8 ms·

School is such a guaranteed one now during Covid – you don't even get social serendipity. You're literally sitting there on Zoom burning through cash. What com

School is such a guaranteed one now during Covid – you don't even get social serendipity. You're literally sitting there on Zoom burning through cash. What common folk don't realize is that college is just a luxury consumption good of the rich.

Pyramus 6y ago
Thats a very US American (anglosaxon?) viewpoint to take. Education is paid for by society in most Western parts of the world.
- eCa 6y ago
  To be fair, there’s still an opportunity cost, and most people also need student loans.
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago
  The US is composed of a heap of immigrants that migrated to the US and to a point intermingled culturally to come up with a new country / culture. The Anglo-Saxons were a people made out of immigrants from Germanic Europe that migrated to what is now England and mingled with indigenous British groups, tracing back to the 5th century. It's often used to refer to the language spoken in England and eastern Scotland until the mid-12th century, also called Old English. The culture and language were pretty much defunct after the Norman Conquest. Something I found out / realized not that long ago: the Norman Conquest wasn't actually vikings, but French from Normandy. Mind you, vikings from Denmark and Norway were also a thing around the same time.
  - globular-toast 6y ago
    Is it common to think the Normans were Vikings? The Normans are the reason why half of the English dictionary consists of French words.
    - babesh 6y ago
      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normans https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normans They were a mixed people, partly descended from Vikings. Not only people descended from Vikings invaded England. You had non Viking French in there too.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
  - rozab 6y ago
    The term has a more complex meaning in America. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Anglo-Saxon_Protestants#Anglo-Saxon_in_modern_usage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Anglo-Saxon_Protestants#...
    - finiteseries 6y ago
      Every American cited in this section, Anglo-Saxon in modern usage, is dead. The only remaining usage of Anglo Saxon in the contemporary USA is as part of the already antiquated “WASP” term. Anglo Saxon in reference to the US is in my very-online anecdotal experience roughly ~70% French speakers, 15% continental Europeans, and 15% race based nationalists. Americans usually just say “white”, even when specifically referring to classic WASP cases, especially after the Germans, Italians, and other ethnic groups were absorbed over the last century.
      - Pyramus 6y ago
        Thank you for the replies with respect to my usage of the term 'Anglo-Saxon', which I had not really reflected upon. In Germany the term is used to refer to the germanic tribe of the same name, which settled in Britain, and its asserted descendents, i.e. a somewhat loose collection of Great Britain, the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
      - Bakary 6y ago
        To be more precise, Anglo-saxon in French refers to the anglosphere and its culture. It's a commonly used word with neutral connotations
  - simonh 6y ago
    There was a lot of Norse cultural influence in the North of England, but of course they had a lot of linguistic crossover with the Anglo-Saxons. In some recent historical TV shows the cultural differences between Anglo-Saxons and the Danes are exaggerated for narrative reasons, but they could actually understand each other's languages reasonably well. The influence of Anglo-Saxon culture is the main reason why English culture isn't the same as French culture, so I don't think you can really say it's defunct. The influence of French is stronger in southern 'BBC' English, but England has a lot of regional dialects that still retain a lot of quite ancient linguistic influences.
  - Bakary 6y ago
    The Normans weren't French or Viking, they were their own thing just like the Anglo-Saxons. The concept of Frenchness wasn't even well defined then.
- Kathula 6y ago
  Sure, the education is paid(via taxes), but you still need to pay rent, food, bills etc. All people I know that studied took student loans.
  - kungito 6y ago
    0 people I know that studied took loans
- caffeine 6y ago
  Doesn't change your parent's point. It's still a luxury consumption good, just maybe it's other people's parents paying for you to drink and party instead of your own.
- foxrider 6y ago
  I'm not from the US and I got "free" education where I live, and I still feel like I've lost money. If I've started working 4 years earlier I would've gotten more experience and more money, and surely wouldn't be as miserable in the meantime as I've been in the Uni. I don't feel like I've learned anything substantial that couldn't be covered by a short online course, but I sure spent much more than working hours stressing out and torturing myself with absolute garbage topics.
- CountDrewku 6y ago
  Which means it's paid by your taxes. It comes out of someone's pockets. Almost ANYONE can go to college in the US. You can be a complete idiot and still get in somewhere. You could argue that's a bad thing but countries that pay for higher education via taxes typically have much stricter standards on getting in to school. IF I'm going to be paying for other people's higher ed then there better be something in place making sure they actually finish or deserve to be there.
ronyfadel 6y ago
Yes and no. A Comp Sci./Eng. degree is pretty much guaranteed to get you a decently paying job. My ROI has been > 20x. Learning a 3-5 yr curriculum on your own is a surefire way to get you demotivated and/or depressed.
- superbcarrot 6y ago
  > A Comp Sci./Eng. degree is pretty much guaranteed to get you a decently paying job. This has been the case in the recent past and is probably still true right now but the trend won't last forever.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
    In the 1980s/90s, a medical degree was the “sure bet” way to a six-figure income. The result was a huge flood of doctors that were...not the best, and some fairly dodgy medical schools. Of course, this also ended up pushing malpractice insurance (and tuition) into six figures, so I guess we achieved balance. We’re starting to see some similar stuff, going on, now, in software development. There’s some...not the best, engineers, out there. I know that E&O insurance isn’t cheap, but it’s a tiny fraction of medical malpractice insurance. That may change, as Big Data, terrible security practices, and ML/AI are starting to make the old adage ”To err is human; but it takes a computer to really screw things up.” kick into overdrive.
    - nojito 6y ago
      This is just not true. Residency slots have not changed much if at all in decades due to the AMA. It wasn’t until the late 00s do we see any meaningful uptick in medical graduates.
      - ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
        OK. I will accept that. Any idea why so many doctors I know (American born and bred) had to attend offshore schools?
  - 6y ago
roland35 6y ago
This may be true for some degrees, but I feel like my engineering degrees were worth it and would still be worth it online. I feel like I could have gotten at least 75% of the value of my education online, especially with my Master's degree (both in Electrical Engineering). For me at least the value of my engineering degrees was in learning the fundamental approaches to solving problems, and most of my classes were lectures anyways without much interaction. For engineering at least I think the other 25% of college should be building things, and unfortunately that is much harder online!
- xxs 6y ago
  Electrical Engineer w/o a lab to practice is rather hard - I guess nowadays people can start with microcontrollers instead but that's a far cry from EE.
  - roland35 6y ago
    Yes, labs are definitely helpful to do in person as well, even with just other students and a TA there. I think they would go under the category of "building stuff", so maybe I should revise 75/25 to 60/40!
_wldu 6y ago
The author is joking. The article is tongue in cheek. You can get a MS in CS from Georgia Tech for roughly $7,000 US dollars total cost... if you can get accepted and complete the work. GT's CS program is consistently ranked in the top 10 CS programs world wide. https://omscs.gatech.edu/ https://omscs.gatech.edu/ Today, you can easily earn a six figure salary anywhere in the US with this degree (provided you have good work ethic and are reasonable to get along with).
shellfishgene 6y ago
I've been wondering, what most degrees from a good school provide to you, and prospective employers, is just a guarantee that you know your stuff and are probably smart. Nowadays you can pretty much teach yourself anything online and from books. Why is there no institution that just does the testing and provides a certificate? You get a syllabus for a few years, and then come back at the end, or in some interval, to be tested on the material. Sure, the tests would have to be pretty comprehensive, but that's not really a problem. If they're done well and cheat-proof, I'm sure employers would start to trust those degrees pretty quickly. Then the benefit would be similar to paying for a full university education, but much cheaper. Of course this only works for people who can teach themselves well.
- the_only_law 6y ago
  I’be thought about this for a while as well. For one, for a lot of the “useful” degrees, getting a hands-in learning experience just isn’t possible without equipment your average person can’t afford or likely even purchase if they could afford it. Outside of that is CD, which is already reasonably easy to break into without the credential.
mrow84 6y ago
Degrees, etc., are better described as positional goods [0], than as more basic luxury goods, but you are right that that largely leaves them as the preserve of the rich (in places where financing is required). I would highly recommend "The Social Limits to Growth" by Fred Hirsch (linked in that page), on the subject. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positional_good https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positional_good

Pyramus 6y ago

Thats a very US American (anglosaxon?) viewpoint to take. Education is paid for by society in most Western parts of the world.

eCa 6y ago
To be fair, there’s still an opportunity cost, and most people also need student loans.
Cthulhu_ 6y ago
The US is composed of a heap of immigrants that migrated to the US and to a point intermingled culturally to come up with a new country / culture. The Anglo-Saxons were a people made out of immigrants from Germanic Europe that migrated to what is now England and mingled with indigenous British groups, tracing back to the 5th century. It's often used to refer to the language spoken in England and eastern Scotland until the mid-12th century, also called Old English. The culture and language were pretty much defunct after the Norman Conquest. Something I found out / realized not that long ago: the Norman Conquest wasn't actually vikings, but French from Normandy. Mind you, vikings from Denmark and Norway were also a thing around the same time.
- globular-toast 6y ago
  Is it common to think the Normans were Vikings? The Normans are the reason why half of the English dictionary consists of French words.
  - babesh 6y ago
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normans https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normans They were a mixed people, partly descended from Vikings. Not only people descended from Vikings invaded England. You had non Viking French in there too.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- rozab 6y ago
  The term has a more complex meaning in America. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Anglo-Saxon_Protestants#Anglo-Saxon_in_modern_usage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Anglo-Saxon_Protestants#...
  - finiteseries 6y ago
    Every American cited in this section, Anglo-Saxon in modern usage, is dead. The only remaining usage of Anglo Saxon in the contemporary USA is as part of the already antiquated “WASP” term. Anglo Saxon in reference to the US is in my very-online anecdotal experience roughly ~70% French speakers, 15% continental Europeans, and 15% race based nationalists. Americans usually just say “white”, even when specifically referring to classic WASP cases, especially after the Germans, Italians, and other ethnic groups were absorbed over the last century.
    - Pyramus 6y ago
      Thank you for the replies with respect to my usage of the term 'Anglo-Saxon', which I had not really reflected upon. In Germany the term is used to refer to the germanic tribe of the same name, which settled in Britain, and its asserted descendents, i.e. a somewhat loose collection of Great Britain, the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
    - Bakary 6y ago
      To be more precise, Anglo-saxon in French refers to the anglosphere and its culture. It's a commonly used word with neutral connotations
- simonh 6y ago
  There was a lot of Norse cultural influence in the North of England, but of course they had a lot of linguistic crossover with the Anglo-Saxons. In some recent historical TV shows the cultural differences between Anglo-Saxons and the Danes are exaggerated for narrative reasons, but they could actually understand each other's languages reasonably well. The influence of Anglo-Saxon culture is the main reason why English culture isn't the same as French culture, so I don't think you can really say it's defunct. The influence of French is stronger in southern 'BBC' English, but England has a lot of regional dialects that still retain a lot of quite ancient linguistic influences.
- Bakary 6y ago
  The Normans weren't French or Viking, they were their own thing just like the Anglo-Saxons. The concept of Frenchness wasn't even well defined then.
Kathula 6y ago
Sure, the education is paid(via taxes), but you still need to pay rent, food, bills etc. All people I know that studied took student loans.
- kungito 6y ago
  0 people I know that studied took loans
caffeine 6y ago
Doesn't change your parent's point. It's still a luxury consumption good, just maybe it's other people's parents paying for you to drink and party instead of your own.
foxrider 6y ago
I'm not from the US and I got "free" education where I live, and I still feel like I've lost money. If I've started working 4 years earlier I would've gotten more experience and more money, and surely wouldn't be as miserable in the meantime as I've been in the Uni. I don't feel like I've learned anything substantial that couldn't be covered by a short online course, but I sure spent much more than working hours stressing out and torturing myself with absolute garbage topics.
CountDrewku 6y ago
Which means it's paid by your taxes. It comes out of someone's pockets. Almost ANYONE can go to college in the US. You can be a complete idiot and still get in somewhere. You could argue that's a bad thing but countries that pay for higher education via taxes typically have much stricter standards on getting in to school. IF I'm going to be paying for other people's higher ed then there better be something in place making sure they actually finish or deserve to be there.

ronyfadel 6y ago

Yes and no. A Comp Sci./Eng. degree is pretty much guaranteed to get you a decently paying job. My ROI has been > 20x. Learning a 3-5 yr curriculum on your own is a surefire way to get you demotivated and/or depressed.

superbcarrot 6y ago
> A Comp Sci./Eng. degree is pretty much guaranteed to get you a decently paying job. This has been the case in the recent past and is probably still true right now but the trend won't last forever.
- ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
  In the 1980s/90s, a medical degree was the “sure bet” way to a six-figure income. The result was a huge flood of doctors that were...not the best, and some fairly dodgy medical schools. Of course, this also ended up pushing malpractice insurance (and tuition) into six figures, so I guess we achieved balance. We’re starting to see some similar stuff, going on, now, in software development. There’s some...not the best, engineers, out there. I know that E&O insurance isn’t cheap, but it’s a tiny fraction of medical malpractice insurance. That may change, as Big Data, terrible security practices, and ML/AI are starting to make the old adage ”To err is human; but it takes a computer to really screw things up.” kick into overdrive.
  - nojito 6y ago
    This is just not true. Residency slots have not changed much if at all in decades due to the AMA. It wasn’t until the late 00s do we see any meaningful uptick in medical graduates.
    - ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
      OK. I will accept that. Any idea why so many doctors I know (American born and bred) had to attend offshore schools?
- 6y ago

roland35 6y ago

This may be true for some degrees, but I feel like my engineering degrees were worth it and would still be worth it online. I feel like I could have gotten at least 75% of the value of my education online, especially with my Master's degree (both in Electrical Engineering). For me at least the value of my engineering degrees was in learning the fundamental approaches to solving problems, and most of my classes were lectures anyways without much interaction. For engineering at least I think the other 25% of college should be building things, and unfortunately that is much harder online!

xxs 6y ago
Electrical Engineer w/o a lab to practice is rather hard - I guess nowadays people can start with microcontrollers instead but that's a far cry from EE.
- roland35 6y ago
  Yes, labs are definitely helpful to do in person as well, even with just other students and a TA there. I think they would go under the category of "building stuff", so maybe I should revise 75/25 to 60/40!

_wldu 6y ago

The author is joking. The article is tongue in cheek. You can get a MS in CS from Georgia Tech for roughly $7,000 US dollars total cost... if you can get accepted and complete the work. GT's CS program is consistently ranked in the top 10 CS programs world wide. https://omscs.gatech.edu/ https://omscs.gatech.edu/ Today, you can easily earn a six figure salary anywhere in the US with this degree (provided you have good work ethic and are reasonable to get along with).

shellfishgene 6y ago

I've been wondering, what most degrees from a good school provide to you, and prospective employers, is just a guarantee that you know your stuff and are probably smart. Nowadays you can pretty much teach yourself anything online and from books. Why is there no institution that just does the testing and provides a certificate? You get a syllabus for a few years, and then come back at the end, or in some interval, to be tested on the material. Sure, the tests would have to be pretty comprehensive, but that's not really a problem. If they're done well and cheat-proof, I'm sure employers would start to trust those degrees pretty quickly. Then the benefit would be similar to paying for a full university education, but much cheaper. Of course this only works for people who can teach themselves well.

the_only_law 6y ago
I’be thought about this for a while as well. For one, for a lot of the “useful” degrees, getting a hands-in learning experience just isn’t possible without equipment your average person can’t afford or likely even purchase if they could afford it. Outside of that is CD, which is already reasonably easy to break into without the credential.

mrow84 6y ago

Degrees, etc., are better described as positional goods [0], than as more basic luxury goods, but you are right that that largely leaves them as the preserve of the rich (in places where financing is required). I would highly recommend "The Social Limits to Growth" by Fred Hirsch (linked in that page), on the subject. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positional_good https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positional_good