Hacker News Reader

Comment by michaelchisari | Hacker News Reader

How many of those 65.9 percent can reasonably afford the loans they take out in order to go attend college?

Seems to me the issue is loans in general, and that free public university is a proven way to provide education without extraordinarily inflating the costs.

View on HN

Public universities are super cheap - in my state (Massachusetts), UMass Amherst is less than 10k a year if you graduate with above a certain (easy to attain) GPA. I think one of the largest issues is with people deciding to forgo cheap, good public schools like UMass, UVM, etc and going instead for more expensive private schools that offer the same or worse quality education, such as Elon, Holy Cross etc.

On the other hand, schools like MIT, Harvard, Yale etc all offer generous scholarships - regardless of your income, you will be able to afford one of these schools. Not to mention that after college, higher paying jobs are easier to get if you go to one of these schools.

If you want to just go to a decent college for cheap, it's not too expensive if you work it out right - either you can get accepted to a top school, or you can go to your state's flagship program (UC Berkeley, UMass Amherst, UNC Chapel Hill, GATech, UT Austin, and others come to mind).

I’m trying to find a polite way of expressing this, but your sense of affordability and ease of access is… not based in a lot of people’s reality.

What is not-affordable about this? If a college costs $10k + $10k cost of living each year that's $20k a year in spending.

Working 20 hour weeks (not uncommon) covers $8-10k of that - so the total debt load is around $40-50k after 4 years. This can be paid off on a $40k a year salary given a desire to spend money wisely.

Working 20 hours a week with full (4 year grad) class load in STEM? No way, no way at all.

Really? I did it. And yes, it was a STEM degree.

Hell, you can work 16 hours just on the weekend which still leaves your week free. And you can work all summer. I graduated with zero loans.

I really hate the "I did it so others can to" arguments. Some people are capable of that... the point is that there are is another entire class of people who are almost capable. Besides, the case today is usually that you take on that 40k in debt and then can't find a job. Good luck even supporting yourself at your minimum wage job, much less paying any loans off.

For most people, it won't be possible. Even if it is possible, it shouldn't be. If you can work that much (and take all your weekends off schoolwork), then you aren't taking challenging enough courses, and aren't getting your money's worth out of your education. School is a full-time job (and more).

Must have been very fun and rewarding. Are you suggesting this is how humans should live?

I think it is very feasible: in college you have opportunities for jobs where you can effectively get paid to study. I worked as: the greeter/pool ball distributor in my dorm every other weekend, the monitor in the cafeteria/study hall/student area one or two nights a week, and in the concession stand at events (only busy during breaks), and between those gigs I netted 20 or more hours a week. Almost all of this time was dedicated study time. I was frankly amazed at how few of these opportunities students took advantage off – every building and every dorm room had similar jobs and I was always able to pick up extra hours if I needed to. I had a few entrepreneurial friends that also worked night shifts at 7/11s or the front desks of nursing homes who were also able to get paid to study all through college. With the exception of the 7/11 gigs, studying was always encouraged. My impression was that college students felt these jobs were beneath them and/or did not take the time to seek them out. Once I entered law school the first thing I did was find a similar job – working the front desk at the law library during the night shift...

A quick Google says average student debt load is around $30k. If you consider a $40-50k debt load to be acceptable, then there is no problem to begin with.

> If a college costs $10k + $10k cost of living each year that's $20k a year in spending.

It depends on the college; mine lists a cost of attendance of $66k/year. Of course, one can argue that one should choose a college based on financial capability; but then, are you also trading quality of education, and does that affect your later chances of a job in your field…

Also, from what I've seen, some people are able to get vastly better loans than others; in my experience, the interest rate can vary by up to 3x, with poorer families getting the higher rates, as they're supposedly riskier to loan to; I've seen this even in the case of a student with a good track record going into a major that would provide him a good salary upon graduation (and at a school that requires paid co-ops, so he'll be getting resume experience and pay soon, hopefully).

Lets see, 10000/(4820) = 10.42/hour in take home* pay. I don't know how realistic it is to make over minimum wage, part-time in most of the US college towns -- but surely it's not tax-free? Would one need any health insurance, or does the employer/college cover that (for while at work/at school resp)?

With 0% interest loans (lots are available for students), 10k tuition + 10k a year in living sounds pretty reasonable considering that college graduates make about 98% more per hour [1] on average than those with only high school diplomas. Not to mention that if you're doing something in CS, you could pretty easily pay off each year by doing extra work on the side / through summer internships.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/27/upshot/is-college-worth-it...

>Public universities are super cheap - in my state (Massachusetts), UMass Amherst is less than 10k a year if you graduate with above a certain (easy to attain) GPA.

I went to UMass Amherst, and thus so did most of my undergrad friends. Only my fiancee received any kind of large scholarship for the GPA she attained in high school that put her anywhere under $10k/year.

Some of us received Commonwealth College merit scholarships, but those generally amounted to $5000/year and required that you maintain a certain GPA while at UMass, while also imposing extra academic requirements.

Further, UMass currently lists itself as costing $25k/year for in-state undergrads[1].

[1] -- http://www.umass.edu/umfa/undergraduates/costs

I think there was also some sort of MCAS requirement - I just know that myself and many of my friends were granted the opportunity to go to UMass for nearly free (basically just housing) based upon our GPA / MCAS. I think the John and Abigail Adams scholarship [1] is what we received offers for.

[1] http://www.doe.mass.edu/mcas/adams.html

    UC Berkeley

You're looking at around $27,000 or more per year.

http://admissions.berkeley.edu/costofattendance

That includes housing. Whether or not you're going to school you need to pay for housing.

State flagships schools generally cost $22-25k/year, including UMass Amherst actually: https://www.umass.edu/umfa/undergraduates/costs

Right, I guess I'm assuming that students receive scholarships, which isn't at all unreasonable at state schools like UMass or UVM (don't know about other areas). Most of my friends going to UVM / UMass are going for free (only have to pay for housing).

How many of those 65.9 percent are learning something useful to society? Because those that are will not have a hard time paying back loans.

Unless they go into a useful field like education.

Mid-career K-12 teachers in WA state make $49-67k per year.[1] Median household income in the WA is $53k.[2] Seems pretty good for single earners to be above half of households for 9-10 months of work per year.

[1] http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/education/wildly-va...

[2] http://www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/INC110213/00

It's more accurate to ask how many are learning something that the parts of our society that control the money find useful. Do we really need more computer science graduates making time wasting apps or on demand laundry start-ups? There's plenty of STEM grads having a tough time finding jobs even though they've studied subjects very useful to society (cancer research, neuroscience, etc).

And reality can change quickly. I seem to recall back in 1991, as I was starting a Computer Science degree, reading articles about the coming glut of CompSci grads and shortage of jobs. Of course the internet came along and changed that rather quickly.

Your position that everyone just needs to major in the right degree is bullshit. If everyone moved to the top 10 in demand degrees then there would be a glut of job candidates and the problem would basically be the same, people just graduating being told their degree is useless and they made the wrong choice.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/us-pus... http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/02/the-phd-... http://www.cbsnews.com/news/a-shortage-of-scientists-and-tec... http://www.popecenter.org/commentaries/article.html?id=2701

If everyone moved to the top 10 in demand degrees then there would be a glut of job candidates

Exactly. Remember when being a lawyer was prestigious and high paying?

"in 2008, science and engineering doctorate holders up to three years out of school had just 1.5 percent unemployment"

I'm not worried about them not being able to pay their debts for undergraduate loans.

Are you aware that most degrees awarded are neither doctorates, nor in science/engineering?

From your comments you don't seem worried about anyone paying their debts, believing rather they all made stupid choices.

STEM PhD is currently at around 2.4 percent. But unemployment rate doesn't speak to income, they may be employed or underemployed and still having a touch time paying back student loans.

But nice to pick out one tiny figure from four articles to try to prove an irrelevant point. Let me remind you, your point was that people learning something useful to society won't have trouble finding jobs and paying off debt. But you've failed to provide any evidence backing your position, unless your position is everyone must get PhD's in STEM to be gainfully employed. Problem still stands that if everyone moves to that tract we will still have more candidates for jobs than actual jobs available.

How many of them are working in fields directly relating to their studies, and how many of them are being paid a livable wage?

Because I can guarantee you right now that a postdoc salary is horrible, especially considering the amount of work that goes into getting that PhD in the first place.

Being employed != being employed in their field, and being employed != being paid a livable wage that can simultaneously sustain student debt.

Furthermore, this adds nothing to your original belief that if people were to do something that benefits society, they would be financially stable. This statement cannot be any further from the truth.

You only have to look so far as teaching to see how wrong that idea is. Teachers are absolutely necessary, and yet in many places, teachers are heavily in debt and not being paid a livable wage. You don't even have to look far - in the Bay Area, the center of technology, school districts are facing massive staffing shortages because teachers simply are not able to live with the salaries they're offered, so they're no longer looking at the Bay as a viable option.

You and I have the immense luck of both being able to enjoy programming and having some measure of talent in it. On top of that, our mutual field is going through an extraordinary time of heavy demand and high salaries.

Not everyone is that lucky. It is absolutely factually and logically wrong to extrapolate your own lucky circumstances and impose them on people less fortunate than you. Not everyone can enjoy and be good in a field that is constantly hiring and paying very well. Not everyone who works hard gets the same opportunities at financial stability that we do. To look down on people and think that by doing something "meaningful" they can find financial stability is a horrible logical fallacy to make.

That's an absolutely incorrect statement.

Before switching to programming, I was a research associate. Internships, publications, the whole deal.

I would argue that cancer research and the other biomed research my colleagues did was absolutely useful to society. Yet it's no secret that if you want to be financially self sufficient, a B.S. in biology is a horrible way to go about it. Sure, there's private industry, but then

a. How useful to society is working for Pfizer, GSK, etc? b. Is it really a viable option when you have dozens of applicants per job option?

People in development are in a great spot in the job market today. Demand outstrips supply, high salaries, etc. That said, do not think that the rest of the world is like that. The world also needs lawyers, researchers, teachers, and a whole list of other jobs, yet those jobs are also well known for having horrible job markets and lots of debt.

For biologists there's also:

c. Compensation is comparatively low and hours are comparatively long in most biological industries, including, as far as my friends in bio have told me: agriculture, biomedical engineering, and biotechnology.

At least, compensation is low and hours are long compared to other white-collar professions that require a lot of education and training. $40k-$60k per year for an agricultural biologist with an advanced degree (MSc or PhD+postdoc) is roughly what they get at my fiancee's workplace, and they usually work around 60 hours/week (my fiancee is unusual in managing to work only 50-55 most weeks).

Thanks, I forgot to include that. In my experience, it's definitely true.

I absolutely love biology and do miss being in the lab. That said, love for a field doesn't pay the bills, and like you pointed out, it's a lot of work for comparatively little money. Double so for people like me who simply do not have it in them for a PhD, and have to "settle" for a B.S. or M.S.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com