[HN Gopher] Americans no longer see four-year college degrees as...
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Americans no longer see four-year college degrees as worth the cost
Author : jnord
Score : 436 points
Date : 2025-11-29 22:56 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nbcnews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nbcnews.com)
| carlosjobim wrote:
| College degrees now have negative value for hiring. A company
| wanting to hire a reliable and competent worker will avoid
| college graduates.
| ungreased0675 wrote:
| Seems like you're hurting some feelings.
|
| I'm a manager in a unique field where people come in with many
| educational levels. There is little correlation between
| educational credentials and job performance. A variety of
| previous jobs and having lived a few different places seems to
| correlate more with performance.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| My comment is generalizing, as is the thread subject. It has
| been a downwards moving trend, and for young workers I will
| say that a college degree is now a negative factor. But that
| doesn't define the candidate.
|
| Also: Any positive or negative effect of a college degree is
| either amplified or moderated by candidates self-selecting. A
| candidate who greatly values their college degree will seek
| out employers who do the same, and vice-versa.
| venturecruelty wrote:
| Sure, get the high school dropout to build your bridge for
| you. See how well that non-traditional hire works out.
| ungreased0675 wrote:
| Becoming a Professional Engineer requires four years
| experience under the guidance of an already licensed
| engineer and passing a rigorous exam. No fresh college
| graduate is qualified to design bridges, same as the high
| school dropout.
| throwaway21321 wrote:
| 1 in 8 incoming freshmen at UCSD (a leading institution in the
| states) cant solve "x + 5 = 3 + 7"... Why would I pay 30k a year
| or whatever it is to get a degree from somewhere like that?
| Beijinger wrote:
| My roommate can solve this. And he just turned 6. I gave him
| today some equations with two unknowns....
| Beijinger wrote:
| Why the Downvote? It is true.
| SanjayMehta wrote:
| It's due to your username; they think you're a troll.
| Beijinger wrote:
| Well. I love Beijing. But I am not Chinese, nor do I
| currently live in China. Unfortunately.
| 11101010001100 wrote:
| It may come across as bragging to some. You can decide if
| that is fair.
| Beijinger wrote:
| Well, if someone feels extremely inferior, true.
|
| Many mothers claim their child is gifted. In this case, I
| believe it. It is not my son, unfortunately. I am just in
| a roommate situation.
|
| I give him math challenges sometimes. Today I started
| introducing equations with 2 unknowns.
| SanjayMehta wrote:
| My father taught me simple algebra when I was around 8
| using puzzles.
| fragmede wrote:
| what does it add to the conversation? The fact that
| incoming UCSD freshman cannot solve the problem is being
| brought up as a failure. That this six year old can solve
| it does nothing to address the issue of UCSD students being
| unable to solve a problem that we all expect them to. It it
| as if you are a stoichastic parrot, bringing up a fact
| that, yes, it happens to be true, because it is nearby on
| some vector space. Hence the downvotes.
| Beijinger wrote:
| What do you do add to the discussion?
| jrflowers wrote:
| I can't do a standing backflip. This is a true statement
| and contributes the same amount to a discussion about
| higher education in the US as "I know a kid that can do
| algebra"
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| You'd go to UCSD if you _could_ solve that equation, and want
| to learn to do _more_. (If you can 't solve the equation, UCSD
| is a very expensive way to learn how.)
|
| I think the more relevant question is, why would you go to
| grade school and high school at institutions that produce
| graduates like that?
| Cheer2171 wrote:
| > why would you go to grade school and high school at
| institutions that produce graduates like that?
|
| Do you not know how U.S. K-12 public schools are funded by
| local property taxes, which means the quality of a child's
| education is a direct causal relationship of the wealth of
| their neighborhood?
|
| Why don't these children just grow up in richer
| neighborhoods?
| okigan wrote:
| Most are overpaying in taxes for what they are getting.
|
| Not to mention single/families without kids and seniors
| that still pay for school districts.
| lunar-whitey wrote:
| Fear not - the American school system was built on and
| holds fast to the supposition that the affluent should be
| able to avoid any unwanted exposure to the problems of
| those less fortunate than themselves.
| roenxi wrote:
| The quality of an education isn't proportional to the
| amount of money spent; learning is remarkably cheap if a
| school wants to focus on outcomes. There's a bit of give in
| where the teacher sits on the bumpkin-genius scale
| (although even then, the range of salaries isn't that wide
| in the big picture).
|
| Although forcing the funding to go through a collective
| rather than letting people choose a school and pay on in
| individual basis would probably deliver a pretty serious
| blow to the quality.
| lunar-whitey wrote:
| The school system is downstream broader social issues
| here. It can be shockingly expensive to deal with the
| various behavioral problems that disproportionately
| impact students from lower income communities. Students
| from stable homes with available and invested parents
| practically teach themselves.
| Aeolun wrote:
| All those downstream effects from a functional social
| security service.
| AngryData wrote:
| The top end may not be limited by money, but the bottom
| of education is, especially when it comes to public k-12
| schools.
|
| I doubt most people would even believe the differences
| until they saw them, I wouldn't of believed public school
| could vary that much until I personally saw it. Going
| from some middling school with a half dozen rich
| properties around, versus a truly poor rural school,
| showed me how true it is. The better middle school was
| teaching topics that the poor rural school didn't even
| broach until senior year. Our civics book from the late
| 2000s talked about the civil rights movement as an
| ongoing and building issue too keep an eye on, and half
| the school books had kid's grandparents name signed in
| them. Our calculus class, which was downgraded to pre-
| calc after a few years because so many kids failed
| college calc entrance exams, had a teacher bragging about
| how it only took her 3 tries to pass calc 102 in order to
| qualify for that teaching position. You certainly didn't
| get very many good teachers when they pay was that far
| below the national median wage, and it was sad to watch
| them struggle to afford things as simple as whiteboard
| markers, or copy paper in order to print student
| assignments on, because yes the school couldn't afford
| and didn't supply copy paper for teachers to print
| assignments on other than a literal single ream of paper
| to last the entire year.
| deaddodo wrote:
| Do you not know that the US is a Federal system and there
| are (at minimum) 50 different ways that schools are funded?
|
| California's schools (for instance) aren't funded by local
| taxes, they're funded by the state and allocated funding
| based on a formula[1] of performance, need, population,
| etc. They can be _augmented_ by local taxes, but in
| practice that 's rare as the wealthy just avoid the system
| altogether; instead, opting for private institutions.
|
| That's at least 12% of the population that is not funded in
| the manner you outline.
|
| 1 - https://www.cde.ca.gov/fg/aa/lc/
| lunar-whitey wrote:
| Equity remains a valid criticism of LCFF in California
| specifically.
|
| For one unremarkable observation in this area, see the
| following think tank report:
|
| > States often commission cost studies to establish the
| level of funding required to help students meet state
| standards. LPI analyzed five of the more recent of these
| studies [...] All of these studies recommended additional
| weighted funding to support English learners and students
| considered "at-risk," which was most often defined by a
| measure of family income and also included other factors
| [...] The recommended weights for English learners in
| these studies ranged from 15% to 40% of the base grant
| level in each state. The recommended weights for at-risk
| students ranged from 30% to 81%. Compared to the
| recommended funding in these states, the LCFF's
| supplemental grant weight of 20% is at the lower end of
| the recommended range of weights for English learners and
| below the range of weights for at-risk students.
|
| https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED670929.pdf
| derwiki wrote:
| San Francisco USD's lottery system has entered the chat
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| The more important question is do they learn to solve it, fail
| out, or just get pushed through?
|
| One of those is a bad outcome, but the other 2 are fine.
| galleywest200 wrote:
| At my liberal arts and sciences college about 10 years ago my
| entry level biology teacher straight up said to the class
| that if people are having trouble with some of this math on
| the board to go home and learn algebra _tonight_.
| kaashif wrote:
| If standards aren't lowered and they're just failed out,
| that's fine eventually, but I would prefer it to be fine from
| day 1.
| nradov wrote:
| None of those are "fine". The problem is that such students
| aren't college material and shouldn't be admitted in the
| first place.
| cvoss wrote:
| What does your (dubious) example have to do with the quality of
| post-secondary education? If it has any relevance, it's for the
| quality of _secondary_ education.
| delichon wrote:
| I wish it were dubious. I recently worked with 11th grade
| Algebra 2 students in New Mexico and found exactly that, and
| worse. Most couldn't begin to do algebra because they
| couldn't do simple addition and subtraction. Out of a class
| of 24 there were two who were arguably ready for it. But
| everyone is moved forward anyway. I understand your
| skepticism because I was shocked by it. The teachers said it
| all went down the drain during Covid and has not recovered.
|
| It must severely limit what they can learn in college.
| TehShrike wrote:
| If the college would accept someone like that, they probably
| don't aim to take their students to a very high level.
| zetanor wrote:
| If a university's administration overlooks a complete failure
| of the student selection process, it's easy to imagine that
| it may well overlook a complete failure of the professor
| selection process. The price of admission is also way too
| steep to wind up being the peer of mental 8th graders.
| ponector wrote:
| Is it a failure of the process? The selection process is to
| pick people who willing to pay, not who can solve
| equations.
| zetanor wrote:
| It's a failure for higher education, yes.
| lunar-whitey wrote:
| Illiterate incoming freshman are the product of the public
| middle and high school systems, not the university system.
|
| For reference:
|
| > Beginning in Fall 2022, the number of students placed into
| Math 2 began to grow rapidly. Math 2 was first created in 2016,
| and it was originally designed to be a remedial math course
| serving a very small number of first-year students (less than
| 100 students a year or around 1% of the incoming class) who
| were not prepared to start in our standard precalculus courses
| [...] In Fall 2024, the numbers of students placing into Math 2
| and 3B surged further, with over 900 students in the combined
| Math 2 and 3B population, representing an alarming 12.5% of the
| incoming first-year class (compared to under 1% of the first-
| year students testing into these courses prior to 2021).
|
| https://senate.ucsd.edu/media/740347/sawg-report-on-admissio...
|
| These are students that even middling American public schools
| would have failed to pass from high school in decades past, or
| would have later failed to meet standardized test requirements
| prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
| admissionsguy wrote:
| > Illiterate incoming freshman are the product of the public
| middle and high school systems, not the university system.
|
| That doesn't matter for the op's point. Students starting
| from this base won't get good in 4 years.
| maxlybbert wrote:
| It so happens I went to high school in California. My math
| teacher mentioned how much interaction she had with the state
| universities, and also lamented the fact that universities
| offered remedial math courses. She felt that if somebody
| needed remedial math, they shouldn't be in a university; a
| junior college would be a better fit.
|
| At the time it felt elitist, but now I agree with her. Yes,
| this example shows that the high schools are doing a bad job,
| but it's not clear to me that the universities should clean
| up the mess. There are other possibilities.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| This is incorrect. It's 1 in ~50. Still bad!
|
| 8.5% of incoming freshmen place in Math 2. 25% of a class of
| Math 2 students could (EDIT: couldn't) answer 7+2=_+6
|
| 8.5% x 25% is about 2%, so 1 in 50.
| tzs wrote:
| Shouldn't that be 8.5% x 75% since you want the percent who
| could _not_ answer it?
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| Sorry, typo. I meant 25% _couldn 't_ answer it.
| jaccola wrote:
| I feel the same fallacies happen with money and degrees:
|
| - People with more money live better lives, so let's just
| print/hand out money and everyone will live a better life!
|
| - People with college degrees live better lives, so let's just
| push more people through college and everyone will live better
| lives!
|
| In both cases, of course, completely missing the underlying
| reasons money/college degrees provide(d) better lives.
|
| It's hard to believe that any single person in government truly
| thinks printing money will increase resources or that more easily
| handing out college degrees will automatically make everyone
| better off. So I don't fully understand how this happens, perhaps
| pandering to the electorate.
| echelon_musk wrote:
| I like to call this degree inflation.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Consider the contraposition.
|
| * Poor people live shorter, unhealthier lives.
|
| * Without a college degree, your employment options are
| diminished.
|
| It's fine to trash "handing out money" or "pushing more people
| through college" but then what is left is: there's nothing we
| can do for poor people.
| Aeolun wrote:
| Make money not a consideration in applying for college? Not
| by handing out whatever the universities are asking for of
| course, but by giving them a fixed $X per student.
| drivingmenuts wrote:
| That might have worked if we had established that right
| after WWII, but it would never get off the ground now. The
| current system is too entrenched.
| Aeolun wrote:
| You have a president that's willing to wage war on
| institutions of higher learning. If anything this is the
| only time it's even been remotely possible.
| anon291 wrote:
| Of course there is. You can just hire them and train them.
| Most positions don't require college degrees. Everything you
| need to know for most jobs you learned in high school. At
| most you need a certificate program of some kind.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Construction, a few trades... Help me, I've run out of
| ideas without resorting to "Walmart Greeter".
|
| Most of those jobs went overseas a long time ago. Short of
| the couple I could think of, the rest of the jobs remaining
| that don't require some advanced education don't pay a
| "living wage".
|
| I'd love to see the US have a vocational "track" beginning
| in high school again. But that also requires we have the
| jobs for them when they graduate.
| edot wrote:
| If you've ever worked at a random Fortune 500 company and
| looked around the office at people whose pinned apps are
| "Outlook, Powerpoint, Excel", those are jobs that can
| easily be done if you're moderately smart and learn a few
| things on the job. You have a reasonably well-defined set
| of goals, projects, and meetings, and you just have to
| talk to other people and move numbers around in Excel,
| then put them into Powerpoint and set up meetings in
| Outlook to discuss. There are millions of these jobs, and
| you can get extremely senior once you just learn the
| business of your company (which would never be taught in
| college). You don't need a college degree for these. A
| friend of mine is a senior executive at a large insurance
| company and does just fine at their job with no degree.
| Given, they got into that job decades ago when degrees
| weren't required, and worked their way up, but the same
| could be done now if employers let people be hired based
| not on degree but on an apprenticeship or similar trial
| period.
| csa wrote:
| > Construction, a few trades... Help me, I've run out of
| ideas without resorting to "Walmart Greeter".
|
| I don't think you're trying hard enough.
|
| - bookkeeper
|
| - billing (esp. medical)
|
| - data entry
|
| - admin assistant
|
| - inventory management
|
| - basic tax filing
|
| - content manager (for websites and social media)
|
| - scheduling
|
| - basic account management
|
| - tons of stuff in supply chain
|
| I could go on...
| baiwl wrote:
| You have better employment options only if there are not
| enough people with degrees. If you give everybody the option
| of obtaining a degree then nobody is better off. In fact
| those at the bottom of the barrel end up in an even worse
| position.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| That assumes there are a large number of jobs that require
| no advanced education. Short of construction, those jobs
| flew overseas decades ago.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| The difference is that printing money creates more money, but
| doesn't create any more stuff. College degrees (theoretically)
| create more educated people. If you just "hand out" degrees,
| that doesn't happen, but if you actually teach people, then it
| does.
| linguae wrote:
| I agree with you.
|
| The problem is that many young Americans for the past 30+
| years has been told that a bachelor's degree is the
| prerequisite for a job that pays well enough to afford a
| middle class lifestyle, which I'll define as being able to
| afford owning a home in a safe neighborhood and being able to
| provide for a household without living paycheck-to-paycheck.
|
| What happens when a large number of college graduates enter a
| tough hiring market while they have five- (or even six-)
| figure student loan balances? It's one thing to work at
| McDonald's debt-free with a high school diploma; it's another
| thing to end up at McDonald's with tens of thousands of
| dollars in debt with a bachelor's degree.
|
| Of course, there's more to going to college than career
| prospects, and there's also the reality that no one is owed a
| job. Still, given the amount of adults struggling with paying
| off their student loans, it's no wonder more people are
| reevaluating the economic value of going to college.
| OGEnthusiast wrote:
| > The problem is that many young Americans for the past 30+
| years has been told that a bachelor's degree is the
| prerequisite for a job that pays well enough to afford a
| middle class lifestyle, which I'll define as being able to
| afford owning a home in a safe neighborhood and being able
| to provide for a household without living paycheck-to-
| paycheck.
|
| Told by who?
| tolerance wrote:
| Well for starters, perhaps the older homeowners who live
| in safe neighborhoods and provide for [young Americans]
| without living paycheck-to-paycheck.
|
| Their parents.
| OGEnthusiast wrote:
| Yeah that's unfortunate then, America has changed so much
| in the past 10-15 years that advice that was worth
| following for the previous generation is just totally
| useless for the current circumstances. I don't think the
| parents had bad intentions though, they were just overly-
| optimistic in assuming the prosperity they enjoyed would
| continue indefinitely.
| tolerance wrote:
| > they were just overly-optimistic in assuming the
| prosperity they enjoyed would continue indefinitely.
|
| What worries me is how they came to believe this in spite
| of the last 10-15 years of change in the country...while
| possibly raising around 3 generations of high school
| graduates throughout.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| My anecdote isn't quite the same, but it's along the
| lines of many adults, not just one's parents: While in
| high school I constantly got the message on how important
| it was to stay in school and graduate with a high school
| diploma. Ironically I passed up the chance to have an
| associate's degree before my 18th birthday, because I
| absorbed this message so well that I prioritized high
| school graduation over the A.S.. It was years later
| (round about the time I finally finished that A.S. at the
| age of 29) that I realized the message hadn't been meant
| for me, but for the students who were at risk of dropping
| out of high school.
| pixl97 wrote:
| All this states is expensive degrees aren't worth it, not
| paid for education.
| anon291 wrote:
| Educated people are the way they are due to a particular
| personality that they have. They are curious and self driven.
| Many educated people have no formal education. You cannot
| teach a personality.
|
| That's not to say other personalities are less worthwhile...
| It's just that we have emphasized one kind of personality as
| the ultimate one and then are surprised that -- after maxing
| out opportunities for those already suited towards that
| personality -- a saturation point is reached and future
| effort has marginal gains.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| What's wonderful about comprehensive universities is that
| there's a program that can excite the interest of almost
| every personality.
|
| And even if that wasn't the case, education _in general_
| actually speaks to a variety of personalities: The self-
| motivated learner, the self-improver, the intellectual
| explorer, the goal-oriented achiever, the rules-based
| structure seeker.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| It's a prime example of the tragedy of the commons and there's
| honestly not much that can be done because of how competition
| on the supply side of the labor market works; for employers, a
| degree is no longer a differentiator among candidates.
| baq wrote:
| It isn't in that it doesn't guarantee a job, but not having
| one all but guarantees HR drones will discard your CV
| algorithmically.
| venturecruelty wrote:
| The good news it that you don't need to hand out money _or_
| degrees. See, some people have an inordinate, obscene amount of
| money, and they would be able to lead full, happy, fulfilling
| lives if some of that money went to help people who have very
| little. Because if you 're making $30,000 per year working at a
| gas station, and you lose that income, you're basically
| screwed. But if you make millions of dollars every year, you
| won't really miss a small portion of that. You'll be just fine.
|
| So you just need to sort of move wealth around such that it is
| less egregiously unequal. Oh, and states can fund universities
| like they did a few decades ago. :) Win-win! Poorer people get
| to participate more freely in society, with more opportunities,
| and you don't have to print any extra money.
| wat10000 wrote:
| The pendulum swings. College was only for the elite. Then it
| slowly expanded until it got to the point of, "everyone should go
| to college, doesn't matter what you study." Now it's swinging
| back. Hopefully we manage to get to a reasonable place and not go
| all the way back to college only being for elites.
| tgma wrote:
| Obviously if you want to learn, there has never been as many
| resources as today for free with YouTube and other stuff. College
| remains only relevant for the piece of paper and networking and
| the four-year party experience.
| crims0n wrote:
| My kids will still go to a four-year university, but for the
| education and experience, not for any vocational aspirations. I
| have no delusions about the marketability of an undergraduate
| degree.
|
| A happy side effect of that university degree was a more rounded
| education, which now many young adults will be missing out on.
| The downstream effects could be catastrophic.
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| > A happy side effect of that university degree was a more
| rounded education, which now many young adults will be missing
| out on.
|
| Absolutely! So many people bemoan taking general Ed classes,
| but knowing the basics about economics, literature, science,
| art, math, history is valuable if you want to think critically
| about the world.
| roamerz wrote:
| >> but knowing the basics about economics, literature,
| science, art, math, history is valuable if you want to think
| critically about the world.
|
| Sure if that is relevant to what your goals in life are. I
| chose to get an education that was tightly coupled with the
| outcome I wanted.
| OGEnthusiast wrote:
| Agreed. Going to college for the social experience and for
| generally learning about the world is effectively a luxury
| good now. For people who just want a path to stable
| employment, the ROI on college no longer makes sense at
| all.
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| I think our society's obsession with thinking of
| everything in terms of ROI is destructive.
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| That's kind of my point. Everyone wants to narrowly focus
| on what will bring them the most value as quickly as
| possible. Being educated in a wide array of subjects
| doesn't seem useful at first, but it actually makes you a
| better communicator, and citizen.
|
| Also, knowing a little about a lot of things doesn't
| preclude you from being an expert in your field.
| pdonis wrote:
| Why do you need to pay to go to college to learn the basics
| of all these subjects? The same information is available for
| free online.
| venturecruelty wrote:
| Teaching is a deliberate act, and it cannot be replaced by
| a Google AI summary.
| bdangubic wrote:
| most teachers these days use google (or another AI) and
| before AI they just used google. few exceptions of course
| but on the large you are imagining some utopia education
| which no longer exists. I pay insane amount of money to
| send me kid to private school and she still gets more
| education at home by wide margin than at school
| pdonis wrote:
| _> Teaching is a deliberate act_
|
| The issue isn't teaching, it's learning. I don't think
| it's at all obvious that being taught by college
| professors is the best way to learn that material.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> a Google AI summary_
|
| That's not the online material I was referring to. Many
| universities have their course materials available for
| free online. Not to mention other online learning sites.
| jamesmontalvo3 wrote:
| I think the point is that if you're going to get a degree
| in mechanical engineering, you need to study differential
| equation, and if you're going to have a well-rounded
| education, you need to study some history. Both were a
| requirement in the past, but we're moving more towards
| only the former being considered important.
| pdonis wrote:
| The claim I was responding to was that one needs to go to
| college to get a "well-rounded education". I don't see
| why: the information is available for free online, and
| the value add of getting it by paying college professors
| to "teach" it to you is, IMO, highly questionable.
| everybodyknows wrote:
| I suggest they live in on-campus dorms, at least the first
| couple of years: a cultural broadening experience like no
| other.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Universities survived half a millenium being networking grounds
| for the upper class, and they will survive another millenium
| being networking grounds for the upper class
|
| The last century will be a mere footnote in a case study of
| folly, where 100% of the university's problems came from dealing
| with the underclass at all with a side helping of federal funny
| money. It will be comedic relief amongst starry eyed business
| majors, waiting to satisfy a condition of their trust fund
|
| The employment sector's decision to require degrees is mere
| happenstance and something that sector will need to reconcile on
| its own.
| thomassmith65 wrote:
| Someone should turn that comment into a Twilight Zone
| episode...
|
| We wake up tomorrow to a world where universities never
| existed.
|
| No cultivation of Copernicus, Newton, Einstein...
|
| So we're stuck mostly with 1000 year old technology.
| paulorlando wrote:
| Better than asking "is college worth the cost," and getting into
| ROI calculations per major is asking "could we provide a similar
| (or better) educational and social experience at a fraction of
| the cost"? To that the answer is yes.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| Many (most?) people go to college primarily for the piece of
| paper, not for the educational and social experience.
| Aeolun wrote:
| You can provide the piece of paper at a fraction of the cost
| too. Nearly all of Europe does, I believe.
| crossbody wrote:
| Did Europe find a cheat code that gets free $$$ for
| education?
|
| Nothing is free - once you graduate you are hit with 50%
| tax that gets back all you "free" tuition costs many, many
| times over.
|
| Not saying education should not be subsidized via taxes (I
| think it's good overall), but it's not free at all - the
| price is just hidden and spread out over many years
| (similar to student loans but less visible).
| ahartmetz wrote:
| Was it much more subsidized in the US when it was much
| cheaper, though?
| crossbody wrote:
| I'd reword the question: "was college paid for via higher
| income taxes for graduates (and others) or via a more
| direct approach of student loan taking?". I believe the
| latter but I don't see the fundamental difference. It's
| the same student loan but hidden from sight, as it's
| packaged as higher tax %
| xethos wrote:
| > don't see the fundamental difference
|
| You're kidding. The former means _all_ higher net worth
| individuals to take on both the cost (via taxes) and the
| benefit (a well-trained workforce for businesses, well-
| paid, highly taxed contributors for the state, an
| educated populace of voters, graduates with stable work
| and in-demand skills). The latter is another example of
| America 's "Everyone for themselves" theme, with students
| bearing the entire cost of their education, while the
| graduate, public, state, and businesses reap the benefit.
|
| If the benefits are spread so widely, why shouldn't the
| cost be?
| crossbody wrote:
| The students bear costs but no benefit to themselves? No
| higher wages?
|
| My point is that it doesn't matter in principle if one
| takes a loan and pays it down over time vs. one is taxed
| at much higher % and that tax "pays down" a phantom
| student loan of "free" education.
|
| It does introduce a risk and hence the incentive for loan
| takers to choose their degree wisely though. Which should
| lead to better allocation of labor but at a cost of some
| personal risk.
| xethos wrote:
| I actually included the graduate as a beneficiary ("a
| well-paid, highly taxed contributor" or "the graduate" in
| the counter), but more importantly:
|
| The entirety of society benefits from a well-educated
| populace. That's one reason even those without children
| pay for public education.
|
| Following that, if _everyone_ benefits, why is the
| graduate taking on all the risk (via a non-dischargeable
| student loan) instead of spreading the risk across the
| entirety of society?
| crossbody wrote:
| Ok, I overlooked that.
|
| I think that's fair that risk should be more spread.
| Comes at a cost of people choosing degrees more
| frivolously though and wasting their time and everyone's
| money
| xethos wrote:
| I'd like to push back on "useless" degrees here, as well.
| The idea that degrees that leave graduates struggling to
| pay their bills (especially with student loans factored
| in) are worse than degrees that maximize income is bad
| for society. Not every job that is good for society pays
| well - if they did, educators would be better paid, and
| many executives would not be compensated as well as they
| are.
|
| Some degrees are less in-demand (at time of graduation)
| economically, but a well-educated populace that can apply
| critical thinking and remember lessons from history, can
| be its own reward. Notably, pushing for a population
| completely _lacking_ these skills is an excellent way to
| topple a democracy over time.
| crossbody wrote:
| The pay is determined by supply and demand, apparently
| there is a relatively large supply of educators (many
| just enjoy it despite low pay) relative to the demand.
|
| I see your point on broader benefits, however, those are
| largely speculative while a shortage of e.g. doctors has
| very direct and concrete costs to the society.
|
| On prior point regarding spreading risks - would you say
| government should bail out failed entrepreneurs? Because
| that is very similar in principle (taking risk, benefit
| for society)
| xethos wrote:
| I would struggle to define a truly useless degree though.
| _That 's_ what I'm pushing back on: that learning from
| our past mistakes, taking in different perspectives from
| other times, places, and cultures, and learning not only
| to _learn_ , but to interpret media and think critically,
| are tremendously important to a healthy society. What you
| call "frivilous", I would call low-earning.
|
| I'm not saying failed entrepreneurs should be bailed out,
| even if (through bankruptcy proceedings) they de-facto
| are. To your point though, they're given tax breaks by my
| government [0], which aligns with the goals we seem to
| have agreed are important and good for society at large.
|
| Small businesses are given assistance when starting out
| and financially vulnerable; financial assistance that is
| paid for by all members of society, as we all reap the
| benefits of a stronger economy when they succeed. I'm not
| sure how one defends not extending the same courtesy to
| students.
|
| [0] https://taxbreak.ca/bc-business-tax-breaks/
| seec wrote:
| This can only be true if the society gets richer over
| timer from this process. Considering that EU has actually
| become poorer and the gap is becoming larger every year
| passing, your theory of benefits from a well-educated
| populace is not well funded.
|
| In the EU, the risk has been loaded onto everyone but the
| benefits are meager at best, and inexistent in practice.
| This is the typical problem of socialist system where
| everyone bear the cost but the benefits are only
| distributed to those in power or those who could
| manipulate the system for their own benefits.
|
| If that wasn't true, France wouldn't be in the political
| turmoil and economic disaster that it is today.
| Unsurprisingly, France has been dominated by marxist
| adjacent ideologies, co-opted by the "resistants", the
| real winners of WW2. The US won on the ground but largely
| lost the ideological battle, we are now seeing the result
| of that invisible battleground.
| eli_gottlieb wrote:
| > The students bear costs but no benefit to themselves?
| No higher wages?
|
| Nobody said the student achieves no benefit. We keep
| saying that the student does not capture all the benefit
| of their own education in higher wages, but bears the
| entire cost.
| crossbody wrote:
| That's also true for entrepreneurs, right?
| surgical_fire wrote:
| That's what taxes are for. Subsidizing public good.
|
| Affordable access to good education is a good outcome
| from the heavy taxation I pay.
| crossbody wrote:
| For sure. The main benefit is that it allows smart,
| hardworking but poor students to get a degree and utilize
| their brainpower productively for the benefit of all.
| That's great.
|
| Just don't say it's "free" - those who get the education
| pay back all they got via taxes (which in it's end effect
| are like paying down a student loan).
| surgical_fire wrote:
| Absolutely. I never would say it is "free". But in many
| ways it is a matter of what one values.
|
| I had opportunities to move to the US and likely make
| 2x-3x what I make here and pay less taxes. I chose moving
| to Europe instead. It is the sort of society I prefer to
| live in.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Free at point of consumption. Anybody with half a brain
| understands that's what's meant when somebody says "free"
| education or "free" healthcare.
| venturecruelty wrote:
| Just going to point out that this is semantic hair-
| splitting that usually comes from opponents of
| governments providing for the social welfare. Not saying
| you're doing that, but it's a thing that happens.
|
| And nobody thinks free education doesn't cost anything,
| just like people don't think the military doesn't cost
| anything. Somehow, though, there is endless trillions for
| "defense", and a little moth flies out of the wallet when
| it's for something that doesn't involve drones.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| People without a degree: Work and pay high taxes for
| years while their peers are studying, and then continue
| to pay high taxes to pay for the high salaries of degree
| holders who used their degrees to get government "jobs".
|
| People with a degree: Get free education and free
| stipends, then get paid by the tax payers for the rest of
| their lives in their cushy government "jobs".
| satvikpendem wrote:
| Europe has a much lower expenditure per student compared
| to the US.
|
| https://www.aei.org/articles/the-crazy-amount-america-
| spends...
| crossbody wrote:
| It does. In large part due to Baumol's cost disease -
| higher overall incomes in productive sector like tech
| drive up costs for sector with low productivity growth -
| so professors and admin staff in US make 2x salaries
| compared to Europe (cost of living adjusted). Also, have
| you seen EU student amenities and dorm sizes?
| btilly wrote:
| When you break down how budgets have changed, the two
| biggest drivers of tuition increases are the growth of
| administration, and fancy amenities like sports
| facilities.
|
| The cost of the person in front of the blackboard has not
| been increasing.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| The cost of the person in front of the blackboard has
| been steadily going down; those people have been
| complaining about this for decades.
| crossbody wrote:
| Ok, the prior link was comparing it to EU though, so
| perhaps costs for professors there went down even more,
| as professors make less there compared to US
| mbesto wrote:
| I'm trying to follow you. I don't get how Baumol's has a
| higher degree of effectiveness in the US than it does in
| the EU? Are you saying there are more tech companies and
| therefore tech roles in the US than EU and thus those
| drive up non-tech wages even though they aren't as
| productive?
| crossbody wrote:
| Exactly
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| I call bullshit on this.
|
| There are lots of reasons why US academics earn so much
| more than their european counterparts, but the income
| level of US tech employees is not high on the list, if it
| is on the list at all.
|
| Also, Baumol's doesn't predict that wages in low
| productivity growth sectors will rise, it merely notes
| that the costs in such sectors do not fall, which means
| that whatever the sector produces (good, services, art
| etc) become relatively more expensive compared to other
| production. This is why it appears to cost so much to see
| the symphony orchestra, even in Cincinnati - it's not
| that the players all make a ton of money, it's that their
| productivity is flat, so the costs of the performance
| appear to rise relative to, say, toothpaste.
| crossbody wrote:
| I asked Gemini 3 if your statement is true and got this,
| as expected: "That statement is false. In fact, the
| prediction that wages will rise in low-productivity
| sectors is the central mechanism of Baumol's Cost
| Disease"
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Somebody asked Gemini 3 yesterday about a piece of music
| I was looking for. It said:
|
| > _Based on the details you provided--specifically the
| overlap with the poem "AM" (from Be Bop or Be Dead) and
| "Set The Tone" (from Bernie Worrell's Blacktronic
| Science)--the track you are most likely looking for is:
| "Music" by DeadbEAT (featuring Umar Bin Hassan) Released
| in 1992/1993 on the album Wild Kingdom, this track was a
| cult hit in the acid jazz/trip-hop scene of the 90s and
| later appeared on compilations like the influential Red
| Hot + Cool (1994)._
|
| Very good, except that there is no album called "Wild
| Kingdom" by an artist named Deadbeat, and while Hassan
| does appear on "Red Hot + Cool" it is on a differently
| named track written by himself.
|
| So forgive me if I call bullshit on Gemini 3 as well.
|
| However, in this instance, it is a correct summary of the
| most visible popular summaries of Baumol's cost disease,
| so there's that.
|
| I don't think it captures the essence of what Baumol (&
| Bowen) were writing about, but I accept that my
| presentation was misleading.
| crossbody wrote:
| LLM hallucinations are still a thing for ultra niche
| topics. Not a problem for topics that have sizeable wiki
| pages, like Baumol Effect. Here is the first paragraph
| from wiki: "...tendency for wages in jobs that have
| experienced little or no increase in labor productivity
| to rise in response to rising wages in other jobs that
| did experience high productivity growth"
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| The problem with this summary is that it's not actually
| what Baumol & Bowen were really focused on in their
| original paper.
|
| It is what most people nowadays connect with "Baumol's
| cost disease", but in their paper, the way in which
| rising productivity sectors cause wage increases in
| stable productivity sectors was more of a detail than the
| central part of their thesis. The core part was the
| observation that certain kinds of economic activity
| cannot reduce costs through productivity gains, while
| others can; the wage connection between them was, well,
| not an afterthought, but more of a consequence of the
| very specific sort of economic system we live in. One
| could imagine a society with different ways of
| distributing resources to labor that didn't really have
| this feature, and yet the same sectors of this imaginary
| society's would still suffer from "Baumol's cost
| disease".
| yardie wrote:
| EU universities, the amenities are quite meager, as they
| should be. But for dorms it's usually single occupancy.
| Unlike the US where you're expect to have roommates.
| DiscourseFan wrote:
| The roommates thing is just part of the socialization of
| US universities, since many kids are not living anywhere
| near home and if they aren't forced to become close
| friends with someone by, say, sleeping right next to
| them, they often go a little nuts. By the time you are an
| upperclassman you are generally given your own room or
| you live off campus.
| piperswe wrote:
| Is it necessary for there to be student amenities paid
| for by the school? Why should tuition pay for a bunch of
| ancillary nice-to-haves instead of, ya know, the
| education?
| crossbody wrote:
| It's not. But apparently that's what most American
| students demand and universities supply to satisfy the
| demand.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| Public schools shouldn't oblige and instead offer the
| lower cost option. The market will then sort this issue
| out in a few years. Right now its public = expensive and
| private = absurdly expensive
| chongli wrote:
| Because schools are in competition with one another to
| attract students (who have the ability to broadcast
| applications to multiple schools). The campus life factor
| is a major part of a student's decision.
|
| Put yourself into the student's shoes. If you had the
| choice between two schools of otherwise roughly equal
| academic reputation but one offered luxurious residences
| while the other housed students like medieval monks,
| which would you choose?
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| From what I understand European education and degree
| programs are typically much more structured and narrow,
| and thus finish a lot faster. A student who finishes
| K-Ph.D. in the US will have a lot more breadth of
| exposure than such a student in most of Europe, if I
| recall what I read on the topic a while ago correctly.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| When used in a social context, "free" has a different
| meaning than in many other contexts. It does not mean,
| for example, "there is no cost for this thing". Rather,
| it means "the person receiving this thing is not
| responsible for paying the costs associated with it (at
| least not at the time)".
|
| Free health care doesn't mean "nobody gets paid to
| provide health care", it means "patients do not pay for
| health at the point of service".
|
| If you'd prefer that we use some other term to describe
| this, please suggest it. I do find it interesting that
| the Scottish NHS uses "No fees at point of service" as
| part of their branding (or did, back in 2019).
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| The taxation is conditional on earning enough income
| though, which aligns incentives better.
| curcbit wrote:
| > once you graduate you are hit with 50% tax that gets
| back all you "free" tuition costs many, many times over.
|
| This is plain false.
| crossbody wrote:
| In EU? What is false about it? I paid the 50% income tax
| after getting my "free education"
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _You can provide the piece of paper at a fraction of the
| cost_
|
| This isn't socially useful.
| venturecruelty wrote:
| And what we're doing now is? Telling 17-year-olds to take
| on six figures of debt and then replacing them with
| ChatGPT while making it impossible to discharge their
| debt?
| DiscourseFan wrote:
| Just because Comp Sci and many STEM degrees in general
| are losing value does not mean that university overall is
| not worthwhile.
| DaSHacka wrote:
| Does it really not, when many of the other degrees
| already lost their value a long time ago?
| chongli wrote:
| The question is not "does it provide any value
| whatsoever?" The question is "does a degree provide
| _surplus value_ to society, given its costs?"
| Libidinalecon wrote:
| What is obvious and what would be hugely socially useful
| would be to have a completely online, completely free
| accredited option for degrees that don't need labs. That
| would cause downward pressure on all of tuition outside
| the top universities.
|
| The price of college at this point is a ridiculous value
| proposition to the average student. Who cares about the
| top students and the most gifted people. They will be
| fine regardless. The average student is getting crushed
| and ripped off blind.
|
| Ripping off entire generations of young people is really
| stupid and is going to have devastating long run social
| consequences.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| That's easily solved with labor market reform. First
| implement federal and state law that requires every
| worker performing any profession to have a college degree
| in that field.
|
| Then companies are evaluated on how much work is produced
| in their business (for example by revenue), and they have
| to either contract the equivalent number of people with
| college degrees, or even better - license the degree from
| a college graduate. This can also be used to pay for
| tuition. The student gets a mortgage that pays for her
| education when she enters college, and then the lender
| has the right to part of either her salary, or the
| licensing fee for her degree to companies that need it,
| or to people who need it.
|
| Let's say a chef who hasn't gone to culinary college, he
| can pay a culinary college graduate 20% of his salary to
| use their degree, which is a professional license. Or a
| company needing programmers. They can hire immigrants or
| an AI to program, and pay licensing fees to computer
| science graduates who have the degree.
|
| Think what I thriving market for banks, investors, and
| insurance companies! They will be able to package these
| licenses and offer them on the market to individual
| workers or to companies for competitive and efficient
| rates. The college student of course gets rewarded as
| well, as they can rent out their degree, or even sell it.
| So a good student can get several degrees, and have a
| very good income from both his own work and from degree
| licensing fees. Of course we'll make sure that students
| belonging to an oppressed class be allowed to license
| their one degree to several places at the same time.
| h2zizzle wrote:
| I... can't tell if this is satire or not.
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| The people who can be replaced by ChatGPT are the ones
| who treated their time in college as "just getting a
| piece of paper". They paid handsomely for a chance at
| drinking from the fountain of knowledge and instead did a
| rinse and spit.
| energy123 wrote:
| That doesn't have prestige value. Prestige comes from
| scarcity and the ability to exclude the lower caste.
|
| If people want to play those exclusivity games that's up to
| them. What's wrong is asking the taxpayer to fund it under
| the false mask that the entire product is education.
| creato wrote:
| The scarcity in Europe (at least the two countries I'm
| familiar with) comes from a standardized test. If you
| don't do well on the test, you don't go to college.
| MengerSponge wrote:
| America used to do that, but Jewish students started
| taking (and doing well on) the test, and later Black and
| Asian students had the audacity to be brilliant too. This
| led to America's "holistic" college admissions process.
|
| For what it's worth, the USA isn't unique in adapting
| admissions to reject an unwanted minority. The most
| interesting mechanism has to be Moscow State University's
| Jewish Problems: https://arxiv.org/abs/1110.1556
| h2zizzle wrote:
| The Chinese national entrance exam (gaokao?) is
| notoriously grueling, but doing well pretty much
| guarantees you a spot in a top university. Would have
| been useful to me, having grabbed a middle-of-the-road
| SAT score for Ivies but having failed to apply to one.
| There's definitely a multi-pronged strategy for ensuring
| exclusivity.
| seec wrote:
| That's not exactly true. Funnily enough, you are
| extremely dependent on your sociological background. If
| you come from a poor family and do very well, you'll get
| a full ride for sure. But if you do well but come from a
| well-off family that refuse to pay for your education,
| you are fucked. It's only university attendance that is
| (mostly) free. you still need to finance housing and life
| costs. Since most good universities are in expensive
| cities and student loans are not much of a thing, it is
| an extremely selective process that targets both class
| standing (from a money standpoint) and parental
| implication.
|
| There was a study on one of the most selective school in
| France and actually diversity of background has gone down
| in the last 20 years. Europe is highly politicised and it
| was always about selecting for ideologically compatible
| behavior. Otherwise education wouldn't need so much
| government intervention/support, even if said education
| would be paid for by the taxpayer (everyone could get
| some amounts of credits, that they could spend on their
| institution of choice).
| thatcat wrote:
| Most prestigous colleges are profitable and don't need
| the funding or the tuition
| jswelker wrote:
| And resultingly, if you do go to college and immerse yourself
| in the educational experience, you come out with superpowers
| compared to your peers.
|
| Getting companies to see those superpowers in a hiring
| pipeline of course is a different story
| petesergeant wrote:
| Do American colleges not give degree grades? In the UK your
| degree class (grade) is moderately important for your first
| job
| veqq wrote:
| All serious applicants have the maximum grade, in the US
| system.
| pastel8739 wrote:
| I don't think this is strictly true, but I do think it's
| true that college GPA is not a differentiating factor.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| American colleges give out a GPA, which used to mean
| something but has now been inflated to the point of
| meaninglessness. 60% of my college class 10 years ago had
| a 3.5/4 or higher. The median grade at Harvard is an A. I
| am told that since COVID, B grades and below now require
| a written explanation by the professor at several
| schools.
| fragmede wrote:
| Given that the bar for getting into Harvard is rather
| high these days, shouldn't we expect the median grade in
| Harvard to be fairly high? If C students aren't allowed
| into Harvard these days, doesn't it make sense they
| aren't giving out Cs?
| paulorlando wrote:
| A bit of context on that grading question here. It was
| interesting to me that grading has gone through a couple
| waves of inflation over the decades:
| https://unintendedconsequenc.es/what-i-talk-about-when-i-
| tal...
| wtetzner wrote:
| Wouldn't a C in Harvard mean "average for a Harvard
| student"?
| jghn wrote:
| oh my sweet summer child.
|
| Harvard was one of the leaders of the charge in terms of
| grade inflation back 20ish years ago
| apparent wrote:
| Yeah, and they made a push to rein it in back in the
| early aughts. As with all things grade inflation, what
| goes down, must come back up. I'm sure we'll be back here
| in 20 years having the same conversation.
| anonym29 wrote:
| I've interviewed Harvard CS grads for SWE roles at big
| tech who couldn't write a working program for fizzbuzz,
| for defanging an IP address, or for reversing words in a
| sentence, in a language of their choice, with leetcode's
| provided instructions, in half an hour, with unlimited
| attempts, gentle coaching from me, and the ability to use
| the internet to search for anything that isn't a direct
| solution (e.g. syntax).
|
| Yes, more than one.
|
| Either the bar for getting into Harvard cannot possibly
| be as high as it's made out to be, someone's figured out
| how to completely defeat degree-validation service
| providers, or Harvard is happy to churn out a nonzero
| number of students wholly unprepared for meeting
| extremely basic expectations for the prototypical job of
| their chosen degree.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| If you don't cram for leetcode, you won't pass a leetcode
| interview. It takes some kids a few interviews to figure
| that out, even they are from elite school like MIT. You
| were just their learning experience.
| anonym29 wrote:
| If you can't solve FizzBuzz in half an hour with a
| language of your choice while being able to look up
| syntax, your problem isn't that you failed to cram for
| leetcode, it's that you don't know how to write code.
|
| There's nothing inherently wrong with not being able to
| write code, but you probably shouldn't be applying for
| software engineering roles where the main responsibility
| of the job is ultimately to write working code.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Just to be clear I have no problem passing these
| interviews, I just spent a few weeks cramming leetcode
| and got a job at Google. Leetcode wasn't the main reason
| I was hired, but it was a filter that I had to get
| through (I've never been given fizzbuzz before, but I
| assume that is just because it's no longer in style and
| hasn't been for more than a decade). You just don't throw
| yourself into on the fly coding, you practice them
| because your competition has and you will look bad if you
| don't. Let's not pretend that any of us are ready to do
| alien dictionary at the spur of a moment, or thats a
| useful skill for our role.
| anonym29 wrote:
| I'd agree with you 100% if these were Leetcode mediums
| and hards. They were not, these were quite literally the
| easiest LC easies I could find.
|
| While my career involves writing code, I am not a SWE, I
| have never done any formal leetcode prep, and I have no
| formal education in technology beyond a high school CS
| class. I have no college degree whatsoever, not even an
| associate's degree.
|
| I had a rule I stuck to when doing these interviews
| (which _were_ for a SWE role) that felt very fair to me -
| I would not give these candidates any problem I couldn 't
| solve in the same circumstances.
|
| For reference, in the allotted time, one such candidate
| spent a good chunk of their time reading up on JS if/then
| syntax on w3schools. As I watched, I reminded them they
| could use any language they wanted, if they were more
| comfortable or familiar with others, and this Harvard CS
| grad declined, stating JS was their "strongest" language.
|
| My best guess about these cases were rich kids / legacy
| admissions that weren't allowed to be failed for
| political reasons.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| I don't know much about Harvard except like Stanford
| computer science became the biggest major by far in the
| last couple of decades. It could be a lot of rich kids
| are choosing it's a major without much of a passion for
| it. It could have also become the default major for
| people who are planning to got into politics, business,
| management, or even law (Harvard's traditional
| strengths).
|
| Don't get me wrong, we don't have much of a choice in
| evaluating especially junior hires. Even for senior hires
| you want to make sure they haven't drifted through their
| last jobs without actually coding. But on the spot
| performances are different even for the simple stuff,
| they should practice coding questions on the fly
| regardless, and even the worst possible SWE candidate
| should be able to pass these with a bit of prep. With a
| lot of prep they could do leetcode, a still suck at the
| job when they get it.
| anonymars wrote:
| This is FizzBuzz:
|
| 1. Output the numbers from 1 to 100
|
| 2. If the number is a multiple of 3, write Fizz instead
| of the number
|
| 3. If the number is a multiple of 5, write Buzz instead
| of the number
|
| 4. If the number is a multiple of 3 and 5, write FizzBuzz
| instead of the number
|
| Does that really sound like something requiring special
| practice and preparation? Assuming a decent interviewer
| would help out with the modulo operator if that was
| unfamiliar
| yatopifo wrote:
| Is it provided as you described or is it more like
| "please do FizzBuzz"? If it's the latter, that would
| explain why some people may have trouble with this
| task... I think we both agree it's ridiculous to test if
| the interviewee knows what FizzBuzz stands for, and
| yet... let's just say i know a few people who treat
| interviews as a jargon recall context.
| anonymars wrote:
| I get the impression you latched on to the word leetcode
| and took away something very different
|
| FizzBuzz, reversing a sentence -- this is programming
| your way out of a wet paper bag, not elite and esoteric
| skills that need advanced study and cramming
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Similar concept. You have them do some task like fizzbuzz
| to see if they can program stuff on the fly that they
| would never need to do in real life. You practice that
| since school doesn't prepare you for that unless you do
| ACM programming contests or something. The interview
| demands this to see if the candidate is capable of
| cramming for the interview, which correlates with the
| effort, ability they could put into the job, not with
| what the skills they actually apply on the job, which are
| hard to measure in a one hour interview slot anyways.
| integralid wrote:
| If someone doesn't know how to reverse words in a
| sentence they are absolutely not qualified to be a
| programmer. Yes they probably won't do this exact task
| often, but this is like a doctor that can't distinguish
| heart from the liver. It tells you something has gone
| horribly wrong.
| ThunderSizzle wrote:
| In many languages, the basic version can be just one line
| of code, if you know the right libraries to leverage. C#
| leveraging Linq, for example:
| String.Join(" ", String.Split(" ",
| sentence).Reverse()))
| chongli wrote:
| What if the sentence is in Japanese (which doesn't use
| spaces)?
| sokoloff wrote:
| I agree that some random leetcode-hard problem is not a
| good indicator, but if you can't write fizzbuzz or can't
| sum an array of integers, you've given me important data
| about your skills as a programmer on that day.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| I've never had an interview question that asked me to do
| something straightforward. If I did get a question like
| that, I would be immediately suspicious about what the
| catch was.
| Vishon wrote:
| Yeah, LeetCode interviews are their own weird universe.
| Even smart people get wrecked until they realize you have
| to treat it like an exam. Most failures aren't about
| ability, it's just pattern recall under pressure. I've
| passed some rounds I had no business passing just because
| I stayed calm. StealthCoder helped me a bit there since
| it keeps me from blanking during the actual interview.
| otabdeveloper4 wrote:
| > FizzBuzz is now a "leetcode question"
| DiscourseFan wrote:
| >Harvard is happy to churn out a nonzero number of
| students wholly unprepared for meeting extremely basic
| expectations for the prototypical job of their chosen
| degree
|
| From one of my professors who did their graduate work at
| an Ivy, apparently there are a lot of rich kids who can't
| be failed because their parents donate so much money to
| the school. But I don't think Harvard has ever had the
| best undergraduate reputation (among the Ivies), its more
| well known for its grad/professional programs.
| hylaride wrote:
| From the people I know that studied at places like
| Harvard and Yale (which since I'm Canadian isn't a huge
| sample size), I've been told that there are essentially
| two different streams of undergrads there - those on
| legacy admissions and those who qualified otherwise
| (either via brains, affirmative action, or other means).
| I was left with the impression that the legacy admissions
| are mostly people who've coasted through life. The rest
| are a full spectrum of people.
|
| Most of Harvard's endowment is via alumni, so it doesn't
| surprise me in the least they continue with it.
| petesergeant wrote:
| > The median grade at Harvard is an A
|
| It's been 20 years or so since my knowledge was up-to-
| date, but Oxbridge undergrads used to bitterly complain
| that their 2:2 (grade C I guess?) wasn't seen as
| equivalent to getting a 1st(A?) or 2:1(B) from other good
| UK unis by graduate schemes and large employers.
|
| Oxbridge workload seemed to be significantly higher for
| most undergrad degrees than it was at other unis, and the
| feeling was that an essay a week was required that would
| have been equivalent to a term's work at other unis. I
| only ever heard the Oxbridge side of this, however.
| hnhg wrote:
| I've worked a lot with Oxbridge and Ivy League folks and
| there is nothing particularly special about them. An
| Oxbridge degrees bestows an out-of-the-box premium
| personal brand, as you've demonstrated, as well as the
| social network, but not superior ability, in my
| experience
| DrBazza wrote:
| When I graduated, ahem, a few decades ago, the main
| difference between Oxbridge (maths graduates) and non-
| Oxbridge, specifically the Cambridge Maths Tripos, was
| that is was teaching the same content it had for the
| previous decades, whereas the maths courses at mine, and
| other 'Russell Group' universities had been dumbed down
| for the first couple of years. You could reach the same
| level as previous graduates by the final year, but you
| had to take a new _additional_ course.
| jswelker wrote:
| The only entity that has ever cared about my college GPA
| has been other colleges when I signed up for grad school.
| And even in that case it is just a "stat check" in gamer
| parlance. 3.0 or greater, yes. Lower, no. That kind of
| thing.
|
| Zero employers have ever asked to see my college GPA
| after graduating almost 17 years ago.
| hc12345 wrote:
| As prices for college go up, the student is more of a
| customer than anything, and therefore the pressure to
| raise grades goes up. Who is going to go to a college
| where people tend to need an extra year to graduate, when
| each year is 60k? Or one where only the top 5% of a class
| gets a top grade?
|
| You are already seeing grade inflation in the UK too: Go
| look at the percentage of first class degrees over time.
|
| The only place where a modern US university can be used
| as a filter is in their own admissions, where they can
| still be pretty stringent. Harvard could fill their class
| 6 times with people that are basically indistinguishable
| from their freshman class, so just getting into the right
| university already shows that you must have had some
| skill and maturity by the time you were a junior in high
| school.
|
| This is also why hiring juniors is so difficult nowadays
| for software: Having successfully finished a CS degree at
| most universities says nothing about your ability to
| write any code at all, or analyze any complex situation.
| And with the advent of leetcode training, it's not as if
| you can now tell who happens to be good because they
| remember their algorithms and data structure classes
| really well. You have no idea of how good the new grad is
| going to be when they show to the interview, and even
| those that pass might not be all that great in practice,
| as they might just have spent 3 months memorizing
| interview questions like an automaton.
| SilverElfin wrote:
| Yes but it is not standardized at all. Every college has
| its own way of doing things. Even every degree or school
| within a university can be different in how they handle
| grades. Some places put every student on a curve, so that
| a particular distribution of grades is always enforced.
| Some places operate on more of a pass/fail basis - often
| this is done for the first couple years to avoid
| measuring students when they're adjusting to a new
| lifestyle (meaning partying a lot). Some places tend to
| give out easy grades. So you cannot compare students
| across different degrees and colleges.
| anal_reactor wrote:
| This is the dumbest idea ever because it forces students
| to take easy classes instead of interesting ones.
| petesergeant wrote:
| > it forces students to take easy classes instead of
| interesting ones
|
| The UK system doesn't really let students choose which
| classes to take
| zipy124 wrote:
| I mean even at my supposedly top uni in the UK 60-80% of
| the class got a first, depending on if a COVID year or
| not. Like 1% gets a 2:2 or below....
| terminalshort wrote:
| I partied my way through an easy major with nothing to do
| with my job. The people who didn't have no "superpowers"
| that I don't. The degree is a bunch of status signalling
| bullshit.
| justin66 wrote:
| It sounds like you've rationalized your lazy work in
| college by convincing yourself it wouldn't have made any
| difference if you had worked harder.
| terminalshort wrote:
| I don't need to rationalize what is already rational. My
| degree isn't even related to my job, so why would working
| harder at it have paid off?
| Nevermark wrote:
| Which strongly suggests that one reason 4-year degrees have
| lost value, is the piece of paper has lost value. Because of
| (most?) people only getting a degree for the paper.
|
| Two improvements then: Degrees that earn the reputation of
| not being given for anything less than excellence in studies.
| Where the earned reputation is used both to discourage the
| non-serious, and enhance the value of the degree.
|
| And of course, bring down the costs. Create a high octane
| alumni network to match. Foster an opinionated high work
| ethic, college-as-daycare / party-scene repellent culture.
| Anything and everything rethought from scratch.
|
| For instance, why are degrees based on years? Why so
| standardized when neither students or jobs are? Why not a
| skill chart that can be custom traversed per student - with
| students expected to move on whenever they choose to, or have
| a good opportunity. A high percentage of students leaving for
| good jobs after just one year would be a win.
|
| For just one slice of education, to start.
|
| As with anything complex, start with something small and
| focused. Like a low population cutting edge practice/research
| AI school. Start from scratch with the thing that is new,
| challenging and in high demand.
|
| Then expand into other fast changing, high demand areas. Keep
| figuring out better ways, keep taking on more, keep reducing
| costs, as long as all three of those efforts tradeoffs are
| compatible.
| mNovak wrote:
| I think most people (namely high school seniors) go to
| college for neither. They go because that was the
| expectation, and was assumed to be at least approximately
| productive path.
|
| While arguably that's indirectly 'for the piece of paper',
| I'd argue the pleasant experience is a factor too, even if
| not quoted as such. i.e. if it was a purely rational,
| economic choice (my interpretation of going to college just
| for the degree) we'd see higher enrollment in high-ROI
| majors.
| SilverElfin wrote:
| I agree the answer is "yes". But I think people are also
| forgetting that the reason college was a useful thing to pay
| for, was it was effective in differentiating between someone
| who was highly capable and someone who wasn't. In a world where
| anyone can get a degree by simply spending enough time and
| money, there's no real differentiation happening. Even if
| someone gets a degree, their fundamental competency (I guess
| I'm talking about something like IQ) is going to be whatever it
| is. And so it's going to be hard to find jobs and the perceived
| value goes down.
| hereme888 wrote:
| The beauty and simplicity of common sense. Good comment.
| ErroneousBosh wrote:
| If you want to make money, go and train to be a plumber.
|
| If you're a kid and you want to be making money (or at least a
| comfortable living) in 20 year's time, become a farrier.
|
| Because we are going to be ploughing with horses again soon,
| the way things are going. And even if we're not, a horse needs
| shod every couple of months and costs a couple of hundred every
| time.
|
| I've never seen a hungry-looking farrier or scrap metal dealer.
| b3ing wrote:
| I guess so mostly foreign students and the wealthier folks can
| get them? Doesn't seem like a win, but with AI taking jobs, who
| knows
| HardwareLust wrote:
| What's the point? You're either going to be replaced by AI or a
| robot (or both) anyway.
| DaSHacka wrote:
| If by "AI" you mean "An Indian", I agree
| mikert89 wrote:
| Employers just hire experienced h1bs instead, they won't leave
| after being trained, no reason to hire an American
| bequanna wrote:
| The h1b program can essentially be eliminated tomorrow. Trump
| could theoretically make h1b visas non-transferable, charge a
| high annual renewal, etc.
| chillycharlie wrote:
| Trump could cancel H1B but most likely he won't. If for no
| other reason than as a favour to his billionaire friends.
| They are more important than the popular idea of America
| first, American jobs etc. here Trump literally says we need
| H1B because we need talent, and USA doesn't have the talent.
| Not a good look for a supposedly America first president..
| https://youtu.be/U2XUNKcKtx0?si=GOFyMGxqUIbyGD6T
| chank wrote:
| And Americans leave because employers will just replace them
| with offshoring and h1bs to save money. It's a self
| perpetuating cycle. Loyalty goes both ways. Employees finally
| realized that they should be treating employers like employers
| have always treated employees. That's capitalism.
| Newlaptop wrote:
| There are ~700k h1bs out of ~157 million American jobs. So
| about 99.6% of jobs in America are held by Americans and 0.4%
| by h1bs.
| yahway wrote:
| Now do the tech industry (high paying American jobs)
| crossbody wrote:
| Why is tech high paying exactly? Maybe low supply of
| qualified labor? Maybe that can be solved with qualified
| immigration? We can call such a program H1B, for example,
| and it would benefit the American economy overall at the
| cost of slightly reducing compensation fir the already
| extremely highly paying tech jobs.
| armas wrote:
| @crossbody that makes too much sense though
| baiwl wrote:
| Immigration is about short-changing the natives to make
| the billionaires wealthier, yes, we know.
|
| People are also now learning this fact, which is why
| you're getting unpalatable politicians elected.
| ben_w wrote:
| "I'm being short-changed!" claims rich minority whose
| high pay even fresh out of university leads to SF rents
| being unafordable by key workers.
|
| Irony is, that doesn't prevent such sentiments as yours
| leading to people like Trump. I had a chance to live in
| the USA years back, I'm glad I didn't bother to take it.
| baiwl wrote:
| I didn't say anything about tech workers.
| ben_w wrote:
| Motte, Bailey. You responded in a thread about tech
| workers and H1Bs, on a tech forum.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Now do the tech industry_
|
| Do you have numbers? If you don't, the appropriate baseline
| is population.
| lovich wrote:
| Are convenience stores getting h1bs for their shelf
| stockers? How the hell is the baseline population an
| appropriate metric for evaluating a niche role?
| venturecruelty wrote:
| Oh good, I was worried this thread wouldn't have any anti-
| immigrant sentiment.
| DaSHacka wrote:
| When immigration is a leading factor on why the modern
| college graduate has less marketability in the workforce,
| leading them to believe the ROI on their degree is not worth
| it compared to generations past, you really should have
| expected it.
| randcraw wrote:
| As the article says, this change in opinion has been very big and
| very recent. Don't expect universities to sit still and do
| nothing.
|
| I see several possible reactions. One is to do what Georgia Tech
| and U Texas are doing -- to offer online degrees for MUCH reduced
| cost, like $10k. Will such 30 credit MS degree programs (that
| don't require BS first) replace 120 credit BS degrees? That makes
| a lot of sense to me.
|
| The popularity of residential degree programs may be ending, due
| to insanely high cost and the need to retrain often as AI
| automation changes the employment picture rapidly and
| unpredictably.
| abeppu wrote:
| > Don't expect universities to sit still and do nothing.
|
| > The popularity of residential degree programs may be ending,
| due to insanely high cost.
|
| I think the problem is that universities _have_ been changing
| in the direction of _delivering less_ at the same time that
| they cost more. The article cites public schools doubling
| tuition in inflation-adjusted terms since 1995, but
| simultaneously:
|
| - student-faulty ratios have gotten worse
|
| - schools use under-paid adjuncts for a larger share of classes
|
| - good schools often trade on the research record of faculty,
| but the success of those prominent faculty often mean they can
| get course buyouts / releases, so they're not teaching anyway
|
| - much has been published about administrative bloat in
| universities but for example see 2010 vs 2021 numbers here
| https://www.usnews.com/education/articles/one-culprit-in-ris...
|
| Rather than trying to make new online offerings, I think
| schools need to lean out their staff, and cut back on programs
| that don't have to do with instruction. Even better would be if
| federal funding eligibility was tied to schools demonstrating
| that at least X% of their budget goes to instruction, where
| that X should ratchet up over time.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| Dedicated grad schools that are separate from, but affiliated
| with, dedicated undergrad schools. Those teaching at the
| dedicated undergrad schools will be hired for their ability
| to focus on foundational teaching, with research programs
| designed to involve undergraduate student researchers in
| genuine research, while still providing publication
| opportunities and genuine advancement of the art.
| randcraw wrote:
| The author neglects to observe that doubling tuition over 30
| years equates to only a 2.35% inflation rate. That sounds
| pretty close to the US inflation rate during that time, so
| increases in tuition cost have been held in check pretty
| well.
| abeppu wrote:
| No, if anything the article has a copyedit error in saying
| twice in one sentence that the doubling is after inflation-
| adjustment.
|
| > While there have been some small declines in tuition
| prices over the last decade, when adjusted for inflation,
| College Board data shows that the average, inflation-
| adjusted cost of public four-year college tuition for in-
| state students has doubled since 1995.
| crossbody wrote:
| Most of you here assume the "Human Capital" model (i.e. you pay
| to acquire skills), but that entirely misses the actual point of
| a college degree! 2001 Nobel Prize went for demonstrating that
| college is basically a quarter million dollar IQ and Marshmallow
| Test. It's a filtering mechanism that allows employers to tell
| who is smart and conscientious enough to be productive at work.
|
| Offering education to more and more people via reduced cost mass
| online courses, lowering entry requirements or similar approaches
| will only erode the signalling value of a degree further.
| chillycharlie wrote:
| Those degrees also don't lead to the jobs they want. My former
| boss would hire people with degrees in, to do basic admin
| tasks. I quit because a they hired a guy to be my manager, with
| a lawyer degree and paid him $20k more than me, to do the same
| job. But he would spend the whole day on his phone. I'm in a
| new job, hiring people, and I'm not looking at degrees when
| it's for a dispatch role.
| crossbody wrote:
| That's the sad outcome of everyone getting _some_ degree in
| recent years. Something like 50 years ago 10% had college
| degree, now it's close to 50%. Meanwhile population IQ score
| stayed rather stable while willingness to work hard declined.
| So of course the quality of employees with degrees has
| dropped and hence the degree is no longer a good signal to
| employers
| sojournerc wrote:
| You don't think tradespeople are contientious, intelligent, or
| productive? That's the whole trouble with this filtering
| signal. It's bogus and has created elitism around professions
| that are just as hard if not harder than pushing computer keys.
| crossbody wrote:
| Would you say all people have the same level of intelligence
| and conscientiousness? If not, we need _some_ way of saying
| who is, so that they could be matched to higher complexity
| jobs. It's far for perfect but it works somewhat
| linguae wrote:
| I'd feel better about not recommending college for everybody if
| our high schools were more rigorous. I personally feel that the
| Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate curricula
| should be the minimum for high schoolers to graduate, since an
| education at this level provides well-rounded knowledge that
| gives students the skills necessary to survive in a 21st-century
| developed economy.
|
| However, many high school students don't have the opportunity to
| take such classes, and there are also many high school students
| who struggled in elementary and middle school.
|
| I was a high school student in California during the first half
| of the 2000s. California used to have the High School Exit Exam,
| which was mandatory to graduate from high school. The test
| focused on English grammar, reading comprehension, and algebra. I
| took the exam in 10th grade, and I felt it was easy. So easy, in
| fact, that I believed eighth graders shouldn't have much
| difficulty passing the exam.
|
| However, there were many students who weren't able to pass the
| exam, even with multiple attempts. Eventually the state got rid
| of the test. I don't know if educational outcomes improved in the
| immediate aftermath, but UC San Diego's study on remedial math
| shows that our high schools are inadequate at preparing students
| not only for college, but for life in our modern economy.
|
| Of course, to fix high schools, we also need to fix our
| elementary and middle schools. This goes beyond the classroom;
| this also involves addressing the cost-of-living crisis. It's
| hard for kids to thrive in school when they have parents who need
| to work heroic hours to make ends meet, and this doesn't include
| the kids who have to deal with homelessness and other unstable
| living situations.
| anon291 wrote:
| How about just not inflating grades?
| AngryData wrote:
| No shit, half the people who got college degrees are in debt over
| it and mostly just lost out on prime years of their life doing
| busy work for little to zero benefit. Was my class about pre-
| colombian society interesting? Yes. Has that knowledge helped me
| in any way related to my job or career or life? No. It certainly
| wasn't worth the thousands of dollars it costs to take that class
| to meet some arbitrary requirements. I could of gotten the same
| knowledge and enjoyment from watching some youtube videos or
| reading the published book that class was 95% based on.
| fuckinpuppers wrote:
| Doesn't help when leaders are trashing it and classifying things
| as not "professional" to further put up more barriers to entry.
| Along with the constant attacks about them being indoctrination
| centers, pulling funding for being too liberal, or not pro-Israel
| enough, or whatever else this administration has officially been
| able to strongarm many institutions about.
| wyldfire wrote:
| Americans attend college as a (1) rite of passage and to some
| extent (2) to have access to an influence network of peers and
| alumni. For elite universities, it's conceivable that #2 provides
| some real opportunity.
|
| But in general #1 dominates the dollars spent on this experience
| and it's really too bad.
| parpfish wrote:
| reason (3) is social signaling.
|
| elite schools aren't only desirable because they set you up
| with big opportunities. they are _the_ way for high-school
| overachievers to signal to everybody how smart and good they
| are.
|
| elite schools could probably make bank if they just sold a
| stamp-of-approval from their admissions committees that just
| said "you are smart enough to get admitted, but were not lucky
| enough to win the lottery of being given a seat".
| EgregiousCube wrote:
| 100%, but it's even worse than that. "X got into Stanford" is
| the new "X is a Stanford graduate" because of grade dilution
| - and admissions dilution has soured even the former.
| lurk2 wrote:
| There was a user here a few months ago trying to promote
| his startup. He was being somewhat obnoxious when people
| offered criticism so I looked him up and found he was some
| 21 year old kid. Profile read:
|
| > Founder & CEO of Nitrility which is the world's first
| music licensing marketplace working with over a billion $
| in assets from 80K rightsholders.
|
| > Age 21 as of August, high school diploma (Rutgers Prep),
| college dropout (UIUC), grew up in Somerset NJ, 2 time
| founder with 1 exit at age 18, 2400 rated chess player,
| former top tennis player, Forbes Technology Council.
|
| > Usually you will find me in NYC, LA, or SF.
|
| The dropout thing struck me because it was such an obvious
| attempt to try to appear to be the Mark Zuckerberg style
| figure that this kid desperately wanted others to believe
| he was. I've been seeing a ton of these kids claiming to
| have had exits before they even graduated high school, and
| even though I know they're lying, I've been browsing here
| long enough that I would probably have believed them if I
| hadn't picked up on it being a social media trend.
| cheschire wrote:
| They might have thought it would help them get a thiel
| fellowship
| seneca wrote:
| > Americans attend college as a (1) rite of passage and to some
| extent (2) to have access to an influence network of peers and
| alumni. For elite universities, it's conceivable that #2
| provides some real opportunity.
|
| I believe the primary reason is to attain credentials in
| pursuit of access to more lucrative employment prospects. I
| think your 1 and 2 are both significant factors, but they are
| quite far behind the pursuit of credentials.
| venturecruelty wrote:
| Only because that's what college has become. I loved studying
| my field for four years, free of most of the vicissitudes of
| life that would otherwise prevent me from being able to focus
| on an education. I guarantee you a lot of people would like to
| get a degree simply for the sake of learning, and to become a
| better person. Hell, I'd take a few classes if it didn't cost
| like $800 per credit hour. This whole "college as job training"
| thing is a self-fulfilling prophecy, and none of the innocent
| people subjected to it are particularly happy with the
| situation. They are not, crucially, in a position to change
| that.
| DiscourseFan wrote:
| I also studied something I found fascinating, but I also had
| friends that I still talk to and meet up with today. Its both
| possible to enjoy your studies and have a social life.
| tylergetsay wrote:
| some of the students just really don't want to live with their
| parents anymore. Going to college is the most socially accepted
| way of doing that.
| jswelker wrote:
| Higher ed is like employer based health insurance in that they
| are both weird path dependent historical accidents.
|
| People want cheap healthcare, and it got shoehorned into an odd
| employer fringe benefit system that really is not at all related
| healthcare in any intrinsic way.
|
| People want job training, and it got shoehorned into extra
| departments at liberal arts universities intended as aristocrat
| finishing schools. Job training really has little to no
| relationship to liberal arts.
|
| And now both those two systems are failing to deliver those
| benefits because those benefits which were initially afterthought
| add-ons have outgrown the institutions that were their hosts.
| It's akin to a parasitic vine that is now much larger than the
| tree it grew on and is crushing it under its weight. Both will
| die as a result.
| lovich wrote:
| I was told in college that the US system of healthcare being
| tied to your employer was the result of companies looking for
| fringe benefits to offer when tax rates were at their highest
| for the high income group.
|
| However I can't find evidence of that now that I'm looking so
| if someone could confirm one way or the other that this was
| true or not, I'd appreciate it
| pdonis wrote:
| It started during WW II when the US government put wage and
| price controls in place so that companies could not compete
| for employees by offering higher wages. So they competed for
| employees instead by offering employer-paid healthcare as a
| benefit. Then after the war, when the wage and price controls
| were repealed, the employer-paid healthcare system, instead
| of going away, kept getting more elaborate.
| eli_gottlieb wrote:
| As with a lot of things, such as vacation time, Americans
| seem to prefer to provide certain social goods as employer
| benefits because that way it seems more like a reward for
| competitive merit, which one can show off as a status
| symbol, than like a universal social good.
| jswelker wrote:
| Maybe some psychos think of it that way, but no one I
| have ever met, at least not regarding insurance. Some
| fringe benefits like unlimited vacation, free lunch, etc,
| maybe I can agree.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| Well maybe it was once prestigious to show off your Aetna
| card, now its a sign of embarrassment.
|
| I guess todays 'cool perk' is something like free lunch
| or allowing dogs at work. I think the "Unlimited
| Vacation" scam has unraveled at this point.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Another way to see it is to ask why a company should be
| able to reap the labour benefits of their workers and
| then force other people to pay for their basic needs?
| orangecat wrote:
| Should your employer be required to pay for your housing,
| food, transportation, and clothes? Company towns turned
| out to be a bad idea.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| No, but they should of course pay a salary that can cover
| all that and more. High salaries and high minimum wages
| is the right solution.
| jswelker wrote:
| Yes it is true and is sort of the subject of my original
| post. One of those things I learned in college ironically and
| is now background knowledge I can't source.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > People want cheap healthcare, and it got shoehorned into an
| odd employer fringe benefit system that really is not at all
| related healthcare in any intrinsic way.
|
| Healthcare costs, and hence health insurance premiums, are the
| same with or without an employer intermediary. The only
| difference is with an employer intermediary, the insured gets
| to pay their premium with pre-tax income. The cost of the
| health insurance is still felt by the employer (shown in box 12
| of code DD of everyone's W-2), and seen by the employee in the
| form of smaller raises, or higher premiums/deductibles/oop max,
| or worse networks.
|
| >People want job training, and it got shoehorned into extra
| departments at liberal arts universities intended as aristocrat
| finishing schools. Job training really has little to no
| relationship to liberal arts.
|
| Job training didn't get shoehorned, a cheap filtering mechanism
| for people worth betting on to be a good hire got shoehorned.
| But that filter simultaneously got worse and more expensive
| over time, making it a bad purchase for most students and bad
| signal for employers.
| jjmarr wrote:
| > Healthcare costs, and hence health insurance premiums, are
| the same with or without an employer intermediary.
|
| If you read the fine print of a health "insurance" plan at a
| large company, you might discover healthcare costs are
| directly covered by the employer and the insurance company
| just administers the plan according to "set rules".
|
| In practice, this operates as blame as a service.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Sure, but the doctors/medicine/hospitals/liability are not
| any cheaper.
|
| So the healthcare isn't cheap, but the employer is able to
| gain more control over their employees by tying a piece of
| their non employee life to the employer creating more
| friction to prevent people from shopping for jobs with
| higher pay, and the employee is getting a small tax
| benefit.
| jjmarr wrote:
| Yes, but the same insurance company will screw with your
| coverage depending on your employer.
|
| My mom's plan randomly denied my medications all the time
| as a student. My current job's plan always provides
| coverage.
|
| Both were the same insurance company, but she's in a
| different field with a more stingy employer.
| jswelker wrote:
| It's especially fun if your employer is in a field with
| an aging employee population--like higher ed ironically.
| The insurer gives the same premium rate to all employees,
| meaning everyone is in the same risk pool. The old and or
| unhealthy employees make insurance more expensive for
| everyone at the employer. I've had situations where the
| exact same insurance plan cost two hugely different
| amounts of money after switching employers just because
| of average employee age differences. Really quite
| perverse.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Which gives employers incentive to illegally discriminate
| against older job candidates but good luck proving it at
| any specific employer.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| American health insurance is insurance in name only -
| picture health insurance models laid on top of your car:
|
| Imagine your car gets totaled. Your insurer says, "Hey,
| we're going to pay out $25K for your vehicle. So you have a
| $1,000 deductible, so that's $24,000, and then your copay
| for a total loss is $2,000, so that brings us down to
| $22,000. For total losses, your coinsurance as your
| contribution for your vehicle coverage is 20%, which is
| $5,000, so here's a check for $17,000. But that's only if
| you're buying a Hyundai, otherwise the vehicle is out of
| network and you'll get a check for $8,500 instead."
|
| > If you read the fine print of a health "insurance" plan
| at a large company, you might discover healthcare costs are
| directly covered by the employer and the insurance company
| just administers the plan according to "set rules".
|
| Generally this is done by a TPA (third party
| administrator). In many ways you can do as you wish, but as
| insurers have already done the actuarial work, it's
| generally easier to use a plan and tweak it if desired
| (like "Give us this plan but pay for 1 massage/week")
| versus having to figure that out yourself.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > American health insurance is insurance in name only -
| picture health insurance models laid on top of your car:
|
| Health insurance is more insurance than car insurance in
| the US. There is a legal out of pocket maximum of $17k or
| so, and networks don't matter for emergency situations.
| In fact, people get millions of dollars of healthcare
| from health insurance whereas auto insurance provides a
| maximum of $500k after which you have to use umbrella
| insurance.
|
| Health insurance premiums are not insurance premiums,
| because legally, health insurance sellers cannot
| underwrite the health risks. Legally, young and healthy
| people have to subsidize old and sick, via age rating
| factor caps (3x and even 1x in NY and 2x in MA), and not
| being able to price pre existing conditions.
|
| Which means health insurance premiums are mostly a tax if
| you are healthy and less than 50 years old or so,
| especially if you don't plan on giving birth that year.
|
| Auto insurance premiums are insurance, because the
| insurer is pricing your risk of loss, based on your
| driving history/driving distance/location/etc.
| nradov wrote:
| Right, the federal tax code is structured to give advantages
| to employer sponsored health plans. But it doesn't have to be
| that way. A better approach would be to eliminate those plans
| and force everyone to purchase individual or family plans
| through state ACA marketplaces using pre-tax dollars.
| jswelker wrote:
| Not sure why the down votes. Severing health insurance from
| employers would be a huge win. It's just such a massive
| task that the efforts to address it like Obamacare aren't
| enough even remotely.
| hylaride wrote:
| As a Canadian, for all the faults of our healthcare
| system, the fact that I don't have to stick with a job to
| maintain healthcare for myself or my family is a massive
| amount of freedom I take for granted.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| You don't have to stick with your job in the US either,
| you just have to earn enough money to buy it yourself
| from healthcare.gov. But that goes for everything, from
| food to shelter to utilities, etc.
|
| Probably half the jobs in the US don't pay enough for the
| employee regularly see a doctor. It might protect them
| for the $500k emergency heart bypass, but they are not
| going to be able to afford the $10k out of pocket costs
| or the ongoing healthcare expenses after they lose their
| job.
| mjevans wrote:
| Or, just provide 'basic healthcare' as a human right (and
| service for being taxed) and make ALL plans on top of that
| luxury services.
|
| Wouldn't you like to STOP the insanity of "picking" a plan
| every year (or more) and also end the billing nightmare by
| just making it all single payer (the government of the
| people, for the people)?
| orangecat wrote:
| This is entirely due to the employer being involved. I
| don't have to pick a new auto or home insurance plan
| every year.
| trashface wrote:
| The ACA would need to be changed too, it isn't as generous
| tax-wise as employer based care. The portion of the premium
| paid by the subscriber is not automatically tax deductible
| - they have to itemize or meet certain self-employment
| restrictions. Many don't, so they are paying effectively
| with after tax dollars. Its one reason why the ACA rate
| hikes next year are so brutal.
|
| It matters for early retirees (or these days, people forced
| out of job some years before they wanted to officially
| retire). Without self-employment income they can't deduct
| it, and often for similar reasons they can't itemize. They
| still get the standard deduction of course, but an person
| on an employer plan gets that + their cost of premiums,
| automatically.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| > Job training didn't get shoehorned, a cheap filtering
| mechanism for people worth betting on to be a good hire got
| shoehorned
|
| While it may not be optimal, there is plenty of
| training/learning that happens in colleges.
| o11c wrote:
| > Healthcare costs [...] The only difference is with an
| employer intermediary, [...]
|
| That's missing the biggest problem, which is that the
| employer gets a free chance to extort the employee in all
| sorts of illegal ways lest they be cut off and die.
|
| Wage theft is perhaps the biggest-value type of crime every
| year (sources disagree, but it's certainly higher than many),
| and that's only _one_ kind of illegal thing employers do when
| they have all the leverage.
| jswelker wrote:
| The employer pays a large portion of the employee premiums.
| As a result the employee is further indentured to the
| employer because they cannot leave without depriving
| themselves and family of health care. And it further
| obfuscates the actual cost of health care. And then the tax
| code makes this bizarre setup the privileged happy path.
| hc12345 wrote:
| The intermediary in healthcare makes a significant
| difference, as, by going through employers and using
| insurance, the US market is quite fragmented, and there is
| minimal alignment pushing prices down. The US healthcare
| provider doesn't get more business by providing a better
| cost/benefit ratio: It's easier to splurge, and get business
| via an expensive, comfortable-ish service.
|
| When one then compares US facilities to foreign ones, it's
| trivially easy to see that many parts of the system just look
| different, which comes from the perverse incentives of going
| through employers that aren't big enough to actually push
| down on providers' prices at all. Both truly private, low
| insurance systems and universal healthcare systems end up
| having much better incentives, and therefore lower prices,
| regardless of who is paying for them.
|
| We get something similar when you compare US universities to
| those in Continental Europe. It's clear that over there, the
| finishing school component is so vestigial as to be
| practically invisible, whole the focus is a filtering
| mechanism that attempts to teach something. Go look at, say,
| Spain's universities and see how many open electives are
| there, or how many university-wide general requirements exist
| (0). Each degree is basically an independent unit, and
| chances are you'll never visit a building from a different
| school. Undeclared majors? Nope. Significant number of
| students living on campus? Nope. Sports teams, offering
| scholarships? Nothing of the sort. This also leads to much
| lower prices to the school itself, regardless of whether it's
| all paid by taxes or students.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| I don't disagree with your major points but note that
| Spanish university course syllabi are determined centrally
| and are identical across Universities which seems
| incredibly bizarre to me.
| anon291 wrote:
| It didn't get shoe horned. Before college degrees proliferated,
| employers had entrance exams and were expected to train people.
| A supreme court decision found this to be racist. Companies
| could be held liable so most companies stopped that and
| demanded a 'fair' credential. Then everyone had to go to
| college
| btilly wrote:
| This one case isn't the full story, but I firmly believe that
| it is a big deal.
|
| See https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/401/424/ for
| the case.
|
| The problem is that any hiring test that blacks and whites
| pass at different rates, is presumed racist. Never mind that
| the real issue might be that the blacks went to worse schools
| and received a worse education. Never mind that there is a
| big body of research showing that ability tests are a more
| effective way to hire good employees than interviews. If the
| ratio of blacks to whites hired is different than the ratio
| that apply, you are presumed to be racist and in violation of
| the Civil Rights Act.
|
| So a company that needs to hire literate people can no
| longer, as used to be standard, allow high school students to
| apply and give them a literacy test. But they can require
| college.
|
| Therefore college has become a job requirement for a plethora
| of jobs whose actual requirement is "literate". Jobs that
| people used to be able to do out of high school, and jobs
| that could still be done by plenty of high school graduates.
| That this has become so ubiquitous lead to an increased
| demand for college. Which is one of the factors driving
| tuition up.
|
| (My suspicion is that an ability test would lead to a less
| racist outcome than requiring college. Why? Because minority
| families struggle more to afford college.)
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| You'll occasionally see people point out that requiring a
| college degree has all the same legal problems as requiring
| a hiring exam does. And those people are correct in terms
| of the judgments that impose our terrible precedents.
| They're all just as negative on degree requirements as they
| are on performance requirements.
|
| But as a matter of empirical reality, our _enforcement
| system_ declines to prosecute employers who require
| degrees, because requiring degrees is morally good and
| requiring exams is morally bad.
|
| The rules about what's allowed don't actually derive from
| the law. We have laws that forbid everything, accompanied
| by selective prosecution of only the things that certain
| people disapprove of.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >The problem is that any hiring test that blacks and whites
| pass at different rates, is presumed racist. Never mind
| that the real issue might be that the blacks went to worse
| schools and received a worse education.
|
| Your first sentence is the _result_ of bigotry against
| those with "enhanced" melanin content, not the cause.
|
| The cause is laid out in your _second_ sentence.
|
| Resolve the systemic bigotry (not just against those with
| enhanced melanin content, but against those with the least
| resources as, at least in the US, most schools are paid for
| by _local_ property taxes, making the poorest areas the
| ones with the worst schools) and put us all on a level
| playing field and we 'll be a much fairer society IMNSHO.
| Izkata wrote:
| You're agreeing with them. Keep reading their comment to
| understand why that didn't matter.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >You're agreeing with them. Keep reading their comment to
| understand why that didn't matter.
|
| That's as may be, but my point was orthogonal to theirs
| and not meant as agreement _or_ disagreement.
| btilly wrote:
| I agree with your point.
|
| My point was a "don't shoot the messenger".
|
| A politically powerful minority calls ability tests
| racist because they make minorities look bad. An opposing
| offensive minority uses those same ability tests as
| evidence that minorities are simply inferior. Courts
| ruled that those using the tests should be presumed
| racist because the results show racial differences.
|
| The result of all of this is a policy, meant to help
| minorities, that fails them. At great expense to all of
| us.
|
| And an actual easy to identify factor which sustains
| racial differences - poor educational policies - is
| politically off limits to think about. "Because that
| would cost money."
|
| The resulting mess is in alternating turns absurd and
| sad.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| and yet ... that's not what the case you referenced says at
| all. Justia's own summary, from your link:
|
| > Even if there is no discriminatory intent, an employer
| may not use a job requirement that functionally excludes
| members of a certain race if it has no relation to
| measuring performance of job duties. Testing or measuring
| procedures cannot be determinative in employment decisions
| _unless they have some connection to the job_.
|
| (emphasis mine)
| qcnguy wrote:
| They worked at a power plant, a place where dumb mistakes
| can cause explosions and kill people. The power plant
| wasn't racist and hired blacks into the labor department,
| but because it was just manual labor that department paid
| worse than the other more technical departments.
|
| When SCOTUS found against the power company they sent a
| clear message that merely being a technical, safety-
| critical job was an insufficient basis to establish a
| need to test people for intelligence. And as it's hard to
| argue that testing isn't needed for people who could
| cause massive power outages but is for <job X>, that was
| widely interpreted to ban such aptitude testing for any
| kind of job.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > When SCOTUS found against the power company they sent a
| clear message that merely being a technical, safety-
| critical job was an insufficient basis to establish a
| need to test people for intelligence.
|
| That's your interpretation. The court regarded the test
| used the power company as unrelated to the demands of the
| job. You're welcome to disagree with the court about that
| (as the company probably did), but don't misrepresent
| their actual position.
| qcnguy wrote:
| I didn't claim otherwise. It should however be self
| evident that courts have no solid basis on which to make
| such a call. Judges don't know anything about running
| power plants, hiring employees, or really anything on
| that matter.
|
| This is why human rights laws are always terrible in
| practice. They require the courts to make decisions well
| outside the bounds of their expertise.
| btilly wrote:
| The court regarded the test as unrelated to the demands
| of the job, despite a large body of research showing that
| the test is generally predictive of performance on a wide
| class of jobs, which that job is in.
|
| The bar was set to, "You must have good statistical
| evidence that this test is applicable to this job." That
| is an extremely high bar, that very few private companies
| are ever going to be able to collect sufficient data to
| establish.
|
| In fact the only organization that I'm aware of which can
| pass that bar is the US military. Which is why they are
| allowed to use ability tests in hiring and initial
| promotions that no private company would be allowed to
| use.
| JuniperMesos wrote:
| > (My suspicion is that an ability test would lead to a
| less racist outcome than requiring college. Why? Because
| minority families struggle more to afford college.)
|
| This might have been true when the United States was mostly
| white, and "minority" specifically referred to the black
| population who was mostly descended from slaves brought to
| the US mainland pre-1808, or to an even small number of
| native Americans. Today, when the US population is
| significantly more ethnically diverse, and "minority" just
| means "anyone nonwhite, regardless of where they came from
| or what their family history is", there's a lot more
| variation in exactly how ability to afford college
| correlates with ethnicity.
| seec wrote:
| All of this is because academia and educational
| institutions have a tremendous amount of power this way.
| They can select for ideological compliance instead of
| actual competence. And this is a desirable property for the
| rulers because they can weed out those who are likely to
| destabilise them if they were able to show a valuable
| alternate path by example.
|
| Why spend so much money on an "education" if you could
| become successful by simple being competent. The tech
| sector was like that at first, but then came the degree
| requirement and the HR ladies. It was a short run and now
| they are very mad that some people became successful
| without needing to bow to the dominant ideology.
| collinmcnulty wrote:
| This view seems to be common, but I think it misses what
| incredible alchemy comes from making people who come in for
| "job training" (like I did) spend 4 years in close proximity
| with research, academic freedom, liberal arts, and at least an
| attempt at some kind of intellectual idealism separate from
| economic incentive. It's peanut butter and chocolate that has
| served democracy and its people well by having a middle class
| that is not just productive, but truly educated. It's weird and
| it has problems, but it's also wonderful, and we should not try
| to sever the two so we can more "efficiently" crank out
| credentials.
| rayiner wrote:
| That's historical revisionism. The percentage of American
| adults over age 25 who have a college degree was only 20% as
| recently as 1990. When America was truly at the top of the
| world in the 1950s and 1960s, it was under 10%. A high
| fraction of college attendance is better correlated with the
| 21st century decline in America's situation.
| collinmcnulty wrote:
| I think widening the aperture outside the USA shows how big
| societal progress has come out of universities of the type
| we now recognize, starting with 1800s Germany. Even within
| the USA, the technological and social progress that
| percolated on universities had big impacts beyond the
| people actually enrolled and were essential in providing
| the basis for the employment of many other Americans.
|
| Finally, it's worth qualifying the idea of America's
| decline. The USA is still THE powerhouse economy of the
| world. We have huge problems with unequal distribution and
| things are seriously politically messed up, but in terms of
| raw productivity, we are doing gangbusters. And solving the
| political and inequality issues call for a more educated
| populace, not less.
| rayiner wrote:
| Germany is a great example of how you don't need most of
| the population enrolled in universities.
|
| > The USA is still THE powerhouse economy of the world.
|
| The US was a powerhouse economy when it could build the
| world's largest navy almost overnight. Since the 1980s,
| the U.S. economy has become highly financialized. It's
| disputed how much American economic dominance is real
| versus on paper today.
| monero-xmr wrote:
| I agree with you, but if the US truly has the best
| military (and it does 100x) then when push comes to
| shove, the US will destroy anyone who tries to undermine
| it. Very dangerous game to oppose it. Being able to
| construct things quickly is important, but if the US can
| militarily seize nearly every country on earth in days,
| the power is not necessarily where the kit is located
| rayiner wrote:
| If you take nukes off the table, the U.S. doesn't have a
| 100x military advantage. If China seriously mobilized its
| industrial capability, the U.S. may not have even a 2x
| advantage.
|
| Remember that, right before World War II, the US didn't
| even have a top-10 military, having demobilized it after
| World War I. It's vast industrial capacity is what
| enabled it to build a larger military than all of Europe
| combined within a few years.
| eastbound wrote:
| The US was also much more unified at the time. That's the
| thing about history: Like economy, it's human matter, and
| you could reproduce and experiment twice and get
| completely different result because your systems are not
| isolated in location or time.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >The US was also much more unified at the time
|
| Were we? Or is that just after the fact revisionism that
| makes things "easy"
|
| If Europe had managed to keep it together a few more
| years the US may very well have had a bunch of communism
| adjacent social strife and FDR may have died a deposed
| tyrant.
|
| We were certainly more unified on certain broad cultural
| and values axis, but things were still very divided.
| pjmlp wrote:
| The most important fact, that people overlook, is that
| its industrial capacity was never bombed during the war,
| and Pearl Harbour was the only time the country got
| directly attacked.
| nostrademons wrote:
| So Australia & New Zealand are the next superpowers.
|
| I remember when I was around middle school or early high
| school, I attended a geopolitical simulation at MIT that
| wargamed out a crisis between major world powers, and
| that was the exact result. New Zealand won, in alliance
| with Australia. They were able to invest heavily in
| technology while everyone else was nuking each other, and
| then ended up with space lasers or whatever the endgame
| tech was while everyone else ended up back in the stone
| age.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| Reminds me of how I used to play Risk (which I now
| consider to be one of the worst designed games in a
| similar fashion to Monopoly) when I'd sit in Australia
| and just keep building troops until other players weaken
| themselves with fighting. Of course it helps that there's
| just a single position to defend Australia and as it's
| the smallest continent, people usually aim to attack
| elsewhere.
| fosco wrote:
| "Modern" risk boards have Australia with 3 borders to
| defend including the normal and addingcross-map Argentina
| to New Zealand and Japan to Philippines (I believe this
| map comes from a risk computer game)
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| Have they re-balanced the continental rewards etc? IIRC
| North America had three borders, but was worth a lot
| more.
|
| However, I have no desire to play Risk again as the dice
| mechanic is infuriating and it's almost the opposite of a
| euro-game i.e. Players can get eliminated a long time
| before the end of the game and the game length can be
| arbitrarily long. Also, if a player falls too far behind
| the other players, it's very unlikely that they can turn
| things around (excepting the infuriating dice mechanic
| which can let a single soldier defeat hordes of
| invaders).
| ghaff wrote:
| Another major feature of Risk (more or less whatever side
| rules you're playing with around alliances and so forth)
| is the role of the cards which pretty much dominate
| everything else in the endgame.
| strken wrote:
| As an Australian, I have the suspicion that the decline
| of industry in the last couple of decades has done a lot
| of damage to that capability.
|
| We've lost oil refineries, steelworks, consumer car
| manufacturing, and we lack much shipbuilding and
| aerospace. We have a lot of mines, which curse us with
| success: it's not economically efficient to smelt ore
| when you could be digging up even more of it instead.
| mystraline wrote:
| When was Pearl Harbor attacked by Japan?
|
| Now, when did Hawai'i become a state?
|
| And when and by whom was their king deposed?
|
| > Pearl Harbour was the only time the country got
| directly attacked.
|
| Uh, which country again was it?
|
| (Edit: -4, really? Damn, people are salty about actually
| knowing history versus going against the US public school
| system's propaganda that "We (royal) were attacked". In
| reality, the occupier forces, the US military, were
| attacked, having deposed the government at the behest of
| Sanford Dole, of pineapple infamy.
|
| But the simple bumper sticker slogan "Remember Pearl
| Harbor", short circuits and somehow gets people to ignore
| history at the behest of ruthless hegemonic expansion and
| irrational patriotism.)
| jleyank wrote:
| Hawaii was a US territory as was Alaska (which was also
| attacked). As is Puerto Rico today.
| mystraline wrote:
| An occupied territory, sure. The Japanese only attacked
| the occupiers (USA). They didn't go after any of the
| native peoples' cities.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaiian_Kingdom
|
| In 1887, King Kalakaua was forced to accept a new
| constitution after a coup d'etat by the Honolulu Rifles,
| a volunteer military unit recruited from American
| settlers. Queen Lili`uokalani, who succeeded Kalakaua in
| 1891, tried to abrogate the new constitution. She was
| subsequently overthrown in a 1893 coup engineered by the
| Committee of Safety (run by Sanford Dole), a group of
| Hawaiian subjects who were mostly of American descent,
| and supported by the U.S. military. The Committee of
| Safety dissolved the kingdom and established the Republic
| of Hawaii, intending for the U.S. to annex the islands,
| which it did on July 7, 1898, via the Newlands
| Resolution. Hawaii became part of the U.S. as the
| Territory of Hawaii until it became a U.S. state in 1959.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| On geopolitical scale, you either need to have big guns
| or big friends. No one has any true right to any land. If
| you don't have the foresight to recognize that, you
| probably don't have a place in the future.
|
| This isn't even something only cold imperialist
| superpowers adopt. Hawaii itself was populated with
| warring chiefdoms that were killing each other and taking
| land for centuries before a bigger fish showed up. Small
| fish happily eating smaller fish but then are upset when
| they get eaten...
| hylaride wrote:
| Your arguments are irrelevant at best and whataboutism at
| worst because the Japanese were specifically attacking
| the US Navy as they saw it as a threat to their own
| expansion plans - which were far worse than anything the
| US did, even compared to the worst parts of Native
| American policies (which were very, very bad). The
| Japanese saw Hawaii as a US territory to attack. Whether
| or how Hawaii became a US territory is a complete non
| sequitur in the context of World War 2.
|
| There's nobody outside of hardcore Japanese nationalists
| that see any of their actions as countering US
| expansionism.
| vel0city wrote:
| > Uh, which country again was it?
|
| Hawai'i became a territory of the United States on April
| 30, 1900. It had been US territory for 40 years. One can
| point to the US doing bad things to make that the state
| of affairs, but it was decidedly US territory for a long
| time at that point. It seems _you_ need to learn history,
| or you 're just being willfully obtuse about things.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| Actually, Alaska and the West Coast were attacked during
| the war -- but only relatively lightly.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleutian_Islands_campaign
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fu-Go_balloon_bomb
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombardment_of_Ellwood
|
| That last one, in which a Japanese sub bombarded Santa
| Barbara, played a role in the later Japanese internment
| by escalating fears of an invasion.
| roenxi wrote:
| The US military isn't that scary; the evidence to date is
| that it's ability to destroy counties ends somewhere
| around Iran's strength. The modelling I've seen is that
| any US-China war will take place in Asia and China will
| probably win it unless the US gets a lot of help (always
| possible). And the US has already been undermined by the
| likes of China, Russia and India and there isn't a lot
| they can do about it in the short term. They certainly
| don't have a military option to use against that
| grouping. At least not one that hasn't already been used
| in the case of Russia and failed to coerce them into
| cooperating.
| kiba wrote:
| America doesn't and shouldn't fight China or Russia
| alone, so I don't know why we're talking about that.
|
| Russia is basically on its way out as a military power.
| It can't even conquer Ukraine.
|
| As for China, you don't fight China alone. What do you
| think military bases in Japan are for? Anyway, for the
| world's sake, China shouldn't start a war, but sometime
| you just can't stop stupid.
| the_gipsy wrote:
| America is on a isolation downward spiral.
|
| Russia will conquer Ukraine, any other prediction at this
| point is absurd.
|
| See point one, America is alone now, it will take decades
| to repair the damage.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Some would dispute the "downward" part there.
|
| Not trying to be the world's policeman would allow
| tremendous downsizing of the military and its associated
| expense.
|
| Decoupling and isolation is a very rational response if
| nuclear proliferation is going to accelerate, in order to
| avoid having entangling alliances pull the country into a
| nuclear equivalent of the first World War.
| the_gipsy wrote:
| "World's policeman", that's what you tell little kids
| America was doing. America didn't invade Iraq or
| Afghanistan for world peace. There were strong economic
| and strategic motives behind those invasions.
|
| At the same time, soft power is also vanishing.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Strategic motivation? If one assumes the US is going to
| be globally involved, yes, but that's begging the
| question.
|
| Economic motivation? Not so much now, with the US being a
| dominant oil producer, and with petroleum itself losing
| importance. Even then, it's questionable if this could
| justify the full cost of the US military.
|
| I think the original motivation was two fold: it was a
| combination of some sort of moral obligation to defend
| the "free world" from authoritarians, and (after WW2) a
| desire to keep small countries (and recent WW2 enemies)
| from deciding their only option for defense was their own
| nuclear deterrent.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| I don't see much evidence that's the US wants to defend
| the world from authoritarians. Some of their closest
| allies are authoritarian countries.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Expansionist authoritarians, which in the post war world
| was communists.
|
| Why would the world need defending from non-expansionist
| authoritarians?
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Maybe. They seem to actually like expansionist
| authoritarians now. Evidence being the Russia Ukraine
| peace effort.
| tim333 wrote:
| "strong economic and strategic motive" behind
| Afghanistan? They did it to get Bin Laden basically.
|
| America are like a slightly corrupt and violent world
| police.
| torginus wrote:
| So they invaded Afghanistan to grab a Saudi national
| hanging out in Pakistan?
| tim333 wrote:
| Mostly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghanistan#US_invas
| ion_and_Is...
|
| Apparently the invasion was Oct 2001 and Bin Laden hiked
| over into Pakistan in Dec 2001
| pfdietz wrote:
| I think it had something to do with 9/11 being an act of
| war from Afghanistan against the US. Nations are
| responsible for the actions of groups inside their
| borders against other nations.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| >Russia will conquer Ukraine, any other prediction at
| this point is absurd.
|
| They have been moving across Ukraine at a literal snails
| pace.
| dmpk2k wrote:
| That is how attrition war works. Until it doesn't.
| _heimdall wrote:
| Are you expecting Ukraine to ultimately buckle and
| collapse if the war of logistics continues for long
| enough?
|
| It doesn't seem like Russia has the will, or potentially
| the capability, to actually conquer Ukraine rather than
| squat on some of their land and hope to move their
| border.
| bildung wrote:
| > Russia will conquer Ukraine, any other prediction at
| this point is absurd.
|
| Are you sure? They are advancing, sure, put look what
| they paid for to achieve this: 300k dead, 700k wounded,
| depletion of their souvereign wealth fund, 20%+
| inflation, lower oil production and so on.
| watwut wrote:
| Unfortunately, yes. USA is doing everything but openly
| support Russia at this point too. It could have been
| different if Ukraine got proper support, but instead it
| is being undermined.
|
| Europe could do more, but at least most states dont play
| for Russia (Hungary and Slovakia excepted).
| tim333 wrote:
| I think we may be at peak Trump though which will limit
| his power to bail out Putin. The midterms won't go well,
| the Epstein stuff is embarrassing, the Republicans are
| starting to get unruly.
| jacquesm wrote:
| It's going to be a very long 12 months though.
| somenameforme wrote:
| I think literally nobody knows the price either side is
| paying right now. And I do mean literally, including
| Trump, Putin, and Zelensky. The fog of war applies to
| participants, let alone outsiders who are basing our
| views on figures and claims that obviously going to be
| driven heavily by propaganda.
|
| But beyond this, I don't think this war is about Ukraine
| anymore than a war in Taiwan will be about Taiwan. It's
| little more than a proxy for hegemony in both cases.
| Russia did not want NATO parked in their Achille's heel
| of the Ukrainian flatlands. NATO did, and we pushed
| forward against endless threats of it being a redline,
| essentially as a means of indirectly imposing our will on
| Russia and establishing a hierarchy of dominance.
|
| And similarly, for those that don't the Taiwan-China
| history - the Mao led Chinese revolution was a success.
| The existing government of mainland China fled to Taiwan
| where they brutally oppressed the locals, in an era known
| as the 'white terror' [1], and established power through
| 40 years of martial law. And of course we backed them,
| solely to use them as a weapon against China, because
| geopolitics.
|
| This is why these wars are so important for the
| participants. The US couldn't care less about Ukraine,
| but withdrawing without ruining our ability to militarily
| threaten other peer or near peer countries is difficult.
| And similarly the last thing Russia needs is more land,
| but if they never act on claims of red lines, then they
| can never expect their interests to be considered in the
| case of a conflict in interests between them and the
| West.
|
| [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Terror_(Taiwan)
| tim333 wrote:
| I don't agree on the Russia Ukraine motivations. Ukraine
| is not part of NATO and was not going to become part of
| NATO. There were already two NATO countries bordering
| Russia near Moscow and St P if NATO had wanted to invade
| which they had no thoughts of doing. Russia lies
| constantly on this stuff. I think they basically regarded
| Ukraine their land as part of the Russian empire they
| were restoring.
| somenameforme wrote:
| It's not about immediate intentions, but about strategic
| options. Imagine Russia decided to form a military
| alliance with Mexico with the expected intention of
| deploying weapons on the Mexican border. If Mexico agreed
| to this, it would take approximately 0 seconds before the
| US invaded them under some whimsical pretext (drug gangs
| probably) and overthrew their government to prevent this.
| In fact this is, more or less, what the Cuban Missile
| Crisis was where we were willing to bring the world to
| the brink of nuclear annihilation over it, and that was
| an even lighter weight version of this event since there
| isn't even a land route from Cuba to the US obviously!
|
| But in this scenario would you think Russia deploying
| weapons in Mexico is a precursor to them invading? Or
| that the US would be worried about that? Obviously not.
| Neither was Cuba. But it gives an adversarial power a
| tremendous strategic edge, while you get less than
| nothing out of it since it reduces your 'power' in the
| relative strategic balance of countries.
| tim333 wrote:
| I still think Ukraine wasn't primarily about Russia's
| military security though. I mean the US/Nato could stick
| missiles in Estonia if they wanted.
|
| It may have been about political security. If Ukraine
| which is basically at least part Russian had become a
| prosperous democracy on Russia's doorstep it would make
| it harder for Putin to justify his autocracy. In fact
| that one may come to pass.
| mopsi wrote:
| > Imagine Russia decided to form a military alliance
| with Mexico with the expected intention of deploying
| weapons on the Mexican border.
|
| It would be a very foolish idea, because it's no longer
| the Napoleonic era. Concentrating your forces close to
| adversary's border makes them easy targets for
| destruction by long-range artillery and airstrikes. The
| Finnish chief of defence forces recently made the same
| remark when the Russians moved their weapons closer to
| Finland for intimidation: "It only makes them easier for
| us to destroy." > In fact this is, more
| or less, what the Cuban Missile Crisis was
|
| Not at all. The Cuban missile crisis was only about
| nuclear missiles. The USSR continued to provide a large
| number of conventional weapons to Cuba, including
| submarines and fighter jets, until it collapsed in 1991,
| without any of your invasion fantasies coming true.
|
| See this photo: https://www.jetphotos.com/photo/11312641
|
| It is a Soviet-built MIG-23 fighter jet carrying Cuban
| insignia. MIG-23 first flew 5 years after the missile
| crisis and the first batch was delivered to Cuba in 1978.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > It's not about immediate intentions, but about
| strategic options. Imagine Russia decided to form a
| military alliance with Mexico with the expected intention
| of deploying weapons on the Mexican border.
|
| The problem with pretending this analogy is relevant as a
| justification (or at least an "other people would have
| one the same thing" argument, which isn't really a
| justification to start with) of the Russian invasion of
| Ukraine (besides the fact that it relies on dubious
| assumptions about a counterfactual) is that the only
| reason Ukraine resumed its long-abandoned pursuit of
| relations with NATO was a direct result of the invasion
| by Russia in 2014.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| > Imagine Russia decided to form a military alliance with
| Mexico ... it would take approximately 0 seconds before
| the US invaded them
|
| Not this shit again. It's always the identical boring
| talking points from the Moscow trolls.
|
| e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46008641
| rebolek wrote:
| Thank you for repeating Russian propaganda. But the truth
| is that Ukraine is sovereign nation and has every right
| to decide their future and give a fuck about Russia
| feelings. Russia is the aggressor and blaming anything on
| NATO is laughable propaganda.
| ku-man wrote:
| "... the truth is that Ukraine is sovereign nation and
| has every right to decide their future..."
|
| In all honesty, would you hold that argument if Mexico
| decides to host Russian or Chinese troops?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > In all honesty, would you hold that argument if Mexico
| decides to host Russian or Chinese troops?
|
| Ukraine wasn't hosting foreign troops (except Russian
| troops, some of whom were were the spearhead of the
| invasion) when the Russo-Ukrainian war started with the
| Russian invasion in 2014.
|
| (They did start hosting some that were involved in
| training and advisory assignments _after_ the war started
| and before the major escalation in 2022, but those can
| hardly justify the war which started with the 2014
| invasion.)
| master_crab wrote:
| Yeah, it wouldn't be a bad bet to wager this is going to
| be a Pyrrhic victory for Russia.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Russia is on the same spiral, but further ahead. They're
| going down together. The US has some chance of pulling
| out of the nose dive, but it's slim.
|
| They may or may not take Europe and Ukraine with them.
|
| China is better placed to survive, but has its own
| structural issues.
| MonkeyClub wrote:
| > Russia will conquer Ukraine
|
| Perhaps the objective isn't to conquer the whole of the
| Ukraine, but only most of it, leaving the western parts
| independent.
|
| This seems to be pushed as the right approach wrt the
| Ukraine in Alexander Dugin's Foundations of Geopolitics,
| which apparently is used as the source for Russia's
| current "Eurasianist" geopolitical doctrine:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics
| tim333 wrote:
| In March 2022 Russia occupied 27% of Ukraine. They have
| now lost much of their artillery tanks and then army and
| now control 19% of Ukraine while their oil refineries
| blow up, and recently tankers. I'm not sure the conquest
| is going quite to plan.
| expedition32 wrote:
| China hasn't started a war since the 1970s.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| They're doing a good job as belligerents against the
| Philippines.
| closewith wrote:
| Okay, as Devil's Advocate, you could say the same about
| the US. It was unable to conquer Korea, Vietnam,
| Afghanistan, Iraq or Syria.
| firesteelrain wrote:
| This is a false equivalence. The United States was not
| trying to "conquer" those countries in the territorial
| sense that Russia attempted with Ukraine. Those conflicts
| were limited political or counterinsurgency objectives
| fought under strict constraints, often without public
| support, and with no intention of annexation. Comparing
| that to a conventional invasion aimed at seizing and
| absorbing a neighbor's territory is analytically
| inaccurate.
|
| US did defeat Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. And
| indirectly Syria by supporting the insurgency (and we had
| bases in that Country). It is also worth noting that the
| US and South Vietnam had effectively contained the North
| by 1973. The Paris Peace Accords ended direct US
| involvement and the North violated those terms two years
| later when it launched a full-scale conventional
| invasion. South Vietnam collapsed only after the US
| withdrew military support. Same with Afghanistan. Iraq is
| flourishing without Saddam and without war. It toppled
| Saddam's regime in weeks, and the country now has an
| elected government, functioning institutions, and no US
| occupation. Whatever its internal challenges, Iraq is not
| a case where the US attempted and failed to annex
| territory. It demonstrates that these were limited
| political interventions, not conquest wars.
| CMay wrote:
| I'd also add that the Vietnamese LOVE the US.
| berdario wrote:
| Despite what the USA did in its invasion of Vietnam, not
| because of it.
|
| Vietnamese are trying to not forget their history:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Remnants_Museum
|
| (I'm not sure how many Vietnamese actually love USA, vs
| how many don't... I just want to remind that different
| people in the same society might hold different opinions,
| and the sentiment is certainly not monolithic)
| CMay wrote:
| I never really looked into it, but it looks like the vast
| majority of Vietnamese were born after the war so US
| culture and trade are way more important contributors to
| opinion. Vietnamese are some of the most pro-US people in
| the world.
| somenameforme wrote:
| I think very few, if any, countries in the world would be
| stronger than what we turned Ukraine into. You have a
| massive army being replenished by a constant slew of
| bodies, to the point of forcefully dragging people in off
| the streets, and then being armed with hundreds of
| billions of dollars in Western arms. But what gives
| Ukraine a particular superpower is their logistics.
|
| Most people don't realize is that war is essentially a
| giant deadly game of logistics, and so the typical plan
| for Russia would be to simply destroy the logistics
| pipelines arming Ukraine. But thanks to the people 100%
| responsible for maintaining Ukraine's military managing
| to maintain a strategically accepted neutrality, it's
| impossible to fundamentally disrupt their logistics
| pipeline outside of small scale black ops stuff.
|
| So that has turned this war into a war of attrition where
| Russia is advancing slowly, but mostly setting the goal
| as essentially having Ukraine simply run out of
| Ukrainians. And they seem to be succeeding. Once the real
| death tolls for this war are revealed, people are going
| to be shocked. You don't need to drag in people off the
| streets, close your borders, and continually lower the
| enlistment age (in a country with a _severe_ demographic
| crisis) if you 're not suffering catastrophic losses,
| especially since as the amount of territory you have to
| defend decreases, you need fewer soldiers to maintain the
| same defensive density.
| artursapek wrote:
| When would the real death tolls be revealed? When Ukraine
| does a census?
| somenameforme wrote:
| Once the war ends and both sides can start clarifying
| their troop classifications. There's always going to be
| uncertainty because an MIA could be dead, or it could be
| some guy who successfully deserted and started a new life
| for himself somewhere. But as both sides return captured
| troops, exchange bodies, and so on - everything will be
| made much more clear. And there will also be less
| political motivation to lie.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Do you think Ukraine has more casualties than Russia? Or
| is it simply that Ukraine had a smaller population to
| begin with?
| hylaride wrote:
| For Ukraine, war deaths would likely be a footnote
| compared to emigration when a new census is eventually
| completed (I don't mean to sound cavalier, but am trying
| to put things into perspective). An estimated 20% of
| their population has left since the start of the full
| scale invasion - ~10 million people - by now they've
| settled into new lives abroad (my 8 year old daughter's
| class here in Canada has 3 kids from Ukraine alone).
|
| Ukraine is going to have some painful demographic issues
| to deal with when the dust settles (and I am cheering for
| them!).
| Qwertious wrote:
| >The US military isn't that scary; the evidence to date
| is that it's ability to destroy counties ends somewhere
| around Iran's strength.
|
| The US military's "ability" is very contextual - for
| instance, the US could easily obliterate Iran with a MIRV
| or two, but for various geopolitical reasons they choose
| not to. Likewise, the US navy is of limited use against
| Iran due to the literal mountain range between their only
| coastline and the bulk of their landmass (and
| population), much of which is quite mountainous.
| roenxi wrote:
| If we're assuming a nuclear war then the US military is
| comparable to a bunch of other militarys. And the
| "various geopolitical reasons", on examination, includes
| possible outcomes like the US being pummelled through the
| stone age and out the other side, or more mild ones like
| New York being flattened. It isn't really much of an
| option in any foreseeable scenario where their goose
| isn't already being cooked.
|
| So yes they are scary, but they aren't that scary
| relatively speaking. We've left the brief era where the
| US could exert military supremacy over the globe and it
| is ambiguous who has the "best" military among the major
| powers [0]. Militarys are generally a tool for self-
| destruction anyway so the term is a bit ambiguous, most
| of the big empires fall because they get too enamoured
| with military solutions over economic and diplomatic
| excellence.
|
| [0] Does the US military even perform to spec? There is
| clearly a lot of corruption and I've seen it described on
| HN as a disguised welfare program.
| woooooo wrote:
| Re: US military quality, it's both. Massively corrupt
| jobs program on the weapons acquisition side, combined
| with an incredibly effective devolved leadership
| structure on the logistics and combat side. Tested
| frequently over the last few decades. The bet in favor of
| them is that the weapons corruption gets sorted out once
| it really needs to be.
| jacquesm wrote:
| > If we're assuming a nuclear war then the US military is
| comparable to a bunch of other militarys.
|
| What a nonsense. Really, if we're assuming a nuclear war
| then the remainder of the sentence no longer has any
| relevance.
|
| Note that even the idiot in the Kremlin has been given
| reasons enough to consider that one off the table no
| matter how much he might want it (assuming he still can).
|
| First strike is a non-starter for every _sane_ country,
| so you better hope that sanity lasts long enough to get
| to the '.' at the end of your sentences. Because if it
| does not the best you can hope for is live near ground
| zero.
|
| > Does the US military even perform to spec? There is
| clearly a lot of corruption and I've seen it described on
| HN as a disguised welfare program.
|
| If you're aware of any American gear that has not
| performed in the last 12 months then maybe you should
| report it rather than to resort to 'just asking
| questions'.
|
| So far all of the recipients seem to be fairly happy with
| the deliveries and most nations would quake in their
| boots if the USA set their sights on them with intent to
| punish, bar none, and to suggest otherwise is seriously
| ignorant.
| lurk2 wrote:
| > the evidence to date is that it's ability to destroy
| counties ends somewhere around Iran's strength.
|
| Only if Geneva enters the equation.
|
| > the US has already been undermined by the likes of
| China, Russia and India
|
| What is India doing on this list?
| roenxi wrote:
| India has been gently aligning [0, 1] with the Russia-
| China bloc that the US has been encouraging to form over
| the last couple of years. Nothing crazy but that looks
| like undermining the US to me. It certainly isn't
| supporting US policy and the US has been trying to
| pressure them over it without much success.
|
| [0]
| https://www.nationalheraldindia.com/national/explained-
| ahead...
|
| [1] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/9/16/india-
| joined-belaru...
| elteto wrote:
| It's not undermining, it's asserting/showing off their
| independence. India doesn't want to play for anyone's
| team, so they play on everyone's team. It's a reminder to
| all sides that they are not an automatic partner to be
| taken for granted.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > And the US has already been undermined by the likes of
| China, Russia and India
|
| With respect, Russia is being decimated (literally, at
| least the "big fortresses" that Russia has been gnawing
| at for months such as Pokrovsk have insane loss rates) by
| Ukraine's army who are mostly using donated shoddy
| Soviet-era remainders and decades old Western surplus.
|
| If the US were to wage actual war with modern technology
| against either Russia or China (whose arms are based off
| of Soviet designs and stolen American plans), there is no
| chance in hell either would be able to do much against
| the US.
|
| India is different but they're at least a democracy
| that's reasonably worth calling it that (despite Modi
| doing his best to dismantle it). I don't see any attempts
| of India to project power anywhere other than in its
| immediate neighborhood (i.e. the border disputes with
| Pakistan and China). They're no threat.
| T-A wrote:
| > If the US were to wage actual war with modern
| technology against either Russia or China (whose arms are
| based off of Soviet designs and stolen American plans),
| there is no chance in hell either would be able to do
| much against the US.
|
| https://www.airandspaceforces.com/in-cnas-led-taiwan-
| wargame...
|
| https://www.csis.org/analysis/first-battle-next-war-
| wargamin...
| plastic3169 wrote:
| Could China attack US? Why would US try to attack China
| in asia? Not an expert but that feels like losing
| proposition. I think people confuse proxy wars with wars.
| US is under no threat of being actually attacked.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| You could ask the same question about Japan attacking
| America but they did do it.
|
| If they think conflict is inevitable then they may well
| feel they will get an upper hand by moving first.
| plastic3169 wrote:
| It counts as an attack, but how close was US to actually
| being taken over? Usually when you fight a war the real
| risk is that you cease to exist as a country. I know
| nothing about war strategy, but seems to me US is in a
| great position as long as you get along with Canada and
| Mexico.
| humanlity wrote:
| old chinese proverb: Suffering is living, happiness is
| death(Sheng Yu You Huan ,Si Yu An Le )
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Military action is an extension of politics.
|
| US politics do not support all out war against foreign
| nations at this point in time hence the half wars.
|
| This goes for most first world nations.
| CMay wrote:
| The US is the second largest manufacturing power, the
| largest economic power and the largest military power,
| but those things aren't even what makes it a scary
| threat.
|
| There are things that make up the US that vastly increase
| its potential for self-organization when it is given an
| organizing principle. Yes, dynamism has taken a hit over
| the decades, but there are also a lot of aimless
| purposeless people right now that do have an appetite for
| purpose if given one.
|
| Major modern countries today have red lines defined that
| they won't cross in order to keep the peace. Russia says
| don't attack Moscow or otherwise attempt to replace their
| government or they will nuke you. Nukes do change the
| structure of future wars between nuclear powers, which
| might actually make some aspects of it less extreme.
|
| If Ukraine had nukes, they could have a red line like,
| "If you keep hitting hospitals and schools, we will nuke
| you. Powerplants and railroads we understand, but if you
| show us with your actions that you have no mercy for the
| weak and innocent, we will end you." Instead, they have
| nothing of the sort.
|
| All the US has to do is wait for the enemy to make
| catastrophic moral failures and it's game over, because
| it rallies the people, the companies, the innovative
| talent, the allies, etc to reject it with force. It
| crystallizes the purpose.
|
| We are energy independent and are advancing even more
| ways to expand the dimensions of that. You can't destroy
| our government, because we'll just recreate it.
|
| We're forcing our allies to become more independent,
| because they got too soft and we need them hardened up.
| That only makes the US stronger, because strong allies
| are better for all of us. It makes us a better deterrent
| against war happening in the first place.
|
| Meanwhile China is surrounded by countries that dislike
| it and don't trust it. Giving Canada and Mexico tough
| love is no comparison to the fundamental failures in the
| relationships China has with its neighbors in their
| region.
|
| India is far more US aligned than with China, regardless
| of tensions. Neither North Korea nor Russia trust China,
| but they are forced to deal with it despite the buddy-
| buddy optics.
|
| Failing to benefit from so many possible optimizations at
| the basic strategic level in their local region, any
| confidence in a favorable outcome for the CCP seems
| misplaced. Their failings probably cascade down into the
| other levels of preparation as well.
| ambicapter wrote:
| "Forcing our allies to become more independent" is a
| HILARIOUS way to say "we're destroying our allied
| relationships, reducing our intelligence capabilities and
| the chances that they would form a coalition with us in
| any armed conflict".
|
| I'm just imagining someone getting a divorce saying
| they're "teaching their spouse the value of
| independence".
| CMay wrote:
| Why are you trying to rephrase something I said to mean
| something it doesn't? That's not what I said. We're not
| destroying our relationships and we're not ditching our
| allies. I think you're too caught up in the politics and
| rhetoric.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| > We're forcing our allies to become more independent,
| because they got too soft and we need them hardened up.
| That only makes the US stronger, because strong allies
| are better for all of us. It makes us a better deterrent
| against war happening in the first place.
|
| Translation: we are getting rid of our allies.
|
| It does not make sense for a country to pay another
| country their "fair share" for military protection. That
| is literally why the American Revolution happened.
| Americans fought a war on behalf of the British and were
| thanked for their service with enough taxes to destroy
| the local economy. The push to make the colonies pay for
| "their war" drove the colonists to turn their guns inward
| and start shooting British regulars.
|
| To be clear, it's one thing for NATO to tell countries to
| actually meet their 2% targets. But that is not what the
| current administration is doing. What it's actually doing
| is disrespecting them and foisting costs upon them. That
| is not how you run a military alliance.
|
| > We are energy independent and are advancing even more
| ways to expand the dimensions of that. You can't destroy
| our government, because we'll just recreate it.
|
| So our government is advancing the cause of energy
| independence by... what, exactly? Trying to shut down as
| many solar and wind projects as possible? Renewables
| (and, to a lesser extent, nuclear) are the best path
| towards energy independence, if not abundance, that we
| have. The current administration is bankrolled by Saudi
| oilmen whose only plan for energy independence is to
| shout "drill baby drill".
|
| Meanwhile China is churning out solar panels like it's no
| tomorrow. This has some interesting effects. Like,
| there's parts of Africa that are just now getting
| reliable access to electricity because they can buy cheap
| Chinese solar panels and batteries. Renewables can be
| provided at basically any scale and can work without
| infrastructure. Which is making the current American
| governing coalition shit their pants because they're all
| oilmen. The American military is built to run on oil. And
| oil is going away.
|
| > Meanwhile China is surrounded by countries that dislike
| it and don't trust it. Giving Canada and Mexico tough
| love is no comparison to the fundamental failures in the
| relationships China has with its neighbors in their
| region.
|
| I'll give you that China is bad at making friends.
| However, for their hegemonic goals, they don't
| necessarily need big American style alliances. They just
| need America's allies to look the other way while they
| steal Taiwan.
| CMay wrote:
| We're not getting rid of our allies, but it's long past
| time that they invested more in the common defense and
| it's important that they do, because it could be a
| valuable contribution to deterring war. Focus less on the
| soundbites. Yes there's messy dealmaking happening, but
| there's what's said and then there's what actually ends
| up happening.
|
| Solar and wind are only okay, but they aren't reliable
| and subsidizing them mostly benefits China since they are
| by far the major supplies. Yes, it creates American jobs,
| but those people could be doing more important jobs
| without creating a foreign energy infrastructure
| dependency. I don't think we actually care that Africa
| has solar panels from China, except that it makes them
| energy dependent on them and increases foreign trade in
| Yuan. It's more of a way to create Chinese jobs, which is
| a huge priority so they end up with an oversupply.
|
| Traditional nuclear has potential, but the costs, extreme
| complexity and lengthy lead times hurt the scalability.
| The newer fusion projects are interesting and I'm
| hopeful, but even if they work they take forever and are
| hard to replace quickly once they're up. It's more likely
| that we'll have a variety of all of these things.
|
| There have been advancements in geothermal that are
| amazing, cheap, quick, less encumbered by supply chain
| risks and require way less land so we should see that
| scale out over the coming decades.
|
| We do also have abundant oil which helps to reduce
| inflation and exporting it can offset some oil
| instability in the market. Yes, oil is eventually going
| away and that is why a renewable energy push was
| important, but a lot of oil remains untouched. The US
| military could also operate for years on just oil
| reserves and can get priority access to it. It would make
| plenty of sense for major countries to set aside oil for
| strategic and military purposes long after it stops being
| used for general transportation.
|
| As for Taiwan, it is fair that dependency on exports from
| China can cause countries to tow the line, but it would
| mostly be optics with nothing preventing other forms of
| support. Also, the pain of losing Chinese exports in many
| ways would be less than the pain of an expanding China
| that goes unchecked, so I think those influences are only
| strong up to a threshold.
| jacquesm wrote:
| > We're not getting rid of our allies
|
| Give Trump a few more months then? The USA has shown
| itself so far be unreliable, and if not quite an enemy
| also not quite an ally while demanding 100% loyalty the
| other way around. This obviously will not hold, you can
| not combine those two and expect a static situation as
| the outcome.
| kec wrote:
| I think you're burying the lede there: this hypothetical
| war would be fought in Asia because China is completely
| incapable of projecting force to the North American
| continent. Without that ability to credibly threaten
| America China could not possibly win a war against it.
|
| The conflicts which superpowers have withdrawn from have
| been against occupied nations which were in no position
| to ever become a future threat, this would not be true in
| a conflict with China, as China could conceivably develop
| the ability to project force and would be certainly
| motivated to do so during or after a real conflict.
| usrnm wrote:
| You cannot keep a good military for very long when you
| enter the economic decline stage, this has been proven by
| every empire in history.
| rcarr wrote:
| Replace the word US in this paragraph with Nazi Germany
| and the issue with this statement becomes apparent. If
| the only way you can maintain power is via physical force
| over others then you're a bully and it won't be long
| until others unite against you. The US may have the best
| military in the world but it does not have the ability to
| take on the entire globe. It's previous status actually
| came from the fact people used to look up to and admire
| it - something that has been steadily declining for quite
| some time now. Growing up, I used to think the US was the
| coolest place on Earth. Yesterday, I felt sick watching a
| video on YouTube about how an estimated 1500 people are
| living in the flood tunnels of Las Vegas and routinely
| die whenever there is heavy rain. Every place has
| problems, but you can't just shout "We're the best
| country on Earth" anymore and have people believe you
| when on a daily basis the world is seeing so much
| evidence to the contrary.
| Qem wrote:
| > Yesterday, I felt sick watching a video on YouTube
| about how an estimated 1500 people are living in the
| flood tunnels of Las Vegas and routinely die whenever
| there is heavy rain.
|
| I didn't know about this. Can you share a link?
| rcarr wrote:
| https://youtu.be/7MkAs99O1LQ
| usrusr wrote:
| The US military is as clueless as any other (except those
| two) about combat in the age of disposable drones.
| sharts wrote:
| 100x and yet it only took a couple of decades to replace
| the Taliban with the Taliban.
| hollerith wrote:
| The last great economic expansion or at least economic
| reconfiguration was internet services (which of course is
| mostly distinct from financial services) and the US ended
| up with a very dominant trade position in internet
| services.
| 0xDEAFBEAD wrote:
| >things are seriously politically messed up
|
| I would argue universities played a big role here. https:
| //books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=social+justice...
|
| The theory of "elite overproduction" suggests that if you
| train too many aspirants for the same few elite jobs,
| they will foment instability in order to get the jobs
| they feel entitled to. That's what happened when we tried
| to get everyone going to college.
|
| What am I supposed to do with my ethnic studies degree,
| aside from DEI consulting? Why would I want my DEI
| consulting to actually solve the underlying problem, if
| it puts me out of a job? Don't forget, I have a lot of
| student loans now! This isn't a small issue for me.
|
| The left-extremists say "you need to give me a job in
| order to make your team more diverse". The right-
| extremists say "you need to give me a job because the
| deep state is corrupt, it's time to make america great
| again". Basically using extremist politics as a trick for
| getting elite roles.
| seec wrote:
| That's because they are "elite" in their credentials, not
| actually elite in their competences/qualities.
|
| By definition you cannot have an elite that is comprised
| of a large part of the population. The problem is that
| education institutions have an incentive to bring in more
| and more people for the money and the power it affords
| them but that's completely contradictory to the goal of
| production elite individuals.
|
| A true elite is only possible if you select for the top
| individuals each year and it cannot be determined solely
| by the capacity to pay for the school.
|
| A good implementation would use qualities from both US
| and EU style institutions: education at no cost but very
| selective process that only accept around 5% of each
| generation. Otherwise you are just wasting
| money/ressources on people that will never pay back,
| whether it is paid by the taxpayer in the EU or by the
| individual/family in the US is an implementation detail.
|
| And when it comes to "liberal arts" education, in a world
| where information is extremely cheap/free, it makes
| absolutely no sense. It was always about credentialism.
| The reality is that it was about assigning a fake value
| to people who are kinda useless. The primary selection
| features are obedience and industriousness which are not
| necessarily valuable qualities if they are not focused on
| worthwhile goals but it's very useful for the powers in
| place. Anybody knows that working hard isn't that
| desirable when the objectives are not useful. But this is
| exactly why we get DEI and other dysfunctional
| policies/systems.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Information is not culture. Universities teach culture -
| moral attitudes. They don't just transfer information.
|
| This applies to science and engineering as much as it
| applies to the arts, but you need a good education to
| understand what "morality" means in this context.
|
| The collapse of the West started when the old
| Enlightenment morality - education of all kinds as a
| collective good - was replaced by the MBA culture of
| greed and vapid narcissism.
|
| DEI was a weak and ineffectual response to that. The
| dysfunction goes far deeper, and universities are now a
| vector of it rather than a bulwark against it.
| ta20240528 wrote:
| The chemistry department teaches culture? nonsense.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| It gets incidentally taught whether it's on the syllabus
| or not.
| throw-the-towel wrote:
| Everything humans do is about culture. (Not to be
| confused with the arts.)
| seec wrote:
| Nonsense. Universities are just part of culture, it's
| tiny and most people do not participate and only receive
| the "products" coming out of universities. Culture is a
| broad concept and very region specific, it is not tied to
| academia. Universities have influence on culture but
| that's pretty much it.
|
| Universities are supposed to teach valuable skills and
| knowledge. Outside of STEM fields they are increasingly
| failing at that task. Relativism is in full force and we
| are in the "post-truth" world largely because university
| produced some of the most garbage theories you could
| think of.
|
| And universities have no business inserting themselves
| into moral arguments, otherwise it is basically a state
| sanctioned religion. But this is basically the problem,
| universities have become the ideological arm the power in
| place, exactly like it was when the Catholics dominated
| Europe and gave legitimacy to kings. Unsurprisingly there
| have been complaints of "neo-feudalism" which is just a
| repeat of the middle-age, that happened after the rise of
| Christianity, when universities were de facto Catholic
| institutions.
|
| > but you need a good education to understand what
| "morality" means in this context.
|
| Passive-agressive much ? Instead of attempting cheap low
| blows, maybe you can go through the trouble of
| explaining.
|
| Morals can guide you for science and engineering choices
| but the whole point of those fields is that they
| shouldn't be limited by morals. I think you are confusing
| ethics and morals but it also seems like you are just
| arguing for some form of censorship.
|
| >The collapse of the West started when the old
| Enlightenment morality - education of all kinds as a
| collective good - was replaced by the MBA culture of
| greed and vapid narcissism.
|
| Vapid narcissism is an inherent human behavior and
| doesn't have much to do with universities but is largely
| linked to consumerism. I guess you could say that people
| go to university for credentialism in order to get a good
| pay to finally express their vapid narcissism. But the
| universities have nothing to do with the process and just
| a middle point in route to the goal. Which is basically
| the argument: credentialism is nonsense and cost a lot of
| money for no good results. If universities would be
| successful, one could easily argue that vapid narcissism
| should be going down actually but instead you get just
| another marker of uselessness. As for the MBAs, they
| can't be that big of an influence in the universities,
| it's mostly about bachelors and masters; why even bring
| this up ?
|
| > DEI was a weak and ineffectual response to that. The
| dysfunction goes far deeper, and universities are now a
| vector of it rather than a bulwark against it.
|
| DEI take its roots in universities, via feminism, gender
| studies and all kind of social sciences bullshit. Those
| fields were created precisely to fill the ranks because
| it was statistically impossible to have enough people
| clearing the bar for the hard studies even if they had
| wished to expand capacity. It was just a way to make
| people pay for a piece of paper that is supposed to give
| them legitimacy even though what happened is nothing
| short of endoctrinement.
|
| Of course the universities are a vector of it, they
| created the dysfunction out of ideology and greed. It is
| just some a proto-religion that is trying to establish
| its authority. Nothing can tell you that better than the
| divide between the university "educated" women, voting
| left and the common man being either right-wing or closer
| to the center. Historically women are often the first
| followers of new religions (just go check who is doing
| new age bullshit) and they constituted the majority of
| early followers of Christianity.
|
| So DEI was hardly a response, it was the result of a new
| religion that has no name trying to cement itself in the
| establishment. But it can only work if the men play along
| and so far the sentiment has been quite negative to say
| the least.
| viraptor wrote:
| > Why would I want my DEI consulting to actually solve
| the underlying problem
|
| This applies to any consulting. Normally you want to
| solve a problem, because there's another thousand of
| companies that need similar problem solved. You don't get
| many people coming into a company with an immediate "I'm
| going to try to not improve anything" plan.
|
| > The left-extremists say "you need to give me a job in
| order to make your team more diverse".
|
| This is seriously weird even as a misrepresentation. The
| extreme left is for changing diversity overall rather
| than just "give me a job". (If we actually go extreme
| left, it would be closer to "we've got enough resources
| for everyone to not need jobs to survive" anyway)
|
| The overproduction issue is interesting, but it really
| didn't need the exaggerated caricatures as examples.
| maxglute wrote:
| > in terms of raw productivity
|
| In terms of dubious financialized metrics of
| productivity, i.e. debt + fx driven growth. Which is
| valid indicator, but also the same inflated indicator
| that suggests 2025 tertiary that cost 200% 1980 tertiary
| (income/inflation adjusted) is somehow more productive
| and not parasitic. The entire problem is spreadsheet
| doing gangbusters is dependenant on increasingly
| inequitable CoL extraction to prop up GDP flows. US
| economy would appear much less powerhouse if not for all
| the disproportionate financiailization/rent extraction
| from inelastic sectors (rent/education/health etc)
| aggregated over past 40 years over functionally
| comparable value goods/services.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Exactly. In <pick random developing nation that isn't too
| poor> a man who wants to construct a septic for a house
| pays a man with backhoe who understands the nuances to
| make it happen. Concrete and diesel are bought, etc, etc,
| etc. Let's say $5k USD added to GDP.
|
| In US same thing happens. But the man is compelled by
| threat of law to pay for engineering studies, permits, as
| are the man with the backhoe and the man making the
| concrete, etc, etc. $10k is added to GDP.
|
| Has anymore wealth actually been created tho?
|
| You can argue there's a difference because the latter
| septic is superior because on average they fail less and
| there's some amortized cost to that but if you're arguing
| about marginal differences in the face of an integer
| multiple you've kind of already lost.
|
| This generalizes to just about all products and services.
| No more value is being created. There's just a bunch of
| hands in the pot that look like value if you squint and
| apply motivated spreadsheet magic.
| mlinhares wrote:
| I haven't been in a car accident for 15 years, not even
| fender benders, that doesn't mean I shouldn't take
| insurance.
|
| As someone from a random developing nation car accidents
| deliver crippling debt and destroy lives there frequently
| because insurance is not mandatory.
|
| The developing nation blindly ignore the externalities of
| not having insurance (instead of spreading the cost
| throughout society, only a few people bear the brunt of
| it, usually the ones least equipped to handle it), so
| your example is great only if you assume its fine to
| continue to beat down the poor. There's a reason
| developed nations have developed such "red tape" and the
| anti-vaccine movement here in the US is finding out what
| happens when the red tape is removed.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| It comes down to the amortized cost of insurance vs
| amortized cost of not. Say nothing about how incentives
| get fucked all to hell by breaking things across many
| parties (principal agent problem) and the money distorts
| things.
|
| And this isn't just insurance. Just because someone who
| work is being made for by law or by rule says that their
| work output reduces the failure rate from X to Y doesn't
| mean that the cost of their work when applied to
| everything isn't a massive loss compared to just not
| paying for that and cleaning up the mess X times instead
| of Y times.
|
| You can appeal to emotion all you want but it's a very
| simple calculation. Heck, health insurance (in the US)
| serves a pretty obvious counterpoint.
| maxglute wrote:
| Compare against the typical OCED nation, US spending ~18%
| gdp on health, about ~8% higher than OECD average, i.e.
| 2T+ rent extraction per year for net lifespan that is
| statistically worse than OECD average. 6 months of US
| excess health spending buys you entire HSR system in
| China that's frequently being panned as overbuilt and
| wasteful. Meanwhile look at recently built Brightline
| Florida, with ~120 deaths per billion passenger km,
| normalize that to EU, JP, PRC HSR billion passenger km,
| you'd get 15k, 50k, 310k fatalities per year. Imagine PRC
| losing Cincinnati every year due to rail deaths. Now
| Brightline extra dumpfire execution but just to highlight
| at some point there's too much red tape, and red tape
| doesn't always buy you value. Sometimes the system is so
| broken and you end up the worst of both world quadrants:
| high cost rent extraction & less than first world
| outcomes because the accumulation of redtape itself is
| leading to substandard outcomes. AKA premium medicore.
| Extra worse in some sectors when it's not simply
| opportunity cost inefficiencies, i.e. you lose on
| something else. A sclerosic money flow recycling
| maximizer can also makes the thing it's pumping money
| into worse than expected.
| randerson wrote:
| There is still $5K more _economic_ value created, in that
| +$5K went to people who might otherwise be jobless.
| They'll in turn spend that money at businesses in the
| private sector, reaching more people, and so on. If the
| man with the septic tank runs a coffee shop, he will see
| extra value from more coffee sales.
|
| The extra taxes paid by all will (theoretically) improve
| the schools, roads, military, and services. The
| regulations will (theoretically) decrease the risk of
| poisoning ground water and injuring someone, which adds
| even more value to the local community.
|
| The distinction is just that the septic tank is twice as
| expensive in the developed country. But that money can
| lift people out of poverty. The exception is when the
| company owner is hoarding the majority of the money tax-
| free instead of paying it to people who will spend it.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| The person who wanted the septic tank almost certainly
| would spend that $5k somewhere else if he had it. Except
| in that circumstance he would spend it on something that
| he thought provided him value, instead of overbearing
| regulation.
| randerson wrote:
| As someone with a septic tank, I'd rather spend more on a
| system that won't fail and won't kill anyone. I'd grumble
| while paying so much but I'd still do it. Just like I'd
| rather pay more for a car from the over-regulated EU than
| one for half the price from a country with no safety or
| quality regulations.
|
| I realize I don't speak for the more cash strapped
| population, and I agree that overbearing regulation can
| be a problem. The problem is not regulations themselves,
| which save lives, but the perverse execution of new
| regulations in countries like the US (often written by
| market leaders to cement their moat, with the power of
| lobbying.)
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >There is still $5K more _economic_ value created, in
| that +$5K went to people who might otherwise be jobless.
| They'll in turn spend that money at businesses in the
| private sector, reaching more people, and so on. If the
| man with the septic tank runs a coffee shop, he will see
| extra value from more coffee sales.
|
| That's the grade school analysis and in reality we are
| all poorer for it.
|
| If ten people pay $5k to avoid getting a substandard
| service that has a 1/10 chance of happening and will cost
| $20k to remediate if it does that is a massive loss to
| the overall economy because that money otherwise would've
| been spent elsewhere else.
|
| This isn't just septics, it's every widget and service.
| And it's not just a government and tax problem (though
| those cases are frequently most flagrant). Private
| industry requirements cause the same problems.
| Aerroon wrote:
| And in some areas it's even worse than that -
| construction quality for housing can be very poor. You
| basically need an independent building inspection to not
| get scammed by poor quality construction.
| ReflectedImage wrote:
| Ahh the bad high school maths take, which doesn't account
| for the risk.
|
| People don't just build 1 thing for a house nor can they
| afford a $20k failure.
|
| If you take Fred who saves up $10k for a major purchase
| for his house each year.
|
| If there is a 10% chance of a failure, then Fred will
| have a 53% chance of bankruptcy in 7 years.
|
| You can't run an economy where everyone is bankrupt.
| pantalaimon wrote:
| So instead of a man with a backhoe we should instead hire
| 10 men with spoons?
| secabeen wrote:
| > In <pick random developing nation that isn't too poor>
| a man who wants to construct a septic for a house pays a
| man with backhoe who understands the nuances to make it
| happen. Concrete and diesel are bought, etc, etc, etc.
| Let's say $5k USD added to GDP.
|
| The piece you're missing is that the man has to pick
| between 10 indistinguishable men with backhoes, of which
| some unknown percentage are charlatans who will dig a
| hole, put some pipes in it, then disappear with the
| money. The original man will now have a puddle of human
| waste next to his house, no septic system, and be $20k
| poorer ($10k+ in cleanup, then $10k to someone to build
| an actual system).
|
| Regulation ensures that the charlatans can't operate and
| that everyone who pays $10k for a septic system actually
| gets one that works for decades. This also protects the
| original man's neighbors who also suffer when his
| property develops a cesspool. Regulation also protects
| against well-meaning but incompetent operators, who are
| also common when regulation is weak or non-existent.
| infecto wrote:
| This is a wild take imo. Yes, I am sure there there are
| definite cases of overreach and I generally sit squarely
| in the libertarian camp but most permits, studies, etc
| are there for a reason. Maybe you have lived in a
| developing nation but I have and I can say you are at
| much higher risk of death because of the lack of
| oversight. The number of commercial building fires, risky
| electric installations, lack of common code is highly
| dangerous.
| bildung wrote:
| > The USA is still THE powerhouse economy of the world.
|
| Things look decidedly different if you exclude the ad
| companies (Google, Meta, ...) and associated shovel
| sellers, see the WaPo article about the S&P 493 from a
| few days ago.
| phillipcarter wrote:
| Not to discount physical infrastructure, but the world is
| quite digital these days and being at the absolute top of
| the software + associated techs economy is nothing to
| sniff at.
| RVuRnvbM2e wrote:
| The reason for US economic domination starting in the 50s
| is the fact that society and infrastructure in the rest of
| the developed world had been utterly devastated by the
| second World War. The rate of college education is utterly
| irrelevant.
| spankalee wrote:
| > When America was truly at the top of the world in the
| 1950s and 1960s
|
| You mean when so much of the rest of the world was poorly
| educated either not very industrialized yet or had their
| industrial base destroyed by the war? Easy for the US to be
| "on top" then.
|
| But I much prefer the better educated America that came
| after that, even if wasn't as "at the top of the world" -
| though I'm really not sure who else you could be referring
| to that could be more on top.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| US had highest per capita GDP in the world in 1913,
| before Europe's first, and second, self destructions. The
| US would have been on top in the in 1950s and 1960s no
| matter what. Just by scale, resources, and economic
| system.
| danans wrote:
| > The percentage of American adults over age 25 who have a
| college degree was only 20% as recently as 1990. When
| America was truly at the top of the world in the 1950s and
| 1960s, it was under 10%.
|
| Due to automation and the great advance of technology, the
| floor for most jobs has risen such that the
| skills/knowledge that a 1950s school dropout had would be
| insufficient for anything but the most menial jobs today.
|
| Outside of a few sectors like agricultural or physical
| service labor, our economy just doesn't need less educated
| people anymore.
|
| That doesn't mean everyone needs a 4 year degree, but to
| make a sustainable living at least a degree from a trade or
| service school focused on some advanced technician skill is
| required, and that must be followed by apprenticeship and
| licensing. In the end, it requires as much time as
| University, but might cost less if the education is at a
| public community college.
| jswelker wrote:
| Community colleges are the best existing institution we
| have to fill the gap. They are too wedded to the
| university model though. Credit hours, semesters,
| discrete courses, administrative overhead, the whole
| works, minus much of the campus life dressing.
|
| Hell I applaud even boot camps for trying to fill it, for
| all their faults. At least they tried something slightly
| different.
| bombcar wrote:
| Our immigration policies pretty strongly indicate we
| still need those less educated people doing work, we just
| don't want to _pay_ anything resembling reasonable wages
| for such.
| danans wrote:
| I agree that our system relies heavily on uneducated
| migrants for menial labor.
|
| However, uneducated people in the 1950s regularly got
| jobs in factories that paid enough for a single income to
| support a family.
|
| That opportunity for uneducated Americans won't come
| back, regardless of our immigration policies.
| K0balt wrote:
| It's likely that automation is about to turn the world on
| its ear vis-a-vis low skilled employment. The cost of
| human sustenance and care is surprisingly high compared
| to electricity, steel, carbon fiber, and silicon.
| stefs wrote:
| While it's true that it was possible to support a family
| on a single unskilled laborer income in the '50s, their
| standard of living was far below anything most people
| would accept today.
| fpoling wrote:
| A single income family in US with the husband working at
| a factory in fifties and sixties could afford a home with
| washing machine, dish washer, TV and a phone. Surely the
| home was smaller, but it was easier to clean, the TV
| screen was tiny, but then the family can go to a cinema.
| There was no internet, but for information one could go
| to the library. So how it was far below what people in US
| could accept today?
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| There are certainly a few people that would accept it,
| look at the whole "tiny home" and "van life" phenomena.
| It's possible that more would, if smaller houses were
| available. Builders make much more profit on larger
| houses though.
|
| I guess apartment living is closer to what people had
| post-war, but everybody wants to buy a house to get in
| the real estate gravy train.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| >While it's true that it was possible to support a family
| on a single unskilled laborer income in the '50s
|
| I'm not even sure that is true. Poverty in the US was
| higher in the fifties and sixties.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_State
| s#/...
| immibis wrote:
| Depends how you measure, surely. They had less TVs and
| computers and prepackaged food, the same amount of
| sunlight, and more freedom (as measured by average income
| to rent ratio).
| crossbody wrote:
| Not true, the share of income going to living necessities
| has steadily dropped. Even not true for sunlight - the
| air quality was so much worse that you couldn't see much
| of the sun anyway
| seec wrote:
| Hard disagree. Most useful skill and knowledge is still
| learned on the job. The "education" is just a selection
| process. And not only it is a pretty bad one, it is
| extremely costly.
| danans wrote:
| > Most useful skill and knowledge is still learned on the
| job. The "education" is just a selection process.
|
| It selects for the ability and intrinsic motivation to
| learn.
|
| If you were running a factory or a building construction
| company, wouldn't you want that in someone you hire?
|
| Are there high school dropouts who have the ability and
| intrinsic motivation? Of course there are. Many drop out
| due to poverty and family/community strife, or mental
| health challenges.
|
| But as an employer would you risk assuming a high school
| dropout had the same motivation?
| seec wrote:
| > It selects for the ability and intrinsic motivation to
| learn.
|
| You are confusing obedience and willingness to jump
| through hoops with the motivation to learn. People
| largely don't need school to learn most things. I would
| argue that most good learners actually hate school. It
| would be challenging to self-teach your way to advanced
| math/physics but that does not concern the vast majority
| of education. Being motivated to learned is deeply linked
| to having a reason for learning. I actually wouldn't
| trust people who were too industrious at school for
| careerist reasons because it mostly means they are able
| to tolerate bullshit and rote learn without much pushback
| on nonsense. STEM is somewhat immune to this because you
| need at least some form of understanding to solve actual
| problems but plenty of field have a legitimacy issue
| resulting from this effect. Notably the medical field is
| full of hard working idiots and most of the social
| sciences are infested with ideological parrots. Allegedly
| it is supposed to select for conscientiousness but since
| I have faced specialised doctors who schedule 2
| interventions when it could be done in one for billing
| purpose, I would argue it's mostly self-interest or a
| very perverted form of conscientiousness.
|
| > If you were running a factory or a building
| construction company, wouldn't you want that in someone
| you hire?
|
| Someone having a specific diploma doesn't mean he is
| actually competent in practice. It is just more likely
| that he isn't absolutely terrible, but that's mostly risk
| edging. It's funny you take that example because a while
| ago there was a news in France where an architect had
| sentenced because he practiced without the required
| diploma. The guy was 60 and he had designed some big
| building, even for the public market (his mistake); he
| had learnt on the job with a mentor and never got around
| finishing the school curriculum. Le Corbusier famously
| didn't have any formal architectural training yet
| seventeen of his projects are on UNESCO list. So I dunno,
| personally I would hire Le Corbusier regardless of his
| training if I ever could afford it but the point is that
| everyone should be free to choose for themselves, not the
| powers that be of the education establishment.
|
| > Are there high school dropouts who have the ability and
| intrinsic motivation?
|
| Yes, it doesn't mean anything, just that they got bored
| with education system or had some other problem. Two of
| the most valuable companies were founded by drop outs,
| Steve Jobs and Bill Gates (not high-school, but first
| year of college is basically the same). If it was just a
| problem of competence, you could have some sort of
| certifications for most things, where one could take an
| exam to prove that he knows what he is doing. But this
| doesn't happen because it is about enriching a specific
| class, restricting access to high level jobs to people
| who will submit to the dominant ideology. Most
| certifications/exams have a specific education
| level/diploma as requirement for entry. This is just
| supply control in favor of the most fortunate. You just
| cannot reduce ability and motivation to the
| willingness/capacity to submit to the education system.
|
| > But as an employer would you risk assuming a high
| school dropout had the same motivation?
|
| That's the whole point of a business. Assume risks to
| merit the potential payoff. Why do you think the cost of
| job training should be assumed by the public when they
| will not get any of the private benefits generated. On
| top of that, the issue is clearly a disconnect between
| what is needed in the market and what type of curriculum
| has been sold in universities so it's clearly not
| working. In any case it seems insane to me that you are
| arguing for the isolation of training risks for the
| benefits of business. What is need is relaxed employment
| regulations, so that if it doesn't work out, it is not
| too expensive for business to let go of poor prospect. In
| an healthy labor market, people would find jobs and the
| required training much easier. Schools are just a way to
| offload the cost to the private individual at best or to
| the public at worst. That's just bad, business have no
| reasons to exist if they are just to leach of public
| benefits, might as well go full on communism at this
| point.
| terminalshort wrote:
| People can operate heavy equipment and even fly planes
| without a fancy sounding degree, so I don't think some
| stupid office job is so complex that a HS grad can't
| handle it.
| torginus wrote:
| That is absolutely untrue - a large part of the jobs were
| either outsourced and/or automated to be trivial, but a
| large part is essentially barely made easier by
| technology - food service, all the jobs necessary for
| running and building infrastructure, homes etc. is only
| changing very slowly due to technology - this is due to
| the nature of the fields, even if there were rapid
| advancement in plumbing (there weren't) in the past few
| decades, most of the buildings are standing and
| rebuilding them makes little sense - same with water
| treatment facilities, power plants etc.
|
| In fact I would argue in some ways society is even less
| capable today - the percentage of people skilled in the
| trades is much lower, so it would be much harder to
| rebuild from scratch.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| > Due to automation and the great advance of technology,
| the floor for most jobs has risen such that the
| skills/knowledge that a 1950s school dropout had would be
| insufficient for anything but the most menial jobs today.
|
| I love to point this out to anti-welfare people and make
| them blue screen. Especially when they're not willing to
| acknowledge unethical solutions, such as euthanizing the
| stupid or acknowledging that not having welfare for an
| unemployable population shits things up for the rest of
| society.
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| Correlation-only is sloppy analysis.
|
| The inheritors and descendants of those that directly
| created the problem are screaming at the colleges as the
| problem.
|
| But that's ass backwards: Create the long-term financial
| opportunity and the college problem will disappear
| overnight.
|
| The correlation is because rational actors will follow the
| only leads available to make money, survive, and raise a
| family.
|
| Edit: I edited the tone, slightly.
| overfeed wrote:
| > The inheritors and descendants of those that directly
| created the problem are screaming at the colleges as the
| problem
|
| Not to mention rank-and-file American conservatives who
| see universities as bastions of liberal thought/power,
| and create threadbare, post-hoc arguments as to why
| universities have to be dismantled or politically
| reeducated when partisanship has to be disguised.
| lurk2 wrote:
| > when partisanship has to be disguised.
|
| The conservatives are right about the partisan bias of
| universities. See this survey by Mitchell Langbert.
|
| https://www.nas.org/academic-
| questions/31/2/homogenous_the_p...
|
| Anthropology and communications saw no registered
| Republicans. English, Sociology, and Art departments had
| a ratio of around 40:1 Democrat professors Republican
| professors, whereas in technical fields the ratio drops
| considerably to only 1.6:1 in engineering, and around 5:1
| for economics, chemistry, and mathematics.
|
| Langbert notes:
|
| > The political registration of full-time, Ph.D.-holding
| professors in top-tier liberal arts colleges is
| overwhelmingly Democratic. Indeed, faculty political
| affiliations at 39 percent of the colleges in my sample
| are Republican free--having zero Republicans.
|
| Duke: https://dukechronicle.com/article/duke-university-
| faculty-su...
|
| > When asked for their political identities on a scale of
| "very liberal" to "very conservative," 23.2% of
| respondents identified as "very liberal," 38.53%
| identified as "somewhat liberal," 24.48% identified as
| moderates or centrists, 9.92% identified as "somewhat
| conservative" and 3.87% identified as "very
| conservative."
|
| Yale: https://buckleyinstitute.com/faculty-political-
| diversity-rep...
|
| > Across 14 departments in the Social Sciences and
| Humanities, the report identified 312 Democrat faculty
| (88%) and only 4 Republicans (1.1%), a ratio of around 78
| to 1.
| overfeed wrote:
| > The conservatives are right about the partisan bias of
| universities
|
| Yes - and? Police forces and catholic churches skew
| conservative, but I figure it's an emergent property
| based on the self-selected group who join the respective
| organizations plus some exposure to new ideas.
|
| You seem like you expect political "neutrality", but if
| you look at at any institution, you'll find "bias":
| theatre fook, country music, poets, small Business
| owners, baristas , farmers, CxOs, software engineers tend
| to lean one way or another on average. The battle is not
| to establish political neutrality everywhere, but
| selective against universities because the staff &
| students leans left. I'm yet to hear conservatives
| complain about the political bias in the Fraternal Order
| of Police or the FBI.
|
| Looking at history, every nascent autocracy takes aim at
| independent intellectuals, like clockwork. First to be
| neutralized is the opposition, then the press, then the
| intellectuals in higher education.
| lurk2 wrote:
| > I figure it's an emergent property based on the self-
| selected group who join the respective organizations plus
| some exposure to new ideas.
|
| There are plenty of conservatives interested in
| anthropology; there's no reason to think they've self-
| selected out of the pool, so then we have to consider if
| conservatives enter the field but are exposed to new
| ideas such that none remain conservatives for long (this
| seems unlikely), or that these departments have been
| taken over by people who explicitly use their influence
| within these departments to promote certain narratives;
| this is far more likely as they have been explicitly
| stating that this is what they are doing for decades now.
|
| This theory is further corroborated by where you see this
| bias; it's the least pronounced in quantitative,
| technical fields (mathematics, engineering, chemistry),
| and most pronounced in fields that are almost completely
| qualitative.
| overfeed wrote:
| > or that these departments have been taken over by
| people who explicitly use their influence within these
| departments to promote certain narratives
|
| What mechanisms do these department heads use to suppress
| conservative viewpoints in research? While politics in
| academia can be vicious, it's never a grand conspiracy
| like you think it is, it's typically, and depressingly
| petty issues and grudges.
| lurk2 wrote:
| > What mechanisms do these department heads use to
| suppress conservative viewpoints in research?
|
| DEI has likely had a minor influence. In the articles I
| linked above, the bias towards liberalism is weakest
| among Asians, then whites, and then strongest among
| blacks and Latinos. I don't know what the racial
| composition of professors looks like, so this is just a
| hunch.
|
| The primary mechanism would be to simply avoid hiring
| those who fail to signal that they are sufficiently
| liberal, and avoid funding research that would reach
| illiberal conclusions. I can't point you to any evidence
| of this besides the paper I linked above, but which seems
| more likely:
|
| 1) Republican opinions just so obviously conflict with
| the study of communications that there are zero
| professors of communications who are registered
| Republicans.
|
| 2) Democrats took control of these positions and did not
| care to invite anyone who didn't signal that they were
| ideological fellow travellers?
|
| > While politics in academia can be vicious, it's never a
| grand conspiracy like you think it is, it's typically,
| and depressingly petty issues and grudges.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_march_through_the_inst
| itu...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deplatforming
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Being interested is not the same as being competent.
|
| Conservatism is not a doctrine of competence. Experience
| shows time and again that conservatives can't think,
| can't plan, and can't govern. They act in emotional and
| purely self-interested ways to promote rigid hierarchies,
| and are reliably surprised by consequences that are
| obvious and predictable to rational educated actors.
|
| Brexit. Anti-vax campaigns. Anti-masking. Racism.
| "Lowering corporate taxes makes everyone richer."
|
| All delusional, all emotionally motivated, all
| predictable failures with terrible consequences.
| inemesitaffia wrote:
| I've seen this exact claim in the NYT and it doesn't hold
| muster.
|
| You're just othering.
|
| The organizations we're talking about aren't diverse,
| inclusive or representative.
|
| Nor is conservativatism a Western only thing.
| esrauch wrote:
| I'm not sure what evidence you would expect to see if it
| was self-selection because of an in-group mentality
| versus explicit hostility to intentionally keep some out.
|
| By comparison, is there some affirmative evidence for the
| reason why there are so few liberals in the FBI is
| because they self-selected out, instead of that the FBI
| being perceived as a conservative institution causes them
| to self-select out?
| lurk2 wrote:
| > I'm not sure what evidence you would expect to see if
| it was self-selection because of an in-group mentality
| versus explicit hostility to intentionally keep some out.
|
| What about an explicit roadmap?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_march_through_the_inst
| itu...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deplatforming
|
| > is there some affirmative evidence for the reason why
| there are so few liberals in the FBI is because they
| self-selected out, instead of that the FBI being
| perceived as a conservative institution causes them to
| self-select out?
|
| I'm not sure I understand your question. I would presume
| if people are self-selecting out of any organization it's
| because they believe it isn't a suitable place for them,
| and if this division is along party lines then politics
| is likely to be the cause of that belief. In either case,
| if the FBI skews conservative, I would guess that this
| was due to internal gatekeeping, not self-selection, and
| I think the history of the organization supports that
| assertion.
| esrauch wrote:
| > What about an explicit roadmap?
|
| I'm not sure what you're pointing at in the links: I
| don't see any "explicit roadmap" to exclude mainstream
| conservative thinkers from professorships documented
| there. The main examples seem to be Creationists and Alex
| Jones and similar inflammatory content creators having
| paid speaker invitations rescinded due to student
| pressure, which is an radically different topic than what
| I thought the thread was about.
|
| > In either case, if the FBI skews conservative, I would
| guess that this was due to internal gatekeeping, not
| self-selection, and I think the history of the
| organization supports that assertion.
|
| The FBI very dramatically skews conservative compared to
| the American base, and I think it is a conspiracy theory
| level claim that the explanation is that the FBI is
| deliberately keeping out mainstream-left-leaning people
| from being agents.
|
| It's always very attractive to believe that there's some
| shadowy cabal explicitly and deliberately controlling the
| strings to the outcomes that you don't like, when in
| reality it essentially is never the case. The reality is
| always far messier, and nearly all bad things stem from
| complex emergent systemic outcomes with no X-Files
| Smoking Man at the center of it all.
|
| Any claim of an affirmative explicit decision for the bad
| outcome requires exceptional justification, because it's
| just such an appealing thing to want to believe and its
| almost never true.
| immibis wrote:
| Is this a problem? We expect universities to have a pro-
| truth, pro-reality, pro-knowledge bias, which are things
| the Republican party overtly rejects. We could expect
| that Republicans might not make it to universities as
| often, or they might not want to attend, or they might
| cease being Republicans upon learning facts and logic.
| None of this would be surprising and none of this would
| necessarily be a problem by itself.
| gedy wrote:
| > We expect universities to have a pro-truth, pro-
| reality, pro-knowledge bias
|
| And yet they are far from that. Lots of finger-in-ears,
| "la-la-la-I can't hear you" behaviour from universities
| in US/west past decade for sure.
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| Speaking of fingers in ears...
|
| That happens in conservative circles too. But instead of
| 4 years, Americans like myself are stuck with 40 years of
| business indoctrination from pro-business and
| conservative "leadership".
|
| The same leadership, by the way, that largely insisted on
| college degrees in the first place.
| lurk2 wrote:
| > We expect universities to have a pro-truth, pro-
| reality, pro-knowledge bias, which are things the
| Republican party overtly rejects.
|
| The people you're pretending to be harbingers of truth
| believe that men can get pregnant.
|
| > or they might cease being Republicans upon learning
| facts and logic.
|
| So why is the bias the strongest in the least rigorous
| fields (communications, anthropology, music) and weakest
| is the most rigorous (mathematics, engineering, medicine,
| physics)?
| ReflectedImage wrote:
| This is a conservative problem.
|
| Conservatives are split into 2 groups. Conservatives who
| are in it for the money and conservatives who are in it
| because they don't know any better.
|
| College professor is not a well paying job for the level
| of skill required nor is it a job that someone who isn't
| very knowledgeable could do. That excludes most
| conservatives from the position.
| lurk2 wrote:
| > Conservatives are split into 2 groups. Conservatives
| who are in it for the money and conservatives who are in
| it because they don't know any better.
|
| An inane assertion made without evidence.
|
| > nor is it a job that someone who isn't very
| knowledgeable could do
|
| So why is the bias the worst in the least rigorous
| fields?
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > Not to mention rank-and-file American conservatives who
| see universities as bastions of liberal thought/power
|
| To be fair, they kind of are. In the 20th century there
| were conservative academics at elite universities and
| they've since largely been excommunicated as heretics.
| Which has been a mistake, because then the people who
| would have agreed with them instead reject academia as a
| whole and latch on to demagogues, which is _so_ much
| worse.
| watwut wrote:
| This is not true. Whole conservative departments do well
| and exist. Moreover, whole ideologically pure christian
| conservative universities exist. Literally kicking off
| students for "infractions" that go against evangelical
| orthodoxy.
|
| Some people got off due to sexual harassment not being as
| cool as before, history and sociology started to study
| women and minorities. The problem is that conservatives
| see that just existing as a threat. If the history is not
| biased their way, they feel like victims.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Being segregated into different universities is exactly
| the thing you need not to happen, and your attitude is
| the exemplification of the problem. Who is going to feel
| welcome if their concerns are blindly maligned as
| prejudiced and in bad faith by default?
| watwut wrote:
| It is not like liberals would created religious colleges.
| Religious colleges were created by evangelicals and they
| have rules that explicitly punish things like "woman
| having male visitor" or "being gay" or "not being
| religious". If what you want is ideological purity of
| evangelical Christianity, then yes, you have to create
| own institution. Which is exactly what conservatives did.
|
| Because it is extremely valid for other institutions and
| students to NOT be subject to the above. They were not
| kicked off other universities and less radical Christians
| still go there. Issue was that other universities did not
| punished non conservative thought and behavior enough.
| These conservatives do not want to share space with other
| nor to welcome anyone except those who are as
| conservative as them.
|
| Your argument is typical "up is down and down is up"
| reversal. Conservatives want to create their own
| segregated spaces, because places that accept and
| tolerate non conservatives are just not acceptable to
| them. Somehow that is framed as problem with those other
| places not accepting conservatives (meaning not punishing
| non conservatives enough).
| inemesitaffia wrote:
| This is nonsense though.
|
| When academics were pushed out of Soviet and Chinese
| universities they had to leave to other locations or stop
| being productive.
|
| The fact they can set up their own schools is a plus in
| the USA.
|
| The disparate impact is clear.
| watwut wrote:
| > When academics were pushed out of Soviet and Chinese
| universities they had to leave to other locations or stop
| being productive.
|
| That is not what happened with Soviet nor Chinese
| academics. They did not started new ideologically pure
| universities. Maybe you should read more on history
| rather then making up an alternative one.
|
| Moreover, these "new" universities are not run by
| academics.
|
| > The disparate impact is clear.
|
| The only disparate impact is affirmative action for
| conservatives. In fact, most universities you complain
| about are run by rich and conservative boards. They make
| decisions to please rich and conservative donors.
|
| But, they accept gay, women are treated more equally and
| that is something conservative christians cant stomach.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > Religious colleges were created by evangelicals and
| they have rules that explicitly punish things like "woman
| having male visitor" or "being gay" or "not being
| religious".
|
| Which is dumb, but we're talking about the major schools
| everybody knows that used to have ideologically diverse
| faculty and don't anymore, not the ones of lesser
| influence founded by Baptists to begin with.
|
| The point of freedom is that other people are allowed to
| be fools without requiring you to be, not that everybody
| be required to choose which major brand of zealot they
| have to be.
|
| > Issue was that other universities did not punished non
| conservative thought and behavior enough.
|
| The issue is this:
|
| https://www.thefire.org/research-learn/scholars-under-
| fire-2...
|
| People being punished for expressing ideas.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| are you saying that your kids should not go to college?
| okay, now do you see why your statistic is meaningless,
| even if it is true? who answers "yes" to the first
| question? (hardly anyone).
| ggm wrote:
| A minor nit. "Should not" is on a path from "don't have
| to" and "can chose not to"
|
| When the fintech boom in the 80s and 90s kicked off,
| quants aside, many had zero tertiary education. The
| benefit of a university then became access to social
| circles, and a bit of spreadsheets. I have friends who
| worked in this sector, and the associated industries
| wiring it up and nobody cared about your degree if you
| weren't dining with merchant bankers.
|
| I think the WH is proving at best education is marginal
| value to hucksters.
| expedition32 wrote:
| It's about who you know not what you know is sadly true.
|
| Let's not pretend that 4 years in an average US/European
| university creates a renaissance Uber man.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| What specifically are you calling revisionism? I don't see
| anything in their post that's tied to these numbers.
|
| They said it's good. They didn't say it matches the best
| decades of the economy.
| Swenrekcah wrote:
| The problem is that almost everyone is now expected to get
| a degree which necessarily devalues the whole thing.
|
| It is now necessary to get a doctorate if you want to
| really signal academic prowess, but that comes with an
| incredibly high opportunity and personal cost.
|
| Society really needs to just accept that just over half of
| the population is never going to maka a good doctor,
| engineer, physicist, etc. and that is perfectly OK. We
| readily understand that very few people can become
| professional athletes and don't think any less of those
| that can't.
| firesteelrain wrote:
| The correlation is backwards. America's mid-20th-century
| dominance was not the result of having only about 10
| percent college graduates. It came from unique post-World
| War II advantages: intact industrial capacity, massive
| federal investment like the GI Bill, NSF, DARPA, and the
| interstate highway system, and the fact that global
| competitors were rebuilding from destruction. The GI Bill
| greatly expanded access to higher education and economists
| widely credit it with boosting productivity, innovation,
| and the growth of the middle class. Rising college
| attainment in the 1990s and 2000s coincides with
| globalization, offshoring, and wage stagnation, which makes
| this a correlation problem rather than evidence that more
| education causes national decline.
| dmix wrote:
| It was 10% of the US population who went to college
| before the GI bill, which then doubled to 20% over a
| decade following the war. Now >50% have post secondary.
| 70% attempt post-secondary after high school
|
| Before WW2 only about 40% of people completed high
| school, now it's at 90%
| firesteelrain wrote:
| Those numbers actually back up the point. The jump in
| education after WWII happened during the biggest boom
| years the US ever had. The rise to 40 percent college
| grads happened much later, during globalization and
| offshoring. So the slowdown is about the economy
| changing, not people getting more education. It is just a
| bad correlation.
| dmix wrote:
| Right, there was clearly much more capacity for advanced
| education with the rise of technology (farming
| advancements, medicine, electronics etc) that started
| before WW2
|
| There is something to the point about needing a
| correction in post secondary education and making
| university again a specialized place rather than the
| catch all default generalized institutions. Where 70% of
| the population tries to waits 3-5yrs+ to enter the
| workforce in exchange for lots of debt. A debt heavily
| incentivized by cheap gov backed loans, subsidies,
| credential inflation, and very profitable immigration
| schemes.
| firesteelrain wrote:
| Sure, there are real issues with cost, debt, and
| credential creep, but that does not change the basic
| point: the expansion of education itself was a net
| positive for decades. The problems we have now come from
| financing, policy choices, and a labor market that
| shifted under globalization. Blaming education levels for
| broader economic or social trends just mixes up the cause
| and effect.
| zbzdrol wrote:
| > A high fraction of college attendance is better
| correlated with the 21st century decline in America's
| situation.
|
| You're basically arguing that having more uneducated people
| is better. If that were the case, why did most of the world
| bend western and American in the latter 20th century
| culturally?
|
| The problems now are that we have a super-old man and a
| bunch of others with super-old ideas at the helm, and as a
| whole none are both wise and caring. I say this as a
| middle-aged gen-X'r.
|
| The missing ingredient is that no one fucking cares about
| anyone other than themselves. It's not a problem that we
| need to solve by dumbing people down. I'd argue that we're
| not educated _enough_.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| > You're basically arguing that having more uneducated
| people is better.
|
| Are you arguing that having more people educated in a
| narrow range of topics is necessarily better? In the USA
| in the 1950s I would suggest there were more people who
| knew how to make machine tools or even food.
| NickC25 wrote:
| >You're basically arguing that having more uneducated
| people is better.
|
| _" I love the poorly educated"_
|
| ~our current president.
| locknitpicker wrote:
| > When America was truly at the top of the world in the
| 1950s and 1960s, it was under 10%. A high fraction of
| college attendance is better correlated with the 21st
| century decline in America's situation.
|
| I think this is a textbook example of correlation not
| implying causality. The US was awarded a unique competitive
| advantage with WW2, which allowed it to become the world's
| hegemon. Much of the reason that the US was able to
| preserve it's status was how it managed to leverage that
| competitive advantage to fuel it's economical and
| technological development to build up and retain a
| competitive advantage. This was only made possible by its
| investment in higher education and R&D, which is a big
| factor behind the progress in the 1950s and 1960s you're
| lauding. Things like the GI bill are renowned by the huge
| impact it had on the tech industry.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Rock
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Kleiner
|
| The US never managed to shake off its anti-intellectual
| bias, and has this irrational belief that ladder-pulling is
| somehow conflated with the cream always rising to the top,
| but if anything it's preventing their domestic talent from
| fulfilling their potential.
| rayiner wrote:
| The U.S. was already the richest country in the world per
| capita by 1880-even at the peak of the British Empire.
| Most of its military achievements during the war--
| building up the world's largest Navy and airforce from
| almost nothing within a couple of years--was a product of
| the industrial economy that already existed before the
| war.
|
| America's preference for common wisdom over book learning
| is a strength, not a weakness. Formal education filters
| for risk averse, process and credential-oriented people.
| And you need some of those people, but you don't want
| your society to be like India where you worship
| credentials and degrees like religion.
|
| The GI bill isn't a counterpoint. GI's still had to gain
| admissions at a time when colleges were far more
| selective than today: https://www.realclearscience.com/bl
| og/2024/01/23/why_college... (undergraduate IQs fell from
| 119 in 1939 to just 102 in 2022). So you created a filter
| that was extremely rigorous. It supported college
| education for people who were both significantly smarter
| than average, and also had served in the military--the
| Marcus Aurelius type.
| timmytokyo wrote:
| I see very little evidence for this abundance of American
| "common wisdom". If anything, America has always had a
| deeply anti-intellectual vein running through it, whether
| it was the Scopes monkey trial, the Know Nothing Party or
| what you see in the present political scene. Higher
| education, especially the affordable kind at public
| universities, has been a bulwark against the paranoid
| delusions that often dominate societies that revere
| superstition and "common sense" over reason, empiricism
| and humanism.
| lambdaphagy wrote:
| The Know Nothing Party had nothing to do with anti-
| intellectualism per se. It was a secret anti-immigration
| party whose members were required to say they "knew
| nothing" of the group if asked.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| Huh? Little evidence? Prosperity in America was built by
| millionaires that drove 20 year old white pickup trucks
| (because base color was $100 cheaper). They were very
| "common wisdom". Almost all had to understand and operate
| within the commodities markets(where reason and
| empiricism meet head first with humanism and human
| behavior), head multi million dollar organizations,
| negotiate multi million dollar deals, and tried to build
| multi-generational (not next quarter) businesses.
|
| And every one I knew made sure their children went to
| University and were educated, because they understood
| it's value. So did every farmer, factory worker, bus
| driver. Their kids didn't understand the value, they just
| new they had to go. Just like todays kids don't
| understand the value. I don't think that's changed, other
| than parents aren't forcing life choices on their kids.
|
| You are either very young and only exposed to the modern
| Audi driving millionaires, or had zero interaction with
| the actual industrial/ag/creative space/inventor America
| pre 2008/pre MAGA brainworms. But these people used to
| exist and were building blocks of this country AND local
| communities (unlike their zero community loyalty
| replacement leased Audi millionaires).
| enraged_camel wrote:
| America's post-war strength _was_ built on unusually
| strong education. After the war, America had far more
| schooling overall than other countries. It was one of the
| many factors that made America a powerhouse in the 50s
| and 60s.
|
| Economic historians Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz, who
| are essentially the gold standard reference here, show
| that the US became the richest nation precisely because
| it led the world in mass education (first universal high
| school, then mass higher ed), not in spite of it.
|
| >> America's preference for common wisdom over book
| learning is a strength, not a weakness. Formal education
| filters for risk averse, process and credential-oriented
| people.
|
| High-education countries don't look like basket cases.
| Among 25-64 year olds, the countries with the highest
| tertiary attainment shares are: Canada (64%), Japan
| (56%), South Korea (53%), USA (50%), and the Nordic
| countries hovering around similar rates. These are some
| of the richest, most technologically advanced societies
| in the world. If "credential worship" made a society
| brittle and unproductive, you'd expect these places to be
| obvious failures.
|
| India's problem is not too much college. It's that gross
| tertiary enrollment ratio is only 33%, below the world
| average. The development-econ diagnosis of India is
| actually the _reverse_ of your claim: too many people
| with too little quality education, especially basic
| literacy, numeracy and foundational skills, plus a small
| highly-credentialed elite at the top.
|
| >> The GI bill isn't a counterpoint. GI's still had to
| gain admissions at a time when colleges were far more
| selective than today: https://www.realclearscience.com/bl
| og/2024/01/23/why_college... (undergraduate IQs fell from
| 119 in 1939 to just 102 in 2022). So you created a filter
| that was extremely rigorous. It supported college
| education for people who were both significantly smarter
| than average, and also had served in the military--the
| Marcus Aurelius type.
|
| The GI bill massively expanded college. Half of all
| college students in 1947 were vets. It is widely credited
| with building the post-war middle class. The IQ meta-
| analysis you cite explicitly says the drop in average
| student IQ is a _mechanical result_ of more people going
| to college, not evidence that universities got worse. The
| researchers in fact explicitly say this.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| +1 outstanding rebuttal w/ facts and data-backed
| insights, thank you for that
| jmspring wrote:
| Part of the problem with the way India wants to be seen
| is those that go to IIT, etc., get into white collar jobs
| that elevate them well above the norm in India want to
| ignore the rest of the country. Abject poverty.
|
| The US has severe issues as well, but many countries that
| want to be seen for their techonological advancement want
| to hide the less successful parts of their communities.
| intended wrote:
| > be like India where you worship credentials and degrees
| like religion.
|
| Or China, Japan, Korea...
| Xelbair wrote:
| >The US was awarded a unique competitive advantage with
| WW2, which allowed it to become the world's hegemon.
|
| That advantage was: being the only country that wasn't
| ravaged by war, and that profited for a while by trading
| with every faction.
|
| Some of countries were also severly kneecapped by US
| betrayal of promises, made by allies - to restore pre-war
| borders, and handover of them to USSR - that means less
| competition.
|
| That also lead to US dollar becoming world's reserve
| currency, which may have affected the measured drop
| afterwards.
|
| There are so many factors involved in that that
| attributing it to just investment in higher education and
| GI bill is a gross oversimplification, so is previous
| post's attribution of the drop afterwards.
| locknitpicker wrote:
| > There are so many factors involved in that that
| attributing it to just investment in higher education and
| GI bill is a gross oversimplification, so is previous
| post's attribution of the drop afterwards.
|
| Your comment sounds like you didn't quite understood the
| point I made.
|
| The whole point was that US benefited greatly from WW2 to
| reach the position of world's hegemon. But that happened
| nearly a century ago, and reaching the position vs
| maintaining the position are two entirely different sets
| of challenges.
|
| My point was that WW2 gave the US a running start, but it
| still required work to preserve that advantage. The US's
| postwar investment in higher education and R&D was the
| key competitive advantage that allowed the US to preserve
| it's dominance until the present day.
|
| To put it another way, WW2 helped attract the world's
| finest research talent, but the technological and
| scientific achievements that followed were the result of
| the investment in domestic talent that followed. You
| cannot have the likes of silicon valley without the US's
| postwar investment in higher education and R&D.
| Xelbair wrote:
| now how much of it was good investment, and how much of
| it was just plain advantage due to that?
|
| It is hard to separate those two to verify either - that
| is my point.
| lenkite wrote:
| > maintaining the position are two entirely different
| sets of challenges.
|
| I will give full credit to the golden generation of
| Americans and the generation before that. They built
| America on true merit and efforts. However, maintaining
| the position was easy for the boomer and subsequent
| generations - break the Bretton-Woods agreement and
| shatter the gold standard _after_ the USD obtained the
| throne of the world 's reserve currency. This enabled the
| US to print infinite amounts of money and pile up
| unlimited debt and use the cash to sponsor any
| investment, any amount of social-security, buy anything
| and have the largest defense budget - so they can stomp
| anyone they want, heavily sponsor "regime change" - and
| still have relatively low inflation. The rest of the
| world just needs to grin and bear it.
|
| As a non-American, I am really hoping for de-
| dollarization and fully independent payment networks
| completely separated from the West. The Russia-Ukraine
| war and Trump sanctions has gotten us around 10% of the
| way there. Only then shall one see the _real_ effect of
| that $33 trillion debt.
| docfath wrote:
| > A high fraction of college attendance is better
| correlated with the 21st century decline in America's
| situation.
|
| Correlation != causation, but let's go the correlation
| route and see where it goes...
|
| China had correlation between higher-ed and economic
| growth, so I think you're just trying to make an argument
| to support a fascist dictator who doesn't want to be the
| dumbest person in the room.
|
| The decline in Christianity, rise in apathy, rise of
| industry in other countries, offensive wars, rise of
| entertainment culture, etc. are correlated also.
|
| One could also argue that the rise of uneducated
| conservatives was associated with U.S. decline.
| sharts wrote:
| Today's college is yesterday's high school though
| spicyusername wrote:
| Sorry to say that I don't think the post-WWII boom had
| anything to do with sound economic policies, but rather the
| chance fact that the United States was the only
| industrialized nation unravaged by war and capable of
| capturing a major share of global economic spending because
| of that.
|
| So... I wouldn't look too nostalgically backwards for
| policy guidance when we have an entirely different set of
| geopolitical circumstances.
| rixed wrote:
| Could it be that "America" and "Americans" are two related
| but different things, and that what's good for the one may
| not always be the best for the other?
| epicureanideal wrote:
| Academic freedom? Where has that existed in the last 20
| years?
| jswelker wrote:
| It's an interesting combo, but after working for a decade in
| higher ed, there is a real division and enmity between the
| liberal arts and sciences and the "career" programs. The
| latter is seen as an illegitimate degree mill. The former as
| a freeloader that does not pull its weight financially. It is
| an uneasy partnership of convenience.
| sagarm wrote:
| I had the impression that liberal arts students were highly
| profitable for universities, because they had no expensive
| labs.
| jswelker wrote:
| It depends highly on logistics like class size. Many
| programs brag about small class sizes, which are great
| for students but anathema to university bean counters.
| These programs often try to subsidize the small program
| specific courses with huge gen ed courses, making the
| whole student body effectively subsidize these
| underperforming programs. Real nasty fights occur over
| which courses to include in the gen ed program because
| every department wants a piece of that pie to prop up
| their poor numbers. And this dynamic is definitely much
| worse in humanities.
|
| Edit: also instructor composition, meaning the proportion
| of instructors in a program who are senior/tenured vs new
| vs adjuncts. Class size and instructor salary are nearly
| the whole equation.
| collinmcnulty wrote:
| It's absolutely an uneasy partnership. But my goodness the
| benefits of having rubbed shoulders with people studying
| forensics, entomology, philosophy, pure math, and
| agriculture were enormous. If I had gone to a school
| composed exclusively of engineers and other careerists, how
| much narrower would my world have been? And bringing in
| ideas from other areas of study has been so powerful in
| both my life and my career.
| mc32 wrote:
| What they crank out today suffers from grade inflation. No
| longer is 'C' the average grade. Kids and parents who pay
| over 100k for their diploma all demand above average grades.
| It's not as bad as presenting a diploma from a Caribbean
| diploma mill, but they're not what they used to be.
| collinmcnulty wrote:
| Agreed completely on this. I almost wonder if it'd be more
| palatable to add a grade above A, like a Japanese style
| "S".
| drnick1 wrote:
| That already exists, it's called an A+.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| American high schools are already doing a form of this,
| with certain classes earning more than a 4.0 score in GPA
| calculations. 5.0 is quite common now, with 6.0 and even
| 7.0 scores on individual classes being possible.
| trashface wrote:
| Many games already have an S-tier in class/stats/builds,
| whatever the criteria is. Would be funny if higher ed
| ripped that off. Life mimicking art and all that.
| hc12345 wrote:
| Most of the world has severed the two. A lot of what you'd
| consider key parts of the university experience just doesn't
| exist in most of Europe or the highly developed parts of
| Asia. In practice, it's attaching job training to a very,
| very expensive resort, regardless of who is paying for it.
| It's pretty nice, in the very same sense that spending 4
| years in a beach resort ls also great, but one needs to be
| absurdly wealthy to choose this model if an equivalent was
| available without all the features that most of the world has
| abandoned. The US system would already have been in trouble
| years ago if it didn't have a government license for being
| the safest, more reliable way to immigrate into the US. Get
| rid of the F1 practical training to work visa pipeline, and
| see many US institutions in serious economic trouble. We can
| keep trying to keep it working as-is by pushing other
| people's money into the expensive vacation environment, but
| without major subsidies, we are already seeing more people
| realize that the risks are way too high when you have to get
| loans to attend. There is no idealism separate from economic
| incentive in institutions that charge 60K per year, plus
| often a whole lot more for mandatory on-campus housing,
| without financial aid.
|
| But as it's normal with failing institutions, they'll be
| extended, kicking and screaming, until they completely
| collapse instead of reform, like almost every other country
| in the world already has.
| jswelker wrote:
| The F1 issue is absolutely real. Foreign students have been
| the secret sauce in keeping prices lower for US students
| for a long time now. Trump 1 and now Trump 2 presidencies
| have created financial crises at most universities just by
| making vague anti immigration gestures without even
| materially changing student visas. Presidents and provosts
| routinely make desperate oversea sales pitches to try to
| gin up the pipeline. I know of one major state university
| whose entire financial existence depends on visas from a
| few companies in Hyderabad.
| haritha-j wrote:
| Vague isn't the word I would use to describe Trump's anti
| immigration gestures.
| jswelker wrote:
| True, but with respect to the university visa system at
| least it is pretty vague. The ICE stuff is not targeting
| Chinese and Indian uni students.
| vasco wrote:
| > have created financial crises at most universities
|
| Those multi-billion dollar endowments are fine man, don't
| worry about them, they're not running out.
| immibis wrote:
| At 4% a billion dollars yields 40 million per year, if
| you have 1000 staff that's 40k each, barely pays a
| salary.
| jswelker wrote:
| I'm not talking about Ivy schools. I mean regional state
| and private schools that educate the majority of people
| who attend college. These do not have multi billion
| dollar endowments unless you are summing them all up.
| qweqweqwe12 wrote:
| > Trump 1 and now Trump 2 presidencies have created
| financial crises at most universities
|
| Worst financial crisis at any university was probably
| caused by himself at his own scam Trump University, long
| before he become president.
| ajashdkjhasjkd wrote:
| > Most of the world has severed the two
|
| Yes, and the US system is the envy of the world and is
| responsible for the overwhelming majority of wealth
| generated in the US over the past few decades.
|
| I'm not sure how that's an argument against the US Higher
| Ed system.
|
| Edit: The real issue you seem to be pointing to is the cost
| of attending universities in the US. There are 2 parts to
| this. 1 is the costs of running a university, and the other
| is the cost that is paid by the student.
|
| Most of the rest of the world subsidizes student tuition so
| students dont pay much out of pocket. The US, OTOH, has
| been consistently reducing govt support for student
| tuition. Even worse, it's been pushing students into taking
| loans that unlike most other loans cannot be discharged
| during bankruptcy. And even though students aren't required
| to start paying back those loans until they graduate, they
| do start collecting interest from day 1, which means a
| student has picked up a significant burden simply from the
| interest on the loans they received to pay for their
| freshman tuition, when they graduate.
|
| These are all issues with the US system of financing
| education as opposed to the actual liberal arts education
| system.
| jswelker wrote:
| Envy of the world due to network effects and inertia, not
| due to any inherent superiority of our model. There are
| some good parts of our model, don't get me wrong, but
| they do not explain the status of the US system at all.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| I don't see how you can be so confident in that. It's not
| at all straightforward to tease apart all the factors.
| rayiner wrote:
| > Yes, and the US system is the envy of the world and is
| responsible for the overwhelming majority of wealth
| generated in the US over the past few decades
|
| The benefits of the U.S. university system aren't
| generated by average people taking a debt-financed 4 year
| vacation. They are generated by the same subset of people
| who would still be attending university even in a scaled
| down system that sent far fewer people to college.
| vasco wrote:
| In your view the benefits of university are that rich
| people go there? Did I somehow completely misunderstand?
| K0balt wrote:
| It's unpopular to say, but a disproportionate amount of
| value is of course derived from people who are both
| educated and have immediate access to resources to fully
| exploit that education as well as the risk tolerance to
| innovate in the process, and the social status to build
| strong trust and social bonds with other similarly
| prepared people...so although it pains me to say it, yes?
|
| It is certainly plausible that the most benefit to
| society comes from people that are both educated and
| empowered.
|
| Whether the cost of that empowerment > the burden
| outsourced to society, well, that is another discussion.
|
| Perhaps more on point, because I definitely think we can
| find examples of this in practice, it's perhaps more
| truthy and also more actionable to say that college
| provides its optimal outcomes when it serves people who
| have intrinsic gifts that are empowered by knowledge.
| Sometimes these gifts are resources, but often these
| gifts are cognitive brilliance. Either one is like
| oxidiser for the fuel of knowledge, but especially
| brilliance when given resources.
|
| I'm pretty sure that for the majority of college
| graduates, aside from its social signalling value, the
| amount of their secondary education that directly
| benefits them in their life could fit in a couple of
| years of summer school or a year of community college.
|
| A quarter million dollars in debt is a tragic price to
| pay for a couple thousand dollars of educational utility.
| A system that requires a social signal 100x more costly
| than the value it represents is externalising that cost
| onto everyone, and the only benefits flow to financiers
| and the moneyed class.
|
| Aside from educational titles (as opposed to
| capabilities) society is generally sensible regarding the
| cost of symbols vs the reality they facade.
|
| We recognise the ridiculousness of people owing $90,000
| for a truck when they live in a dilapidated trailer on a
| rented lot. We understand that a man who lives hand to
| mouth but wears a half of kilogram of gold around his
| neck is probably not making the best life decisions. We
| ridicule the faux-intellectual with their ridiculously
| stilted props. But somehow, we are convinced to dress up
| our children like heirs to the crown and send them to
| finishing school for their jobs in retail. It's a
| profound mis-investment.
|
| It's also worth noting that it is way more expensive to
| provide an education to the intellectual proles than it
| is to educate brilliant and hungry minds. We are
| shovelling money (distilled human effort) into a furnace
| of misery in the service of vanity.
| rayiner wrote:
| > We recognise the ridiculousness of people owing $90,000
| for a truck when they live in a dilapidated trailer on a
| rented lot. We understand that a man who lives hand to
| mouth but wears a half of kilogram of gold around his
| neck is probably not making the best life decisions. We
| ridicule the faux-intellectual with their ridiculously
| stilted props. But somehow, we are convinced to dress up
| our children like heirs to the crown and send them to
| finishing school for their jobs in retail. It's a
| profound mis-investment. It's also worth noting that it
| is way more expensive to provide an education to the
| intellectual proles than it is to educate brilliant and
| hungry minds. We are shovelling money (distilled human
| effort) into a furnace of misery in the service of
| vanity.
|
| This is a fantastic analysis.
| rayiner wrote:
| No, the benefits of university are from smart people who
| can earn enough during summers to pay reasonable tuition
| if schools weren't set up as four-year vacations with
| lavish amenities. When I went to Georgia Tech, in-state
| tuition was about $2,400 per semester, or about $20,000
| over four years (in 2024 dollars). It was a spartan,
| 1970's experience--like European universities often are
| today--but it was quite affordable for students who could
| earn that much at summer internships. And it's not just
| for engineers. My wife put herself through the University
| of Iowa, studying business and german literature, in 5
| semesters by nannying.
| secabeen wrote:
| And do you know who is responsible for the increase in
| tuition at Georgia Tech? The legislature and governor of
| the state of Georgia. State appropriations for higher ed
| and the tuition rates at Georgia Tech are set exclusively
| by the state government and its appointees on the Board
| of Regents for the State University System, not by
| university administrators in any way.
|
| https://www.usg.edu/regents/
| nothrabannosir wrote:
| > Yes, and the US system is the envy of the world
|
| Where in the world have you polled?? because this is
| categorically opposite to my experience discussing the US
| college system
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| I dunno, google any university ranking and you will find
| the top ten has many from the US?
| FranzFerdiNaN wrote:
| University rankings have pretty much nothing to do with
| how well they teach students, only their research output.
| And good researchers aren't automatically good teachers (
| and vice versa).
| globalnode wrote:
| google, lol, marketing doesnt make a university good.
| nothrabannosir wrote:
| I don't know any such rankings which measure envy, I'm
| afraid. It's all based on numbers of papers published,
| etc.
|
| Do you think people in other countries envy the us
| college system based on rankings? If so I strongly
| recommend a trip abroad and striking up a few
| conversations with prospective or enrolled students. In
| my experience the topic of cost and non dischargeable
| student loans comes up often. Rankings very rarely.
| vee-kay wrote:
| The education system to be envied by the rest of the
| world is Norway's model.
| 59nadir wrote:
| > Yes, and the US system is the envy of the world and is
| responsible for the overwhelming majority of wealth
| generated in the US over the past few decades.
|
| Can you elaborate on this a bit? It's very easy to read
| uncharitably without further elaboration and reads pretty
| delusional as is.
| hackinthebochs wrote:
| >Most of the rest of the world subsidizes student tuition
| so students dont pay much out of pocket.
|
| And they also severely restrict who can attend
| university. Of course this is a non-starter in the
| current US political environment.
| expedition32 wrote:
| In my country the only restriction for university is that
| you have a highschool diploma.
|
| Getting into the medical faculty is harder because the
| government does pay for everything and training doctors
| is expensive- for those the university picks the best and
| brightest.
|
| The government also has programs in place to send out
| students to Harvard and MIT as the future elite of the
| nation.
| terminalshort wrote:
| > Yes, and the US system is the envy of the world and is
| responsible for the overwhelming majority of wealth
| generated in the US over the past few decades
|
| Citation needed on both counts
| Ekaros wrote:
| From European perspective US system is a joke. All built
| on even bigger joke of high school. Which fails to teach
| students what they need in general education. And thus
| you get some weird "general" education irrelevancy being
| part of degree. Not to even mention how Master's level is
| not the standard most aim towards.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| The US made a big shift from public financing via grants
| to public financing via loans. During the same period
| there was a ton of information/propaganda disseminated
| about how much more lifetime income college grads made vs
| high school grads. The companies making these loans are
| doing very well.
|
| If I believed in conspiracy theories I might think this
| was all planned.
| wavemode wrote:
| It's not sustainable to sell a product that most people only
| buy because they were trying to buy something else (or
| because they're forced to for societal reasons).
|
| That sort of approach is exactly why "Americans no longer see
| four-year college degrees as worth the cost" (as the title
| states)! People are wising up to the truth, and now it's
| harming the credibility of the system as a whole.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Everything's a societal reason from some angle. We've
| probably tilted a bit too hard towards college as a
| universal path, but I think the median college-degree-
| required job would still tell you that they're trying to
| find people who value education and learning for its own
| sake. The best doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc. are the
| intellectually curious ones who don't see education as a
| burden.
| trimethylpurine wrote:
| Then sell it to doctors, lawyers, and engineers. Those
| fields aren't really the issue.
| conductr wrote:
| You went from "median" job/employer to "best" employee in
| high value/pay/education roles. These best employee's
| don't want to work in the "median college-degree-required
| job", they likely have done some significant post-grad
| studies and have also likely been saddled with more debt
| thus requiring their high paying career outcome just to
| avoid collapse of their personal finances.
|
| I think the median 4 year college graduate going after
| the "median college-degree-required job", did not care
| much about their studies at all. They slogged through it
| hung over from the night before. College was a social
| experience and gave them a sports team to root for on
| Saturday. It let them extend their childhood and eschew
| responsibilities for a few more years.
|
| We have this weird cultural thing in the US where we put
| super high expectations on education systems but we
| actually don't value education. We value the social clout
| and whatnot. Public schools are a prime example, parents
| are the problem. Make your kids do homework! Take away
| the video games/phone/tablet/wifi/whatever. It translates
| to college as, do just what is necessary to get a degree.
| Often the bare minimum, etc. Cheating runs rampant and so
| on. It manifests itself in so many ways. Just a core part
| of youth right now is much more interested in being an
| influencer, popular, a good athlete, no sorry good
| athletes are a dime a dozen - you need to be an elite
| athlete, etc. Being a bookworm or just studious simply
| isn't seen as cool, it has no social reward, quite the
| opposite in fact.
|
| This might not apply to many students at ivy and top
| schools, but I'd argue it's certainly the median for the
| nation's college students the past few decades maybe
| longer. I think colleges allow it to happen. They don't
| grade as harshly as they used to, they have dumbed down
| the courses, etc. I wouldn't be surprised if the "median
| undergrad" education was more on par with the "median
| high school" education from a few decades ago.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| I think the rigid nature of other systems leads to more
| promising people being eliminated early on. America was
| always more fluid: the country of Homer Simpson: A guy
| that got second chance after second chance and with his
| own way of doing things(which others like Frank Grimes
| find absurd), managed to make something of himself.
|
| Applying this logic to college, schools used to be more
| strict yes but there was always leeway for students to
| chart their own path to success, it never really felt
| like Asia or Europe's systems where they place you in a
| bucket early on and thats it you are in there for life.
|
| I graduated with an Engineering degree in the early 2010s
| and let me tell you, I really did do the bare minimum in
| a bunch of classes. It led me to tinker with junk
| computers that the school discarded which led me to
| dedicated school space in a lab to experiment which led
| to my first job and general success. Looking back not
| studying harder led to more trouble later on but the path
| still worked out because I jumped at some opportunities
| due to that path. If I were in asia, I would have
| probably not even be admitted or permanently weeded out
| after my first academic probation warning instead of
| being a decently successful software developer.
|
| > Just a core part of youth right now is much more
| interested in being an influencer, popular, a good
| athlete, no sorry good athletes are a dime a dozen
|
| Before that people dreamed of becoming a hollywood actor.
| It was the number one desired career for years. The bar
| is much lower for trying your luck at being a successful
| influencer than becoming an actor. The end result will be
| the same, many will try and flame out and then go do
| something else.
|
| >Being a bookworm or just studious simply isn't seen as
| cool, it has no social reward, quite the opposite in
| fact.
|
| You sound like you are thinking of the 1990s as your
| context. These days after movies the The Social Network,
| one of the most desired careers is in software
| development. This goal requires people to expend much
| more effort than prior generations pursuing other desired
| careers and many more kids are doing it! Techies are the
| boss now.
| conductr wrote:
| I definitely like the flexibility our system provides. I
| changed majors a couple times before I found what I could
| tolerate (can't say it's a passion). I do not think the
| kids today are as comparable to the kids of yester*. I
| think in past, people desired those things in a day
| dreamy way, but knew it wasn't realistic. They also knew
| they'd get disciplined for poor grades; perhaps even
| harshly. We just culturally have really relaxed on being
| stern parents and I feel we have transitioned to wanting
| to be friends with our kids. That's a great thing too but
| it needs a balance IMO, there are advantages to being
| stern. But we're a nation of lazy parents who have high
| expectations of teachers, but don't pay them, and won't
| even help them out at home by being a parent and taking
| responsibility for our kids. (My rant on this topic is
| too verbose for HN but I firmly believe it's lazy
| parenting at the core of how we view education systems
| performance/lack of)
|
| > Techies are the boss now
|
| I think it's more accurate to say that more socially
| adept people have infiltrated the tech scene due to the
| loot. Sure tech no longer equates to nerd like it did
| back then, and bullying is managed differently now, but
| let's not pretend that the same type of kids that were
| into tech back then are ruling the world today. The
| normalization of tech has opened it up to average joe's
| that wouldn't have touched it back then due to the social
| stigma it had. This is why I chose the words "bookworm"
| and "studious" because those things do not necessarily
| mean tech. But kids that value their studies over their
| social lives, or just like to have conversations about
| something more intellectual than video games and the
| trending tiktoks, are still likely outside the fold
| whatever the contemporary take on that is. Social norms,
| bullying, cliques have all changed but being a teenager
| in a group setting isn't yet a democratic affair.
| seec wrote:
| > I think it's more accurate to say that more socially
| adept people have infiltrated the tech scene due to the
| loot.
|
| Yep, it's all about status, money and power chasing.
| Nothing taught me this more than getting an iPhone before
| everyone else in France (wasn't yet available, imported).
| Before that I had weird phones and proto-smartphone that
| costed as much but nobody cared. But the iPhone was cool
| and desirable and automagically I became more desirable.
| Before that nobody gave a shit about my technology
| interest and it wasn't for the lack of trying to discuss
| it at large.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| >I think it's more accurate to say that more socially
| adept people have infiltrated the tech scene due to the
| loot. Sure tech no longer equates to nerd like it did
| back then, and bullying is managed differently now, but
| let's not pretend that the same type of kids that were
| into tech back then are ruling the world today.
|
| Ok you do make a good point about people coming into tech
| for the money. It was quite a recent phenomenon. About 15
| years ago I was finishing at my engineering focused
| university and my CS department was considered loser
| ville. Only the deeply passionate people wanted to enroll
| in that program. Everyone else went into Engineering or
| the sciences. Fast forward a few years later, and they
| are the largest department in the university. We are at
| the tail end of a massive bubble and its possible that if
| AI sticks around or the tech industry cannot support
| these valuations, its likely that high salary gigs will
| become scarce. I guess we will then see if this field
| grew because most people genuinely wanted to be here vs
| people just looking for dollar signs.
|
| >This is why I chose the words "bookworm" and "studious"
| because those things do not necessarily mean tech.
|
| Yeah I'd imagine those kids would have gone into
| Engineering or similar fields instead. They really arent
| the people I was talking about. I considered the social
| structure growing up to be the "jocks" at one end of the
| social spectrum and the "techies" at the other end with a
| massive amount of regular people in the middle.
|
| If you take these middle people and just filter for B
| average grades or higher, these middle people wouldn't
| necessarily consider tech because it just wasn't really a
| 24 hour lifestyle thing for highschool kids in the 2000s.
| Yeah we had computers and video games but for most
| people, computers were that beige box in the den you'd
| play with once in a while, not a career. I recall in high
| school (mid 2000s) coding was offered and they couldn't
| even fill the entire class. The only course computer
| related that had any relevance was graphic design. The
| industry really expanded post iPhone when computing
| became a 24/7 lifestyle. In my opinion thats when the
| normies started considering computing as a career because
| it now impacted them directly.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| > But kids that value their studies over their social
| lives, or just like to have conversations about something
| more intellectual than video games and the trending
| tiktoks, are still likely outside the fold whatever the
| contemporary take on that is.
|
| Always hard to know what's universal, but I think the
| inclusion of video games on this list represents a
| genuine shift. When I was growing up only the other
| studious kids would talk with me about video games. We
| understood it to be an intellectual hobby because we were
| analyzing how to achieve things instead of just passively
| consuming.
| fwipsy wrote:
| Colleges used to be much more affordable even though they
| covered liberal arts and engineering together.
|
| Are all colleges unaffordable? Do all colleges require
| engineering students to take liberal arts? Maybe this isn't
| universal, maybe it's just that prestigious colleges all
| have strong liberal arts programs, either out of tradition
| or because it's required for being seen as prestigious.
|
| Liberal arts courses arguably are still helpful for
| building general language and reasoning skills.
|
| On the whole though, it does seem strange that I paid the
| same for a graduate level stats course and a freshman
| history course, even though the former taught me about five
| times as much.
| vkou wrote:
| > Do all colleges require engineering students to take
| liberal arts?
|
| 15 credit hours of liberal arts education isn't why
| college in the US is so expensive, and if one pays
| attention, they might even learn something from it.
|
| If nothing else, you'll learn how to read and write.
| torginus wrote:
| Liberal arts is a huge grab bag of courses with varying
| rigor, quality, appeal and difficulty.
|
| One of the best courses I had in college was a
| metalworking course during which I learned to weld.
|
| But like many (engineering) students, for most of the
| liberal arts credit, I went with stuff where I could get
| the best possible grade with the least possible work.
| collinmcnulty wrote:
| I did too, but still managed to gain a lifelong
| appreciation for live theatre.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > It's not sustainable to sell a product that most people
| only buy because they were trying to buy something else (or
| because they're forced to for societal reasons).
|
| Like a car in the United States, outside of perhaps five
| metro areas?
| DaSHacka wrote:
| What do you suggest people were trying to buy, instead of
| cars?
| rjsw wrote:
| The post is saying that you are forced to buy a car
| everywhere except five metro areas.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| In addition to the point made by rjsw in this subthread
| .... food.
| wavemode wrote:
| That's not for societal reasons, that's for practical
| reasons. People want to be able to get around.
|
| By contrast, many people don't want to be forced to take
| classes unrelated to their desired area of study.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| It is for societal reasons, in that some societies devote
| significant resources to ensure that people can "get
| around" without private vehicles, and others do not. It
| is also for societal reasons in that the distribution of,
| for example, grocery stores, dictates that people doing
| desired/necessary work in rural areas generally need to
| travel significant distances in order to obtain food.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| This comment would make more sense if more than ~38% of the
| country had a college degree. Can you really make the
| argument that college is truly a middle class concept if not
| even half of the populations has a bachelor's degree? I guess
| if you include community college which has really helped to
| serve the downtrodden get on their dream paths then I guess
| it makes more sense?
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Middle class doesn't necessarily mean average or median
| class, but rather some life style bar where you aren't
| struggling even if you can't afford many luxuries. In
| India, for example, the middle class is small (definitely
| not average!) but growing.
|
| Having a college education could totally be an indicator
| for middle class even if most people didn't have one.
| tovej wrote:
| The middle class is something in between the capitalist
| class and the working class, it's badly defined.
|
| If you're in the capital class, you're getting your income
| from the assets you own. If you're in the working class,
| you're getting your income from working.
|
| I've heard multiple definitions for a middle class, eiher
| one that owns some capital in the form of rental apartments
| or stocks, or that the middle class has a decenr amount of
| discretionary income.
|
| Personally I don't think the middle class is that useful of
| a term to make sense of the economy. I also have a feeling
| that people like the term middle class because it muddies
| the waters when it comes to understanding the relationship
| between capital and labor.
| wcfrobert wrote:
| There's that Jerry Yang quote:
|
| Middle class is a state of mind
| qcnguy wrote:
| That's a very ideological take, especially this part:
|
| _> It's peanut butter and chocolate that has served
| democracy and its people well_
|
| Most people are now saying in polls it didn't serve them
| well! You're disagreeing with the majority of people's lived
| experiences. And of those who say it was worth it, a lot will
| be people in denial. Nobody wants to rack up huge debts and
| then admit it was a mistake. If you were to somehow measure
| how many people it has actually served poorly, instead of
| whether people admit it served them poorly, the numbers would
| be worse.
|
| And serving democracy? No way! The Biden presidency stressed
| democracy by illegally attempting to bail liberal arts majors
| out of their debts, an extreme violation of the social
| contract. And arguing this stuff served people well when
| they're telling you right out that it didn't, is the kind of
| anti-democratic attitude that liberal arts colleges incubate
| in their student body. It's a big reason they're now openly
| loathed by so many people.
|
| A good example of the problem is when you claim the academy
| has "some kind of intellectual idealism separate from
| economic incentive". There is no "separate from economic
| incentive". Anywhere, ever. For an adult to have such a
| belief is like still believing Santa Claus is real. It's
| economic incentives that have led to these professors
| creating a flood of non-replicable research using
| unscientific methods. Publish more papers = get promoted,
| even if the claims are false. So they publish lots of false
| papers. Incentives = outcomes, always.
|
| Professors brainwashing people at vulnerable stages of their
| lives into believing false things about human nature is the
| number one reason why politics is so polarized, why democracy
| is so stressed all the time and it's so difficult to get
| anything done. It can easily take decades for people to learn
| that it isn't true and sometimes they never learn at all
| (like, because they went into academia themselves).
| collinmcnulty wrote:
| Friend, go to a community theatre production and you will
| find people engaged in something for which there is no
| economic incentive. Or learning a new language after
| retirement. Or playing church softball. There's more to
| life than money, and there's good in the world dollars
| can't capture.
| qcnguy wrote:
| We're talking about academia, not hobbies. Academics
| expect to get paid in both money and social status.
|
| As do churches and community theaters, by the way. They
| tend to expect donations. If nobody ever donated money
| they'd shut down.
| nicoburns wrote:
| > I think it misses what incredible alchemy comes from making
| people who come in for "job training" (like I did) spend 4
| years in close proximity with research, academic freedom,
| liberal arts, and at least an attempt at some kind of
| intellectual idealism separate from economic incentive.
|
| For me it was the opposite. I came into college full of
| academic curiosity, and left completely burnt out by a system
| that cares about grades and proving knowledge much more than
| the pursuit of knowledge.
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| If you can't prove knowledge gained, would that not
| indicate that the pursuit was fruitless?
|
| Regardless of your endpoint in that pursuit, you should
| have gained intermediate foundational knowledge along the
| way, even if you haven't arrived at your endpoint.
|
| If you cannot show mastery of that intermediate knowledge,
| then any kind of journey for knowledge would have failed.
| nicoburns wrote:
| "if you can't prove something, then it isn't true" is an
| obvious logical fallacy.
| redwall_hp wrote:
| Extraordinary claims requiring extraordinary evidence,
| however, is not. It's the foundation of the scientific
| method.
|
| There's an obvious lack of logical rigor to jump from
| someone pointing that out to framing it as proving an
| untruth.
|
| A is true if evidence B supports it [?] A is only true if
| evidence B supports it.
|
| But you can only _claim_ A is true if B. Otherwise you
| 're just blowing smoke around an unknown.
| taylodl wrote:
| The real issue is we've largely abandoned the public
| university from a funding standpoint. Now the costs of a
| public institution is beyond the ability for many Americans
| to pay. The unstable job market has led many to believe the
| risks outweigh the rewards.
| RRRA wrote:
| It's insane to me having to contemplate how much more of a
| simple cog in the machine I would be mentally,
| intellectually, etc. had I not been exposed to sciences for
| the sake of knowledge and had only been trained on the job
| and some day tossed out as not useful anymore...
|
| That would be the definition of alienation for me.
| jltsiren wrote:
| The job training you get at 20 is often obsolete when you're
| 40. For example, many women of my parents' generation trained
| for jobs in the textile industry. But eventually the jobs
| disappeared, as Finland got too wealthy. A bit more abstract
| education would have made it easier for them to find a new
| career.
|
| But not too abstract. From my point of view, the weird parts of
| the American educational system are the high school and the
| college. Everyone is supposed to choose the academic track. I'm
| more used to systems with separate academic and vocational
| tracks in both secondary and tertiary education.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| economies and national policies are complex. only the most
| straightforward things, like ending patriarchy, wars and
| modifying interest rates, have firm evidence of causing this
| or that thing on a national scale. nobody knows if so and so
| nuanced educational policy really matters in an
| intellectually honest way.
| nradov wrote:
| There are certain advantages to having separate academic and
| vocational tracks, but that tends to lock out late bloomers.
| Quite a few of prominent US scientists and business leaders
| didn't have good grades going into secondary school.
| bko wrote:
| Job training is a lot more than learning how to use
| equipment. It's about showing up on time, dealing with
| coworkers and being a productive member of a team. That's
| best learned on the job and is a big reason people don't like
| new grads. Its like going out on a date with someone that has
| never had a girlfriend. Let someone else break them in and
| screen them.
|
| Higher ed unfortunately almost desocializes a lot of people.
| They live in a bubble and become insufferable obsessed with
| politics and social issues that are disruptive and
| inappropriate in the workplace
| ajashdkjhasjkd wrote:
| > People want job training, and it got shoehorned into extra
| departments at liberal arts universities intended as aristocrat
| finishing schools
|
| I really wish the computer science degrees and even online
| courses spent like 30 mins on the history of computer science.
|
| The entire existence of this field has been dependent on those
| non job-training liberal arts degrees.
| metamet wrote:
| > I really wish the computer science degrees and even online
| courses spent like 30 mins on the history of computer
| science.
|
| Completely agree here. This would fall under the umbrella of
| liberal arts, which a lot of CS-only folks seem to find
| little to no value in.
|
| Most concepts in computer science--especially when it comes
| to programming--are fairly easy to learn if you're good at
| learning. Reading something and understanding it to the point
| that you can write a proper college level essay about it
| trains that muscle, which is a different skill than rote
| memorization.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| Schools typically have no space to squeeze it in. Here is a
| typical pathway for a CS student:
| https://catalog.njit.edu/undergraduate/computing-
| sciences/co...
|
| A 4 year cs degree dumps you into heavy math, physics, and
| intro CS + Data structures in your first year to weed people
| out who cant cut it.
|
| Second year teaches fundamentals of CS (discrete math,
| concept of languages, understanding algorithms at least at a
| basic level).
|
| Third year is filled with more practical fundamentals (OS,
| DB, computer architecture + field specific courses the
| student wants).
|
| Finally the fourth year pieces everything together with more
| advanced versions of prior topics (algorithms for example) +
| repeated practical applications of all the concepts from
| years 1-3 to hopefully put the student on at least an 'ok'
| footing post graduation.
|
| I guess you can try to make the first lecture or two in CS101
| about the history but most students don't even know if they
| want to pursue this journey. Would talking about Alan
| Turing's history really be appropriate in that class? I don't
| know really.
| dmurray wrote:
| > Schools typically have no space to squeeze it in. Here is
| a typical pathway for a CS student:
| https://catalog.njit.edu/undergraduate/computing-
| sciences/co...
|
| That course has 28 credits in first year, 3 of which are
| spent on computer science (arguably 3 more on "Roadmap to
| Computing"). Second year has a little more. Third and
| fourth year are heavy on CS/SE topics, but still have some
| time allocated to others.
|
| I don't _disagree_ with students learning Calculus and
| Statistics and even Physics as part of a CS course, and I
| think it 's excellent that they take at least two courses
| in English composition. But you can't look at that four-
| year curriculum and say nothing could possibly be cut
| (turned into an elective) in favour of a History of
| Computers module.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| I could concede that the "History or Humanities" elective
| in the 4th year could include an option for history of
| computing but I think the rationality of including that
| course in the first place is partly due to politics and
| accreditation requirements.
|
| Its also possible that the department wanted to round out
| the students education by providing something not related
| to STEM each semester.
|
| Note: these reasons I listed are just a guess based on my
| experience with the university.
|
| I still find it difficult to justify the placement of
| this course as a hard requirement because of how the rest
| of the STEM courses are structured. YWCC 307 is a very
| fluid course so maybe it can be squeezed in there? Anyway
| my point is that it is tough and I still feel that way.
| trinix912 wrote:
| > I really wish the computer science degrees and even online
| courses spent like 30 mins on the history of computer
| science.
|
| The uni I went to did, in multiple classes, to the point
| where you could almost predict the "war story" you were about
| to be told :D
| qcnguy wrote:
| How has the existence of the computing industry depended on
| baristas with Women's Studies degrees?
|
| Because the history I know has it being 99% created by men
| with engineering skills doing paid work for large
| corporations.
| rKarpinski wrote:
| Steve Jobs taking Calligraphy [1] comes to mind
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/UF8uR6Z6KLc?si=339qOh2AlIr5QC2f&t=204
| tovej wrote:
| Men and women. Women were heavily involved in the
| engineering work at the beginning of the industry. The
| industry only became male dominated in the late 20th
| century:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_disparity_in_computing
| qcnguy wrote:
| They weren't heavily involved and to claim otherwise is
| historical revisionism.
| jvvw wrote:
| Perhaps the people teaching thec purses don't feel qualified
| to talk about the history?
|
| I taught university-level computer science and I'm not a
| historian by any stretch of the imagination. I know something
| about the history and might mention things in passing but I
| don't think I could legitimately teach it to other people!
| dexwiz wrote:
| Plenty of colleges and universities started as job training.
| The Morrill land grant colleges were founded to study
| mechanical and agricultural arts, and that was over 150 years
| ago. Many of those are now the top state schools in the USA.
| seec wrote:
| At least the good part about the US situation is that people
| are still free to choose for themselves. The cost isn't
| redirected to the whole population at large via taxation. In
| the EU it's much worse, because the same reality is
| materialising, but it is still advertised as "free". Of course,
| this is the path to a form of soft communism and all systems
| are becoming dysfunctional and unable to create real value at
| the same time. The "solution" has been to create ever more
| taxation and even more debt that is to be paid by the next
| generation.
|
| It seems that the US will course correct but the EU seems to be
| declining into authoritarianism and proto-communism.
| tovej wrote:
| The EU is aggressively neoliberal or liberal-conservative,
| and that is the reason universities have begun to be more
| expensive. It's related to austerity, privatization, the
| aggressive revision of tax codes, and New Public Management.
|
| The left has not been popular in the EU since the 70s, which
| is why this development has gotten increasingly aggresive in
| the last few decades. You cannot seriously suggest that the
| EU has moved left in any meaningful way. The EU commission is
| currently trying to implement that every new regulation can
| only pass once an old regulation can be removed. It's a
| neoliberal dream, where the amount of regulation can only go
| down, and public funds are allocated to private companies
| more and more.
|
| This is especially true for universities, where public
| funding programs for research has begun to be funneled to
| startups instead of research groups.
| qcnguy wrote:
| _> where public funding programs for research has begun to
| be funneled to startups instead of research groups._
|
| It is darkly amusing that in one post you claim "the left
| has not been popular since the 70s" whilst admitting that
| the EU is centrally planning new companies. That's very
| much the sort of thing the left did in the 1970s.
|
| _> You cannot seriously suggest that the EU has moved left
| in any meaningful way ... the EU commission is currently
| trying to implement that every new regulation can only pass
| once an old regulation can be removed._
|
| And who believes they'll really do it? They only got to
| that point after ignoring decades of warnings from the
| right that their left wing approach would crush their own
| economic power, which it did.
|
| It's a common enough claim that "the left" refers to
| exactly the same set of ideas that it did in 1930, and
| therefore that no modern entity is left wing. But this is
| spurious. There are still left wing people and groups, that
| claim to be so and nobody disagrees with them.
|
| All that happened is that as left wing economics became
| discredited over the course of the 20th century the left
| became better at obfuscating what they were doing. After
| the working classes disappointed by not rising up in
| revolution, the concept of equality shifted to be about
| gender and race instead. The EU doesn't want to openly
| nationalize industries, but is _really keen_ on feminism,
| regulation and mass third world migration.
|
| And economically, the left didn't need to obfuscate much.
| The gap between heavy regulation and nationalization is
| small. CEOs get to pretend that they're still in charge,
| but with no strong commitment to private property rights
| they're ultimately just transient administrators and
| there's not much reason to sign up for the stresses of
| being one. So - no startups.
| tovej wrote:
| Centrally planning? My guy, the EU is not founding
| companies, it is giving existing companies subsidies. The
| profits of those companies will not be public, they are
| private.
|
| Nationalization and regularization are both on the
| decline. The opposite has happened: privatization of
| state monopolies and deregulatization.
|
| I also think it's hilarious that you think a) the EU is
| feminist, and b) that feminism is leftist. What you are
| describing is liberalism, a right wing political
| position.
|
| And even the liberal right is losing ground to the
| conservative right. The EU commission is far more
| conservative than it ever has been, and hard-right
| parties are in government in at least six EU countries
| (see e.g., https://www.politico.eu/article/mapped-europe-
| far-right-gove...), with conservative governments
| elsewhere. This is a strict break with tradition, where
| the extreme right has been excluded from European
| governments by consensus of other parties ever since the
| second world war.
|
| Your beliefs are not aligned with reality. I am also
| personally in the middle of this research money
| refunnelling, I can vouch forst hand that research money
| is being funneled to startups and other private
| companies, while austerity measures are hitting hard
| across the EU.
| seec wrote:
| You are arguing about form and semantics.
|
| Yes the bureaucrats have added a indirection level to
| shield themselves from consequences and fill the pockets
| of their friends. This is basically the definition of
| corrupt communism. Where political figure assign and
| distribute the work and rewards the commissars who
| oversee the work. Your head is so far up your ass that
| you don't even realise that you basically described the
| Chinese system, which is, guess what, freaking communist.
|
| Feminism is absolutely leftist and is straight from the
| Marxist playbook. De Beauvoir and Sartre are the parents
| of modern feminism and are both heavily influenced by
| Marx. In the Soviet Union the propaganda for equality was
| extremely strong and women were just considered another
| regular worker, same as the men. In fact feminists played
| a key role in the revolution of 1917 and gained suffrage
| right away. Funnily enough, women complained that they
| were exploited, because unlike feminist in rich
| capitalist countries that can afford to give "freedom" to
| women in exchange for very little work/value, the soviet
| women were actually required to work, the country being
| too poor to afford them easy jobs. But you'll tell us how
| actually it's all liberalism and whatnot, for sure you
| have a special history we don't know about that
| contradict every common sources we know about. For sure.
|
| Yes the EU is becoming more right-wing and conservative.
| This is course correction after decades of left/center-
| left (and greens) domination. But do you realise that
| this fact is completely contradictory to your point of
| view.
|
| The argument is that the EU *was* pushing socialist
| policies and establishing a soft-form of communism. You
| contest that, claiming neoliberalism domination but then
| you admit that right-wing/conservative are just coming
| into power. I mean it was literally yesterday.
|
| > For the first time, a right-wing majority is emerging
| at the European Parliament as the European People's Party
| flirts with groups that would have been considered too
| toxic to work with in the past. The pivot has given the
| EPP a choice but also created a headache for Ursula von
| der Leyen.
|
| https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2025/11/15/how-the-
| epp-us...
|
| A news that was published literally 15 days ago. It
| cannot be that both the EU was ruled by neoliberals and
| they are just coming into power at the same. Do you
| realised how disingenuous you are ? If not this is
| frightening.
|
| > Your beliefs are not aligned with reality.
|
| No clearly you have a delusional point of view. Even
| wikipedia that is famously tilting left is basically
| disagreeing with you on everything. Get a grasp.
|
| > while austerity measures are hitting hard across the
| EU.
|
| Of course that's coming. They have ran out of others
| people money and debt level are unsustainable. But I
| would also contest you personal anecdote with one of
| mine, since I know someone who is currently receiving
| subsidies for a musical concert via EU. So maybe you are
| just bad a selling your projects on top of having a
| distorted view of reality. To be honest that would make
| sense because even the hardest left-wingers are not
| stupid enough to believe the garbage they sell to the
| wider populace. They pretend in public but in private
| they'll tell you about whatever power trip they are
| currently chasing.
|
| You seem to be getting high on your own supply; that
| can't be good.
| qcnguy wrote:
| _> My guy, the EU is not founding companies, it is giving
| existing companies subsidies. The profits of those
| companies will not be public, they are private. I can
| vouch forst hand that research money is being funneled to
| startups and other private companies_
|
| Nobody claimed it isn't, but governments trying to pick
| winners by subsidizing startups is still the same old
| left wing politics. You don't see the USA spray grants
| around at the scale the EU does, do you? I'm pretty sure
| they don't directly subsidize startups at all.
|
| BTW companies are routinely created in the EU
| specifically to access the 'free money' of grants. The
| act of offering subsidies creates companies. The profits
| - if any - will be taxed heavily. They are only partly
| private. We agree, though, that this is not as extreme as
| the 100% profit tax that occurs under nationalization.
|
| _> I also think it 's hilarious that you think a) the EU
| is feminist, and b) that feminism is leftist._
|
| The EU leadership class all demanded a female EU
| Commission president before Ursula vdL mysteriously
| failed upwards into the role without explanation:
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/23/eu-leaders-
| cal...
| seec wrote:
| Well the common theme of leftist is that they are in
| complete denial of reality.
|
| This is how you get some dude that will argue with a
| straight face that EU problems absolutely come from
| neoliberalism when many of the biggest members are
| closing on 60% public spending to GDP ratio. I just can't
| imagine the cognitive dissonance at this point.
|
| I wish it would be simple ignorance or plain stupidity
| because it would mean that would be somewhat solvable.
| But they are simply and purely lying and they have been
| doing it for so long that they don't even know where/what
| reality is anymore. That's a bit sad when you think about
| it.
|
| At least the "good thing" is that since they are nothing
| but parasites, eventually they successfully destroy the
| host system. Then comes the reality check and for a while
| the parasites get evacuated.
|
| By the way, HN is infested with Marxist types, which is
| hilarious considering it is supposed to be a forum for a
| filthy capitalist endeavor. But this is the way of life
| of the parasite: identify a valuable target and destroy
| it from the inside. Find another supply, rinse and
| repeat.
| seec wrote:
| Ah yes, the neoliberal boogeyman.
|
| Here is what Wikipedia has to say on the matter. >
| Neoliberalism is often associated with a set of economic
| liberalization policies, including privatization,
| deregulation, depoliticisation, consumer choice, labor
| market flexibilization, economic globalization, free trade,
| monetarism, austerity, and reductions in government
| spending.
|
| Do you agree with that definition ? If so, none of what is
| happening in the EU is consistent with that description. If
| not, I'm all hears for what you think it means.
|
| > The left has not been popular in the EU since the 70s
| What constitute the left has mutated and is not called as
| such anymore. It is now found in the "green" parties and
| adjacent. The hard left is actually very popular, at least
| as much as the right wing, but I'll grant you they are
| becoming less desirable because people are pushing back on
| the immigration the hard left is very much for that. It is
| incoherent because it mechanically reduce the power/earning
| of their supposed electorate but on the other hand it
| grants them dominating power in key places and they get the
| votes of the bourgeoisie.
|
| Here is some data on public government spending in the EU.
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/263220/public-
| spending-r... https://tradingeconomics.com/country-
| list/government-spendin...
|
| Most of the rich countries are over 50% and approaching 60%
| very fast. After COVID, spending has increased at an insane
| rate, via debt creation. It's basically like a poor family
| using credit to buy an ultra expensive fancy car but I
| guess that's very austere to you.
|
| It's balsy to pretend that the EU suffer from austerity
| when the data readily show the contrary. The only tax
| revisions to be found are to raise them, not the other way
| around.
|
| To be clear, I'm all for the targeted raising of taxes on
| the boomers, who got us into this mess. I also think some
| of the regulations goals are laudable (notably transition
| to electric everything and building improvements but I
| disagree that regulation is the way to get there.
| Considering that the EU economy is basically in the dump,
| I'll say that the world largely agree with me.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Thanks, I thought this was a very insightful comment that
| helped me think about the problem differently.
|
| I would add, though, that I think "co-op universities" have a
| good solution. That is, places like Northeastern and Drexel
| when the undergrad program is 5-ish years and a good portion of
| that time is working in paid co-op positions. This ensures that
| students graduate with at least some real-world experience in
| their field but still get the benefit of classroom study and
| the full college experience.
| ryandv wrote:
| Obligatory uwaterloo plug. I didn't even end up graduating
| after 3 years of compsci but still ended up with almost two
| years of work experience. Colleagues in my early career were
| still paying down student debt while I had already paid for
| tuition out of pocket, not with tax dollars.
|
| Funny too, because I had a philosophy professor there who
| talked about how the university is _not_ a vocational school,
| but a place one goes to enrich the mind and become a more
| worldly citizen.
| hfsdhkdshksdhk wrote:
| Funnily enough there is a parasitic vine in Australian rain
| forests that kills its host and then thrives.
|
| It grows completely around the tree and creates its own trunk
| on the outside. The tree underneath eventually cannot get any
| nutrients in its sap and dies. The vine then feeds on the tree
| as it rots away on the inside.
|
| Eventually you have a hollow tree.
| jswelker wrote:
| Very apt metaphor for the current situation.
| trashface wrote:
| Sure sounds like a good descriptor for the US healthcare
| system at least. The hospitals will still be operating and
| collecting government payments even when most people don't
| have healthcare. Bunch of empty rooms with beeping hardware
| everywhere. Meanwhile a bunch of sick and dying people
| outside the hospitals that are too poor to actually go into
| them.
| shevy-java wrote:
| "People want cheap healthcare"
|
| This has a lot to do with what a country wants. Many countries
| show this is possible; the USA prefers a profit-based system
| where everyone pays a lot.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| There is indeed a mismatch between the traditional de jure
| mission of the university and the de facto mission it has
| today.
|
| What is the university traditionally for? Education. What
| curriculum is most quintessentially constitutive of education?
| The liberal arts (traditionally understood, not the flakey pot-
| smoking/Dead Poets Society counterfeit). What is the purpose of
| the liberal arts? The free man.
|
| What is the mission of the university today? Job training
| (putting to the side the question of how well it actually
| accomplishes this end). What are jobs? The servile arts.
|
| There's the heart of the contradiction. The university has a
| split personality that has rendered it bad at education and bad
| at job training, and to add insult to injury, it charges you
| Ritz prices for Motel 6 service.
|
| The idea of universal education was never sensible.
| "Democratization" leads to mediocrity, because now market
| forces demand you satisfy the customer. You fail everyone by
| doing this. You get people that are uneducated (despite what
| they fancy themselves to be) and poorly trained for work, and
| on top of that, burdened by crushing debt. What a great start
| to adult life!
|
| I propose that the first fundamental change needs to occur
| first in primary education, which is generally quite poor. Try
| teaching the basic liberal arts in primary schools (some
| adaptation of the trivium/quadrivium). Then, either after high
| school or by bifurcating high school into university-bound and
| trade-bound tracks, you choose one or the other track. In
| general, the majority should be in the trade track (where
| "trade" includes more that just plumbing or construction or
| whatever, but also vast swathes of what we put people through
| universities for for no justifiable reason).
|
| Then we unsaddle the university of its job-training duties.
| Instead, you have apprenticeships and technical schools and so
| on to prepare people for their occupations. The university is
| stripped of anything that weakens its mission as educating
| institution. Valuable ancillary activities are spun off into,
| say, technical institutes.
| harrall wrote:
| Liberal arts is cheap and is not why university is expensive.
| You can get it for relative pennies at a community college.
|
| I've studied at university, state college and community college
| and my best history teacher was at a community college.
|
| University is expensive probably because there is job demand
| but almost no real downward pressure to keep it cheap. Students
| can't provide much pressure and it's not directly affecting
| companies that ask for it. A lot of families also carry this
| "prestige" element that pushes the cost up.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| People don't want "cheap healthcare," people want to be
| healthy.
|
| And people don't want "job training," people want to be
| educated and have a fulfilling life.
|
| _Of course_ college looks too expensive if it is just "job
| training." But that is not what college is.
|
| College proved its immense value _first_ , and then because of
| its obvious value, employers started looking for it. But you've
| let the cart get in front of the horse, by thinking that the
| value of a college education is simply that employers are
| looking for it.
| kgdiem wrote:
| I agree with you in spirit but most people in the US look at
| college like job training. It's literally advertised as job
| training on TV, buses and billboards. Teachers, parents, and
| media have long been seen as "the way" to get a job.
|
| One of the most disappointing things about college was how
| little people cared about the liberal arts aspect, where
| humanities courses were an annoying box to tick.
| tootie wrote:
| I think that's the disconnect. When college was more
| rarified, it was populated by a mix of children of
| privilege and those who had the talent, ambition and desire
| to expand their minds. That selection bias was enough to
| predict future success. When the formula was boiled down to
| "college=success" it became a system to be gamed. Students
| scraping and cheating to get admission, schools offering
| easier degrees. The birth of diploma mills where education
| didn't matter and student life was non-existent. No wonder
| the value of college seems so diminished.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Teenagers do not understand the true value of things. This
| is not news and not restricted to the field of education.
| "You'll need to get a good job someday" is one of the all-
| purpose lines adults use when harassing them into making
| better life choices.
|
| College makes a person more capable in general, which
| confers long-term competitiveness during a career. That's
| why parents want their kids to go to college. And the great
| thing is it works even if the kid is just checking the box.
| It works better if they are engaged and enthusiastic, of
| course.
| fragmede wrote:
| > And the great thing is it works even if the kid is just
| checking the box.
|
| Maybe if you limit it to STEM degrees. There are plenty
| of people saddled with humanities degrees that haber no
| hope of paying off the loans taken to get the degree,
| nevermind a job past barista.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| No, what I'm saying is that if a kid takes a college
| writing class and does enough to pass it, at the end that
| kid will be a better writer. Even if they did not like
| the class.
| jb_rad wrote:
| The problem is there isn't an alternative for people who want
| one. I'm self educated and self employed, and yet I'm forced
| to pay for healthcare I don't need, and compete against those
| with the pedigree of an Ivy League.
|
| My issue is these things boil down to class. There should be
| a legitimate, high quality alternative for those who can't
| afford it.
| somenameforme wrote:
| This [1] is a graph of educational attainment in the US. And
| the percent of people into the 60s who had a college degree
| was in the single digits, with it being near zero in times
| past. It then started ramping up extremely quickly. The main
| thing that changed is a lot more jobs started requiring
| degrees around that time.
|
| If people were genuinely pursuing college for self
| betterment, then you'd think the numbers would have been
| dramatically higher in the past, especially back in the day
| when you could comfortably afford college even on just a part
| time job. The increase in enrollment also came right
| alongside sharp increases in cost.
|
| [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in
| _the_...
| nine_k wrote:
| What kind of job training should an engineer have? An
| engineer's job is to understand very complex systems, and to
| evolve them, to design, to invent. It's very different from a
| carpenter's job training, because it requires a much larger
| width of base knowledge, and much less of what can be acquired
| by just watching others do their thing, and imitating.
|
| Maybe the study tracks of those going to the industry and those
| pursuing a scientific career could split earlier. OTOH I
| personally must say that what I've studied for my master's
| degree, and even what I researched during my further postgrad
| studies (even though I did not ultimately go for a PhD) ended
| up being rather useful for my work in the industry.
|
| It wasn't a sufficient job training though; I sometimes think
| that nothing is, nothing short of an actual job.
| skirge wrote:
| "job training" at school? Everyone known you learn how to work
| at work, where first day they say to forget everything you have
| been taught at school.
| angst wrote:
| This is worrisome. College experience does provide unique
| benefits compared to self-learning.
| logicchains wrote:
| But in the long term it seems to destroy the ability to self-
| learn; the vast majority of graduates go out of their way to
| avoid acquiring any new academic knowledge after graduation.
| College (aside from phd programs) fails at teaching people how
| to learn.
| maxlybbert wrote:
| Colleges need to figure out how to advertise those benefits,
| and the colleges' role in providing the benefits. The fact that
| they've been flat-footed for a decade tells me either (1)
| they're incredibly bad communicators, or (2) they don't really
| believe their own claims.
| chasing wrote:
| They're wonderful but, yes, the cost is out of control.
|
| Higher education delivers a fantastic ROI for the country as a
| whole. The people who benefit most from a strong economy are the
| wealthy. So tax them more. And put that money towards lowering
| the cost of education. Win-win-win.
| stack_framer wrote:
| I dropped out after my university added various "studies" courses
| to the required list.
|
| I took just one such course--gender studies--which was utterly
| abysmal. There was zero tolerance for debating ideas or
| considering opposing viewpoints. You either assimilated with the
| group think, or you were castigated for your heresy. It was
| indoctrination, not education.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| You may have had a bad instructor. I don't think I've ever been
| in a class where I couldn't do some genuine questioning, but of
| course I didn't always feel the need to do so.
|
| Edit to add: Also, you failed to learn the lesson that you
| can't always quit in the face of tyranny. Did you never have a
| history or civics class in high school?
| WorkerBee28474 wrote:
| But were any of your classes gender studies?
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| No. I had one that had something to do with anthropology
| though.
| mapontosevenths wrote:
| Which viewpoint did you oppose? It matters.
|
| If it was "Women should be allowed to vote" I can understand
| the teachers reluctance to engage in debate.
| lapcat wrote:
| I have a hard time believing this story. You seriously dropped
| out because you didn't like one class? That doesn't seem to
| show much fortitude.
|
| Which university, which year was this, what was your major, and
| what happened with your education and/or career after you
| dropped out?
|
| And what precisely do you mean by "castigated," in your
| specific case?
| stack_framer wrote:
| > You seriously dropped out because you didn't like one
| class?
|
| No. The university added other "studies" courses to my
| requirements that contributed to my decision. After taking
| gender studies, I knew I could not tolerate the other
| "studies" courses the university was suddenly demanding--
| which were not required when I first started.
|
| > Which university
|
| The University of Utah
|
| > which year was this
|
| 2014
|
| > what was your major
|
| Computer Science
|
| > what happened with your education and/or career after you
| dropped out?
|
| I still have 8 classes left. Nothing happened to my career.
|
| > And what precisely do you mean by "castigated," in your
| specific case?
|
| One of our guest speakers was a man with autogynephilia--a
| man who derives sexual pleasure from dressing like a woman.
|
| In a follow-up discussion, I committed the "sins" of
| referring to him as a man, and saying things like he is not a
| woman, and there are only two sexes.
|
| My instructor and some students went scorched earth on me
| over these elementary facts. They made it quite clear that
| the only acceptable narrative was that, because he
| "identifies" as a woman, he is a woman.
|
| This is just one example of the kind of "thinking" that went
| on in this course. I don't like it when I'm told what I must
| think. As I said before, that's indoctrination, not
| education.
|
| > I have a hard time believing this story.
|
| Why? It's all true.
| baiwl wrote:
| I don't understand this thing you do in the US of forcing
| you to do completely unrelated courses. You want to study
| computers and they put you through liberal arts or gender
| studies bullshit that is basically worthless. Why?
| ta20240528 wrote:
| What's telling is they don't make the liberal arts
| student take any hard science electives.
| lapcat wrote:
| This is false.
| fzeroracer wrote:
| > One of our guest speakers was a man with autogynephilia--
| a man who derives sexual pleasure from dressing like a
| woman.
|
| > In a follow-up discussion, I committed the "sins" of
| referring to him as a man, and saying things like he is not
| a woman, and there are only two sexes.
|
| Now I definitely agree with the other poster that this
| sounds made up, or at the very least you are significantly
| embellishing the story in such a way to completely ruin
| your own credibility.
| stack_framer wrote:
| > you are significantly embellishing the story
|
| The guy told us he was married, with children, and that
| he had a separate apartment where he "lived like a woman"
| most weekends. He lived that way because his wife didn't
| like it when he dressed like a woman around her. He said
| he was intensely aroused by wearing pantyhose and skirts,
| in particular.
|
| That may sound "significantly embellished" to you, but I
| assure you it is not.
|
| Regardless of what you, or anyone else here, would like
| to believe about my credibility, this was the beginning
| of why I personally no longer thought a college degree
| was worth the cost. I refused to spend another dollar of
| my hard-earned money sitting through courses where I was
| not allowed to openly debate the ideas being presented to
| me.
| fzeroracer wrote:
| I'm sorry but this timeline and story makes zero sense.
| For reference, 2014 is about a year before gay marriage
| was fully legalized in the US and reasonably before the
| whole trans rights movement started being a lot more
| public. I went to college in a deep blue state and had
| practically little to no interaction with any transgender
| folks, both in my gen eds classes and just overall at
| that same time period. Someone arriving as a guest
| speaker and talking in the way you've mentioned would've
| instantly made headlines in 2014, especially since at
| least one student would've complained and made it a
| bigger issue which as far as I can tell it doesn't exist.
| Nor are there any mentions of said guest speaker, and
| colleges are generally very public about this sort of
| thing.
| stack_framer wrote:
| I understand that you had a different experience, but you
| seem to be committing the "argument from incredulity"
| logical fallacy.[0] What I described may not have
| happened to you, but it did happen--regardless of whether
| the timeline or details makes any sense to you.
|
| Do you have any thoughts about the cost of college
| degrees being worth the cost? That's ultimately what
| prompted me to comment.
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_incredulity
| 59nadir wrote:
| > In a follow-up discussion, I committed the "sins" of
| referring to him as a man, and saying things like he is not
| a woman, and there are only two sexes.
|
| Sincere question: Why were you not able to just think "Oh,
| ok, some people do this and feel this way." and then just
| move on? I'm not sure why these particular things needed to
| be discussed.
| lapcat wrote:
| https://www-
| old.cs.utah.edu/docs/Undergraduate/UGHandbook_20...
|
| According to the University of Utah Computer Science
| Undergraduate Student Handbook 2014-2015, "Students must
| take two intellectual explorations courses in each: fine
| arts (FF), humanities (HF), and social sciences (BF). Two
| of these six courses must be upper division - one should
| meet the diversity (DV) requirement and one should meet the
| international (IR) requirement" and "The diversity (DV)
| requirement can be satisfied by taking a course from an
| approved list as part of the intellectual explorations
| courses." So, there was only one required diversity course,
| from a list of courses, meaning that gender studies was not
| specifically mandated. If you took gender studies to
| satisfy the diversity requirement, it was because you chose
| gender studies, which seems like an odd choice, given your
| beliefs. In any case, you would not have to take multiple
| diversity courses.
|
| > I still have 8 classes left. Nothing happened to my
| career.
|
| I'm not sure exactly what you mean. As a result of dropping
| out, do you not have a career in computing? Alternatively,
| did dropping out without getting a computer science degree
| not harm your career at all, and if it didn't, then why
| were you spending time and money ("I refused to spend
| another dollar of my hard-earned money") to get a degree?
|
| In a later comment, you say:
|
| > this was the beginning of why I personally no longer
| thought a college degree was worth the cost.
|
| > sitting through courses where I was not allowed to openly
| debate the ideas being presented to me.
|
| I'm confused here. For you, is the monetary value of a
| college degree to openly debate ideas in class? And if so,
| why did you major in computer science, as opposed to
| philosophy, for example, which is known for open debate of
| ideas in class, unlike computer science?
|
| > My instructor and some students went scorched earth on me
|
| Scorched earth is a metaphor. It's not in this case an
| accurate and informative description of reality. I suspect
| you just mean that you got criticized, which is exactly
| what you asked for: an open debate of ideas. The use of
| hyperbolic phrases like "castigated" and "scorched earth"
| does not make your comments plausible.
| jpalawaga wrote:
| I will give you an upvote to offset the negative expressions.
| I've heard of at least one instance at a very well known Bay
| Area university in such a class.
|
| From what was described to me, and I trust this person to not
| misrepresent their experience, was that they were essentially
| told 'hi, cis white male, sit down and don't say a damn thing,
| this isn't your place to talk'. And then go on to essentially
| present a curriculum that was essentially a myriad of thinly-
| veiled misandry, compounded by extremely clear classroom
| rules/culture where any opposition was decidedly unwanted by
| the lecturers.
|
| I'm the first to champion equal rights and equal opportunity,
| but that that sort of thing was going on in higher ed left a
| bad taste in my mouth.
| yatopifo wrote:
| Is it still a thing in the US though? There was a bit of that
| in Canada briefly but then everyone saw the ridiculousness of
| the radical approach in 2023. Universities have been
| distancing themselves from such groups since then.
| fzeroracer wrote:
| When I see posts like this, it reminds me of when I went to
| community college. I was working towards an associate degree to
| transfer to a larger university which saved both money and
| allowed me to bypass some of the admission issues. One of the
| classes I was taking was a Gen Ed class around the philosophy
| of religion. I was an especially strong atheist at the time,
| and this class involved a well-rounded discussion and
| examination of religions from across the world as well as
| debates around our religious beliefs.
|
| By the end of the class I had softened on my stance a bit
| (though still an atheist), and I saw multiple Christians get
| up, walk out of the class mid-lecture and never come back. Not
| all of them mind you, but a few of them took such great offense
| at the class even mentioning other religions that they left,
| and some really couldn't handle any sort of debate or
| discussion.
| nashashmi wrote:
| Total cost of ownership is 4 years x $15k-$25k (for a cheap
| public school) + missed income from working that same four years
| ($35k x 4 years). This is equal to $220k +/- $20k of lost money.
|
| Now compare this to income differential. Starting grad income is
| $80k(?). At 4% raise per year compared to 3.5% raise per year for
| a non-college employee. Over 43 years.
|
| My math comes out to the college grad is still making more money
| despite the initial sunk cost.
| AxiomaticSpace wrote:
| This assumes that every college grad is guaranteed a decent
| starting income. It seems that on average new grads are
| struggling more now than they used to to get jobs in their
| fields, especially higher paying jobs. And that perception is
| probably magnified by internet horror stories such as every 3rd
| post on r/cscareers.
| nashashmi wrote:
| Yes this kind of math doesn't make sense in places and
| industries where pay is not high and job prospects are
| difficult. Like liberal arts. Or third world countries.
|
| And that is the point: do the math that assesses the incomes
| correctly and many people won't see as college as sensible
| for those professions.
| rfrey wrote:
| I'm not sure where your numbers come from. In my region job
| prospects are not much better for a liberal arts grad than a
| high school graduate, and much, much worse than someone with a
| trades education.
| naet wrote:
| Anecdotally my wife came very close to finishing a 4 year
| degree but ultimately did not for various reasons (she comes
| from a very disadvantaged family...) and not having one has
| been a _major_ burden or blocker for her pursuing all kinds of
| jobs. I am hoping to help her finish, but it is hard to restart
| later in life and lots of past credits will probably be lost or
| not count anymore due to various academic bureaucracy
| roadblocks.
| viccis wrote:
| Yep, I've seen this with a lot of my friends who did a
| similar thing. HR employees screening you out alone is a huge
| problem.
|
| I have some middle and upper middle class gen X and older
| friends giving their children TERRIBLE advice about how
| degrees aren't worth it anymore and you get more out of
| getting started in your career ASAP than spending 4 years in
| school. The problem is that a BS now is like a high school
| diploma when they grew up, and if you don't have one, then in
| all likelihood, you will struggle to not be downwardly
| mobile, as it's the new middle class gatekeeping tool.
|
| People should NOT listen to anyone over 45-50 or so who tells
| them college isn't necessary. Those people grew up in a world
| that no longer exists.
|
| Another example of bad gen X / boomer advice is to knock out
| core credits in community college and transfer to university
| later. They don't understand that your only shot at getting
| _significant_ scholarships and financial aid is when you
| enter as a 1st time freshman. I know someone with brilliant
| kids who made National Merit Scholar this year who is already
| setting their kids aims low by advising them to do this when
| there are so many good universities, both private and state,
| where their kids have a good shot at getting a full ride.
| jghn wrote:
| > The problem is that a BS now is like a high school
| diploma when they grew up
|
| > gen X / boomer
|
| Those 2 generations aren't even remotely close in terms of
| shared experience of what high school diploma was like when
| they grew up.
| viccis wrote:
| Well that specific example paragraph was about financial
| aid, not the value of a high school diploma, so I fail to
| see your point.
| jcater wrote:
| Well, I'll elaborate as a Gen-Xer; what you describe
| about financial aid was the exact same scenario we faced.
|
| You are conflating the "exceptional" kid coming out if HS
| who is offered full rides (who clearly should take
| advantage of that and go straight into university with
| that full ride) with an average student who will have to
| pay for some or all of college. For the latter, community
| college for 2 years was and still is a good idea.
| jswelker wrote:
| I think the point is that you need to feel out the
| options available, which are fairly unique to each kid
| based on geography and grades and parents and extra
| curriculars, not just take a one size fits all approach
| of going to community college.
| viccis wrote:
| It really depends. In many states, for the latter, there
| are state programs that cover tuition if the student can
| meet some GPA and enrollment minimums. I knew someone in
| such a state still telling their kids to start in CC
| because that's what they knew from 30 years ago and they
| haven't bothered to research how things work now.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| >Another example of bad gen X / boomer advice is to knock
| out core credits in community college and transfer to
| university later. They don't understand that your only shot
| at getting significant scholarships and financial aid is
| when you enter as a 1st time freshman. I know someone with
| brilliant kids who made National Merit Scholar this year
| who is already setting their kids aims low by advising them
| to do this when there are so many good universities, both
| private and state, where their kids have a good shot at
| getting a full ride.
|
| I'll have to push back on this. I'll give NJ as an example
| but other states have similar systems. In NJ If you are in
| the top 15% of your graduating school you are covered for
| full tuition provided for the first two years at community
| college. You are also given a guaranteed spot at whatever
| public college/program you want. (EDIT: I am not sure if
| this is still the case im trying to sift through the
| documentation but now I think it may also require minimum
| GPA in CC) Imagine getting that university degree and
| starting your professional career with potentially 0 debt.
|
| Furthermore a variation of this program extends to families
| making less than 65k. If you meet that criteria. The
| community college degree is 0$. From there you are given a
| course schedule that if you follow will transfer 1:1 to a
| university and if you do well academically there you can be
| eligible for reduced or waived tuition at the public
| college of your choosing. This system helps people who did
| poorly in high school or just didnt make the cut aid wise
| get a second chance at tuition free college.
|
| If you make more than 65k, you still get reduced tuition on
| some sliding scale. And again excellent grades translates
| to more savings.
|
| At least for NJ, Community college really sets many people
| up for an excellent start in their career by not having any
| college debt.
| viccis wrote:
| Many private colleges like Rice cover 100% of costs for
| all students with parents under a fairly high salary.
| Almost 40% of MIT students have financial aid that's
| equal or greater than their tuition. This is starting to
| get more and more common for elite colleges and
| universities.
|
| I got a full ride plus stipend to a _pretty good_ but not
| great school, but one of the things I wish my parents
| pushed me on harder was applying to schools like MIT
| where I didn 't bother applying because I didn't want to
| be saddled with debt. This was a couple decades back, and
| it's so much easier to get a full ride now if you can
| make it in (admittedly much harder now).
|
| My point isn't to write off community college. It's that
| a talented and accomplished high schooler should set
| their sights higher because the old idea that all these
| elite colleges are unaffordable is rapidly changing.
|
| Also, I am not sure if you know people taking CC courses
| recently, but they are often taught in a way that gives
| you what you paid for at $0. Prerecorded canned lectures,
| infuriating and curiosity crushing online worksheets,
| etc. I know multiple people who were excited to do free
| CC when it was made free for older (30+) students whose
| academic aims were immediately stamped out within one
| semester because there was no college instruction. Just
| endless online worksheets. These things exist in other
| higher ed paths too, but truly not to the extent that
| I've witnessed.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| I understand where you are coming from in regards to
| elite university. Certainly if a student can get admitted
| into an ivy league they should at least _inquire_ about
| eligible aid packages. I would assume someone with the
| intellect to get admitted there would put in the work to
| explore all options.
|
| Ivy league is a shrinking circle of spots and does not
| represent the majority of where exceptionally talented
| students go to as a result. Lets just take the example I
| cited with the top 15% of high school students in each
| high school in NJ would likely exceed the available spots
| at all Ivy Leagues. You mentioned public institutions in
| your original message. States have programs in place to
| ensure exceptional students are taken care of.
|
| >Also, I am not sure if you know people taking CC courses
| recently, but they are often taught in a way that gives
| you what you paid for at $0. Prerecorded canned lectures,
| infuriating and curiosity crushing online worksheets,
| etc. I know multiple people who were excited to do free
| CC when it was made free for older (30+) students whose
| academic aims were immediately stamped out within one
| semester because there was no college instruction. Just
| endless online worksheets. These things exist in other
| higher ed paths too, but truly not to the extent that
| I've witnessed.
|
| I was admitted to an Engineering school but due to severe
| health issues with family, I was forced to move closer
| and enroll in community college so I have gone through
| this experience in a unique way (Enrolled at University
| -> Transfered to CC -> Transferred back to University).
|
| This was ~15 years ago but during that time all the
| teachers at the CC had Masters degrees in their field and
| also had additional teaching credentials(some had PHDs).
|
| I found that instruction was very focused on ensuring
| students learned material vs my experience at my public
| Research based university where either TAs taught courses
| or professors focused on their research would reluctantly
| lecture as a requirement.
|
| I will concede that instruction in subjects like
| Math/Physics were not of the same caliber as university
| only because while CCs tended to give examinations
| consisting of hard versions of the practice problems
| assigned as homework, my Engineering university expected
| me to to deeply understand the material and would give
| very unique problems during the common exams that test
| the deeper understanding vs just technique.
|
| I am surprised to hear the anecdote that you expressed as
| that wouldn't pass muster with the university
| accreditation bodies as well as the admissions
| departments of the public universities that renew the
| "transfer agreements" with the CCs. In NJ there is a
| requirement of a minimum standard of instruction needed
| or else the receiving university has the right to reject
| course credit from the CC and rescind transfer
| agreements. The universities know who comes from the CCs
| and they are assessing academic performance of those
| students. For example Rutgers does this with some CC in
| their CS classes as the subject material is not 1:1(they
| are offered as general elective credit instead so still
| allows the student to not fall too behind).
|
| Let me ask you was this anecdote occuring during COVID?
| Maybe that accounts for the strange online instruction?
| viccis wrote:
| >Certainly if a student can get admitted into an ivy
| league they should at least inquire about eligible aid
| packages.
|
| Bear in mind when I say "elite college", I'm not talking
| Ivy Leagues, as those have covered tuition for the non-
| wealthy students for a while now. I'm talking elite
| liberal arts colleges (Amherst, Swarthmore), elite
| private universities (MIT, Rice), etc. Many state schools
| cover a lot but your mileage varies dramatically, and
| it's often tied to fairly intense GPA requirements.
| Georgia Tech has a student suicide problem because of
| this, for example.
|
| >This was ~15 years ago but during that time all the
| teachers at the CC had Masters degrees in their field and
| also had additional teaching credentials(some had PHDs).
|
| It's much worse now. A lot of the core classes (calculus,
| first semester bio and chem, etc.) _don 't have teachers_
| at all. You're given all of your instruction via canned
| videos and your homework and evaluation through online
| tests. There's often a way to contact a teacher of some
| sort, but they will mostly be terse and just link you to
| a resource to work on it yourself or direct you to a
| forum where you and your classmates can talk about it.
|
| This isn't covid, this is from this year. A lot of this
| started with covid but has stuck around for budgetary
| reasons. YMMV but for a lot of places, this is how you
| cut costs to be able to easily offer free college. Some
| of the classes will still have teachers, but the big ones
| that people typically use CC for will be largely
| automated because that's what scales.
| jswelker wrote:
| > knock out core credits in community college
|
| The correct way to do it is to utilize high school dual
| credit or dual enrollment offerings. Then you can shave off
| a year or two of college but still be eligible for freshman
| scholarships. Often cheaper than community college too.
| DiscourseFan wrote:
| And the opposite is true as well. I had a friend who had no
| idea how to market her labor, uncomfortable even with the
| idea of making a linkedin profile. She has an undergraduate
| degree, she _did_ eventually find something, but it was a
| tiresome process. On the other hand, I had just finished a
| Master 's degree, I had made up a linkedin profile to apply
| to a startup I thought looked interesting--no response, but,
| about a month later a recruiter messaged me on linkedin to
| work a short term contract that turned into the job I have
| now. There was practically no effort on my part for a job
| search.
| erikw wrote:
| Have you verified that these "academic bureaucracy
| roadblocks" exist? Surprisingly, I was able to pick my
| studies back up after almost 20 years, and not only were all
| of my existing credits counted, but they also exempted me
| from new requirements that had been added in the subsequent
| 20 years.
| blitz_skull wrote:
| Assuming a grad income of $80k is an insane starting
| assumption. MAYBE you're making that in software (good luck
| getting your foot in the door).
|
| Any other industry? Biology? Social sciences? Academia?
| Manufacturing?
|
| I struggle to think of anything other than finance that has a
| shot of STARTING at $80k. Hell I didn't hit $80k in software
| industry until ~3 years in and I thought I was (I indeed WAS)
| very lucky.
| alephnerd wrote:
| Your numbers seem to be a couple years out of date, or maybe
| you're (no offense) living in an economic backwater like
| Florida where salaries are severely depressed due to the
| tourism effect.
|
| The base salaries for Entry level SWE roles are in the
| $80k-100k range nationally [0].
|
| Additionally, most finance roles start in that ranges, though
| high finance has starting salaries comparable to Big Tech new
| grad.
|
| Even Biotech new grad salaries tend to be in the $60k-80k
| range.
|
| Same with manufacturing engineering roles [1]
|
| [0] - https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-
| engineer/levels/entry-leve...
|
| [1] - https://www.salary.com/research/salary/alternate/entry-
| manuf...
| givemeethekeys wrote:
| > like Florida
|
| If Florida is "backwater", then so is most of the rest of
| the country outside of a handful of overpriced cities where
| earning 80k is required to be able to afford a room in an
| apartment - not the whole apartment, and certainly not
| buying one.
| alephnerd wrote:
| I mean yea, they absolutely are economically speaking -
| especially when looking at where new grad college
| educated jobs _are_ located [0].
|
| Heck, most states have fallen into a technical recession
| [1]. Florida is weird simply because of how much tourism
| and retirement adjacent industries skew it's economy (eg.
| Elderly care, primary care, etc) - in fact, healthcare
| services (as in elderly care, hospice care, and homecare)
| is the only non-skilled industry that is seeing a
| significant expansion in the US.
|
| I personally along with HN, other VCs, and PE funds have
| been actively following the MSO space for a couple years
| now because of this boom.
|
| And I say this as someone who kinda likes Florida (Dr
| Philips reminds me and moreso the missus of bougie gated
| communities back in ASEAN - it's a nice place for us to
| Fat FIRE).
|
| [0] -
| https://www.axios.com/local/denver/2025/02/28/white-
| collar-w...
|
| [1] - https://www.ft.com/content/e9be3e3f-2efe-42f7-b2d2-
| 8ab3efea2...
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Living in Louisiana, salaries here are in the same bucket
| as FL.
| alephnerd wrote:
| Oof that is a shame given how severely CoL has risen
| across much of the South. Salary expectations on the
| employers side is just too low, but then again, I guess
| most industries are low margins ones sadly.
| Suppafly wrote:
| >Assuming a grad income of $80k is an insane starting
| assumption.
|
| It doesn't really matter if you consider it to be insane. The
| studies on this stuff always compare averages to averages,
| and average college grads do better in the long run no matter
| how optimistically you cook the books to make the inverse
| seem likely.
| apparent wrote:
| > average college grads do better in the long run no matter
| how optimistically you cook the books to make the inverse
| seem likely
|
| This is far from true when you consider the selection bias
| of who goes to college, and the sheepskin effect.
| csomar wrote:
| Here is my made up guess: The average university graduate
| will do better without degree than the current non-grad
| averages.
|
| You are making the assumption that it all boils down to the
| degree (the difference in income). This can't be possible
| (maybe a majority of it, but not all of it). There are
| other factors (like being from a middle-class, higher IQ,
| etc.) that selects for going to Uni. and this has effect
| later on income.
| apparent wrote:
| Academia at $80k? After a PhD, sure. There may be some grad
| programs where you get a stipend north of $60k, but those are
| probably located in very HCoL places, so you can be assured
| you won't be saving anything.
| apparent wrote:
| The numbers look very different for a private school, which
| could run up to $100k for tuition, room, and board. It is
| almost unimaginable that attending a private college could have
| a positive expected value at that cost. For one thing, the
| incoming students will typically have stellar credentials and
| abilities. This means that they would not have the average
| outcome of a high school grad who gets no further education.
|
| If I were faced with spending $100k/yr for my kid to go to
| college, I would strongly consider offering 5 tranches of
| $50,000 that we would together invest in business ideas over
| the next 5 years. Humanities and social sciences could be
| learned in parallel, while trying to launch businesses that
| bring value to the world.
|
| The lessons learned would not be the same as those one learns
| in college, and the social aspects would be very
| different/lacking. This would clearly not work for all
| teenagers, but for some, it could be a much better opportunity
| and use of funds.
| menaerus wrote:
| People who can afford themselves going to private schools
| have a reason why they prefer spending 100ks vs less.
| Prestige schools gets you a prestige job so "It is almost
| unimaginable that attending a private college could have a
| positive expected value at that cost" isn't necessarily true.
| apparent wrote:
| The thing is, prestige and cost do not go hand in hand. The
| most expensive schools are not the most prestigious. I
| think Vanderbilt was the first school to hit the
| ignominious milestone of $100,000/yr, and they're not Ivy
| League, Ivy+, or perhaps even Ivy++ (if such a
| classification existed).
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > Now compare this to income differential. Starting grad income
| is $80k(?). At 4% raise per year compared to 3.5% raise per
| year for a non-college employee. Over 43 years.
|
| I would not assume earning that much for 43 years.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Are you assuming $55k salary differential? ($80k for starting
| graduate vs $35k for non-graduate)? That seems a bit high.
| trashface wrote:
| The 43 years of career is debatable. I got a CS degree in 1997
| and worked for 18 years (non consecutively), but have been out
| of work now for several years. It's quite possible those 18 are
| the entirety of the earnings I will derive from my CS degree.
| And people today have AI pressures I didn't have. Makes the
| math quite a bit different.
| daft_pink wrote:
| I'm really shocked that everyone is running to cyclical
| industrial/construction type jobs that are great in an economic
| expansion, but awful in a downturn.
| b3ing wrote:
| With AI, h1b, other visa workers, and outsourcing it makes sense
| they see it as a waste. Those things aren't going to change,
| either.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| Meanwhile, China is churning out STEM graduates at breakneck
| pace. Sure, not every single one is Nobel prize material, but 7
| mainland China universities are now in Times' top 100, and
| another 5 Hong Kong ones as well.
| tokioyoyo wrote:
| I'm still heavily subscribed to the idea that global access to
| social media ruined the kids' expectations. Everything else is
| downstream effects of unrealized expectations.
|
| In Chinese/Japanese cultures, role models and parental
| influence on education is still pretty huge. Japan is changing
| a bit, but I think school systems are still strict enough to
| keep it up. China is still a beast of its own.
| wwalker2112 wrote:
| Because they are not. If I was 18 years old right now, I'd be
| going into a trade of some sort. No debt, immediately earning a
| decent amount of money. AI will push even more kids towards this
| route.
| esperent wrote:
| I'm Irish. The state _paid me_ to go to university, and I 've
| paid it back many times over in taxes.
|
| Whenever I hear about the cost of degrees in the US I feel like
| I'm taking crazy pills.
|
| It doesn't make sense, it's entirely inhumane and predatory to
| loan that kind of money to a teenager, and there's no way I
| would ever have gotten a degree if I lived there.
|
| I tried being in debt once, for a far more modest amount than a
| US degree, and it weighed on my subconscious the entire time.
| blindriver wrote:
| "Adjusted for inflation" concept is broken in this instance.
|
| One of the reasons why inflation is so high is because college
| costs have skyrocketed, so citing that they have increased after
| taking into inflation is like circular logic.
|
| Banks lent an unlimited amount of money to students because they
| knew they couldn't discharge the debt in bankruptcy, and the
| schools jacked up prices because they knew students had the
| money. College costs more than doubled in a 10 years period but
| the services or even the number of students enrolled didn't even
| get without a ballpark of doubling. They just enriched themselves
| off student loans.
|
| The only way to fix this is to let student loans be dischargeable
| from bankruptcy again, and let banks and colleges take the fall.
| Right now it's another instance of us peons playing a game of
| "heads you win, tails i lose."
| anonzzzies wrote:
| I went to uni to learn to learn. It helped that it was free, but
| it was a rigorous education with formal proofs (starting in week
| 1), proper research, scientific writing etc. Very few people will
| learn that outside universities, and, while not strictly needed
| for most jobs, it really helps as a tool to shut 'talkers' up to
| this day. Socially it was good as well; got my first and second
| project for my tiny company I set up in uni from the father's of
| two study mates: the first project was 100k, the second 1.6m
| (both guilders at time), so there is that; I would have never
| known these people otherwise.
| swydydct wrote:
| Yeah I never get what these other comments are talking about
| with college not being useful. I basically learned my
| profession in college and now hire people who have done the
| same thing.
| anonym29 wrote:
| There is nothing a college can teach you that you cannot learn
| for free online. The social environment can be replicated for
| free. You're not paying six figures for an education, you're
| paying six figures for exactly two things:
|
| 1. Someone to write lesson plans for you
|
| 2. A piece of paper that tells the world you are capable of
| conforming with the sometimes-frustrating impositions of an
| institution for 4 years without making too much of a fuss in the
| process
| nrhrjrjrjtntbt wrote:
| What you need is the exams! Maybe $1000 to sit a bunch of paper
| or computer based exams in a hall. Teach yourself beforehand.
| baq wrote:
| > There is nothing a college can teach you that you cannot
| learn for free online.
|
| This is trivially false outside of some math, CS and sweng.
| Even within IT learning networking at an above basic level
| requires a well equipped lab.
| 8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote:
| Reminiscent of this thread talking about undergraduate-level
| students mailing it in:
| https://bsky.app/profile/jesbattis.bsky.social/post/3m6pvvko...
|
| Is this not rational behavior? If, through grade inflation, the
| only thing that matters to an employer is what school you went to
| and that you completed it (the sheepskin effect), then isn't the
| correct optimization to reduce wasting time on levers that won't
| make any practical difference in the end?
|
| Sure sure, there's the love of learning and the formation of the
| well-rounded modern individual, but most people are much more
| pragmatic than that.
|
| They need to get in, get the piece of paper for the least effort,
| get a job. Everything they need can be taught on the job or asked
| to ChatGPT most likely anyway.
|
| A Case Against Education
| https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691174655/th...
| was prophetic of this phenomenon years ago.
| bombcar wrote:
| Completely unironically your best bet is to get into a good
| college, then do the minimum work needed to graduate and spend
| al the rest of the time networking (read: partying).
| 8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote:
| Yep, meet as many people as you can who might later give you
| a job or ask you to join their startup. Meet a potential
| spouse, you're in the same social class, about the same age,
| probably similar interests. You are alumni of the same
| institution. Do sports, drink beers, learn social skills.
| viccis wrote:
| >Is this not rational behavior?
|
| If you think the purpose of an education is _literally_ nothing
| more than the diploma, then yeah sure.
|
| If you think that I'm interviewing you for an entry SWE job
| (yes, we do this still) and you think I'm going to hire you
| because you hyperoptimized a compsci degree to minimize the
| work and learning you had to do and maximized your GPA, then
| you're going to blow the interview and wind up another person
| on reddit scratching your head wondering why these mean
| companies just don't want to give you your $125k software dev
| job.
|
| Obviously, you don't need a degree to learn enough to convince
| me that you'll be a productive member of our team (or at least
| good enough in the short term and productive after a few
| months). But in my experience, the ones who half ass and
| ChatGPT their way through college are almost never brilliant
| polymaths. In my experience as a student years back and my
| experience interviewing graduates now, those students breezed
| through their courses and sought out more challenging learning
| opportunities such as accelerated graduate courses, impressive
| work within student organizations (for example, winning CTFs
| competitions with their school's computer security group), etc.
| And that all shows up on resumes and in interviews in a way
| that's night and day vs the ones who got tricked into thinking
| that the only purpose of an education is to get a paper.
| 8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote:
| I'm with you. In their position I did the most of the
| educational opportunity I had, but then I didn't live in a
| world where people told me my job would soon cease to exist
| thanks to Claude and I spent every waking out flipping
| through short form videos. I can't relate to what that does
| to you.
| viccis wrote:
| This is part of the reason I make this point online. People
| need to understand that there _are_ jobs available if you
| do the work to make yourself valuable, especially if you
| aren 't demanding high compensated FAANG roles right out
| the gate. It's just that if you learn absolutely nothing
| and will be hired to do shit work for a year or two until
| you become baseline competent and will just leave as soon
| as you can pass FAANG interviews, companies would rather
| just pay people in developing countries like India or
| Colombia. They'll do bad work and, in the case that they do
| turn out to be great, leave to make more money. But at
| least they cost 5x less (the US system of employer covered
| healthcase isn't helping our workers' competitiveness in
| this either!)
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > If, through grade inflation, the only thing that matters to
| an employer is what school you went to and that you completed
| it (the sheepskin effect), then isn't the correct optimization
| to reduce wasting time on levers that won't make any practical
| difference in the end?
|
| The reason I don't think this is rational at all is the amount
| of work needed to "look good for employers" isn't really that
| far off from the amount of work needed to understand and learn
| the info well in the first place.
|
| I used to do a lot of college hiring for software devs. We did
| on-campus recruiting at a bunch of top universities, so sure,
| the school you went to is inherently one factor in our hiring
| process. But we also definitely cared about the grades you got,
| especially in core CS courses. Most importantly, my on-campus
| interviews were focused on things that someone should have
| learned in their data structures and/or algorithms course (but
| used examples that were as "real world" as possible). If you
| didn't actually understand the material, we weren't going to
| hire you.
| heresie-dabord wrote:
| > Is this not rational behavior?
|
| Yes, and it is also demonstrated by the Flynn Effect. [1]
|
| About "A Case Against Education": _Caplan draws on the latest
| social science to show how the labor market values grades over
| knowledge, and why the more education your rivals have, the
| more you need to impress employers. He explains why graduation
| is our society's top conformity signal, and why even the most
| useless degrees can certify employability._
|
| [1] _ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect
| Aperocky wrote:
| Almost nobody seem to see college as a place where people can
| develop the skills to learn _itself_? Did it get that bad?
|
| It doesn't matter that I didn't remember how to do real analysis,
| but I had that class, and I learned it at some point, the process
| itself is exactly what happens in work - we'll learn new things,
| use it for some time, and then almost forget it to learn the next
| thing.
|
| It doesn't have to be college, but there are a lot less
| opportunity, freedom and guidance to do so elsewhere.
| wvenable wrote:
| Developing skills to learn is great but when one is struggling
| to pay for housing, food, and other essentials then that
| becomes a luxury that fewer and fewer can afford.
| RomanPushkin wrote:
| Don't forget it's free in some countries. My degree was 100%
| free. And don't tell me it wasn't. There has been a lot of free
| stuff in post-Soviet era. In Soviet Union people had more than
| most of the folks who are pretty much jobless and desperate now
| at the moment. My family gotten free 3br apartments from
| government. My mom and dad were high school teachers.
| cherrycherry98 wrote:
| Nothing the government provides is free. It's paid for with
| taxes that are forcefully collected and would have been spent
| or invested privately otherwise. I'm not someone who's against
| taxes but it's a myth and propaganda that the government can
| just magically provide free stuff. I'm ok with the government
| providing things but I want them to be honest about what the
| costs are.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| They are being honest, you're just being pedantic. The fact
| that everyone pays taxes which ultimately pay for e.g.
| socialized health care/insurance or college-level education
| doesn't alter the fact that for the person receiving it, said
| good comes with no invoice, which is a conventional meaning
| of "free".
|
| The fact that paying taxes is required of all members of the
| community that organizes, collects and distributes resources
| in this way doesn't change the relationship between the
| person and the service _at the point of service_.
| lurk2 wrote:
| > The fact that paying taxes is required of all members of
| the community that organizes, collects and distributes
| resources in this way doesn't change the relationship
| between the person and the service at the point of service.
|
| That's irrelevant to the point the grandparent comment was
| making, which is that these resources don't just fall out
| of the sky and that "I got it for free and I liked getting
| it for free," isn't a good basis for policy.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Anybody who imagines that the use of the term "free" in
| connection these resources/services means that they fall
| out of the sky should stay as far away from public policy
| decisions as possible.
|
| I went to school (K-BS(c)) in the UK, and it was entirely
| normal to talk about that as "free", despite the fact
| that in dozens of conversations my parents would discuss
| the way in which their local taxes funded all of it,
| including my university education. People are not that
| stupid ...
| chongli wrote:
| If we're talking about social costs and social benefits
| then it does matter. Different countries can have wildly
| different costs for delivering the same education, an
| education whose value to society (or lack thereof) needs to
| be taken into account.
|
| Whether an education is paid for by loans or by higher
| taxes, the cost is ultimately borne by someone. In neither
| case is it free and in both cases its cost-benefit
| difference should be scrutinized.
| viccis wrote:
| >Nothing the government provides is free.
|
| Yes it is. "Free" doesn't mean "has no cost paid by anyone"
| and never has in these discussions. It means "at no cost to
| the student".
|
| Apologies if English isn't your first language.
| baiwl wrote:
| ...but there is cost to the student or their family. The
| difference being that paying for it or not is not an
| option. You can't just say "I won't go to uni, so I won't
| pay for it"
| viccis wrote:
| By this definition, nothing is "free"; there is always
| some cost, whether financial or otherwise. It's an absurd
| bit of pedantry that does nothing but derail discussion.
| Free tuition is free at the point of sale to the student,
| just like the interstate I drive on sometimes is free to
| use as compared to the toll roads, even though my taxes
| paid for both. It's not complicated terminology.
| DaSHacka wrote:
| > It means "at no cost to the student".
|
| and GP's whole point was that it is _not_ at no cost to the
| student.
|
| Apologies if reading comprehension isn't your strong suit.
| viccis wrote:
| The student does not participate in a transaction that
| involves paying money in exchange for education. Taxes
| are collected and allocated as seen fit by the state.
| Students and others pay their taxes, but taxes are not
| directly transactional.
|
| Apologies if English isn't your first language.
| lurk2 wrote:
| > "Free" doesn't mean "has no cost paid by anyone" and
| never has in these discussions.
|
| Calling these programs "free" obfuscates the issue because
| there are people (even college-educated people) who
| genuinely believe the government can just make something
| appear from nothing; they genuinely don't understand that
| the resources have to come from somewhere, which means
| someone else who does not necessarily benefit from the
| program pays for it now or those benefitting from the
| program have to pay for it later.
|
| > Apologies if English isn't your first language.
|
| I would encourage you to review the site guidelines. These
| kinds of quips are discouraged here.
| viccis wrote:
| >there are people (even college-educated people) who
| genuinely believe the government can just make something
| appear from nothing
|
| Untrue.
|
| >These kinds of quips are discouraged here.
|
| "Free" has a specific meaning in English, and someone who
| doesn't speak it fluently might think that it means, for
| example, "appearing from nothing". Whereas a fluent
| English speaker of sound mind understands that "free"
| refers to the price in a transaction. No one thinks that
| the "free pizza" at an event was created at no cost to
| anyone in the supply chain that brought it there. They
| just understand that it means that they won't be charged
| for consuming it. But for some reason, I never hear
| people make a big deal about how "I can't believe you'd
| say _free pizza_ when I _know_ that your organization had
| to _pay_ for it! " It's always when it comes to
| reactionary opposition to social services where this
| simple word immediately becomes so much more nuanced and
| impossible to comprehend for the layperson.
| lurk2 wrote:
| > Untrue.
|
| You know these people exist. Try asking them where the
| money is going to come from to finance this education and
| see if more than 10% of them can explain it to you.
|
| > "Free" has a specific meaning in English
|
| You've made a few allusions to the idea that the people
| pushing back on this reading of the word "free" speak
| English as a second language when there's been no
| indication that this is true; it's just something you're
| saying to imply that these people are less intelligent
| than you. I would again encourage you to read the site
| guidelines. Posting like this is contrary to the spirit
| of the forum.
|
| > Whereas a fluent English speaker of sound mind
| understands that "free" refers to the price in a
| transaction.
|
| The price for whom? If a parent pays for their child's
| education, it would be very uncommon for the child to say
| that his education was "free."
|
| Similarly, state-funded education is free to the college
| student. It's not free for taxpayers who don't attend the
| college. They are a party to the transaction because they
| are the ones paying for it.
| yatopifo wrote:
| TANSTAAFL
| viccis wrote:
| Obviously. But part of a democracy is voting on
| politicians who will choose what resources are
| distributed. Do you think "TANSTAAFL" every time you take
| a road without paying a toll?
| lurk2 wrote:
| > And don't tell me it wasn't.
|
| It wasn't, other people paid for it.
| mantas wrote:
| At the same time many families got a single room with shared
| anemities. Even people in skilled positions. Just because they
| got assigned to some factory which management didnt have as
| good connections. Or preferred to pocket more than take care of
| workers. Or didn't ended up in some location where central
| government was putting in extra resources to make it more
| desirable.
| hk1337 wrote:
| I think we, as a society, put way too much emphasis on everyone
| going to a four-year college and now everyone has a degree and
| they're basically useless.
|
| A lot of people would likely have been better off going to a
| trade school or going into a trade apprenticeship.
|
| Parents should focus on helping their kids figure out what they
| want to do and developing a path to achieve it. The path may take
| them to university, a trade, or something else.
| chokominto wrote:
| Maybe, just maybe, universities shouldn't cost a fortune?..
| willmadden wrote:
| Objectively, universities function as indoctrination centers that
| lower the reproductive rate of the most intelligent in the
| population. They take women away from their support
| networks/family, preoccupy them for four of their most fertile
| years, and then saddle them with debt that ties them up for
| another five to ten years. It's horribly dysgenic. At a minimum,
| pregnancy during college should be encouraged, there should be
| free daycare, and the college loan racket should be blown into a
| million tiny pieces.
| donkeybeer wrote:
| Ask the women if they want to be dependent purely on their
| family or man.
| alanchen wrote:
| I encourage everyone to read how Economists think about
| education: Spencer's Job Market Signaling paper.
|
| https://www.sfu.ca/~allen/Spence.pdf
|
| It's not just about learning skills, but it's a natural and
| rational mechanism to filter talents.
| constantcrying wrote:
| The problem is that no one can really articulate what the point
| of higher education is.
|
| If it were job training it would have to actually train students
| for jobs. But neither is that "academic" in any sense of the word
| nor actually practical in any way. University trains people to be
| research scientists in the hope this helps them do some later
| job.
|
| If the goal were training students to be academics, then degree
| requirements for most jobs are absolutely nonsensical and
| universities admitting large percentages of the population would
| be extremely counterproductive.
|
| If the goal were a continued education to create "well rounded"
| people, then why give that task to _university professors_ and
| create a social environment where this is the least likely thing
| to happen?
|
| If the goal is networking, then why do all that academic research
| stuff? Just play sports throughout the day.
| apparent wrote:
| The downward "is it worth it" trend over the last 12 years is
| partly due to the continued upward climb of college tuition. Some
| schools are now at $100,000/yr for tuition, room, and board. In
| order for this to be "worth the cost" they would have to have a
| strongly positive expected value in terms of future earnings.
|
| And a positive EV isn't sufficient. It would also need to have a
| very low chance of negative EV. Otherwise people would be crazy
| to sink $400,000 into a degree that might or might not leave
| their child with better job prospects in the future.
|
| Of course, only the wealthy pay full price for college, but when
| you ask people if college is worth the cost, they may be anchored
| to those prices even if their own kids would end up paying less.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| There's a simple and effective escape hatch: study abroad.
| Europe, Australia, South America, Canada even. Some countries
| are more affordable than others but the most expensive (by far)
| option is staying in the US.
|
| From the point of view of developing your brain, leaving your
| country is a free education in itself. There is also the effect
| of embedding yourself in a network of expats made up of the
| best and brightest from countries all over the world. That all
| comes on top of the education you receive. And if you are less
| in it for the intellectual stuff and are more into drinking and
| partying, college life in the US is pretty lame compared to
| some university towns across the world. Cheaper, wilder,
| better.
| armchairhacker wrote:
| I can vouch for studying abroad. But can you get loans and
| scholarships for it as easily as studying at home? Even if
| the university is free you must pay for food and housing.
| deanishe wrote:
| > Even if the university is free you must pay for food and
| housing.
|
| A one-person apartment in the local halls of residence
| costs under EUR500/month here in DE. A room in a shared
| flat costs a lot less.
| chongli wrote:
| Studying abroad in Canada is not nearly as affordable.
| Tuition alone for international students here is
| exorbitant ($40,000/year and up). We don't give any
| subsidies whatsoever for international students. Instead,
| we use their tuition fees to subsidize the tuition of our
| domestic students.
| phatfish wrote:
| Yeah, Germany must be one of the few still attracting
| foreign students with no/low fees? I know a lot of
| courses have teaching in English, landing a job
| afterwards needs fluent German though.
|
| I wonder how long it will last? UK Universities are now
| for rich foreigners only. It does mean great options for
| Chinese food near student halls though.
| armchairhacker wrote:
| That can still be too much. Someone studying abroad
| usually isn't allowed to work, so they're making zero
| income. If they come from a poor family, they have almost
| if not zero reserves. So everything must be either
| provided by the college or covered by grants/loans.
|
| Except some universities may allow foreign students to
| take on-campus jobs, which would probably pay enough. Or
| for a PhD, usually the university pays you.
| donohoe wrote:
| Yes - for those coming from USA. Most colleges in EU are
| part of the US student loan program, through Netherlands
| appears to be dropping it
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| There is an actually easy an effective escape hatch right
| here in the US:
|
| Community college to state school path.
|
| You can get a full bachelors degree for ~$35k. All four
| years, $35k. Not per year. Full degree. $35k.
|
| And that's before any scholarships or grants.
|
| Kids and parents are just insane though, and want to flex
| about the college they are going to from day one. Its become
| a ritualistic practice with social shame attached to going to
| community school.
|
| _Even though the end result is exactly the same_.
| pavluha wrote:
| If I remember that right. It is not that easy to get into
| the state school in our state. UW engineering departments
| required GPA 4.0 last year. Kids who had GPA 3.9 or less
| had 0 chances getting into the UW engineering schools.
| phatfish wrote:
| A degree from the "right" college surely helps for certain
| firms? Sure, it must be a small number of top ones as most
| can't afford to be that choosy about their candidates.
|
| Whether that is a sensible strategy for the firm (a
| candidate bias towards those who can pay the top college
| fees) is another question.
| wslh wrote:
| The university is the signal. Studying at Stanford or MIT
| gives you a better (professional) future in the US, while the
| average American doesn't know universities such as the
| L'Ecole polytechnique, UNAM, or UBA exist. They will clearly
| hire from the top US ranked ones.
| thatfrenchguy wrote:
| > There's a simple and effective escape hatch: study abroad.
| Europe, Australia, South America, Canada even. Some countries
| are more affordable than others but the most expensive (by
| far) option is staying in the US.
|
| I mean, good luck finding a job in the US when your degree is
| not from the us (or maybe Canada). Most industries don't hire
| folks with overseas degrees.
| nkrisc wrote:
| > Of course, only the wealthy pay full price for college, but
| when you ask people if college is worth the cost, they may be
| anchored to those prices even if their own kids would end up
| paying less.
|
| They're paying less, but they can also only afford to pay less.
|
| I went to college with many people who were paying heavily
| reduced tuition rates and it was still a significant financial
| burden for them.
|
| So even if the expected value of the degree is high in the long
| run, the downside risk is immediate financial ruin.
| fintechjock wrote:
| Correct.
|
| It is also worth noting that the non-wealthy pay for higher
| education in two ways: first through tuition, and second
| through the taxes required to fund the very programs that
| provided their "discount."
| h2zizzle wrote:
| If rich families had to take on the same financial burden as
| middle class and poor families, they would be paying millions
| in tuition.
|
| Which, honestly, isn't that bad of an idea. Means-testing for
| everyone.
| LanceH wrote:
| > only the wealthy pay full price for college
|
| This is one of those things that may technically be correct,
| but only because colleges are giving out tiny $500/yr
| scholarships to practically everyone.
| ojosilva wrote:
| As far as the data goes, adjusted for inflation, tuition and
| fees have eased up in the last ~5 years [1]. But overall,
| college enrollment has been going down anyway [2], except for
| 2025, where it hints at a slight rebound.
|
| So I'd say we have to consider the full set of drivers that can
| correlate: overall rising cost of living making it very
| expensive to be at a university full-time, general labor market
| sentiment which is mostly down since covid, interest rates and
| debt risk which are still high despite recent cuts, etc.
|
| 1. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/education/college-costs-
| working...
|
| 2. https://educationdata.org/college-enrollment-statistics
| boplicity wrote:
| Some schools are $100k/year for room, board, and tuition, and
| yet those expensive schools are very much optional. It's a red
| herring to point them out.
|
| There are still affordable schools. And staying in a dorm with
| expensive room and board remains optional at many institutions.
| Heck, some people still live with their parents.
|
| The state school I went to is still just around $10k/year
| tuition, and I got a broad education that opened many doors for
| me. (I was in the humanities, but there are very good science
| programs there as well.)
|
| Of course it's crazy to sink $400k into a degree for most
| people. And for many, many people, it is completely un-
| necessary! You can still get a relatively affordable 4 year
| degree.
| ggambetta wrote:
| My degree was 5 years back in the day. Was it worth it? Maybe,
| probably. But these days people seem to get a bachelor's and a
| master's in 5 years, and it kind of pisses me off to have that CV
| disadvantage when my degree could have effectively been that (the
| last two years were full of electives to choose a narrower
| specialization, and was much more research-y).
| jghn wrote:
| There is no way that you got that degree recent enough such
| that the years matter. An undergrad/master degree really only
| matters for the first, perhaps second job. After that, your
| experience and ability is what matters.
| t0lo wrote:
| *some
| zkmon wrote:
| Education in modern times is only about training and certifying
| workforce so that employers can easily filter the prospective
| employees.
|
| If that training and certification can be made available via
| other easier means, that's the end of brick-mortar universities
| with grand campuses. The dinosaur has to evolve into a bird.
| kopirgan wrote:
| IIRC Mark Andreessen once said colleges esp ivy league ones,
| simplify the job of recruiters by acting as filters. Saves them
| the bother. So they attached lots of value.
|
| I guess that's true even now but in a perverse sort of way. As
| markers of indoctrination and unsuitability for productive
| corporate roles.
|
| Employers probably decided to avoid them.
|
| That's not fair to a large number of students but the old system
| of colleges being markers of intelligence, suitability etc was
| not fair to large number of others either..
| armchairhacker wrote:
| Do you know any employers actively avoiding students from Ivy-
| league colleges?
|
| I agree that colleges have acted as filters, but the value of
| degrees has been deflated, even in Ivy leagues, because they're
| easier and more common. I think a degree still acts as a filter
| though; getting a job is hard with a degree but nearly
| impossible without.
|
| EDIT: There's the Thiel fellowship, which requires not having a
| degree, but I'm not aware of other such opportunities. Early
| work experience looks better to some employers than university,
| but that requires getting a job in the first place.
| walthamstow wrote:
| I don't know about actively avoiding, but I have worked for
| multiple companies in London who prefer not to hire at the
| 'top' end of candidates (hence hiring me!), because they'll
| cost more and can have cultural issues like not be very fun
| people or thinking themselves to be above the self-taught and
| weird-career guys who didn't get a first from Imperial.
| kopirgan wrote:
| There's lot of anecdotal chatter and also mainstream media
| coverage on this.. It's a genuine concern.
|
| But bigger issue is in USA where general jobless numbers
| are lower, with several sectors facing shortages, why is
| there the issue of grad unemployment at all.
|
| The correct answer is important because politicians are
| filling the vacuum with false narratives to suit their
| base.
| kopirgan wrote:
| I don't "know" that's why I said guess. I doubt if they'll
| ever say this. Even in today's USA.
|
| But there's enough SM comments to make a guess.
| nemo44x wrote:
| I was a hiring manager at a company that didn't recruit from
| top universities for strategic reasons. In short we were
| smaller and a startup so it would have been difficult to
| compete. As we grew we had a presence at university job fairs
| but still avoided the top schools.
|
| Similarly we avoided engineers from the Bay Area due to cost
| concerns.
|
| The company was also a pioneer in the distributed work
| environment. A decade before Covid. So that opened a huge
| market for recruitment at that time.
| csa wrote:
| > Do you know any employers actively avoiding students from
| Ivy-league colleges?
|
| Yes.
|
| The Ivy grads are often considered over-qualified (rightly or
| wrongly). Especially for government positions that don't
| normally hire elite school grads and smallish local/regional
| businesses.
|
| I know plenty of people who work in different government
| positions (federal, state, local) who will not hire grads
| from an elite schools (Ivy, Stanford, Berkeley, etc.) because
| they think something must be wrong with them ("why would they
| apply for _this_ job?"), or they think that the applicant
| will jump ship at the first opportunity.
|
| I agree that those can both be issues, but I'm not sure those
| issues are limited to or are more likely in elite school
| grads.
|
| I've certainly seen situations in which elite school grads
| have worked at an org that didn't normally hire any of them,
| and the quality and quantity of work produced caused there to
| be some tough conversations in terms of standards and
| evaluations (they basically "crushed the curve"). In the two
| cases I'm most familiar with, the people in question were
| relatively non-ambitious female employees who just cranked
| out high quality work. They took those jobs because they were
| decent jobs near their respective families. In both cases,
| the companies had bittersweet feelings when said employees
| left --- they lost productivity, but they no longer had the
| manage outlier performers.
|
| One of these ladies left her job to become a stay at home
| mom. The other joined a more prestigious privately-held
| company who seemed to know how to harness her abilities (she
| moved up quickly).
|
| So... it happens.
| lgleason wrote:
| It would be interesting to see if the job prospects of American
| students and perception of the value of the degrees were to
| change if they were to eliminate the 15% discount that employers
| get for hiring foreign graduates (via OPT) by not having to pay
| FICA taxes.
|
| When the unemployment rate for fresh American college grads is
| the same or higher than those without a degree, it does not make
| a compelling case for spending all of that money and time on a
| degree.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Polls really need to start adding filter questions like "Do
| vaccines work?" "Did humans evolve from small mammals?" because
| some people not believing something works is actually a positive
| signal.
|
| Are there problems in Higher Ed? Almost certainly. Are changes to
| the situation driven by the "vaccines don't work crowd" likely to
| make things even worse for everyone? Oh yes.
| xzjis wrote:
| While Western countries are making education increasingly
| private, expensive, and accessible only to the elite, in China,
| free education accessible to all is training engineers who then
| go on to work for companies that outperform those of other
| countries.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| It seems mainly to be about cost, as opposed to opportunity.
| College tuition inflation is _insane_.
|
| When it came time for me, I couldn't even come close to affording
| college (in 1981). Long story, but there were many challenges to
| address.
|
| I didn't want to accept financial support from my family (see
| "long story," above), but I did let them co-sign a government-
| backed student loan for $6,000, for a two-year, full-time trade
| school (which seemed outrageously expensive, back then).
|
| Took ten years to repay, but I never regretted it.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| IMO most of the stuffs in colleges can be self taught nowadays so
| the only two benefits are 1) that piece of paper and 2)
| networking. And good network only exists for certain colleges so
| for the majority out there it's just that piece of paper.
| numbsafari wrote:
| Most of stuffs can, indeed. But how many have actually done so?
|
| Like most investments in yourself, you get out of it what you
| put into it.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Yeah that's true. But a paid education doesn't provide too
| much motivation anyway. College education is stuffed with
| unnecessary courses not everyone needs but you have to take
| anyway.
|
| Like any business. The only valuable thing is that paper and
| network (that is if it's a top 50 school).
| numbsafari wrote:
| I didn't take a single unnecessary course.
|
| The course I took on Literature of the Apocalypse, in fall
| of 1999, is probably one you would say is unnecessary. It
| has proven quite valuable as I learned how to read a lot, a
| lot more quickly. I learned how to write quickly as well. I
| also learned a lot about an important aspect of our
| cultural and political context, as western society is
| dominated by doomsday cults (especially the atheistic ones,
| everyone's got a utopia they are trying to sell in order to
| get you to sacrifice your life for them).
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| That's true, but without that piece of paper you're not getting
| past the hiring filters to even hope of landing an interview to
| showcase your skills to even get the lowest entry level job
| that's not flipping burgers. A college degree is the new high
| school degree.
| nikanj wrote:
| Four-year anything is not seen as worth the cost, when every
| platform firehoses you with stories about people who became
| billionaires in 7 months.
|
| Being long degeneracy [1] is the number one strategy right now
|
| 1: https://oldcoinbad.com/p/long-degeneracy
| peterlada wrote:
| In unrelated news: China graduates more engineers then ever
| before.
| bojangleslover wrote:
| Supply and demand. It's no surprise that when we had 10% of
| people going to university in the 1960's and now we have over
| 38.8% [1] that the economic value of a degree seems to be getting
| watered down.
|
| No different than any other form of inflation from the government
| blowing on the fire (subsidizing with money) without adding any
| actual fuel (intrinsic value). Just like housing and healthcare.
|
| [1] https://educationdata.org/education-attainment-
| statistics#:~...
| immibis wrote:
| A degree isn't SUPPOSED to be an arbitrary differentiator. It's
| supposed to signal that you know a certain thing because you
| studied it for 4 years. Whether that's currently true in
| America I couldn't say.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| The problem is the funneling of dispassionate kids into
| college who just pick something and then game their way as
| much as possible to that piece of paper.
|
| Employers want passionate and self-motivated workers, instead
| they have gotten a mountain of applicants who routinely
| forget everything they crammed the moment the test is over.
| weakfish wrote:
| Can we name this "HN's Law," where any thread remotely related
| to economics will have someone attributing everything to supply
| and demand?
| nemo44x wrote:
| The 4-year college isn't a bad system but it has been asked to do
| a job for which it wasn't intended. Many people just want an
| opportunity to develop useful skills within the context of a
| modern corporate business. Modern corporate businesses want a way
| to filter and sort potential employees for skills and readiness.
|
| The four-year college isn't good at either of these as it wasn't
| intended for this. I don't think the trade school model is quite
| right for this (there's lots of soft skills to be learned) but
| it's closer than the 4-year.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| Maybe one thing to keep in mind is that there are a big range of
| colleges in the US. If you go to a poorly regarded party school
| then probably you have a good time and maybe even get some useful
| connections out of it, but the main advantage is presumably being
| able to check the 'college degree' box when applying to
| relatively ordinary jobs. If you go to Harvard then (a) you pay
| much less if you have limited means and (b) your future prospects
| are probably significantly better from the experience (this is a
| bit complicated - a lot of the good outcomes are due to capable
| and ambitious inputs so the direct benefit of the degree is more
| limited).
|
| It is easy to read something about one subset of universities
| while subconsciously thinking of a different subset (eg all
| universities vs well-known / highly regarded / similar ones to
| your own).
|
| When some survey says that people no longer see the value in the
| degree, it obviously doesn't mean that no college is worth it.
|
| Another thing: a lot of recent wage growth was in the lower end
| of the income distribution so better alternatives is part of the
| decreased desirability of college.
| chongli wrote:
| The signalling hypothesis (of Bryan Caplan [1]) lurks within
| your two premises. Neither the poorly regarded party school nor
| Harvard add much in the way of human capital. What both do is
| act as honest signals of intelligence, ability,
| conscientiousness, and resourcefulness (including family
| resources). These are extremely valuable indicators for
| prospective employers who are otherwise prohibited (by law)
| from asking or testing these directly and punished (through
| wasted wages, training costs, benefits) for making a mistake.
|
| In the past it was much cheaper to train people on the job
| because wages and benefits were much lower. Higher education
| has driven up wages and benefit costs (through inflation and
| cost disease), thus cementing higher education's position as a
| gatekeeper.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Case_Against_Education?wpr...
| UltraSane wrote:
| We need to bring back apprenticeships. They are the most
| effective method of transferring knowledge.
| swydydct wrote:
| I'm not in CS, so maybe it's different, but I don't know how we
| can expect to get skilled biologists, mechanical engineers,
| psychologists, etc without something that's very similar to the
| 4-year degree.
| maxlybbert wrote:
| I'm not sure American universities are still issuing things
| similar to 1990s 4-year degrees. They issue documents claiming
| to be degrees, but the quality has dropped, and they aren't
| what they used to be.
| ChicagoDave wrote:
| This was the intended result in the 80's when Reagan destroyed
| public college subsidies.
|
| White rich people hated competition from poor and brown people.
| That whole even playfield thing was their nightmare.
|
| Ask the rich families if college degrees are still important.
| You'll get a different answer.
| lvl155 wrote:
| College is still worth it for maybe the top 100 schools
| especially well-funded state schools. Why? Because people still
| get hired based on such a connection alone. Think about Waterloo.
| It's a mediocre school with a strong pipeline to SV. You wanna
| end up at SV but didn't study hard in high school or just weren't
| smart enough for MIT/Stanford? Go to Waterloo.
| NickC25 wrote:
| truth told nothing in American society is truly worth the cost.
| especially with rampant inflation.
|
| we've allowed capitalists and rent-seekers into our educational
| system and it's nigh impossible to root them out. same goes for
| healthcare, housing, etc.
| earlyreturns wrote:
| Why pay to get a degree in the US when you are competing for jobs
| not based on merit or qualifications? I can see why those in
| h1b'd industries like cs don't see any point, and those are the
| industries where the most jobs and money have historically been.
| As goes the STEM labor market so goes the market for stuff like
| accounting, communications, sociology. A fair and secure labor
| market is a necessary condition for higher education to pay off.
| American workers compete for jobs with a global workforce,
| therefore American universities must be cost competitive with
| those in India, China, etc.... Tenure is like tarrifs, the cost
| of protectionism is paid by the consumer.
| thinkingtoilet wrote:
| I work for a small Us-based med-tech company that is growing.
| We are paring down our offshore devs and hiring only US based
| devs now. I can assure you that if you have a good school on
| your resume it puts you at the top of the list. All things
| being equal, if you went to University of Vermont (like I did)
| and and someone else when to Harvard, you better believe I'm
| interviewing the Harvard kid first.
|
| >Why pay to get a degree in the US when you are competing for
| jobs not based on merit or qualifications?
|
| This is one of those things that people just say and while of
| course there are issues with our current system, this provably
| false and patently absurd. Do you not do a technical interview
| for new devs? You don't check their merit or qualifications?
| You just do a lottery? It's frustrating to hear comments like
| this because it reeks of people thinking they're so smart while
| ignoring reality.
| standardUser wrote:
| The question actually asks "...worth the cost because people have
| a better chance to get a good job and earn more money over their
| lifetime".
|
| The value of college to me was mostly social and intellectual,
| not economic. It's an irreplicable experience. There's certainly
| some logic to skipping that experience, but I couldn't recommend
| it.
| softwaredoug wrote:
| I find this stage is more important for social development than
| intellectual development. An early adult stage where you go some
| place away from home in a relatively easy, same aged social
| experience, with people of diverse backgrounds is a net social
| good.
|
| There are other ways of getting the same thing. Like if your
| country has some kind of compulsory service.
|
| But maybe let's stop pretending college is just about the
| intellectual stuff and see it as a social good.
| estimator7292 wrote:
| Capitalists have sucked all available liquid assets from the
| economy and are shocked-- _shocked_ to learn what happens when
| people don 't have enough money to buy non-essentials.
|
| Look forward to an article like this about every economic sector
| every few months
| 65 wrote:
| My theory is public state schools will become much more
| prestigious, as non extremely rich kids will find spending $75k
| on tuition to just not be worth it when you can go to your local
| state flagship for a fraction of the price. Plus, most of the
| most prestigious schools in other countries are public schools
| (e.g. UT and UBC in Canada, Oxford and Cambridge in the UK).
|
| As an example, when I went to college tuition prices were already
| ridiculous. I got in to some good schools but ended up going to
| my local state flagship purely because of price. I was able to
| pay off all my loans and have a good job as a software engineer.
| Compared to my brother who went to a private school, he is 3
| years older than me and makes the same amount of money as me, and
| is still paying off his loans.
|
| Of course where I live in NYC there's still this smugness from
| those private university grads when they hear where I went to
| school. As though the US News and World Report rankings are some
| kind of way of deciding your self worth. Wow, you school is
| ranked #36 and mine at #42? You must be a smarter and more
| valuable person than me! Except... we work at the same place and
| live in the same area. But I don't have any loans to pay. I guess
| for some people it's not about the cost.
| matt-p wrote:
| They're absolutely not, but I think 18 is also young to go into
| the workplace straight from school.
|
| I think the most valuable things I learned from my degree were
| about myself and how to work well with others, manage my time
| that kind of thing.
|
| We kind of need 1 year collage degrees.
| thelastgallon wrote:
| College is for partying. It is the right age to party, raging
| hormones and all that. Frats, sororities. It is the most fun/$.
| Escape out of parents control. Do what you want with whoever you
| want. Anybody looking for education is looking at the wrong
| place, most everything is available to self-learn.
| mullingitover wrote:
| Peter Thiel seen rubbing his greasy palms together at this news.
| It wouldn't be surprising to learn that he somehow engineered
| this poll himself.
|
| Thiel and his ilk are eager to shove the US back into feudalism,
| with themselves at the top like some kind of warmed-over Borgia
| family. An educated populace that is capable of operating a
| democracy competently is absolutely intolerable for them.
| user294812092 wrote:
| We need to spend so much on healthcare and education that we can
| no longer afford our wars and imperial misadventures
| tanin wrote:
| The fact that the student debt crisis is going on shows that
| colleges are not worth it. If it was, most would have been able
| to pay it back.
|
| My impression is, unless you can get into a top X college, it
| isn't worth it.
|
| This also depends on the cost of course. My university in
| Thailand back then was 1,000 USD per year, so that seems worth
| it, even tho it isn't in the top 20.
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