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Almost 30% of Americans Say College Not Worth It in Pew Poll
- helsinkiandrew 2y agohttps://archive.ph/IzXJN https://archive.ph/IzXJN Original Pew Research report PDF: https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2024/05/ST_2024.5.23_non-college-workers_REPORT.pdf https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2024...
- hindsightbias 2y agoIf we can just keep this up, Chem 301 might fit in the 300 seat auditorium again. Faster, please!
- jl6 2y agoIs there a reason they didn’t ask what kind of college degree it was? Seems like a missed opportunity to get data about which degrees are worth it.
- Rinzler89 2y ago>which degrees are worth it Basically everything that gets you a decent paying and stable job if that's what you're after: STEM, law, medicine, management consulting, banking, finance. Did I miss any?
- jl6 2y agoI'm sure we all have our suspicions about which degrees lead to better careers, and which are luxury purchases, but it would be nice to have some data to prove it.
- kwere 2y agolaw in most countries unless you get to sucessfully practice on your own or as a partner of a firm doesnt pay well. Banking/finance is similar to a lesser extent with few good positions open compared to the talent pool.
- 082349872349872 2y agoDon't forget from which institution...
- strathmeyer 2y agoI got a worthless CS degree from CMU so I always get a kick outta these replies.
- 082349872349872 2y agoI got a worthwhile (for those who wish to be paid in scenery) non-CS degree, but nobody cared about that when applying to CS (well, SWE) jobs because of where it came from — although for that matter, it was almost 20 years before anyone (in this instance, for nation-state reasons) bothered to check that I actually had it, at which point I had to call my school and sheepishly ask if they still had my "sheepskin" on file anywhere... ProTip: catalogues are for people unwilling to do social engineering; if you can get the relevant people to sign off on it, you can turn just about any cursus into a degree programme. EDIT: CMU produced both Olin "Jack 'n Zac helps me get through the meetings without one of my students winding up with his severed head in a bowling-ball bag" Shivers and Tom "imagine that instead of chainsaws, we are juggling something more dangerous" [Murphy] 7, so I assume that despite my current lack of ghits, "useless CS degree" is a term of art there? [Not to mention Perlis, Newell, Floyd, Feigenbaum & Reddy, Clarke, etc., but all of these, while duly recognised by more august bodies, are far less likely to have ever been Gonzo Informaticians, finding themselves somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when attacked by "huge bytes, all swooping and screeching and diving". In https://fictionadvocate.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/gonzo-journalism.jpg https://fictionadvocate.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/gonzo... I guess that'd be Tom7 driving with Dr. Shivers riding shotgun?]
- Lerc 2y agoThe questions were asking if people felt a degree was required to get a well paying job. I feel like if you think of extended study purely for financial gain you might be doing education wrong.
- ollysb 2y agoThis makes sense in countries where education is publicly funded, it's there to broaden the knowledge and culture of the population. If you're having to take a huge loan to do it then you start having to do a ROI calculation.
- elcritch 2y agoI'd wager that the majority of students view college primarily as a method of financial gain.
- xandrius 2y agoTrue but it doesn't mean it's not wrong. Also the result you get out of college very often mirrors that mindset: if you are there to primarily learn and expand your skillset, I'd say college is virtually always worth it. I studied at 6 different universities (with varying teaching quality and approaches) and always learnt tons.
- ZephyrBlu 2y agoDoesn't really add up for me, because it's very obvious that university is definitely not purely about learning, and even if that was the case why does self-teaching from open university courses tend to have zero weight with employers? Because the degree itself has status/signal/meaning. In reality the benefits are far closer to purely financial gain than purely learning, and personally I found that the structure of university severely limited the amount I could learn.
- xandrius 2y agoThe trick is to break through the self-imposed constraints and go audit/listen to whatever class/course you like, even if outside your program (in less modern/flexible universities, make sure to ask for permission, especially if the number of students is low.) If the time doesn't allow that, make friends with people in those courses/classes and ask them to forward to you the slides/presentations of their classes (or trade yours for their if they want to). Contact professors working on projects you are interested in, regardless of whether they are your professors and/or if it is your major. Since you'd be generally unpaid, you might have lots of freedom to modify the project as you need/please, or join what they are already doing. Check out facilities/available materials and other tools that the university provides. If you do that, you'll learn several orders of magnitude more than most students there. I did that pretty much at every uni I went to, and still managed to do some good amount of partying and part-time job.
- blue_light_man 2y agoThey arrived at this conclusion by surveying around 6000 people. And then made it look like 30% of Americans have this view so that your brain takes the view seriously. Investigating why they lie to themselves and others to spread this idea is the actual truth here.
- gask 2y agoall global indices use less than 1k samples.
- blue_light_man 2y agoI don't know how that is relevant. Many other surveys lying more doesn't make this any more true.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- piva00 2y agoDo you know how to calculate sample sizes? For a population around 300m people you can survey some 7500 (if those are representative of the overall population, not just a homogeneous cohort of the population) and get a confidence level of 99% with 1.5% margin of error. I recommend studying a little of basic statistics.
- blue_light_man 2y agoDoes this also balances out the fact that these are people who choose to respond to their survey and not random sample of all Americans? Are you saying the list of people who choose to respond to their survey is an accurate sampling of the entire American population? Also why not say we surveyed 6000 people in our list instead and 30% of them have this view? That is more true than saying 30% of Americans have this view which is quite a big jump. There is ofcourse some lying going on here. What are they trying to achieve by lying here is my question.
- golemiprague 2y agoSome degrees are worth it and some are not. The ones that don't should focus more on funneling a small pool of talented students to research and higher degrees in order to expand human knowledge rather than having hoards of students doing a degree just for the sake of having a degree
- weberer 2y ago[flagged]
- vasco 2y agoI was always thinking this was only because of outrageous tuition in the US compared to my country where it was €1k / year. Recently though I saw some curriculum from a random university (might very been a community College?) and it looked closer to "learn html" than fundamentals. A lot of courses that looked like they were just there to fill time. Obviously everyone knows MIT and other top university lectures on youtube and those are great, but I was surprised to see people paying outrageous amounts for what looked like a genuine waste of time. Any more informed thoughts about the differences between top / bottom universities in the US?
- mulmen 2y agoCommunity colleges are for learning skills. “Learn HTML” is appropriate as a community college course. Universities are more… well, universal in their approach to education.
- Macha 2y agoWe have "community colleges" here but they're a little more holistic than that, so I'd always been assuming the US ones were more like ours. But it sounds more like a US community college is more like what's usually branded and adult education centre here if "learn HTML" is the kind of agenda.
- rjbwork 2y agoIt really just depends. I went to a community college and took maths through calculus 3, a discrete math course, some gen eds like history, english composition, etc. But there are also those kind of remedial adult education and specialized "how to" courses as well.
- dagw 2y ago"Community college" in the US can offer everything from remedial high school for adults, via technical certification and job skills training to 'real' university level education and university associate degrees.
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- pradeepkatiyar 2y ago[dead]
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- anoplus 2y agoWe are living in the internet era. I think one can do an engineering job as easily with or without a degree. I think attending college may have value in terms of social life. I think degrees are used today as a mean to filter job candidates in the absence of better ways to assess candidates. So degrees are inflationary in the sense that if everyone had X degrees, jobs would require X+1 degrees as they have to filter out candidates if they are saturated with applications.
- cedws 2y ago>I think attending college may have value in terms of social life. College has a monopoly on social life if you're in the late teens/early 20s. I believe this is part of the reason it is still such a popular option, to the point that people will pay extortionate amounts to do useless degrees. If you're thrust straight into work that isn't stocking shelves or being a fry cook you won't be around people your own age and it's very alienating. I'm in my early 20s and have considered changing course despite having a successful SWE career to go back to university just so I can have a social life.
- perkolator 2y agoI absolutely loved college and can understand the dilemma. Most the social aspect for me though came from living near the college and not the actual classes. If I was in this situation, I would just move as physically close to a major university as I could. Most of my social interaction at college came from eating lunch and all the people I met during lunch. Actually paying tuition though for this reason is as bad an investment as I can think of.
- cedws 2y ago>I would just move as physically close to a major university as I could Actually not a bad idea, thanks. >paying tuition though for this reason is as bad an investment as I can think of True, but my 'smart' financial decisions have led to a life I'm pretty unhappy with.
- libertine 2y ago
- Traubenfuchs 2y agoThis kind of garbage data and opinions really gets me seething in anger. Why do people continue to throw gender studies, law, medicine, business and engineering into the same pot? For medicine, to become a doctor, you literally HAVE to go to college/university and becoming a doctor is the best guarantee that exists to live a life in wealth. Pretty much the same requirements, with more wiggle room, for most engineers, with less of the guarantee. Some business degrees set you up for a lucrative career as big4 consultant. And many liberal arts degrees set you up for a future as Starbucks barista and life long student debt. college != college
- magicalhippo 2y agoNot even as blatant as gender studies, for example history is quite popular here relative to the prospects after getting the degree. I know two history majors well, both found it very hard to use it for anything. One started over on a math major as math teachers are in high demand. Other had taken a single psychology course as one of their self-selected courses during their degree, and ended up teaching psychology in high-school, as the school had plenty of history majors to pick from but hardly any with psychology.
- somerandomqaguy 2y ago> Why do people continue to throw gender studies, law, medicine, business and engineering into the same pot? Because my generation grew up having all of those thrown into the same pot. Kindergarten to high school the constant mantra from parents, teachers, to counsellors was to, "Get a degree! It doesn't matter what the degree is, just get one and you will have a good job! If you don't you will be a garbage man for the rest of your life!" And the adults all genuinely believed it. Because it was true in their generation. An fine arts degree was basically a ticket to a decent paying office job as some manager's administrative assistant typing out letters, taking phone calls and scheduling meetings. It's not that true anymore, even when I entered into the work force. And that was a long time ago.
- robertlagrant 2y agoThe problem is how student loans work in America. They can't be defaulted on, so they loan to anyone, even people who can never pay them back. If they could be defaulted on, the loans companies would have to figure out which degrees they should loan to, and not everyone would go to college and get a degree that will never pay back.
- vkou 2y agoThat's not even the problem with student loans. The problem with it is that they provide an endless firehose of money, that drives tuition costs up.
- robertlagrant 2y agoMy stance is that if the loans were only made on degrees that could reasonably pay back, the administrative bloat that has driven up costs would not be possible.
- vkou 2y ago> My stance is that if the loans were only made on degrees that could reasonably pay back, the administrative bloat that has driven up costs would not be possible. The administrative bloat that has driven up costs will eat every single penny that will still be available. It wouldn't be as many pennies as it does today, but it would still capture every bit of that free money that it can.
- robertlagrant 2y agoI agree - that's sort of my point. As the excess reduces proportionally, so will the administrative bloat.
- rightbyte 2y agoTell that to the housing market? Or medical costs for that matter (insurences should have the same effect as loans).
- dgan 2y agoI have a degree of some (pretty OK) French business school, and been working as a developer for 8 years already I always find myself reading some random courses that I find around on Internet; so many times I wished to have followed a well organised, coherent theoretical learning track, for ex, in compilers Is my business degree worth it? I paid it dearly, around 12000/y for 3 years, it adds absolutely nothing to the ability to perform my job. It does however, act like a signal for recruiters, signalling that I am "smart enough", and multiple times I found that it did play a non-negligible role
- jollofricepeas 2y agoCollege is not worth it. But public high schools are a joke. We have failed the poor and working class especially young men of all backgrounds. At one point, you could graduate high school OR even not graduate and get a good job that let you buy a car and move out of your parents house. Within a few years you could save up and buy a starter home for a family. Until there’s meaningful reinvestment into public school education that helps young men obtain the skills to become gainfully employed at 18 years of age as an apprentice or junior anything in a meaningful career then we’ll continue to have problems with wealth inequality, crime, drug use and apathy.
- Ajay-p 2y agoThe college degree has become diluted over time. As more people go to college and receive degrees, the less special those degrees are treated. Then it becomes the type of degree you get, then the major. It's relatively easy for most people to get into college but not always to completion. That is the only benefit that college bestows - recognition that you are capable of committing to a program, and meeting deadlines in a formal, adult-oriented environment.
- oooyay 2y agoI can appreciate some of the other replies here. I didn't finish school and I disagree with respondents to this poll (at least from the perspective of a SWE). In my experience if you want to work in the kind of software fields and companies that enable you to retire then you should go to school. These places often gate your acceptance behind algorithm problems. Those problems you will only know the tricks to solving if you have a decent background in math, unless you want to spend a lot of time memorizing answers. A lot of SWEs have a pretty intuitive understanding of math that they don't even realize when compared to average people. This was something I noticed immediately about myself when working with degreed peers. That's to say, I spent a lot of time early in my career reading books on math primers and algorithms. I understand people who have degrees do this at times as well, but believe me when I say my primer and your primer were different in their thickness. What I wish is that software application (as opposed to theory) were taught in more in the way that we teach and level up trades. You could even split this out among some high level fields. On top of that, I'd really enjoy watching us ditch LeetCode interviews and base them on this certification and work history. I think we'd retain people in software longer, it'd counter ageism, and it'd attract a lot more diverse talent. Tertiary to that, college is an experience. It's where a lot of people grow up, make mistakes, learn to grow quite a bit, etc... not that it's entirely worth the price of admission, but it is an important place for young people imo.
- tennisflyi 2y agoDoesn’t matter if you can’t appease the black box resume filter/gatekeeper
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 2y agoOver 70% of Americans Say College Is Worth It in Pew Poll