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Where the overfishing analogy breaks down is that we have the power to provide enough fish. College doesn't have to be expensive. As little as 15 years ago it w

Where the overfishing analogy breaks down is that we have the power to provide enough fish. College doesn't have to be expensive. As little as 15 years ago it was quite possible to work your way through college and come out with manageable debt. Something else happened to balloon the cost of education in that time period. Perhaps the increased reliance on loans, cuts in financial aid to students and state assistance to universities, ballooning student services and administration costs, etc. I don't know. But it certainly seems like a problem that can be solved on the supply end. Which leads me to the other end of the equation, the job market. The distinction between selection and training isn't important to me as an employer. What I as an employer know is that college is a good shorthand for a variety of skills I feel are important. Knowledge testing doesn't cover those skills. It would likely encourage me to disregard entry level candidates in favor of ones with previous work experience or contacts I trust. Right now I'm fairly confident taking a flyer on a young person either in or recently graduated from college that interviews well, but that confidence would decrease without that knowledge and I don't have any shortage of candidates with work experience. I'm willing to explore new ways of evaluation, but I think over time college became optimized for putting out good white collar employees. And employers have become optimized to working with people that have a certain, homogeneous educational background. Before we cut that wire, we need to have the alternative evaluation pieces in place or the negative externalities, especially on young candidates, would be huge.

ThrustVectoring 10y ago
College costs are, IMO, entirely because student loans removed the need for colleges to compete on price. Regardless of cost and value, students could get loans to cover it. So in order to compete, institutions branched out into what's basically bling, with sports being a salient example. There's also a fundamental economic pressure from non-education productivity. It takes just as many man-hours to teach a class, but those man-hours would go further growing potatos or making widgets. I have a suspicion that the problem can't be supplied out of. Not everyone can have the nicest house in the neighborhood, no matter how many nice houses you build. It wasn't that long ago that high-school education or the equivalent was something that set you apart and ahead. Now it's just kind of an assumed requirement. I'm afraid that making an undergraduate degree ubiquitous would make a master's degree the new bachelor's. In some fields, this is already happening.
- stinkytaco 10y ago
  That's a fair enough point. You simply keep raising the bar for how much education people need. But I don't think that's a problem of job seeking or education, but of the economy in general. There are simply fewer things for people to do. I'm no Marxist, but it does seem glaringly obvious to me that since the industrial revolution we have made more things with machines, requiring fewer people. For a while increased consumerism meant we could re-purpose people into making new stuff, and when that was automated we could shuffle them into service jobs, but there's a cap on that. Increasingly, only the most qualified people will be able to do the fewer and fewer things there are to do. That's why college is so important. There's no chance without it. But I do think the supply can be solved. I think "everyone gets loans" oversimplify the issue because most institutions are state run, there isn't really much competition in the free-market sense of the word. Because the government controls the bulk of higher education in the US, we are in a better position to solve this problem than any other discussed. Part of it is to start supporting it again. Return grant programs and create real financial aid so people who need money can get it and people who don't aren't forced to take it.

ThrustVectoring 10y ago

College costs are, IMO, entirely because student loans removed the need for colleges to compete on price. Regardless of cost and value, students could get loans to cover it. So in order to compete, institutions branched out into what's basically bling, with sports being a salient example. There's also a fundamental economic pressure from non-education productivity. It takes just as many man-hours to teach a class, but those man-hours would go further growing potatos or making widgets. I have a suspicion that the problem can't be supplied out of. Not everyone can have the nicest house in the neighborhood, no matter how many nice houses you build. It wasn't that long ago that high-school education or the equivalent was something that set you apart and ahead. Now it's just kind of an assumed requirement. I'm afraid that making an undergraduate degree ubiquitous would make a master's degree the new bachelor's. In some fields, this is already happening.

stinkytaco 10y ago
That's a fair enough point. You simply keep raising the bar for how much education people need. But I don't think that's a problem of job seeking or education, but of the economy in general. There are simply fewer things for people to do. I'm no Marxist, but it does seem glaringly obvious to me that since the industrial revolution we have made more things with machines, requiring fewer people. For a while increased consumerism meant we could re-purpose people into making new stuff, and when that was automated we could shuffle them into service jobs, but there's a cap on that. Increasingly, only the most qualified people will be able to do the fewer and fewer things there are to do. That's why college is so important. There's no chance without it. But I do think the supply can be solved. I think "everyone gets loans" oversimplify the issue because most institutions are state run, there isn't really much competition in the free-market sense of the word. Because the government controls the bulk of higher education in the US, we are in a better position to solve this problem than any other discussed. Part of it is to start supporting it again. Return grant programs and create real financial aid so people who need money can get it and people who don't aren't forced to take it.