3 ms·

The problem isn't that college isn't worth doing, it's just too fucking expensive. The amount of debt we are asking people to assume is simply too great.

bane 13y ago
College isn't all that expensive. Private and out of state college is. There's a prejudice that you have to go to Stanford or Harvard or whatever to do well in life, and places like Google have perpetuated this problem for a long time by not only just hiring people who went to the more expensive options, they've only done job fairs and hiring outreach at these places. It's a vicious cycle. So people who could be spending $40k on their local state university are spending $200k just to get a crack at a place like Google. $40k over 4 years is not that much, and the earning potential of people after that more than makes up for it. And then guess what? Google, in a moment of stark reflection, looks at the data and realizes that the performance of the few folks who went to the cheaper school and still managed to get hired is about the same as the folks who sold a kidney to get through <preferred tier-1 school>. This image, that you need to get into a top-20 school to make it in life perpetuates all the way down into high school and it needs to stop. Kids need to focus on just getting into college, not getting into an Ivy League school, and companies need to start hiring from the local state universities, not just the approved list of top schools the founders went to.
- jiggy2011 13y ago
  But if the founders/companies are selecting for people from top schools, regardless of whether or not that is rational in itself then it still makes sense for students to try and go to top schools.
  - bane 13y ago
    I don't disagree about the rationality of students aiming for those schools. But it's a vicious cycle. The complaint that "college is too expensive" is only true if people only go to expensive colleges. But "college" in general isn't really all that expensive. Some colleges are, and the problem is that this has been where top-companies have been traditionally recruiting from. My assertion is that if top companies stop using "expensive schools with gamed USNews rankings" as proxies for "places to find good employees", then students won't feel as much need to go to those overpriced schools in the first place.
  - GrinningFool 13y ago
    Slight editing required: ... then it still makes sense for students [who specifically want to get into the startup scene and/or want to get a shot at very specific employers] to try and go to top schools. That's not the same as saying it makes sense for all students across the board to try for those schools.
    - jiggy2011 13y ago
      It's nice to have options especially with the most presigeous companies and I don't think it's just the startup scene. In the UK it's not uncommon for the top universities to have more potential employers turn up to a careers event than potential employees. That's a nice situation to be in.
  - danielweber 13y ago
    We could do something simpler and less expensive and less time-consuming, like straight out IQ tests. But instead we see who can afford to spend 4-9 years at an Ivy League school and think this is more fair.
  - snowwrestler 13y ago
    That's true, but this particular problem is not representative of the value of college in general. I would have no objection if Peter Thiel and others were saying "hey maybe it's not worth all that debt for you to go to a top school." But that's not what they are saying. The message is "college is not worth it at all." And Thiel might be right that some people don't need college--and those are the people he wants to fund. But that is a tiny tiny slice of humanity. Do we really want tech to be like pro sports or music, where millions of kids make bad life decisions because they assume they'll make the big time? If Jay Z told high school kids they don't need college because they can become hip hop superstars like him, you would probably mock him. But that is exactly the same as saying that kids don't need college because Zuckerberg.
    - bane 13y ago
      > I would have no objection if Peter Thiel and others were saying "hey maybe it's not worth all that debt for you to go to a top school." But that's not what they are saying. The message is "college is not worth it at all." And if that's not a reflection of the SV reality warping bubble I don't know what is. If it's not Tier-1, you may as well not even bother because no-name state school is the same as a G.E.D. in this world view.
    - _delirium 13y ago
      Thiel has been pretty open that he has more of a political problem with higher education: he thinks it turns people left-ish, and therefore he sees it as an obstacle to the advancement of libertarian politics in the next generation. I'm not sure whether it does or doesn't help people's careers is really the main question for him.
    - jiggy2011 13y ago
      Didn't Zuckerberg attend Harvard? I think that part of the appeal of these elite schools is the filtering system that you have to go through in order to be even offered a place there, very high grades and extra curricula achievements. It wouldn't surprise me much if "Dropped out of Harvard" is better to have on a resume than "Graduated top of class in community college".
- mjn 13y ago
  I agree with your general point, but Stanford and Harvard in particular aren't great examples, because for many people they're considerably cheaper than public universities, if you can get in. Both schools have pretty generous tuition reductions, all the way down to fully waiving tuition plus paying you a stipend for living expenses, if your family makes below about the 60th percentile of household incomes. Even up to about the 80th percentile they may still come out cheaper than a public university. Harvard has a sliding scale between 60th-90th percentile, where 60th percentile pays nothing, and 90th percentile ($150k/yr) pays the full "sticker price" tuition. The schools that are really expensive for people from the middle-ish of the income distribution are the private schools that don't have as lavish endowments as Stanford and Harvard do, who therefore offer much less generous reductions, generally only need-based aid to considerably poorer people, not circa-median-income people.
  - Bahamut 13y ago
    Not quite true - the expensive private schools will make sure to suck you dry as much as possible before filling in the rest. One of my colleagues while I was in grad school mentioned to me that he went to Princeton for undergrad, and the school pretty much took all spare $ they could, even his inheritance once his grandmother died.
    - mjn 13y ago
      What's not true about what I said? Princeton isn't one of the schools that has tuition reductions for middle-income families.
      - chimeracoder 13y ago
        I went to an Ivy League school (not Princeton), and I looked at most of them when considering which schools to apply to. As of when I applied to college, all the Ivy League schools committed to meeting 100% of "demonstrated financial need"[0]. Princeton was the only one (IIRC) that offered all its financial aid in the form of grants (no loans). In that sense, it has the most undergraduate-friendly financial aid process. HOWEVER, "demonstrated financial need" is a murky term, and I have seen it be abused in practice, at all of these schools. An unfortunate consequence is that it can create a "doughnut hole" - the burden often falls on people who are just above the line that the school draws for financial aid[1]. This can hurt the middle class families who have enough money not to qualify for the same level of financial aid, but not enough to pay for the college without significant financial pain[2]. Of course, the schools often have little incentive to solve this, because the "significant financial pain" that these families feel takes the form of either private student loans (which the students pay for later), or subsidized federal loans (which are subsidized by taxpayers). So, costs keep going up and up. I saw a graph recently that compared the tuition (and also tuition + other expenses) of private education compared to inflation, and it was staggering. [0] They all also have an agreement not to provide any merit-based scholarships (only need-based). [1] It's usually stepwise, not a single line, but the same idea holds [2] The "demonstrated financial need" can also be very easily abused by the affluent. I know one student who received very heavy financial aid, despite her family being incredibly well-off. I can't remember, but I think they structured their assets and income on paper so that it looked like their daughter was an "independent" payer. She received close to a full ride, while her parents had enough money to regularly write 5- and 6-figure checks to their pet charities.

bane 13y ago

College isn't all that expensive. Private and out of state college is. There's a prejudice that you have to go to Stanford or Harvard or whatever to do well in life, and places like Google have perpetuated this problem for a long time by not only just hiring people who went to the more expensive options, they've only done job fairs and hiring outreach at these places. It's a vicious cycle. So people who could be spending $40k on their local state university are spending $200k just to get a crack at a place like Google. $40k over 4 years is not that much, and the earning potential of people after that more than makes up for it. And then guess what? Google, in a moment of stark reflection, looks at the data and realizes that the performance of the few folks who went to the cheaper school and still managed to get hired is about the same as the folks who sold a kidney to get through <preferred tier-1 school>. This image, that you need to get into a top-20 school to make it in life perpetuates all the way down into high school and it needs to stop. Kids need to focus on just getting into college, not getting into an Ivy League school, and companies need to start hiring from the local state universities, not just the approved list of top schools the founders went to.

jiggy2011 13y ago
But if the founders/companies are selecting for people from top schools, regardless of whether or not that is rational in itself then it still makes sense for students to try and go to top schools.
- bane 13y ago
  I don't disagree about the rationality of students aiming for those schools. But it's a vicious cycle. The complaint that "college is too expensive" is only true if people only go to expensive colleges. But "college" in general isn't really all that expensive. Some colleges are, and the problem is that this has been where top-companies have been traditionally recruiting from. My assertion is that if top companies stop using "expensive schools with gamed USNews rankings" as proxies for "places to find good employees", then students won't feel as much need to go to those overpriced schools in the first place.
- GrinningFool 13y ago
  Slight editing required: ... then it still makes sense for students [who specifically want to get into the startup scene and/or want to get a shot at very specific employers] to try and go to top schools. That's not the same as saying it makes sense for all students across the board to try for those schools.
  - jiggy2011 13y ago
    It's nice to have options especially with the most presigeous companies and I don't think it's just the startup scene. In the UK it's not uncommon for the top universities to have more potential employers turn up to a careers event than potential employees. That's a nice situation to be in.
- danielweber 13y ago
  We could do something simpler and less expensive and less time-consuming, like straight out IQ tests. But instead we see who can afford to spend 4-9 years at an Ivy League school and think this is more fair.
- snowwrestler 13y ago
  That's true, but this particular problem is not representative of the value of college in general. I would have no objection if Peter Thiel and others were saying "hey maybe it's not worth all that debt for you to go to a top school." But that's not what they are saying. The message is "college is not worth it at all." And Thiel might be right that some people don't need college--and those are the people he wants to fund. But that is a tiny tiny slice of humanity. Do we really want tech to be like pro sports or music, where millions of kids make bad life decisions because they assume they'll make the big time? If Jay Z told high school kids they don't need college because they can become hip hop superstars like him, you would probably mock him. But that is exactly the same as saying that kids don't need college because Zuckerberg.
  - bane 13y ago
    > I would have no objection if Peter Thiel and others were saying "hey maybe it's not worth all that debt for you to go to a top school." But that's not what they are saying. The message is "college is not worth it at all." And if that's not a reflection of the SV reality warping bubble I don't know what is. If it's not Tier-1, you may as well not even bother because no-name state school is the same as a G.E.D. in this world view.
  - _delirium 13y ago
    Thiel has been pretty open that he has more of a political problem with higher education: he thinks it turns people left-ish, and therefore he sees it as an obstacle to the advancement of libertarian politics in the next generation. I'm not sure whether it does or doesn't help people's careers is really the main question for him.
  - jiggy2011 13y ago
    Didn't Zuckerberg attend Harvard? I think that part of the appeal of these elite schools is the filtering system that you have to go through in order to be even offered a place there, very high grades and extra curricula achievements. It wouldn't surprise me much if "Dropped out of Harvard" is better to have on a resume than "Graduated top of class in community college".
mjn 13y ago
I agree with your general point, but Stanford and Harvard in particular aren't great examples, because for many people they're considerably cheaper than public universities, if you can get in. Both schools have pretty generous tuition reductions, all the way down to fully waiving tuition plus paying you a stipend for living expenses, if your family makes below about the 60th percentile of household incomes. Even up to about the 80th percentile they may still come out cheaper than a public university. Harvard has a sliding scale between 60th-90th percentile, where 60th percentile pays nothing, and 90th percentile ($150k/yr) pays the full "sticker price" tuition. The schools that are really expensive for people from the middle-ish of the income distribution are the private schools that don't have as lavish endowments as Stanford and Harvard do, who therefore offer much less generous reductions, generally only need-based aid to considerably poorer people, not circa-median-income people.
- Bahamut 13y ago
  Not quite true - the expensive private schools will make sure to suck you dry as much as possible before filling in the rest. One of my colleagues while I was in grad school mentioned to me that he went to Princeton for undergrad, and the school pretty much took all spare $ they could, even his inheritance once his grandmother died.
  - mjn 13y ago
    What's not true about what I said? Princeton isn't one of the schools that has tuition reductions for middle-income families.
    - chimeracoder 13y ago
      I went to an Ivy League school (not Princeton), and I looked at most of them when considering which schools to apply to. As of when I applied to college, all the Ivy League schools committed to meeting 100% of "demonstrated financial need"[0]. Princeton was the only one (IIRC) that offered all its financial aid in the form of grants (no loans). In that sense, it has the most undergraduate-friendly financial aid process. HOWEVER, "demonstrated financial need" is a murky term, and I have seen it be abused in practice, at all of these schools. An unfortunate consequence is that it can create a "doughnut hole" - the burden often falls on people who are just above the line that the school draws for financial aid[1]. This can hurt the middle class families who have enough money not to qualify for the same level of financial aid, but not enough to pay for the college without significant financial pain[2]. Of course, the schools often have little incentive to solve this, because the "significant financial pain" that these families feel takes the form of either private student loans (which the students pay for later), or subsidized federal loans (which are subsidized by taxpayers). So, costs keep going up and up. I saw a graph recently that compared the tuition (and also tuition + other expenses) of private education compared to inflation, and it was staggering. [0] They all also have an agreement not to provide any merit-based scholarships (only need-based). [1] It's usually stepwise, not a single line, but the same idea holds [2] The "demonstrated financial need" can also be very easily abused by the affluent. I know one student who received very heavy financial aid, despite her family being incredibly well-off. I can't remember, but I think they structured their assets and income on paper so that it looked like their daughter was an "independent" payer. She received close to a full ride, while her parents had enough money to regularly write 5- and 6-figure checks to their pet charities.