False Advertising for College Is Pretty Much the Norm

The incessant obsession with multi-year degree-granting programs specifically is a lot more about the degree than the education.

Also, the quality of the education is not the same.

Educated populace in video game history isnt value added like an engineering degree.

You can educate yourself in anything, but society only values education in a few value-added sectors.

There are some that can't get scholarships or even into universities in their state for engineering because there aren't enough spots. The no return majors take up resources and funding and leave countless people in debt they can't pull out of for a long time.

We don't have a shortage of history and art majors or lawyers and also, real artists would be a better investment than art majors anyway. No need for the debt. Just invest in the talent for society to thrive and be balanced.

> We need to find a way to finance education that isn't based on future income.

This already happens. One example - We have collegiate sports revenue financing no return liberal art degrees directly or indirectly via scholarships.

The most creative people I know are engineers.

My friend who studied music is a tutor making $15/hr.

He isnt writing, I know this, he does his job, goes home, end of the day as far as society outside netflix is concerned.

While this engineer is constantly playing and learning music theory, recording, and soon to be releasing content.

This could merely be personality traits, but the methodical nature of engineering may make it beneficial outside physics.

Major: ECE Job: Software Engineer Debt: Some private variable rate, some public fixed rate. The highest private loans were originally around 100bp higher than my public, and eventually jumped to a 300bp gap, but by that point I had paid them off so it didn't impact me. Credit rating: Pretty high- no missed payments, multi-year-old account, has multiple lines of credit.

All of my re-fi offers, for the most part, have advertised lower interest rates than my private loans and the lower bound of their advertised rate was slightly less (50-100 bp) than my public loans. However, when I'd start going through the process my offered interest rate would end up around the median of the rate window they were offering, and refinancing would have been a wash.

This meant refinancing only would have made sense for my private loans, not public. By the time I had seen these offers, it didn't make sense for me to refinance because by that point I had paid off the highest interest private loans (as general debt repayment strategy suggests)!

I don't think the incentive to refinance from a government loan is there because those interest rates are already pretty good. Obviously, someone might make a poor decision and refinance with a higher rate "because it's easier" but if my case generalizes I can only see private lenders suffering because of higher rates.

On a side note, I also don't want to get rid of my government debt too soon in case some sort of policy change occurs in my favor. This isn't to say I'm not pursuing an aggressive debt strategy, just that my private loans are my higher priority.

The only "news article" [1] I can find that references this mentions 0.3% of student loans were discharged through bankruptcy in 1977 [2].

[1] https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/history-student-loans-bankrup...

[2] http://harvardlawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/pdfs/vol126_s...

Seems be to be some serious revisionist history going on...

Kids living at home and taking (mostly) pre-programmed online courses should be the norm. It is vastly cheaper, and can deliver more consistently better results.

(The best part is when the politicians who voted for the cut in funding turn around a year later and say why are you raising tuition?!)

This is a vicious cycle, and it only serves one class of people: students who are born into well-off families who can afford tuition at these rates out of pocket. Those who aren't have to take out larger and larger loans just to attempt to complete a degree. It's really sad, because it doesn't need to be this way.

Also the meme that all blue collar jobs require a higher ed degree, such as bartender, waitress, secretary, day care worker, receptionist, all of that will go back to "high school grad" as a job req.

Of course with prevailing long term trends, "having a full time job" or "having medical care" will soon be a luxury few will experience.

So, just to be clear 18 year olds getting tens of thousands in dischargeable loans is ridiculous, but 18 year olds getting tens of thousands in non-dischargeable loans makes total sense?

I mean, I understand why if you are a person making money off student loans, the latter is a great situation to have. But for anyone else, I'm not sure I agree that it's something we should fight for.

Alternatively cap un-bankruptable dept to a reasonable amount, say 15k/yr or something. It's pretty much how it works here in Quebec Canada and very few students end up with more than 40k CAN in un-bankruptable dept.

I feel like your question is supposed to be making a rhetorical point but it has an extremely literal answer as of a few years ago.

The concept of everyone should go to college is extremely Boomer; they're dying off and their beliefs are dying off with them. Likewise just wait until "Real estate only goes up!" dies out. Or watching TV pro sports being taken seriously as a hobby. Then you factor in demographic replacement; if most young kids are not native, they will not have legacy native beliefs. It doesn't matter what white hippies held dear in 1970, if a significant fraction of the kids are not legacy demographic. Demographic elimination means cultural elimination and nothing says "white boomer" quite like "Everybody gotta go to college"

Since the elimination of the Federal Family Education Loan program in 2010, there has been only one legally-possible lender for Federally-guaranteed student loans.

And they aren't a for-profit corporation, or an entity that evidences much concern for babalncing spending and revenue.

However on the margin it would make a huge difference. The most expensive programs require a mix of federal loans and federally subsidized loans. There are a few changes the federal government could make to not back loans data clearly show are going to be bad, and if those loans aren’t federally subsized they’re not happening. Or, perhaps, worst case scenario the interest rate becomes extreme.

There are a lot of moving pieces.

It is concerning to me that after approximately 18 years on earth and 12 years of schooling that the locals are still dumb. But as little as two to four more years of school can transform them into smart, well rounded, people capable of understanding complex social issues related to their city and beyond.

It seems the real shame is not that college is expensive, but that we've wasted the time of our youngsters.

If education was the main motivation for college rather then trying to prove to employers you are a more competitive employee then your peers, I feel the system would look a lot different and not have nearly the same balooning cost problem.

- Someone who accepted a place at Oxford

- Someone who was offered a place at Oxford, but went to Durham instead

It should also help distinguish those two from:

- Someone admitted to Oxford who decided not to go to university at all

However (and perhaps this is the problem you have in mind) the data set for this last category is likely to be very very small.

So perhaps the data can help to compare universities, but not whether going to university at all helps.

Someone ordered that every household should have books at home while failing to realize that correlation != causation…

How do you know this possibility has been left unconsidered?

Measuring the true returns of education is impossible, both on the individual level (we can't replay history with alternative choices) and the population level (clean randomisation on education is socially unacceptable), so all we have are approximations and methodological hacks (technical summary in linked summary paper). But such approximations typically found that "ability bias" was not all that large.

But my experience is anecdotal, and maybe the industry attracts video game players (my assumption) and this makes it more difficult demographic for success. The welders in the school seem to do great and generally succeed from what I have learned from the other departments.

Maybe I was a sucky teacher? Who knows...

source: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/10/bill-gates-us-college-dropou...

That's not what I meant, I mean there are students that spend all their "loans" on video games and entertainment instead of on living expenses and school, so no matter what the school does to help, the student will screw this up.

Can't blame the school for irresponsible students.

I have had a couple of homeless kids, yes friggin homeless kids, and one turned into rockstar. The only reason he could even attend was because the school made every student have a laptop (they provided, with full software and support)

There is money available to everyone, and there's only so much you can do to help people. Sometimes letting them fail instead of propping them up is what is actually good for them.

As like many other's here, I failed at the beginning, and learned a lot from that failure.

The humanities are a day care and delayed adulthood for those who would be better suited doing anything else with their time aside from one or two students in every classroom of ~40.

For context, I left to work in the private sector with people who give a damn.

My state used to pay 100% of your state college tuition if you maintained a 3.0 GPA. A lot of students in my freshman dorm stayed until the 30 hour re-evaluation period and then disappeared forever. They partied, never went to class, never studied, and withdrew from most of their classes. They'd regularly fall asleep in or oversleep for 11:00 classes.

As a teacher, how do you handle these students? Many of them have not been raised to be on their own, and college is the first time they're let "off the leash". They're unprepared to be independent adults.

Additionally some students fail the same class over and over, then keep retaking the class with no improvement. They keep asking the same questions, slow down the class, and make it more difficult for everyone else to learn.

As a teacher how do you handle these students? Maybe you've already failed them twice. Maybe you've had extensive study groups, office hours, extra credit materials for these people, but they continue to do poorly. Some of them you suspect have learning disabilities or other mental problems that may always interfere with their ability to take your class.

(Later the state college system changed it to 80% tuition for 3.5 GPA, and at least my college mandated a maximum of 5 withdrawls, which cut down on the problem some.)

I've always disliked the verb "teach" because it implies that it is something I can do to you, when really all I can do is nurture, facilitate or provide a framework for you to learn.

I've lots of experience in teaching mathematics to students of all age. I believe how well you can be taught exclusively depends on your genetics and the environment you are brought up in.

Not everyone can succeed, not even majority of them can succeed.

You can simply filter students at the lowest level to manipulate the propotion of students who are succeeding.

Since then I've stopped teaching and went to start my own business.

If you really want to help them, leave them to fend for themselves and let the evolution make them fit for survival.

Anything done to screw with the nature will bite you back.

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.

I taught EFL at a high school for 5 years. Being a good teacher takes a lot of experience, inspiration and hard work. It is a very, very difficult job. When I was doing it, I often thought how much easier it is to explain things to a computer compared to a person -- especially when the person is often doing everything they can to avoid listening to you ;-)

I don't want to diminish the role of a teacher because there is a huge difference between a good teacher and a bad teacher. It's just that there comes a point where you have to realise that the best you can do is to create an environment where it is possible for the students to learn. Everything else is up to the student.

The OP's point is very correct that of students who succeed, the vast majority would have succeeded even without the teacher. In those cases, the teacher may create a more pleasant environment, or may provide a convenient filtering of information. But there are very few disciplines where a good text book and a place to practice aren't enough. Where foreign languages are concerned, you don't even need the text book!

I fairly quickly realised that my "value add" in the classroom was to help those people who were borderline. There are always some people who are eager to work, but are constantly at a loss about how to start. In my experience, this is a very small percentage of the class (maybe only 10%), but you can make a big difference as a teacher to these students.

The real problem is where the teacher is placed in an environment where they are unable to concentrate on those students. For example, I often had classes of 42 students. For a language class, that's horrible. I can actually manage with 20, but if you get up over 30, it becomes impossible to spend enough time with the people who need it.

Of course, just like high school (which is filled with students who don't want to be there), undergraduate courses have massive numbers of students who are hopelessly uninterested in studying. There was a time when "university" was aimed at a very small number of very keen students. You had lectures with less than 10 other students and had tutors who helped you work your way through the ridiculously large amount of material that you had to learn. But such organisations are never going to fund a proper football programme, and what is the poor NFL going to do to train their players? ;-)

I mean your point is completely fair: society should take its share of the blame. However, consider who makes up society? The very people who think it is completely reasonable to drift from high school to university, take a bunch of random courses, and party every day. These same people whose career plans are to take their gold stamp for having sat through 4 years of boring lectures and exchange it for a "good job" (TM), which will bring them a very high salary but will have completely unspecified content.

Although, contrary to my rant, one of the things I really like about code boot camps is that it allows people to "wake up" from their delusion. After getting a general degree in "business" with specialisation in making unnecessarily complicated Excel spreadsheets, and working as a drone in the financial industry for 2 years, suddenly some people think, "OMG! Programming is amazing. What the heck have I been doing with my life?". Some of the best people I've worked with recently have come a similar route.

So it would be extremely great if we could help society get over this expectation of mediocrity and start making universities that are centres of higher learning. However, a teacher in a classroom is up to their ears wrestling with extremely unfortunate social dynamics and doesn't have very much time to change the world.

No, it's not. Higher education is not adult daycare. If I have half a class screwing off and playing video games _in class_, and the other half desperately trying to improve their lives.

I used a very strict grading policy, if you don't turn in your assignment, you get a zero, period. All it takes is 41% of not turning in your assignments and your class doesn't apply to your degree. (ie, failure by default)

Are you suggesting I commit fraud to let these students pass? I did not "fail" them, they failed themselves.

Edit: Fyi, 100% of all my students that failed did so by not turning in assignments. 100% of them.

Yes, this is exactly what I mean. Success often requires asking for help.

Countless times I tried to help students that really didn't seem to care too much, they just wanted to get through the class. (it was required for the degree)

But I regretted splitting my time equally with people that just wanted to eek their way through, when they didn't even care, and didn't really need my help to pass, just to get a better grade.

Where as I wish I had devoted more effort/time towards students that really wanted to excel, even if their skills weren't great, or their talent was near non-existant.

The students that had a drive and need to learn, but still needed help, were the ones that succeeded.

Half the students were there for unknown reasons and would play games in class. Try and tell me how much I should care that they have run out of time to get their projects done at the last minute?

It's better for them to fail than to get shoe-horned into the next class because I helped them maintain their last minute freakout sessions. This did not help them succeed at school or life.

Some of my students were inspired in my classes and have good jobs in the industry. They were looking for something, and I had something to offer. I suspect your experience wasn't too different.

Unfortunately, most students don't find what you found...

> If so, that probably makes you the exception rather than the rule.

So you're saying the majority of people seeking higher education are going out of state or to private schools?

Enrollment in public/state colleges and universities outpaces private schools three to one.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/183995/us-college-enroll... https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cha.asp

The old "college is about being well rounded/learning how to learn" narratives made sense 50-100 years ago, when people were going to university as more a "cultural elite" thing. The rich 20-generation legacy who attends to build his social network, mixing with the top-5%-of-his-class scholarship student and social-climbers powering their way through school, had a different set of needs. Yeah, let them study Latin and great thinkers so they can schmooze in the corridors of power. It was fine when only a few percent of the population went on to university, and the actual degree content was less important than that you got a degree.

However, the kids signing up today-- especially in well-known high-revenue programs (CS, EE, etc) are in it because they either 1) love the subject matter or 2) are bootstrapping their careers. These kids have neither use nor interest in becoming cultured or well-rounded. They'll go further referencing Dennis Ritchie than William Blake.

There might be a case for a writing course or two, but all those 100-level survey humanities or "fun sciences" classes you're taking to hit general studies requirements? I doubt it. Or the requirement some programs have of "at least NNN total credit-hours" even if you can technically hit all the content requirements on fewer.

I'm surprised you aren't seeing legitimate universities responding to the market and producing a 2-3 year BSc program, stripped of almost all general-studies courses. You want to fight tuition increases? Get kids out in 2.5 years!

I assume the endgame of this would be that a lot of literature and philosophy professors will be out of work, but this surely leads into some sort of punchline about them working at Starbucks..

I don't know about others, but for me university was an important experience as a place where I could grow as a person. It's a time where you get a few years to figure it all out before you spend the next 45 years working. Even if I could've done a 1 year course and then jumped straight into working full time, I wouldn't want to do that, and I don't think people should necessarily do that. There's more to life than getting a good qualification and getting a job that pays well.

I earn more than practically everybody in my friend group, yet I'm no happier than they are. I'm not more fulfilled in my life because I have a piece of paper that says I'm good with computers.

Spending an extra year or two on growing personally and intellectually costs comparably to a luxury car. It'd also be nice for everyone to literally drive a luxury car, but for most people it makes sense to drive something cheaper and more practical, rather than borrowing and spending that much resources on it; and in a similar manner for most people it makes sense to get practical education instead of "buying" in addition to that a year or two of self-improvement that you can't really afford.

But trades are results-driven. The critical thought, business-mindedness, etc have all developed without the 4 year degree precondition for all successful trades.

Do you mean elementary school? Historically, that is the level of schooling that was provided to all citizens to learn how to think and allow them to become active participants in a civil society. Although it is debatable of how successful it has been at that in modern times.

Historically, college was reserved as a finishing school for the wealthy to learn the social graces of upper-class society. It was only after people started noticing a correlation between wealth and completion of a college degree that the lower members of society started pushing for affordable access, believing that they would also be able to join the upper-class with that experience.

Is it after my freshman year, going into my senior year, or only once I have that holy piece of paper (a college degree).

Regarding history...well historically colleges were for wealthy white men/the upper class.