After Decades of Growth, Colleges Find It’s Survival of the Fittest

Ugh - depends what state school. My wife and I both went to University of Illinois (we are from Illinois). I worked 10 - 20 hours per week, and got some smaller grants, my wife got larger grants..

We still both have more debt than I care to admit... It's literally 20% of our overall monthly expenses.

I found the connections personally invaluable and worth it. My wife is just starting her PhD at U of I, so we both agree it was worth it, but just barely.

I would be very interested to know which, if any, schools make this possible.

Not sure why you're getting downvoted. Going to one of your state schools is a good choice for a relatively low cost education.

It's naive to think a college degree isn't valuable. Among a collection of candidates with and without college degrees, those with degrees will not only get preferential treatment, but also once they are deep in their careers those who do not have formal degrees will be held back from leadership roles.

This is how the real world works much of the time, the idea that college is becoming less important is wrong. It's becoming more important.

When I went to school in the early/mid 90s, tuition was low enough that I could basically support myself with a job and some minimal support from my dad ($1000/quarter). Those days are long gone, however.

Do you mean you never graduated college, or that you literally only completed schooling up to middle school?

With respect to well-roundedness: would you say your knowledge is also covers as much depth as your brother’s?

I recently got back in touch with a friend from highschool who's parents were really well off. They actually bought property on the East Coast just so that he could claim residency and get in-state with this really haughty college (I cannot remember which one). He now has several philosophy degrees and works at our old highschool as a librarian. He seems very unhappy with his life as well.

In Germany higher education is also very focused on one subject.

I believe that part of the difference is that when the education systems gelled in the US there was in the air the perception that the US is this historically radical experiment in democracy and that it needed a citizenry that well-rounded enough to participate.

I don't believe that there was as strong a sense for those things in other places. But it fit with the way that at least some people thought of the US, at the time.

As a recent graduate of an American college, I don't see it as giving me a "well rounded" education. Thanks to advanced courses in High School, I didn't even have to take a writing class. There were maybe 4 or 5 out of over 30 classes through my entire career that weren't directly related to my CS degree

This does make sense. If he is anything like me, he's going to do whatever the hell he thinks is best. I was the weirdo for going to college.

This shows correlation but not causation. Hypothetically: people with certain background (social class) and traits (IQ) are more likely to go to college, and they would fare as well or better without college. I'd be very interested in stats of lifetime earnings difference that was corrected for selection bias.

If a student can get into MIT that student will likely be financially well off no matter where they go, even after an upper middle-class family spends nearly $300,000 in tuition, room and board. It's the edge cases that are much harder. Try comparing an expensive private school for four years with a state school (three if they accept AP courses).

Of course there are a lot of other non-financial reasons to attend college, such as growing a circle of friends and being exposed to new ideas in a formal setting. It's unclear how to value that properly however.

In this case, I don't think your data is that strong. The parent could get them an entry level job in tech, conceivably one comparable with one one would obtain fresh out of college.

Separately from this specific case, remember, to pay off 200k in debt (cost of many good public schools), you need to make about 2M! If you save 20%, then you need an EXTRA 1M over not going to college just to break even. I'm not even factoring in interest that many students are getting these days. And then you have the opportunity cost of not investing the money you did make when you didn't have debt by skipping college. So when you consider these things, a 900k bump in lifetime earnings doesn't look good.

Now if you get a scholarship or if you factor in the intangibles the parent mentions then I think it's a no brainer. But strictly from a lifetime earnings standpoint it's oversold. You have to factor in the foregone earnings, the debt, the interest and the opportunity cost of not being able to save and invest money.

Personally I think it's worth it but best for most people to go to a lower tier university that won't start them off with a mountain of debt.

The average person who graduates from college is different from.the average person who doesn't in more attributes than "degree held".

When you say 'run of the mill degree' are you referring to Associates, Bachelor, or higher? Additionally, do you know how the data you shared compares to individuals with technical certificates?

Employer here. I’ve never thought like this through the hiring process. I care about what people can build and not where/if they have a degree. The Github section of a CV is 10X more meaningful to me than the education section and I regularly hire people who don’t have degrees.

Ymmv but I’m sure I’m not alone.

I doubt there will be online degrees equivalent to a PhD (or calling itself a PhD). The coursework of a PhD is typically very similar to a master's in the same subject (maybe with a few additional requirements) but is usually just a primer for the real work doing our research. Conducting research is an inherently social exercise and the mentorship that is given during a PhD won't be easily replicable with an online program.

I agree with the general point you're making though.

> ...my first database class taught MS Excel and moved to MS Access. This is from a college that is charging me thousands of dollars a year.

Which institution and major?

Be cool stay in school.

You have a good job and you can get another, you already have valuable skills and work experience.

Unlike many of your classmates, you do not have an urgent need to gain a means to support yourself. When you are next in class, look around and appreciate the rarity of your circumstance.

Enjoy the liberty you have to pursue knowledge solely for edification and personal expansion. You can work towards a degree in any subject that interests you. Enjoy a liberal education.

I feel like you have a bit of an extreme take by saying 'profiting off dreams and naivete'. Uni is excellent for people for so many reasons. The price has gotten out of hand thats for sure. College and education are wonderful things. We just have to make sure it's within reach for everyone

to the top

Most of the teachers are also more occupied with doing research than actual teaching.

> Also, how the hell is college so damn expensive when the people teaching classes are paid 12 bucks an hour because they're "adjuncts"?? where tf is the money going?? (see above)

A non-trivial portion goes to legal expenses and risk management. It started with the concept of in loco parentis (in the place of the parent). University students stopped being adults and became children.

Obama's interpretation of Title IX was also catastrophic for expenses. All of a sudden you had to set up your own internal pseudo-court system and have an entire mechanism for handling even the most dubious of accusations. These things are not free.

This has snowballed into other pseudo-legal aspects and the social justice movement is just monumentally expensive to deal with. It's not a question of if a #metoo incident happens on your campus, it's a matter when. What steps did you take to prevent it? What staff do you have in place to react?

And the worst is that once you've hired these staff they're there forever. There will never will a point of mission accomplished, perfect equity, or an environment sufficiently free of even the smallest of nano-harassments for a university to rid itself of this burden.

Don't get me wrong, there's a country club and sports team aspect to a lot of university expenses, but the primary purpose of most universities is not education, research, or anything along those lines - it's to avoid getting sued into oblivion.

  Also, how the hell is college so damn expensive when
  the people teaching classes are paid 12 bucks an hour

Lack of effective price competition.

Imagine I'm the boss of a university, and I push through across-the-board budget cuts of 10%, and cut tuition by 10%. I drop the out-of-state annual price from $25,000 to $22,500.

Am I going to be widely praised for my radical move? Probably not, the price remains extremely high. Are sales going to skyrocket, offsetting the price drop? Probably not, most good universities fill 100% of their places.

Are loads of the colleagues I see on a daily basis going to be mad at me? Quite possibly! Did I take this job because I love slashing budgets for libraries and arts education? Probably not. Is there a risk, due to different departments' abilities to raise funds externally, that some departments will be disproportionately impacted? Absolutely.

If I'm a university boss and I want an easy life, much easier to turn a blind eye to increasing costs.

The typical comparison of college to today to that from 20 or 30 years ago is just poorly considered. "Where does the money go?" Consider the things that didn't exist at many colleges 30 years ago:

- IT

- Any type of student welfare services.

- Title IX and any other regulatory offices.

- Diversity offices and other efforts.

- Disability services.

- Dedicated police departments.

- Advising, Counseling, and Academic support (because more and lower-qualified students than ever are going to college).

- In the case of state schools, typically significant budget cuts from the state.

I'm not saying these rationally explain the increase in cost, but it's a significant expansion in responsibility and functionality that brought with it administration and bureaucracy.

> Also, how the hell is college so damn expensive

It's a positional good, and the buyers are bidding for it using borrowed money, and bidding from a position that is underinformed and cannot be anything but underinformed.

It's the epitome of a bubble.

I don't subscribe to the WSJ or its comments, but I suspect there's also an additional reason:

7. Colleges and universities are ground zero (and a symbol) of a (newish) culture that loudly, strongly, and explicitly rejects and condemns much of the rest of America; and especially the type of American that stereotypically would read the WSJ. Conservatives, libertarians, and increasingly classical liberals are not going to have very warm feelings towards things that they perceive are openly hostile to their values.

> 1. College costs have been outstripping inflation for decades.

At least for public universities, the rise in costs can be largely attributed to the collapse of state support:

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/fancy-dorms-arent-the-m...

Agreed, the web links haven't been working for me for a while.

>>That must be incredibly frustrating. It's more disheartening for how I look at my field than personally frustrating. One of my favorite anecdotes from this whole process is that, in parallel, to hearing that line of logic from multiple schools I had two different startups express interest in hiring me for technical positions. It has continued to validate my own belief that I'm a reasonably credible person who is well prepared to do what I want to do for a career...the people doing the hiring just can't separate their own beliefs from what the needs of their organization are. It's funny because that is exactly identical to the results of a study we recently published on why engineering students struggle with design thinking - they can't separate their own subjective reality from a shared objective one.

>>I hear that the transition from full-time to grad school is pretty challenging. What were the issues you faced, if any? Its...interesting. The big issue was ego. I'm sure I have one I'm not super aware of but I make a really itnentional effort not to talk out my ass. I sat in a meeting where people were describing the 'needs' of engineering employers. No one in that room besides me had ever worked as an engineer, hired an engineer, or managed an engineer. But because I was a grad student they didn't see my input as useful. That pattern, of role based power supplanting all, is commonly used. It is also a pretty strong indicator of competence - those who use it are less likely to be so.

I would add that adherence to process (but not formal process, always implicit process) is hugely valued in my experience. Even more so than when I worked in manufacturing.

I think this is a little narrow but perfectly valid. People get all squingy in my program when I bring up the idea of what value a college or program creates. They assume I'm being arch-capitalist about it.

The schools don't create value for students because they are bad at teaching. Having all the materials online is not learning, and its not good education.

But, the fact that students can create a better learning environment themselves than can a faculty member who knows the content and works at a university teaching the conten should be shocking.

Counterpoint: Ng's Coursera machine learning course is outdated now, unlikely to ever be updated, and focuses on applications of old algorithms without teaching the underlying fundamentals.

I DID take a machine learning course from an unknown professor. One he was just doing as a fluke! It was incredible. I went from having zero background in Statistics or Machine learning, not even really understanding what they were, to applying several different techniques to exam large, million row datasets, using tools I had zero experience with, as well as learning how to interpret the results and avoid statistical pitfalls like overfitting and misinterpreting things.

Compare this to when I tried to take an AI class online offered by stanford, and I had to drop it because it was impossible to grok.

The difference? One professor actually taught, and the other simply wrote inscrutable symbols on the board and expected you to interpret it yourself. When we informed the professor on our lack of requisite statistics background, the unknown one simply adjusted his lessons to introduce the necessary concepts, while the Massive online course simply required a thorough background in probability to watch even the first few lectures.

Independent learning can kind of scale, in half-hearted ways, but actual TEACHING does not scale. Real teaching requires one on one effort.

I went to a low tier university because I had zero chance of getting actual access to an MIT professor, and the local ones were good enough to teach me everything I needed to have a real chance in the field.

It's one of those things I'm regularly 'warned off' doing stuff like that because the biggest sin in academia is making observations about the emperors clothes. A friend an I have a draft of something that we plan to submit once we both have jobs.

Schools always want to hire 'collegiality' candidates...who get along with folks. They have warped the definition of collegiality (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recuperation_(politics)) to mean doesn't buck the system rather than respectfully disagree in furtherance of a shared purpose.