6 ms·

This is the point where people run in to say, "College is MORE than just career prep! It's about producing well-rounded citizens!" Which is a fine sentiment; t

This is the point where people run in to say, "College is MORE than just career prep! It's about producing well-rounded citizens!" Which is a fine sentiment; the problem is that it makes no sense for people to be going deeply into debt to become well-rounded citizens. If you're gonna end up with tens of thousands of dollars in the hole at the end of an education, at the start of your adult life, then yes, it's reasonable to need that education to reliably produce economic dividends. Like, just think of all the other things that can help people become more well-rounded or better citizens, like community service, or international travel. Once you have the list in your head, think to yourself: how many of these would you recommend that young adults spend years of full-time labor in, and go into major debt to pursue?

rch 4y ago
I've been hearing the "college teaches you how to think" trope less often lately. Can't imagine why.
woodruffw 4y ago
> Which is a fine sentiment; the problem is that it makes no sense for people to be going deeply into debt to become well-rounded citizens. If you're gonna end up with tens of thousands of dollars in the hole at the end of an education, at the start of your adult life, then yes, it's reasonable to need that education to reliably produce economic dividends. I'll turn this around on its head: if we recognize the civic and social benefits of having a well-rounded population, then we ought to treat the current rash of students who knowingly go into debt for their degrees as performing a remarkably selfless act. Like so many problems in the US, this one is entirely self-inflicted: you can get a liberal arts degree for virtually nothing in much of the rest of the developed world. This hasn't caused crises anywhere else, and hasn't caused students to flock away from technical programs (which are also civically necessary). None of this has to be the way that it is.
- TulliusCicero 4y ago
  Agreed, from a systemic perspective, shit is broken in the US and needs to be fixed. The government should be paying more, and also controlling costs better (US universities spend a lot more than universities in other countries). Bare minimum, loans that are protected in bankruptcy should have a limit to how much can be taken out based on the median earnings of those who earn that degree, and this should be annualized such that you can't suddenly hit a limit halfway into your degree. From an individual perspective, people should not be willingly going into large debt for poor or relatively uncertain financial prospects.
  - woodruffw 4y ago
    > From an individual perspective, people should not be willingly going into large debt for poor or relatively uncertain financial prospects. I don't disagree, but I want to highlight some factors that (IMO) at least partially absolve people who do take that route: * We do a really pitiful job of teaching financial literacy in the US, especially below the undergraduate level. I suspect that many people see 30K debt after college and think that they can subtract that directly from their salary over a course of years, without factoring in taxes, interest above the principal, etc. * At a societal level, we avoid crushing peoples' dreams: we all know that we can't each be this century's defining investigative journalist, art critic, &c., and yet we (socially) also understand that we can't get those successes unless lots of people strive towards those goals. Maybe this points to a fundamental error in how we value labor, but that's probably an even harder problem to solve for Americans than restructuring college tuition.
  - landemva 4y ago
    College loans were dischargeable in bankruptcy until Clinton changed it. Biden can have that repealed, but that would upset the bankerster gravy train and could jeopardize political donations by the banksters. https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/economy-budget/283625-how-the-clinton-administration-made-it-harder-on-student https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/economy-budget/28362... Since politicians don't want to repeal the Clinton-era law, the logical choices for many students will be to skip college or to leave USA for college overseas. We are really harming our children with this debt.
- vasco 4y ago
  Or we assume they were afraid of mathematics.
- PartiallyTyped 4y ago
  Technically Math, Physics, Biological sciences and many segments of Stem are "liberal arts".
- addicted 4y ago
  The Onion headline: “‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens” applies to so many things in the US. Americans’ absolute refusal to even attempt to learn anything from comparable countries abroad is pathological at this point.
- bnralt 4y ago
  > Like so many problems in the US, this one is entirely self-inflicted: you can get a liberal arts degree for virtually nothing in much of the rest of the developed world. Degree attainment is much lower than the U.S. for much of the rest of the world[1] (usually from more restrictive admissions, from my understanding). Also, from talking to people in other countries, universities over there are often much simpler and don't resemble the 4-year summer camp that schools in the U.S. do (studying in a lot of other countries is probably closer to studying in American night school). I'd say it's a good model to consider, but many would oppose it because it's so different from the typical American college experience. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiary_education_attainment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiary_...
- leeroyjenkins11 4y ago
  The thing is, they aren't doing it as a selfless act. If I want to get a liberal arts education I can go onto open courseware and get a free education. I know so many people getting degrees to get a job that shouldn't need them. I know many that went from a stem degree to a throw away degree because they felt stem was too hard for them and interfered with their social life. A real fix for the student loan crisis would be to make a national competency test instead of using a bachelor's degree gauge competence. Then get rid of government backed student loans. My time in college could have been halved if I could have not taken a bunch of the classes that added no value to my education. Honestly, it's shameful how bad those Gen Ed classes are. They exist to check a box. And I'd be pretty upset to pay for someone else to get a liberal arts degree, especially when it doesn't contribute anything and could have been gotten for free if the person took some initiative.
  - woodruffw 4y ago
    This boils down to the “welfare freeloaders” polemic, turned onto people who are pursuing higher education. The fact that you can’t see what they contribute (or more accurately, can’t appreciate it because you’ve been consistently failed by the educational system) doesn’t make it worthless. When I talk to people with STEM degrees who are around my age, it frequently comes out that their “gen ed” classes were pathetically easy. They generally feel some kind of mild resentment around this, since they’re (1) paying for a degree, and (2) generally intelligent people who can handle a more challenging class. But there’s a reason it’s that way, one that I experienced firsthand when CS students popped into my philosophy courses thinking they’d be easy: they frequently performed miserably and were suddenly at risk of having their CS progression slowed by a non-major requirement. In other words: many schools have thrown up their hands and (tacitly) admitted defeat on STEM students, funneling them through no-fail liberal arts requirements rather than actually challenging them (where they might fail, slow down their STEM degree, and complain about all the irrelevant coursework they have to do even more). And that hasn’t worked so well either: instead of keeping STEM students happy, it’s produced a generation of undergraduates who think their kid-glove treatment is what liberal arts is actually like.
  - ModernMech 4y ago
    One of the reasons for “gen ed ” classes is to give you exposure to different fields at a time when many students don’t know what they want to do in life. Not everyone goes into college 100% sure they want a CS degree and to be a software engineer or whatever. One of the reasons they are easy is because they are intro courses at the doorway of an entire field of study that is not lacking in depth or complexity. Intro to CS is also very easy (this is a variable, this is an if statement, this is a while loop), but that doesn’t mean the 400 level OS or AI course is a walk in the park. The same goes for philosophy, physics, biology, chemistry, history, or any other subject you perhaps thought was a joke. The ease of the 100 level course is so it doesn’t scare you away entirely, not because the field is intrinsically easy. Many students will take that gen ed course and then switch into that major because they found the topic fascinating. You took it and found it dull, which actually did add value to your education because it reaffirmed your choice of your major. Some people aren’t so lucky and pick a career they hate, only to find something they love much later in life. Anyway, this idea that opencourseware is equivalent to a university education is not true in my experience. From my perspective, learning is a multiplayer activity. My students learn best when they are helping each other, doing group projects, teaching eachother things they’ve just learned, and going through the college experience as a cohort. University isn’t just about the facts in the book or the curriculum. I think if that were true, the University system would have been obviated long ago by open courseware. But that has t happened and it won’t because open courseware is just a projection of a university education, not the full thing.
lamontcg 4y ago
How much does it actually cost a university to produce liberal arts majors compared to STEM majors and what would their tuition look like if they only paid for what they used and what directly benefited their education?
- TulliusCicero 4y ago
  My guess is...slightly less? I'm guessing that the cost of instructors, administrative staff, and general facilities dominates the cost of specialized equipment. Would be interesting to see data on though.
  - secabeen 4y ago
    Yeah, it's hard to find that data, as any search is swamped by tuition-focused content. My anecdotal sense is that STEM is significantly more expensive. Here are some factors: 1) Salaries for STEM faculty are higher than non-STEM, due to competition from the private sector. 2) STEM education often requires additional lab courses, with their own dedicated staff, space, and equipment. 3) Non-Stem additional instruction (discussion sections, etc.) is taught by non-STEM grad students, who are much less expensive than even STEM grads. Also STEM classes are much larger, with many state school having more than 50% of their students declare a STEM major of some form.
    - klooney 4y ago
      I mean there's STEM, and there's the reality that Computer Science is the tent pole discipline that people mean when they say STEM. And Computer Science doesn't actually need much more than English in terms of infrastructure
      - CogitoCogito 4y ago
        I'd be surprised if math isn't one of the cheapest disciplines to educate.
        4y ago
coffee_beqn 4y ago
Besides I think they’d be more well rounded working a well paying trade for example than going tens to hundreds of thousands in debt hanging out in echo chambers and coming out with no marketable skills.
- core-utility 4y ago
  At least that's what current society shows us. If the humanities graduates were actually a mass of well-rounded people that contributed to society, and happened to also have debt as a result, we'd be having a better conversation right now. The current reality is that that many (not all) humanities majors are societal annoyances with little to show for their education and also have a ton of det.
renewiltord 4y ago
Interesting. Universities produce well-rounded people. But their admissions process attempts to find well-rounded applicants. Perhaps the whole point of university is to take well-rounded people and smash them into other well-rounded people without damaging their roundedness. Eventually, the perfectly spherical student enters, experiences perfectly elastic collisions with other spherical student with no shape deformation and the perfectly spherical graduate leaves. Society then profits through the resulting efficiency of spherical person transport, with highways replaced by high speed rollways. The apotheosis of universities achieved, the almost-well-rounded college administrator - rounded enough to round the next batch of students but not round enough to use a rollway himself - celebrates this random process of collisions. He names the motion of students through this process after his university where it is first developed: the famous Brown University.
bakuninsbart 4y ago
Well, our life expectancy is so high by now that I think the purpose of young people (and I include people in their 20s here) is to become well-rounded people and citizens. Going travelling for a year or two, working odd jobs, taking chances in a low probability career or opportunity, and yes, also studying for the purpose of pure education are all things young people should be encouraged to do. I do however completely agree that going into deep debt to do just that is a bad idea, but that's more of a societal problem in the US. Most rich countries heavily subsidize young people's education, including travel and service. Luxembourg is an example of doing this incredibly well: most young people I met there were really well adjusted, broadly educated, and also quite happy.
- mamonster 4y ago
  IMO big countries should not be taking policy/lifestyle queues from a country with 700,000 people with an economy made up of EU transfer pricing schemes/tax haven machinations.
  - christophilus 4y ago
    Cues. But I would t take their queues, either.
- vt85 4y ago
- moonchrome 4y ago
  Luxembourg is a ridiculous example... I'm from Europe as well, mid 30s, so my friends/peers have no significant college debt. Somehow I grew up with people who all went to art school (mom pushed me in that direction early on) - and all my childhood friends that went to art school are now in entry level/low paid jobs with low job ambitions, limited options in life because of income, no long term relationships, no children. Subjectively I'm not seeing the "complete people" produced by this system. Compared to my friends that only finished high school they may have more complex opinions, but the reality is they are still in dead end situations - I would not call them any more "complete" personalities. Both end up wasting time on "moms couch" and smoking weed, just discussing different topics. Life expectancy may have extended (although that's average so it's kind of a moot point I'd argue), but prime age for having children has not. Having children later on in life not only increases pregnancy risks but also gives you more childbirth defects. Objectively the modern "waste 20s to jump around and party" and "spend your 20s/30s building a career" is leading to a societal collapse.
afarrell 4y ago
Also: well-rounded citizens are able to contribute their labor to the social cohesion and physical infrastructure of their communities. Careers are part of civic participation.
anovikov 4y ago
If people can take out a loan to buy a Tesla or a Birkin bag, having no money to pay it back, because they think it makes them cool - they should be allowed to take out a loan to get an arts history degree. If anything, it will bring less harm to the environment. There's no way to forbid people to be stupid without sacrificing both market economy, and democracy.
- fallingknife 4y ago
  And the creditor should be to deny them based on insufficient ability to repay, and it should be dischargeable in bankruptcy, and the government should in no circumstances pay it back for them.
  - mmcconnell1618 4y ago
    This is the difference. The government backs educational loans and sets different rules that mean the creditor is almost guaranteed never to lose money. If there was no government guarantee, creditors would offer fewer loans to people they didn't expect to be able to pay them back.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
oulipo 4y ago
This is such an American-like comment, perhaps instead of asking people why they try to take on debt for humanities, you should ask why your Government doesn't pay for studies, like we do in most European countries
j-bos 4y ago
Are people who go to college for those degrees actually well rounded or better citizens as opposed to those of equivalent socio economic background who didn't? On what metrics? As measured by whom?
SkyBelow 4y ago
>"College is MORE than just career prep! It's about producing well-rounded citizens!" Which can be done through online resources, MOOCs, libraries, and using free resources that colleges from such as access to the college library and ability to sit in on guest lectures (the ones that aren't tied to a specific class, they tend to be open to anyone who wants to attend). One will have to miss out on the college experience, especially the parties, but that shouldn't be an issue because it is all about becoming a well rounded citizen, right? Dropping the sarcasm for a moment, one of the reasons colleges cost so much is because they are investing so heavily in the student experience. How many admins do they pay that aren't related to education (and who make so much more than the professors actually teaching, especially the non-tenured ones). Revamping if not rebuilding buildings that are perfectly fine because they have a dated look. Adding numerous amenities that aren't related to education. Some young adults save quite a lot of money by skipping out on these colleges, at least for the first two years, and going to cheaper ones more focused on just education. Sadly, at least in my experience, there is a correlation between having all the extra experiences and having a higher ranked degree program.
fny 4y ago
> College is MORE than just career prep! It's about producing well-rounded citizens! Doesn't/shouldn't this already happen in public school? That sounds like something shilled by higher ed.
_fat_santa 4y ago
> College is MORE than just career prep! It's about producing well-rounded citizens This sentiment was true maybe 50-60 years ago but today, college today is purely for career prep. What drives me nuts is seeing jobs where a degree is necessary but required by the company. I took a peek a "non-STEM" jobs on some job board a while back, I basically wanted to answer the question: "what are my career prospects if I majored in PolSci instead of CS". What drove me crazy is the number of "humanities of other associated major" requirements when the job was something that clearly did not require you knowing any of that, it was just a blanket "need a degree" requirement, what that degree actually entailed be damned. One thing I noticed is these jobs seemed to ask for degrees more often than tech jobs. Some tech jobs want to see a 4yr degree but I would say the majority are pure merit based (needs X years in this, Y years in that, some experience with Z tech). TBH that's the root of the problem we have with education. The reason we see so many useless degrees is that they are literally useless, the only purpose is to full-fill a line item on some job applications. Makes me wonder how much more competitive those jobs would be with stem if they didn't require a degree. You might make less working in a non-STEM field, but your "edge" is that you didn't have to go to college and take on debt. A software engineer may make way more, but they have student loans to pay down. Getting a degree just to show that you have one seems to be a massive waste of time for everyone but those that collect tuition checks.

rch 4y ago

I've been hearing the "college teaches you how to think" trope less often lately. Can't imagine why.

woodruffw 4y ago

> Which is a fine sentiment; the problem is that it makes no sense for people to be going deeply into debt to become well-rounded citizens. If you're gonna end up with tens of thousands of dollars in the hole at the end of an education, at the start of your adult life, then yes, it's reasonable to need that education to reliably produce economic dividends. I'll turn this around on its head: if we recognize the civic and social benefits of having a well-rounded population, then we ought to treat the current rash of students who knowingly go into debt for their degrees as performing a remarkably selfless act. Like so many problems in the US, this one is entirely self-inflicted: you can get a liberal arts degree for virtually nothing in much of the rest of the developed world. This hasn't caused crises anywhere else, and hasn't caused students to flock away from technical programs (which are also civically necessary). None of this has to be the way that it is.

TulliusCicero 4y ago
Agreed, from a systemic perspective, shit is broken in the US and needs to be fixed. The government should be paying more, and also controlling costs better (US universities spend a lot more than universities in other countries). Bare minimum, loans that are protected in bankruptcy should have a limit to how much can be taken out based on the median earnings of those who earn that degree, and this should be annualized such that you can't suddenly hit a limit halfway into your degree. From an individual perspective, people should not be willingly going into large debt for poor or relatively uncertain financial prospects.
- woodruffw 4y ago
  > From an individual perspective, people should not be willingly going into large debt for poor or relatively uncertain financial prospects. I don't disagree, but I want to highlight some factors that (IMO) at least partially absolve people who do take that route: * We do a really pitiful job of teaching financial literacy in the US, especially below the undergraduate level. I suspect that many people see 30K debt after college and think that they can subtract that directly from their salary over a course of years, without factoring in taxes, interest above the principal, etc. * At a societal level, we avoid crushing peoples' dreams: we all know that we can't each be this century's defining investigative journalist, art critic, &c., and yet we (socially) also understand that we can't get those successes unless lots of people strive towards those goals. Maybe this points to a fundamental error in how we value labor, but that's probably an even harder problem to solve for Americans than restructuring college tuition.
- landemva 4y ago
  College loans were dischargeable in bankruptcy until Clinton changed it. Biden can have that repealed, but that would upset the bankerster gravy train and could jeopardize political donations by the banksters. https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/economy-budget/283625-how-the-clinton-administration-made-it-harder-on-student https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/economy-budget/28362... Since politicians don't want to repeal the Clinton-era law, the logical choices for many students will be to skip college or to leave USA for college overseas. We are really harming our children with this debt.
vasco 4y ago
Or we assume they were afraid of mathematics.
PartiallyTyped 4y ago
Technically Math, Physics, Biological sciences and many segments of Stem are "liberal arts".
addicted 4y ago
The Onion headline: “‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens” applies to so many things in the US. Americans’ absolute refusal to even attempt to learn anything from comparable countries abroad is pathological at this point.
bnralt 4y ago
> Like so many problems in the US, this one is entirely self-inflicted: you can get a liberal arts degree for virtually nothing in much of the rest of the developed world. Degree attainment is much lower than the U.S. for much of the rest of the world[1] (usually from more restrictive admissions, from my understanding). Also, from talking to people in other countries, universities over there are often much simpler and don't resemble the 4-year summer camp that schools in the U.S. do (studying in a lot of other countries is probably closer to studying in American night school). I'd say it's a good model to consider, but many would oppose it because it's so different from the typical American college experience. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiary_education_attainment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiary_...
leeroyjenkins11 4y ago
The thing is, they aren't doing it as a selfless act. If I want to get a liberal arts education I can go onto open courseware and get a free education. I know so many people getting degrees to get a job that shouldn't need them. I know many that went from a stem degree to a throw away degree because they felt stem was too hard for them and interfered with their social life. A real fix for the student loan crisis would be to make a national competency test instead of using a bachelor's degree gauge competence. Then get rid of government backed student loans. My time in college could have been halved if I could have not taken a bunch of the classes that added no value to my education. Honestly, it's shameful how bad those Gen Ed classes are. They exist to check a box. And I'd be pretty upset to pay for someone else to get a liberal arts degree, especially when it doesn't contribute anything and could have been gotten for free if the person took some initiative.
- woodruffw 4y ago
  This boils down to the “welfare freeloaders” polemic, turned onto people who are pursuing higher education. The fact that you can’t see what they contribute (or more accurately, can’t appreciate it because you’ve been consistently failed by the educational system) doesn’t make it worthless. When I talk to people with STEM degrees who are around my age, it frequently comes out that their “gen ed” classes were pathetically easy. They generally feel some kind of mild resentment around this, since they’re (1) paying for a degree, and (2) generally intelligent people who can handle a more challenging class. But there’s a reason it’s that way, one that I experienced firsthand when CS students popped into my philosophy courses thinking they’d be easy: they frequently performed miserably and were suddenly at risk of having their CS progression slowed by a non-major requirement. In other words: many schools have thrown up their hands and (tacitly) admitted defeat on STEM students, funneling them through no-fail liberal arts requirements rather than actually challenging them (where they might fail, slow down their STEM degree, and complain about all the irrelevant coursework they have to do even more). And that hasn’t worked so well either: instead of keeping STEM students happy, it’s produced a generation of undergraduates who think their kid-glove treatment is what liberal arts is actually like.
- ModernMech 4y ago
  One of the reasons for “gen ed ” classes is to give you exposure to different fields at a time when many students don’t know what they want to do in life. Not everyone goes into college 100% sure they want a CS degree and to be a software engineer or whatever. One of the reasons they are easy is because they are intro courses at the doorway of an entire field of study that is not lacking in depth or complexity. Intro to CS is also very easy (this is a variable, this is an if statement, this is a while loop), but that doesn’t mean the 400 level OS or AI course is a walk in the park. The same goes for philosophy, physics, biology, chemistry, history, or any other subject you perhaps thought was a joke. The ease of the 100 level course is so it doesn’t scare you away entirely, not because the field is intrinsically easy. Many students will take that gen ed course and then switch into that major because they found the topic fascinating. You took it and found it dull, which actually did add value to your education because it reaffirmed your choice of your major. Some people aren’t so lucky and pick a career they hate, only to find something they love much later in life. Anyway, this idea that opencourseware is equivalent to a university education is not true in my experience. From my perspective, learning is a multiplayer activity. My students learn best when they are helping each other, doing group projects, teaching eachother things they’ve just learned, and going through the college experience as a cohort. University isn’t just about the facts in the book or the curriculum. I think if that were true, the University system would have been obviated long ago by open courseware. But that has t happened and it won’t because open courseware is just a projection of a university education, not the full thing.

lamontcg 4y ago

How much does it actually cost a university to produce liberal arts majors compared to STEM majors and what would their tuition look like if they only paid for what they used and what directly benefited their education?

TulliusCicero 4y ago
My guess is...slightly less? I'm guessing that the cost of instructors, administrative staff, and general facilities dominates the cost of specialized equipment. Would be interesting to see data on though.
- secabeen 4y ago
  Yeah, it's hard to find that data, as any search is swamped by tuition-focused content. My anecdotal sense is that STEM is significantly more expensive. Here are some factors: 1) Salaries for STEM faculty are higher than non-STEM, due to competition from the private sector. 2) STEM education often requires additional lab courses, with their own dedicated staff, space, and equipment. 3) Non-Stem additional instruction (discussion sections, etc.) is taught by non-STEM grad students, who are much less expensive than even STEM grads. Also STEM classes are much larger, with many state school having more than 50% of their students declare a STEM major of some form.
  - klooney 4y ago
    I mean there's STEM, and there's the reality that Computer Science is the tent pole discipline that people mean when they say STEM. And Computer Science doesn't actually need much more than English in terms of infrastructure
    - CogitoCogito 4y ago
      I'd be surprised if math isn't one of the cheapest disciplines to educate.
      - 4y ago

coffee_beqn 4y ago

Besides I think they’d be more well rounded working a well paying trade for example than going tens to hundreds of thousands in debt hanging out in echo chambers and coming out with no marketable skills.

core-utility 4y ago
At least that's what current society shows us. If the humanities graduates were actually a mass of well-rounded people that contributed to society, and happened to also have debt as a result, we'd be having a better conversation right now. The current reality is that that many (not all) humanities majors are societal annoyances with little to show for their education and also have a ton of det.

renewiltord 4y ago

Interesting. Universities produce well-rounded people. But their admissions process attempts to find well-rounded applicants. Perhaps the whole point of university is to take well-rounded people and smash them into other well-rounded people without damaging their roundedness. Eventually, the perfectly spherical student enters, experiences perfectly elastic collisions with other spherical student with no shape deformation and the perfectly spherical graduate leaves. Society then profits through the resulting efficiency of spherical person transport, with highways replaced by high speed rollways. The apotheosis of universities achieved, the almost-well-rounded college administrator - rounded enough to round the next batch of students but not round enough to use a rollway himself - celebrates this random process of collisions. He names the motion of students through this process after his university where it is first developed: the famous Brown University.

bakuninsbart 4y ago

Well, our life expectancy is so high by now that I think the purpose of young people (and I include people in their 20s here) is to become well-rounded people and citizens. Going travelling for a year or two, working odd jobs, taking chances in a low probability career or opportunity, and yes, also studying for the purpose of pure education are all things young people should be encouraged to do. I do however completely agree that going into deep debt to do just that is a bad idea, but that's more of a societal problem in the US. Most rich countries heavily subsidize young people's education, including travel and service. Luxembourg is an example of doing this incredibly well: most young people I met there were really well adjusted, broadly educated, and also quite happy.

mamonster 4y ago
IMO big countries should not be taking policy/lifestyle queues from a country with 700,000 people with an economy made up of EU transfer pricing schemes/tax haven machinations.
- christophilus 4y ago
  Cues. But I would t take their queues, either.
vt85 4y ago
moonchrome 4y ago
Luxembourg is a ridiculous example... I'm from Europe as well, mid 30s, so my friends/peers have no significant college debt. Somehow I grew up with people who all went to art school (mom pushed me in that direction early on) - and all my childhood friends that went to art school are now in entry level/low paid jobs with low job ambitions, limited options in life because of income, no long term relationships, no children. Subjectively I'm not seeing the "complete people" produced by this system. Compared to my friends that only finished high school they may have more complex opinions, but the reality is they are still in dead end situations - I would not call them any more "complete" personalities. Both end up wasting time on "moms couch" and smoking weed, just discussing different topics. Life expectancy may have extended (although that's average so it's kind of a moot point I'd argue), but prime age for having children has not. Having children later on in life not only increases pregnancy risks but also gives you more childbirth defects. Objectively the modern "waste 20s to jump around and party" and "spend your 20s/30s building a career" is leading to a societal collapse.

afarrell 4y ago

Also: well-rounded citizens are able to contribute their labor to the social cohesion and physical infrastructure of their communities. Careers are part of civic participation.

anovikov 4y ago

If people can take out a loan to buy a Tesla or a Birkin bag, having no money to pay it back, because they think it makes them cool - they should be allowed to take out a loan to get an arts history degree. If anything, it will bring less harm to the environment. There's no way to forbid people to be stupid without sacrificing both market economy, and democracy.

fallingknife 4y ago
And the creditor should be to deny them based on insufficient ability to repay, and it should be dischargeable in bankruptcy, and the government should in no circumstances pay it back for them.
- mmcconnell1618 4y ago
  This is the difference. The government backs educational loans and sets different rules that mean the creditor is almost guaranteed never to lose money. If there was no government guarantee, creditors would offer fewer loans to people they didn't expect to be able to pay them back.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

oulipo 4y ago

This is such an American-like comment, perhaps instead of asking people why they try to take on debt for humanities, you should ask why your Government doesn't pay for studies, like we do in most European countries

j-bos 4y ago

Are people who go to college for those degrees actually well rounded or better citizens as opposed to those of equivalent socio economic background who didn't? On what metrics? As measured by whom?

SkyBelow 4y ago

>"College is MORE than just career prep! It's about producing well-rounded citizens!" Which can be done through online resources, MOOCs, libraries, and using free resources that colleges from such as access to the college library and ability to sit in on guest lectures (the ones that aren't tied to a specific class, they tend to be open to anyone who wants to attend). One will have to miss out on the college experience, especially the parties, but that shouldn't be an issue because it is all about becoming a well rounded citizen, right? Dropping the sarcasm for a moment, one of the reasons colleges cost so much is because they are investing so heavily in the student experience. How many admins do they pay that aren't related to education (and who make so much more than the professors actually teaching, especially the non-tenured ones). Revamping if not rebuilding buildings that are perfectly fine because they have a dated look. Adding numerous amenities that aren't related to education. Some young adults save quite a lot of money by skipping out on these colleges, at least for the first two years, and going to cheaper ones more focused on just education. Sadly, at least in my experience, there is a correlation between having all the extra experiences and having a higher ranked degree program.

fny 4y ago

> College is MORE than just career prep! It's about producing well-rounded citizens! Doesn't/shouldn't this already happen in public school? That sounds like something shilled by higher ed.

_fat_santa 4y ago

> College is MORE than just career prep! It's about producing well-rounded citizens This sentiment was true maybe 50-60 years ago but today, college today is purely for career prep. What drives me nuts is seeing jobs where a degree is necessary but required by the company. I took a peek a "non-STEM" jobs on some job board a while back, I basically wanted to answer the question: "what are my career prospects if I majored in PolSci instead of CS". What drove me crazy is the number of "humanities of other associated major" requirements when the job was something that clearly did not require you knowing any of that, it was just a blanket "need a degree" requirement, what that degree actually entailed be damned. One thing I noticed is these jobs seemed to ask for degrees more often than tech jobs. Some tech jobs want to see a 4yr degree but I would say the majority are pure merit based (needs X years in this, Y years in that, some experience with Z tech). TBH that's the root of the problem we have with education. The reason we see so many useless degrees is that they are literally useless, the only purpose is to full-fill a line item on some job applications. Makes me wonder how much more competitive those jobs would be with stem if they didn't require a degree. You might make less working in a non-STEM field, but your "edge" is that you didn't have to go to college and take on debt. A software engineer may make way more, but they have student loans to pay down. Getting a degree just to show that you have one seems to be a massive waste of time for everyone but those that collect tuition checks.