[HN Gopher] I think US college education is nearer to collapsing... ___________________________________________________________________ I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears Author : jger15 Score : 64 points Date : 2022-03-20 17:56 UTC (5 hours ago) (HTM) web link (twitter.com) (TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com) | [deleted] | raincom wrote: | HYP (Harvard, Yale and Princeton), and top tier law schools | (Harvard, Yale, Stanford), top tier b schools (Harvard and | Stanford) still control the whole thing. | | Sure, if you can ace leetcode like an olympiad, you can become a | L7 at FAANG. However, if you are a MBA from San Jose state, you | would be working as a financial analyst. However, if you are a | Stanford MBA, you would be a SVP. | | Top tier firms in PE, VC, IC, and top tier consulting companies | still go for elite colleges. Why? That is the path to c-level | positions (not leetcode). Same thing for big law. Same thing goes | for Washington consensus (the cesspool of Beltway), where | pedigree matters. | mgh2 wrote: | Is it pedigrees that matter or what these signal? | | Ethics aside, I rather have a smart person in charge rather | than the opposite | wpietri wrote: | What they signal? Like generational wealth and elite | connections? [1] | | I have definitely seen hiring managers lean very hard on | pedigree so they didn't have to do the actual work of | evaluating candidates. It was basically the same deal with a | lot of certifications, like Scrum/Agile and Java certs. | | I also think that your bucketing people such that Harvard = | smart and state school = "the opposite" is a great example of | the problem. Personally, I'd always rather work with somebody | who has had to work their way up, as they tend to have a more | balanced perspective. | | [1] E.g.: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/07/harvards-freshman- | class-is-m... | mgh2 wrote: | Nope, intelligence matters at the end if that person works | hard too, there is no ceiling unlike the opposite. | Intelligence or/and hard work alone can only carry you so | far, there are so many other factors that lead to success | (ex: luck) | | As a business, you bet your risks against the person who | has been vetted vs. the unproven one. | wpietri wrote: | I get why on HN saying "intelligence matters" seems like | an uncontroversial opinion. Under the right circumstances | and ceteris paribus, it can help. But it doesn't always. | Indeed, as a person who is officially very smart, that | has often been a problem for me. E.g., the way smart | people can easily learn to perform smartness rather than | doing the long-term smart thing. Or our tendency to value | theory over experience and book smarts over street | smarts. Early on, being smart also helped me avoid | learning discipline and gumption, two things without | which smartness may not do a lot of good. | | And anyway, you're again, not very smartly, ignoring the | point that a fancy degree doesn't correlate particularly | well with smartness, so the whole intelligence thing is a | bit of a sideshow to the actual discussion here. | mgh2 wrote: | Show some proof, otherwise it is just an opinion | lokar wrote: | One thing that would help with the standardized test issue would | be to set a threshold (based on what data show is needed to do | well in the program) and have a random lottery of everyone who | meets that bar. | ceeplusplus wrote: | That's exactly what TJ HS (top 1 HS in the US) tried to do to | reduce their Asian representation, because Asians were | "overrepresented". | | Standardized tests are a better solution than "holistic" | admissions, which bias heavily for students who can afford to | go to expensive summer camps, competitions, and volunteer in | poor countries. At least standardized tests can be studied for | even if you're poor. | oatmeal_croc wrote: | Random lotteries for people meeting bars is a terrible idea. | Look at the H1b wreck we have today where bodyshop companies | exploit the system by gaming the lottery. Not to mention the | stress, uncertainty and powerlessness of the actual applicants. | lokar wrote: | There would not really be a backlog. You pick the best school | you get into, just like today. And it's already very | uncertain now. | spywaregorilla wrote: | Seems like a pretty unremarkable collection of surface level | observations if you ask me | [deleted] | zdragnar wrote: | The point about not forgiving debt without solving the | underlying problem seems to be missing from much of the student | debt debate. | | Though, the most surprising thing to me was needing to provide | a privilege statement in order to speak at the college event. | | How the hell can anyone provide any sort of nuanced insight | into the privilege and challenges they faced in a "disclosure"? | It reeks of enacting a miniature struggle session to undermine | the speaker before they even have a chance to talk. | boppo1 wrote: | > It reeks of enacting a miniature struggle session to | undermine the speaker before they even have a chance to talk. | | Maybe the Long March through Institutions was real... | mgh2 wrote: | Try hiring someone without a degree in healthcare: someone's | life is on the line, not some rich man's toy. | oceanplexian wrote: | Lots of people have jobs that put lives on the line, Pilots | for example. They don't need a college degree to do that | safely, competently, or legally. The idea that healthcare is | somehow a special snowflake is nonsense. | mgh2 wrote: | I think you are digressing from the main point. Most people | who devalue education are viewing it from a privileged | position (ex: tech). | | Parents on 3rd world countries know that education is still | the safest way to a higher standard of living (not | guaranteed though). | | There are no shortcuts to gain knowledge (degrees, | training, self-taught, etc.). It is hard to vet someone if | that person has not been through accredited programs - | professional scammers can even fool interviewers. | | Aside from this, there is a big difference: would you trust | a doctor to cure you without a medical degree? There is | your answer. | anonporridge wrote: | Healthcare demonstrates the other extreme of the problem in | my experience, where entrance to the field is gatekept by the | medical education system to ensure that there's not an over | supply of professionals that would put downward pressure on | existing salaries. | tablespoon wrote: | > Healthcare demonstrates the other extreme of the problem | in my experience, where entrance to the field is gatekept | by the medical education system to ensure that there's not | an over supply of professionals that would put downward | pressure on existing salaries. | | That's not a bad thing (to a point) when the entry-level | qualification takes a massive amount of time, intense | effort, and money to get; it's very important that they | manage it so there's no oversupply. If you don't, then | you'll have disasters like US legal education has been. | spywaregorilla wrote: | Entry level qualifications probably shouldn't require | that though; especially money. | | Society needs a lot of doctors. It doesn't need any | english lit PhDs. Not to say the latter isn't without | benefit. | redthrow wrote: | This could be Sam Altman reacting to the recent article about | George Hotz [1] mentioning Sam Altman as actually being a pro | status quo figure masquerading as an anti-establishment figure: | | [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30738763 | | _It 's a poetic mission statement for an endeavor which seems | to jive with Hotz's recognition that such a school must be | physical and beautiful. However, scratch away the veneer, Hotz | suggests in a recent blog post, and one finds that those behind | UATX "are either straight up supporters of Power or naive | political children." He points to Joe Lonsdale, Sam Altman, and | Marc Andreessen, all of whom "are very successful in the | current system."_ | | _"This is not a counter-elite!" Hotz continues. "This is a | spin off of the exact same BS that's everywhere. NGO awards and | fake status signaling markers."_ | drewcoo wrote: | > a pro status quo figure masquerading as an anti- | establishment figure | | I call those "liberals." /s | ulrashida wrote: | Got the same impression. The narrative presented indicates the | writer has minimal appreciation for what degrees in fields | other than their own actually provide. | | Good luck being able to practice engineering if you haven't got | a degree! The licensing bodies for professions won't care a fig | about your life experience. | lordnacho wrote: | OTOH, I actually have an engineering degree and I can't build | a bridge, a radio, or a robot, despite having looked at all | those things during the course. | | People who can actually do it have done it for a lab or a | business, and then get accredited. | | My impression of the engineering degree is that it's | basically a certificate in being able to deep dive into... | something. Whether that's actual bridges or financial | derivatives or trading systems, a degree basically says you | haven't given up on some large pile of math-heavy topics, so | an employer should bet on you being able to learn their | thing. It's also the case that there isn't enough time to | learn a whole business, so really it's testing that you stuck | with the introductory parts of a wide variety of techie | things. | ulrashida wrote: | Entirely fair. | | I've worked as an engineering manager for both professional | engineers and non-degreed technicians / technologists. My | observation (such as it is) is that the degreed engineers | had a stronger framework to be able to connect ideas and | learn new skills. On the other hand, technologists were | able to do tasks just as well as engineers but had trouble | generalizing the concepts. | | Importantly, the degree (combined with professional | guidance) also helps you appreciate the things you don't | know. For example, a geotechnical engineer may be perfectly | able to assess an abutment or design a blast but they | wouldn't certify a dam foundation and would reach out for | help in doing so. | | It's probably worth sharing that I hated my undergraduate | education with a burning passion. I've only recently begun | to appreciate it more -- turns out those old farts who did | the accreditation might have known a thing or two about | what you need to know later in your career. | ceeplusplus wrote: | There is very little that an undergraduate degree in gender | studies, media studies, history, etc. provides, even if these | subjects can be considered useful in general. On the surface | you are learning about the humanities but in practice the | classes have such low standards that you learn neither the | writing and argumentation skills needed to excel in academia | nor the deep understanding of past works that is the reward | of the humanities. | | I say this as someone who went to a school with highly ranked | humanities programs. My business communication class taught | me more about communication than any rhetoric/history/media | studies class. My high school AP English Language class | taught me more about persuasive writing than any writing | class in college. | | If undergrad humanities programs are to be taken seriously | they need to drastically increase their rigor and actually | instill skills in their students. | anotherhue wrote: | Twitter 'threads' are bad and people should feel badly for | creating/posting them. | batman-farts wrote: | Imagine how busted archived Twitter threads are going to look | in 20 years. If linkrot in the early Web is bad now, how bad | will "tweet-rot" be, after Twitter declines into disuse, quite | likely fails as a corporation, and its CDN is scattered to the | winds? | | I couldn't care much less about VC or crypto-bro brain farts | like the linked post, although historians writing about this | period probably will be, if only to write cautionary tales. But | there's a lot of deeply interesting expertise that's been | crammed into this godawful format, especially during fraught | times like the pandemic and the current Ukraine invasion. I can | only guess that the experts in question assume that Twitter | will be the format with the widest reach, although I have to | doubt that will always be true. If the Internet Archive comes | up with a project specifically targeted at archiving Twitter | threads as coherent artifacts, I for one would be happy to | earmark a donation for that. | shagie wrote: | I nearly completely agree with you. The one thing that a | twitter "threat" enables that is poorly supported in other | formats is the ability to have comments on a particular | sentence. | | The worst part of the twitter as a long form platform is when a | single idea extends beyond the limitations of a single tweet. | trentgreene wrote: | I see your point about commenting on sentences, but would | also argue that academic writing provides a better model for | this via quotations and references | shagie wrote: | Yep, but there's no place that provides the combination of | user base, potential for engagement, and commenting on | sentences. | | Long form is a much better format for comprehensive ideas, | but the "this is something I want to comment on" isn't | there and the engagement on the comment and comments on the | comments rarely exists in those formats. | | Medium's "highlight" and "respond" functionality is a | rather poor implementation of that desired ability (the | discoverability beyond the "top highlight" is difficult for | other users) ... and then there's that whole "upgrade to | read more" problem. | | And beyond that, there's the bit that twitter has a large | number of users - trying to traverse Wordpress pings and | comment moderation... ugh. | | Unfortunately, twitter is the best place that offers users, | aggregation, no $ needed, comment on sentence, and the | opportunity for engagement of followers. | wpietri wrote: | This is kind of a weird mix of points. Ignoring his political | axe-grinding, I think the value of a college degree is | increasingly in question for many fields because the price has | risen wildly for decades without a corresponding increase in | market value. (Except perhaps for elite-institution degrees, | which are more about the brand and the network than what people | actually learn.) | | I think we haven't seen at least a partial collapse only because | most American companies are bad at hiring, bad at investing in | workers, and bad at keeping them. But imagine a company where | programmers are happy and tend to say for years. That company | might do just as well, or perhaps better, running an in-house | boot camp and apprenticeship program as by hiring new grads. | zdragnar wrote: | Price and value are decoupled for college degrees. STEM | students are subsidized by liberal arts students, and many | liberal arts degrees are not, by themselves, economically | valuable (I said this as someone with just such a degree). | itake wrote: | > STEM students are subsidized by liberal arts students | | Can you provide more context for this? How is the cost of | teaching a STEM student higher than the cost of a liberal | arts student? The classrooms are roughly the same. STEM | student labs might be more expensive to manage, but that | equipment is/(can be?) funded by research grants. | zdragnar wrote: | It is largely anecdotal based on some inquiries made at my | school. Different schools will vary- is it a research | school? What types of STEM degrees are offered? Etc. Others | likely have more concrete insight than I do. | | One conversation that stuck was the me: | | Back when I was in school, one of my mandarin teachers | wanted to offer a "business mandarin" course outside of the | general language program geared towards business students | who might need basic fluency in a corporate setting. The | school denied him because there wasn't a budget for it, | which struck me as asinine at the time as it wasn't like | there would be students who weren't paying tuition for the | course anyway. The school had rooms available, and students | have to buy all the materials the class would need anyway. | bell-cot wrote: | Would offering that course have spread the same n | students across m + 1 courses? (Hence an increase in | instructional costs, but no increase in tuition revenue.) | shinjitsu wrote: | This works fine for research universities, but in teaching | universities (couldn't find the statistics, but there are a | lot of them out there) someone has to subsidize the new | STEM programs until the alumni start giving grants. In my | experience, a lot more STEM alumni give large donations | than humanities and social sciences. But that does mean a | bigger initial outlay by someone. | seanmcdirmid wrote: | STEM professors have to be paid a lot more than liberal | arts professors (due to competition for STEM talent). | Equipment for teaching isn't covered under research grants, | but might come from overhead on those grants, but more | likely from donations (from big corps), grants, or tuition. | itake wrote: | The national center for labor statistics says labor costs | are about 30% of the spend [0]. STEM programs also | include Liberal Arts courses, so only a fraction of the | 30% goes to STEM professors pockets. AFAIK, STEM | professors justify their value by generating money for | the university via patents and grants. | | While there are a massive number of private liberal arts | schools, there are relatively few private STEM schools. | Most STEM degrees come from public university that are | significantly cheaper than private universities. | | [0] - https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=75 | ceeplusplus wrote: | STEM professors bring in billions of dollars in research | grants, of which the university takes over 50% for | "administration". If you aren't aware labs have to pay a | big cut of any grant income they get to the school. It | used to be that in exchange the school would maintain | buildings, fund build outs of equipment, etc. but | nowadays it's wasted on DEIABCDXYZ vice chancellors of | provosts. | ThrowawayR2 wrote: | Research grants pay for research equipment. They do not | cover student labs in any way. | blagie wrote: | Yes, they do. | | (1) Many grants have a mentorship / training / giving- | back component. This is one of the merit-based criteria | NSF reviews on. | | (2) Research grants have overhead which feeds back into | general budgets. At elite schools, this is about 2/3 of | the money. A typical split might be 1/3 to the | department, 1/3 to the school, and 1/3 to the project. | It's kind of a financial scam. Nominally, these cover | buildings and admin time. Practically, these feed into | general budgets which do include labs and teaching. | Corruptly, a lot of the money gets funnelled in creative | ways to improve professor's lives through fancy faculty | clubs, get-aways, and in some cases, creative (but legal) | embezzlement with money ending in people's pockets. | jameshart wrote: | Question: do elite institution degrees confer any addition to | market value commensurate with their cost, or do they simply | select for people who already have high market value? | okaram wrote: | Private elite institutions (Yvies) offer excellent education, | and networking with really rich people ;). Some people | already had that, some will make economic use of it, and some | not. I assume the variance within-group is very very high, so | you can probably calculate stats to defend any point. And | then the cost also varies, so ... | | 'Elite' state schools (GA Tech, Michigan State? Etc) probably | have excellent ROI. | | Expensive, not really elite schools are probably not worth it | on average, but again, cost varies highly, so ... | gumby wrote: | Good question. This has been studied a lot and the answer | is...unclear. | | I think the kind of longitudinal studies needed combined with | a small "treatment" group make this kind of investigation as | hard to do as a nutritional study. | GrumpyYoungMan wrote: | > " _Question: do elite institution degrees confer any | addition to market value commensurate with their cost, or do | they simply select for people who already have high market | value?_ " | | Speaking only for STEM, an elite STEM program gives the | student access to a bigger variety of upperclassman courses; | compare the available course list for a community college vs | a large university and the difference is quite noticeable. | The better programs also provide access to better equipment | and advising; e.g., various University of California campuses | have their own on-site chip fabrication labs. If the career | trajectory you're planning benefits from those advanced | courses, going to the better STEM programs is going to help | tremendously. If not, well, they don't but that's hardly the | institution's fault; they aren't choosing who to send your | resume to, you are. | | (As an aside, I use the word "access" very intentionally; | educational institutions don't "confer" anything. Students | get access to resources and opportunities and they choose | which to take. It's entirely possible to do the minimum to | fulfill requirements; for example, I chose easy courses to do | the minimum fulfill my humanities requirements because it | wasn't where my interests lay.) | lotsofpulp wrote: | It is not the degree that is valuable, it is the network it | allows you to access that is valuable. The classmates you | have at certain institutions will increase the probability of | you achieving certain goals. | wpietri wrote: | I'm sure it depends some on the degree. A very sharp friend | of mine got an aeronautical engineeering degree from a good | state school. After a few years in industry he went back for | a brand-name MBA. He said in 2 years of school, he learned | exactly one thing that he couldn't have just figured out via | general knowledge and a bit of thinking. [1] He said the real | value was in the network he built up, people who would soon | be placed in important positions in important companies all | over. | | [1] For the curious, it was the notion of comparative | advantage, which was counterintuitive for me too: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage | wpietri wrote: | And I should add that in an age of increasing inequality, a | network with a lot of elite members will increase in value | much faster than inflation. So the value of an elite degree | might still be a bargain even at the current prices. Which | probably explains why there's a lot of bribery, legal and | otherwise, by the rich trying to get students into brand- | name schools. | opportune wrote: | Elite institutions could do nothing and still add market | value simply by colocating people with high market value who | meet each other and create lasting networks and friendships. | | I do think that on top of that, they add value because | students can be given more challenging and stimulating | coursework. The difference in Math education between a top | college and a college with loose entry requirements is | staggering - we're talking people doing hard proofs freshman | year vs. undergrad seniors taking upper level math courses | that don't even have proofs, just computation. | okaram wrote: | Maybe ... I think IBM, for example did, and others might. | | OTOH, it may be easier and cheaper to make an agreement with | their local community college. | | I think what makes the discussion hard is that people say | 'college' and mean wildly different things. The author seemed | to mean elite colleges in some comments, overall statistics in | others, and for-profits in others. I think there are very | different problems in different sectors. | abecedarius wrote: | A degree doesn't cost the company. An in-house bootcamp and | apprenticeship program does. Once the less-legibly-promising | new hires are equally productive, they now have a resume making | them legibly good to the company's competitors in the job | market, so it can't make up its investment by underpaying. | ("Programmers are happy and tend to stay" is something the | competitors can do too.) | | I'm not saying don't do it, or that the status quo is good. But | I don't think your suggestion really addresses the problem that | got us here, the problem that we've subsidized an expensive | signaling game (cf Bryan Caplan's _The case against education_ | ). | | > Ignoring his political axe-grinding | | This was gratuitous. I didn't even see any politics in the | thread. | wpietri wrote: | > A degree doesn't cost the company. | | Degrees cost companies through increased wages. Student loans | get paid somehow, after all. | | > This was gratuitous. I didn't even see any politics in the | thread. | | You not seeing things is not the same as things not existing. | I do see it, and wanted to focus this bit of discussion on | the question of degree value, not the assorted other stuff | there. | gumby wrote: | > Except perhaps for elite-institution degrees, which are more | about the brand and the network than what people actually | learn. | | Even for a place like MIT/Caltech? | drewcoo wrote: | Yes. | | Even the way you ask the question shows that you consider | them somehow different. Probably better. Which presumably | means that "better" people go there or teach there. So that's | better networking. | | And the fact that you know them by name as better places | shows better brand. | option wrote: | As a hiring manager at one of tech firms, I can confirm that I | can't care less where you completed your deep learning courses - | at Berkeley or on Coursera. Your GitHub profile matters so much | more (especially so if you are fresh out of college). | clusterhacks wrote: | How about some numbers? Applicants with "traditional" degree | (BS/MS/PhD) hired versus applicants with alternative | credentials hired? | jimbob45 wrote: | In two years of a job search, I had two firms actually look at | my GitHub. It's not a realistic path to getting hired, as much | as hiring managers want you to believe otherwise. | 999900000999 wrote: | Ehh. | | College is a net good, but do it on the cheap. Unless you plan to | attend a top law school, no one cares about your undergrad. | | Community College students can still transfer into UCLA or other | top schools. Hell, community college was good for me since I was | able to take out student loans and get the hell away from my | family. | | No more evictions for me! Even if you don't finish college, it's | a great deal. I was at 6 figures before I graduated. | cudgy wrote: | > I was at 6 figures before I graduated. | | Very few degrees offer this type of wage at graduation. Not | everyone wants to build software. Although I agree with your | general point to attend cheaper schools until it matters (eg | graduate level and want to be a professor or lawyer). | 999900000999 wrote: | My degree has nothing to do with my career. | | If you have horrible family like my own college is one of the | very few options you have. If anything the FASA process needs | to do more to accommodate people who don't really have | families. | | The calls for student loan forgiveness ignore the good these | loans do. At 18 you can do so many stupid things, taking out | a loan isn't the worst. If that loan gets you put of a | volitile situation max it out | unpopularopp wrote: | What's the word when people with trust and experience on one | field suddenly trusted when they talk about other topics too? Saw | this a lot with COVID but this is a good example too. | dorkwood wrote: | Maybe the Halo Effect? | | "The halo effect (sometimes called the halo error) is the | tendency for positive impressions of a person, company, brand | or product in one area to positively influence one's opinion or | feelings in other areas." | | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect | anonporridge wrote: | Some kind of mix between appeal to authority and false | equivalence? | jpeloquin wrote: | Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect? Although that's more about how news | and social media are unreliable sources of information on all | topics. I've heard "Engineer's Disease" or "Engineer Syndrome" | used to describe the tendency of so-called technical people to | think their expertise generalizes to topics in which they have | no experience. | ulrashida wrote: | But.. he has a blue check mark! | _Microft wrote: | On Nitter: | | https://nitter.eu/sama/status/1505597901011005442 | mulcahey wrote: | Few thoughts | | 1) The subreddit of my alma mater has been full of posts venting | anxiety, depression, trouble with financial aid, trouble making | friends, frustration with administration, etc for years now, | exacerbated by COVID. While that may not be representative of the | whole undergrad population, I can't help but be reminded of | Thiel's line from Zero to One "Why are we doing this to | ourselves?" | | 2) I'm now seeing not only friends without bachelors degrees get | well-paying CS jobs with "engineer" titles & equity comp, but | even some in mechanical engineering! | | 3) When I was in undergrad, half of my upper div classes were so | abysmal that I figured the staff who cared enough to keep the | enterprise going were fighting a losing battle. A complete | rewrite would be better than an in place one. "Death is the best | invention of life" and we should try the creative destruction of | capitalism/evolution instead of holding the oldest institutions | in the highest regard. | | I don't have much of a clue what the future will look like by the | time I have kids of college age, but I do not think particularly | highly of what we've got now. | moab wrote: | These kind of prognostications /opinions are easily falsifiable | by talking to your coworkers that went to other universities. | Most of the top-25 schools have upper-div CS classes that are | nothing like what you're taking about, with both faculty and | TAs putting in enormous effort to make sure that courses are | accessible and intellectually stimulating. | mulcahey wrote: | I went to a top 25 CS school. Half my upper div lectures had | ~5% attendance. | moab wrote: | Strikes me as very anomalous. 5% attendance? Anyway, bad | idea to draw conclusions from one university... | mach1ne wrote: | I don't see the point of cancelling student debt. It's obvious | it's not fixing the problem. Probably the only reason it's even | on the table is the fact that it's not stepping on any toes. | yucky wrote: | It's only on the table because it's an attempt to buy votes. | dgan wrote: | > "I was asked to give a 'privilege disclaimer', essentially | stating that if I didn't look like I did I wouldn't have been | able to succeed..." What?? | Jerrrry wrote: | The government should pull out of student grants and loans. | | Unfortunately, the "double pell" movement means people paying out | of pocket are soon going to have to pay double. | | What a coincidence, that the average degree costs the average | student loan package. | | Stop subsidizing education. Let the market forces actually allow | for a fair price discovery, or else that college degree is as | valuable in a sense as crypto is...its intrinsic value - use case | - job improvement prospects, multiplied by a coefficient of | speculation. | | I say this as someone who has had a massive impact on the student | aid lifecycle, and yet didn't go to college myself, because | ironically, wasn't able to fill out the FAFSA form. | ThrustVectoring wrote: | One of the underappreciated parts of student loans is that every | debt is someone else's financial asset, and this usually nets out | to financing the transfer of real goods and services to retirees. | If you stop squeezing young adults, you _have_ to squeeze the | retirees that own their assets. Inflation, asset prices going | down, pension benefits reduced, tax increases, etc - reducing | student loan amounts doesn 't affect the real economy, so easing | up on material constraints means more real consumption there | instead of elsewhere. | blakesterz wrote: | "But cancelling all student debt and then continuing to issue new | debt to students that the university fails (i.e. by not putting | them in a position to make enough money to easily pay it back) | doesn't make sense." | | That's one thing that never made any sense to me. I get it. I | really do. But I've never seen any compelling, realistic answer | to "And then what?". This only solves the problem of the HUGE | number of people with crushing loan debt now. I get it, I really, | really do. But... then what? What about the next decade? It's not | getting any better. | | The most important word in this is "realistic". | okaram wrote: | > This only solves the problem of the HUGE number of people | with crushing loan debt now. | | That's a big problem solved. We can also solve other problems. | Nothing requires us to solve all of them at the same time. | AnimalMuppet wrote: | But if solving this problem takes a huge amount of money, and | the problem is going to keep coming, then actually _solving_ | it takes more than money. It takes changing things so that | the problem quits showing up. | | You _might_ get everyone to pony up the money to bail | everyone out who is currently mired in college debt. It 's a | much tougher sell to get us to pony up the money forever. | crackercrews wrote: | Definitely agree that removing the SAT appears to be related to | the upcoming supreme court case about affirmative action. COVID | was a good reason to delay it for a couple years. But schools are | pushing it out further. That makes no sense. | | It seems the SAT is increasingly considered "racist" because it | reveals racial disparities in learning. What's next? Get rid of | the driver's license test because it turns that white kids pass | it at a higher rate than black kids? | | Sam mentions that schools could down-weight the SAT but should | still consider it. Why don't schools want to do that? My guess: | if they have mediocre scores on record for a kid, then admitting | him means reporting those scores to USNews. They'd rather not | know that the kid has a score that would bring down their | average. | sometimeshuman wrote: | As an ancedote, I was told by my low income peer group that you | get 600 points just for filling out your name on the SAT and | that 800 points could get you into a great school like MIT. So | I assumed it was a pass/fail exam in a sense and left early | during the verbal part because I found it condescending and | boring. | | Before the exam, I couldn't understand why the higher income | kids were paying for SAT training classes. What is the point of | scoring 1600 if 800 could get you in the "best" school. It | would have interfered with my after school job anyway. | | To add further, I thought MIT was just DeVry for rich people | but otherwise equivalent and that only black kids get | scholarships (ironic since I am Latino). Are things different | now ? Are most kids from lower socio-economic backgrounds still | clueless about the college admissions process, the difference | between colleges, and scholarships. It seems like that is the | part that needs to be fixed and eliminating SATs is | shortsighted. | crackercrews wrote: | You get 200 points per section automatically. [1] And to get | into MIT you'd need at least 1,000 points, no matter your | race. | | 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAT | tessierashpool wrote: | that is entirely a guess, though. there's actual documented | evidence of colleges admitting less Asian-Americans and Jews | than the test scores of either group would suggest, and Altman | refers to this phenomenon in the thread. | | > It seems the SAT is increasingly considered "racist" because | it reveals racial disparities in learning. What's next? Get rid | of the driver's license test because it turns that white kids | pass it at a higher rate than black kids? | | the SAT's a way of laundering discrepancies in generational | wealth, which is indeed due to racist public policy as well as | racist private actions. it may be intended not that way, but | that's how it functions. | | so what's next would be removing other methods of laundering | racist public policy and racist private action. probably | drivers' licenses would not show up on that list, and your | assertion that it might is so ridiculous that it's hard to | believe you're examining this topic with good faith. | gruez wrote: | >the SAT's a way of laundering discrepancies in generational | wealth, which is indeed due to racist public policy as well | as racist private actions. it may be intended not that way, | but that's how it functions. | | But what are SATs being replaced with? "holistic admissions"? | A poor kid can prepare for the SAT by studying his ass off, | with mostly free/cheap materials from the internet. How can | you do the same with "extracurriculars" (eg. going to africa | to dig a well) and "hobbies" (going the country club every | week)? | Ekaros wrote: | From my viewpoint in Europe I never understood the whole | extracurricular, hobby or even the essay or recommendation | letter part of admission process. All of those felt like | nothing to do with actual capability to study. If SAT is a | bad idea, replace it with field specific national entrance | exam. | | Other fun alternatives, just outright auction off certain | number of admission slots. Or just award slots randomly to | all applicants. | crackercrews wrote: | > the SAT's a way of laundering discrepancies in generational | wealth, which is indeed due to racist public policy as well | as racist private actions. it may be intended not that way, | but that's how it functions. | | Wealthy students do score better than poor students on the | SAT. Do you know who also scores well? Students who study | very hard, including poor students. If you get rid of the SAT | then the poor students will find it harder to stand out. The | rich kids will have ghost-written essays and | extracurriculars. They won't be hurt at all. | | > so what's next would be removing other methods of | laundering racist public policy and racist private action. | probably drivers' licenses would not show up on that list, | and your assertion that it might is so ridiculous that it's | hard to believe you're examining this topic with good faith. | | I have never heard someone say that disparate impacts only | matter if there is a laundering of wealth or public policies | or private actions. Where have you seen this distinction | drawn? | moltke wrote: | The problem with modern US college education is that much of | what it teaches is just remedial high school education ("gen | eds" and math up to and including Calculus/Linear | Algebra/Probability/"discrete math" etc.) | | We've already destroyed public primary/secondary education by | more or less passing everyone in order to not make it "racist" | so in order to communicate much of anything in college everyone | has to go through the same crap a second time. When everyone | gets allowed into college the same thing will happen there and | the whole thing will just turn into an (expensive) | administrative exercise rather than something that actually | produces value. | | There's a lot of data suggesting some races (Asians, jews, to | some degree Europeans) are just more academically inclined than | others (such as Africans.) We need to accept that it's ok if | these people are underrepresented in academia _if the | individuals are still allowed to succeed based on merit._ There | will always be outliers in both directions and it 's important | to not racially discriminate against them. | | I'm certain that removing entrance exams like SATs will | actually hit the disadvantaged people hardest because now they | can't as easily show their merit and are likely to be | discriminated against while at the same time undermining higher | education. | zozbot234 wrote: | > ...are just more academically inclined than others... | | It's not "races", it's culture. We should just remove this | whole idea of "race" from our understanding of social | phenomena, all it can do is mislead. There are African, Black | subcultures like the Igbo and Ashanti that achieve to the | highest levels academically (including in the West!) and | Asian subcultures that don't place any focus on education, | and struggle as a result. Culture is what matters. Forget | race. | acidbaseextract wrote: | Polymatter recently had a great video on the way the college | ranking system is a hustle for foreign student money, and just | how heavily it distorts colleges incentives: | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQWlnTyOSig | [deleted] | nickysielicki wrote: | > Cancelling student debt is good if it's tied to fixing the | problem going forward, which means not offering it, or having the | colleges be the guarantor, or ISAs, or something. | | What do you tell the upper middle class families that didn't buy | a bigger house or pad their investment accounts so that they | could help put 3 of their kids through schools? My parents spent | at least $200k on undergrad education between me and my siblings | (UVA, Cornell, UW-Madison). | | Did they make the wrong decision? Should they have saddled us | with debt? At 10% (ie: S&P AAR) that would net $600,000! When | America becomes a place where you're punished for having invested | in your children, it becomes a place where you will no longer | want to live. | ryanSrich wrote: | The US is anti-children from the moment they are born. College | is no exception. As someone with 2 kids under 2 years old, it's | one of those things you don't think about until it happens to | you. | | - daycare is on average around $2k per month per child where I | live. | | - outside of tech, almost no companies pay for parental leave. | At most, they are obligated to hold your position, but no pay | is required. This is especially true if you or your spouse work | in the healthcare field. It's absolutely mind blowing how | poorly employees are treated by their employers in the | healthcare industry. | | - childcare tax credits are an absolute joke. From the $32k in | childcare I paid for last year, I got a $1,600 credit... | | - once you have kids, your health insurance costs will be | astronomical unless you're lucky enough to work at a company | that provides good insurance. In my situation, I run a small | tech company where we don't provide HC insurance (too costly | atm). My wife works in healthcare. Our insurance is beyond a | joke. Thousands per month with a $20k deductible. It's hell. | | - once your kids are in school they're taught very little | useful skills. It's mostly an exercise in obedience and | conformist thinking. | | - once your child graduates high school they have the option to | either take out hundreds of thousand of dollars in federally | backed loans if they're lucky enough to have parents that don't | make enough money. If they have middle class parents they'll | have to rely on even worse loans from private lenders. | | So would I expect the US to punish middle class parents that | foot the bill for their child's college? Yes. The US hates the | middle class, as much as they hate children. | disambiguation wrote: | This is an extremely important observation and it doesn't get | discussed enough. | | For whatever reason, the USA is extremely hostile to having | kids. | alanbernstein wrote: | You know, I've asked this exact question before, but I've | changed my mind. Here is what I'd tell them: "Congratulations | on being wealthy enough to afford tuition. Try to be | considerate of the people less fortunate than you." | nickysielicki wrote: | If it was $60k of opportunity cost I might be willing to | accept it as a progressive tax and let bygones be bygones. | But $600k likely represents half of their net worth. | "Considerate" only goes so far. | alanbernstein wrote: | Yeah, $60k is closer to the amount that I was complaining | about having already paid. But you're not wrong; I'm just | trying to keep the greater good in mind. How about: "Try to | consider how much you and your family will benefit from the | improvements made possible to society and the economy by | redirecting billions of dollars from loan payments to other | spending." | tenebrisalietum wrote: | Red herring. Subject of TFA is the value of school. This | example family wasted $200k on a low-value thing that only | seems to exist because companies are terrible at recruiting. | It's worse for someone who has to go in a lifetime of debt, but | ideally neither the rich nor poor family would have to waste | their money. | nickysielicki wrote: | Subject of TFA is about the dwindling value of school and I | agree with it. But I don't think it's wrong to push back on | this aside about cancelling student debt. | | It's completely untenable and anyone proposing it is ignoring | the massive opportunity cost that has been incurred by people | that played by the rules, pursued useful degrees, and made | the responsible decision to stretch their means to do so. | Tretiotrr wrote: | In Germany you study for free. | | There was a video (perhaps even from kurzgesagt) which describes | how critical it is for our society to allow as many people as | easy access to knowledge as possible and not only for obvious | reasons but also to increase the chance for all of us that the | hidden genius is finding a cure for cancer. | | You can even study for free in Germany as an non German. You know | what happens? Those people might stay in Germany and make Germany | a better country. | | Imagine a world were we compete globally with the best education | system. Let's allow more people to shape our future. | walkhour wrote: | What do you think about German kids being sent to different | kinds of highschools at age 10. | | Most of the people attending Hauptschule don't attend | university [0]. In some regions 60% of the children attend it. | Aren't you concerned that the person who could discover the | cure for cancer is in Hauptschule right now? | | Imagine a Germany in which the rest of your life isn't | determined at age ten. | | [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hauptschule | boppo1 wrote: | Cool, I got a 2.3 GPA in highschool and college but would love | to try again. Where should I apply? I don't mind moving to | Germany. | Tretiotrr wrote: | You only need to Google for it. | | https://www.mygermanuniversity.com/universities | | You are a little bit limited by what you like to study if you | don't speak German as not every university offers a bachelor | in English but it's doable. | frogperson wrote: | If they made college free in America it would be severely | underfunded and suffer all the same problems as American high | school. | | If there is no money in something, then it's assumed there is | no value. It's the American way. | webmaven wrote: | _> If they made college free in America it would be severely | underfunded and suffer all the same problems as American high | school._ | | You would only get those same problems if you made college | mandatory, as well as free. | | A real commitment to a policy of free tertiary education | would also expand the availability of trade schools not just | universities. | mind-blight wrote: | I'm concerned that the majority of "should we fix college or | should we circumvent college" conversations don't bring up one of | the scariest parts of our current economy: STEM jobs are the main | viable path for economic stability and freedom. | | All of the conversations I've seen implicitly assume that this is | good, and that the solution to farmer workers (or other low paid | workers) escaping poverty is to train them as software | developers. | | We _really_ need farm workers, and most of them live in poverty. | I love having more engineers, scientists, and doctors, but we | desperately need non-STEM work to be a viable option | tester756 wrote: | That's real problem | | Only one person (the oldest one) from my like 20-30ppl circle | within age range of 20-30 gets close to IT salaries, that's | ridiculous | | in most cases it is around 40% (around 2 minimal wages) of my | *nothing special* salary by IT standards (4.5 minimal wages), | people with better cards get 7-10 minimal wages here, top | people like 15-20+ | | and they see no reasonably easy way to jump higher (e.g within | one or two years) | | I can't honestly recommend anything but IT to anyone that can | put a lot of effort (while mentioning all bad things ofc) | webmaven wrote: | Cards? | tester756 wrote: | >have a card up your sleeve | | >to have an advantage that other people do not know about: | | (without that last part) | gruez wrote: | >STEM jobs are the main viable path for economic stability and | freedom. | | >We really need farm workers, and most of them live in poverty. | I love having more engineers, scientists, and doctors, but we | desperately need non-STEM work to be a viable option | | This is basically a non-problem because of the supply/demand | mechanics of the labor market. If farm workers' job gets | sufficiently bad from a value proposition perspective, then | people will leave the occupation and employers would be forced | to pay higher wages to attract workers. | tough wrote: | Macro-farms and thousands of automation systems can make your | need for human labour decrease more rapidly than people can | find other jobs... | | It's going to be a fuckin'mess, 4 dudes richer and everyone | else screwed | belltaco wrote: | In that case, this statement would become false: | | >We really need farm workers | tough wrote: | We really need them if we want to farm in sustainable and | moral ways, as we have done by thousands of years. | | But point maken | antholeole wrote: | Not sure about this: everyone else screwed seems kind of a | far reach. If you consider screwed "unable to buy luxuries" | then maybe, but I consider screwed "unable to buy food" and | Macro farms stand to make food substantially cheaper. | | How will the four people get richer if the food they create | is priced so high that no one can buy it? | | I get this is deeply economic and philosophical, but it's | an interesting thought experiment. | colpabar wrote: | > If farm workers' job gets sufficiently bad from a value | proposition perspective, then people will leave the | occupation and employers would be forced to pay higher wages | to attract workers. | | Serious question - have you ever been poor? Are you aware | that sometimes people have to work at shitty jobs because | they have no other options? And, if employers really would | "be forced to pay higher wages" as you claim, why are all the | restaurants in my city still short staffed? | | I'm not claiming to have a solution but claiming "the market | will fix it" seems like such a cop-out, like telling someone | god will take care of it. | gruez wrote: | >Serious question - have you ever been poor? Are you aware | that sometimes people have to work at shitty jobs because | they have no other options? | | OP was talking about the problem from a practical | perspective (ie. "We really need farm workers", presumably | worried about a future where there aren't enough farm | workers and we starve or something), and I was addressing | that in the same way. Your objection seems to be from a | humanitarian perspective (ie. how can we provide a minimum | standard of living to non-STEM workers?), which is valid | concern, but ultimately not relevant to the original | problem. | | >And, if employers really would "be forced to pay higher | wages" as you claim, why are all the restaurants in my city | still short staffed? | | combination of: | | 1. stubbornness/price stickiness | | 2. belief that it's better to hold out in the short term | and wait for the labor supply to return, then it is to give | out pay raises now. Wages are sticky, which mean wage hikes | would turn into ongoing expenses into the future. | | 3. belief that the raising wages would raise prices, which | would decrease demand and ultimately make the business | worse off. | | >I'm not claiming to have a solution but claiming "the | market will fix it" seems like such a cop-out, like telling | someone god will take care of it. | | The market seems to be working just fine in my area. Some | restaurants have shut down. Some have raised prices. Some | have decreased service. Which is the right approach? I | don't know. The restaurants that took the right approach | will win out in the end. In the meanwhile I'm still able to | eat out. | mind-blight wrote: | The labor market - especially the low paid labor market - is | _a lot_ less liquid than it needs to be for pure supply | /demand to work in the US (that's also taking human suffering | caused by poverty out of the equation, which is pretty | callous). | | Laissez-faire markets are also bad at taking negative | externalities into account. Food being too expensive to | afford in the stores while it's also rotting in the fields | (which has happened in my state multiple times on the last | few decades) is really bad. Children not being being | effectively taught because teachers are quitting due to | burnout and terrible wages is really bad. I don't think it's | sufficient to shrug out hands and say "it'll work itself out" | when we can actively see very these kinds of detrimental | problems | kistanod wrote: | It's still important to have doctors/nurses/engineers that went | through rigorous tenure. The problem lies with inflated tuition | costs for a useless degree like gender studies, where after | graduating college, your options are 1) drown in debt 2) continue | the cycle of being in academia (masters/PhD) and justifying the | existence of this system. | orzig wrote: | I didn't see any statements about what _will_ be, just what | _should_ be. | | The sort-of counter-example is that "Tech jobs [..] are | increasingly willing to hire with no degree". But strange that he | of all people didn't add a statistic on that. | | Am I missing something? | nynx wrote: | It's really too late for me to drop out (graduating in the fall), | but it's something I've put a lot of thought into in the past. | Really, the main thing that's had value for me has been my senior | thesis. Most classes, even high-level engineering classes, are a | waste of time. | lordnacho wrote: | The elephant in the room is that college doesn't teach you | anything you need to know at a job. | | I'm not talking about the obvious exceptions like medicine or law | (though even that can be done as a conversion rather than an | undergrad degree) or anything else where you literally need the | paper that says you can do it. I'm also not talking about | becoming a researcher, where obvious you need to know a bit of X | to become a professor of X. I'm talking about the vast number of | degrees that are not job specific. Business, economics, history, | literature, and so on with humanities, but also math, chemistry, | physics, and biology. | | There is no real reason an employer would care what you studied, | because as a new graduate your job is to learn the business. | Whether you were interested in one thing or another in college | doesn't matter much, the main line is between math-tech stuff and | not-math-tech stuff. Employers who reckon their work is techie | will gravitate towards those graduates, while others will be open | to anyone. | | All the degree signals is that you somehow gathered yourself and | read a bunch of books and solved a bunch of questions. That's | somehow supposed to be evidence that you can learn their | business. | | Of course the problem is there's plenty of people who instead of | learning Krebs cycle could just go directly into finance or | accounting or any number of jobs without jumping through the | hoops. The issue is that college has become a destination for so | many smart kids, it's hard to imagine a smart kid who skips it. | So absolutely everyone feels they need to go to college, and | absolutely every employer thinks they need to hire just college | grads. | | In terms of helping the economy, it's really not efficient. | Everyone has to sit around for three or four years when they | really want to be working, and everyone who can't find the | money/time to do it is cut out from middle class aspirational | jobs. | gruez wrote: | >All the degree signals is that you somehow gathered yourself | and read a bunch of books and solved a bunch of questions. | That's somehow supposed to be evidence that you can learn their | business. | | >[...] | | >In terms of helping the economy, it's really not efficient. | Everyone has to sit around for three or four years when they | really want to be working, and everyone who can't find the | money/time to do it is cut out from middle class aspirational | jobs. | | What's the alternative? Like you said yourself, employers want | some sort of signal that you're reasonably smart and can put | the work in. You can't really replace that with a 6 month | bootcamp. | lordnacho wrote: | Massive online learning/examination system, fewer places in | university, reserved for people who actually are going to be | professors. | | Everyone else sits at home and just learns the stuff and does | the exams while driving an uber. It will take a lot less time | to just jump the math hoops than to do four years of half | holidays, eg my total university time was actually 96 weeks | but spread over 4 years. So a couple of years of doing that | and people can see you can learn stuff. | ab_testing wrote: | I don't like Twitter threads but I agree with Sam Altman in this | case. Waiving student loan debt but not resolving the root cause | will give a clear signal to colleges - Increase tuition as much | as you want because the taxpayers will again pick up the tab in a | few years . | onlyrealcuzzo wrote: | Creditors would be on the hook - not colleges - if students | default. | WillPostForFood wrote: | Taxpayers are the creditors for 92.6% student loans. | | https://educationdata.org/student-loan-debt- | statistics#:~:te.... | walkhour wrote: | Thank you for this data | Maximus9000 wrote: | more easily read here: | | https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1505597901011005442.html ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-03-20 23:00 UTC)