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> How is the market so broken? Student debt. Look at the housing market: in the 70s you could buy a house for much less because houses cost less because peopl

> How is the market so broken? Student debt. Look at the housing market: in the 70s you could buy a house for much less because houses cost less because people didn't have more money to overpay. With a thirty year explosion of the mortgage industry and the idea that anyone should qualify to own a home, suddenly consumers had extra money to outbid people on buying houses. This broadly increased property prices with no signs of slowing (unless the money runs out, as per '08). All of that debt is increasing people's ability to buy (raising demand, increasing prices) but not increasing their ability to pay (suggesting some kind of time limit). Now look at the education market: in the 70s, you could buy an education for much less because people didn't have more money to overpay. The cost of education was in line with normal market mechanisms. But with a thirty year explosion of student debt and the idea that everyone should go to college and qualify for loans if they can't pay for it, prices broadly increased. The problem is, for many, there is no alternative. "I'm the first one in my family to be able to go to college." "Not going to college makes it impossible to find a job." "I have to get an education." When "No thanks, that's crazy, I'll do something else" is not an option, prices are going to do crazy things. Perfect example being healthcare costs. I think "Don't go to college" is the best advice today. Learn to program early, start working as a freelancer when you're 18 and graduate from highschool. By the time your friends graduate from college with a bunch of student debt and can't find a job because they don't have job experience and employers want to hire people that know what they're doing, you'll be making and saving a lot more money freelancing with 4+ years of experience under your belt already. Experience is waaaaaay more valuable than degrees. Might as well get it early.

coldcode 9y ago
What a programmer centric view. 99+% of people are not programmers. You want to be in any other STEM job you need a university degree(s). Almost any reasonable paying job other than programmer require actual training and education.
- klibertp 9y ago
  > Almost any reasonable paying job other than programmer require actual training and education. Are you implying that you don't need skill and knowledge to program? Or that it's impossible to get skill and knowledge needed in "other reasonable paying jobs" mostly outside of formal education industry?
- technofire 9y ago
  > Almost any reasonable paying job other than programmer require actual training and education. Interesting; this contrasts with the claim of liberal arts graduates who maintain that simply being competent critical thinkers is all that's required for almost any job.
  - jogjayr 9y ago
    There's a big difference between having the skills for doing the job and having the credentials for getting the job.
- njarboe 9y ago
  This attitude is part of the college problem. How is having a job not training and education? Some jobs you can learn in a week but others, like programming, have plenty to learn for a lifetime. College should not be "actual training" for a job. More like a way to learn to have a better life, if you make the most of it.
- dave_sullivan 9y ago
  Play it out 20 years and: * 80% fewer lawyer jobs because algorithmic contracts will kill the rest of the lawyer jobs that e-doc review didn't kill already. The 20% that remain will be lawyers/programmers. * 80% fewer medical doctor jobs because all surgery will be done by robots because it's safer, radiology will be automated because it's more accurate, and most diagnoses will be automated through DNA analysis and readings from wearables. Doctors will need training in presenting (quite possibly bad news) results to patients and training to run the machines. The 20% that remain will be doctors/programmers. * 80% fewer jobs in "driving vehicles" or "packing things" (truckers, factory workers, Uber drivers) because self driving cars will be mature 20 years from now. * Restaurant jobs will still be around. But the cooking will be automated for 80% of the food sold in America. * Business process automation paired with private equity firms and competition from startups will automate away a surprising amount of managerial roles. * 80% fewer retail jobs because Amazon has helped make it so you can just walk in and pick something up and walk out and be charged for it, without any human involvement. 20 years is the difference between 1994 and 2014. I might be wrong about some of it, but I think people underestimate how much the job landscape is going to change and how important of a skill "programming" (which means a lot of different things) will be. Everyone should learn to program. And basic income, but that's a whole different can of worms.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > Almost any reasonable paying job other than programmer require actual training and education. Programming requires “training and education”, too. But for many jobs, especially if you have connections that let you bypass filters designed to winnow the applicant field down to a manageable number that throw out lots of otherwise-atrocious candidates, you can demonstrate that other than by the degree that is “expected” for the field. Computing is by no means unique in this respect (and the big players in computing are as much known for near-total exclusive preference for top schools as is the case in the worst of other fields.)
Chriky 9y ago
This explanation makes no sense, what you are describing is MORE money entering the system.
- gbacon 9y ago
  Money is not neutral. That is, increases in the supply of money and credit do not produce uniform increases in all prices. Otherwise counterfeiting would be a mere nuisance. More money entering an economy will certainly allow buyers to bid up prices (as with houses and college tuition). The question is which other prices are being bid up even more rapidly and which are remaining flat or declining on a relative basis. These sorts of problems are why both illicit and legalized counterfeiting are so pernicious.
vijayr 9y ago
I think "Don't go to college" is the best advice today. That only works in industries like software etc. If one wants to be a lawyer, doctor etc they have no choice but to go to college, right? Some American students are going abroad (Germany etc), that could be a short term option.
- sigstoat 9y ago
  considering the state of the legal job market, going to law school is its own brand of crazy, and certainly no ticket to wealth, as conventional wisdom would have it. and getting into medical school is basically luck of the draw; there are far more overqualified applicants than necessary. thinning that herd a bit isn't going to hurt.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > That only works in industries like software etc. If one wants to be a lawyer, doctor etc they have no choice but to go to college, right? For lawyers in some US jurisdictions, including California, no; California, for instance, requires general education of two years of college or “demonstrated equivalent intellectual achievement” prior to study of law, and several options for the study of law, including what amounts to apprenticeship in law office or judge's chambers. So traditional college or law school is not strictly required.
  - jogjayr 9y ago
    Except that all the top law firms hire exclusively from top law schools. And the legal field is generally oversupplied with lawyers so if you don't work at a top law firm you won't be making a great living for a long time.
    - dragonwriter 9y ago
      > Except that all the top law firms hire exclusively from top law schools The top law firms employ small percentage of employed lawyers. And not even a huge percentage of graduates of top law schools. And aren't even the kind of work some people going into law want to do. Confusing “what you need to get a job at a top law firm” with “what you need to be a lawyer” is like confusing “what you need to get a job at Google” with “what you need to be a programmer”. > And the legal field is generally oversupplied with lawyers so if you don't work at a top law firm you won't be making a great living for a long time. If you avoid undergraduate and law school debt (and especially if you are a paid employee instead of a paying student during your legal education), you can make a great living at a substantially lower salary than if you don't; and olif you do a legal apprenticeship, you come out with real-world experience most law students won't have (and quite often a job in the office you apprenticed in, if it was a law office and not a judges chambers.)
throwaway613834 9y ago
We don't even know if "don't go to college" is good advice for the long term (15+ years) in software engineering, let alone the fact that you're completely forgetting about other fields. Seems incredibly short-sighted to me.
- valuearb 9y ago
  Unless maybe you are going to a top 1% CS program, there is little need for a degree in software engineering. Even if you go to a top 1% school, it's unlikely you will be taught by anyone remotely as good as this guy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdAfILoJWcI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdAfILoJWcI And his lectures are available for free. If you get a degree, lots of what you learn will be outdated fast. The most important things you learn will be on the job actually making things.
  - throwaway613834 9y ago
    >> We don't even know if "don't go to college" is good advice for the long term (15+ years) in software engineering > Unless maybe you are going to a top 1% CS program, there is little need for a degree in software engineering. I think you missed what I just said. You say there "is" little need. But I'm not looking at the present. We still don't know if we do for the long-term. (Well, lots of people think they do, but they're only guessing, not going on evidence obviously.) Note that it's simply not true that people would learn the same material independently that they would learn in a classroom. Yes, it is theoretically possible, and some people can pull it off, but it's not at all universal or even common. A lot of people need the environment to learn better. Online lectures just don't cut it for everyone. So yes, "you need to go to college" can be true regardless of how good online lectures are, and we still don't know if what people get out of a CS degree will on average give them an advantage compared to those who don't get one in the longer term (though I don't really have statistics for the shorter term either).
  - turk184 9y ago
    I grew up lower middle class, but because of where I went to school and who I met along the way, I'm quite wealthy now. Things in life don't always play out linearly. Just sayin'.
anonacct37 9y ago
> The problem is, for many, there is no alternative. "I'm the first one in my family to be able to go to college." "Not going to college makes it impossible to find a job." "I have to get an education." When "No thanks, that's crazy, I'll do something else" is not an option, prices are going to do crazy things. Perfect example being healthcare costs. That's not always true. Most people seem to think they "need" a car, yet the price of cars isn't astronomical. But you're right that even though the cause is noble (education available for everyone) our current mechanism of funding it results in runaway prices and for-profit scams. I don't think everyone should not go to college and learn to code though. I think in the near future coding will be a basic piece of literacy, but only one piece. I think it's reasonable to imagine a future where just like people study english and learn to do some writing in english 101, they will also learn the skills to munge a csv file or write an sql statement in programming 101, and both will be part of a well rounded education. The last thing this industry needs is a flood of high school graduates creating shitty insecure websites. I say this as someone without a degree, who knows first hand that although it's possible to make it w/o a degree, it shouldn't be anyone's first choice.
- pkaeding 9y ago
  > That's not always true. Most people seem to think they "need" a car, yet the price of cars isn't astronomical. Cars are not subsidized in the same way that healthcare or education are subsidized, though. There are fancy, expensive cars for people who want/can afford them, and there are more modest cars for the rest of us. There are lots of manufacturers of cars from around the world (and those cars from foreign manufacturers are available locally). Of course, there are fancy expensive schools, and cheaper schools, but the subsidies (or maybe some other force I'm unaware of) seem to make the 'cheaper' schools still get more expensive every year.
sjg007 9y ago
I don't think this is true. If you want to be a software engineer, take the courses, meet people (future founders), network, and freelance on the side. Also try to get scholarships.
kxyvr 9y ago
Student debt is half of the problem. Really, the problem is that the primary source of funding for a university is the state. Over time, states have reduced the amount of money they give to schools because they can increase tuition to make of the difference. Since students are forced to then take student loans from the federal government, it in affect becomes a scheme for the states to milk money from the fed, but saddle the debt on students. So, yes, student loans are a problem, but the larger problem is that the states have proportionally removed money from the universities. As to how to fix it, it's complicated. If the fed wants to continue to pump money into universities, they could federalize them, but it would be a huge transfer of power to transfer control of universities from the state to the fed. There's accreditation, the board of regents, and a variety of other organizations that would then be federally controlled. On top of this, since a university is such a large piece of a local community and requires infrastructure to support it, it makes sense to manage it locally. Further, the state would probably just play the same game if a university was federally controlled and still milk money. Really, the states need to realign their priorities and increase funding for the university system if they want stuff like this to stop. Removing federal student loans would help alleviate some of this pressure, but there's still pressure on universities to move to adjunct faculty to reduce costs as well, which is what the article was about.

coldcode 9y ago

What a programmer centric view. 99+% of people are not programmers. You want to be in any other STEM job you need a university degree(s). Almost any reasonable paying job other than programmer require actual training and education.

klibertp 9y ago
> Almost any reasonable paying job other than programmer require actual training and education. Are you implying that you don't need skill and knowledge to program? Or that it's impossible to get skill and knowledge needed in "other reasonable paying jobs" mostly outside of formal education industry?
technofire 9y ago
> Almost any reasonable paying job other than programmer require actual training and education. Interesting; this contrasts with the claim of liberal arts graduates who maintain that simply being competent critical thinkers is all that's required for almost any job.
- jogjayr 9y ago
  There's a big difference between having the skills for doing the job and having the credentials for getting the job.
njarboe 9y ago
This attitude is part of the college problem. How is having a job not training and education? Some jobs you can learn in a week but others, like programming, have plenty to learn for a lifetime. College should not be "actual training" for a job. More like a way to learn to have a better life, if you make the most of it.
dave_sullivan 9y ago
Play it out 20 years and: * 80% fewer lawyer jobs because algorithmic contracts will kill the rest of the lawyer jobs that e-doc review didn't kill already. The 20% that remain will be lawyers/programmers. * 80% fewer medical doctor jobs because all surgery will be done by robots because it's safer, radiology will be automated because it's more accurate, and most diagnoses will be automated through DNA analysis and readings from wearables. Doctors will need training in presenting (quite possibly bad news) results to patients and training to run the machines. The 20% that remain will be doctors/programmers. * 80% fewer jobs in "driving vehicles" or "packing things" (truckers, factory workers, Uber drivers) because self driving cars will be mature 20 years from now. * Restaurant jobs will still be around. But the cooking will be automated for 80% of the food sold in America. * Business process automation paired with private equity firms and competition from startups will automate away a surprising amount of managerial roles. * 80% fewer retail jobs because Amazon has helped make it so you can just walk in and pick something up and walk out and be charged for it, without any human involvement. 20 years is the difference between 1994 and 2014. I might be wrong about some of it, but I think people underestimate how much the job landscape is going to change and how important of a skill "programming" (which means a lot of different things) will be. Everyone should learn to program. And basic income, but that's a whole different can of worms.
dragonwriter 9y ago
> Almost any reasonable paying job other than programmer require actual training and education. Programming requires “training and education”, too. But for many jobs, especially if you have connections that let you bypass filters designed to winnow the applicant field down to a manageable number that throw out lots of otherwise-atrocious candidates, you can demonstrate that other than by the degree that is “expected” for the field. Computing is by no means unique in this respect (and the big players in computing are as much known for near-total exclusive preference for top schools as is the case in the worst of other fields.)

Chriky 9y ago

This explanation makes no sense, what you are describing is MORE money entering the system.

gbacon 9y ago
Money is not neutral. That is, increases in the supply of money and credit do not produce uniform increases in all prices. Otherwise counterfeiting would be a mere nuisance. More money entering an economy will certainly allow buyers to bid up prices (as with houses and college tuition). The question is which other prices are being bid up even more rapidly and which are remaining flat or declining on a relative basis. These sorts of problems are why both illicit and legalized counterfeiting are so pernicious.

vijayr 9y ago

I think "Don't go to college" is the best advice today. That only works in industries like software etc. If one wants to be a lawyer, doctor etc they have no choice but to go to college, right? Some American students are going abroad (Germany etc), that could be a short term option.

sigstoat 9y ago
considering the state of the legal job market, going to law school is its own brand of crazy, and certainly no ticket to wealth, as conventional wisdom would have it. and getting into medical school is basically luck of the draw; there are far more overqualified applicants than necessary. thinning that herd a bit isn't going to hurt.
dragonwriter 9y ago
> That only works in industries like software etc. If one wants to be a lawyer, doctor etc they have no choice but to go to college, right? For lawyers in some US jurisdictions, including California, no; California, for instance, requires general education of two years of college or “demonstrated equivalent intellectual achievement” prior to study of law, and several options for the study of law, including what amounts to apprenticeship in law office or judge's chambers. So traditional college or law school is not strictly required.
- jogjayr 9y ago
  Except that all the top law firms hire exclusively from top law schools. And the legal field is generally oversupplied with lawyers so if you don't work at a top law firm you won't be making a great living for a long time.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > Except that all the top law firms hire exclusively from top law schools The top law firms employ small percentage of employed lawyers. And not even a huge percentage of graduates of top law schools. And aren't even the kind of work some people going into law want to do. Confusing “what you need to get a job at a top law firm” with “what you need to be a lawyer” is like confusing “what you need to get a job at Google” with “what you need to be a programmer”. > And the legal field is generally oversupplied with lawyers so if you don't work at a top law firm you won't be making a great living for a long time. If you avoid undergraduate and law school debt (and especially if you are a paid employee instead of a paying student during your legal education), you can make a great living at a substantially lower salary than if you don't; and olif you do a legal apprenticeship, you come out with real-world experience most law students won't have (and quite often a job in the office you apprenticed in, if it was a law office and not a judges chambers.)

throwaway613834 9y ago

We don't even know if "don't go to college" is good advice for the long term (15+ years) in software engineering, let alone the fact that you're completely forgetting about other fields. Seems incredibly short-sighted to me.

valuearb 9y ago
Unless maybe you are going to a top 1% CS program, there is little need for a degree in software engineering. Even if you go to a top 1% school, it's unlikely you will be taught by anyone remotely as good as this guy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdAfILoJWcI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdAfILoJWcI And his lectures are available for free. If you get a degree, lots of what you learn will be outdated fast. The most important things you learn will be on the job actually making things.
- throwaway613834 9y ago
  >> We don't even know if "don't go to college" is good advice for the long term (15+ years) in software engineering > Unless maybe you are going to a top 1% CS program, there is little need for a degree in software engineering. I think you missed what I just said. You say there "is" little need. But I'm not looking at the present. We still don't know if we do for the long-term. (Well, lots of people think they do, but they're only guessing, not going on evidence obviously.) Note that it's simply not true that people would learn the same material independently that they would learn in a classroom. Yes, it is theoretically possible, and some people can pull it off, but it's not at all universal or even common. A lot of people need the environment to learn better. Online lectures just don't cut it for everyone. So yes, "you need to go to college" can be true regardless of how good online lectures are, and we still don't know if what people get out of a CS degree will on average give them an advantage compared to those who don't get one in the longer term (though I don't really have statistics for the shorter term either).
- turk184 9y ago
  I grew up lower middle class, but because of where I went to school and who I met along the way, I'm quite wealthy now. Things in life don't always play out linearly. Just sayin'.

anonacct37 9y ago

> The problem is, for many, there is no alternative. "I'm the first one in my family to be able to go to college." "Not going to college makes it impossible to find a job." "I have to get an education." When "No thanks, that's crazy, I'll do something else" is not an option, prices are going to do crazy things. Perfect example being healthcare costs. That's not always true. Most people seem to think they "need" a car, yet the price of cars isn't astronomical. But you're right that even though the cause is noble (education available for everyone) our current mechanism of funding it results in runaway prices and for-profit scams. I don't think everyone should not go to college and learn to code though. I think in the near future coding will be a basic piece of literacy, but only one piece. I think it's reasonable to imagine a future where just like people study english and learn to do some writing in english 101, they will also learn the skills to munge a csv file or write an sql statement in programming 101, and both will be part of a well rounded education. The last thing this industry needs is a flood of high school graduates creating shitty insecure websites. I say this as someone without a degree, who knows first hand that although it's possible to make it w/o a degree, it shouldn't be anyone's first choice.

pkaeding 9y ago
> That's not always true. Most people seem to think they "need" a car, yet the price of cars isn't astronomical. Cars are not subsidized in the same way that healthcare or education are subsidized, though. There are fancy, expensive cars for people who want/can afford them, and there are more modest cars for the rest of us. There are lots of manufacturers of cars from around the world (and those cars from foreign manufacturers are available locally). Of course, there are fancy expensive schools, and cheaper schools, but the subsidies (or maybe some other force I'm unaware of) seem to make the 'cheaper' schools still get more expensive every year.

sjg007 9y ago

I don't think this is true. If you want to be a software engineer, take the courses, meet people (future founders), network, and freelance on the side. Also try to get scholarships.

kxyvr 9y ago

Student debt is half of the problem. Really, the problem is that the primary source of funding for a university is the state. Over time, states have reduced the amount of money they give to schools because they can increase tuition to make of the difference. Since students are forced to then take student loans from the federal government, it in affect becomes a scheme for the states to milk money from the fed, but saddle the debt on students. So, yes, student loans are a problem, but the larger problem is that the states have proportionally removed money from the universities. As to how to fix it, it's complicated. If the fed wants to continue to pump money into universities, they could federalize them, but it would be a huge transfer of power to transfer control of universities from the state to the fed. There's accreditation, the board of regents, and a variety of other organizations that would then be federally controlled. On top of this, since a university is such a large piece of a local community and requires infrastructure to support it, it makes sense to manage it locally. Further, the state would probably just play the same game if a university was federally controlled and still milk money. Really, the states need to realign their priorities and increase funding for the university system if they want stuff like this to stop. Removing federal student loans would help alleviate some of this pressure, but there's still pressure on universities to move to adjunct faculty to reduce costs as well, which is what the article was about.