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Comment by Matachines | Hacker News Reader

We're gonna need a culture shift away from "higher education" being the only option for middle class kids. Go to any middle/upper middle class suburb and tell parents their kid doesn't need to go to college and you'll get laughed at.

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That won't happen unless "higher education" stops being a highly profitable enterprise for those selling it.

But how can it be profitable? They are non-profit institutions.

A business need not be corporate-profitable to pay its management lavishly. The university may not have shareholders or a dividend but that just means all the money it makes has to go somewhere, and that is often inflated salaries for the highest echelons of the school.

Don't forget power and influence.

Besides, there is also multi-billion dollar world of for-profit education.

What about the fact that most of the best-known schools have basically become massive hedge funds with nices educational institutions attached to them to keep the non-profit scam in play?

The military is also a non-profit institution, yet it's the most expensive thing we pay for in the US. Just because the institution itself is non-profit doesn't mean there aren't tons of entities making a killing off of growing the beast.

The military has amassed untold billions of dollars squirreled away in a tax-free endowment?

http://www.forbes.com/sites/troyonink/2014/05/05/federal-res...

College is increasingly becoming required for the average American. The problem is the type of degree, not college itself.

For a fraction of the price, you can have an excellent European university-level education, which is viewed more than favorable by future employers.

Outside of Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial, and maybe ETH Zurich I would not consider European education as viewed favorably by employers in the US. I'd say it would typically be equivalent to an unknown state school at best, especially for something like CS where the European equivalent is frequently "informatics".

(because it's bad)

I have a hard time believing that universities in the US are so much better than those in Europe, what would make you think so?

Nothing would make one think so. I believe what Kephael is saying is that most European universities are unknown quantities to American employers. So said employers will tend to equate them with known quantities - the many American state schools of no particular distinction.

This has nothing to do with the quality of the schools, the education they offer, or the skills of their graduates. It has everything to do with the schools being unknown.

I'm not sure whether the average US university is better or worse than the average European university, but I can say that once you're not talking about the top few schools (Harvard, Stanford, Oxford, whatever) the university itself matters little to employers unless they went there or it's infamous for some reason. So the University of France Calais may be amazing, but it probably won't be viewed as significantly different than Penn State by your average employer.

All right. Education in ETH Zurich will cost you around $2000/year (not a typo). Plus costs of living in Switzerland (outrageously expensive).

That's not really the problem here. The problem here, specifically, is that art school is extremely expensive (much more so than other schools, which are more expensive than they used to be, but not nearly this bad), and an art degree has no earning power.

What would you suggest to an average (not smart but not stupid either) middle-class high schooler to do after finishing high school? Their best bet at a good life and career is by finishing their higher education IMO. This is true for Europe at least, I can't speak for the US. But I imagine that it would be true for the US as well.

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