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> Great news, the concept that you need college to succeed was one of the greatest lies told to my generation. I guess it means what you mean by “succeed”. Goi

> Great news, the concept that you need college to succeed was one of the greatest lies told to my generation. I guess it means what you mean by “succeed”. Going to college is and always has been a reliable way towards earning more money[0]. The issue isn’t that college doesn’t work, the issue is that it’s basically an asset bubble of sorts and the cost exceeded its value. If huge chunks of future generations skip college because it’s unaffordable, that will be bad for us as a society. It would be much better to reduce the cost of college so that it’s more valuable for more people, rather than having younger generations opt out due to the high cost. 0 - Degree dependent, of course. Music degrees have been always poorly valued by the market.

rgrieselhuber 5y ago
Bad for us as a society how?
- racl101 5y ago
  I imagine their point is people forgoing a post secondary education.
  - rgrieselhuber 5y ago
    The conflation of college with education was natural and understandable until the last 10-15 years, but that appears to be changing.
    - Grakel 5y ago
      Well said. Today it's a dating camp that you attend after high school before you settle into the debt economy.
    - racl101 5y ago
      I agree as well. I'm just speculating about OP's point. Now you can get a pretty decent education from watching lots of videos and an education that commensurate with one that you'd plunk down thousands of dollars for at a university or college. Especially in the era of COVID where they would have you watch videos anyways during a period of lockdown. So glad I'm not a student right now. I'd feel so ripped off.
- JackFr 5y ago
  Well, two ways. First, broadly speaking across the economy, a college graduate 2000 hours a year typically produces more GDP$ to the real economy than a non-college graduate. There are a lot of caveats to that statement, but broadly it's true and that's why people will refer to education as human capital. Second (and I believe this is the more controversial claim), as a society we really do benefit from intellectuals expert in history, literature and other liberal arts and from basic research, by which I mean scientific research which has no immediately forseeable practicable application.
- jimbokun 5y ago
  Personally, I don't know. But I find it interesting that the only politically permissible way to even discuss it is by looking at how it could hurt women: > Yet the stakes are too high to ignore, she said. “If you care about our society, one, and, two, if you care about women, you have to care about the boys, too. If you have equally educated numbers of men and women that just makes a better society, and it makes it better for women.” The possibility that it could be bad for men I guess is not a relevant consideration when evaluating the impact on society.
michaelt 5y ago
College degrees are either incredibly overpriced, or incredibly good value for money, depending on how you analyse them. If you look at some CS graduate making $200,000 a year and assume they'd have made $50,000 without the degree, college looks like an incredibly good investment. On the other hand, if you look at someone paying $1000 per credit hour for online video lectures? I've seen online video at 1% that price being described as overpriced.
- Aerroon 5y ago
  >If you look at some CS graduate making $200,000 a year and assume they'd have made $50,000 without the degree This is the problem with assessing how valuable college is: you don't know how well off the person would've been if they had chosen not to go to college. You can't just compare all the people who went to college with all the people who didn't. You end up with a selection bias. You need to compare people who went to college with people who could've gone to college, but didn't. Also, there might be (is) a difference between what's good for the individual and what's good for society.
  - inkblotuniverse 5y ago
    Also, to the degree that college is used as a signal of intelligence/skill, it's a waste for individually and collectively. You could just have the college entry exams and hand out diplomas for those, and it would be nearly as good.
    - bradlys 5y ago
      Except they’re not used as a measure of intelligence or skill? They’re used as a measure of ability to go through a series of rigorous tests and do a bunch of work you might not like doing. They’re a litmus test to see if you’d likely be good for doing a job you don’t enjoy either. End of the day - work is work and they need history to show you can do more than the bare legal minimum of graduating high school.
      - loonster 5y ago
racl101 5y ago
> If huge chunks of future generations skip college because it’s unaffordable, that will be bad for us as a society. It would be much better to reduce the cost of college so that it’s more valuable for more people, rather than having younger generations opt out due to the high cost. You'd think so. But then again look at healthcare in the US.
ekianjo 5y ago
> It would be much better to reduce the cost of college so that it’s more valuable for more people To do that, would be very helpful if the government stopped giving zero interest loans. This is resulting in costs skyrocketing.
- yardie 5y ago
  LOL. I wish the government gave 0-interest loans. As it stands in the US, Stafford Loans are higher than most car loans [3.73% undergrad, 5.28% graduate, 6.28% PLUS]. Costs are skyrocketing despite government loans. It's not the working/middle class students asking for new buildings, new "centers of research", new dorms, etc. Colleges are building these things, giving you the bill, and your options are go:not go.
  - loonster 5y ago
    As the percentage goes lower the amount of debt will increase. The same thing happened in mortgages. The monthly payment stayed relative constant (plus inflation).
    - ric2b 5y ago
      We're talking about teenagers, not adults with several years of household finance experience.
      - loonster 5y ago
        It doesn't matter. People care more about the monthly payment than they do the debt #. You can afford a much higher debt burden if the interest rate is smaller. For fun, assume you can afford $1000/month in housing costs. With a 30yr mortgage and 20% interest rate. How expensive of a house can you afford? What if interst rates dropped to 10%? 5? 2.5? Very strong correlation with home prices over the last 40 years.
phkahler 5y ago
>> Going to college is and always has been a reliable way towards earning more money[0]. The issue isn’t that college doesn’t work, the issue is that it’s basically an asset bubble of sorts and the cost exceeded its value. That last part about exceeding it's value contradicts the notion that it currently IS a reliable way toward earning more money. At least net more money. IMHO a bunch of professors should be able to start their own "non-profit" college with minimal overhead. But I suppose a lot of them aren't really into teaching anyway. Maybe we need to separate education from funding their hobbies (research).
- a123b456c 5y ago
  Your idea sounds like a public university. We could even collectively own it through our state government.
- pc86 5y ago
  It depends on what you're comparing it to. You can go to a trade school and learn contracting, or be an electrician, or an HVAC installer, and in your late teens and early 20's you'll make a lot more than most college grads. But unless you branch out into your own business your income is capped lower than a generic college grad's probably is. And importantly, those careers are typically hell on your body. I know we all like to talk about the dangers of sitting all day but it doesn't compare to doing physical labor for a living, by any stretch. If you have particularly onerous private loans funding a marginal degree from a for-profit institution, you might net less lifetime earnings than a very skilled electrician in an in-demand market. If you're comparing it to unskilled labor, retail, customer service, or stuff like that, it's absolutely no contest you're still better off with the degree. And yeah your last bit there seems like the typical HN "let's reinvent this thing that already exist but 'from first principles!!1' but forgetting all the reasons it exists in the state it does now." Public colleges have too much overhead but some of it is justified and necessary to ensure licensing, credentialing, etc.
  - the_only_law 5y ago
    > and in your late teens and early 20's you'll make a lot more than most college grads. I question even this. I live in an area of the US without a strong union culture, and known a lot of people in the trades and it doesn’t seem uncommon to see job postings for X apprentice starting at $13-$15 and hour. I could get close to that at a shitty gas station clerk job.
Grakel 5y ago
Everyone going to college has turned it into high school- in every metric. I'm a professor, and college is a lifestyle, the classes are a part time job, and there is greatly reduced academic rigor and seriousness. At some age, general education should become a personal journey, or soon we'll have PhDs in general studies and everyone will need one.
- silexia 5y ago
  My kids will be strongly discouraged from going to college. Colleges have somehow devolved from centers of education into something else entirely. Colleges now often push extreme viewpoints that lack evidence, colleges have dangerous drinking and drug cultures, and colleges bury their students in debt that enslaves them for life. A good education can now be had on YouTube... I have spent the last year learning construction there and the quality of content is excellent. Years ago, I learned to program quite well using online courses and I am sure those have improved even further. I tried to learn diesel mechanics from a textbook That was the top rated in the field, it is shocking how terrible learning from a textbook is. I am going to have my kids do a combination of apprenticeships and online learning.
- bradlys 5y ago
  > I'm a professor, and college is a lifestyle, the classes are a part time job, and there is greatly reduced academic rigor and seriousness. Where/what do you teach? When I was doing math & cs - they (especially math) were more than a full time job. Rigor was pretty high - lots of kids failing, dropping out, or transferring schools out. I see this still happening with people I know in school now - mind you not as severe since they’re not in math.
- poopypoopington 5y ago
  This is a vastly overgeneralized statement. Where I went to college [in the US] was much more than a "part time job" and academic rigor was incredibly high. It was not uncommon for students to work 60-80 hours a week.

rgrieselhuber 5y ago

Bad for us as a society how?

racl101 5y ago
I imagine their point is people forgoing a post secondary education.
- rgrieselhuber 5y ago
  The conflation of college with education was natural and understandable until the last 10-15 years, but that appears to be changing.
  - Grakel 5y ago
    Well said. Today it's a dating camp that you attend after high school before you settle into the debt economy.
  - racl101 5y ago
    I agree as well. I'm just speculating about OP's point. Now you can get a pretty decent education from watching lots of videos and an education that commensurate with one that you'd plunk down thousands of dollars for at a university or college. Especially in the era of COVID where they would have you watch videos anyways during a period of lockdown. So glad I'm not a student right now. I'd feel so ripped off.
JackFr 5y ago
Well, two ways. First, broadly speaking across the economy, a college graduate 2000 hours a year typically produces more GDP$ to the real economy than a non-college graduate. There are a lot of caveats to that statement, but broadly it's true and that's why people will refer to education as human capital. Second (and I believe this is the more controversial claim), as a society we really do benefit from intellectuals expert in history, literature and other liberal arts and from basic research, by which I mean scientific research which has no immediately forseeable practicable application.
jimbokun 5y ago
Personally, I don't know. But I find it interesting that the only politically permissible way to even discuss it is by looking at how it could hurt women: > Yet the stakes are too high to ignore, she said. “If you care about our society, one, and, two, if you care about women, you have to care about the boys, too. If you have equally educated numbers of men and women that just makes a better society, and it makes it better for women.” The possibility that it could be bad for men I guess is not a relevant consideration when evaluating the impact on society.

michaelt 5y ago

College degrees are either incredibly overpriced, or incredibly good value for money, depending on how you analyse them. If you look at some CS graduate making $200,000 a year and assume they'd have made $50,000 without the degree, college looks like an incredibly good investment. On the other hand, if you look at someone paying $1000 per credit hour for online video lectures? I've seen online video at 1% that price being described as overpriced.

Aerroon 5y ago
>If you look at some CS graduate making $200,000 a year and assume they'd have made $50,000 without the degree This is the problem with assessing how valuable college is: you don't know how well off the person would've been if they had chosen not to go to college. You can't just compare all the people who went to college with all the people who didn't. You end up with a selection bias. You need to compare people who went to college with people who could've gone to college, but didn't. Also, there might be (is) a difference between what's good for the individual and what's good for society.
- inkblotuniverse 5y ago
  Also, to the degree that college is used as a signal of intelligence/skill, it's a waste for individually and collectively. You could just have the college entry exams and hand out diplomas for those, and it would be nearly as good.
  - bradlys 5y ago
    Except they’re not used as a measure of intelligence or skill? They’re used as a measure of ability to go through a series of rigorous tests and do a bunch of work you might not like doing. They’re a litmus test to see if you’d likely be good for doing a job you don’t enjoy either. End of the day - work is work and they need history to show you can do more than the bare legal minimum of graduating high school.
    - loonster 5y ago

racl101 5y ago

> If huge chunks of future generations skip college because it’s unaffordable, that will be bad for us as a society. It would be much better to reduce the cost of college so that it’s more valuable for more people, rather than having younger generations opt out due to the high cost. You'd think so. But then again look at healthcare in the US.

ekianjo 5y ago

> It would be much better to reduce the cost of college so that it’s more valuable for more people To do that, would be very helpful if the government stopped giving zero interest loans. This is resulting in costs skyrocketing.

yardie 5y ago
LOL. I wish the government gave 0-interest loans. As it stands in the US, Stafford Loans are higher than most car loans [3.73% undergrad, 5.28% graduate, 6.28% PLUS]. Costs are skyrocketing despite government loans. It's not the working/middle class students asking for new buildings, new "centers of research", new dorms, etc. Colleges are building these things, giving you the bill, and your options are go:not go.
- loonster 5y ago
  As the percentage goes lower the amount of debt will increase. The same thing happened in mortgages. The monthly payment stayed relative constant (plus inflation).
  - ric2b 5y ago
    We're talking about teenagers, not adults with several years of household finance experience.
    - loonster 5y ago
      It doesn't matter. People care more about the monthly payment than they do the debt #. You can afford a much higher debt burden if the interest rate is smaller. For fun, assume you can afford $1000/month in housing costs. With a 30yr mortgage and 20% interest rate. How expensive of a house can you afford? What if interst rates dropped to 10%? 5? 2.5? Very strong correlation with home prices over the last 40 years.

phkahler 5y ago

>> Going to college is and always has been a reliable way towards earning more money[0]. The issue isn’t that college doesn’t work, the issue is that it’s basically an asset bubble of sorts and the cost exceeded its value. That last part about exceeding it's value contradicts the notion that it currently IS a reliable way toward earning more money. At least net more money. IMHO a bunch of professors should be able to start their own "non-profit" college with minimal overhead. But I suppose a lot of them aren't really into teaching anyway. Maybe we need to separate education from funding their hobbies (research).

a123b456c 5y ago
Your idea sounds like a public university. We could even collectively own it through our state government.
pc86 5y ago
It depends on what you're comparing it to. You can go to a trade school and learn contracting, or be an electrician, or an HVAC installer, and in your late teens and early 20's you'll make a lot more than most college grads. But unless you branch out into your own business your income is capped lower than a generic college grad's probably is. And importantly, those careers are typically hell on your body. I know we all like to talk about the dangers of sitting all day but it doesn't compare to doing physical labor for a living, by any stretch. If you have particularly onerous private loans funding a marginal degree from a for-profit institution, you might net less lifetime earnings than a very skilled electrician in an in-demand market. If you're comparing it to unskilled labor, retail, customer service, or stuff like that, it's absolutely no contest you're still better off with the degree. And yeah your last bit there seems like the typical HN "let's reinvent this thing that already exist but 'from first principles!!1' but forgetting all the reasons it exists in the state it does now." Public colleges have too much overhead but some of it is justified and necessary to ensure licensing, credentialing, etc.
- the_only_law 5y ago
  > and in your late teens and early 20's you'll make a lot more than most college grads. I question even this. I live in an area of the US without a strong union culture, and known a lot of people in the trades and it doesn’t seem uncommon to see job postings for X apprentice starting at $13-$15 and hour. I could get close to that at a shitty gas station clerk job.

Grakel 5y ago

Everyone going to college has turned it into high school- in every metric. I'm a professor, and college is a lifestyle, the classes are a part time job, and there is greatly reduced academic rigor and seriousness. At some age, general education should become a personal journey, or soon we'll have PhDs in general studies and everyone will need one.

silexia 5y ago
My kids will be strongly discouraged from going to college. Colleges have somehow devolved from centers of education into something else entirely. Colleges now often push extreme viewpoints that lack evidence, colleges have dangerous drinking and drug cultures, and colleges bury their students in debt that enslaves them for life. A good education can now be had on YouTube... I have spent the last year learning construction there and the quality of content is excellent. Years ago, I learned to program quite well using online courses and I am sure those have improved even further. I tried to learn diesel mechanics from a textbook That was the top rated in the field, it is shocking how terrible learning from a textbook is. I am going to have my kids do a combination of apprenticeships and online learning.
bradlys 5y ago
> I'm a professor, and college is a lifestyle, the classes are a part time job, and there is greatly reduced academic rigor and seriousness. Where/what do you teach? When I was doing math & cs - they (especially math) were more than a full time job. Rigor was pretty high - lots of kids failing, dropping out, or transferring schools out. I see this still happening with people I know in school now - mind you not as severe since they’re not in math.
poopypoopington 5y ago
This is a vastly overgeneralized statement. Where I went to college [in the US] was much more than a "part time job" and academic rigor was incredibly high. It was not uncommon for students to work 60-80 hours a week.