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The “everyone goes to college” mantra has caused educational inflation caused by misaligned incentives created from a misunderstood effect. In the past, wealth

by samtho 3y ago

The “everyone goes to college” mantra has caused educational inflation caused by misaligned incentives created from a misunderstood effect. In the past, wealthy people self selected to go to college because they could afford to live and pay for college at the same time, all of their life, they liked had a lot of educational privilege because they likely were able to focus on studies and not menial work. Post WWII, college was the hip thing to do that any good middle class young adult could do. They could go to a school that taught you almost exclusively what you wanted to know as everyone motivated enough to go likely had the background to succeed. College moved from a intellectual play grand for the rich to something closer to a vocational school. Because these the new college grads were going into new and specialized industries and earning way higher than average, lawmakers in the US took notice and instead of paying for college for all, they created the worst class of loan in history, one that cannot be discharged, subsidized by the federal government, and under minimal oversight. Colleges noticed this and raised tuition gradually until about 2000-2005 where it rose sharply out of control because they realized that every year that the fed just increased the loan cap, so now you have this loan cap tracking the cost of college in a case of perverse incentives where the most vulnerable people in this arrangement lose. I’m not even going to mention the FAFSA and what a steaming pile of horseshit the “estimated family contribution” is and how to this day condemns millions of students to take on ridiculous private loans just to be able to qualify for a job that maybe pays above minimum wage. Meanwhile, colleges are finding out that the “everyone goes to college” push made enrollment skyrocket but the quality of students has plummeted. Students are no longer self selecting, where in the past only the best and the brightest wanted to continue schooling, everyone from your high school valedictorian to the room-temperature-IQ nose picker was applying. They had to be more selective thereby creating more elite institutions, the rest of them had to deal with the problem of unqualified students filling up their ranks and wanted to find a way to extract more value so they lobbied for additional, comprehensive general education requirements which kept students in college, spending money on classes, because a ton of kids entering can’t do math or write coherently. Now, college is simply an extra few years of high school that ends up being very expensive and it’s returns are questionable with the best results achieved by those actually interested in the material but their 4-year degree looks exactly the same as the other person who skirted through class doing the bare minimum. What’s next? A masters degree. I cannot imagine a more machiavellian, insane, and hostile system for students. The current college system represents a fall from grace where students carried this increasing burden and we just let it happen.

NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
If you think that's bad... it's so much worse than even you are describing. Let's say that you are a college or university in the US. You want more students, right? You sort of need them, if enrollment drops off you lose money any number of ways, and the perception that you're a bad school makes enrollment drop off even more in some vicious circle. So you make the college prettier. The campus gets bigger gardens and fountains. New shiny buildings. Dorms get bigger, you're no longer stuffing 4 freshmen into broom closets with bookshelves masquerading as bunks. They start to resemble every year more and more some sort of resort or spa. How do you pay for this? You raise tuition. You add more fees. The students like it, and they're not really paying for it (not yet, in that way that young people always seem to think debt is like free money instead of an obscene trap into debt bondage). And you're hiring massive numbers now of people whose job it is just to manage this stuff (and to manage the people who manage this stuff). But all the other schools are doing this too, so it's an arms race. And you have to do this, because if you act cost-conscious, people take it as a sign of low-quality. Even if we turn around the perverse incentives that caused this, it does not fix the problem. Universities have been gorging themselves gluttonous on all of this, and now their costs are too high to roll it back. They've got too much staff, too many buildings that won't amortize for years. And god help if anyone were to suggest they dip into the endowments for any of this (even if they were game, what would Wall Street think of that sort of withdrawal?). Not to mention, as bad as "everyone should go to college" is, what's left for those who wouldn't if we trimmed that back? Up until the 1970s or so, you'd go to work at the factory in your little town that would become part of the rust belt a decade or two later. That even (sort of) held in some places up to the early 1990s. What are these kids supposed to do? On r/antiwork, they're always complaining about how no one can afford to live on a Starbucks or Dollar General job. There's a mismatch between the employment these people need, and the sort of employment that is available. And no reasonable way to shrink that gap.
- samtho 3y ago
  I fully agree, and being in tech has insulated me from many of the repercussions of not having a degree. Yes, there are a few non-negotiable "must have a bachelors in X" but I've not lost any sleep over those opportunities. Having had the privilege of hiring for roles, my experience has been that fresh grads need so much hand holding and have trouble understanding a lot of "glue" concepts in CS, but they can... make crude a hashtable in Java? My favorite are those who can name and implement all the data structures but have no idea what they are actually for. Part of the way the labor market has adjusted is that all businesses (not just elite or specialized ones) can say they that a 4-year degree is a requirement, even for ostensibly entry-level roles because there are just so many people with that degree and it's a convenient filter. When you have 1000 applications to fill a single $35,000/yr entry-level position, it's always going to be person with the most experience and willing to work for that. The numbers are not in their favor at all. The pandemic has forced a small readjustment in that businesses whining about not being able to find people are shocked to discover that nobody actually wants that $35K/yr job where they have be on site 5 days per week, get maybe 6 days of vacation per year, dubiously little sick time, and have to exist in a sweat-shop-esque open office floor-plan. The movement to remove the paper ceiling is a noble one but it will be doomed to fail unless forgoing these candidates affect their bottom line. When writing job descriptions, I tend to mercilessly pair back requirements to one or two points that are absolutely essential for the role and most everything else can be omitted. I think this is something more companies can and should do (or selfishly, maybe not) because I've picked up some absolutely fantastic employees who were passed over due to some asinine reason like failing a contrived, live leet-code problem or were demonstrably clever but didn't have a degree. But this is tech which exists in its own world right now, but I fear we are entering the era where it is becoming like any large industry with constantly rising barriers to enter as a new company and lower standards for workers as we begin an exponential race to the bottom. I am in my 30s and have access to many well-paying options, but I am starting to see the bottom fall out of the labor force in this industry where more experienced people are taking roles they are overqualified for and this ushering in of a new generation of tech workers is just not happening at the rate that we need. We hear that there are more tech jobs than there are tech workers to fill, well most of those are shit because the balance of compensation, expectations, and requirements are way off. If I were just entering some non-tech industry, I would have lost all hope at this point with the media fearmongering AI as anything more than a smarter autocomplete and will only serve to further exacerbate the problem of not being able to find employment in order to simply have a modest lifestyle of renting a tiny apartment and being able to pay back the absolute mountains of student loan debt. Forget owning a home, going on vacation, having kids of their own, or achieving any other goal in life on a reasonable timeframe. What are these kids suppose to do? Maybe wait for an uncaring boomer congress to help relieve some student debt? Not with the current attitudes of, "well I paid mine back so screw you" all while conveniently ignoring the fact that educational costs have outpaced inflation, as well as wages relative to that, by orders of magnitude. I don't know what they are suppose to do and it's fucking depressing.

by samtho 3y ago

NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago

If you think that's bad... it's so much worse than even you are describing. Let's say that you are a college or university in the US. You want more students, right? You sort of need them, if enrollment drops off you lose money any number of ways, and the perception that you're a bad school makes enrollment drop off even more in some vicious circle. So you make the college prettier. The campus gets bigger gardens and fountains. New shiny buildings. Dorms get bigger, you're no longer stuffing 4 freshmen into broom closets with bookshelves masquerading as bunks. They start to resemble every year more and more some sort of resort or spa. How do you pay for this? You raise tuition. You add more fees. The students like it, and they're not really paying for it (not yet, in that way that young people always seem to think debt is like free money instead of an obscene trap into debt bondage). And you're hiring massive numbers now of people whose job it is just to manage this stuff (and to manage the people who manage this stuff). But all the other schools are doing this too, so it's an arms race. And you have to do this, because if you act cost-conscious, people take it as a sign of low-quality. Even if we turn around the perverse incentives that caused this, it does not fix the problem. Universities have been gorging themselves gluttonous on all of this, and now their costs are too high to roll it back. They've got too much staff, too many buildings that won't amortize for years. And god help if anyone were to suggest they dip into the endowments for any of this (even if they were game, what would Wall Street think of that sort of withdrawal?). Not to mention, as bad as "everyone should go to college" is, what's left for those who wouldn't if we trimmed that back? Up until the 1970s or so, you'd go to work at the factory in your little town that would become part of the rust belt a decade or two later. That even (sort of) held in some places up to the early 1990s. What are these kids supposed to do? On r/antiwork, they're always complaining about how no one can afford to live on a Starbucks or Dollar General job. There's a mismatch between the employment these people need, and the sort of employment that is available. And no reasonable way to shrink that gap.

samtho 3y ago
I fully agree, and being in tech has insulated me from many of the repercussions of not having a degree. Yes, there are a few non-negotiable "must have a bachelors in X" but I've not lost any sleep over those opportunities. Having had the privilege of hiring for roles, my experience has been that fresh grads need so much hand holding and have trouble understanding a lot of "glue" concepts in CS, but they can... make crude a hashtable in Java? My favorite are those who can name and implement all the data structures but have no idea what they are actually for. Part of the way the labor market has adjusted is that all businesses (not just elite or specialized ones) can say they that a 4-year degree is a requirement, even for ostensibly entry-level roles because there are just so many people with that degree and it's a convenient filter. When you have 1000 applications to fill a single $35,000/yr entry-level position, it's always going to be person with the most experience and willing to work for that. The numbers are not in their favor at all. The pandemic has forced a small readjustment in that businesses whining about not being able to find people are shocked to discover that nobody actually wants that $35K/yr job where they have be on site 5 days per week, get maybe 6 days of vacation per year, dubiously little sick time, and have to exist in a sweat-shop-esque open office floor-plan. The movement to remove the paper ceiling is a noble one but it will be doomed to fail unless forgoing these candidates affect their bottom line. When writing job descriptions, I tend to mercilessly pair back requirements to one or two points that are absolutely essential for the role and most everything else can be omitted. I think this is something more companies can and should do (or selfishly, maybe not) because I've picked up some absolutely fantastic employees who were passed over due to some asinine reason like failing a contrived, live leet-code problem or were demonstrably clever but didn't have a degree. But this is tech which exists in its own world right now, but I fear we are entering the era where it is becoming like any large industry with constantly rising barriers to enter as a new company and lower standards for workers as we begin an exponential race to the bottom. I am in my 30s and have access to many well-paying options, but I am starting to see the bottom fall out of the labor force in this industry where more experienced people are taking roles they are overqualified for and this ushering in of a new generation of tech workers is just not happening at the rate that we need. We hear that there are more tech jobs than there are tech workers to fill, well most of those are shit because the balance of compensation, expectations, and requirements are way off. If I were just entering some non-tech industry, I would have lost all hope at this point with the media fearmongering AI as anything more than a smarter autocomplete and will only serve to further exacerbate the problem of not being able to find employment in order to simply have a modest lifestyle of renting a tiny apartment and being able to pay back the absolute mountains of student loan debt. Forget owning a home, going on vacation, having kids of their own, or achieving any other goal in life on a reasonable timeframe. What are these kids suppose to do? Maybe wait for an uncaring boomer congress to help relieve some student debt? Not with the current attitudes of, "well I paid mine back so screw you" all while conveniently ignoring the fact that educational costs have outpaced inflation, as well as wages relative to that, by orders of magnitude. I don't know what they are suppose to do and it's fucking depressing.