The thing that irks me about this the most is how it's the people who were doing exactly what they were told that got hurt the most. The good kids who went to the best school they could get in to, studied whatever they were interested in, and if that thing happened to be literature or women's studies or a wide number of other things you might just spend the next 20 years figuring out how to live with debt you can't pay off.
I was brought up under the faulty assumption that if you graduate from college you get a promising career, so pay whatever that takes. Full stop. My entire generation was. Not one teacher or counselor or advisor ever mentioned anything about cost relative to career prospects, and now it's my smart friends who are getting kicked in the teeth, while the kids like me who didn't listen and dropped out and played with computers are richly rewarded.
I can't even count the number of friends with six figures of student debt and no career on both hands.
I think Peter Thiel was right: for some time Americans believed in a college education so fully, so completely that we ignored the cost, even as it skyrocketed. Couple that with federally-backed loans, and no one even considered the risk. 100% of the risk was put on 18-year-old kids, many of whom had never seen a day in the workforce, paid a bill, or had a job.
A lot of people will make it out unscathed, but for those that don't we lived through (or are living in) a giant secondary education bubble. But this time it's one that you can't bankrupt your way out of.
> The thing that irks me about this the most is how it's the people who were doing exactly what they were told that got hurt the most. The good kids who went to the best school they could get in to, studied whatever they were interested in, and if that thing happened to be literature or women's studies or a wide number of other things you might just spend the next 20 years figuring out how to live with debt you can't pay off.
Are they REALLY telling kids nowadays to go major in whatever interested them? Because when I went to college (nineties), nobody told me to just go major in women's studies or medieval history. They were telling me, "Study medicine or engineering because that's the only way it'll be worth the cost." The "what does a liberal arts major say" joke was very much a thing back then, as I assume it is today, now that job prospects for anyone not in STEM are even bleaker than when I went to school.
I don't think the guy who took out $100K in loans to study literature for 5 years was really doing exactly what they were told to do.
I made that mistake as well. Did what people were telling me to do and it got me nowhere. Got a useless university degree in something I liked because I thought having a degree would help, and was told by everyone that I was too "gifted" not to get one. Found out it just makes you super pretentious at retail jobs while you struggle to pay off the debt.
I managed to pay that debt off, and 5 years ago I figured out what I should actually do, went back to school yet again, and again I've spent the last 3 years again paying off the exact average amount of student loan debt in a job that seems to pay about $100k less than what the valley pays.
Just payed off the last of my student debt in one big lump sum on Sunday. I was super aggressive paying off my loans and I'm so very thankful they are done. Now in my mid 30's, used to living like a pauper but entirely debt free, and I can finally start putting my money towards things that matter. I really wish I'd gotten good advice about where I should probably head a decade and a half ago, when I still had savings and a larger support network. I would have only had to go through this once, though I know I'm one of the lucky ones in that I've been able to pay it off at all.
I'm not against student debt in general, schools unfortunately cost money, I just wish the guidance counselors talked about the ROI of particular degrees and pushed the trades and technical colleges harder. My ability to talk about the socioeconomic results of the black plague doesn't enhance my employability. Thankfully I figured out that SQL, Python, and C# does on my own.
>, studied whatever they were interested in, and if that thing happened to be literature or women's studies
As some sibling comments noted, this lackadaisical attitude of ignoring the ROI wasn't really true even 50 years ago.
The meme "underwater basket weaving" as a synonym for "unmarketable degree" has been around since the 1960s.[1] Undoubtedly, the GenX, GenY, & Millenials going to college in 1990s & 2000s would have heard of it or similar memes. I believe I first heard of it from a monologue by comedian Jay Leno. (The "uwb" was originally a meme about a specific class but its meaning expanded to entire unmarketable degrees -- which is how mainstream press like NYT used it.[2])
It doesn't mean that "literature" or "women's studies" are unworthy academic subjects. If you're a trust fund baby, you can study whatever you want with no financial repercussions. (The whole philosophy about the pure joy of learning for learning's sake, etc.) However, if one takes out $30k+ in debt, the banks and USA government won't forgive your loan just because you got a degree with no market demand. Therefore, the job prospects of "B.A. in Communications" vs "B.A. in Accounting" has to affect the decision.
I'm part of that generation and made that mistake for sure.
> The thing that irks me about this the most is how it's the people who were doing exactly what they were told that got hurt the most.
The takeaway here is, in part: don't do something just because you're told to. If our generation stops doing what we're told (which seems to be the case), then this will be a small price.
Perhaps one of the silver linings of growing up poor was that I, and my friends, were conscious of money, or its lack. I wanted to pursue a writing degree and knew I shouldn't spend a ton of money on it, so I stayed local and worked to mostly pay my way through my first degree. My friends went to fancier schools, but did it in pursuit of business degrees, looking to get a good return on their education.
The point being, because we maybe understood money a little better, we made more practical decisions with regards to education. We certainly didn't get useful advice from our parents or school.
No we weren't. I was definitely encouraged to go to college and study something I enjoyed that was marketable. My parents' first concern when I switched away from pre-med to Political Science was "how will you get a job?"
I remember as a young child hearing my parents make a comment about a degree in "underwater basket-weaving" or similar. Getting a degree in a completely non-marketable skill has always negatively impacted your employability and your earning potential.
This rings completely false to me. I went to college the first time in 2000. At that time, it was common knowledge that a liberal arts degree was a portal to either grad school, professional school (law mostly), or a low wage job, unless you distinguished yourself and made your own way. Law school was already flooded, and graduate schools were already overproducing phds.
I chose to go into graduate school in philosophy, but along the way I also decided to not take out any debt, go to a public university, and to work my ass off. Why? Because I knew I couldn't afford debt of I didn't make it, and I knew I'd have to be summa cum laude with killer letters of recommendation to make it.
How did I know all that? It seemed like common sense to me, but I probably did some research and talked to people. And of course my grandmother wanted to know how I was going to make a living.
And I did make it, but I dropped out of the phd program, took out some loans, and got a freaking csci degree that paid the loans off with a signing bonus, because I discovered that I can't stand academia. Go figure.
This was just... Common sense to me. Don't burn money to do something with low returns. Do burn money to get a valuable degree with returns. Above all, think.
At the time, as now, I feel a great deal of contempt (an ugly, evil emotion to be sure) for people who take out massive debt to be molly-coddled at a private liberal arts college with a sticker price approaching MIT and no connection to the real world, or who fund their entire college degree with loans and no work (i worked through both degrees). I try to convert that into compassion or sympathy, but I haven't found success yet.
It is very unfortunate that this happened and was a perfect storm. Money for college loans became too easy and too lucrative and made the supply of college educated workers too large for the demand. This also happened at the same time that good paying non-college jobs started to decline, mostly to automation and partly to globalization. Then students said, "Well, I'll invest more and get a Masters" and then there were too many of them, plus all the extra debt. In a lot of verticals, the same has happened with the PhD.
Software really is eating the world and we need to find a solution or it will eventually lead to revolt as people will have no other option. If someone isn't going to college for something medical or STEM, they shouldn't bother. Go learn a trade or start a small sole proprietor business while you live at home.
My parents flat-out told me I was going in-state or funding the difference myself (and with UVA, VT, and W&M available, that became a no-brainer).
And counselors, while not actively discouraging applications to expensive private/out-of-state schools, did actively encourage scholarship and grant applications.
Then, during college, my dad did repeatedly ask me my plans. And, when I decided I wanted to pursue a career in computer science, offered to pay an extra year of school so I could transfer to the engineering program (CS was part of the engineering school at UVA). I declined - at the time, the dot-com bubble had not burst, and if you could spell C++, you could find a job that paid $50k+ (in 1999 dollars) - and finished my degree in economics (minored in CS).
This is just simply not true. I know it makes people feel better, but it's nonsense. I started college in 1999. It was plainly obvious to me that some degrees had better prospects than others. People routinely made jokes about majors that had poor career prospects. Jokes about English majors asking if you want fries with that have been around for a long, long time.
This information was available to everyone. If you didn't pay attention to it, then that's on you. This isn't a new discovery.
How is "did exactly what they were told" different from "did not think for themselves" ? Any kind of large decision demands a cost-benefit analysis, including opportunity costs, time value of money, etc.
The labour market does not change that much in 4-5 years (barring something like the 08-09 financial meltdown). It should be straightforward to check whether a degree is necessary in order to land a decent job - apply to those jobs without a degree and see what they say.
Even if you understand that the system is broken you still have to play along. Suppose you are a regular student who wants a regular job in an office doing marketing or whatever. A huge % of candidates have degrees. So employees start demanding a degree. If your cv has no degree it goes in the bin.
So you pay the piper. The supply of gov credit sets the price of courses. Hand over your labour.
But the important this is that, like with the US health insurance system, all the people completely ruined and destroyed by it had choice and weren't 'forced' into anything by nasty government regulation. After all, that's what really counts. Anyway, lots of insurance and finance companies made millions. That's got to count for something. What are you, some kind of communist?[/sarcasm]
Also there is a lack of youth going into the trades. Welding, electrical, plumbing, appliance repair etc. We have devalued those careers and now they just don't have enough apprentices.
Around the time my older sibling got into college, I remember that my parents attitude shifted from "enjoy high school, it's your youth" to "good grades = free money" (ie free tuition)...
So I got lucky, but there's definitely an attitude that needs to be battled.
In India we chose academic streams purely on the basis future employment and career aspects.
Taking huge loans to study things like literature was either considered a extreme luxury of the rich who wanted a degree just for the heck of it, or those people going to such sciences(Even commerce, accounting etc) are largely considered people who can't do tough things in life(a.k.a losers).
Most people who study things like literature eventually have to go on and get another degree on top of it. Like say an MBA just to get a job.
Never understood why people take huge loans to study non-STEM degrees.
This is the biggest con our capitalist system pulls. People (especially kids) are not rational actors. Our current economic system just doesn't allow for mere emotional humans.
It's more than just higher education. The previous generation was addicted to easy credit. They used it to enrich themselves and solve every single social problem. That trend will probably continue until millennials take their place running society. I really do think that will be the major shift in American society, way more than Trump.
As a follow-up question to your last sentence, do you have any thoughts on collateralization? Not so easy when the asset grown to pay back the debt is social/intellectual capital, but I think we could come up with creative solutions for certain degrees and borrower profiles.
I fully agree, but this didn't just happen. Cost of college didn't simply explode. There were people on the other side that steered things such that costs would explode, loans would be readily available, people would land in debt they can never escape.
A lot of people still believe that BS. I know people pushing their kids so hard and paying hundreds of thousands of dollars on education bills over a 4 year college. And, for what?
A problem is that many of the higher paying jobs are in cities such as NYC, SF, LA, Boston, DC, (also London, ...) and the housing is expensive in these cities because of "rent-seeking" -- a market failure or market inefficiency caused by an politically induced scarcity of housing through zoning density restrictions. This harms renters and those starting out in life while benefiting wealthy landlords such as President Trump. The fix is a simple one which is to overturn the zoning density restrictions.
In 2002 Japan passed a federal law that gave the federal government control of housing density restrictions: the result is that in 2014 Tokyo built 140,000 homes vs. 20,000 for NYC and less than 90,000 for all of California.
The local politicians are bought off by the wealthy landlords and those just trying to make their life after graduating from college and poor people are paying for it.
Did any of these kids (and I am one of them, graduated in 2013) stop and think that paying 50-70k a year after room and board to attend a university was insane? I had the option to go to a nice university, and maybe my horizons would have been expanded, maybe they wouldn't, but at the end of the day I am happy where I ended up and I went to community college for 2 years, and the public state university, for the remaining two., driving 1 hour to college from my parents house. Crazy I know. I lived at home! I ended up with 1/16th the debt of most of my cohorts.
It's fine if these kids were just doing exactly what they were told or people sold them on the koolaid, but generations prior also had to navigate the diverse world of snake-oil salesmen and people hyping up things and overvaluing them -- you can't beat teaching common money sense. Simple math. Teaching personal finance should be in inserted into middle school and taught all the way to graduation.
College is a positional good, so "Is college worth it" is a question with two answers. Let me explain.
The first question is "as an individual job-seeker, is college worth it to me personally". Which it probably still is - there's very real discrimination against folks without a degree.
The second question is "for job-seekers as a class, does college help them". Which it almost certainly isn't - there's a huge amount of time and money spent on what's mostly a piece of paper that says "I'm smart enough to get into college, not-lower-class enough to spend the time and money, and obedient enough to jump through arbitrary hoops". Employees as a class aren't magically better because they have a piece of paper, they're better because of specific skills and abilities that they learn that enable extra productivity.
People see that college is worth it for individuals, and then they go and shovel gigantic piles of money at college for everyone, and this just pisses me the hell off because it's so goddamn wasteful.
IMO, the only realistic way out of this hole is to make it illegal to ask about college education or verify with an issuing institution whether or not you have a degree. If an employer asks, they get sued or prosecuted. If a job-seeker tells, the employer can't find out if they're lying. Only remaining thing is to screen for actual knowledge, like "are you a good enough engineer to not make buildings that collapse". Professional exams - like the Fundamentals of Engineering or actuarial exams - seem like an appropriate fit for that.
I like this idea, but I also routinely see criticism on HN of interviews that attempt to determine knowledge level (puzzle solving, programming tasks, and so on). And, of course, you start to wade into the problem of any exam, that it's too narrow, biased, and so on.
I think your point about job-seekers as a class is mostly right, but it doesn't bring into account one of the things college provides you, which is a well-rounded education. Now, this may or may not be worthwhile to you, but my experience is that college is a good shorthand to "will this person be a good coworker". There are plenty of things about that hoop jumping that have value in the working world. They are probably OK in teams, they are probably OK at administrative work, and so on. I had a friend who went to MIT that said "if someone graduated from MIT, at least I know they have good time management skills". This is absolutely not universally true, but a higher percentage of the college graduates I've worked with are good in teams than of non-college graduates I've worked with.
> So, is college still worth it? In the most simplistic terms, yes.
Not really, college is only worth it if you finish a select number of degrees and are somewhat middle class to begin with.
US education system slowly alienates a large portion of the country putting them in debt forever. It's a stark contrast to Germany and some of the Nordic countries.
But I also believe America is too big to make much changes regarding education.
Even STEM can be a bad investment, depending on what you do. I graduated with a degree in Chem, wanting to do nanoscale computers and -later- optical computing. Found out 3rd year that unless I got a doctorate, I'd be a glorified lab rat. What's worse is that even if I got a doctorate, I'd still be a lab rat while trying to get one and would have a sliver of a chance to get a job anyways. My choice? I graduated, but didn't do grad school. Think of that next to you wonder why STEM jobs aren't being filled.
There were some redeeming measures of school. I got a minor in CS, some text on my resume that says I went to school and got good grades - the first step for many companies to even consider you - and learned about a number of really good books I might not have encountered by just randomly exploring the net. Still, I probably would've done better without school.
I will now take this opportunity to mention that I'm still looking for work, albeit sunny Cal is too expensive for me to consider jobs out there.
This is a bit tangential to the conversation, but relevant: I have an art degree. I was pushed into getting any degree. I'm a part of that same generation that was told to go to college at all costs, even if you don't know what you want to do with yourself. Fast forward 11 years, and I've just finally paid my student loans off.
Now I'm in this situation: I'm not doing a whole lot with art, and I'm trying to break into software development. Do I need a CS degree? Any opinions? I'm thinking about going back to school but the thought of possibly having more debt is not something I'm interested in. I'm having a hard time finding even junior level jobs that are interested in people without degrees. I'm a fairly competent programmer as-is, self taught.
Freelance? Start contributing to OS projects and consult? I mean, if you're trying to break in without existing credentials or work product, I would have to think you'd need to create some work product and connections.
These types of things are always a cause and effect relationship, and I feel we never look at the cause.
This line bothers me in particular:
> So, is college still worth it? In the most simplistic terms, yes.
It is only worth it because we've made it a requirement to find employment with growth potential outside of the trades or sales. Hell, even some sales jobs are requiring degrees now.
If Corporate America was honest with itself about which jobs REALLY required a degree versus just some level of experience, college would become devalued in some respects.
I'm 'one of the lucky ones'. I don't have a degree, I work in a fairly important job for a fortune 100 company. I am paid fairly well for my area and I enjoy my job. My experience built up over time got me to where I am, but I know many others who weren't afforded the same chance just because their resume didn't have a piece of paper and debt attached to it. That being said I'll probably eventually hit a wall where I can't advance anymore, and I'm probably OK with that.
The other cause we've failed to address is the constantly rising cost of going to college. Government programs to increase loan availability (and forgiveness) have just raised the price, because the student can "afford" it.
Taleb's 2012 book "Antifragility" discusses the state of university education and student loans:
"Harvard is like a Vuitton bag or a Cartier watch. It is a huge drag on the middle-class parents who have been plowing an increased share of their savings into these institutions, transferring their money to administrators, real estate developers, professors, and other agents. In the United States, we have a buildup of student loans that automatically transfer to these rent extractors, In a way it is no different from racketeering..."
On the future of education:
"My answer: BS is fragile. Which scam in history has lasted forever? I have an enormous faith in Time and History as eventual debunkers of fragility. Education is an institution that has been growing without external stressors; eventually the thing will collapse."
I was an idiot, like "Hell yeah give me this money." Only later realizing how long it would take me to pay. Luckily for me what I owe is a mere pittance compared to someone like a doctor. But I also make 1/3rd of a pitance per year... haha I like that word pittance. Tribute to that Futurama episode, "Honking"
Anyway yeap... sucks thankfully I have a somewhat functioning brain, despite the loans, not getting a useful degree/potentially wasting three years of money/life, I have an opportunity to dig myself out. It's my own fault by the way I had a great opportunity and I pissed it away because I was a jackass. But yeah, it's easy to accept this money and not realize the interest like a couple of my loans are 6.8% APR and paying the interest down alone holy crap.
> debt significantly hurts your chances of buying a home
60k in the hole still from undergrad loans. The thought of taking out a mortage after this debt is finished is not appealing. "hurts my chances"? Sure, that's one way to put it.
So, is college still worth it? In the most simplistic terms, yes.
Let's look back at homeownership. Attending a four-year college — even if you borrow, and even if you do not graduate — still increases your chances of owning a home, compared to people who never enroll.
But if the new economy demands that workers have the ability to flow to job opportunities (like dragging-n-dropping them on a spreadsheet) then home ownership is an anchor.
Remote working needs to become a standard practice. It's the only way to escape the neverending rise in housing in places like SF, and give people the ability and stability to settle down in a place they love, raise a family, and invest in their housing.
Think about all of the coming job losses to automation ... what if high earning tech workers could stay in their communities, and spread some of that SV economy around.
Yea, at this point I'd only get a home if I was comfortable with severely limiting my job prospects. Even in the same metro area I've moved apartments after getting a new job so that my commute is around 30 minutes rather than the 1-1.5 hour commutes a lot of my home owning coworkers have had
This article and thread reminds me of how lucky I was for being a stubborn idiot after graduating high school.
I, too, was told I was too smart to skip college and that I'd be wasting my life. And since I graduated HS at seventeen, my insistent immigrant mother was able to dump me into the local university regardless of my feelings about taking a year off. And, so, I partied my ass off every day and dropped out after the first semester. Mom wasn't happy, so I was allowed temporary quarters until I found a job, and then I was off to find an apartment, and that semester was all mine to pay off.
A year later I found myself with a shitty job downtown (back room at a clothing store) and art school (graphic design). I lucked into a job doing IT and on-site tech support (managing DOS servers and clients), and by nineteen I decided all the adults were full of shit, dropped out of art school and moved to NYC.
It was hard. Lots of work; Lots of hustle; Lots of failures and bad days; All along with the occasional fear that I'd made the wrong choice by skipping college, as I saw a few of my friends who had gone to college get to about where I was in my own career. They'd caught up. My head start was over; But rarely surpassed.
At any rate, I'm 38, back home in Chicago where the price of housing is far more reasonable than the cities I've lived in (NYC, Seattle, Los Angeles), working 100% remotely, and just bought a house. As for the stats mentioned in this article, my wife really made the cut as a 36-year-old bartender who also didn't finish college.
I definitely feel like I missed out on something important by skipping school. But my career hasn't suffered for it, and I'm not sad I missed out on paying for it. And I'm pretty sure spending my twenties in NYC made up for whatever I might have missed, socially.
this is what system failure in the making looks like. look at those percentages who are still in default. even if people aren't in default, the cost of paying off their loans is stifling their economic livelihood.
here is the lasting consequence of student debt: poverty
poverty precludes home ownership, marriage, reinvestment into the economy, and casual consumption. the US has dug its own grave by rejecting its obligation to provide education to its citizenry.
loan forgiveness would solve these problems somewhat, but honestly the ship has sailed. millenials will continue to be poorer indefinitely.
I started at a "small liberal arts school," but had to leave early. I then started an IT career while living at home and somehow had the good sense to pay off the loans from my aborted college career. Then degree requirements started to kick in on IT positions, so I went to night school to finish my B.S. Because I could only handle one class per semester on top of full time IT work, my degree inadvertently ended up being pay-as-you-go. I graduated a bit exhausted, but debt free. Younger friends who did their four year degrees in the same time frame essentially pay an extra rent payment each month. It's crushing them.
The real costs are not even visible, the iceberg of debt is killing other risky behavior (like entrepreneurship). You do not build a company in a garage, if you are already in to your chin with debt. Any risky move, be it political or in your job, will be well thought through and in doubt, be aborted, because you "know" where risky decisions get you.
[+] [-] austenallred|9 years ago|reply
I was brought up under the faulty assumption that if you graduate from college you get a promising career, so pay whatever that takes. Full stop. My entire generation was. Not one teacher or counselor or advisor ever mentioned anything about cost relative to career prospects, and now it's my smart friends who are getting kicked in the teeth, while the kids like me who didn't listen and dropped out and played with computers are richly rewarded.
I can't even count the number of friends with six figures of student debt and no career on both hands.
I think Peter Thiel was right: for some time Americans believed in a college education so fully, so completely that we ignored the cost, even as it skyrocketed. Couple that with federally-backed loans, and no one even considered the risk. 100% of the risk was put on 18-year-old kids, many of whom had never seen a day in the workforce, paid a bill, or had a job.
A lot of people will make it out unscathed, but for those that don't we lived through (or are living in) a giant secondary education bubble. But this time it's one that you can't bankrupt your way out of.
[+] [-] ryandrake|9 years ago|reply
Are they REALLY telling kids nowadays to go major in whatever interested them? Because when I went to college (nineties), nobody told me to just go major in women's studies or medieval history. They were telling me, "Study medicine or engineering because that's the only way it'll be worth the cost." The "what does a liberal arts major say" joke was very much a thing back then, as I assume it is today, now that job prospects for anyone not in STEM are even bleaker than when I went to school.
I don't think the guy who took out $100K in loans to study literature for 5 years was really doing exactly what they were told to do.
[+] [-] SketchySeaBeast|9 years ago|reply
I managed to pay that debt off, and 5 years ago I figured out what I should actually do, went back to school yet again, and again I've spent the last 3 years again paying off the exact average amount of student loan debt in a job that seems to pay about $100k less than what the valley pays.
Just payed off the last of my student debt in one big lump sum on Sunday. I was super aggressive paying off my loans and I'm so very thankful they are done. Now in my mid 30's, used to living like a pauper but entirely debt free, and I can finally start putting my money towards things that matter. I really wish I'd gotten good advice about where I should probably head a decade and a half ago, when I still had savings and a larger support network. I would have only had to go through this once, though I know I'm one of the lucky ones in that I've been able to pay it off at all.
I'm not against student debt in general, schools unfortunately cost money, I just wish the guidance counselors talked about the ROI of particular degrees and pushed the trades and technical colleges harder. My ability to talk about the socioeconomic results of the black plague doesn't enhance my employability. Thankfully I figured out that SQL, Python, and C# does on my own.
[+] [-] jasode|9 years ago|reply
As some sibling comments noted, this lackadaisical attitude of ignoring the ROI wasn't really true even 50 years ago.
The meme "underwater basket weaving" as a synonym for "unmarketable degree" has been around since the 1960s.[1] Undoubtedly, the GenX, GenY, & Millenials going to college in 1990s & 2000s would have heard of it or similar memes. I believe I first heard of it from a monologue by comedian Jay Leno. (The "uwb" was originally a meme about a specific class but its meaning expanded to entire unmarketable degrees -- which is how mainstream press like NYT used it.[2])
It doesn't mean that "literature" or "women's studies" are unworthy academic subjects. If you're a trust fund baby, you can study whatever you want with no financial repercussions. (The whole philosophy about the pure joy of learning for learning's sake, etc.) However, if one takes out $30k+ in debt, the banks and USA government won't forgive your loan just because you got a degree with no market demand. Therefore, the job prospects of "B.A. in Communications" vs "B.A. in Accounting" has to affect the decision.
[1] https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=underwater+bas...
[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/23/arts/television/and-there-...
[+] [-] jMyles|9 years ago|reply
> The thing that irks me about this the most is how it's the people who were doing exactly what they were told that got hurt the most.
The takeaway here is, in part: don't do something just because you're told to. If our generation stops doing what we're told (which seems to be the case), then this will be a small price.
[+] [-] r_smart|9 years ago|reply
The point being, because we maybe understood money a little better, we made more practical decisions with regards to education. We certainly didn't get useful advice from our parents or school.
[+] [-] pc86|9 years ago|reply
No we weren't. I was definitely encouraged to go to college and study something I enjoyed that was marketable. My parents' first concern when I switched away from pre-med to Political Science was "how will you get a job?"
I remember as a young child hearing my parents make a comment about a degree in "underwater basket-weaving" or similar. Getting a degree in a completely non-marketable skill has always negatively impacted your employability and your earning potential.
[+] [-] jknoepfler|9 years ago|reply
I chose to go into graduate school in philosophy, but along the way I also decided to not take out any debt, go to a public university, and to work my ass off. Why? Because I knew I couldn't afford debt of I didn't make it, and I knew I'd have to be summa cum laude with killer letters of recommendation to make it.
How did I know all that? It seemed like common sense to me, but I probably did some research and talked to people. And of course my grandmother wanted to know how I was going to make a living.
And I did make it, but I dropped out of the phd program, took out some loans, and got a freaking csci degree that paid the loans off with a signing bonus, because I discovered that I can't stand academia. Go figure.
This was just... Common sense to me. Don't burn money to do something with low returns. Do burn money to get a valuable degree with returns. Above all, think.
At the time, as now, I feel a great deal of contempt (an ugly, evil emotion to be sure) for people who take out massive debt to be molly-coddled at a private liberal arts college with a sticker price approaching MIT and no connection to the real world, or who fund their entire college degree with loans and no work (i worked through both degrees). I try to convert that into compassion or sympathy, but I haven't found success yet.
[+] [-] snarf21|9 years ago|reply
Software really is eating the world and we need to find a solution or it will eventually lead to revolt as people will have no other option. If someone isn't going to college for something medical or STEM, they shouldn't bother. Go learn a trade or start a small sole proprietor business while you live at home.
[+] [-] alistairSH|9 years ago|reply
My parents flat-out told me I was going in-state or funding the difference myself (and with UVA, VT, and W&M available, that became a no-brainer).
And counselors, while not actively discouraging applications to expensive private/out-of-state schools, did actively encourage scholarship and grant applications.
Then, during college, my dad did repeatedly ask me my plans. And, when I decided I wanted to pursue a career in computer science, offered to pay an extra year of school so I could transfer to the engineering program (CS was part of the engineering school at UVA). I declined - at the time, the dot-com bubble had not burst, and if you could spell C++, you could find a job that paid $50k+ (in 1999 dollars) - and finished my degree in economics (minored in CS).
[+] [-] dionidium|9 years ago|reply
This information was available to everyone. If you didn't pay attention to it, then that's on you. This isn't a new discovery.
[+] [-] refurb|9 years ago|reply
Huh, I went to college 10+ years ago and it was clear to me then that certain degrees meant a good paying job and some were dead ends.
That's a shame if some students were led to believe something else.
[+] [-] uiri|9 years ago|reply
The labour market does not change that much in 4-5 years (barring something like the 08-09 financial meltdown). It should be straightforward to check whether a degree is necessary in order to land a decent job - apply to those jobs without a degree and see what they say.
[+] [-] branchless|9 years ago|reply
So you pay the piper. The supply of gov credit sets the price of courses. Hand over your labour.
[+] [-] pitt1980|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] simonh|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] epalmer|9 years ago|reply
I'm a fan of what Mike Rowe is doing to raise awareness around the trades. http://profoundlydisconnected.com/foundation/
[+] [-] swsieber|9 years ago|reply
So I got lucky, but there's definitely an attitude that needs to be battled.
[+] [-] kamaal|9 years ago|reply
Taking huge loans to study things like literature was either considered a extreme luxury of the rich who wanted a degree just for the heck of it, or those people going to such sciences(Even commerce, accounting etc) are largely considered people who can't do tough things in life(a.k.a losers).
Most people who study things like literature eventually have to go on and get another degree on top of it. Like say an MBA just to get a job.
Never understood why people take huge loans to study non-STEM degrees.
[+] [-] NTDF9|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tboyd47|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lr4444lr|9 years ago|reply
As a follow-up question to your last sentence, do you have any thoughts on collateralization? Not so easy when the asset grown to pay back the debt is social/intellectual capital, but I think we could come up with creative solutions for certain degrees and borrower profiles.
[+] [-] revelation|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bwb|9 years ago|reply
A lot of people still believe that BS. I know people pushing their kids so hard and paying hundreds of thousands of dollars on education bills over a 4 year college. And, for what?
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] bobbington|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] davidf18|9 years ago|reply
In 2002 Japan passed a federal law that gave the federal government control of housing density restrictions: the result is that in 2014 Tokyo built 140,000 homes vs. 20,000 for NYC and less than 90,000 for all of California.
The local politicians are bought off by the wealthy landlords and those just trying to make their life after graduating from college and poor people are paying for it.
I wrote more about this today at: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14032591
[+] [-] treehau5|9 years ago|reply
It's fine if these kids were just doing exactly what they were told or people sold them on the koolaid, but generations prior also had to navigate the diverse world of snake-oil salesmen and people hyping up things and overvaluing them -- you can't beat teaching common money sense. Simple math. Teaching personal finance should be in inserted into middle school and taught all the way to graduation.
[+] [-] ThrustVectoring|9 years ago|reply
The first question is "as an individual job-seeker, is college worth it to me personally". Which it probably still is - there's very real discrimination against folks without a degree.
The second question is "for job-seekers as a class, does college help them". Which it almost certainly isn't - there's a huge amount of time and money spent on what's mostly a piece of paper that says "I'm smart enough to get into college, not-lower-class enough to spend the time and money, and obedient enough to jump through arbitrary hoops". Employees as a class aren't magically better because they have a piece of paper, they're better because of specific skills and abilities that they learn that enable extra productivity.
People see that college is worth it for individuals, and then they go and shovel gigantic piles of money at college for everyone, and this just pisses me the hell off because it's so goddamn wasteful.
IMO, the only realistic way out of this hole is to make it illegal to ask about college education or verify with an issuing institution whether or not you have a degree. If an employer asks, they get sued or prosecuted. If a job-seeker tells, the employer can't find out if they're lying. Only remaining thing is to screen for actual knowledge, like "are you a good enough engineer to not make buildings that collapse". Professional exams - like the Fundamentals of Engineering or actuarial exams - seem like an appropriate fit for that.
[+] [-] stinkytaco|9 years ago|reply
I think your point about job-seekers as a class is mostly right, but it doesn't bring into account one of the things college provides you, which is a well-rounded education. Now, this may or may not be worthwhile to you, but my experience is that college is a good shorthand to "will this person be a good coworker". There are plenty of things about that hoop jumping that have value in the working world. They are probably OK in teams, they are probably OK at administrative work, and so on. I had a friend who went to MIT that said "if someone graduated from MIT, at least I know they have good time management skills". This is absolutely not universally true, but a higher percentage of the college graduates I've worked with are good in teams than of non-college graduates I've worked with.
[+] [-] Kinnard|9 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ban_the_Box http://bantheboxcampaign.org/
I bet some sort of uncollege[1] labor group that calls out and rallies/lobbies against discrimination would be effective too.
[1] https://www.facebook.com/groups/UnCollegeNetwork
[+] [-] nojvek|9 years ago|reply
Not really, college is only worth it if you finish a select number of degrees and are somewhat middle class to begin with.
US education system slowly alienates a large portion of the country putting them in debt forever. It's a stark contrast to Germany and some of the Nordic countries.
But I also believe America is too big to make much changes regarding education.
[+] [-] nercht12|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RUG3Y|9 years ago|reply
Now I'm in this situation: I'm not doing a whole lot with art, and I'm trying to break into software development. Do I need a CS degree? Any opinions? I'm thinking about going back to school but the thought of possibly having more debt is not something I'm interested in. I'm having a hard time finding even junior level jobs that are interested in people without degrees. I'm a fairly competent programmer as-is, self taught.
[+] [-] stinkytaco|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pillowkusis|9 years ago|reply
Definitely do not need a degree but you will have to change your job-seeking process to account for that fact.
[+] [-] supergeek133|9 years ago|reply
This line bothers me in particular:
> So, is college still worth it? In the most simplistic terms, yes.
It is only worth it because we've made it a requirement to find employment with growth potential outside of the trades or sales. Hell, even some sales jobs are requiring degrees now.
If Corporate America was honest with itself about which jobs REALLY required a degree versus just some level of experience, college would become devalued in some respects.
I'm 'one of the lucky ones'. I don't have a degree, I work in a fairly important job for a fortune 100 company. I am paid fairly well for my area and I enjoy my job. My experience built up over time got me to where I am, but I know many others who weren't afforded the same chance just because their resume didn't have a piece of paper and debt attached to it. That being said I'll probably eventually hit a wall where I can't advance anymore, and I'm probably OK with that.
The other cause we've failed to address is the constantly rising cost of going to college. Government programs to increase loan availability (and forgiveness) have just raised the price, because the student can "afford" it.
[+] [-] contingencies|9 years ago|reply
I assume they mean "own" in the sense "get a mortgage on" not "have fully paid for", no?
[+] [-] giardini|9 years ago|reply
"Harvard is like a Vuitton bag or a Cartier watch. It is a huge drag on the middle-class parents who have been plowing an increased share of their savings into these institutions, transferring their money to administrators, real estate developers, professors, and other agents. In the United States, we have a buildup of student loans that automatically transfer to these rent extractors, In a way it is no different from racketeering..."
On the future of education:
"My answer: BS is fragile. Which scam in history has lasted forever? I have an enormous faith in Time and History as eventual debunkers of fragility. Education is an institution that has been growing without external stressors; eventually the thing will collapse."
- "Antifragile", Chapter 17 (last 2 pages)
- Nassim Nicholas Taleb
[+] [-] ge96|9 years ago|reply
Anyway yeap... sucks thankfully I have a somewhat functioning brain, despite the loans, not getting a useful degree/potentially wasting three years of money/life, I have an opportunity to dig myself out. It's my own fault by the way I had a great opportunity and I pissed it away because I was a jackass. But yeah, it's easy to accept this money and not realize the interest like a couple of my loans are 6.8% APR and paying the interest down alone holy crap.
[+] [-] OliverJones|9 years ago|reply
"People who loan money to students are dangerous predators, and I am their lawful prey."
That doesn't mean you shouldn't go to university, or that you shouldn't borrow money. Just be careful around predators.
[+] [-] chestervonwinch|9 years ago|reply
60k in the hole still from undergrad loans. The thought of taking out a mortage after this debt is finished is not appealing. "hurts my chances"? Sure, that's one way to put it.
[+] [-] ourmandave|9 years ago|reply
Let's look back at homeownership. Attending a four-year college — even if you borrow, and even if you do not graduate — still increases your chances of owning a home, compared to people who never enroll.
But if the new economy demands that workers have the ability to flow to job opportunities (like dragging-n-dropping them on a spreadsheet) then home ownership is an anchor.
[+] [-] CodeCube|9 years ago|reply
Think about all of the coming job losses to automation ... what if high earning tech workers could stay in their communities, and spread some of that SV economy around.
[+] [-] lovich|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] enobrev|9 years ago|reply
I, too, was told I was too smart to skip college and that I'd be wasting my life. And since I graduated HS at seventeen, my insistent immigrant mother was able to dump me into the local university regardless of my feelings about taking a year off. And, so, I partied my ass off every day and dropped out after the first semester. Mom wasn't happy, so I was allowed temporary quarters until I found a job, and then I was off to find an apartment, and that semester was all mine to pay off.
A year later I found myself with a shitty job downtown (back room at a clothing store) and art school (graphic design). I lucked into a job doing IT and on-site tech support (managing DOS servers and clients), and by nineteen I decided all the adults were full of shit, dropped out of art school and moved to NYC.
It was hard. Lots of work; Lots of hustle; Lots of failures and bad days; All along with the occasional fear that I'd made the wrong choice by skipping college, as I saw a few of my friends who had gone to college get to about where I was in my own career. They'd caught up. My head start was over; But rarely surpassed.
At any rate, I'm 38, back home in Chicago where the price of housing is far more reasonable than the cities I've lived in (NYC, Seattle, Los Angeles), working 100% remotely, and just bought a house. As for the stats mentioned in this article, my wife really made the cut as a 36-year-old bartender who also didn't finish college.
I definitely feel like I missed out on something important by skipping school. But my career hasn't suffered for it, and I'm not sad I missed out on paying for it. And I'm pretty sure spending my twenties in NYC made up for whatever I might have missed, socially.
[+] [-] cryoshon|9 years ago|reply
this is what system failure in the making looks like. look at those percentages who are still in default. even if people aren't in default, the cost of paying off their loans is stifling their economic livelihood.
here is the lasting consequence of student debt: poverty
poverty precludes home ownership, marriage, reinvestment into the economy, and casual consumption. the US has dug its own grave by rejecting its obligation to provide education to its citizenry.
loan forgiveness would solve these problems somewhat, but honestly the ship has sailed. millenials will continue to be poorer indefinitely.
[+] [-] akeck|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Pica_soO|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Prego|9 years ago|reply