4 ms·
Is the labor market tight enough for the signaling requirements to relax naturally? If employers struggle to hire enough entry level people who can read memos a
by philipkglass 3y ago
Is the labor market tight enough for the signaling requirements to relax naturally? If employers struggle to hire enough entry level people who can read memos and learn basic office software, they probably won't require a generic 4 year degree. But as long as there's enough labor that employers can still be picky, I don't see why/how employers will drop that easy (if blunt) 4 year degree filtering mechanism.
The signaling value of a traditional degree will go up if fewer people acquire it, so the optimal outcome for parents anxious about their own children's future prospects is that other people's children should consider vocational education or go straight from high school into the work force.
I say this aware that many high school grads without academic inclinations are nudged toward universities by default, to their irritation and to the detriment of their more seriously academic classmates. I don't see how to fix it until/unless the labor market gets tight enough to squeak. Until then, every small move to fix the problem will raise the reward for "defecting" back toward earning a degree as a signal.
- eru 3y agoYou can just make college more expensive, that should punish 'defecting' all by itself. My favourite policy suggestion for that: make it so that student loans can be discharged in a bankruptcy like any other loan. (Or more precisely, new student loans taken on after the new policy takes effect. No retro-active loan forgiveness.) It's my favourite policy suggestion, because it's a common populist complaint that student loans stay with you forever. So my suggestion looks like it's giving in to that populist sentiment. What is actually does: most students have no assets just after graduation, so bankruptcy is 'free' for them. Thus lenders can't count on getting the loans repaid, and thus won't loan as freely. Cutting off the spigot of student loan money will bring down the price of education.
- Tyrek 3y agobut the source lender is the US government, which is awful at adjusting to market economics, and would likely require legislation to slow(?) down lending. How would you convince these populists to support this (not very sneaky) legislation?
- naveen99 3y agoreducing money flowing into higher education industry would reduce overall education levels of the population. I don’t think you really want the population to be less educated. Go see what life is like in places with lower levels of education. College is expensive for those people. You don’t want that.
- eru 3y agoGermany, for example, has much less money flowing into education than the US. They seem plenty educated enough to me.
- hansvm 3y agoGermany spends roughly the same annually through post-secondary (normalized by total population) and that amounts to a higher percentage of GDP to support a lower per capita student count at all grade levels. They do have a lower population and thus lower absolute spending, but that shouldn't be relevant.
- eru 3y agoInteresting. What are your sources? What kind of spending are you talking about? Total spending (both private and public), or just official government spending? I agree that all comparisons should be done on a per capita basis or as a proportion of GDP.
- Tyrek 3y agoGiven that we know that there can be multiple types of intelligence and that college only tests a small fraction of those types - are you comfortable with this binary framing? That the only way to go is up (in years of education)? There's no alternate model, different framing, etc. to educating a populace outside of these two choices? Please - let's approach this question with an open mind - there are plenty of alternative approaches worth considering just from other parts of the globe.
- jakear 3y agoWhy would anyone not immediately declare bankruptcy upon graduation under this model?
- smallnamespace 3y agoBecause under this model nobody would make student loans.
- unmole 3y agoThat doesn't seem to happen in other jurisdictions where student loans are dischargable in bankruptcy. Presumably people don't do that because having a bankruptcy on your record comes with consequences. It might even disqualify you from persuing certain careers.
- eru 3y agoWell, the point of my suggestion was to discourage student loans. Exactly as https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36626179 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36626179 points out.
- leetcrew 3y agobankruptcy stays on your credit report for 7 years iirc. that's a long time to get denied (or approved with terrible terms) for credit cards, auto loans, mortgages, etc. if you have a reasonable student loan balance and a solid job offer (maybe you got a stem degree from a public university), it would still be much better to make payments and have access to other credit.
- ChainOfFools 3y ago7 years of being unable to finance a home purchase and having to pay cash or a huge down payment to get a car, but in exchange my entire college education is free? Which is realistically a worst case scenario because there will always be someone who will try to figure out how to correctly evaluate the lending risk of people who are all equally handed free money and thus for whom the bankruptcy signal doesn't differentiate much. And as a fresh college graduate I'm necessarily the most mobile I will likely ever be in my life, with no kids yet and maximum disposable income relative to my needs at this time of young adulthood, thus unlikely to be able or interested in looking for a settle-down home anyway for several years? better believe I'll take that deal, or I would if I was back in that age group and stage of life.