Jaded With Education, More Americans are Skipping College (apnews.com) 222
In America, the number of high school graduates going to college "was generally on the upswing," reports the Associated Press, "until the pandemic reversed decades of progress. Rates fell even as the nation's population of high school graduates grew."
Nationwide, undergraduate college enrollment dropped 8% from 2019 to 2022, with declines even after returning to in-person classes, according to data from the National Student Clearinghouse. The slide in the college-going rate since 2018 is the steepest on record, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Economists say the impact could be dire. At worst, it could signal a new generation with little faith in the value of a college degree.
At minimum, it appears those who passed on college during the pandemic are opting out for good. Predictions that they would enroll after a year or two haven't borne out. Fewer college graduates could worsen labor shortages in fields from health care to information technology. For those who forgo college, it usually means lower lifetime earnings — 75% less compared with those who get bachelor's degrees, according to Georgetown University's Center on Education and the Workforce. And when the economy sours, those without degrees are more likely to lose jobs. "It's quite a dangerous proposition for the strength of our national economy," said Zack Mabel, a Georgetown researcher.
In dozens of interviews with The Associated Press, educators, researchers and students described a generation jaded by education institutions. Largely left on their own amid remote learning, many took part-time jobs. Some felt they weren't learning anything, and the idea of four more years of school, or even two, held little appeal. At the same time, the nation's student debt has soared.... If there's a bright spot, experts say, it's that more young people are pursuing education programs other than a four-year degree. Some states are seeing growing demand for apprenticeships in the trades, which usually provide certificates and other credentials.
After a dip in 2020, the number of new apprentices in the U.S. has rebounded to near pre-pandemic levels, according to the Department of Labor.
Community college is even free in Tennessee, the article notes. "Searching for answers, education officials crossed the state last year and heard that easy access to jobs, coupled with student debt worries, made college less attractive." They also found that restaurant and retail jobs pay better than they have before, with other high school graduates being recruited by manufacturing companies that have aggressively raised wages in response to labor shortages.
One 19-year-old making $24-an-hour at a new Ford plant gushed that "The type of money we're making out here, you're not going to be making that while you're trying to go to college."
Nationwide, undergraduate college enrollment dropped 8% from 2019 to 2022, with declines even after returning to in-person classes, according to data from the National Student Clearinghouse. The slide in the college-going rate since 2018 is the steepest on record, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Economists say the impact could be dire. At worst, it could signal a new generation with little faith in the value of a college degree.
At minimum, it appears those who passed on college during the pandemic are opting out for good. Predictions that they would enroll after a year or two haven't borne out. Fewer college graduates could worsen labor shortages in fields from health care to information technology. For those who forgo college, it usually means lower lifetime earnings — 75% less compared with those who get bachelor's degrees, according to Georgetown University's Center on Education and the Workforce. And when the economy sours, those without degrees are more likely to lose jobs. "It's quite a dangerous proposition for the strength of our national economy," said Zack Mabel, a Georgetown researcher.
In dozens of interviews with The Associated Press, educators, researchers and students described a generation jaded by education institutions. Largely left on their own amid remote learning, many took part-time jobs. Some felt they weren't learning anything, and the idea of four more years of school, or even two, held little appeal. At the same time, the nation's student debt has soared.... If there's a bright spot, experts say, it's that more young people are pursuing education programs other than a four-year degree. Some states are seeing growing demand for apprenticeships in the trades, which usually provide certificates and other credentials.
After a dip in 2020, the number of new apprentices in the U.S. has rebounded to near pre-pandemic levels, according to the Department of Labor.
Community college is even free in Tennessee, the article notes. "Searching for answers, education officials crossed the state last year and heard that easy access to jobs, coupled with student debt worries, made college less attractive." They also found that restaurant and retail jobs pay better than they have before, with other high school graduates being recruited by manufacturing companies that have aggressively raised wages in response to labor shortages.
One 19-year-old making $24-an-hour at a new Ford plant gushed that "The type of money we're making out here, you're not going to be making that while you're trying to go to college."
Slashdot bait (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the kind of story that will likely draw a lot of engagement around here.
Partisans of both sides will be eager to claim superiority.
I predict much heat and little light.
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kid crowing about $24 an hour could almost double that with education/training, whether college or other type
Re:Slashdot bait (Score:5, Insightful)
kid crowing about $24 an hour could almost double that with education/training, whether college or other type
Have you seen how many jobs pay less than that and require a bachelor's? Obviously not, I guess
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I am acquainted with two people that have master's degrees and two people with bachelor's degrees that aren't really able to utilize their degrees.
It's absolutely true that having a degree in any random subject does not guarantee financial success. Having completed undergrad or higher levels of higher education can offer opportunties in many fields, and in some fields having such degrees are basically required, but there are far too many occupations where the employer prefers degrees for even entry-level,
Re:Slashdot bait (Score:5, Insightful)
For what it's worth I don't expect colleges and universities to become trade-schools, churning-out graduates as business chases various fields or technologies, but we really do need to stop enrolling for people that are going to end up in a career like clerical work. It's a disservice to the student to compel them to take on that kind of debt for an education that won't benefit in the workplace.
You know, people used to be able to afford to get an education once upon a time in this country. It's self-defeating to insist that they should just not get one instead of making education affordable, because that leads to a nation of dumbfucks, and that leads to the perpetuation of our broken political system.
Re: Slashdot bait (Score:5, Insightful)
Take AP classes in HS and AP tests. You can easily get 12 credits on the cheap.
Then go to community college for 2 years, also on the cheap, while living at home. Bonus points for taking some CLEP tests for even more cheap credits.
Then finish your last 3-4 semesters at a cheap, in state university.
You and easily have a 4 year degree for under $25K, which you can cover working your ass in the summers.
People just don't want to do that. They want to go to expensive 4 year schools and finance ALL of it, with even bothering to determine an ROI.
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Re: People just don't want to do that. — not everyone has equal faculties, or equality of environment. For some people that is realistic, and not doing it is an unfortunate missed opportunity. For others, it simply is not, and no amount of insisting that they should have pulled themselves up by their bootstraps will make it so.
Re: Slashdot bait (Score:3)
Right. So they should go do something else because run up huge debts to go to college.
Some people can pay cash for a Ferrari. I can't. That doesn't mean it is reasonable for me to sell a kidney, suck dicks on weekends and rob liquor stores to get something I REALLY want, but simply cannot afford. The smart thing to do would be to settle on a used Corolla.
Re: Slashdot bait (Score:4, Funny)
That doesn't mean it is reasonable for me to sell a kidney, suck dicks on weekends and rob liquor stores to get something I REALLY want
You're deep-throating corporate cock right now, so you're already sucking dicks on weekends.
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People just don't want to do that. They want to go to expensive 4 year schools and finance ALL of it, with even bothering to determine an ROI.
You are totally 100% correct.
There are way cheaper options:
https://www.uopeople.edu/ [uopeople.edu]
University of the people (fully credited university) fees:
Total Costs
The total approximate costs to earn a degree at UoPeople are the following:
Associate Degree: $2,460
Bachelor’s Degree: $4,860
MBA: $3,660
M.Ed.: $3,960
MSIT: $3,660
Re: Slashdot bait (Score:4, Informative)
One of my core memories vis-a-vis the value of college
occurred while walking to the bookstore of the Art Institute in Nashville. There was a legislative push to require colleges to report ROI information, job placement rates, and first year salary information for their graduates, and the school was giving away free stuff if you'd write legislators to oppose the measure.
People were literally lined up to get the free stuff, too.
I looked it up later and their 4-year cooking degree was $78k with a < 40% job placement rate.
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Not everyone has the ability to attain a STEM degree. I'm sure you know many people that that fit that description. I guess they could get their MBA or maybe be day traders or other people that don't really add value to the economy. Is that your solution? Add more people that we constantly belittle on here for being scum that some how suck down lots of money for basically defrauding people or are otherwise dumb asses that make life worse for most of us?
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There is the option of accepting that low IQ people will always exist and since we don't live in personal bubbles, those people not being able to live decent lives and being able to contribute to society WILL make life shittier for us, too.
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Re: Slashdot bait (Score:5, Insightful)
Times have changed. Colleges and state universities used to be a reasonable bargain. But prices have zoomed. Community colleges still are affordable and can cut the cost of a 4 year college down by going to the community college first. I used to be sour on trade schools but that's another option.
The cost is why I've changed my opinions on this. I used to be "don't be a fool and go to college". Now I'm more like "if you_can_ go to college then it's for your best interest to do so". Even with high prices it pays for itself over time, as you will likely get more promotions, be laid off less often, etc.
Even without college though - never stop learning! Learn broadly, not just some specific trade. Learn stuff that's hard that you don't want to learn as well.
There is a strain of anti-education in some segments of society though. Many hate school, including elementary school. Many drop out of high school. A lot of those realize the mistake later and get a GED, but also many do not. Their first job is low paying and they never break out of that. If their dream was to work on the factory floor, or in a coal mine, they may be out of luck as those get replaced. A good education makes it much easier to be adaptable.
Re: Slashdot bait (Score:3)
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Can you point on the doll where social justice hurt you?
While I don't express it with as much anger as Armored Dragon, he isn't wrong.
Can you give a valid reason why someone with an opinion degree should make as much as someone who has, say an EE, NucE degree, or one in chemistry.
There really is not much of a job market out there for people who's education is disagreeing with others. Even once upon a time, those folks might get a job in HR, but that's becoming a thing of the past.
Re: Slashdot bait (Score:3)
So complaining that I have to pay taxes that pay somebody else's student loans off, because they refused to go somewhere else with lower tuition costs as I myself did...is wrong?
Do explain your reasoning.
Re: Slashdot bait (Score:5, Insightful)
The debt isn't being paid with your taxes, its getting erased. No money is changing hands.
And in case you didn't notice, tuition has been rapidly going up for decades everywhere because we've been repeatedly slashing government funding of colleges. College isn't affordable anywhere anymore.
Why is it ok that your education was massively government subsidized, but the people after you have to pay for it with high interest rate loans?
Re: Slashdot bait (Score:3)
I understand better than you do. Besides, it's not taxes in and of itself that I'm talking about.
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The evidence suggests otherwise.
Re: Slashdot bait (Score:3)
The debt isn't being paid with your taxes, its getting erased. No money is changing hands.
And in case you didn't notice, tuition has been rapidly going up for decades everywhere because we've been repeatedly slashing government funding of colleges. College isn't affordable anywhere anymore.
Why is it ok that your education was massively government subsidized, but the people after you have to pay for it with high interest rate loans?
You contradicted yourself really badly just now, and you don't even realize it. Not to mention you're incredibly naive about this topic.
Re: Slashdot bait (Score:4, Insightful)
"The debt isn't being paid with your taxes, its getting erased. No money is changing hands."
Who paid the school money for that student's tuition? Was it the government? If so, wiping the debt absolutely means that taxpayer money was spent on tuition and never reimbursed by the student. Was it a private entity, guaranteed by the government? If so, the private entity isn't suddenly a charity; they're getting paid by somebody. i.e. the government. i.e. taxpayer dollars. So either it's getting paid by taxpayer money or it's getting paid by taxpayer money. Which is it?
"tuition has been rapidly going up for decades everywhere because we've been repeatedly slashing government funding of colleges"
No, that doesn't make sense. If that were the case, colleges and universities which don't rely on government funding would have relatively stable tuition rates. But they're all going up. The more likely cause is a sudden and rapid shift from only select professions requiring college education to an expectation that everyone goes (i.e. a sharp spike in demand with supply hopelessly unprepared) coupled with profit motive coupled with an unlimited ability to pay regardless of costs thanks to loan guarantees offered by the government. In other words, the most broke bastard on Earth can spend $500,000 getting a degree that will only ever pay $20,000 a year. No one in their right mind would give that person a loan... unless somebody (e.g. the government) guaranteed it would be paid back, no matter what. So a degree that either shouldn't exist at all or should only cost $5,000 to get can cost $50,000 or $150,000 or $500,000 or $500,000,000 because money is no object.
"Why is it ok that your education was massively government subsidized, but the people after you have to pay for it with high interest rate loans?"
Why is a mistake that has devastated millions of lives made yesterday required to continue happening today? You aren't doing anyone any favors by continuing to distort the education market. All it's doing is enabling and encouraging teenagers to take on suffocating lifelong debt in order to dump more taxpayer dollars into a greed-fire fueled by money. We need construction workers, plumbers, electricians, carpenters, mechanics, janitors, medics, police officers, firemen, and plenty of others and they don't need a $120,000 degree in underwater bongo drumming to do their jobs effectively. They need training in their individual trades, apprenticeship programs, and on-the-job training that enables them to make money from the start and learn to do the job right rather than spending 4 or 5 years racking up debt that will haunt them for a lifetime, earning nothing, and learning about 17th century Bulgarian poetry for no reason whatsoever.
Lawyers, doctors, certain types of engineers, physicists, and certain other specific positions really require all that a university has to offer. And those who demonstrate the aptitude necessary to complete degrees in those fields should absolutely have the opportunity to attend real universities regardless of their family economic or social status, but it MUST be done without fueling the greed-fire. Fix that imbalance and the cost for college education will crater.
Re: Slashdot bait (Score:3)
No, only among people like you.
Re: Slashdot bait (Score:2)
He could also go $60k in debt and come out making $23/hr. It's kind of a coin flip for many degrees.
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He could also go $60k in debt and come out making $23/hr. It's kind of a coin flip for many degrees.
If you only go for one or two semesters, don't expect your earning potential to be spectacular compared to others when starting out. Then again someone who can earn their degree in so little time clearly has a strong work ethic that will set them above their peers in short order.
Re:Slashdot bait (Score:5, Insightful)
And then spend the rest of his life paying off the loans.
Of course, "could" reads a lot like the favorite marketing phrase "up to".
He could also run up a mountain of debt, delay his entry into the workforce by 4 years, and end up making less than $24/hr for his trouble.
Another possibility is that he gets established, saves up some money, and goes to college part time to eventually get a debt-free degree.
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kid crowing about $24 an hour could almost double that with education/training, whether college or other type
The kid should get an economics degree. S/he already understands opportunity cost.
I'd be curious to see the numbers broken out by degree program. I saw a headline last week that the number of people getting English degrees has plummeted. It wouldn't surprise me if other humanities programs are seeing the same things. Ditto programs for which the only career is in academia. I can see law and medicine dropping since the whole student debt debate may have raised awareness that you can't ignore costs.
Conversely
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there are other careers on liberal arts path with high salaries, like public relations and management analysts.
Of course, we're talking about students/apprentices picking a path based on cash, not necessary "follow your dreams."
Sometimes dreams are best left as experimental "side hustles" while the bills are being paid
Re:Slashdot bait (Score:5, Insightful)
I have to agree, I think we can shift the idea from "find something you love doing" which is a bit of pipe dream to make a career out of to "find something you are good at and can tolerate as a job and is somewhat in demand" which is not nearly as catchy but makes way more sense.
Your career funds your passions and hobbies, only a select few can honestly turn their hobby and passions intoa career
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I wonder what the long-term implications of that with career changes is. Not everything requires the education per-se, but a broader background has a huge impact on being able to shift into different roles and adapting quickly.
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I think in general most people would be fine. I know a lot of people who got degrees who now work professionally in I wouldn't say totally unrelated but definitely tangenital fields to their major.
I think a college degree in most cases is 60% the same skills and value to an employer: You can self regulate, keep schedules, dedicate and finish long term and short term tasks, ie, the fact that you could complete the 4 year program in itself carries the value for an employer. The field specific things you lea
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Interestingly (or not), that college level of responsibility doesn't seem to translate to military experience for employers. I know my own biases in the matter-- people able to take orders but not being able to creatively approach a broad problem. Bigger issues are around PTSD and resulting drug addictions and homelessness. Peacocking has been an issue for a couple as well.
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I don't think we can dismiss his concerns out of hand though, it's an intersting question, if employers are finding those with a tour in the military as productive and skilled workers as those just getting 4 year degrees. One would think military service should imbue all those skills but in talking to ex-military (my company hires a lot because the owners are ex-military) the expererience they recount is something of a mixed bag. While one gets out what they put in it's definitely a story of an uneven sys
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I am actually speaking from personal experience after having hired 4 vets over the last 20 years and interviewed several dozen more. It is anecdotal, but appears to be representative of career military people that leave after ~10 years.
Part of my comment was shaped by the most recent cover letter I got from a vet though.
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The kid should get an economics degree. S/he already understands opportunity cost.
What's that kid going to do when a robot takes his job?
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Re: Slashdot bait (Score:2)
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kid crowing about $24 an hour could almost double that with education/training, whether college or other type
I make close to triple that, and I have no formal training whatsoever beyond high school graduation.
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kid crowing about $24 an hour could almost double that with education/training, whether college or other type
And how long would it take him to pay off the student debt, assuming he puts all of that $24 towards doing so? Especially given the 3 to 4-or-more years during which he'll be earning SFA?
Re: Slashdot bait (Score:2)
Re:Slashdot bait (Score:5, Interesting)
My kid is starting college in the fall and completed a full course of welding certifications while in high school. So she'll be covered even if ChatGPT makes degrees worthless. And she can weld spikes on mad-max mobiles if SHTF.
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My kid is starting college in the fall and completed a full course of welding certifications while in high school. So she'll be covered even if ChatGPT makes degrees worthless. And she can weld spikes on mad-max mobiles if SHTF.
This assumes that jobs for welders will not be largely eliminated by the introduction of even more sophisticate AI driven robots in the next couple of decades. Same for basically any job that involves you driving people or things around for a living if Elon Musk and his ilk manage to make self driving cars viable. Furthermore, once the hype has died down, what ChatGPT is likely to kill off first is low level jobs like call centres and help lines, not Bachelor and Masters degree level jobs. People can recite
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It may be that for a while people's bodies are harder to reproduce than their minds. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
A free market (Score:3)
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"Partisans of both sides will be eager to claim superiority."
Which sides would that be?
The ignorant and the other side who wants them ignorant?
Continuation of a longer-term trend (Score:5, Informative)
https://www.npr.org/2019/12/16... [npr.org]
It wasn't just the pandemic. College, in general, costs too much.
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It is cost, but there is something else going on too. Labor shortage is part of it, making the short-term decision to forego education logical; aspirations seem to be in there as well. There seems to be a significant chunk of the population that lacks intellectual curiosity and is stuck in fantasy or otherwise detached from the "real world." Many college graduates do not gain much in terms of career marketability from their experience. Hopefully the ones that forego university will find other ways to fill i
Re:Continuation of a longer-term trend (Score:4)
The idea that everyone needs to go to college is idiotic and countries that don't waste money trying to educate people for no benefit will do just fine. Compare countries [oecd-ilibrary.org] like Germany and France which have a lower percentage of the population with the equivalent of a four year degree with others with a far higher rates. If college education were magically valuable, it should be Greece economically dominating over Germany who is upset over the financial terms they must accept. Russia should be the leading economy in the world instead of the under-developed shithole that it actually is.
I'm not even convinced something like CS absolutely needs a bachelors degree. A young kid who gets into programming early enough with a secondary school system that offers CS courses could probably have about the same level of capability as a college sophomore or junior applying for internships. If we think that out entry-level positions require 4-year degrees, it's more of an indication of how lacking our high schools are than how challenging the jobs in our economies must be.
Re:Continuation of a longer-term trend (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not even convinced something like CS absolutely needs a bachelors degree. A young kid who gets into programming early enough with a secondary school system that offers CS courses could probably have about the same level of capability as a college sophomore or junior applying for internships. If we think that out entry-level positions require 4-year degrees, it's more of an indication of how lacking our high schools are than how challenging the jobs in our economies must be.
So much to unpack here. I teach college and graduate computer science. I do not believe that college is about getting a good job. But let's look at it from an economical perspective anyway.
From what I have seen, you do not need a college degree to be employable in the industry. But a college degree will make you much better. There are essentially 3 types of students:
-the very passionate "I want to learn everything" type of students. For that group of student, if they were going in the industry right away, they would be effective there. But the amount of knowledge that they get out of courses and out of discussion with faculty and research project is tremendous. It enhances significantly their earnings out of their degree significantly. And the degrees are usually cheap on them because they are getting TA and RA position throughout their degrees that both provides them a source of funds WHILE also enhancing their skills. These are your $200k+ engineers in a few years.
-The "I came here because there is money in the field and I am kind of ok at it" type of students. These students could probably learn some basic programming kind of things and be useful in the industry in some low level positions. You see two behaviors out of these students. The first ones go "this is stupid, I just wanna the degree because degree == money" kind of students will actually get little out of the degree. They don't use their time to learn effectively, they are gonna get a little bit better and a bit more rounded, but they don't get technically much better. They usually end up in middle management a few years later because they aren't technically good enough. You get the "now that I am here, let's make the best of it" group. And these actually try to learn what you teach them and they get technically decent and they are going to be your main workforce in tech. And they are decent enough, they are the largest group by far and they are gonna be the 70k-80k out of college group. For them, college is still pretty useful.
-Then you get the "my parents pushed me into this, I don't really want to learn it and I just want a degree and job" kind of students. These usually would never be able to make it in the industry by themselves because they just have no inner drive to learn this; at most they think"it's cool" but don't dig in any of it. These students have the largest drop-out rate. The ones that make it out are usually not very good but they'll find a role in the industry they would not be able to get otherwise. Usually these are your 40k to 60k employees in the industry. So they do benefit from a college education overall. The drop-outs usually not so much. They usually end up with some amount of college debt that may be a bit harder to catch up on.
Now in the last group, there are plenty of people who would do much better doing something else. Either something they'll get more excited about, or something that would lead them to more debt from a purely economical stand point. But we also see PLENTY of students that come and tell us "I trained to be a plumber out of high school, and while I could make a living, I just hate the working conditions, and I think I'd get a better life in an office setting, even thought the money may not be that much better for me."
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
My high opinion of the CS degree has changed over the years, especially since I have been interviewing and hiring a wide variety of candidates. What I have been seeing is candidates with CS degrees and high grades, with classes like "Algorithms" and "AI" on their transcript, who cannot even write code to sort an array of integers (by any means at all). They can talk about breadth-first vs depth-first searches, but they cannot write a recursive algorithm to traverse a tree. Very few can even tell me the d
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I teach at $LOCALR2SCHOOL. You are not wrong. Some of that has happened. And you are right that the key difference is the motivation of the student population.
There are nowadays a trove of students going into computer science for the money. They tend to not put enough efforts and so they struggle more on harder concepts. Once you have a class of 80 students where 60 maybe like that, it becomes really hard to say "I'll teach to the top 20 and screw the bottom 60". So in practice the average level of the clas
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Costs too much on the tax-payer's dime. Any college/university with an endowment > $1B should provide its own tuition loans.
Plus college causes anxiety and depression [substack.com]
Not a bad thing (Score:4, Insightful)
As a purely empirical observation, the generally agreed upon golden ages of American prosperity (postwar boom, 80s/90s tech boom) that saw widespread and broad based economic growth occurred during times when far less than half the workforce held college degrees.
While the college educated usually stood near the top of the ladder, the push to credential everyone with a pulse seems in retrospect (and be honest, at the time too) to be a classic example of a (self-interested) fallacy of composition.
Hence the tales of Starbucks baristas with liberal arts degrees that cost them 100k. It doesn't take a degree in literature to serve coffee or operate a spreadsheet in an office for that matter.
And since we have an epidemic of binary thinking in this country, let me state what should be obvious: "college *for all* is bad" != "college is bad" != "education is bad"
Re:Not a bad thing (Score:5, Interesting)
You're not wrong that the push for widespread college adoption has been a mixed bag but that's more to do with systemic issues in the education system starting at the bottom and the way we fund and promote college education.
Fact is having a 4-year degree on the averages is a very good thing for a persons lifetime earnings. Yes there are exceptions of those with just a HS diploma but that is by the numbers a minority so we shouldn't just say "no college" but offer alternatives:
New Study: College Degree Carries Big Earnings Premium, But Other Factors Matter Too [forbes.com]
We can hardly be shocked when parents and schools are going to encourage high school grads to seek higher education. Yes some kids can and should go into the trades and some are going to be entrepreneurs but for the majority a college degree is a pretty wise investment.
Now my suggestions would be to open up community colleges to offer 4-year degrees and those low-cost schools are the "public option" of higher education as well as covering trade and certificate schooling as well and encourage kids more that while there is more out there than "STEM, Law and Business" we have to be realistic about prospects and some 18 year olds are going to make mistakes in choosing their career. The issue is that mistake costing them six figures.
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Re:Not a bad thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Because you only need so many people with advanced basket weaving degrees. Sorry to break it to you, but companies want people who can bring a skill to the table they can actually use, they don't create jobs to accommodate whatever degree you might have.
Re:Not a bad thing (Score:4, Interesting)
But a lot of jobs really just do not require degrees. Some education is helpful but full 4 year degree is not needed.
A good example of this. I've been in a union grocery worker as my career. I write orders, forecast sales and keep a department in stock, while keeping shrink to a minimum. I have a ton of experience at this. I've talked with several of my beer vendors that do order writing and their position is typically referred to as salesman. I've asked their job qualifications if I wanted to get hired on and they all have told me a 4 year degree is a mandatory requirement.
My experience writing orders likely dwarves these young folk but if I were to go put an application in to work at one of those jobs, it would get automatically screened out or otherwise tossed in the waste bin because of not having a four year degree. To write a beer order for a store. It's asinine but there it is.
Luckily I do pretty darn good but a lot of that is my benefits package and not the dollar amount I make. I have a pension, 401k plan, prepaid dental/vision and healthcare that's $1000 deductible and cost me $10 (not a typo) a week, and I have a health savings account that's funded by the company so I don't even have a copay for roughly about half of that $1000 deductible. But I only make $25.50 an hour and 1.5x on Sundays (which i always put my full 8 in). Only work 40 hours a week also.
Given that I enjoy my job and it's done good enough for me, I stay instead of going back to school. I did look into going back to school recently and I may actually take the dive in the Fall Semester but I'll need about 9 more classes to get my associates of science in network management. I worry that a two year degree won't be enough to even be considered for a job and going to a nearby university on a transfer agreement and doing 60 more units (that will take me likely at least 5 years to finish, because I need to work fulltime to live) is a bridge to far.
P.S. I'd love to hear some positive feedback but it sounds like I'm going to keep working for another 13 years so I can pension out of my current job at 52 or keep working until I'm 62 then take SS and my pension (which will be decent by then). Maybe then I can shift over, but who's going to hire a rookie in their low 50s?
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Nobody is going to hire a rookie in their 50s. Sorry.
The point is, though, that no, you don't need any degree to write a beer order. A high school diploma should actually ensure you're overqualified for that. But do you want to bet that it's trivial to find people who have high school diplomas who would be in over their head with that job?
We've devalued the high school to the point where a dog that went through obedience school has more to show than someone who graduated from high school.
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The thing is that it's no longer enough to have any college degree, you need a relevant college degree. A PhD in advanced basket weaving is worthless. It always was, it always will be. Until about 20 years ago, companies just hired anything that had some sort of college degree, but it seems they finally realized that not all college degrees are created equal.
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I think the military hasn't cottoned onto that yet from what I hear - they're a bit olde fashioned.
Re: Not a bad thing (Score:2)
Look, to be fair, a society has needs as well as wants, and someone somewhere will pay to listen to a lecture on advanced basketweaving, and on how baskets are racist, sexist, and whateverist...if only for the entertainment value.
Problem is, as another commenter noted, when the market floods with these people.
You'd be surprised how high the barriers to the free flow of information can be in academic environments. It can be a cultural bubble where any career path that doesn't end with an academic appointment
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But after hearing one goofball rant on about how basket weaving, or the total lack thereof is racist, sexist and $whatever-ist, my need for a good laugh is satisfied. And why would I want to pay someone for that when there's almost certainly another goofball doing it for free for YouTube clicks?
And yes, that shit exists over here too. As you can imagine it's even worse in a country where university is a matter of about 1000 bucks a year.
Job and college markets (Score:5, Interesting)
It's a complex story (Score:5, Interesting)
If you read the (long) fine article, it's a mixed bag. They have a number might have been intended as sob stories but I think are actually quite positive. One was a kid who was going to get a degree in musical theater but is now working a smoothie shop. Given how many musical theater graduates wind up making smoothies anyway, that seems a win. Theater sounds like a really fun degree, one I'd love to have, but it's not a great way to make a lot of money. Not getting that degree would be a personal loss but might be a good long term move.
Ditto the kid who dropped out of college to learn plumbing. Plumbing is a great career. Experienced plumbers earn a good living. That sounds like a quite positive outcome.
What this is telling me is we're becoming more realistic about what a college degree can accomplish. Remember, getting a degree is a means, not an end. The goal is to live a happy and satisfying life. If that involves working 120 hour weeks as a trial lawyer, knock yer socks off. If it involves raising kids as a stay-at-home parent, do it. Military? Sir, yes sir. If it involves making coffees while working community musical theater at night, break a leg. But we need to be intentional about our goals and whether getting a college degree advances us toward those goals.
Re: It's a complex story (Score:3)
Sounds like your kid should have picked another university! Iâ(TM)ve never heard of that, and do not fit an instant believe it is the norm that you have to drive across multiple campuses to get a degree.
Post-secondary education is a ripoff in the US (Score:5, Insightful)
Colleges and universities in the US are ridiculously expensive. Average tuition is US$25K/year for in-state education; in Canada, that's about $5.2K. (Source [lendingtree.com])
This is going to seriously hamper US competitiveness against other better-educated societies. IMO, college and university tuition, both for the trades and more academic courses, should be free for full-time students who meet a certain minimum academic performance. The long-term savings to society will far outweigh the up-front costs.
But that won't happen in a society predicated on greed, selfishness and short-term outlook.
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This is going to seriously hamper US competitiveness against other better-educated societies. IMO, college and university tuition, both for the trades and more academic courses, should be free for full-time students who meet a certain minimum academic performance. The long-term savings to society will far outweigh the up-front costs..
I'm not sure that's true. For one, trade school teaches virtually nothing for many trades. I knew kids that did 2 year degrees to go into carpentry, and the general contractor I worked for as a summer gig would complain they came out worse than the kids that skipped the degree and went straight in. Because anything worth knowing was taught on the job, and the kids doing 2 year degrees came in thinking they knew everything already. That's true of a great many trades: apprenticeship was the norm for a very lo
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So where'd you get the figure of $25K for in-state tuition?
I have one 'child' who's a recent college graduate and two more currently enrolled, and I can tell you first-hand that paying $25K/year is not necessary.
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Disclaimer: I work in public higher ed.
Using the average is misleading. Private and high priced specialty programs (like medical and law) throw the average off. They should be using more 'typical' numbers like median but those don't make it as disturbing. I'm sure there are some people getting degrees that have no direct correlation to a job except for teaching in their field of study. However, a degree of just about any kind can usually help you get a job but if you can't then maybe it isn't the degre
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>But that won't happen in a society predicated on greed, selfishness and short-term outlook.
The tuition costs are high exactly because of that thinking. We want to be "generous" and not "selfish" so we write a blank check (that is a combination of grants and loans) to colleges, so colleges just raise their rates every year and hire non-instructional staff to justify the expenses. Only a small fraction of the employees of Harvard are actually instructional staff, and that includes adjunct faculty:
https:// [univstats.com]
Decades of 'progress' (Score:2)
The assumption that ever more kids should be ever more institutionalised in ever more expensive education programmes, is progress needs to be questioned. We need to think harder about this - especially the usefulness of college lectures where there is minimal feedback from the students. Of course there is the perspective that that's the only way information will get into students heads - that they need that format or otherwise they won't study. That implies they're not ready for college, surely?
Bullshit (Score:4, Insightful)
This is just copium on the part of the kids, their parents, and the media. It's also an excuse to abandon Americans in favor of those sweet, sweet H1-Bs. Corpos love them because they don't have to pay taxes to train them.
Re:Bullshit (Score:4, Insightful)
It did not take $170k to get your kid through college.
You chose to pay $170k to get your kid through college at the place you decided was OK for them to attend, despite needing to pay for high living expenses and a car.
That was your choice. It was not a requirement. There are thousands of schools in the US you could have chosen that would have been cheaper.
If people like yourself keep coughing up that sort of money, why wouldn't they keep charging it? You are absolutely part of the problem.
You're just trying to make yourself feel better (Score:2, Interesting)
Tuition alone was $50,000. Had another 5K on top of that for books because it was a stem degree. The car cost $15k. It had to be reliable so they could get the classes because there was no room for error. Getting into your 300 level classes is incredibly competitive because we've been cutting funding the schools and there isn't enough slots for
It's (male) licensed professions that pay (Score:2)
I didn't put in the parenthesis until I thought about teachers and nurses. Some pretty bad pay scales for them, but still better than a lot of unlicensed jobs. (And the crappy pay scales, I'm deferring to American readers, Canadians get "living wages" for school and nursing.)
If you're considering college/not, consider whether it's a licensed profession you're heading for: engineering, medicine, law, teaching, accounting. They're all binary: degree or no license. "Working your way up" ended by 1950 in all
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I didn't put in the parenthesis until I thought about teachers and nurses. Some pretty bad pay scales for them, but still better than a lot of unlicensed jobs.
What are you talking about? My wife is a nurse (RN, so 4-year college degree). Admittedly we're older, but she's making a touch over $100K working 4 days a week. In Washington state, if you're wondering.
Not a mind-blowing salary, but certainly nothing to sneeze at.
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Thanks for the instruction. A little google turned up this:
https://www.registerednursern.... [registerednursern.com] ...which shows that salaries have been rising above inflation for some years now, I was out-of-date.
But, mainly, I was reading complaints from the old Confederacy, where salaries are lowest. Washington is almost the best state(!), as the map in that article dramatizes.
And why do we require college degrees? (Score:2)
Why does every job today require a college education?
One has to wonder, why do employers expect advanced degrees from the people who empty their trash cans? I mean, seriously, take a look at the entry level office jobs today. You want to be a secretary, put away files and write a letter or two? College degree required. Are they insane?
Well... no. Why not? Because, well, what else could they demand from someone without job experience to point to? A high school diploma? Please. We lowered the requirements so
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>Why does every job today require a college education?
Doesn't matter, education is its own reward. The more you understand about the world, the less helpless and stressed you tend to be, which ups your quality of life. Beyond that, believe it or not it is possible to enjoy knowing things for the sake of knowing things.
Educated people tend to be easier to deal with on average, and if college is a convenient filter for HR departments, I don't blame them for using it.
The problem is saddling youth with un
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Education is only its own reward if it deserves that name. Be honest, do you think the education our kids get in the average high school deserves being called that?
And more and more that degradation of quality shifts into college. "Education" means for most people getting a sheet of paper that says that they somehow, sometime managed to stuff bullshit into their brain, then barf it down onto a test, and the whole mess was enough to be awarded that sheet of paper. That education only means something if it is
Free community college in Tennessee? (Score:2)
Aren't they a red state? How is it possible that the so called party of ignorance can run a state and offer free community college but Liberal California can't accomplish the same?
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How is it possible that the so called party of ignorance can run a state and offer free community college?
We set up a lottery with a legal requirement for a chunk of the proceeds to pay for education. That was distributed in the form of scholarships, but they weren't giving the money away fast enough. Our legislature tweaked the requirements for the Lottery (HOPE) scholarship and that cost savings plus the endowment with the leftover lottery money pays for the (PROMISE) community college program.
It's sur
Registrations up at my college (Score:4, Informative)
At the community college in NYC where I teach, registrations for spring 2023 are up and exceeded all of the college's target numbers. My own classes are filled to capacity for the first time since the pandemic. So it's possible this article is being written just as the situation turns a corner.
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Community "colleges" are not colleges. They are mainly vocational schools. They are only called "colleges" for the benefit of student self-esteem.
For many, vocational school is indeed the right choice, and there are plenty which are not community colleges; some claim to be "colleges" other don't, and some are scams.
Per field, portfolio/experience or career? (Score:2)
Of course, medicine is an easy counter-examples where formal education is an absolute requirement.
So what does that look like for your particular field?
I want to learn; You gotta want it. (Score:2)
It wasn't progresd (Score:2)
More and more people went to college, for no good reason. Now your barista has a degree in art history, and the history major tries to make ends meet driving for Uber.
Too few people went into the trades, and anyway, the US has pretty much dismantled the apprenticeship system.
because it's useless (Score:3)
College courses are getting worse and more expensive. Little of value is learned, while much bullshit propaganda is spread. Meanwhile, people who go into the trades are finding they're paid more, don't have huge college debt, and are generally more content with their jobs. You might say "But, the high-tech jobs that pay really well require a degree". In the 11 years since I got my degree, not a single job I've had required that degree. I basically spent $120,000 and four years for prestige.
Education is wasted on normals. (Score:2)
They need simple low paying tasks they can do for life and survive on, a safe, practical floor which is required for social stability (thus not a matter of charity).
Techis should not identify with the normals who read therefore think at 8th grade level or less. They were never better and often worse but they need jobs.
The wise seek knowledge for the joy of it without prompting. The rest need economic security because freedom is unusable without money.
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The wise seek knowledge for the joy of it without prompting. The rest need economic security because freedom is unusable without money.
I think we might have a lot more people who are 'wise' by your definition, if primary and secondary education weren't focused so heavily on both conformity and reflexive obedience to authority.
Seeking knowledge for the joy of it isn't exclusive to those who are wise and/or have above-average intelligence. It only seems that way because our educational and social systems are biased against those who aren't natively oriented toward abstract thought and intellectual pursuits. Also, schools in lower-income are
Maybe a kind of a reset (Score:2)
I see the education boom as kind of like the tech boom, and I think it was largely driven by the tech boom. Sadly, that largely reduced higher education to job training. If enrolment drops significantly, maybe the focus of colleges and universities will shift more towards having a better life instead of merely making a better living.
We might even see less emphasis on materialism and more on free time, better relationships, charitable work, fulfilling hobbies, etc. I think work-life balance has gotten way ou
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The numbers speak for themselves (Score:3)
College tuition rises at twice the rate of inflation, and this has been a problem for as long as the federal government had made it possible for practically anyone to borrow money for college, regardless of their ability to repay.
I worked in the higher education software field for nearly a decade. I remember very well the presentation by the lobbying firm we hired at one of our annual conventions. He put up a line chart of the rate of inflation vs. the rate of tuition increase, and told the room, (paraphrasing here) "as long as this continues, you are making my job impossible".
I was happy to leave that market. I never felt that it was sustainable, long term. You can't just keep raising prices forever.
That's not an Education anymore... (Score:3)
...in the United States.
It's an Indoctrination.
And until that shit changes, don't expect that product to sell like it did before.
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So many sad stories. So many cliches:
* The promising young man who sees the ad for 'Data Center Security Engineer' and signs up. Which turns out to be nights spent manually watching event logs scroll by for a company too dumb to automate it, and his days spent in front of the Best Buy with a sign saying "Will watch syslog for cash."
* The girl looking for a quick way to enter the tech field, so she takes a month off as an HR specialist, which means dressing up like a floozy and acting as eye candy at colle