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https://www.statista.com/statistics/184272/educational-attainment-of-college-diploma-or-higher-by-gender/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/184272/educational

https://www.statista.com/statistics/184272/educational-attainment-of-college-diploma-or-higher-by-gender/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/184272/educational-attai... The percent of people who have completed a 4 year degree has been on a continual increase. This will drag down the net worth of young folks who give up working years and take on a debt load.

jessriedel 7y ago
Another, more optimistic way to describe it is that students are spending more of their wealth to invest in their own human capital, which isn't measured in statistics.
- rukittenme 7y ago
  Reminder to those down voting this comment. Down votes are for people not contributing to the discussion in a meaningful way. They are not for expressing disagreement. Use the reply button if you disagree with the parent comment.
  - novok 7y ago
    Comment systems should have 2 voting pairs, a I agree/disagree button and insightful/non-meaningful comment button.
  - gnicholas 7y ago
    Is downvote the opposite of upvote? It seems that people upvote comments that are helpful/insightful and that they agree with. Because upvote and downvote seem like they would be opposites, it's not surprising that people might focus on the negative of "I agree with this comment" instead of the opposite of "this comment is helpful/insightful". The former is easier to measure than the latter.
    - jessriedel 7y ago
      pg has in the past explicitly endorsed the idea that votes should, to some extent, reflect agreement/disagreement, but he's making a mistake. He has also correctly said the votes should answer the question "do we want more of this on HN?" since that's functionally what they are used for. If anything, we should err on the side of upvoting thoughtful things we disagree with, rather than agree with, since we learn more from that.
  - detaro 7y ago
    > They are not for expressing disagreement. That's not a rule on HN (unlike e.g. reddit), neither officially nor by user consensus.
    - Noumenon72 7y ago
      The OP should acknowledge that difference, but it's not a good policy to condone downvoting to disagree. It freezes out unpopular points of view and breeds resentment.
- hrktb 7y ago
  Thinking about this a lot, university at the end of a school cursus to develop “human capital” seems a not so great idea. People live close to 70 years, and the world changes a lot. So many things that we took for granted 10 years ago are just mistaken now. Anyone wanting to be well rounded can’t stop learning when getting out of school, whatever school they went to. Do they learn less by themselves, reading papers and lectures while having a good sense of the how society and the world works from an adult point of view ? What would happen to someone who only focuses on work related education at school but keeps reading and getting lectures about whatever subject picks their interest ? Wouldn’t they be in a better place than whoever spent crazy amount of money on a “well rounded” education and goes to the world with the impression they now know most of what they need to know ?
  - delecti 7y ago
    Many things being taught in college today will be out-of-date by the time a current college student dies. But I think you're overstating the proportion which that applies to, and discounting the usefulness of that knowledge between now and when it's no longer useful. Most of what's really subject to change is the stuff on the outer edges of fields, which is mostly only being taught to people specializing in those fields. Most of the rest is in relatively new fields (much of computer science) and people in new fields are going to have to work to keep up anyway.
    - ryl00 7y ago
      Is computer science really that subject to change, though? Especially given what most CS graduates end up doing in industry? The tech stack may change, the syntax of the language may change, but the underlying math/theory mostly doesn't.
      - hiram112 7y ago
        I think most decent CS programs are roughly the same as they have been for decades. It should include a lot of math including a few semester of calculus, linear algebra, probability, etc. Should be forced to take a few of the CE beginner courses like digital logic. And of course, learning low level OS development, networking layers, which includes C and assembly. Algorithms and some sort of numeric computing course using the learned math. It wasn't until my last year where I had electives that I needed an IDE for dealing with high level languages and frameworks. But I have a feeling that a lot of CS programs - especially those in lib arts instead of under the engineering schools - have really become watered down and glorified boot camp, and for several reasons. * need more women and diversity to pass the program. * colleges are addicted to the foreigners who pay full tuition. Who cares of half of them cheat, can't speak English, can't complete the work - they're paying $100k for that degree. And the smartest ones can be used as indentured servants in the grad school since they can't stay otherwise. Anyway, when I do interviewing, I have noticed a decline in candidates even if they have a fresh CS degree. Many of them know things like React and Javascript, but are clueless with most of the subjects I wrote about above.
- icelancer 7y ago
  > Another, more optimistic way to describe it is that students are spending more of their wealth to invest in their own human capital, which isn't measured in statistics. Statistics can measure this fairly easily. Just these particular statistics cited in this article do not. However, the root of the argument is probably depressing. It is pretty unlikely that all the money spent on higher education produces a true positive return on investment (please do not cite any "college grads make more money" stats without controlling for co-variant effects). Most loans taken out to fund schooling are forms of malinvestment.
- SomeOldThrow 7y ago
  Human capital manifests statistically as employment. It’s not a complete measure of labour but it is very convenient for measuring the natural value of a degree.
  - jessriedel 7y ago
    Sure, but that is stretched over a lifetime of work. If you just measure current wealth you won't see it.
    - SomeOldThrow 7y ago
      Debt can also be stretched over a lifetime of work, so I’m not sure how you’d avoid factoring debt into this. Anyway, entering into an investment fully knowing that you can’t expect any quantifiable return seems like a terrible thing to teach children.

jessriedel 7y ago

Another, more optimistic way to describe it is that students are spending more of their wealth to invest in their own human capital, which isn't measured in statistics.

rukittenme 7y ago
Reminder to those down voting this comment. Down votes are for people not contributing to the discussion in a meaningful way. They are not for expressing disagreement. Use the reply button if you disagree with the parent comment.
- novok 7y ago
  Comment systems should have 2 voting pairs, a I agree/disagree button and insightful/non-meaningful comment button.
- gnicholas 7y ago
  Is downvote the opposite of upvote? It seems that people upvote comments that are helpful/insightful and that they agree with. Because upvote and downvote seem like they would be opposites, it's not surprising that people might focus on the negative of "I agree with this comment" instead of the opposite of "this comment is helpful/insightful". The former is easier to measure than the latter.
  - jessriedel 7y ago
    pg has in the past explicitly endorsed the idea that votes should, to some extent, reflect agreement/disagreement, but he's making a mistake. He has also correctly said the votes should answer the question "do we want more of this on HN?" since that's functionally what they are used for. If anything, we should err on the side of upvoting thoughtful things we disagree with, rather than agree with, since we learn more from that.
- detaro 7y ago
  > They are not for expressing disagreement. That's not a rule on HN (unlike e.g. reddit), neither officially nor by user consensus.
  - Noumenon72 7y ago
    The OP should acknowledge that difference, but it's not a good policy to condone downvoting to disagree. It freezes out unpopular points of view and breeds resentment.
hrktb 7y ago
Thinking about this a lot, university at the end of a school cursus to develop “human capital” seems a not so great idea. People live close to 70 years, and the world changes a lot. So many things that we took for granted 10 years ago are just mistaken now. Anyone wanting to be well rounded can’t stop learning when getting out of school, whatever school they went to. Do they learn less by themselves, reading papers and lectures while having a good sense of the how society and the world works from an adult point of view ? What would happen to someone who only focuses on work related education at school but keeps reading and getting lectures about whatever subject picks their interest ? Wouldn’t they be in a better place than whoever spent crazy amount of money on a “well rounded” education and goes to the world with the impression they now know most of what they need to know ?
- delecti 7y ago
  Many things being taught in college today will be out-of-date by the time a current college student dies. But I think you're overstating the proportion which that applies to, and discounting the usefulness of that knowledge between now and when it's no longer useful. Most of what's really subject to change is the stuff on the outer edges of fields, which is mostly only being taught to people specializing in those fields. Most of the rest is in relatively new fields (much of computer science) and people in new fields are going to have to work to keep up anyway.
  - ryl00 7y ago
    Is computer science really that subject to change, though? Especially given what most CS graduates end up doing in industry? The tech stack may change, the syntax of the language may change, but the underlying math/theory mostly doesn't.
    - hiram112 7y ago
      I think most decent CS programs are roughly the same as they have been for decades. It should include a lot of math including a few semester of calculus, linear algebra, probability, etc. Should be forced to take a few of the CE beginner courses like digital logic. And of course, learning low level OS development, networking layers, which includes C and assembly. Algorithms and some sort of numeric computing course using the learned math. It wasn't until my last year where I had electives that I needed an IDE for dealing with high level languages and frameworks. But I have a feeling that a lot of CS programs - especially those in lib arts instead of under the engineering schools - have really become watered down and glorified boot camp, and for several reasons. * need more women and diversity to pass the program. * colleges are addicted to the foreigners who pay full tuition. Who cares of half of them cheat, can't speak English, can't complete the work - they're paying $100k for that degree. And the smartest ones can be used as indentured servants in the grad school since they can't stay otherwise. Anyway, when I do interviewing, I have noticed a decline in candidates even if they have a fresh CS degree. Many of them know things like React and Javascript, but are clueless with most of the subjects I wrote about above.
icelancer 7y ago
> Another, more optimistic way to describe it is that students are spending more of their wealth to invest in their own human capital, which isn't measured in statistics. Statistics can measure this fairly easily. Just these particular statistics cited in this article do not. However, the root of the argument is probably depressing. It is pretty unlikely that all the money spent on higher education produces a true positive return on investment (please do not cite any "college grads make more money" stats without controlling for co-variant effects). Most loans taken out to fund schooling are forms of malinvestment.
SomeOldThrow 7y ago
Human capital manifests statistically as employment. It’s not a complete measure of labour but it is very convenient for measuring the natural value of a degree.
- jessriedel 7y ago
  Sure, but that is stretched over a lifetime of work. If you just measure current wealth you won't see it.
  - SomeOldThrow 7y ago
    Debt can also be stretched over a lifetime of work, so I’m not sure how you’d avoid factoring debt into this. Anyway, entering into an investment fully knowing that you can’t expect any quantifiable return seems like a terrible thing to teach children.