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Gen z grew up hearing stories about their older cousins or even parents going $100,000 in student loan debt for nothing. Now all of a sudden the colleges are l

Gen z grew up hearing stories about their older cousins or even parents going $100,000 in student loan debt for nothing. Now all of a sudden the colleges are like, well technically we can get that down to 85,000 of student loan debt for an English degree. Don't you want to come to college and have a lot of fun! I still think college is a net positive for most people, but you seriously need to evaluate where you're at and decide what you want to spend. Unless you get into a dream school, or something extremely specific for your major almost everyone should go to community college . The reason why is if you have a bad year at community college and you just don't want to do it, you're only out a few thousand dollars versus 20 or 30. Second, when you're ready to transfer you should have a good idea of what you actually want to do and then you can pick a college appropriately. Optimistically you'll graduate with half the student loan debt . You can have just as much fun going to a cheap community college, and then a cheap state school. And outside of a small handful of outliers the net results are going to be the same. If you get in the Harvard, go ahead and go to Harvard. But if you get into Billy's weird expensive private school, that's not worth the money. Between birth rates dropping and student loan reality, we're going to see an absolute tsunami of small school closures. Which isn't good or bad, it's just a sign of the times. While I'm ranting, I absolutely resent this notion of college being necessary to obtain an upper middle-class lifestyle. It's just not, and I know this from personal experience despite finishing college years later. You end up putting a lot of people in a really nasty loop, you can't afford college unless you have money, and you can't earn money unless you go to college. That also justifies indefinite debt loads, so what you have to go $200,000 in student loan debt. The nice salesperson said you're practically guaranteed a six figure job when you graduate! You graduated into a bad economy and end up working at Vons. Sucks to be you, by the way Sallie Mae expects your first payment in 60 days. May the odds be in your favor.

paulpauper 2y ago
High school, in the past, prepared people for college, so those who were not cut out already had a clear indication during high school. But due to dumbing-down and grade inflation, they now learn the hard way during college. you can't afford college unless you have money, and you can't earn money unless you go to college. not really. there are tons of scholarships and other assistance. hardly anyone who goes to college is writing $30-100k checks.
- anonym29 2y ago
  A lot of those scholarships are locked along racial and gender lines. Immutable traits that, as a society, we have decided, as a foundational principle, are an unfair, unjust, unkind, and uncivil basis to discriminate upon. Equal representation is great. What's not great is producing a system that's so financially unsustainable for working class people that they're told to go solve what is framed as a merit-based challenge in exchange for money, but the qualification criteria for some crazy high percentage (something like 2/3rds, if my memory serves correct) of the challenges exclude certain cohorts of people based on demographic traits they have no control over, including race and gender. It's just a very unbecoming look for a progressive institution, it feels like we're deliberately trying to relive the racial and gender conflict of the last century by continuing to deliberately view all human interaction through the lense of race and gender, and framing race and gender filters as "merit" filters, almost as if to suggest that you can be a fundamentally flawed person by having the wrong chromosomes or ethnicity, rather than by viewing human interaction through the lense of interacting with actual individual people, who all have incredibly rich, deep, unique lived experiences that are not defined exclusively by demographic traits. I believe it's this point of view that leads to the common perception of higher education among the actual working class - that the American college experience was once something great, but got so watered down in pursuit of ideals other than education that it has essentially turned into a big summer camp for the adolscent offspring of the rich to extend the "party" of youth for a little bit longer, hopefully increasing their social credit score in the process, with actual learning being a "nice to have" along the way.
  - tbrownaw 2y ago
    > framing race and gender filters as "merit" filters Do you have examples? I haven't gone systematically digging into this, but the general impression I've gotten is that this sort of explicit demographic filters are largely associated with the "equity" crowd rather than the "merit" crowd.
    - throwaway48476 2y ago
      I suspect such reframing is very recent.
HPsquared 2y ago
Also a person with a degree in a subject (years of sunk cost) often feels pigeonholed into that field which may not be enjoyable, well-paid or require you to move to hunt for a job in the field. All negative outcomes.
- wakawaka28 2y ago
  Those are negative outcomes, but they aren't the worst tradeoffs if you study something worthwhile.
jart 2y ago
There's no point in going to university anymore when you can just go straight into big tech. If you're doing anything mathematical, your late teens and early twenties are going to be some of your most productive years. Why should universities benefit from those years when they don't do frontier research anymore and have degenerated into quasi religious institutions that hand out credentials to anyone with a pulse in order to get rich shackling you with debt? Big tech will literally give you money to be educated.
- ndiddy 2y ago
  > There's no point in going to university anymore when you can just go straight into big tech. Assuming wanting to work at big tech is a goal, I'm not aware of any of the big tech companies recruiting for entry level roles outside of colleges. The "boot camp"/"hire anyone with a pulse" period was a ZIRP era anomaly.
  - 999900000999 2y ago
    In the free money era the only boot camp grads who I know got jobs already had 4 year degrees. If you got lucky you got a junior dev or QA position at a small dev shop. Unless you were some kind of known prodigy no one got a FAANG job out of highschool with no degree or experience.
- mixmastamyk 2y ago
  No one (statistically) is getting hired for a coveted job today without a degree. The first thing they check; without and you go straight to /dev/null.
toast0 2y ago
> The reason why is if you have a bad year at community college and you just don't want to do it, you're only out a few thousand dollars versus 20 or 30. Depends on the state. When I was in college, California community college was very affordable, but when I transferred to a Wisconsin school to get a 4-year degree, I learned there that WI community colleges charged the same price per credit hour as UW. Things may have changed since then, but at that time, if you lived in WI, you may as well go to a UW if you can get accepted, cause a community college wouldn't save you money.

paulpauper 2y ago

High school, in the past, prepared people for college, so those who were not cut out already had a clear indication during high school. But due to dumbing-down and grade inflation, they now learn the hard way during college. you can't afford college unless you have money, and you can't earn money unless you go to college. not really. there are tons of scholarships and other assistance. hardly anyone who goes to college is writing $30-100k checks.

anonym29 2y ago
A lot of those scholarships are locked along racial and gender lines. Immutable traits that, as a society, we have decided, as a foundational principle, are an unfair, unjust, unkind, and uncivil basis to discriminate upon. Equal representation is great. What's not great is producing a system that's so financially unsustainable for working class people that they're told to go solve what is framed as a merit-based challenge in exchange for money, but the qualification criteria for some crazy high percentage (something like 2/3rds, if my memory serves correct) of the challenges exclude certain cohorts of people based on demographic traits they have no control over, including race and gender. It's just a very unbecoming look for a progressive institution, it feels like we're deliberately trying to relive the racial and gender conflict of the last century by continuing to deliberately view all human interaction through the lense of race and gender, and framing race and gender filters as "merit" filters, almost as if to suggest that you can be a fundamentally flawed person by having the wrong chromosomes or ethnicity, rather than by viewing human interaction through the lense of interacting with actual individual people, who all have incredibly rich, deep, unique lived experiences that are not defined exclusively by demographic traits. I believe it's this point of view that leads to the common perception of higher education among the actual working class - that the American college experience was once something great, but got so watered down in pursuit of ideals other than education that it has essentially turned into a big summer camp for the adolscent offspring of the rich to extend the "party" of youth for a little bit longer, hopefully increasing their social credit score in the process, with actual learning being a "nice to have" along the way.
- tbrownaw 2y ago
  > framing race and gender filters as "merit" filters Do you have examples? I haven't gone systematically digging into this, but the general impression I've gotten is that this sort of explicit demographic filters are largely associated with the "equity" crowd rather than the "merit" crowd.
  - throwaway48476 2y ago
    I suspect such reframing is very recent.

HPsquared 2y ago

Also a person with a degree in a subject (years of sunk cost) often feels pigeonholed into that field which may not be enjoyable, well-paid or require you to move to hunt for a job in the field. All negative outcomes.

wakawaka28 2y ago
Those are negative outcomes, but they aren't the worst tradeoffs if you study something worthwhile.

jart 2y ago

There's no point in going to university anymore when you can just go straight into big tech. If you're doing anything mathematical, your late teens and early twenties are going to be some of your most productive years. Why should universities benefit from those years when they don't do frontier research anymore and have degenerated into quasi religious institutions that hand out credentials to anyone with a pulse in order to get rich shackling you with debt? Big tech will literally give you money to be educated.

ndiddy 2y ago
> There's no point in going to university anymore when you can just go straight into big tech. Assuming wanting to work at big tech is a goal, I'm not aware of any of the big tech companies recruiting for entry level roles outside of colleges. The "boot camp"/"hire anyone with a pulse" period was a ZIRP era anomaly.
- 999900000999 2y ago
  In the free money era the only boot camp grads who I know got jobs already had 4 year degrees. If you got lucky you got a junior dev or QA position at a small dev shop. Unless you were some kind of known prodigy no one got a FAANG job out of highschool with no degree or experience.
mixmastamyk 2y ago
No one (statistically) is getting hired for a coveted job today without a degree. The first thing they check; without and you go straight to /dev/null.

toast0 2y ago

> The reason why is if you have a bad year at community college and you just don't want to do it, you're only out a few thousand dollars versus 20 or 30. Depends on the state. When I was in college, California community college was very affordable, but when I transferred to a Wisconsin school to get a 4-year degree, I learned there that WI community colleges charged the same price per credit hour as UW. Things may have changed since then, but at that time, if you lived in WI, you may as well go to a UW if you can get accepted, cause a community college wouldn't save you money.