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As a Spaniard who has discussed this in lenght with many other Europeans[1], it really seems like the US is the main country with the University debt issue. I a

• linkregister 8y ago
  Can you share more information about score inflation for STEM degrees in the United States? This is the first I've heard of this phenomenon.
• im3w1l 8y ago
  > If everyone can finish University, then having a university title becomes pointless! I mean ideally, degrees shouldn't just be a zero sum game. Ideally, it should mean everyone is better off.
  • franciscop 8y ago
    Yup. What I meant is that degrees now are becoming easier (thus, losing value) faster in the USA than in Europe. Example: https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/01/same-performance-better-grades/384447/ https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/01/same-p...
  • Taniwha 8y ago
    unless you actually learn something there
• dumb2223 8y ago
  As another Spaniard I agree with you. But degrees about tourism can get you a job here. As I am learning English, I would suggest: Use "at length",don't repeat finish so many times, finish (complete, get, achieve) a degree, become pointless (become less valuable, worthless), which (that) is what I now best. About grade inflation in the US: http://www.gradeinflation.com/ http://www.gradeinflation.com/, https://blog.prepscholar.com/average-college-gpa-by-major https://blog.prepscholar.com/average-college-gpa-by-major it seems that Grade inflation is more rampant in non-STEM fields because assignments are usually more open to interpretation,
  • franciscop 8y ago
    No problem, since I'm learning Japanese while living in Tokyo I've lost quite a bit of English. Repetition is your friend here as it's the only way to be able to speak with 90+% of the people and for them to understand. Thanks for the tips, improved it a bit :)
    • dumb2223 8y ago
      Thanks for being so open, I know I shouldn't give suggestions but watch out for karoshi culture, overwork and burnout, surely you should be able to cope with all that.
      • franciscop 8y ago
        I typed that from the beach, that's why it was so badly worded; so don't worry about karoshi :) I don't mind and take everything with a grain of salt, but you are right, it'd not be good for most people.
  • adoctor 8y ago
    As a non-native English speaker, these suggestions are very bad. Every single one of them, if implemented, would make the original post worse and the phrasing more awkward. I may be wrong in this (I'm not a native speaker after all), but at least take it into account as an counterpoint of the above...
• tikkabhuna 8y ago
  > [1] oddly enough I have never discussed this with british people Over recent decades tuition fees have been rising, but they've been covered by a special loan. Paying back this loan is taken out of your pay cheque (via PAYE) based on how much you earn. If you don't pay it back within a certain number of years it gets wiped. Before the last major increase it was viewed by most of my peers (I graduated in 2013) as reasonable. Graduates could expect to pay it off. Now graduates finish with £40,000-$50,000 and the interest rate is so high many won't ever pay it off. Being able to support yourself during university might be a problem but there are bursaries and grants you can get. Let me know if you want more details.
  • franciscop 8y ago
    Thanks! Seems like a step between the US system and the Spanish system. What happens if you lose your job for example for a couple of months? Do you have to pay as a normal loan or is it more like taxes where you only pay relative to your earnings?
    • dean177 8y ago
      The latter, you won't have to pay whilst you aren't earning. Additionally you will only start paying when you are earning over £21,000 a year. After that, you'll pay back 9% of anything you earn over £21,000.
    • benaadams 8y ago
      Currently its +9% to your tax bands; essentially a graduate tax. Repayment starts at £21,000pa; so if you earn £30,000 you'd pay back £37 per month
    • Wildgoose 8y ago
      The payments are based on your earnings, so it is a kind of graduate tax - but only up until around retirement when any remaining amounts are cancelled. In effect, more successful English graduates subsidise everybody else (because it is supposed to be revenue neutral). And specifically English, because only English students pay the full £9,250 per year. (Scottish students pay nothing, Welsh and Northern Irish a reduced amount). The English subsidise the "United" Kingdom but are discriminated against when it comes to social provision paid out of general taxation. Unlike Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland we do not have a Parliament for England looking after England's interests. Instead we are ruled by the Union Parliament which includes MPs from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland whose remit and interest is their own respective nations, not England, but who get to vote on legislation that affects England without England having the equivalent ability to interfere in the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish Parliaments.
• Latty 8y ago
  > If everyone can finish University, then having a university title becomes pointless! Only if the value of a degree is having an edge over others, not if it's value is learning - primary school isn't pointless even though most people master it. This feels like it links back to the same problem as everything else - as time goes on automation removes less skilled jobs, and more and more people will need to do more skilled jobs. This means that at some point, university levels of education will probably become necessary for any employment - at that point (and arguably before), asking people to pay for education they need to be a functional member of society seems inherently broken. Of course, the other option is just to accept that maybe in the future not everyone needs to work, or certainly not everyone needs to work a full time job. Unfortunately for America, the idea of anyone not working as a "freeloader" is so heavily ingrained into the public consciousness, it seems likely people will just be left to suffer (even if they are "freeloading" off the labour of machines). Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if when we reach that point, people who can't do that level of work are defined as disabled in some way to "justify" it. Or, worse, arbitrary jobs that aren't needed, but are created just to employ them.
  • andai 8y ago
    The biggest obstacles to UBI aren't economic, they're cultural. I'm currently working in manual labor as I brush up on front end, and it's devastating to me that my current job and almost all jobs available to me can and will be automated. What happens then, with the majority of people who aren't suited for STEM?
    • hycaria 8y ago
      You don't need a degree to care for elders or run errands for them.
    • Applejinx 8y ago
      Why do you think STEM can't be automated?
      • 3rdAccount 8y ago
• DeepYogurt 8y ago
  > If everyone can finish University, then having a university title becomes pointless! Certainly the competitive advantage has decreased over time. Having gone through the US university system myself I can confirm that there is... lets say "inflationary pressure", though I've also been at a european university and the same pressure existed there and for all the same reasons. I agree that the university debt seems to be a uniquely american issue though.
  • franciscop 8y ago
    Exactly. My point is that US "score inflation" seems to be faster than in Europe. Maybe it has something to do with capitalism/socialism (pleasing the student/client), maybe with culture, maybe with language, etc. I don't know why, but it seems that way for me.
    • jxub 8y ago
      Also, I'm sure it is correlated with paying so much for a degree. When a single year can cost tens of thousands failing a subject might incentivize the student to drop out, resulting in loss of a high-paying and otherwise reliable customer. When there is no obvious reason, the purpose is always monetary in nature.
      • esfandia 8y ago
        In Ontario (and probably other provinces in Canada), there is a strong financial incentive by the province to universities (in the form of tuition matching) to maintain a high retention rate.
        • jxub 8y ago
          Now that's perverse... It seems like our short-sighted vision is screwing us in realms of both finance and education.
    • flatfilefan 8y ago
      On Cuba the higher education is free but if you study medicine you have to work a few years on a government assignment before you can even choose where to work and you may not emigrate. Sounds pretty draconian but compared with the cabal of the student debt system and the effect it has on the prices of the medical care, maybe not so much?
• brozaman 8y ago
  > If everyone can finish University, then having a university title becomes pointless I think it only becomes pointless if there are limited work opportunities for your studies, however, we're lacking computer science people and having a degree almost guarantees that you'll get a job. In our current context, people who study a 1-3 month course in a code bootcamp are getting jobs, a degree with inflated score still is a degree. I'm not saying that having an engineering degree is a guarantee that you are competent, and that someone without a degree, or a completely unrelated degree cannot be competent.
• CPLX 8y ago
  > If everyone can finish University, then having a university title becomes pointless! If everyone has access to a shovel, or a computer, does having that thing become pointless?
  • undersuit 8y ago
    If a number of companies are using it as a single or major metric for hiring, yes. These companies are looking for anyone with a shovel to fill a seat, because historically having a shovel is better than not.
• cimmanom 8y ago
  But if the government isn't going to subsidize learning, in a way you have to give a degree to everyone who "buys" one. Having someone go 6 figures in debt and walk away with nothing is just too destructive.
  • franciscop 8y ago
    There you go, the only logical conclusion is that going 6 figures in debt is crazy so the government should subsidize it.
• tor0viking 8y ago
  Europe is able to keep its colleges and Universities free or mostly free because the European collegiate experience is a much simpler and stripped down version of what you find at US Universities. In the US, living on campus is the norm, a vast array of amenities and services are offered to students, and University bureaucracies are huge and growing by the year. Contrast this with Europe, where many Universities are simpler affairs with students living at home, commuting to classes (which have higher student to professor ratios) at Universities without student centers, gyms, etc. It's not that the US through sheer stupidity is missing out on some easy fix for college costs, the issue is simply that in the US Universities offer more than in Europe. This is in keeping with our overall culture.
  • ajmurmann 8y ago
    Having studied in both US and Germany, US universities seem to have a much lighter focus on studying itself. The negative view would be that the are a lot more distractions like fraternities, sorts teams etc. Another view would be that there is a strong focus on network building. Fraternities and the whole school loyalty thing are practically made for this. It's a clear advantage to have those connections for the individual. I do wonder what this does to society as a whole. Maybe it makes matching people to jobs easier, maybe it makes it easier to find people to even start a company with. I could easily see how this caused silicon valley to be adding UC Berkeley and Stanford rather than TU Munich or the Sorbonne. Maybe it's mostly a zero sun game that's very expensive?
    • tor0viking 8y ago
      To be honest I don't like the US model. All the extra fluff isn't helpful in any substantive non-zero-sum way. You have the freedom to be entirely focused on academics in the US, participating in research etc. But you also have the freedom to live off your loans without any serious focus on academics, treating college like a vacation more than anything else. For the "students" who are tempted by the latter option, college is a waste.
      • candiodari 8y ago
• JauntTrooper 8y ago
  It's still pretty difficult for many Americans to finish university. Only 55% of students that start at a 4-year university program graduate within 6 years. Only 19.5% of students that start at a non-flagship, 4-year program finish on time.
• nickik 8y ago
  I would recommend this book: > The Case against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money The title is a bit much but it explains in great detail the problem with 'inflation' and what you lose by this process.
• arcturus17 8y ago
  And yet in Spain when we finish a CS degree at a top uni (UPM, UPC, etc) all we can aspire to is a 25,000€ / year salary with a ridiculous progression in most cases, whereas in the US it's not uncommon to climb to 150k fairly quickly.
  • jazzyk 8y ago
    I agree that salaries for college-educated people are shockingly low in Spain, I think it is a reflection of the lower general (not necessarily individual) productivity in Spain - as in bureaucracy, labor laws, etc. Please keep in mind that MANY college-educated people in the US never get to even $100K (teachers, architects, there are more). Also, it takes at least 10 years (perhaps more) to get to $150K for software engineers (with a B.S. degree), and you need to live in one of the bigger cities (where the cost of living is higher). The numbers are a bit skewed here because a lot of the posters on HN live/work in the S.F./Silicon Valley area, which is a world onto itself.
    • arcturus17 8y ago
      I also forgot to mention that under-25 unemployment in Spain is around 35%-40%, with general unemployment rates at 16%. Other than not being burdened by debt, Spanish STEM majors are comparatively worse off in pretty much any post-graduation dimension you can think of compared to Americans.
• kilburn 8y ago
  > In Spain, Germany, France, Italy, etc if you get a degree in STEM it means you put a lot of effort. [...] But the requirements to finish the degree have not changed so drastically as in the US so going to University is quite a good choice. TLDR: As a Spaniard, I strongly disagree. Neither our universities as institutions nor our teachers as individuals have much incentive to (fairly) fail students, whereas they have many incentives to (unfairly) pass them. As a result, the level has dropped significantly in the latest decades. The requirements in our degrees have plummeted since 20-30 years ago. Seriously, check exams from 20 years ago for ANY subject that was taught back then, and compare them to last year's. The difference is staggering. There are several reasons for this: First, because the level in high-school has been dropping similarly. Students get to the university with a lower base level, and hence they cannot be taught at the same level than before. Second, because more and more people go to uni as time passes. This also drags down the average level of the average class (with respect to when the uni population was composed mainly of good and MOTIVATED students). Third, because -contrary to what's been said here- our universities gain significantly from passing students. For one, each degree taught by a school is evaluated regarding the percentage of students that finish the degree in a set time, percentage of students that quit, and percentage of course passes [1]. This is the main evaluation of "quality" of a degree, and not hitting the set goals will lead to the degree being dropped. Also, teachers gain nothing from failing students. Most will just accept it (because most know they really don't deserve to pass). However, some will complain. Very loudly. And handling such complaints is a huge time-sink not just for the involved teacher, but also for the department and the School itself. The easy way out is to just pass people. Many teachers openly admit that they pass lots of students who they don't think have achieved the goals of their subjects. And many students themselves admit it too. [1] https://www.boe.es/buscar/pdf/2007/BOE-A-2007-18770-consolidado.pdf https://www.boe.es/buscar/pdf/2007/BOE-A-2007-18770-consolid... , Article 8