary for obvious reasons. But for a programmer, it may not be, depending on the person. More than helping you learn how to code, a college education helps you learn HOW to learn how to to code. You won't get much useful experience until you are in an internship or doing actual work in the field learning from people that are better than you. You can spend forever on theories, but it will never actually get you anywhere unless you put it to use. For the people that need to learn how to learn, the price of college can be worth it. For others, it can be a waste of time and a LOT of money.
- tanderson92 11y agoNot so; medical schools are somewhat unique in only requiring certain college coursework. One can complete a medical degree whilst never finishing a bachelors degree. The most prominent example of this is the Kentucky Senator Dr. Paul who graduated from Duke with an M.D. and has no bachelors degree.
- ZanyProgrammer 11y agoThat's not very common-its very much a corner case.
- sachingulaya 11y agoSons and daughters of political figures tend to be the ONLY ones to be afforded that. Every few years I hear of a senator's kid getting in w/o MCAT scores or some other requirements skirting.
- jdmaurer 11y agoWell I use the term "going to college" loosely, it can be applied to getting any kind of degree (whether it's an MD or a bachelors) vs. self-learning, which is not pursuing a degree at all.
- vacri 11y ago
- solidangle 11y agoI really do wonder how much of these gaps can be attributed to the universities themselves. Elite universities are more likely to attract successful and motivated and thus will "produce" more successful graduates than other universities. No name state colleges are more likely to attract the less successful high school students and thus they will likely produce less successful graduates. I bet there is nearly as much correlation between SAT scores and pay as the eliteness of the attended university and pay.
- bd 11y agoYup, selection effect bias. There was a long term study on this (sorry no link, I don't remember exact details, just that it was pretty solid, could have been famous Terman study [1] or something similar). People who were admitted to elite universities but for whichever random reasons ended up not going there ended up being as successful as their cohort peers who did attend elite institutions. What mattered was "good enough for Ivy League" not Ivy League education itself. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_Studies_of_Genius https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_Studies_of_Genius
- SilasX 11y ago... it would really suck if the pro-education policies if numerous countries were all based in a misunderstanding of why education is correlated with success. (To put it mildly.)
- plonh 11y agoPro-Education is different from pro-collehe, but yes. And when there is only room for say 10% of the population to succeed , making 100% of the population meet today's arbitrary selection criteria will only serve to usher in new selection criteria.
- VLM 11y agoThe ratio of income inequality is immensely higher than the ratio of tuition cost, which is at least kind of interesting. Also the education bubble is economically sustainable if and only if the population is selected to be elite ivies only. A nation where nobody makes over $10/hr unless they're in the ivy aristocracy (therefore attending for free with substantial scholarships and aid) doesn't mix well with $60K/yr tuition for a non-elite school.
- racketracer 11y agoIs there a data source link? Can't find it anywhere and I'm just jumping from article to article when it highlights their data source -_-
- bsilvereagle 11y agohttps://collegescorecard.ed.gov/data/ https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/data/ It's climbing the front page right now.
- dvt 11y agoInteresting article. I graduated from (and interned) at UCLA while the need-based financial aid initiative was rolling out[1]. Obviously, it's the primary factor in minimizing student debt (it's obvious to see that students with well-to-do families have more financial support than poor ones). An issue I take is conflating public institutions with private ones. I remember UCLA & Berkeley admissions people always struggling to poach students that might attend Stanford/Caltech, but the issue is very complex. Huge endowments are just part of the story. It makes sense that a wealthy private school (Harvard/Princeton/etc.) has more extra-academic connections that help students get better jobs. Smaller class sizes also make a difference. I just think the article tries to talk about too many things and doesn't end up doing any of them justice. The gender stuff shoehorned at the end is a prime example. [1] http://www.ucla.edu/admission/affordability http://www.ucla.edu/admission/affordability
- Uroboric 11y agoI feel like a tremendous factor behind the numbers for middle-tier schools is simple geography. For example, I make more than double what many of my college friends who I consider at least equally as smart and motivated as I make, and it's pretty clear that the only reason is I chose to move to California whereas they stayed in Nevada. Colleges in sparsely populated areas will probably always have dramatically lower numbers given the tendency of graduates to stay close to home, regardless of the actual quality of education. The salary numbers should take the region of a former student's job into account in some way.
- kspaans 11y agoDoes your comparison with your friends take location into account? E.g. if you're in SF and they're in Reno, then expatistan[0] claims your costs are 57% higher. 0 - http://www.expatistan.com/cost-of-living/comparison/reno/san-francisco http://www.expatistan.com/cost-of-living/comparison/reno/san...?
- CydeWeys 11y agoCost of living is hard to account for; it's definitely not just some percentage multiplier. For instance, my cost of living went up by about $5K/year to move to Manhattan (rent went up by a lot, which was partially offset by no longer having transportation costs). But my salary went up by over $100K. Yet a cost of living calculator says that Manhattan is significantly more expensive, and that an, e.g., $200K salary is only "worth" $114K in low-cost areas like Reno, which practically speaking, isn't true for me at all. I'm saving more money per year than what my post-tax salary in Reno would be in its entirety, which itself is an unlikely situation because the Big 4 don't have offices in Reno and I suspect there aren't a huge number of well-compensated developer jobs there, even at the $160K or so level that would yield the same savings left over as a $200K job in NYC. You're always better off making a given salary in a higher CoL area than the equivalent salary in a lower CoL area, because not everything scales linearly with CoL (e.g. ordering goods off Amazon, or going on vacations), and your higher salary thus gets you more purchasing power on lots of goods and services.
- superuser2 11y agoHow is grad school factored in? At my school, a very large portion (~40%) of students go on to masters/PhD/law/MD right after graduation. This could deflate salary numbers compared to what those students make when they actually enter the workforce.
- linkydinkandyou 11y agoThis wouldn't be a concern of the Federal Government at all if they'd just stop funding student loans. And there would be a side-benefit of college costs dropping sharply. A win-win for everyone!
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y agoThat would lock poorer students out of higher education.
- linkydinkandyou 11y agoNo it wouldn't. Tuitions would plummet. And we can certainly make sure we have a good, inexpensive (or free!) community college system with wide access so everyone can get a start with higher education.
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago> No it wouldn't. Tuitions would plummet. To whatever the "middle class" can afford.
- remarkEon 11y agoI keep hearing this sentiment and I'll be honest I don't understand it. Do you think it's not the pervue of the federal government to encourage access to higher education? Or is your argument that if there were significantly more limited access to funding for higher education that schools would have no choice but to lower tuition? Edit: Realized I was probably straw-manning you with those questions. Sorry about that. Basically, could you elaborate on your position?
- SilasX 11y agoI'm pretty sure that's exactly what's under dispute: whther the funding actually improves access, or whether it just raises prices and debt loads all around while adding one more credential everyone has to get to take jobs that only needed high school in the 60s. By equating funding and access, you're defining away a critical dynamic.
- dang 11y agoThe data is at https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/data/ https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/data/, which was posted as https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10211838 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10211838. We merged that thread into this one since they are the same story from two angles. It's rather arbitrary which thread of the two to pick as primary. Arguably it should be the original source, but then the article gives more background, and people have linked to the original source in the thread. We can change it if people feel strongly about it.
- dovereconomics 11y agoBeyond questionable gaps, like gender gaps, it's blatant we're living under a modern caste system.
- andyidsinga 11y agowow! -- the 10 year earnings for 2 yr college "Los Angeles County College of Nursing and Allied Health" is almost as high as harvard. see: http://www.ed.gov/blog/2015/09/colleges-where-students-earn-high-salaries/ http://www.ed.gov/blog/2015/09/colleges-where-students-earn-... and http://www.ed.gov/blog/2015/09/schools-with-low-costs-and-high-incomes/ http://www.ed.gov/blog/2015/09/schools-with-low-costs-and-hi...
- plonh 11y agoIt is pretty obvious what most of LACCN grads are doing 10 years later. Harvard has a more economically diverse bunch of academics, authors, engineers, homemakers, and CEOs. Harvard's mean is higher than its medianm
- rawnlq 11y agoCarnegie Mellon has salary information for each major. For example, computer science majors: http://www.cmu.edu/career/salaries-and-destinations/2015-survey/scs.html http://www.cmu.edu/career/salaries-and-destinations/2015-sur... have a mean starting salary of $103,608 and median of $105,000. This doesn't include any stock, stock options or bonuses yet. Out of 192 students, 32 joined Google, 19 joined Facebook and 12 joined Microsoft. The data for MIT is very similar (even same median starting salary of $105,000 for EECS): https://gecd.mit.edu/sites/default/files/about/files/2014-gss-survey.pdf https://gecd.mit.edu/sites/default/files/about/files/2014-gs... So if you can just graduate in the top half of your class in at a good CS school you start with a 6 figure salary.
- falsestprophet 11y agoEasier said than done. For context fewer than 5% of students admitted to MIT scored below the 99th percentile on admissions tests.
- mahyarm 11y agoOr you can go to a normal college (like San Jose State), intern at apple or similar and make that six figure starting salary fairly quickly.
- rawnlq 11y agoYep, of course. Looking at SJSU's data http://www.sjsu.edu/careercenter/employers/salary-data/2014SalarySurveyReport2.pdf http://www.sjsu.edu/careercenter/employers/salary-data/2014S... it seems like their average starting salary for CS is 85k which isn't far off. EDIT: Since you mentioned internships, CMU also publish internship stats: http://www.cmu.edu/career/salaries-and-destinations/2014-survey/SCS%20One%20Pager%20Internships%202014.pdf http://www.cmu.edu/career/salaries-and-destinations/2014-sur...
- tstactplsignore 11y agoI think you must take these concepts into account if you're going to think about how to "fix" or "disrupt" education. 1. Most students who go to elite colleges pay for what they can afford. While there are exceptions and financial aid is not perfect, the college bubble and loan crisis is largely occurring at for-profit colleges, 3rd tier universities, and the smaller liberal arts college. 2. Most students who go to elite colleges are not attempting to optimize their future salary, but are positioning themselves to succeed and obtain prestige in science, law, medicine, politics, or academia. Many graduates of South Dakota School of Mines earn more than the POTUS, and salary optimization is not what many college applicants value. 3. You do not and should not go to college primarily to sit and learn in classrooms. You go for the peer connections, professor mentorship, intellectual resources, and industry connections. 4. Outside of technology, it is almost impossible to correctly learn and succeed in most intellectual fields without attending college. See: science, medicine, law, politics, literature, the arts. In technology, students who go to adequate universities and take advantage of the resources and connections offered there are merely at an enormous advantage. 5. It is impossible to talk about (a) elite universities (top ~20 schools), (b) "top 100" universities, (c) small elite liberal arts colleges and conservatories, (d) lower ranked state schools, and (e) for-profit and/or trade schools under the same umbrella of "education" and have a productive conversation. There are all widely different environments where widely different rules apply and different policies should be considered.
- hueving 11y ago>salary optimization is not what many college applicants value. Is there any source for this? It's always something I've wondered about but haven't seen anything concrete indicating one way or another.
- tstactplsignore 11y agoI don't know of any polls, I'm simply taking into account that fact that a large percentage of college students want to go into fields which do not have high 10-year salaries, such as science, academia, journalism, literature, and politics.
- deleted 11y ago
- Tycho 11y agoHas there been any sort of Marxist analysis about the middle class using the higher education system to entrench their advantage over the poor and therefore willingly going along with ridiculous tuition fees?
- Kalium 11y agoI'm sure there has been. Some Libertarians probably add to it with an analysis showing chunks of the working class using unions and professional licensing to further entrench their advantages. The net result I expect to be the same as every other Marxist and/or Libertarian analysis: no useful outcomes.
- imchillyb 11y agohttp://www.nbcnews.com/feature/in-plain-sight/great-unequalizer-higher-education-policy-making-inequality-worse-n107651 http://www.nbcnews.com/feature/in-plain-sight/great-unequali...
- steveklabnik 11y agoMarxists don't have a concept of the 'middle class', so not directly.
- plg 11y agoThis assumes college is what determines salary after college... Sure it might have some effect but I bet other factors are also v important e.g. Parent's income, family wealth, social network, personality, life goals, etc. Also perpetuates the myth that college is for job training. It's not. It's for education.
- adevine 11y ago> Also perpetuates the myth that college is for job training. It's not. It's for education. While I agree, the sheer cost of college, and the huge loans many take out to attend, mean that the vast majority are expecting a decent return on their sizable investment. After all, if you're really just concerned about getting an education, there are a lot cheaper ways to do it than college.
- schwabacher 11y agoThis is really exciting, and I think this shows that the government is starting to 'get' software development after the healthcare.gov fiasco. They released the data under an open source license and have the source of the website on github! It's built w/ Jekyll! https://github.com/18F/college-choice https://github.com/18F/college-choice If you asked me a year ago how likely I thought this was, I would have guessed something like 1%.
- djabatt 11y agoCollege isn't the only method to become educated. Going in debt for on College lark is a social acceptable way to spend money, but it isn't the only way to win. If you know what you want to do chase then chase all methods to get trained. Otherwise spend some time traveling the world to figure your life and then consider spending $200K ~ $400K on college education. Don't waster your time on these for profit degree mills. Their product sucks and no employer cares you got a purchased a degree from Phoenix College
- azinman2 11y agoGiven the point about program : tuition I wonder if different majors should be asked different tuitions. Bio/cs/things that cost more and have more earning potential could charge a higher price than the English lit majors.
- jongraehl 11y ago"Mrs. degree" assortative mating (+ field of study preferences) make the 'females in college X' implication muddier, but overall it's good to encourage people to look at expected outcomes before opting into $100k debt. That is, a rational woman would look at expected earnings including child support + alimony, and insist on figures stratified by field of study (so she can choose where + what to study).
- jeffdavis 11y agoWe believe that we should cram as many people in the country as possible through our current conception of a university. There are several reasons people want to believe that's a good idea: * They believe that someone with a B.A., B.S., etc. is a higher class person than one without * They believe that putting everyone through the system will bring everyone up to that higher class, thus removing the negative effects of classes in society * They believe that it's the only path to education * They believe it's somehow immune from various biases, corruption, infighting, trend-following, etc. * They believe it's a diverse forum for the free exchange of ideas, and that all reasonable ideas are given their due consideration * They believe that "good colleges" are good and lead to success because of the quality of the education and the insight of the professors Unfortunately, none of those are true. Until we admit that, we can't fix the problem. When we do admit those things, we can acknowledge that: * A person who reads a lot of books and participates in discussions with others who have different opinions has as much claim on "good citizenship" as anyone else (college or not), and it doesn't take tens of thousands of dollars * Language, history, and art classes can be quite effective by teaching language, history, and art; and not spending the entire time on politics * Vocational schools are probably the right place for a lot of things, including programming and software engineering (though a university might be the right place for Comp. Sci.). When we figure out software engineering, perhaps it belongs in the university, but for now it's not an established discipline. * If we really want people to get a more academic education, giving them a loan and demanding them to pay it back regardless of bankruptcy makes little sense. Maybe that makes sense for vocational school, where it's more of a straight investment. But for a purely academic education, it's probably a lot cheaper to provide it anyway, so lots of financial approaches could work. * "Good colleges" are good because of the kind and quality of students that they concentrate in one place -- in other words, a social club built around an academic theme. (This is really the one that makes it obvious that bringing more people into the university system won't have the same results as the ones who are in it now.)