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The thing that irks me about this the most is how it's the people who were doing exactly what they were told that got hurt the most. The good kids who went to t

The thing that irks me about this the most is how it's the people who were doing exactly what they were told that got hurt the most. The good kids who went to the best school they could get in to, studied whatever they were interested in, and if that thing happened to be literature or women's studies or a wide number of other things you might just spend the next 20 years figuring out how to live with debt you can't pay off. I was brought up under the faulty assumption that if you graduate from college you get a promising career, so pay whatever that takes. Full stop. My entire generation was. Not one teacher or counselor or advisor ever mentioned anything about cost relative to career prospects, and now it's my smart friends who are getting kicked in the teeth, while the kids like me who didn't listen and dropped out and played with computers are richly rewarded. I can't even count the number of friends with six figures of student debt and no career on both hands. I think Peter Thiel was right: for some time Americans believed in a college education so fully, so completely that we ignored the cost, even as it skyrocketed. Couple that with federally-backed loans, and no one even considered the risk. 100% of the risk was put on 18-year-old kids, many of whom had never seen a day in the workforce, paid a bill, or had a job. A lot of people will make it out unscathed, but for those that don't we lived through (or are living in) a giant secondary education bubble. But this time it's one that you can't bankrupt your way out of.

jMyles 10y ago
I'm part of that generation and made that mistake for sure. > The thing that irks me about this the most is how it's the people who were doing exactly what they were told that got hurt the most. The takeaway here is, in part: don't do something just because you're told to. If our generation stops doing what we're told (which seems to be the case), then this will be a small price.
- austenallred 10y ago
  Agreed, though if the incentives weren't so misaligned it wouldn't doom you to 20-30 years of struggle if/when you didn't think for yourself. For example, if the loans weren't backed by Uncle Sam there would be some threshold at which the loan providers would say "OK people studying this aren't getting jobs." Or if the universities that were promising careers had their feet held to the fire somehow before it had to reach ITT Tech billions of dollars. I've been thinking a lot about a model in which education is extended as credit. If students paid back a percentage of income how would that change colleges? I don't have all of the answers, and bootstrapping that kind of thing is rough, but I'm trying a few experiments along those lines that could be very interesting at scale.
- kpwags 10y ago
  I generally agree that you should think about what you're doing even if you're told to do so. That said, for someone 18 years old without a lot of life experience, when you're being told to go to college, that you need a college degree to succeed by just about everyone, and being bombarded from all sides with that message...might be a little difficult to really think otherwise. I'm fortunate that I went into a good field and didn't come out with too much debt, but I don't even want to think of what my family would have said if I questioned the need for college my senior year of high school.
- bluedino 10y ago
  Didn't people try placing the blame on that during the last housing bubble? "You're throwing money away renting, buy a house! The value will only go up!"
- wu-ikkyu 10y ago
  >The takeaway here is, in part: don't do something just because you're told to. Perhaps children shouldn't go to school at all then, seeing as how the mantra of the classroom is sit down, shut up, and do what you're told or else you are likely to be labeled with a mental disorder and drugged with amphetamines.
- maxxxxx 10y ago
  How is someone 18 years old supposed to figure out what to do? At that age I had no idea how the workplace works or how to get a career, don't event talk about a career I like. Some people have parents with insight or they just have luck but without guidance what do you do?
  - jMyles 10y ago
    I think that 18 year-olds today are quite a lot more sophisticated than I was at 18. But yeah, it's tough; you need to survey multiple sources.
    - maxxxxx 10y ago
      With all the sources telling you different things?
  - randomdata 10y ago
    Growing up on the farm, I had more than a decade of workplace experience, marketable skills, and exposure to life lessons like learning how to learn by the age of 18. In fact, I started my current career when I was 17. To just start thinking about those things after the age of 18 is difficult to imagine. What I wonder is why we find it acceptable – desirable even – to shield children under the age of 18 from the reality they will face after that age? How did we reach a point where 18 year olds find themselves in your position? Historically, my experience would have been common. I think it is a travesty so many miss out in modern times. Learning about life has proven to not be a suitable replacement for engaging in life, in my opinion.
    - maxxxxx 10y ago
      I think they shouldn't be sheltered from learning but we also shouldn't rub it in when they make a mistake. With the high cost of college I would argue making mistakes has become much more expensive than it used to be.
      - randomdata 10y ago
pitt1980 10y ago
yeah, it was an expensive lesson in the downsides of uncritically accepting large scale social narratives
- rglover 10y ago
  Which, conveniently, most children and young adults are not taught (unless their parents are intelligent).
uiri 10y ago
How is "did exactly what they were told" different from "did not think for themselves" ? Any kind of large decision demands a cost-benefit analysis, including opportunity costs, time value of money, etc. The labour market does not change that much in 4-5 years (barring something like the 08-09 financial meltdown). It should be straightforward to check whether a degree is necessary in order to land a decent job - apply to those jobs without a degree and see what they say.
- austenallred 10y ago
  That's easy to say in retrospect. But when you're a naive and scared 18-year-old trying to navigate a life you don't understand you may not be thinking quite so clearly. For example I have one friend who was an immigrant. First generation college graduate, parents don't speak English, and his parents take home more working construction than he does. That wasn't what was sold to him, but he bears all of the risk and all of the responsibility. For those that aren't immigrants your most likely source is parents or counselors or advisors, nearly all of which were encouraging the same thing.
  - 67726e 10y ago
    You've just had "college is the only way" drilled into your head for the 13 years. You've been told and conditioned to understand that if you do not go to college, you will be flipping hamburgers for minimum wage. The people telling you this are your parents, your friends' parents, your teachers, your principals, your guidance counselors. All of these people are supposed to help you, right? Of course, you've also go to contend with the fact that it's culturally acceptable for your parents to toss you out on your ass the day you hit eighteen. So you're faced with the prospect of having to go it your own, at eighteen with no life experience and probably very little savings. There's probably very few jobs in the area, and it would be hard to live off them. Or you can just sign your name on a piece of paper and be whisked away to the mythical land of college. Who knows, you'll probably get to drink with your bros and get laid. Sounds like a great time? At a certain point this stuff stops being "think for yourself" and is just straight up indoctrination. Maybe you're lucky and your school district has some kind of alternative program for trades, or maybe JROTC and you figure out the military isn't a horrible option. For most? It's not even a consideration, it's college or a life of failure. I can't really blame a lot of folks for not realizing how shit things would be. They were brainwashed.
SketchySeaBeast 10y ago
I made that mistake as well. Did what people were telling me to do and it got me nowhere. Got a useless university degree in something I liked because I thought having a degree would help, and was told by everyone that I was too "gifted" not to get one. Found out it just makes you super pretentious at retail jobs while you struggle to pay off the debt. I managed to pay that debt off, and 5 years ago I figured out what I should actually do, went back to school yet again, and again I've spent the last 3 years again paying off the exact average amount of student loan debt in a job that seems to pay about $100k less than what the valley pays. Just payed off the last of my student debt in one big lump sum on Sunday. I was super aggressive paying off my loans and I'm so very thankful they are done. Now in my mid 30's, used to living like a pauper but entirely debt free, and I can finally start putting my money towards things that matter. I really wish I'd gotten good advice about where I should probably head a decade and a half ago, when I still had savings and a larger support network. I would have only had to go through this once, though I know I'm one of the lucky ones in that I've been able to pay it off at all. I'm not against student debt in general, schools unfortunately cost money, I just wish the guidance counselors talked about the ROI of particular degrees and pushed the trades and technical colleges harder. My ability to talk about the socioeconomic results of the black plague doesn't enhance my employability. Thankfully I figured out that SQL, Python, and C# does on my own.
- crusso 10y ago
  Did what people were telling me to do and it got me nowhere There will always be people who give you bad advice. I know it's cliche to beat up on the "everyone gets a trophy" mentality that has grown in dominance, but maybe this is a legitimate beef against it. If kids grow up thinking that there are no winners and losers, how do they learn to discriminate when it comes to important matters like college, degree, and career choices? I just wish the guidance counselors talked about the ROI of particular degrees My guidance counselor in the 1980's told me to stay at an in-state school in Louisiana with a recommendation, "Why are you applying to Georgia Tech? That's so far from home." I ignored her. She meant well, but I didn't trust her to tell me what was best for my future.
  - 10y ago
r_smart 10y ago
Perhaps one of the silver linings of growing up poor was that I, and my friends, were conscious of money, or its lack. I wanted to pursue a writing degree and knew I shouldn't spend a ton of money on it, so I stayed local and worked to mostly pay my way through my first degree. My friends went to fancier schools, but did it in pursuit of business degrees, looking to get a good return on their education. The point being, because we maybe understood money a little better, we made more practical decisions with regards to education. We certainly didn't get useful advice from our parents or school.
- ep103 10y ago
  You make a good point. Yet the entire time I'm reading it, the main thought going through my mind, is people shouldn't have to make choices like this about education. And definitely not in a democracy.
  - austenallred 10y ago
    100%. It's a broken system with misaligned incentives. The college doesn't have to care if you get a job, the loans are backed by the federal government so there's no risk there, and 100% of the risk is placed on the shoulders of the student. Even if we didn't have government sponsored education straight up, if any of the money involved were dependent upon a student's career success I believe we'd see a very different educational system.
    - crusso 10y ago
      Are you saying to get rid of the federal government backing of the loan? Let the banks making the loans sink or swim based upon the success of the students and their ability to pay it back?
      - austenallred 10y ago
        In my ideal world (I'm trying to start a company that will eventually do this, but hard for obvious reasons) college would be a place where you "just show up," you learn what you need to, then you pay back the school with a percentage of income. The percentage piece aligns incentives, because the school is now invested in you earning the highest income, and it's now in part the school's responsibility to make sure it's providing skills that are in-demand in the workforce. I also think a system like this would help a lot of the social divide; right now it's much more risky for poor people to go to college (or trade school), so many opt out. I'm obviously biased and could be wrong, it's just a problem that's been eating at me for a long time.
tboyd47 10y ago
It's more than just higher education. The previous generation was addicted to easy credit. They used it to enrich themselves and solve every single social problem. That trend will probably continue until millennials take their place running society. I really do think that will be the major shift in American society, way more than Trump.
revelation 10y ago
I fully agree, but this didn't just happen. Cost of college didn't simply explode. There were people on the other side that steered things such that costs would explode, loans would be readily available, people would land in debt they can never escape.
snarf21 10y ago
It is very unfortunate that this happened and was a perfect storm. Money for college loans became too easy and too lucrative and made the supply of college educated workers too large for the demand. This also happened at the same time that good paying non-college jobs started to decline, mostly to automation and partly to globalization. Then students said, "Well, I'll invest more and get a Masters" and then there were too many of them, plus all the extra debt. In a lot of verticals, the same has happened with the PhD. Software really is eating the world and we need to find a solution or it will eventually lead to revolt as people will have no other option. If someone isn't going to college for something medical or STEM, they shouldn't bother. Go learn a trade or start a small sole proprietor business while you live at home.
- lr4444lr 10y ago
  And as a corollary, the humanities that escape the downsizing can purge themselves of the downward drag of people who aren't cut out for college work, and raise their standards again.
refurb 10y ago
The good kids who went to the best school they could get in to, studied whatever they were interested in Huh, I went to college 10+ years ago and it was clear to me then that certain degrees meant a good paying job and some were dead ends. That's a shame if some students were led to believe something else.
ryandrake 10y ago
> The thing that irks me about this the most is how it's the people who were doing exactly what they were told that got hurt the most. The good kids who went to the best school they could get in to, studied whatever they were interested in, and if that thing happened to be literature or women's studies or a wide number of other things you might just spend the next 20 years figuring out how to live with debt you can't pay off. Are they REALLY telling kids nowadays to go major in whatever interested them? Because when I went to college (nineties), nobody told me to just go major in women's studies or medieval history. They were telling me, "Study medicine or engineering because that's the only way it'll be worth the cost." The "what does a liberal arts major say" joke was very much a thing back then, as I assume it is today, now that job prospects for anyone not in STEM are even bleaker than when I went to school. I don't think the guy who took out $100K in loans to study literature for 5 years was really doing exactly what they were told to do.
- austenallred 10y ago
  I graduated high school in 2008 and dropped out of college a few years later. I can honestly say not one person (other than my parents) ever recommended considering cost until after my Freshman year of college. The message that was pounded in again and again and again was "The best college at all costs." I'm pretty sure that's no longer the case - at least I hope so.
  - antisthenes 10y ago
    The classic case of "You can totally substitute being part of the capitalist class with education signaling!" Turns out you can not, at least not in America.
  - agalarza 10y ago
    Sorry if this is too personal, but did you think your parents were blowing hot air or something? This thread has been eye-opening from the perspective of all these comments who (apparently) had negligible guidance from a group of people (parents) who absolutely need to talk about debt to their kids. Maybe a silver lining in this topic is a generation of future parents who will have better conversations with their kids around going into debt for their college education.
swsieber 10y ago
Around the time my older sibling got into college, I remember that my parents attitude shifted from "enjoy high school, it's your youth" to "good grades = free money" (ie free tuition)... So I got lucky, but there's definitely an attitude that needs to be battled.
lr4444lr 10y ago
Beautifully said. As a follow-up question to your last sentence, do you have any thoughts on collateralization? Not so easy when the asset grown to pay back the debt is social/intellectual capital, but I think we could come up with creative solutions for certain degrees and borrower profiles.
- austenallred 10y ago
  I think it makes a lot of sense to have a simple model that predicts ability to repay and to not give out loans to people who won't be able to pay them back. But that would have to happen at a federal level, and imagine being the politician who pushes that through. Until that happens the universities won't care, so it would have to be a societal shift.
branchless 10y ago
Even if you understand that the system is broken you still have to play along. Suppose you are a regular student who wants a regular job in an office doing marketing or whatever. A huge % of candidates have degrees. So employees start demanding a degree. If your cv has no degree it goes in the bin. So you pay the piper. The supply of gov credit sets the price of courses. Hand over your labour.
bobbington 10y ago
I agree 100%. You succeed in life because of who you are, not because of what college makes you. College is a business and that's why there is so much advertising for it.
pc86 10y ago
> My entire generation was. No we weren't. I was definitely encouraged to go to college and study something I enjoyed that was marketable. My parents' first concern when I switched away from pre-med to Political Science was "how will you get a job?" I remember as a young child hearing my parents make a comment about a degree in "underwater basket-weaving" or similar. Getting a degree in a completely non-marketable skill has always negatively impacted your employability and your earning potential.
- colmvp 10y ago
  Yeah I don't like the generalizations people are making. It's clear each family had different levels of guidance and opinions on career choices. My parents were like yours. I chose not to go into STEM, and they were extremely worried, especially since the rise of the Internet, web startups, and smartphones were still in its infancy and I was basically studying things that hadn't gone into the mainstream yet. They were supportive but pretty darn skeptical they thought I was just messing around on a computer. I will say though, I go back and forth on the benefits of University. With the rise of online videos, detailed writeups from people in the field, and scanned copies of textbooks and answers, students who are driven might be able to achieve a high level of education without needing to enroll into a program that costs tens of thousands. I've learned more in a few months of self-training via MIT OpenCourseWare, Coursera, Udacity, Stanford (online materials), Khan Academy vs. one year of studying at my University many years ago. I was even listening to an interview by Ezra Klein with Kara Swisher, who mentioned she wouldn't recommend anyone going to journalism school these days as you can probably get by via practicing things on your own, becoming much b So I'm sort of in that camp, but on the other hand, her graduating from a University may have helped give her a slight edge in getting even entrance to a first internship/job. Likewise, earning a degree helped me get work visas and gave me access to people who eventually boosted my career and life opportunities.
jasode 10y ago
>, studied whatever they were interested in, and if that thing happened to be literature or women's studies As some sibling comments noted, this lackadaisical attitude of ignoring the ROI wasn't really true even 50 years ago. The meme "underwater basket weaving" as a synonym for "unmarketable degree" has been around since the 1960s.[1] Undoubtedly, the GenX, GenY, & Millenials going to college in 1990s & 2000s would have heard of it or similar memes. I believe I first heard of it from a monologue by comedian Jay Leno. (The "uwb" was originally a meme about a specific class but its meaning expanded to entire unmarketable degrees -- which is how mainstream press like NYT used it.[2]) It doesn't mean that "literature" or "women's studies" are unworthy academic subjects. If you're a trust fund baby, you can study whatever you want with no financial repercussions. (The whole philosophy about the pure joy of learning for learning's sake, etc.) However, if one takes out $30k+ in debt, the banks and USA government won't forgive your loan just because you got a degree with no market demand. Therefore, the job prospects of "B.A. in Communications" vs "B.A. in Accounting" has to affect the decision. [1] https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=underwater+basket+weaving&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cunderwater%20basket%20weaving%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=underwater+bas... [2] http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/23/arts/television/and-there-they-went-miss-america-hopefuls.html http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/23/arts/television/and-there-...
kamaal 10y ago
In India we chose academic streams purely on the basis future employment and career aspects. Taking huge loans to study things like literature was either considered a extreme luxury of the rich who wanted a degree just for the heck of it, or those people going to such sciences(Even commerce, accounting etc) are largely considered people who can't do tough things in life(a.k.a losers). Most people who study things like literature eventually have to go on and get another degree on top of it. Like say an MBA just to get a job. Never understood why people take huge loans to study non-STEM degrees.
epalmer 10y ago
Also there is a lack of youth going into the trades. Welding, electrical, plumbing, appliance repair etc. We have devalued those careers and now they just don't have enough apprentices. I'm a fan of what Mike Rowe is doing to raise awareness around the trades. http://profoundlydisconnected.com/foundation/ http://profoundlydisconnected.com/foundation/
jknoepfler 10y ago
This rings completely false to me. I went to college the first time in 2000. At that time, it was common knowledge that a liberal arts degree was a portal to either grad school, professional school (law mostly), or a low wage job, unless you distinguished yourself and made your own way. Law school was already flooded, and graduate schools were already overproducing phds. I chose to go into graduate school in philosophy, but along the way I also decided to not take out any debt, go to a public university, and to work my ass off. Why? Because I knew I couldn't afford debt of I didn't make it, and I knew I'd have to be summa cum laude with killer letters of recommendation to make it. How did I know all that? It seemed like common sense to me, but I probably did some research and talked to people. And of course my grandmother wanted to know how I was going to make a living. And I did make it, but I dropped out of the phd program, took out some loans, and got a freaking csci degree that paid the loans off with a signing bonus, because I discovered that I can't stand academia. Go figure. This was just... Common sense to me. Don't burn money to do something with low returns. Do burn money to get a valuable degree with returns. Above all, think. At the time, as now, I feel a great deal of contempt (an ugly, evil emotion to be sure) for people who take out massive debt to be molly-coddled at a private liberal arts college with a sticker price approaching MIT and no connection to the real world, or who fund their entire college degree with loans and no work (i worked through both degrees). I try to convert that into compassion or sympathy, but I haven't found success yet.
alistairSH 10y ago
That wasn't my experience. My parents flat-out told me I was going in-state or funding the difference myself (and with UVA, VT, and W&M available, that became a no-brainer). And counselors, while not actively discouraging applications to expensive private/out-of-state schools, did actively encourage scholarship and grant applications. Then, during college, my dad did repeatedly ask me my plans. And, when I decided I wanted to pursue a career in computer science, offered to pay an extra year of school so I could transfer to the engineering program (CS was part of the engineering school at UVA). I declined - at the time, the dot-com bubble had not burst, and if you could spell C++, you could find a job that paid $50k+ (in 1999 dollars) - and finished my degree in economics (minored in CS).
dionidium 10y ago
This is just simply not true. I know it makes people feel better, but it's nonsense. I started college in 1999. It was plainly obvious to me that some degrees had better prospects than others. People routinely made jokes about majors that had poor career prospects. Jokes about English majors asking if you want fries with that have been around for a long, long time. This information was available to everyone. If you didn't pay attention to it, then that's on you. This isn't a new discovery.
bwb 10y ago
Well said. A lot of people still believe that BS. I know people pushing their kids so hard and paying hundreds of thousands of dollars on education bills over a 4 year college. And, for what?
deleted 10y ago
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simonh 10y ago
But the important this is that, like with the US health insurance system, all the people completely ruined and destroyed by it had choice and weren't 'forced' into anything by nasty government regulation. After all, that's what really counts. Anyway, lots of insurance and finance companies made millions. That's got to count for something. What are you, some kind of communist?[/sarcasm]
NTDF9 10y ago
This is the biggest con our capitalist system pulls. People (especially kids) are not rational actors. Our current economic system just doesn't allow for mere emotional humans.

jMyles 10y ago

I'm part of that generation and made that mistake for sure. > The thing that irks me about this the most is how it's the people who were doing exactly what they were told that got hurt the most. The takeaway here is, in part: don't do something just because you're told to. If our generation stops doing what we're told (which seems to be the case), then this will be a small price.

austenallred 10y ago
Agreed, though if the incentives weren't so misaligned it wouldn't doom you to 20-30 years of struggle if/when you didn't think for yourself. For example, if the loans weren't backed by Uncle Sam there would be some threshold at which the loan providers would say "OK people studying this aren't getting jobs." Or if the universities that were promising careers had their feet held to the fire somehow before it had to reach ITT Tech billions of dollars. I've been thinking a lot about a model in which education is extended as credit. If students paid back a percentage of income how would that change colleges? I don't have all of the answers, and bootstrapping that kind of thing is rough, but I'm trying a few experiments along those lines that could be very interesting at scale.
kpwags 10y ago
I generally agree that you should think about what you're doing even if you're told to do so. That said, for someone 18 years old without a lot of life experience, when you're being told to go to college, that you need a college degree to succeed by just about everyone, and being bombarded from all sides with that message...might be a little difficult to really think otherwise. I'm fortunate that I went into a good field and didn't come out with too much debt, but I don't even want to think of what my family would have said if I questioned the need for college my senior year of high school.
bluedino 10y ago
Didn't people try placing the blame on that during the last housing bubble? "You're throwing money away renting, buy a house! The value will only go up!"
wu-ikkyu 10y ago
>The takeaway here is, in part: don't do something just because you're told to. Perhaps children shouldn't go to school at all then, seeing as how the mantra of the classroom is sit down, shut up, and do what you're told or else you are likely to be labeled with a mental disorder and drugged with amphetamines.
maxxxxx 10y ago
How is someone 18 years old supposed to figure out what to do? At that age I had no idea how the workplace works or how to get a career, don't event talk about a career I like. Some people have parents with insight or they just have luck but without guidance what do you do?
- jMyles 10y ago
  I think that 18 year-olds today are quite a lot more sophisticated than I was at 18. But yeah, it's tough; you need to survey multiple sources.
  - maxxxxx 10y ago
    With all the sources telling you different things?
- randomdata 10y ago
  Growing up on the farm, I had more than a decade of workplace experience, marketable skills, and exposure to life lessons like learning how to learn by the age of 18. In fact, I started my current career when I was 17. To just start thinking about those things after the age of 18 is difficult to imagine. What I wonder is why we find it acceptable – desirable even – to shield children under the age of 18 from the reality they will face after that age? How did we reach a point where 18 year olds find themselves in your position? Historically, my experience would have been common. I think it is a travesty so many miss out in modern times. Learning about life has proven to not be a suitable replacement for engaging in life, in my opinion.
  - maxxxxx 10y ago
    I think they shouldn't be sheltered from learning but we also shouldn't rub it in when they make a mistake. With the high cost of college I would argue making mistakes has become much more expensive than it used to be.
    - randomdata 10y ago

pitt1980 10y ago

yeah, it was an expensive lesson in the downsides of uncritically accepting large scale social narratives

rglover 10y ago
Which, conveniently, most children and young adults are not taught (unless their parents are intelligent).

uiri 10y ago

How is "did exactly what they were told" different from "did not think for themselves" ? Any kind of large decision demands a cost-benefit analysis, including opportunity costs, time value of money, etc. The labour market does not change that much in 4-5 years (barring something like the 08-09 financial meltdown). It should be straightforward to check whether a degree is necessary in order to land a decent job - apply to those jobs without a degree and see what they say.

austenallred 10y ago
That's easy to say in retrospect. But when you're a naive and scared 18-year-old trying to navigate a life you don't understand you may not be thinking quite so clearly. For example I have one friend who was an immigrant. First generation college graduate, parents don't speak English, and his parents take home more working construction than he does. That wasn't what was sold to him, but he bears all of the risk and all of the responsibility. For those that aren't immigrants your most likely source is parents or counselors or advisors, nearly all of which were encouraging the same thing.
- 67726e 10y ago
  You've just had "college is the only way" drilled into your head for the 13 years. You've been told and conditioned to understand that if you do not go to college, you will be flipping hamburgers for minimum wage. The people telling you this are your parents, your friends' parents, your teachers, your principals, your guidance counselors. All of these people are supposed to help you, right? Of course, you've also go to contend with the fact that it's culturally acceptable for your parents to toss you out on your ass the day you hit eighteen. So you're faced with the prospect of having to go it your own, at eighteen with no life experience and probably very little savings. There's probably very few jobs in the area, and it would be hard to live off them. Or you can just sign your name on a piece of paper and be whisked away to the mythical land of college. Who knows, you'll probably get to drink with your bros and get laid. Sounds like a great time? At a certain point this stuff stops being "think for yourself" and is just straight up indoctrination. Maybe you're lucky and your school district has some kind of alternative program for trades, or maybe JROTC and you figure out the military isn't a horrible option. For most? It's not even a consideration, it's college or a life of failure. I can't really blame a lot of folks for not realizing how shit things would be. They were brainwashed.

SketchySeaBeast 10y ago

I made that mistake as well. Did what people were telling me to do and it got me nowhere. Got a useless university degree in something I liked because I thought having a degree would help, and was told by everyone that I was too "gifted" not to get one. Found out it just makes you super pretentious at retail jobs while you struggle to pay off the debt. I managed to pay that debt off, and 5 years ago I figured out what I should actually do, went back to school yet again, and again I've spent the last 3 years again paying off the exact average amount of student loan debt in a job that seems to pay about $100k less than what the valley pays. Just payed off the last of my student debt in one big lump sum on Sunday. I was super aggressive paying off my loans and I'm so very thankful they are done. Now in my mid 30's, used to living like a pauper but entirely debt free, and I can finally start putting my money towards things that matter. I really wish I'd gotten good advice about where I should probably head a decade and a half ago, when I still had savings and a larger support network. I would have only had to go through this once, though I know I'm one of the lucky ones in that I've been able to pay it off at all. I'm not against student debt in general, schools unfortunately cost money, I just wish the guidance counselors talked about the ROI of particular degrees and pushed the trades and technical colleges harder. My ability to talk about the socioeconomic results of the black plague doesn't enhance my employability. Thankfully I figured out that SQL, Python, and C# does on my own.

crusso 10y ago
Did what people were telling me to do and it got me nowhere There will always be people who give you bad advice. I know it's cliche to beat up on the "everyone gets a trophy" mentality that has grown in dominance, but maybe this is a legitimate beef against it. If kids grow up thinking that there are no winners and losers, how do they learn to discriminate when it comes to important matters like college, degree, and career choices? I just wish the guidance counselors talked about the ROI of particular degrees My guidance counselor in the 1980's told me to stay at an in-state school in Louisiana with a recommendation, "Why are you applying to Georgia Tech? That's so far from home." I ignored her. She meant well, but I didn't trust her to tell me what was best for my future.
- 10y ago

r_smart 10y ago

Perhaps one of the silver linings of growing up poor was that I, and my friends, were conscious of money, or its lack. I wanted to pursue a writing degree and knew I shouldn't spend a ton of money on it, so I stayed local and worked to mostly pay my way through my first degree. My friends went to fancier schools, but did it in pursuit of business degrees, looking to get a good return on their education. The point being, because we maybe understood money a little better, we made more practical decisions with regards to education. We certainly didn't get useful advice from our parents or school.

ep103 10y ago
You make a good point. Yet the entire time I'm reading it, the main thought going through my mind, is people shouldn't have to make choices like this about education. And definitely not in a democracy.
- austenallred 10y ago
  100%. It's a broken system with misaligned incentives. The college doesn't have to care if you get a job, the loans are backed by the federal government so there's no risk there, and 100% of the risk is placed on the shoulders of the student. Even if we didn't have government sponsored education straight up, if any of the money involved were dependent upon a student's career success I believe we'd see a very different educational system.
  - crusso 10y ago
    Are you saying to get rid of the federal government backing of the loan? Let the banks making the loans sink or swim based upon the success of the students and their ability to pay it back?
    - austenallred 10y ago
      In my ideal world (I'm trying to start a company that will eventually do this, but hard for obvious reasons) college would be a place where you "just show up," you learn what you need to, then you pay back the school with a percentage of income. The percentage piece aligns incentives, because the school is now invested in you earning the highest income, and it's now in part the school's responsibility to make sure it's providing skills that are in-demand in the workforce. I also think a system like this would help a lot of the social divide; right now it's much more risky for poor people to go to college (or trade school), so many opt out. I'm obviously biased and could be wrong, it's just a problem that's been eating at me for a long time.

tboyd47 10y ago

It's more than just higher education. The previous generation was addicted to easy credit. They used it to enrich themselves and solve every single social problem. That trend will probably continue until millennials take their place running society. I really do think that will be the major shift in American society, way more than Trump.

revelation 10y ago

I fully agree, but this didn't just happen. Cost of college didn't simply explode. There were people on the other side that steered things such that costs would explode, loans would be readily available, people would land in debt they can never escape.

snarf21 10y ago

It is very unfortunate that this happened and was a perfect storm. Money for college loans became too easy and too lucrative and made the supply of college educated workers too large for the demand. This also happened at the same time that good paying non-college jobs started to decline, mostly to automation and partly to globalization. Then students said, "Well, I'll invest more and get a Masters" and then there were too many of them, plus all the extra debt. In a lot of verticals, the same has happened with the PhD. Software really is eating the world and we need to find a solution or it will eventually lead to revolt as people will have no other option. If someone isn't going to college for something medical or STEM, they shouldn't bother. Go learn a trade or start a small sole proprietor business while you live at home.

lr4444lr 10y ago
And as a corollary, the humanities that escape the downsizing can purge themselves of the downward drag of people who aren't cut out for college work, and raise their standards again.

refurb 10y ago

The good kids who went to the best school they could get in to, studied whatever they were interested in Huh, I went to college 10+ years ago and it was clear to me then that certain degrees meant a good paying job and some were dead ends. That's a shame if some students were led to believe something else.

ryandrake 10y ago

> The thing that irks me about this the most is how it's the people who were doing exactly what they were told that got hurt the most. The good kids who went to the best school they could get in to, studied whatever they were interested in, and if that thing happened to be literature or women's studies or a wide number of other things you might just spend the next 20 years figuring out how to live with debt you can't pay off. Are they REALLY telling kids nowadays to go major in whatever interested them? Because when I went to college (nineties), nobody told me to just go major in women's studies or medieval history. They were telling me, "Study medicine or engineering because that's the only way it'll be worth the cost." The "what does a liberal arts major say" joke was very much a thing back then, as I assume it is today, now that job prospects for anyone not in STEM are even bleaker than when I went to school. I don't think the guy who took out $100K in loans to study literature for 5 years was really doing exactly what they were told to do.

austenallred 10y ago
I graduated high school in 2008 and dropped out of college a few years later. I can honestly say not one person (other than my parents) ever recommended considering cost until after my Freshman year of college. The message that was pounded in again and again and again was "The best college at all costs." I'm pretty sure that's no longer the case - at least I hope so.
- antisthenes 10y ago
  The classic case of "You can totally substitute being part of the capitalist class with education signaling!" Turns out you can not, at least not in America.
- agalarza 10y ago
  Sorry if this is too personal, but did you think your parents were blowing hot air or something? This thread has been eye-opening from the perspective of all these comments who (apparently) had negligible guidance from a group of people (parents) who absolutely need to talk about debt to their kids. Maybe a silver lining in this topic is a generation of future parents who will have better conversations with their kids around going into debt for their college education.

swsieber 10y ago

Around the time my older sibling got into college, I remember that my parents attitude shifted from "enjoy high school, it's your youth" to "good grades = free money" (ie free tuition)... So I got lucky, but there's definitely an attitude that needs to be battled.

lr4444lr 10y ago

Beautifully said. As a follow-up question to your last sentence, do you have any thoughts on collateralization? Not so easy when the asset grown to pay back the debt is social/intellectual capital, but I think we could come up with creative solutions for certain degrees and borrower profiles.

austenallred 10y ago
I think it makes a lot of sense to have a simple model that predicts ability to repay and to not give out loans to people who won't be able to pay them back. But that would have to happen at a federal level, and imagine being the politician who pushes that through. Until that happens the universities won't care, so it would have to be a societal shift.

branchless 10y ago

Even if you understand that the system is broken you still have to play along. Suppose you are a regular student who wants a regular job in an office doing marketing or whatever. A huge % of candidates have degrees. So employees start demanding a degree. If your cv has no degree it goes in the bin. So you pay the piper. The supply of gov credit sets the price of courses. Hand over your labour.

bobbington 10y ago

I agree 100%. You succeed in life because of who you are, not because of what college makes you. College is a business and that's why there is so much advertising for it.

pc86 10y ago

> My entire generation was. No we weren't. I was definitely encouraged to go to college and study something I enjoyed that was marketable. My parents' first concern when I switched away from pre-med to Political Science was "how will you get a job?" I remember as a young child hearing my parents make a comment about a degree in "underwater basket-weaving" or similar. Getting a degree in a completely non-marketable skill has always negatively impacted your employability and your earning potential.

colmvp 10y ago
Yeah I don't like the generalizations people are making. It's clear each family had different levels of guidance and opinions on career choices. My parents were like yours. I chose not to go into STEM, and they were extremely worried, especially since the rise of the Internet, web startups, and smartphones were still in its infancy and I was basically studying things that hadn't gone into the mainstream yet. They were supportive but pretty darn skeptical they thought I was just messing around on a computer. I will say though, I go back and forth on the benefits of University. With the rise of online videos, detailed writeups from people in the field, and scanned copies of textbooks and answers, students who are driven might be able to achieve a high level of education without needing to enroll into a program that costs tens of thousands. I've learned more in a few months of self-training via MIT OpenCourseWare, Coursera, Udacity, Stanford (online materials), Khan Academy vs. one year of studying at my University many years ago. I was even listening to an interview by Ezra Klein with Kara Swisher, who mentioned she wouldn't recommend anyone going to journalism school these days as you can probably get by via practicing things on your own, becoming much b So I'm sort of in that camp, but on the other hand, her graduating from a University may have helped give her a slight edge in getting even entrance to a first internship/job. Likewise, earning a degree helped me get work visas and gave me access to people who eventually boosted my career and life opportunities.

jasode 10y ago

>, studied whatever they were interested in, and if that thing happened to be literature or women's studies As some sibling comments noted, this lackadaisical attitude of ignoring the ROI wasn't really true even 50 years ago. The meme "underwater basket weaving" as a synonym for "unmarketable degree" has been around since the 1960s.[1] Undoubtedly, the GenX, GenY, & Millenials going to college in 1990s & 2000s would have heard of it or similar memes. I believe I first heard of it from a monologue by comedian Jay Leno. (The "uwb" was originally a meme about a specific class but its meaning expanded to entire unmarketable degrees -- which is how mainstream press like NYT used it.[2]) It doesn't mean that "literature" or "women's studies" are unworthy academic subjects. If you're a trust fund baby, you can study whatever you want with no financial repercussions. (The whole philosophy about the pure joy of learning for learning's sake, etc.) However, if one takes out $30k+ in debt, the banks and USA government won't forgive your loan just because you got a degree with no market demand. Therefore, the job prospects of "B.A. in Communications" vs "B.A. in Accounting" has to affect the decision. [1] https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=underwater+basket+weaving&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cunderwater%20basket%20weaving%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=underwater+bas... [2] http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/23/arts/television/and-there-they-went-miss-america-hopefuls.html http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/23/arts/television/and-there-...

kamaal 10y ago

In India we chose academic streams purely on the basis future employment and career aspects. Taking huge loans to study things like literature was either considered a extreme luxury of the rich who wanted a degree just for the heck of it, or those people going to such sciences(Even commerce, accounting etc) are largely considered people who can't do tough things in life(a.k.a losers). Most people who study things like literature eventually have to go on and get another degree on top of it. Like say an MBA just to get a job. Never understood why people take huge loans to study non-STEM degrees.

epalmer 10y ago

Also there is a lack of youth going into the trades. Welding, electrical, plumbing, appliance repair etc. We have devalued those careers and now they just don't have enough apprentices. I'm a fan of what Mike Rowe is doing to raise awareness around the trades. http://profoundlydisconnected.com/foundation/ http://profoundlydisconnected.com/foundation/

jknoepfler 10y ago

This rings completely false to me. I went to college the first time in 2000. At that time, it was common knowledge that a liberal arts degree was a portal to either grad school, professional school (law mostly), or a low wage job, unless you distinguished yourself and made your own way. Law school was already flooded, and graduate schools were already overproducing phds. I chose to go into graduate school in philosophy, but along the way I also decided to not take out any debt, go to a public university, and to work my ass off. Why? Because I knew I couldn't afford debt of I didn't make it, and I knew I'd have to be summa cum laude with killer letters of recommendation to make it. How did I know all that? It seemed like common sense to me, but I probably did some research and talked to people. And of course my grandmother wanted to know how I was going to make a living. And I did make it, but I dropped out of the phd program, took out some loans, and got a freaking csci degree that paid the loans off with a signing bonus, because I discovered that I can't stand academia. Go figure. This was just... Common sense to me. Don't burn money to do something with low returns. Do burn money to get a valuable degree with returns. Above all, think. At the time, as now, I feel a great deal of contempt (an ugly, evil emotion to be sure) for people who take out massive debt to be molly-coddled at a private liberal arts college with a sticker price approaching MIT and no connection to the real world, or who fund their entire college degree with loans and no work (i worked through both degrees). I try to convert that into compassion or sympathy, but I haven't found success yet.

alistairSH 10y ago

That wasn't my experience. My parents flat-out told me I was going in-state or funding the difference myself (and with UVA, VT, and W&M available, that became a no-brainer). And counselors, while not actively discouraging applications to expensive private/out-of-state schools, did actively encourage scholarship and grant applications. Then, during college, my dad did repeatedly ask me my plans. And, when I decided I wanted to pursue a career in computer science, offered to pay an extra year of school so I could transfer to the engineering program (CS was part of the engineering school at UVA). I declined - at the time, the dot-com bubble had not burst, and if you could spell C++, you could find a job that paid $50k+ (in 1999 dollars) - and finished my degree in economics (minored in CS).

dionidium 10y ago

This is just simply not true. I know it makes people feel better, but it's nonsense. I started college in 1999. It was plainly obvious to me that some degrees had better prospects than others. People routinely made jokes about majors that had poor career prospects. Jokes about English majors asking if you want fries with that have been around for a long, long time. This information was available to everyone. If you didn't pay attention to it, then that's on you. This isn't a new discovery.

bwb 10y ago

Well said. A lot of people still believe that BS. I know people pushing their kids so hard and paying hundreds of thousands of dollars on education bills over a 4 year college. And, for what?

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simonh 10y ago

But the important this is that, like with the US health insurance system, all the people completely ruined and destroyed by it had choice and weren't 'forced' into anything by nasty government regulation. After all, that's what really counts. Anyway, lots of insurance and finance companies made millions. That's got to count for something. What are you, some kind of communist?[/sarcasm]

NTDF9 10y ago

This is the biggest con our capitalist system pulls. People (especially kids) are not rational actors. Our current economic system just doesn't allow for mere emotional humans.