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Fascinating that culturally the author couldn't bring himself to talk to the kids. The only kid he talked to was one of the unusual college attendees. Kind of

by VLM 9y ago

Fascinating that culturally the author couldn't bring himself to talk to the kids. The only kid he talked to was one of the unusual college attendees. Kind of shocking if you think about it. He repeated a lot of narrative from numerous professional axe grinders, but nothing can really be learned from that. It wasn't a story about the rural kids who don't go to college, it was a story about politicians axe grinding where the claimed subject was never considered; could have been a story "about" Bolivian tin exports or farm subsidies for all the subject mattered to the discussion. An analysis mode the author didn't consider is time. The rate of attendance has increased dramatically over time. Attendance is a little less than 10% lower for rural kids, and google nearly instantly found a graph of college attendance per year indicating the rate has been increasing at a fairly linear rate of a bit less than five percent per decade, so rural kids are not living in a dystopia as much as they're living in roughly the early 00s. Not a bad time to live, really. Culturally I'm sure there are variations in attitude in various areas and having 2005 cultural attitudes in the year 2018 isn't really much of an issue especially if your friends family neighbors and employer have attitudes that are significantly pre-2005 anyway. An interesting analysis mode is comparing supply and demand. According to the linked Washington Post article below, only 27% of college grads in America work in a job closely related to their degree, and "The chances of finding a job related to your degree or major go up a few points if you move to a big city". The kids might be intelligent enough to see that taking out a home mortgage sized student loan to get a degree that will not lead to gainful employment is a poor investment. The article further states only 62 percent of grads had a job that requiring a degree. You can hand wave a lot, but around 4/5 of rural kids are throwing money away if they go to college. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/05/20/only-27-percent-of-college-grads-have-a-job-related-to-their-major https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/05/20/only-... The advice on HN usually skews toward advice for SAT score recipients above 1475 points or so... please remember this is a discussion about 100% of American kids not the 1%. Based on the numbers, college was a waste of money for somewhere between one third and three quarters of attendees, so rural kids not wasting money on a bad investment is not exactly a crisis.

watwut 9y ago
College grads do better then those who did not went to college - in terms of earnings, home ownership and just about any other stat I have seen. They do worst then grads of previous generation through. The worst off are those who took debt and then dropped out. Picking up grads as argument against college is odd, given that their results are not as bad as results of other demographic groups.
- BeetleB 9y ago
  >College grads do better then those who did not went to college - in terms of earnings, home ownership and just about any other stat I have seen. Seen as an aggregate. It need not be true for subgroups.
- jdhopeunique 9y ago
  "College grads do better then those who did not went to college..." This is simply selection bias or survivorship bias: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selection_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selection_bias "They do worst then grads of previous generation though" Again, selection bias. Currently everyone except a limited few are encouraged to go to college therefore the effect of selection bias has weakened over time and current grads don't do as well as grads of generations past.
  - AnimalMuppet 9y ago
    Hmm. So if only 10% of people go to college, you'd expect that the best 10% go, and you'd expect the best 10% to do better than the other 90%. But if 70% of people go to college, well, we don't have 70% "winner" positions available in society, so a bunch of those who go to college have to accept not-so-good outcomes. That makes some sense.
    - VLM 9y ago
      Yes its a variation on the interview suit injustice problem If you require job applicants to buy a $1K suit to wear to interviews, that's merely a weird tax if there's one applicant per job and therefore everyone ends up with a $100K job for their $1K investment and everyone who buys a suit is ridiculously happy and thinks everyone should be forced to buy a suit to be as happy as they are. Of course if you have ten dudes buying ten $1K suits to interview for one job, thats net $9K of injustice, and the vast majority of people who buy an interview suit see it as a wasteful horrible racket designed to extract money from the very people who have the least opportunity in life to begin with, etc. The army recruitment analogy is similar. The army needs 200K recruits, as long as more than 200K show up, its not a problem (for the army, anyway) if 350K show up one year or 375K the next year, only 200K are gonna make it anyway, so trying to make a relevant story about 350K vs 375K is going to be deaf ears.

by VLM 9y ago

watwut 9y ago

College grads do better then those who did not went to college - in terms of earnings, home ownership and just about any other stat I have seen. They do worst then grads of previous generation through. The worst off are those who took debt and then dropped out. Picking up grads as argument against college is odd, given that their results are not as bad as results of other demographic groups.

BeetleB 9y ago
>College grads do better then those who did not went to college - in terms of earnings, home ownership and just about any other stat I have seen. Seen as an aggregate. It need not be true for subgroups.
jdhopeunique 9y ago
"College grads do better then those who did not went to college..." This is simply selection bias or survivorship bias: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selection_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selection_bias "They do worst then grads of previous generation though" Again, selection bias. Currently everyone except a limited few are encouraged to go to college therefore the effect of selection bias has weakened over time and current grads don't do as well as grads of generations past.
- AnimalMuppet 9y ago
  Hmm. So if only 10% of people go to college, you'd expect that the best 10% go, and you'd expect the best 10% to do better than the other 90%. But if 70% of people go to college, well, we don't have 70% "winner" positions available in society, so a bunch of those who go to college have to accept not-so-good outcomes. That makes some sense.
  - VLM 9y ago
    Yes its a variation on the interview suit injustice problem If you require job applicants to buy a $1K suit to wear to interviews, that's merely a weird tax if there's one applicant per job and therefore everyone ends up with a $100K job for their $1K investment and everyone who buys a suit is ridiculously happy and thinks everyone should be forced to buy a suit to be as happy as they are. Of course if you have ten dudes buying ten $1K suits to interview for one job, thats net $9K of injustice, and the vast majority of people who buy an interview suit see it as a wasteful horrible racket designed to extract money from the very people who have the least opportunity in life to begin with, etc. The army recruitment analogy is similar. The army needs 200K recruits, as long as more than 200K show up, its not a problem (for the army, anyway) if 350K show up one year or 375K the next year, only 200K are gonna make it anyway, so trying to make a relevant story about 350K vs 375K is going to be deaf ears.