[HN Gopher] The looming college-enrollment death spiral
___________________________________________________________________
The looming college-enrollment death spiral
Author : JumpCrisscross
Score : 79 points
Date : 2026-04-13 19:18 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theatlantic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theatlantic.com)
| kamikazeturtles wrote:
| https://archive.ph/KpOsf
| ks2048 wrote:
| Right in the headline is a word choice I've notice lately that
| irks me, "democratization".
|
| "democratization" doesn't mean more people have access to it. In
| voting, "more access" means "more governing power" (in
| principle), but in other things, it does not.
|
| If you want to use "democratized" applied to higher-ed, it would
| mean more people are involved in the decision-making, leadership,
| or ownership.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Isn't more people attending college, and thus choosing where to
| go with their pocket book, the 'control'.
|
| The people control, through voting by choosing where to attend,
| based on what is offered. So if someplace is not offering much
| that anybody wants, they don't get students, and go out of
| business.
|
| The word 'democratize' is often used just for 'access' through
| purchasing power.
|
| Not that I agree that money should control learning. I'd like
| to go back to more hardcore reading/writing/arithmetic/Compiler
| Design. But nobody digs that.
| ks2048 wrote:
| > The word 'democratize' is often used just for 'access'
| through purchasing power.
|
| I guess I'm saying, yes, that is how it often used. I just
| don't like it and think it is relatively new usage and a
| change in the older meaning of the word.
|
| In the 90's when Linux was taking off, did people say
| Torvalds has "democratized Unix"? (honest question - I'm not
| sure.)
| atq2119 wrote:
| It's a fairly weak level of control, though.
|
| Compare with the governing structures of public universities
| in (most of?) Germany where there is a "senate" composed of
| elected representatives of professors, students, and
| administrative and academic staff. Now _that_ is approaching
| democratic control.
| jasode wrote:
| _> "democratization" doesn't mean more people have access to
| it. _
|
| _> I just don 't like it and think it is relatively new usage
| and a change in the older meaning of the word._
|
| People have been using _" democratize"_ to describe _" more
| accessible to the masses"_ for a long time. Here's an example
| from 106 years ago in 1920 :
|
| https://www.google.com/books/edition/Soviet_Russia/qflaAAAAM...
|
| And 40 years ago a 1986 article of "microchip democratizing
| computing" :
| https://www.google.com/books/edition/Procom_s_1986_1987_Dent...
|
| The additional meanings of _democratize_ to describe _" more
| accessible"_ are also documented in Oxford and Merriam-Webster
| dictionaries:
|
| https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/dictionaries-thesaur...
|
| https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/democratic#:~:tex...
| Amorymeltzer wrote:
| I basically agree, but I think at this point it's an accepted
| use; see e.g.
| <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratization_of_knowledge>
| and
| <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratization_of_technology>.
| Indeed, wiktionary
| (<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/democratization>) uses your
| sense as the first, _strict_ definition, but gives "The
| broadening of access to something, especially for the sake of
| egalitarianism." as the loose definition.
| caconym_ wrote:
| "Democratize"? I thought that was when you rent an AI tool
| built on stolen intellectual property to write, draw, code,
| etc. for you because you never bothered to learn those skills
| yourself and convinced yourself they were being gatekept.
| bananamogul wrote:
| Just wait until you realize that 99.999% of the time, when
| people say "methodology" they really mean "method". It'll drive
| you mad.
| apparent wrote:
| The author has written a famous book on college admissions, but
| this piece doesn't really seem to add much to the discussion. I
| came away thinking that his publicist recommended he get his name
| out there more to help his brand or sell some more books.
| yodon wrote:
| More people read the Atlantic than read books on college
| admissions. It is possible and often useful to increase the
| number of informed people even without adding net new
| information.
| apparent wrote:
| I don't think the book that he's famous for talks about the
| demographic trends much at all. It's just something that
| parents are aware of, and that is talked about as one of the
| ways in which admissions numbers will change in the next
| decade or two.
| ks2048 wrote:
| > The number of teenagers graduating from American high schools
| peaked last year.
|
| The article doesn't seem to mention foreigners - particularly
| Chinese. Are those numbers expected to grow or shrink?
| rtkwe wrote:
| Under the current admin's policies shrink. After that who
| knows.
| HillRat wrote:
| That's really the key problem facing US universities, from
| land-grant colleges to the Ivies: everyone depends at least
| in part on closing budgetary gaps with global students who
| pay full freight. Current Administration policies, both
| specifically targeted at foreign students and more generally
| at higher education and immigration, are poisoning the seed
| corn colleges and universities rely on. The only good news,
| relatively speaking, is that Europe is evidently
| constitutionally incapable of taking advantage of what is a
| genuinely one-in-an-imperial-lifetime chance to drain
| intellectual capital from the United States, which means that
| America and our higher education system _can_ recover from
| this, should we have the fortitude to do so in the future --
| there just isn 't much in the way of competition.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| > with global students who pay full freight
|
| Some do, some pay nothing:
| https://www.axios.com/local/twin-
| cities/2023/05/31/minnesota...
| cschmidt wrote:
| Those are not global students. Those are people who are
| already living in the state. Foreign students typically
| pay the most tuition possible with no financial aid,
| subsidizing everyone else.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| so all those foreign students could become "not foreign"
| by merely coming here for a tourist visit and
| overstaying? Quite the stretch.
| brd529 wrote:
| Isn't there a strong argument that we put too many students in
| debt with a partially completed or useless degree in a well
| meaning push for "college for all"? The triumph the author
| describes - an increase in colleges - came at the expense of a
| reduction in vocational schools and programs.
| convolvatron wrote:
| there was almost certainly a demand issue with graduates of
| technical schools. Also increased privatization leading to some
| really awful scammy institutions. I personally went to college
| and washed out, and would have been much better served by
| getting schooled in the trades, but I think this is really a
| pretty bad multi-dimensional corner we've backed ourselves into
| (primary, secondary, and post-graduate schooling, employment).
| kakacik wrote:
| Discussions and concerns we simply dont have in Europe. There
| are costs, but nothing significant from public schools
| themselves, rather just accommodation, food, travel etc. Some
| folks still go to private ones, but those are mostly not for
| extra prestige but rather different focus, or those who are
| not that great students themselves.
|
| Unpopular here, but I judge degree of development / maturity
| of societies on 2 major factors : 1) how it can take care of
| the vulnerable members in need - mostly heathcare, with som
| basic social support to help you bridge between jobs, plus
| obviously (mostly self-earned but managed by state)
| retirement; and 2) how well it invests into its future via
| education on all levels. Education aint luxury but empowering
| basic need. The question then is, how much does given country
| wants to empower potentially all its citizens.
|
| It costs something, but doesnt have to be ridiculous. Apart
| from infrastructure and basic security & defense(since we
| have russia trying to conquer us all in Europe) the only
| really valuable investments.
| lamasery wrote:
| > Unpopular here, but I judge degree of development /
| maturity of societies on 2 major factors : 1) how it can
| take care of the vulnerable members in need - mostly
| heathcare, with som basic social support to help you bridge
| between jobs, plus obviously (mostly self-earned but
| managed by state) retirement; and 2) how well it invests
| into its future via education on all levels. Education aint
| luxury but empowering basic need. The question then is, how
| much does given country wants to empower potentially all
| its citizens.
|
| The test of Rawls' "Veil of Ignorance" is a pretty good way
| of cutting through the details and getting to what matters:
| if you had to be reborn as someone in any country (or, had
| to choose between two, if we wanted to e.g. rank them), and
| you couldn't control anything about the circumstances
| (race, social status, money, intelligence level, disabled
| or not, et c.) but were leaving it up to a die roll based
| on the demographics of the place--which would you choose?
| The ones you're more-inclined to choose are the better
| ones.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_position
|
| And yeah, stuff like ensuring the worst-likely-case for a
| resident isn't _that_ bad, and that you get a significant
| helping hand to improve your lot, helps a ton to make a
| country more appealing, in this sort of thought experiment.
| Far, far more than e.g. making sure the few very-best-off
| really run away with the prize (which improves the appeal
| of such a place basically not at all).
| zdragnar wrote:
| Nearly half of college graduates age 22-27 are underemployed
| (i.e. such that bachelors degrees have jobs that only require a
| high school diploma or less):
|
| https://archive.is/wrDde
|
| According to https://archive.is/Gyl7y the usual suspects do
| poorly, such as performance arts, but also things like criminal
| justice, environmental studies and many of the STEM majors are
| near or over the 50% mark as well.
|
| People trot out the "college grads earn more" lines ad nauseum
| but the numbers haven't been looking good for that argument for
| years.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > all of the STEM majors are near or over the 50% mark as
| well.
|
| I am not seeing that? Computer Science, to use an easy
| example, is 19.1% underemployed. Bad, but not 50%. Even
| restricted to 'recent graduates' it does not look that grim?
| If I'm misreading the data, please correct me. I have kids
| approaching the age where they will be considering post-
| secondary choices so I am trying to keep an eye on things.
| wafflemaker wrote:
| Wouldn't it also mean, that while 1/5 of CS grads
| initially work as support (for example), the people with
| just the education needed for that (vocational school)
| didn't get that job, because it went to someone with a
| better degree?
|
| So it's not that bad after all. At least you got the job,
| while somebody else didn't.
|
| This is just me thinking. Never been to the US and I'm
| guessing that's what the discussion is about.
| zdragnar wrote:
| Not necessarily. Many employers who don't require a
| college degree can be reluctant to hire someone who is
| "over qualified" because they are more likely to quit as
| soon as they get a better job, and they are more likely
| to keep looking for one.
|
| With that said, there's also a lot of jobs that list a
| college degree as a requirement that absolutely don't
| need one whatsoever. I suspect this is largely to cut
| down on the number of applicants.
|
| Back when applications were done on paper, I recall
| turning one in to a prospective employer, who set it on a
| stack of paper around 15cm tall, which just so happened
| to be right next to a trash can. Now that you can apply
| to 50 jobs in an hour because job application sites
| basically pre-fill applications for you, it's insane what
| hiring is like in any city bigger than a small town.
| zdragnar wrote:
| Edit: apologies, I just noticed my original comment said
| "all" instead of "many". That definitely isn't case as you
| noted.
|
| Original: Animal and plant sciences: 53%
|
| Biochem: 42
|
| Biology: 51
|
| Chemistry: 42
|
| Engineering technologies: 44
|
| Medical technician: 47
|
| Miscellaneous Biological Science: 47
|
| Miscellaneous Technologies: 49
|
| Those were the ones that caught my eye. I'm assuming the
| "miscellaneous" categories are for higher degrees in very
| niche or specific sub fields.
|
| STEM covers all of science, math and tech outside of
| medicine/ health care, so the computer science and
| engineering tracks are okay. Even then, I'd be a little
| suspect, as I'd heard elsewhere that the number of
| graduates has increased by 110% but the market for jobs
| hasn't. The good old days of ZIRP and wildly too-small
| talent pool are likely over for good.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| To my own discredit, I do often forget the S in STEM ;-).
| Thank you for improving the completeness of my knowledge
| with data.
|
| I've long been under the impression (might be quite
| wrong, of course) that a number of science fields suffer
| from a problem where bachelor's degrees have very little
| practical value because the career expectation in the
| field is a graduate degree.
|
| This is probably bias on my part since my most direct
| exposure to the phenomenon is a couple of my extended
| family members who got degrees in biology but then exited
| higher education. They can't get jobs in biology, they
| are stuck working jobs that would have been just as
| attainable right out of high school.
| wonnage wrote:
| Some colleges seem to be glorified sports teams that happen to
| have a school attached.
| burningChrome wrote:
| I honestly don't buy this for several reason.
|
| In the mid 90's, my affluent suburban high school was in panic
| mode, afraid that declining enrollment was an impending death
| spiral. My graduating class only had _gasp_ 750+ students. Ten
| years after I graduated, entering the 2000 's, enrollment had
| already surpassed 800 kids. The school had to build out an entire
| wing and completely remodel the athletic building to accomodate
| all the new students that were enrolling.
|
| Likewise, attending college in North Dakota saw the same thing in
| the late 90's. Sheer panic the entire North Dakota college system
| was about to enter an enrollment desert. They wondered how can
| the Universities recruit more out-state students. Again, by early
| to mid aughts? Enrollment was off the charts. They had to buy
| buildings in the downtown area and convert them to a new
| "downtown campus" for several emerging and expanding majors. The
| campus saw a constant upgrade of facilities and buildings. It was
| completely the opposite. The entire system saw a massive
| transformation that continues to this day:
|
| _As of Fall 2025, the North Dakota University System (NDUS)
| reports a total headcount of 47,552 students, marking a 3.8%
| increase over 2024 and reaching its highest level since 2014. The
| University of North Dakota (UND) specifically achieved a record-
| breaking enrollment of 15,844 students in 2025, surpassing its
| previous 2012 record. Across the system, growth is driven by
| rising undergraduate numbers and an increase in high school
| students._
|
| Over the past five or so years, there's been a small fluctuation,
| but overall the system has been surging as of late and is on
| solid ground for the next decade or so.
|
| The North Dakota system is the very kind of system the article
| says is about to be greatly affected by the year 2040. That would
| require quite a drop off from where they currently are and the
| amount of growth they're having right now.
|
| Again, I don't buy this since many of the people who are from
| out-state, many of them will settle down in North Dakota cities,
| get married and start families there. The cost of living is super
| low and its a very tax friendly state compared to many of its
| neighbors like Minnesota. Fargo, where NDSU (and by proxy
| Moorehead University and Concordia College) is located is still
| one of the fastest growing cities in the state, growing steadily
| at about a 2% pace annually. Which means the supply side of the
| equation isn't likely to die out any time either.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Tell that to WVU.
| seniorThrowaway wrote:
| I think college's value proposition and entire model has been
| eroded. Major school's CS grads are finding jobs upon graduation
| at an 11% rate (I don't have the primary source on this, but it
| is published by a site I read that never fudges these kinds of
| things, going back many years). AI probably has a lot to do with
| that, but it's exposing something more fundamental. CS wasn't
| supposed to be a programming boot camp anyway, it is at its heart
| an academic degree much close to pure mathematics than
| programming. Maybe it should go back to that? Maybe college never
| should have been for everyone? That was the norm for the vast
| majority of the existence of higher education. Maybe we don't
| need gleaming campus' with huge facilities overhead costs? When
| storing knowledge required physical books it made sense to build
| learning facilities around large libraries, but that hasn't been
| the case for decades now. Should young people really be taking on
| life long non-dischargeable debt for a glorified high school
| diploma? I think the answer is no, they shouldn't, and that the
| entire college bubble needs to be popped.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > Major school's CS grads are finding jobs upon graduation at
| an 11% rate
|
| That number makes me very skeptical, even in 2026. Maybe what
| you are saying is that the _unemployment_ figure is 11%? That
| would be pretty bad compared to two years ago, but within the
| realm of plausible if we were seeing a major upset in the
| employment market.
|
| E.g. 2024 data: https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/college-
| labor-market#--:...
| mcmcmc wrote:
| I'd interpret that as 11% of CS grads are finding appropriate
| jobs (not underemployment) within a set amount of time after
| graduation. That data from the fed includes all people aged
| 22-27 with a bachelor's degree.
|
| Where that number is coming from, or what that time frame
| would be I'm not sure. But I do think it would be more
| interesting to see the amount of time recent grads spent
| unemployed or underemployed vs a presumptive snapshot of
| current employment state.
| ryandrake wrote:
| That's the way I interpreted it, too. A CS grad working at
| Home Depot stocking shelves or an accounting grad working
| at Starbucks would not count toward unemployment figures,
| but it's probably not what anyone would consider a
| properly-employed college graduate.
|
| Sample size of <10, but a lot of my friends are at the age
| where their kids are graduating from undergrad recently,
| and pretty much zero of them are working in their field,
| and many are struggling to find anything at all, even
| retail or bartending.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > probably not what anyone would consider a properly-
| employed college graduate
|
| Agreed, but wouldn't that be captured as 'under
| employment'? The stats are there for that, too, seems to
| be close to 20%.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Yea, I'd call that underemployed. Does that mean 80% of
| recent college grads are employed in their area of study?
| I would be shocked if that were true.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| It means that they are employed in a position that
| requires a college degree.
| mcmcmc wrote:
| Underemployment in the Fed's data is defined as working
| any job where at least 50% of people in the job field say
| you don't need a college degree. So 80% of recent grads
| are working in jobs where the perception is you need a
| degree. Which with the insane requirements for entry
| level jobs could still be underemployment from a
| practical perspective
| computably wrote:
| The census data you linked lists unemployment and
| underemployment for graduates aged 22-27. Assuming
| nontraditional graduates are a relatively small minority,
| that's a _5 year_ window after graduation.
|
| I would find it believable, though not interesting, for only
| 11% of CS grads to have a local-median-pay, CS-related job
| locked in _at_ graduation.
| Ancalagon wrote:
| defunding education systems strikes again
| curuinor wrote:
| let's see the site, if we can't have a primary source
| bix6 wrote:
| Quick search shows around 6% unemployment for CS grads. Where
| is your number from? That is massively different.
| linkregister wrote:
| Internet universities have been available for several decades;
| correspondence degrees for almost a century. Sure,
| credentialing is a large part of students' choices to attend
| in-person. Yet the primary reason students attend universities
| in person is because most people learn best in-person, with
| personal interaction.
|
| I would not be confident in underemployment figures for 2025
| published this early in the year. The New York Federal Reserve
| has published underemployment rates from 2024 only a couple
| months ago [1]. In it, computer science underemployment is
| lower than other majors, even in the mathematical and natural
| sciences. Aggregated new graduate underemployment has been
| higher in previous decades than the current level.
| Underemployment is the right metric to consider because it
| captures people who accepted lower-skill jobs in order to
| support themselves.
|
| 1. https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/college-labor-
| market#--:...
| dylan604 wrote:
| > Yet the primary reason students attend universities in
| person is
|
| the parties, the co-eds, and the start of life from outside
| the direct supervision of parental units. Let's be honest,
| all of this education stuff is secondary to that.
| linkregister wrote:
| This seems like the conclusion someone would come to by
| watching 1980s college movies, not someone who looked at
| data. Community colleges, vocational schools, and commuter
| students represent a large proportion of college students,
| and are removed from the Animal House experience.
|
| The primary goal for attending college, as stated by both
| students and parents, is for preparation for entrance into
| the workforce and adult life.
|
| One can go to the engineering or computer science building
| in almost any U.S. or Canadian university and observe a
| student population that doesn't party on a regular basis.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > Major school's CS grads are finding jobs upon graduation at
| an 11% rate (I don't have the primary source on this, but it is
| published by a site I read that never fudges these kinds of
| things, going back many years).
|
| I think you may have misread something. 11% is closer to the
| _unemployment or underemployment_ rate for recent grads, not
| the employment rate.
|
| There may have been a short window during the intense layoffs
| where you could have looked at a specific graduation cohort and
| found a low rate of job placement at time of graduation, but
| that's a very different statistic. Many take time off after
| graduation, travel, choose to go to grad school, or just don't
| start job searching in earnest until after graduation.
| Gagarin1917 wrote:
| Jee I wish OP would have linked the source instead of just...
| alluding to it and promising that it's reliable.
|
| "... a site I read..." Lol
| dmoy wrote:
| In 2024 is 74%, not 11%
|
| https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/college-labor-
| market#--:...
|
| That is, 7% are unemployed, and 19% aren't able to find comp
| sci jobs.
|
| I suspect it's worse now, but probably not 11%?
| heathrow83829 wrote:
| Yup. I've also seen a number like that mentioned by the
| Moonshots podcast by peter diamantis.. they showed that quarter
| by quarter the placement rate for CS grads had declined every
| querter for the last 3 years from 93% at 91K per year down to
| 19% at about 65k. it was one of their last podcasts from about
| a week ago.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| I think what you wrote makes sense, and you missed one critical
| aspect : shared access to excessively expensive capitalized
| facilities and equipment.
|
| One example from 1985 onwards that i can think of is NSF
| funding of supercomputer centers. 40 years ago, SIMD / vector
| processors with boatloads of memory were not ubiquitous, nor
| were shared memory multicore / multiprocessors, a situation
| which differs with the reality today.
|
| This NSF funding established the 5 supercomputing centers
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Science_Foundation_Ne...
|
| and then further downstream effects include popular access to
| creations from the supercomputer centers, such as Mosaic from
| NCSA, and an expansion of ideas outside the compuserve / aol
| paradigms.
|
| I think similar situations apply for other engineering
| disciplines, mechanical and chemical and physics and so on.
| Probably true for the arts in various forms: people don't have
| personal pipe organs to learn Bach on, for a crazy example, but
| universities do.
|
| For various industries, learning requires physical equipment
| too expensive for individuals, historically and still.
| traderj0e wrote:
| I view it as an arms race. We even went beyond college degrees
| being common. Now it's fairly common to also do grad school and
| other resume-padding. Yeah that means more learning, but
| there's also a big zero-sum aspect to this.
|
| Specific example is medical school/residency. To "DMZ" this,
| they'd need to ignore anything students do during gap years,
| ignore research too unless it's an MD-PhD program. Everyone
| should be going straight through unless some personal challenge
| forces them to delay.
|
| I don't look to CS as an example because it's an unusual bubble
| on top of all that. CS degrees also became super competitive
| and subsequently worthless around 2000.
| dylan604 wrote:
| > Maybe college never should have been for everyone?
|
| This is my sentiment. School counselors pushed everyone to
| colleges, but actively dissed trade schools. Forcing students
| to take classes in subjects they absolutely do not care about
| is a terrible idea for a secondary education track. If someone
| really just wants to learn a trade and have a nice life, there
| is nothing wrong with that.
|
| Did CS course really just become coding boot camps? That seems
| like an insult to CS grads that came before. That's not a diss
| to boot camp attendees, but CS grad learns way more than how to
| code a specific language. However, if someone wants to just
| code, there's nothing wrong with that. Not everyone is
| interested in knowing how a CPU works or how much L2 cache
| improves anything. There's plenty of code that can be written
| with GC languages so that the coder never even has to think
| about any of the underpinnings of the system. There's other
| code that'll never work like that and requires more lower level
| understanding. There's plenty of work to share
| irishcoffee wrote:
| I said this a week ago, and it swung in votes like crazy:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47655525
|
| " I don't know about anyone else here, but college was not
| educating because I was at college. I did all of the reading
| and studying on my own. The classes weren't very interesting,
| most of my TAs didn't speak the native language well at all,
| nor did half the professors. I enjoyed my time, I made a lot of
| lifelong friends, and figured out how to live on my own. My
| buddies that enrolled in boot camp instead of college learned
| all those same skills, for free. Education won't be ruined or
| blemished my LLMs, the whole thing was a joke to begin with.
| The bit that ruined college was unlimited student loans... and
| all of our best and brightest folks running the colleges raping
| students for money. It's pathetic, evil, and somehow espoused.
|
| I remember my calc teachers, married, last name gulick,
| university of maryland. The calc book was sold as the same book
| for calc 1/2/3. The couple, gulick were the authors. Every
| semester they released a new edition, the only thing that
| changed was the problem set numbers. So, if you took calc
| 1/2/3, you spent $200/semester for the same fucking book.
| Magical times."
| jltsiren wrote:
| The model has not really eroded. It just became more obvious
| that some people had assumptions that were always wrong.
|
| In some circles, it was popular to assume that academic degrees
| are supposed to be job training instead of education. And then
| that got interpreted narrowly as the skills you need in your
| first job after graduation. But a full career is 40+ years.
| Even when the job market was not changing as quickly as now,
| nobody could predict the skills you would need 20 years later.
| If you bought that viewpoint, you spent years preparing for the
| first few years of your career, which was obviously wasteful.
|
| The actual value proposition was already stated 200+ years ago:
|
| > There are undeniably certain kinds of knowledge that must be
| of a general nature and, more importantly, a certain
| cultivation of the mind and character that nobody can afford to
| be without. People obviously cannot be good craftworkers,
| merchants, soldiers or businessmen unless, regardless of their
| occupation, they are good, upstanding and - according to their
| condition - well-informed human beings and citizens. If this
| basis is laid through schooling, vocational skills are easily
| acquired later on, and a person is always free to move from one
| occupation to another, as so often happens in life.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humboldtian_model_of_higher_ed...
|
| Of course, colleges can be made more cost-effective by focusing
| more narrowly on education. For some reason, American higher
| education ended up being weirdly collectivist in an otherwise
| individualist culture. The ideal college experience became a
| separate stage of life between childhood and adulthood. You
| live on a campus outside the real world, and that campus is
| located in a place few people would otherwise move to. The
| incentives got weird, and colleges started prioritizing aspects
| of the college experience that are not directly related to
| education.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| The idea that the AVERAGE person should spend 4 years BOTH not
| working AND incurring massive amounts of (non-defaultable) debt
| is bananas.
|
| College either needs to be 1) way cheaper, 2) mainly for the
| state-subsidized exceptional and independently wealthy, or 3)
| move to a different model.
|
| We have too many colleges LARPing as Harvard, and too few
| colleges even attempting to be affordable, practical, or
| actually deliver value to the ordinary person.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Waterloo University sort of nails the balance with their
| focus on constant, paid internships.
| bashtoni wrote:
| Higher education improves society as a whole. It should be
| paid for from general taxation, and available to all.
| Humanities subjects are just as valid a topic of study as
| STEM.
|
| A couple of generations ago these were uncontroversial
| statements, now most people think you are crazy for
| suggesting such a thing. I think you can trace a lot of the
| problems in the western world back to this.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Lots of things benefit society and don't cost $40k per year
| per person in subsidies - mainly to the upper middle class.
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| _If_ you are choosing to still attend college, my advice would be
| to get an A.B.E.T-accredited degree, to fall back upon (I have a
| non-BE science degree from a prestigious US institution ==
| _essentially_ worthless).
|
| Being an _engineer_ vs. being an _engineer tech_ is a
| substantially life-quality difference.
|
| But only _if_ you choose to attend (I would not re-attend).
| layman51 wrote:
| Is this related to the exam that some college graduates could
| take to become professional engineers?
| coredog64 wrote:
| Necessary but not sufficient: My aerospace engineering degree
| is from an ABET-certified school. However, I skipped the
| class (and test) that puts you onto the track of being able
| to call yourself a professional engineer.
|
| I would also suggest looking at the ABET certification
| interval for different campuses. It was a point of pride on
| our campus that we had a longer interval compared to the more
| established campus. We got the longer interval because ABET
| trusted our program to not need constant supervision.
| semiquaver wrote:
| It seems that the entire higher education space is in dire need
| of some creative destruction. College expenses have been subject
| to cost disease for years and a reckoning is long due. I'm not
| sure if demographic change will produce this reckoning but
| something has to.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| There are only two businesses ChatGPT has really disrupted:
| Chegg and customer service.
|
| There's disruption but not the good kind. The reckoning is
| cheating not demographics.
| colechristensen wrote:
| My most effective professors gave us the answers to the work
| we were expected to do. It was a much more effective way to
| learn than doing work and getting feedback to whether or not
| it was correct weeks later. Organizing academic work in such
| a way that "cheating" is even a concept is silly. You're
| there to learn, if you want to pretend that you learned I
| guess good for you but we need to just get over the fact that
| people can make it look like they did something when they
| didn't.
| colechristensen wrote:
| You just have to fire 80% of the administration, kill all of
| the "programs" which are trying to do this or that, and focus
| on A) providing the basic resources for academics to study and
| B) providing the basic resources for teaching.
|
| Universities need to do very much less that isn't directly
| related to research or teaching and stop pretending the lead
| administrator of a university is an important position. The
| president of a university should have the pay and prestige that
| goes along with administering the parking garage and cafeteria
| and have few responsibilities or accolades beyond that.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| But then how will the NFL run it's free feeder and athlete
| development program?
|
| How will Disney get to profit off of selling college athletes
| as an entertainment product?
|
| If college is accessible to even the poorest Americans, how
| will we maintain the claim that they are bastions of liberal
| brainwashing against millions of conservative people getting
| reasonable educations in basic things like "Political
| Science" that don't actually force them to become communists
| at all?
|
| Who will ensure that only those who "Deserve" it can afford
| to get a degree through byzantine FAFSA workflows and
| departments? Who will ensure that being middle class means
| you have to pay out of pocket instead of getting a couple
| thousand dollars?!
| topspin wrote:
| "It seems that the entire higher education space is in dire
| need of some creative destruction."
|
| There is a substantial collection of things that share this
| need.
| colechristensen wrote:
| University is too expensive, bloating administrative budgets and
| "prestige" architecture combined with professional sports teams
| have led everyone astray from the two goals: advancing the
| forefront of human knowledge and preparing young people with the
| education to be free in their world.
|
| Instead we're going to very expensive camp where most of the
| people flaunt laws for fun (there's no reason alcohol should be
| illegal for undergrads) and then grind to pass tests while not
| actually learning all that much OR becoming all that prepared for
| the world after university.
|
| Particularly with how poorly academics are paid, it would be
| pretty damn easy to build a better university.
|
| It's not at all surprising people are leaving, university degrees
| are becoming minimum quarter million dollar participation
| trophies.
| chromacity wrote:
| > It's not at all surprising people are leaving, university
| degrees are becoming minimum quarter million dollar
| participation trophies.
|
| The vast majority of college degrees are nowhere near that.
| Average in-state tuition in the US is something like $9,000.
|
| Now, some people want a trophy from Stanford, but that's a
| separate topic.
| jimbokun wrote:
| > On the flip side, perhaps no field has collapsed more
| dramatically than computer and information sciences: From 2014 to
| 2024, entry-level openings grew about 6%, while the number of
| graduates soared by 110%.
|
| That seems more relevant to new CS grad unemployment than AI.
| munificent wrote:
| As long as people are allowed to vote in the US, we have an
| incentive to ensure they are all well educated.
|
| Surely a large part of this problem that the article doesn't
| mention is that college is too fucking expensive. And an obvious
| solution to that is to tax rich people and use that to fund
| universities so that students don't have to go so far in debt in
| order to become productive members of society.
|
| It's crazy how many problems today boil down to "a tiny fraction
| of elites are hoarding all the wealth" and yet we seem to assume
| the solution of "tax them and use that money to benefit others"
| is simply impossible.
| mcmcmc wrote:
| Who's "we"? Parties in power have a huge incentive to keep
| voters uneducated and gullible.
| blix wrote:
| You don't want the people to be uneducated, because you have
| no control over their thought processes, which could be
| dangerous an unpredictable. And it leaves space for someone
| else to educate them in way that conflicts with your
| interests.
|
| Ideally, you would want them to be intentionally educated to
| a specific type of manipulable gullibility, where they are
| receptive to your messages, but resistant to messages from
| other sources.
| czl wrote:
| > specific type of manipulable gullibility
|
| A congregation trained to say "amen" on cue.
| GS523523 wrote:
| I'm sure a lot of people assume it's immoral rather than
| impossible.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| But if we care about people being educated enough to vote, a
| high school education is enough. Or at least, what high school
| was 50 years ago was enough.
|
| If you care about voting, fix primary and secondary education.
| The universities aren't the main problem.
| thfuran wrote:
| We can always add more funding, but at some point it must be
| admitted that our system does not efficiently turn funding into
| education.
| codersfocus wrote:
| One man's eduction is another man's indoctrination and your
| comment is a prime example of that.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _One man 's eduction is another man's indoctrination_
|
| This is pretty silly. Any amount of new knowledge tends to
| make the brain more critical. The only real exception is rote
| memorization without application.
| Schiendelman wrote:
| Ironically, improving access to education funding may be what
| made college more expensive.
| akramachamarei wrote:
| The US tax system is substantially more progressive than you
| might think.1 It seems unwise to make it even moreso. The tough
| pill to swallow, if we are to follow in e.g. Sweden's
| footsteps, is that you need to tax the middle class a lot more
| if you want the government to provide more services.
|
| By the way, this whole discussion completely ignores that the
| country is BROKE. Why are we contemplating building a new patio
| and switching to Whole Foods when we're not even on pace to pay
| off the house??
|
| 1: https://manhattan.institute/article/correcting-the-
| top-10-ta...
| danny_codes wrote:
| IMO we should pay adults to go back to school. Make all public
| universities free and pay a living stipend. Give additional
| stipends for dependents. Easy win for everyone.
| coredog64 wrote:
| Insert "just need to subsidize demand" meme here.
| ecshafer wrote:
| Universities got broken trying to make it for everyone, and also
| jacked up the price. Return to traditional degrees, get rid of
| the boutique majors and things that belong in job training
| centers.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Return to traditional degrees, get rid of the boutique majors
| and things that belong in job training centers.
|
| But who is gonna pay for these? (half-/s)
|
| Reality is, employers don't want to pay the bill for job
| training centers or for German-style apprenticeship education.
| Universities aka degree mills are what keeps most large
| employers afloat - depending on the system, it's either the
| talent themselves (US via student loans), the government itself
| (Germany) or a mixture of both paying the bills, while
| employers get fresh trained talent without paying a dime.
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