8 ms·

Is college worth the cost? Many recent graduates don’t think so

86 points by daegloe 11y ago

spike021 11y ago
This semester I have two "fun" professors. One always finishes class 25-30 minutes early- just completely stops lecturing for the day, not for questions or anything. Add up every single class he does it for the whole semester and the sum is probably worth about a third of the entire semester. That's quite a bit of money down the drain. A second professor that I have has openly stated he has "stolen" and only _slightly_ modified (his words, not mine) slides from some other member of faculty here (who I think got them from Stanford); the system we use for classwork/quizzes/etc. is from some other university and he didn't even know when we'd have our midterm because he hasn't even started to think about writing one yet since he "can't get it from anyone else and needs to write one" on his own (again, his words). The latter situation has been rather commonplace with many classes I've taken here for my degree. It's just not right. I feel like my time and money are being wasted, and rather than gaining valuable knowledge and experience, this is all rather just a detrimental experience in and of itself. No, it's not worth the cost. From what everyone has told me or everything I've read in the past, we need degrees otherwise the chance of landing a job (in my case software engineering) plummets and only some are lucky enough to be successful without one. And so here I am, losing out on more even than just money with not much to show for it.
- beachstartup 11y ago
  > this is all rather just a detrimental experience in and of itself. heck, that's nothing! wait until they lose one of your exams, or you write an essay that goes against a professor's political beliefs. that's when the real fun starts and you start making time/money cost benefit analyses with your own ethics! make a deal with the devil, or waste several thousands dollars and 10 weeks? ...then again, if that isn't real world experience, what is???
- bojo 11y ago
  Back when I was in university I had a professor consistently show up 15 minutes late to our 1 hour lectures, read their online slides verbatim with no embellishment to enhance our understanding, and took a numerous amount of lectures off to go skiing. When confronted about it, I was told that people passing the class with high scores are the ones who don't even show up and studied straight out of the book on their own time.
- spdionis 11y ago
  Btw, generally, I would not consider sharing teaching resources between professors a bad thing. I actually think it's great in most cases. Stolen might probably be a hard word, if the other member of the faculty agreed to give the slidesor simply didn't care.
- Matachines 11y ago
  Similar situation here: My discrete mathematics professor last year pretty much used everything from the MIT OCW Mathematics for Computer Science books. Homework, exams, lectures (even the jokes in the video lectures!).
seibelj 11y ago
Having a college degree sends a signal that you can dedicate yourself to education and follow through. I find employees with college degrees are better than those without, regardless of degree. I suggest getting a degree and putting in some hustle to get out with zero or little debt. Scholarship, side jobs, whatever it takes.
- hockeybias 11y ago
  Spot on.
- spike021 11y ago
  Side jobs are great and sadly not many students take advantage. I was fortunate enough to get an in-office campus job my freshman year that I'll finally be leaving now due to getting an offer to continue my summer internship part time. But the experience of working hard, learning new things (Apache webservers can in fact have very shoddy configurations and issues..), and earning money that can be spent toward tuition and other bills is invaluable.
- untilHellbanned 11y ago
  pay to show your dedication is messed up
  - seibelj 11y ago
    In America, higher education is not free, unlike high school. Our society will always make you pay, that is reality. The way to get around this is to get scholarships, which are not that hard to get provided you work hard and dedicate yourself in high school.
- brighton36 11y ago
  It could just as easily signal a lack of financial competency, and/or a lack of ability in teaching oneself. If you want to signal that you can follow through with 'something' - join the military or start a business.
- daegloe 11y ago
bithive123 11y ago
A good education is priceless. It's sad that apparently many people are dissatisfied with their college experiences, but I've always felt that if you went to a good school and feel that all you got out of it was debt and a diploma, maybe you are the problem.
- untilHellbanned 11y ago
  what part did the university contribute that was priceless?
  - AnimalMuppet 11y ago
    More: What part of what the university contributed was education? What part of what the university contributed was education that you could not have otherwise obtained? And the real problem: What part of the education, that you got from somewhere other than the university, could you prove to a potential employer that you actually had received?
- quanticle 11y ago
  A good education may be priceless, but the cost of a four year college degree, in monetary terms alone (let alone time) has exceeded that of a house in many parts of the United States. That's a huge opportunity cost, and I see no problem in asking whether the theoretically increased earning potential of a college degree outweighs that sacrifice.
- pmiller2 11y ago
  I got a good education to go with my debt and diploma. What I'm not particularly satisfied with is what kind of income the education and the diploma have given me relative to the debt.
- kajecounterhack 11y ago
  Maybe not. This outlook feels a bit blinded by privilege. If you're lower middle class and didn't get great scholarships, you have to choose between taking out a lot of debt or going to college and working to keep yourself in it. When you get out, if your grades were lower because you spent time working / it affected your grades, this may affect your chances at a job. Similarly, if you're poor and your high school education didn't prepare you as well as rich kids for college, this can happen. And if you were mislead in re market opportunities (this happens more than you might imagine), you may have chosen a field that happens to be not-very-lucrative / not many jobs are available. Again, this is more likely to happen to disadvantaged / underprivileged kids regardless of how hard working or smart they might be. Now you're in the real world, you have a hard time getting a job, and even though you learned a lot it doesn't feel appreciated or wanted by the market. So you feel that all you got was debt and a diploma, but not necessarily because you didn't take advantage of learning or growing as a person. And now you have no way to pay it off, so you feel trapped and hustled.
quanticle 11y ago
I'm frustrated by articles like these that lump all of "college" into one bucket, as if the variety of degrees that one can earn at any four year institution can be combined into a single undifferentiated mass. Is college worth the cost? The answer, as with so many things in life is, "It depends." If you go to college with a clear idea of what sorts of careers your degree is going to open up, and what the earnings potential of those careers are then college can definitely be worth it. Is an engineering degree worth the money? Given the numbers I've seen fly around whenever Hacker News talks about engineering and programmer salaries, I'd have hard time arguing no. Is a degree in, say, Art History worth it? I don't know. I don't know anything about the sorts of careers Art History majors get, and what the costs of an Art History degree are.
- jordanpg 11y ago
  Agreed. I would take this a step further, though. If the degree is simply a means to an end, a credential, a set of skills needed for some job, then I would submit that a live-in university is a grossly inefficient way to transmit those skills, in most cases. Something more akin to community college, or perhaps what Georgia Tech or Coursera, et al. are doing is more appropriate. If, on the other hand, the goal is to sharpen critical thinking, to learn how to solve difficult problems, to become more well-read, to become a writer, to debate ideas, and a host of other less tangible skills, then a university is called for. In either case, what the modern undergraduate university has become accomplishes neither. It is an obscenely expensive, grotesque, hyper-social playground with the occasional cookie-cutter class, with the exception of a smattering of upper-level classes. The university will only survive the next few years is if they return to their more austere roots and shed about 60% of the students and 80% of the staff in the process.
  - blisterpeanuts 11y ago
    Yes, you could hire a few professors, rent a few classrooms with chairs and whiteboards, and you have the essence of a university. No real need for all this bloat. Students could live at home and brown bag it for lunch.
randomname2 11y ago
Interesting quotes from the article: "Two thirds of students who graduated in the last nine years and whose debt matches or exceeds the national average do not believe their degree was worth the cost." Gallup’s executive director for education and workforce development Brandon Busteed speaking to the WSJ: “When you look at recent graduates with student loans it gets really ugly, really fast. If alumni don’t feel they’re getting their money’s worth, we risk this tidal wave of demand for higher education crashing down.” As Bill Ackman had warned: "When asked if he was concerned about bubbles forming in debt markets as central banks around the world continue to keep interest rates near zero, Ackman cited student loans as his biggest concern. “If you think about the trillion dollars of student loans we have outstanding, there’s no way students are going to pay it back,” Ackman said. He foresees a future where debt-laden students protest government officials, leading to some form of forgiveness. The $1.3 trillion in student loan debt outstanding in the U.S. has drawn parallel among some investors to the subprime mortgage bubble of the mid-t0-late 2000s."
- the_watcher 11y ago
  I really don't like the idea of loan forgiveness (despite being a potential beneficiary), but I really do expect there to be a tipping point soon.
  - Falkon1313 11y ago
    Even for predatory lending? Our culture basically tells kids that they have to do this or else. Preying on vulnerable kids who are just getting out on their own for the first time and do not have any experience dealing with finances on their own in the real world over long terms.
    - the_watcher 11y ago
      I understand the issues very, very well. I have student loans and grew up in the current generation. I'd benefit substantially. I don't like the idea of it (unless it came with compensation for those who did pay theirs off, even if it's less compensation - maybe some kind of tax credit?), but I agree that we're getting closer and closer to the point where the issues with forgiveness are simply overwhelmed.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
Ologn 11y ago
For college classes, we were told to study three hours outside the classroom for every hour inside the classroom. Rearranged over a four year period, that means I spent three years in the library or at home studying algorithms, data structures, theory of computation etc., as well as some calculus, biology, psychology. In this rearranged sense, I spent only one year in class, listening to lectures, talking to professors during office hours, talking with fellow students. Some people tell me they will study CS on their own. But to get to my level, they'll just have to spend the same three years as I did on my own studying algorithms, data structures, theory of computation etc. The only question is if that year of sitting in the classroom, talking to professors with doctorates and published papers, interacting with other students etc. is worth the time. As well as the money - a Bachelors at my decently ranked public college is currently $26k tuition plus about $4k for books etc. But you can get Pell grants, low interest government backed loans etc. It was slightly cheaper a few years ago. I think the year's work and $30k are worth it. Spread out over a 40 year career, it's less than one thousand a year. In terms of job opportunities, salaries etc. it's definitely worth it. One thing is students don't even know what they need to know. On my own I probably would have just dove into learning a language like C++ or Java, and then probably would have gotten more specific as I used the language I learned to implement things in some framework for that language. College went the other way - I learned a foundation of calculus, graph theory, theory of computation. Then on top of graph theory I learned data structures, on top of theory of computation I learned algorithms. So when I started using languages, I knew what was going on. Some of the caveats in the article should be obvious, but are worth being there. People should think twice about going to an expensive private school they and their parents can't afford, if they don't have any idea what they are going to do when they graduate. Some of the kids even in level 300 CS courses openly told me they were slacking, doing the minimum to pass. I'm not sure why they were even bothering going in the first place. Before I went to school, many job listings said "BSCS required". Even if they didn't, human resources would often interrogate me about what credits I had, what my college plans were etc. Once you get a BSCS, these things are no longer a problem. Plus you have a technical base that people without a degree who are doing CRUD PHP or Node.js do not have.
blisterpeanuts 11y ago
Higher education is important and must continue. The problem is that, in America, costs are out of control. Some blame it on the ease of obtaining student loans; some blame it on poor management, decrease in public funding, decrease in alumni donations, reduction in federal research grants. Probably it's a combination of all of the above. But when the average private school is trying to charge $50K+ per year for an undergraduate education, and the average public school is over $10K per year, something's seriously wrong. I would tighten up the student loan system, cap it at $10K per year, and then let the universities figure out how to roll back their ridiculous tuitions that have risen many times faster than has the cost of living. You could take an old warehouse, subdivide into about 10 lecture halls and classrooms, get a bunch of chairs and whiteboards, and hire 20 professors. That's in essence all a university should be. In this day and age, of course, you could add some online access, at a minimum stream the lectures in real time which costs almost nothing. These glitzy $100 million "student centers", multimillion dollar athletic facilities, on-campus coffee shops and restaurants, dorms, hordes of administrative officials, assistant deans, etc. pulling down six figure incomes when they don't even teach -- that's just lifestyle crap that has nothing to do with education (although, sports teams can sometimes bring in big bucks). It all costs money -- maintenance, insurance, expansion, lawyers, advertising, marketing -- money, money, money. That's what has done in the American university system. Some of these campuses have turned into towns-plus-shopping malls and have lost their original vision.
- the_watcher 11y ago
  Public schools in a lot of states are nowhere near that cheap anymore either. The UC system, for example, is comparable to private schools now.
- scintill76 11y ago
  > I would tighten up the student loan system, cap it at $10K per year, and then let the universities figure out how to roll back their ridiculous tuitions that have risen many times faster than has the cost of living. I suppose they'll be forced to when their student numbers dive because nobody can afford it anymore, but what happens in the meantime? Only the rich get to go to school? Or if the public funding tap gets shut off, are private lenders going to step in and just make it cost more? Lowering the "expectation" that going to school is what all good American youths do is another solution that gets proposed sometimes (though maybe at odds with your premise "higher education is important and must continue"), so maybe lower attendance rates is acceptable, but I wouldn't want it to fall along class lines, or any other uneven distribution of demographics. You could gradually step the funding down each year, but it seems like the steps would either be so small it would take generations to reform, or so big that it's basically as hard as doing it all at once.
intopieces 11y ago
How on earth are you going to know if an intangible investment like education will be "worth the cost" over your entire life time?
hackuser 11y ago
A few thoughts: 1) Do these graduates know what it's like to try to get by with a high school diploma? Think of the level of education you had when you graduated from high school. Regarding just jobs, the data is clear that people with college degrees earn more. 2) College educates you not just for your first job, but for a lifetime of jobs. And not just for careers, but for life - citzenship, family, community, and your own personal growth, understanding of the world, of ideas, and your well-being. To measure its value on the basis of early jobs is a mistake. They should have paid more attention in class. 3) The idea that you can have just as much knowledge without spending 4 years taught by experts, surrounded by peers, and utilizing the enormous capital facilities colleges provide, is hard to believe. 4) Perhaps college isn't something that should be priced by the market. It is of exceptional value - even if you just consider effects on lifetime income - much more than anyone pays.
- wavefunction 11y ago
  >>2) College educates you not just for your first job I agree largely with your points but I would point out that if #2 on your list is true in some regard, it's highly ineffective. People with college degrees start unnecessary wars. People with college degrees ruin economies with finance schemes designed for maximum personal profit over the interest in a healthy society. People with college degrees beat their partners and children. People with college degrees abuse substances, and they fall prey to the ravages of induced mental health issues and poor physical health choices like obesity or sedentary lifestyles. In addition I've found many Americans with college degrees to be incurious about the world outside their own life and often outright hostile to intellectualism. Not all people with college degrees are like this of course, but enough to make me think that if #2 is an intended and assumed function of post-secondary education then these institutions are not very effective in that mission when you compare the credentialed population with the rest of us. And yes, I have no college degree. Despite high-test scores, AP credit in math, sciences, history and English, sports and other activities I was only accepted to my State Schools' Engineering program out of my applications, and only begrudgingly, which meant I had to actually write a lett er to the Dean's office about how very very much I wanted to be an Engineer. When I got there I realized how much of the 'education' offered was ridiculous nonsense. I had to drop out after a year to attend to some family issues and was forced to enter the workforce immediately doing tech support and clawed my way into professional software development. It's been a struggle most of the time not having a degree I can simply point to, but that's been mostly due to having to overcome the biases of the credentialed versus those of us with no formal credentials. I consider myself incredibly fortunate in life though, as for example I'm composing this post from Kolkata after taking an amazing and profound trek through the Himalayas. None of my friends with college degrees have done this ;)
qrendel 11y ago
I regret going to college, and I'm fairly certain I wouldn't encourage my kids to do it unless they really wanted to... and had good scholarships to diminish the costs. If you compare the long-term earnings, lets say over 50 years, of taking all the money that would have been spent on college, and especially if you add private school tuition to that (which many parents would in order to get into a good college in the first place), depending on the exact numbers college can be an outright losing proposition. Some quick examples for investing your school tuition: $300,000 at 5% interest invested at 22 == $3,440,219.94 at age 62. $10,000 average private school tuition invested each year from 6 to 18 + $100,000 college tuition invested at 18, 5% interest rate == $6,472,837.02 at 62 vs $10,000 avg invested annually starting at 22, 5% interest == $2,312,827.95 at 62 $20,000 avg invested annually starting at 22, 5% interest == $4,625,655.91 at 62 Of course there's lots of ways to play with the numbers, and other considerations to take into account. Do you really, really want a specific career that requires a college degree, or do you just want a middle-class lifestyle? Is that career goal realistic, or will you just end up another depressed burnout? Plus most graduates won't be able to invest $20,000 per year starting at 22, that's highly optimistic, and most people who don't go to college won't have absolutely zero lifetime earnings either. The opportunity cost of time spent attending schools you don't enjoy versus doing other things with the "best years of your life" is another factor, too.
- wesleyy 11y ago
  that assumes you actually have 300k at 22 though; whereas most people need to take out interest free loans to afford the 300k
- crdoconnor 11y ago
  5% interest risk free is a pipe dream.
  - qrendel 11y ago
    Are college degrees risk free by any means? Especially since degrees now often confine you to a narrow career path compared to what was available for graduates in previous generations. But point taken - a more detailed analysis should consider the risk-adjusted returns for each path (college vs non-college).
darkmarmot 11y ago
I dropped out of college with all of my classes finished but lacking high school credits that I became retroactively deficient for... because I switched from Engineering to A&S. The only F in my life (generally straight-A student) was in Computer Science. Currently: architecting, setting, developing coding standards for a Fortune 100. Computer programming is one of the few academic careers in which you can succeed sans papers.
calinet6 11y ago
Give 'em 5 years, then ask. I had very little understanding of the importance of my college education the year after I graduated, but I think it's invaluable now.
- nsxwolf 11y ago
  I graduated 15 years ago. Still don't get it.
littletimmy 11y ago
In principle, this should not be a question. College is NOT something that should be looked upon as an "investment" requiring ROI. Sure enough, in civilized countries like Germany, or Sweden, or Denmark, college isn't thought off as a significant expense that requires ROI calculations because it is free. That's how it should be, given that the market does not understand the value of education. It is only in this corporate-run hyper-capitalistic country that we're having this ridiculous conversation. For US graduates, college may indeed not be "worth it".
- qrendel 11y ago
  Except that someone still has to pay for it, and unless the cost of college is trivial then that means society still has to make choices about whether the ROI for doing so is actually worth it. Resources spent giving people an education they won't actually need is money that could have been spent on other things like healthcare, disease research, or enriching their lives in other ways. The free college of other countries still comes with its own cost,; it's just hidden from the individual members of the public by being spread across the whole taxbase. If you want to learn and absorb knowledge there are many cheaper ways to do it, e.g. libraries or MOOCs. But that won't give you a special status signaling symbol (the degree) that you can use to get past HR departments into the hiring process. That creates positional externalities that are a huge expense for society beyond just enriching people's lives through knowledge and education.
  - littletimmy 11y ago
    The best solution is we have is to tax the rich and use that money to educate everyone else. That's who should pay for it: people who have too much. I think it is a mistake to assume that resources spent on giving people an education will be spent on healthcare or other stuff. What's most likely going to happen is that the relevant cut in public spending will be made into a tax cut.
  - Falkon1313 11y ago
    >Except that someone still has to pay for it, and unless the cost of college is trivial Compared to the price, the cost is trivial. If the price wasn't hyperinflated, it wouldn't be an issue. We see similar things in healthcare. "But someone has to pay for this $40 inhaler!" (Which only costs $1 in any other industrialized country.) What society needs to make choices about is whether the ROI of price-gouging everyone for things that we all agree that everyone needs is actually worth it. Resources spent giving rich people more money that they won't actually need is money that could have been spent on other things like healthcare, disease research, or enriching their lives in other ways. Like, for example, education.
mistermcgruff 11y ago
All I know is that I spent two years deep in abstract algebra and other proof-heavy classes, and it was some of the best training in rigor and thoughtfulness I've ever had. Wouldn't trade it for the world. But, then again, most recent grads weren't math majors. I think my university of 30k graduated about 15 math majors a year.
hindsightbias 11y ago
A college degree is the new high school diploma. The minimal level criteria for general labor/bagging groceries. The female:male gender gap in college is moving towards 60:40, people not getting married, not being able to afford to get married... we're going to need a war or something to straighten this out.
- mildbow 11y ago
  Good news: the US is currently at war with ISIS. Bad news: that hasn't helped for a while. I would wager it hasn't helped since the rise of the MIC. Note also: lots of general labor/bagging groceries people has diplomas. But that's just because pretty much everyone has a diploma. I would be extremely surprised if they thought they were actually using their degrees. It's a crap situation, and victim blaming doesn't help (not directed at you). We just happened to be lucky that we like STEM. I know I was lucky enough to find my passion before college, then follow it, which luckily just happened to be a booming field.
chubalub 11y ago
College is a scam. All you need is HN and a computer. Six figga nigga in no time!
mentos 11y ago
Steve Jobs on the cost of his college: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc&t=2m17s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc&t=2m17s

86 points by daegloe 11y ago

This semester I have two "fun" professors. One always finishes class 25-30 minutes early- just completely stops lecturing for the day, not for questions or anything. Add up every single class he does it for the whole semester and the sum is probably worth about a third of the entire semester. That's quite a bit of money down the drain. A second professor that I have has openly stated he has "stolen" and only _slightly_ modified (his words, not mine) slides from some other member of faculty here (who I think got them from Stanford); the system we use for classwork/quizzes/etc. is from some other university and he didn't even know when we'd have our midterm because he hasn't even started to think about writing one yet since he "can't get it from anyone else and needs to write one" on his own (again, his words). The latter situation has been rather commonplace with many classes I've taken here for my degree. It's just not right. I feel like my time and money are being wasted, and rather than gaining valuable knowledge and experience, this is all rather just a detrimental experience in and of itself. No, it's not worth the cost. From what everyone has told me or everything I've read in the past, we need degrees otherwise the chance of landing a job (in my case software engineering) plummets and only some are lucky enough to be successful without one. And so here I am, losing out on more even than just money with not much to show for it.

beachstartup 11y ago
> this is all rather just a detrimental experience in and of itself. heck, that's nothing! wait until they lose one of your exams, or you write an essay that goes against a professor's political beliefs. that's when the real fun starts and you start making time/money cost benefit analyses with your own ethics! make a deal with the devil, or waste several thousands dollars and 10 weeks? ...then again, if that isn't real world experience, what is???
bojo 11y ago
Back when I was in university I had a professor consistently show up 15 minutes late to our 1 hour lectures, read their online slides verbatim with no embellishment to enhance our understanding, and took a numerous amount of lectures off to go skiing. When confronted about it, I was told that people passing the class with high scores are the ones who don't even show up and studied straight out of the book on their own time.
spdionis 11y ago
Btw, generally, I would not consider sharing teaching resources between professors a bad thing. I actually think it's great in most cases. Stolen might probably be a hard word, if the other member of the faculty agreed to give the slidesor simply didn't care.
Matachines 11y ago
Similar situation here: My discrete mathematics professor last year pretty much used everything from the MIT OCW Mathematics for Computer Science books. Homework, exams, lectures (even the jokes in the video lectures!).

seibelj 11y ago

Having a college degree sends a signal that you can dedicate yourself to education and follow through. I find employees with college degrees are better than those without, regardless of degree. I suggest getting a degree and putting in some hustle to get out with zero or little debt. Scholarship, side jobs, whatever it takes.

hockeybias 11y ago
Spot on.
spike021 11y ago
Side jobs are great and sadly not many students take advantage. I was fortunate enough to get an in-office campus job my freshman year that I'll finally be leaving now due to getting an offer to continue my summer internship part time. But the experience of working hard, learning new things (Apache webservers can in fact have very shoddy configurations and issues..), and earning money that can be spent toward tuition and other bills is invaluable.
untilHellbanned 11y ago
pay to show your dedication is messed up
- seibelj 11y ago
  In America, higher education is not free, unlike high school. Our society will always make you pay, that is reality. The way to get around this is to get scholarships, which are not that hard to get provided you work hard and dedicate yourself in high school.
brighton36 11y ago
It could just as easily signal a lack of financial competency, and/or a lack of ability in teaching oneself. If you want to signal that you can follow through with 'something' - join the military or start a business.
daegloe 11y ago

bithive123 11y ago

A good education is priceless. It's sad that apparently many people are dissatisfied with their college experiences, but I've always felt that if you went to a good school and feel that all you got out of it was debt and a diploma, maybe you are the problem.

untilHellbanned 11y ago
what part did the university contribute that was priceless?
- AnimalMuppet 11y ago
  More: What part of what the university contributed was education? What part of what the university contributed was education that you could not have otherwise obtained? And the real problem: What part of the education, that you got from somewhere other than the university, could you prove to a potential employer that you actually had received?
quanticle 11y ago
A good education may be priceless, but the cost of a four year college degree, in monetary terms alone (let alone time) has exceeded that of a house in many parts of the United States. That's a huge opportunity cost, and I see no problem in asking whether the theoretically increased earning potential of a college degree outweighs that sacrifice.
pmiller2 11y ago
I got a good education to go with my debt and diploma. What I'm not particularly satisfied with is what kind of income the education and the diploma have given me relative to the debt.
kajecounterhack 11y ago
Maybe not. This outlook feels a bit blinded by privilege. If you're lower middle class and didn't get great scholarships, you have to choose between taking out a lot of debt or going to college and working to keep yourself in it. When you get out, if your grades were lower because you spent time working / it affected your grades, this may affect your chances at a job. Similarly, if you're poor and your high school education didn't prepare you as well as rich kids for college, this can happen. And if you were mislead in re market opportunities (this happens more than you might imagine), you may have chosen a field that happens to be not-very-lucrative / not many jobs are available. Again, this is more likely to happen to disadvantaged / underprivileged kids regardless of how hard working or smart they might be. Now you're in the real world, you have a hard time getting a job, and even though you learned a lot it doesn't feel appreciated or wanted by the market. So you feel that all you got was debt and a diploma, but not necessarily because you didn't take advantage of learning or growing as a person. And now you have no way to pay it off, so you feel trapped and hustled.

quanticle 11y ago

I'm frustrated by articles like these that lump all of "college" into one bucket, as if the variety of degrees that one can earn at any four year institution can be combined into a single undifferentiated mass. Is college worth the cost? The answer, as with so many things in life is, "It depends." If you go to college with a clear idea of what sorts of careers your degree is going to open up, and what the earnings potential of those careers are then college can definitely be worth it. Is an engineering degree worth the money? Given the numbers I've seen fly around whenever Hacker News talks about engineering and programmer salaries, I'd have hard time arguing no. Is a degree in, say, Art History worth it? I don't know. I don't know anything about the sorts of careers Art History majors get, and what the costs of an Art History degree are.

jordanpg 11y ago
Agreed. I would take this a step further, though. If the degree is simply a means to an end, a credential, a set of skills needed for some job, then I would submit that a live-in university is a grossly inefficient way to transmit those skills, in most cases. Something more akin to community college, or perhaps what Georgia Tech or Coursera, et al. are doing is more appropriate. If, on the other hand, the goal is to sharpen critical thinking, to learn how to solve difficult problems, to become more well-read, to become a writer, to debate ideas, and a host of other less tangible skills, then a university is called for. In either case, what the modern undergraduate university has become accomplishes neither. It is an obscenely expensive, grotesque, hyper-social playground with the occasional cookie-cutter class, with the exception of a smattering of upper-level classes. The university will only survive the next few years is if they return to their more austere roots and shed about 60% of the students and 80% of the staff in the process.
- blisterpeanuts 11y ago
  Yes, you could hire a few professors, rent a few classrooms with chairs and whiteboards, and you have the essence of a university. No real need for all this bloat. Students could live at home and brown bag it for lunch.

randomname2 11y ago

Interesting quotes from the article: "Two thirds of students who graduated in the last nine years and whose debt matches or exceeds the national average do not believe their degree was worth the cost." Gallup’s executive director for education and workforce development Brandon Busteed speaking to the WSJ: “When you look at recent graduates with student loans it gets really ugly, really fast. If alumni don’t feel they’re getting their money’s worth, we risk this tidal wave of demand for higher education crashing down.” As Bill Ackman had warned: "When asked if he was concerned about bubbles forming in debt markets as central banks around the world continue to keep interest rates near zero, Ackman cited student loans as his biggest concern. “If you think about the trillion dollars of student loans we have outstanding, there’s no way students are going to pay it back,” Ackman said. He foresees a future where debt-laden students protest government officials, leading to some form of forgiveness. The $1.3 trillion in student loan debt outstanding in the U.S. has drawn parallel among some investors to the subprime mortgage bubble of the mid-t0-late 2000s."

the_watcher 11y ago
I really don't like the idea of loan forgiveness (despite being a potential beneficiary), but I really do expect there to be a tipping point soon.
- Falkon1313 11y ago
  Even for predatory lending? Our culture basically tells kids that they have to do this or else. Preying on vulnerable kids who are just getting out on their own for the first time and do not have any experience dealing with finances on their own in the real world over long terms.
  - the_watcher 11y ago
    I understand the issues very, very well. I have student loans and grew up in the current generation. I'd benefit substantially. I don't like the idea of it (unless it came with compensation for those who did pay theirs off, even if it's less compensation - maybe some kind of tax credit?), but I agree that we're getting closer and closer to the point where the issues with forgiveness are simply overwhelmed.

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Ologn 11y ago

For college classes, we were told to study three hours outside the classroom for every hour inside the classroom. Rearranged over a four year period, that means I spent three years in the library or at home studying algorithms, data structures, theory of computation etc., as well as some calculus, biology, psychology. In this rearranged sense, I spent only one year in class, listening to lectures, talking to professors during office hours, talking with fellow students. Some people tell me they will study CS on their own. But to get to my level, they'll just have to spend the same three years as I did on my own studying algorithms, data structures, theory of computation etc. The only question is if that year of sitting in the classroom, talking to professors with doctorates and published papers, interacting with other students etc. is worth the time. As well as the money - a Bachelors at my decently ranked public college is currently $26k tuition plus about $4k for books etc. But you can get Pell grants, low interest government backed loans etc. It was slightly cheaper a few years ago. I think the year's work and $30k are worth it. Spread out over a 40 year career, it's less than one thousand a year. In terms of job opportunities, salaries etc. it's definitely worth it. One thing is students don't even know what they need to know. On my own I probably would have just dove into learning a language like C++ or Java, and then probably would have gotten more specific as I used the language I learned to implement things in some framework for that language. College went the other way - I learned a foundation of calculus, graph theory, theory of computation. Then on top of graph theory I learned data structures, on top of theory of computation I learned algorithms. So when I started using languages, I knew what was going on. Some of the caveats in the article should be obvious, but are worth being there. People should think twice about going to an expensive private school they and their parents can't afford, if they don't have any idea what they are going to do when they graduate. Some of the kids even in level 300 CS courses openly told me they were slacking, doing the minimum to pass. I'm not sure why they were even bothering going in the first place. Before I went to school, many job listings said "BSCS required". Even if they didn't, human resources would often interrogate me about what credits I had, what my college plans were etc. Once you get a BSCS, these things are no longer a problem. Plus you have a technical base that people without a degree who are doing CRUD PHP or Node.js do not have.

blisterpeanuts 11y ago

Higher education is important and must continue. The problem is that, in America, costs are out of control. Some blame it on the ease of obtaining student loans; some blame it on poor management, decrease in public funding, decrease in alumni donations, reduction in federal research grants. Probably it's a combination of all of the above. But when the average private school is trying to charge $50K+ per year for an undergraduate education, and the average public school is over $10K per year, something's seriously wrong. I would tighten up the student loan system, cap it at $10K per year, and then let the universities figure out how to roll back their ridiculous tuitions that have risen many times faster than has the cost of living. You could take an old warehouse, subdivide into about 10 lecture halls and classrooms, get a bunch of chairs and whiteboards, and hire 20 professors. That's in essence all a university should be. In this day and age, of course, you could add some online access, at a minimum stream the lectures in real time which costs almost nothing. These glitzy $100 million "student centers", multimillion dollar athletic facilities, on-campus coffee shops and restaurants, dorms, hordes of administrative officials, assistant deans, etc. pulling down six figure incomes when they don't even teach -- that's just lifestyle crap that has nothing to do with education (although, sports teams can sometimes bring in big bucks). It all costs money -- maintenance, insurance, expansion, lawyers, advertising, marketing -- money, money, money. That's what has done in the American university system. Some of these campuses have turned into towns-plus-shopping malls and have lost their original vision.

the_watcher 11y ago
Public schools in a lot of states are nowhere near that cheap anymore either. The UC system, for example, is comparable to private schools now.
scintill76 11y ago
> I would tighten up the student loan system, cap it at $10K per year, and then let the universities figure out how to roll back their ridiculous tuitions that have risen many times faster than has the cost of living. I suppose they'll be forced to when their student numbers dive because nobody can afford it anymore, but what happens in the meantime? Only the rich get to go to school? Or if the public funding tap gets shut off, are private lenders going to step in and just make it cost more? Lowering the "expectation" that going to school is what all good American youths do is another solution that gets proposed sometimes (though maybe at odds with your premise "higher education is important and must continue"), so maybe lower attendance rates is acceptable, but I wouldn't want it to fall along class lines, or any other uneven distribution of demographics. You could gradually step the funding down each year, but it seems like the steps would either be so small it would take generations to reform, or so big that it's basically as hard as doing it all at once.

intopieces 11y ago

How on earth are you going to know if an intangible investment like education will be "worth the cost" over your entire life time?

hackuser 11y ago

A few thoughts: 1) Do these graduates know what it's like to try to get by with a high school diploma? Think of the level of education you had when you graduated from high school. Regarding just jobs, the data is clear that people with college degrees earn more. 2) College educates you not just for your first job, but for a lifetime of jobs. And not just for careers, but for life - citzenship, family, community, and your own personal growth, understanding of the world, of ideas, and your well-being. To measure its value on the basis of early jobs is a mistake. They should have paid more attention in class. 3) The idea that you can have just as much knowledge without spending 4 years taught by experts, surrounded by peers, and utilizing the enormous capital facilities colleges provide, is hard to believe. 4) Perhaps college isn't something that should be priced by the market. It is of exceptional value - even if you just consider effects on lifetime income - much more than anyone pays.

wavefunction 11y ago
>>2) College educates you not just for your first job I agree largely with your points but I would point out that if #2 on your list is true in some regard, it's highly ineffective. People with college degrees start unnecessary wars. People with college degrees ruin economies with finance schemes designed for maximum personal profit over the interest in a healthy society. People with college degrees beat their partners and children. People with college degrees abuse substances, and they fall prey to the ravages of induced mental health issues and poor physical health choices like obesity or sedentary lifestyles. In addition I've found many Americans with college degrees to be incurious about the world outside their own life and often outright hostile to intellectualism. Not all people with college degrees are like this of course, but enough to make me think that if #2 is an intended and assumed function of post-secondary education then these institutions are not very effective in that mission when you compare the credentialed population with the rest of us. And yes, I have no college degree. Despite high-test scores, AP credit in math, sciences, history and English, sports and other activities I was only accepted to my State Schools' Engineering program out of my applications, and only begrudgingly, which meant I had to actually write a lett er to the Dean's office about how very very much I wanted to be an Engineer. When I got there I realized how much of the 'education' offered was ridiculous nonsense. I had to drop out after a year to attend to some family issues and was forced to enter the workforce immediately doing tech support and clawed my way into professional software development. It's been a struggle most of the time not having a degree I can simply point to, but that's been mostly due to having to overcome the biases of the credentialed versus those of us with no formal credentials. I consider myself incredibly fortunate in life though, as for example I'm composing this post from Kolkata after taking an amazing and profound trek through the Himalayas. None of my friends with college degrees have done this ;)

qrendel 11y ago

I regret going to college, and I'm fairly certain I wouldn't encourage my kids to do it unless they really wanted to... and had good scholarships to diminish the costs. If you compare the long-term earnings, lets say over 50 years, of taking all the money that would have been spent on college, and especially if you add private school tuition to that (which many parents would in order to get into a good college in the first place), depending on the exact numbers college can be an outright losing proposition. Some quick examples for investing your school tuition: $300,000 at 5% interest invested at 22 == $3,440,219.94 at age 62. $10,000 average private school tuition invested each year from 6 to 18 + $100,000 college tuition invested at 18, 5% interest rate == $6,472,837.02 at 62 vs $10,000 avg invested annually starting at 22, 5% interest == $2,312,827.95 at 62 $20,000 avg invested annually starting at 22, 5% interest == $4,625,655.91 at 62 Of course there's lots of ways to play with the numbers, and other considerations to take into account. Do you really, really want a specific career that requires a college degree, or do you just want a middle-class lifestyle? Is that career goal realistic, or will you just end up another depressed burnout? Plus most graduates won't be able to invest $20,000 per year starting at 22, that's highly optimistic, and most people who don't go to college won't have absolutely zero lifetime earnings either. The opportunity cost of time spent attending schools you don't enjoy versus doing other things with the "best years of your life" is another factor, too.

wesleyy 11y ago
that assumes you actually have 300k at 22 though; whereas most people need to take out interest free loans to afford the 300k
crdoconnor 11y ago
5% interest risk free is a pipe dream.
- qrendel 11y ago
  Are college degrees risk free by any means? Especially since degrees now often confine you to a narrow career path compared to what was available for graduates in previous generations. But point taken - a more detailed analysis should consider the risk-adjusted returns for each path (college vs non-college).

darkmarmot 11y ago

I dropped out of college with all of my classes finished but lacking high school credits that I became retroactively deficient for... because I switched from Engineering to A&S. The only F in my life (generally straight-A student) was in Computer Science. Currently: architecting, setting, developing coding standards for a Fortune 100. Computer programming is one of the few academic careers in which you can succeed sans papers.

calinet6 11y ago

Give 'em 5 years, then ask. I had very little understanding of the importance of my college education the year after I graduated, but I think it's invaluable now.

nsxwolf 11y ago
I graduated 15 years ago. Still don't get it.

littletimmy 11y ago

In principle, this should not be a question. College is NOT something that should be looked upon as an "investment" requiring ROI. Sure enough, in civilized countries like Germany, or Sweden, or Denmark, college isn't thought off as a significant expense that requires ROI calculations because it is free. That's how it should be, given that the market does not understand the value of education. It is only in this corporate-run hyper-capitalistic country that we're having this ridiculous conversation. For US graduates, college may indeed not be "worth it".

qrendel 11y ago
Except that someone still has to pay for it, and unless the cost of college is trivial then that means society still has to make choices about whether the ROI for doing so is actually worth it. Resources spent giving people an education they won't actually need is money that could have been spent on other things like healthcare, disease research, or enriching their lives in other ways. The free college of other countries still comes with its own cost,; it's just hidden from the individual members of the public by being spread across the whole taxbase. If you want to learn and absorb knowledge there are many cheaper ways to do it, e.g. libraries or MOOCs. But that won't give you a special status signaling symbol (the degree) that you can use to get past HR departments into the hiring process. That creates positional externalities that are a huge expense for society beyond just enriching people's lives through knowledge and education.
- littletimmy 11y ago
  The best solution is we have is to tax the rich and use that money to educate everyone else. That's who should pay for it: people who have too much. I think it is a mistake to assume that resources spent on giving people an education will be spent on healthcare or other stuff. What's most likely going to happen is that the relevant cut in public spending will be made into a tax cut.
- Falkon1313 11y ago
  >Except that someone still has to pay for it, and unless the cost of college is trivial Compared to the price, the cost is trivial. If the price wasn't hyperinflated, it wouldn't be an issue. We see similar things in healthcare. "But someone has to pay for this $40 inhaler!" (Which only costs $1 in any other industrialized country.) What society needs to make choices about is whether the ROI of price-gouging everyone for things that we all agree that everyone needs is actually worth it. Resources spent giving rich people more money that they won't actually need is money that could have been spent on other things like healthcare, disease research, or enriching their lives in other ways. Like, for example, education.

mistermcgruff 11y ago

All I know is that I spent two years deep in abstract algebra and other proof-heavy classes, and it was some of the best training in rigor and thoughtfulness I've ever had. Wouldn't trade it for the world. But, then again, most recent grads weren't math majors. I think my university of 30k graduated about 15 math majors a year.

hindsightbias 11y ago

A college degree is the new high school diploma. The minimal level criteria for general labor/bagging groceries. The female:male gender gap in college is moving towards 60:40, people not getting married, not being able to afford to get married... we're going to need a war or something to straighten this out.

mildbow 11y ago
Good news: the US is currently at war with ISIS. Bad news: that hasn't helped for a while. I would wager it hasn't helped since the rise of the MIC. Note also: lots of general labor/bagging groceries people has diplomas. But that's just because pretty much everyone has a diploma. I would be extremely surprised if they thought they were actually using their degrees. It's a crap situation, and victim blaming doesn't help (not directed at you). We just happened to be lucky that we like STEM. I know I was lucky enough to find my passion before college, then follow it, which luckily just happened to be a booming field.

chubalub 11y ago

College is a scam. All you need is HN and a computer. Six figga nigga in no time!

mentos 11y ago

Steve Jobs on the cost of his college: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc&t=2m17s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc&t=2m17s