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US Confidence in Higher Education Institutions Continues Long Decline
- sickofparadox 3y agoIn absolute numbers, college is still 100% a good deal, provided you have some kind of scholarship or go to an in-state institution. The problem is that some of these places (and I hate to be that guy), especially small elite liberal arts colleges, seem to exist these days to basically drown young people in debt while they get into a job they could have had with the same English degree from the dependable community college + state school combo. We really need to look at the morality of allowing young adults access to an essentially unrestricted credit line.
- anovikov 3y agoWell, that is a problem with government and banks, not the universities. I think liberal arts degree is a good thing if you are already set for life. Getting it on credit and expecting to repay that credit with job is of course, crazy.
- sickofparadox 3y agoWell, I'd say that while it might be a problem to be solved by governments and banks, it certainly ends up being egg on the Universities' faces. Anecdotally, almost all of my college friends and acquaintances held the university just as responsible for charging the prices it did, thus requiring them to go into further debt. (It was a technical school and most of my social group had jobs-focused degrees)
- Almondsetat 3y agoIvy League schools are so good at marketing that they have brainwashed the youth into thinking community colleges are worthless. Spoiler: all bachelors are foundational, meaning they are taught basically the same not only in the US but around the world and don’t require any fancy equipment or laboratory to complete
- lotsofpulp 3y ago90% of students are not aiming to go to a top school, and of those that do, they know the benefit is networking with peers at the top schools, not the labs or fancy equipment.
- boringg 3y agoExcept, you know, the top tier research labs with the most talented minds working in them. That absolutely has value. Is it worth the money that you are paying for your diploma - I don't know. The denigration of our best technical programs to say they don't have that much value above and beyond networking benefits really undermines some of the core values of our educational institutions.
- lotsofpulp 3y agoSorry, I was only referring to bachelor level education.
- kelipso 3y ago> Spoiler: all bachelors are foundational, meaning they are taught basically the same That is just really really not true. Variance in quality of professors is huge. Also they clearly don't all follow the same textbooks or course syllabus.
- Almondsetat 3y ago
- fasthands9 3y agoI do feel where there was a weird transition where small liberal arts schools used to just be for rich people - but then they became for all people (it just meant debt for the non-rich ones) I come from a highly educated but not super wealthy family. Even 15 years ago, my family told me unless I got into an Ivy or similar school I should just go to my state university. I feel like that, as the starting point for conventional wisdom, would help more people.
- fullshark 3y agoFirst two years in community college, transfer to state university is by far the best return on investment. In part because some kids after two years of college decide it's not for them.
- rawgabbit 3y agoI have a son in a state university now. Unfortunately, things are so competitive even in a state school; I don't believe the community college pipeline is viable. Yes, technically you can go to a CC and try to transfer to a state university. The odds of that happening, is however very difficult. At my son's large state university, it is almost impossible to transfer majors now. The reason being is that there are so many students and applicants wanting to go into the popular majors. The queue does not move. If you are in, you are in. If you are not, you need a miracle to get into a popular major like CS, engineering, biomedical etc.
- seanmcdirmid 3y agoIf you can't make it into a state school of choice after high school, going to a CC, getting good grades in those classes, might give them a second chance to get in. For a state school, and this is hardly guaranteed. One trick is to see if they have quotas based on geography in the state. So you want to get into UW in Seattle, it might make sense moving to Spokane, attending Spokane Community College for a year, and then re-apply to UW as an Eastern Washingtonian! It might work, who knows. Doesn't apply to really top schools. You aren't going to transfer into MIT, Stanford, Caltech from a CC, or probably any other university.
- hospitalJail 3y ago>small elite liberal arts colleges If they are elite, they should pay for themselves. They are not actually elite. Everyone wants to feel elite, so everyone pretends to have some prestige even if the school is mid/low. Most of the issue is that unrestricted credit line.
- sarchertech 3y agoFederal loans aren’t unrestricted. The problem is that private banks are willing to loan large amounts because you can’t bankrupt out of student loans (in most cases).
- bo1024 3y agoYou seem to be basing the value of education solely on employability, but that misses a huge amount of the value of a liberal arts education -- not just to the individual, but even more so to society at large.
- sickofparadox 3y agoThat's a really nice sentiment and I used to believe it, but going to college has disabused me of this boomer/gen x lie.
- red-iron-pine 3y agoi don't think it's a lie, per se. but at 50k a year? absolutely not worth it. and if it's so great for society, why isn't society willing to pay for it?
- azemetre 3y agoI mean wouldn’t the better question to ask if it is even good for society? American population is more educated than ever but we still have massive issues of wealth inequality and people still fall for disinformation all the time. At what percentage do we need for population with degrees to finally tackle the hard problems of our society?
- StableAlkyne 3y agoThe universal credit line was created a few decades ago when Congress decided to make student loan debt very hard to discharge (you basically can only get out of it by dying, becoming so disabled you cannot hold a job, or leaving the country). This encouraged lenders to put money into what is effectively a risk free investment. Suddenly, everyone had infinite money, and there was no pressure to keep university costs low (as most states don't have the political will to cap their public education costs in a meaningful way). Colleges started investing more into attractions for their students - fancy gyms, rec halls, new dorms, etc. Both combined to "require" that schools raise the price. And on the other side, now that everyone could afford college, public schools started to heavily encourage everyone to go to college - degree holders make more on average after all. Which is how people go into college for degrees they have no practical use for (picking on philosophy, it is great and gives a very valuable set of critical thinking skills, but do you really need those skills if you're not going to be an author, professor, lawyer, etc?). It also led to lots of folks going into college as "undecided" majors, paying tens of thousands per semester without any plan.
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago> It also led to lots of folks going into college as "undecided" majors, paying tens of thousands per semester without any plan. A lot of universities won't let you select a major until you are toward the end of your sophomore year. Many majors have pre-requisites that you have to satisfy, and acceptance isn't guaranteed (even if you are already accepted to the university).
- StableAlkyne 3y agoThat sounds like a terrible deal - why would someone pay thousands of dollars for the chance to maybe buy the service you wanted in the first place? It only makes sense if it's a prestigious university whose name guarantees you a job or PhD slot somewhere What portion of universities are doing that?
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
- fundad 3y agoForgive my quip but college is the absolute worst way to improve your job prospects except for all the other ways. I get that if politics is important to you, you won't like a place that includes your political opponents. So some people don't let their kids go, or they resent that their kids have to mix with political opponents. Though as pointed our here already, most kids are not politically inclined and are trying to have fun.
- thomastjeffery 3y agoNone of what you just wrote has anything to do with the students themselves; and that's the problem. College was 90% a waste of time and effort for my ADHD self. The overwhelming majority of value-to-be-had is gated behind the bureaucracy and traditionalism of the system itself. The only value I ever found at college was to casually be around people who are in the mindset of learning. That value was minimized by the tedious and time-consuming work that school is designed from the ground up to be.
- underseacables 3y agoPrevious Gallup polling found that Democrats expressed concern about the costs, while Republicans registered concern about politics in higher education. I think both parties are right. The cost of a university education has skyrocketed, which I believe is due to bloated administration. However, what has also occurred is a campaign of political and social indoctrination, and censorship of contrarian views. I went to university 20 years ago, and it was common for people to challenge one another, regardless of their views, and not get punished for it. You can't seem to do that anymore, at least safely and without punishment. If you can't challenge your professors, can't challenge one another, are you learning or just being indoctrinated?
- polishdude20 3y ago"can't challenge your professors" Seems more like nowadays it's "if you can't be challenged by your professor"
- lupusreal 3y ago[dead]
- slackfan 3y agoIt's both.
- alpinisme 3y agoIt’s absolutely not. The balance of power has shifted toward the students in recent years (for better or worse). If a professor is able to “punish” “contrarian views,” it is only to the extent that the rest of the students get behind it. But I also think the punished views are at most socially punished in all but outlier cases. Having worked in higher ed for a bit and then transitioned into tech, I can say that students are over quick (on both left and right) to chalk up a bad score (read: “b” when I thought I deserved an “a”) to a biased attitude toward content rather than a substantive objection to the quality of argument. One thing that is true of humans in general: we will more easily find the holes in the arguments we disagree with, and what’s more, most students have similar ish ideas (especially the “contrarian” ones), so after two years of teaching a class on (say) the history of the civil war or gender in 18th century literature, the arguments are going to be familiar enough that you can just pattern match on them.
- twelfthnight 3y agoThis feels like a feedback loop where political parties defund public colleges, it becomes worse, they say "look how bad it is" to justify more cuts. It becomes worse... EDIT. I do think there is also a phenomenon that over time corruption (administration) seeps into organizations. Wish we could tackle that directly instead of defunding which may be short sighted.
- rayiner 3y agoSpending, including at public colleges, has skyrocketed over the last 20 years.
- bo1024 3y agoTuition has skyrocketed, public funding has decreased (if not "plummeted"). e.g. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/education/most-americans-dont-realize-state-funding-for-higher-ed-fell-by-billions https://www.pbs.org/newshour/education/most-americans-dont-r...
- rayiner 3y agoSpending still went up. So it doesn’t make sense to say, as OP did, that cuts made higher education “worse.”
- JamesBarney 3y agoThis doesn't look like plummeted to me. https://www.statista.com/statistics/184069/federal-funds-for-education-and-research/#:~:text=In%202021%2C%20about%20174.9%20billion,programs%20in%20the%20United%20States https://www.statista.com/statistics/184069/federal-funds-for....
- bo1024 3y agoLocal and state funding of education is much higher than federal funding.
- twelfthnight 3y ago
- SliceOfWaifu 3y agoMy advice to all high school graduates is that you should not go to college if you don't already know exactly what you want to major on, and have at least some idea of what career path you plan to pursue.
- verisimilidude 3y agoI would recommend community college to smart kids without direction. It’s a great place to explore subjects without going into debt.
- phone8675309 3y agoThis is how I started my collegiate journey. I made enough money at my minimum wage job to pay for my entire community college's quarter's fees up front. It really helped me figure out how and where I wanted to pursue higher education. Did my first two years there to get an associate's and then transferred to an in-state school where the tuition was a bit more expensive but much less than the average college student's. I took an intro to philosophy course in community college where the professor was passionate about teaching it, and would happily play with ideas with students. We had 15 students in our course, and he'd sit us down and discuss our papers on the books and readings assigned for the course, and generally loved it. He had to - he wasn't being paid a lot for teaching at the community college, so it had to be a passion. I had to take another intro to philosophy course at the university. There were 90 people in the course in a small lecture hall. We were assigned many of the same books and readings, but they weren't discussed in any detail or with any insight, our papers weren't carefully marked, and it felt like not even the professor cared as this was a course that checked a humanities requirement everyone had to take. The professor was tenured, and had to teach at least one course in addition to whatever else he did for the school (which wasn't clear to use as students). I learned more for less at community college, and some of the readings and discussions we had still float into my mind sometimes. The only thing I remember about my university philosophy professor is that he'd sometimes pace at the front of the lecture hall with a baseball bat and when he made a point he thought was good he'd pretend he was hitting a home run with the bat.
- 3y ago
- fullshark 3y agoWell earned, turning clueless 18 year olds into indentured servants without actual vocational skills does that.
- austin-cheney 3y agoMost people I know treat a 4 year degree as some form of blue collar work placement program. There is no consideration for education, but instead just minimum required criteria to qualify for a job exactly matching the educational major. No wonder so many people are disappointed and that they lack passion and competence for their work. This is why I tell people if they really want to learn to program learn on their own. Get a degree in the humanities (English, Art History, Literature, History) to learn composition and more formally correct communication. If they really want to learn computer science theory do it as a masters. I get the feeling most people don't really want to learn to program as instead they want to jump straight into higher paid employment.
- incogitomode 3y agoI had this mindset when I went to UNC Chapel Hill 20 years ago and studied humanities. As a software engineer for 15 years now, I wish I'd studied something more in the vein of your work placement program. Having in-person instruction and academic rigor for a subject like Chemistry, Engineering or Computer Science is the key to really mastering it. Everything I learned in my Philosophy and Art History courses I could have gained independently through reading, debate, and conversation with friends or in other extra-curricular settings. If I'd pursued a career in academia, or maybe law, I might feel differently but even then I'm not sure an undergrad English or Art History degree is worth anything approaching the typical cost.
- gregorymichael 3y agoHard to think of another product where six-figure customers are treated so poorly and leave with so little value.
- apwell23 3y agohousing market in usa?
- bo1024 3y ago"In higher education, students are not the customer, they are the product. Society is the customer." Not 100% true, but worth thinking about.
- whichfawkes 3y agoIf society were the customer, society ought to be paying.
- bo1024 3y agoRight, which is why we have publicly funded education systems - in much of the world, and to various extents.
- heap_perms 3y agoThe education system is a system of indoctrination of the young. Always has been.
- dj_mc_merlin 3y agoEducation is just indoctrination which we consider useful.
- pauldenton 3y agoHow many of the graduates with degrees that end in "studies" are doing something useful with their degree?
- dj_mc_merlin 3y agoHaving any degree and some social skills can get you a white collar job. While not glamorous it beats shoveling holes (unless you're smart/practical/brave enough to make good money with some sort of physical labour). That's useful to you since you can make a somewhat easy living. Useful to society? I mean sort of, in most jobs you achieve _something_. The fact that we're inefficient and often build the wrong thing that's useless is more of a failure of the human race in general..
- pauldenton 3y agoThat's credential inflation. Saying we require any degree to do this job means the degree is irrelevant. It's like Occupational licensing. Putting up barriers between people with low paying jobs to pursuing higher paying jobs which cannot be overcome without sinking a lot of cost. This country in the past did fine without requiring that license, as do many competing countries today.
- dj_mc_merlin 3y agoI don't think it's purely inflation. A degree shows you can show up to a place for 3-4 years and do something. That's all you need for a lot of jobs so preferring those who have a piece of paper saying they can do that makes some sense. I live in Europe where university is free or quite cheap so asking young people to do it for a couple years isn't the worst.. it's quite fun. And I say this as someone who dropped out to work in software engineering instead.
- xyzelement 3y agoI’ve been saying that college is doomed, for a while. I say this as a man with 2 graduate degrees so I am obviously not anti education. Let’s think first principles. A hundred or even 50 years ago, going to college was a real signifier. You were someone who invested in scholarship, survived the rigor, etc. In the absence of other signifiers, that meant something about you. And obviously also you learned something. Today “everyone” goes to college but it’s also trivial to graduate college with no useful skills or mind expansion because it has become more accessible and the bar is lower. So your degree no longer signifies much about you. It’s kinda sad to see college educated adults working in Starbucks but yeah it’s trivial to be half a million dollars in debt and not come out with much. So the signifier value is gone. Meanwhile your opportunities to learn and prove yourself outside of a college degree are more present than ever. Online education options, easy testing, online portfolios etc being some examples of that. So college gives you less, charges you a lot, and competition is rising. That’s not a tenable situation. And the pill about decreased confidence resonates. In the prior generation maybe you can make some argument about college educated people being smarter (and worth listening to) in contrast to others. But now, it’s kinda obvious that electricians, plumbers etc are pulling in 300k a year are smarter and wiser than a liberal arts grad pulling 45k at Starbucks and yeah it’s becoming hard to justify giving more weight to the later in anything. I find this a bit sad - I got a lot out of my education and if that was available to my son and daughter in 17 years that would be great but I suspect it will be so watered down if it exists at all that it would be a hard to justify option.
- TMWNN 3y ago>Today “everyone” goes to college but it’s also trivial to graduate college with no useful skills or mind expansion because it has become more accessible and the bar is lower. So your degree no longer signifies much about you. In Heinlein's Friday, the heroine visits a future California. The government, having found that those with college degrees earn more money, promptly issues every citizen a bachelor's degree to correct this inequitable situation.
- xyzelement 3y agoHaha fair enough! Or more specifically - NYU recently (2022/2023) fired an organic chemistry professor for teaching a too-hard course - which he had taught the same way for decades - because now that SATs aren't a must for admissions, the student body can't hack it.
- alephnerd 3y agoBefore everyone starts hyperventilating, based on the data Pews provided, the biggest reason for this drop was because trust in higher education from individuals with no college education dropped from 54% in 2015 to 29% in 2023, and primarily Republicans from 59% in 2015 to 19% in 2023. It looks like a feedback loop caused by culture wars and anti-elitism.
- pauldenton 3y agoConsidering how elites handled things since March of 2020, can you really blame them?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- mbfg 3y agoA strong case can be made, i think, for people who are struggling with the cost of education, to consider trades, now more than ever. especially in electrical. Trades people are aging pretty significantly as a group, and there is going to be a surge in electrical that will need lots of people. This is true in general, but especially electrical. I went to college when it was cheap and so there really wasn't much of a concern. If i were a young person now, i doubt i could afford it, and trades would likely be a big win for me. Many a day, even now, i wake up and wish i had taken that path.
- hotpotamus 3y agoMy tradespeople relatives; uncles, my brother, etc... tell me they wish they had gone to college. My brother actually did and went from a (quite good from what I could tell) general contractor to an engineer (not the software kind). He couldn't believe that he could get a day off work and still get paid for it, and he got health insurance for the first time in his life. They also make money that's much more in line with the national averages (like $60K/year; a number that would be scoffed at here) than the wild several hundred thousand dollar fantasies I see people here engage in.
- pauldenton 3y agoAnd yet if you look at teachers, parents and the general milieu, there is an idea that everyone should go to college, and that going into the trades or working immediately after completing highschool makes you lesser than.
- BenFranklin100 3y agoIn addition to the reasons others have mentioned (high tuition costs and political and social indoctrination) a separate reason is universities are failing at providing useful, practical skill sets. A course on how to use a spreadsheet and other business software has much value, especially to those from disadvantaged backgrounds. A basic statistics course that includes, say, Darrel Huff’s “How to Lie with Statistics” has value to both the individual and society. It would interesting to see if the reputation of community colleges have held up, as they have a bigger focus on offering practical courses and at a lower price point.
- standardUser 3y agoOne thing people always seem to overlook is that college is really, really, really super fun. I'm not being facetious! It's uniquely fun and interesting opportunity that was easily worth the ~$100/mo I'll be paying for the rest of my life. 5 stars, would be educated again.
- pauldenton 3y agoSo is maxing out your credit card and going on an epic Spring Break, but we don't pretend that those kinds of vacations should be subsidized by the state and given special tax privileges like Colleges.
- standardUser 3y agoI'm certain you missed the "educated" part of my comment.
- barry-cotter 3y agoMany more people enjoy the four or five year paid holiday component than enjoy the intellectual stimulation component. > “Research on college boredom is thin but confirms the continuity of pain. A study of British college students found 59% were bored in half or more of their lectures. Only 2% claimed to find none of their lectures boring.34” Excerpt From The Case against Education Bryan Caplan “34. Mann and Robinson 2009, pp. 249–50.” Boredom in the Lecture Theatre https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2009-04304-005 https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2009-04304-005