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http://money.cnn.com/2016/10/18/pf/college/average-student-loan-debt/ http://money.cnn.com/2016/10/18/pf/college/average-student-l... Average debt for 2015 gra

http://money.cnn.com/2016/10/18/pf/college/average-student-loan-debt/ http://money.cnn.com/2016/10/18/pf/college/average-student-l... Average debt for 2015 grads is 30k. That is not a low end car. > And "prove you can stick to a goal" being a massive increase in lifetime earnings over those without a college degree. Going to college is not the only way you can prove you stick to a goal, which according to the OP, is the only purpose of college. This is an immense waste of resources, all so that a company can take a little less risk when hiring someone, if at all. And college is such a business today that academic integrity is an afterthought, the degree is continually losing its value. > I can't be the only person who sees how fair and progressive this is? It's a wonderful reflection on our society. There is no need for sarcasm here. Either way, it doesn't follow from your argument that it is fair and progressive.

merpnderp 10y ago
It took just a few moments to find out if $30K is actually fair and progressive. College grads average around $30K more per year in compensation than high school grads. These degrees are already highly subsidized. So tax payers, including those with only high school degrees, are paying for people to become educated and thus make more money, with the hope that some sort of trickle down economics will make it better for those without college degrees. I'd tongue in cheek call this highly regressive.
- ntsplnkv2 10y ago
  > It took just a few moments to find out if $30K is actually fair and progressive. This is a false comparison. 30k is average DEBT they have-not the total cost of college education. Add many more tens of thousands-just so a company can take a little less risk, according to OP. The reason we have subsidies is because businesses now want a degree, for no good reason, as evidenced by the OP. Because more people, who can't afford it, need college degrees, the government stepped in to provide that, with loans, which they make money on, and grants, which they hope to be paid for by future taxes. That doesn't account for all of the growth in tuition prices, rather, the demand does. Demand has skyrocketed because college grads make more. Since demand has skyrocketed, the supply of college grads has substantially increased-commoditizing the college degree, which benefits businesses because now they can pay less for a college grad. That's the bottom line. The problem is more nuanced than just cost and salary. The fact is to make good salary college wasn't necessary decades ago. Now it is. So before what you got for free, now costs tens of thousands of dollars. How that is "progressive" is foreign to me.
  - merpnderp 10y ago
    Funny, I just realized my error and came here to correct it and saw you'd already done it. Hah, thanks. And I sympathize with the point about jobs paying more in the past without a degree, but I believe that the premise of the article is also wrong - that college degree confer no benefit to the company other than proving individuals can grind through boring tasks. Although to be fair, I got a CS/Math degree in 2.5 years, and I don't know that I've held a job where I couldn't have learned most of the programming required in a few months on the job. And I've never needed a lick of the math I so painfully learned. So maybe jobs actually requiring degrees are fewer and farer between than I realized.

merpnderp 10y ago

It took just a few moments to find out if $30K is actually fair and progressive. College grads average around $30K more per year in compensation than high school grads. These degrees are already highly subsidized. So tax payers, including those with only high school degrees, are paying for people to become educated and thus make more money, with the hope that some sort of trickle down economics will make it better for those without college degrees. I'd tongue in cheek call this highly regressive.

ntsplnkv2 10y ago
> It took just a few moments to find out if $30K is actually fair and progressive. This is a false comparison. 30k is average DEBT they have-not the total cost of college education. Add many more tens of thousands-just so a company can take a little less risk, according to OP. The reason we have subsidies is because businesses now want a degree, for no good reason, as evidenced by the OP. Because more people, who can't afford it, need college degrees, the government stepped in to provide that, with loans, which they make money on, and grants, which they hope to be paid for by future taxes. That doesn't account for all of the growth in tuition prices, rather, the demand does. Demand has skyrocketed because college grads make more. Since demand has skyrocketed, the supply of college grads has substantially increased-commoditizing the college degree, which benefits businesses because now they can pay less for a college grad. That's the bottom line. The problem is more nuanced than just cost and salary. The fact is to make good salary college wasn't necessary decades ago. Now it is. So before what you got for free, now costs tens of thousands of dollars. How that is "progressive" is foreign to me.
- merpnderp 10y ago
  Funny, I just realized my error and came here to correct it and saw you'd already done it. Hah, thanks. And I sympathize with the point about jobs paying more in the past without a degree, but I believe that the premise of the article is also wrong - that college degree confer no benefit to the company other than proving individuals can grind through boring tasks. Although to be fair, I got a CS/Math degree in 2.5 years, and I don't know that I've held a job where I couldn't have learned most of the programming required in a few months on the job. And I've never needed a lick of the math I so painfully learned. So maybe jobs actually requiring degrees are fewer and farer between than I realized.