“How long have you been smoking for?” the colleague asks.
“Thirty years,” says the smoker.
“Thirty years!” marvels the co-worker. “That costs so much money. At a pack a day, you’re spending $1,900 a year. Had you instead invested that money at an 8% return for the last 30 years, you’d have $250,000 in the bank today. That’s enough to buy a Ferrari.”
The smoker looked puzzled.
“Do you smoke?” he asked his co-worker.
“No.”
“So where is your Ferrari?”
- No, I spent it all on $SOMETHING_ELSE
I think that’s the point...
I am a student from Rural India, studying at an "engineering" "college" (obviously in urban area). The minimum cost for getting into engineering degrees is too much for rural income scales here. And the quality of education is PATHETIC (everything is rote learning based and everyone is trying to game the system, because edu system is so mechanical).
Since the formal education is so costly and ineffective[0], many people like me would benefit from a commoditization through online medium. I started learning programming one year before I joined the college in Bachelor of Engineering (CSE) program. And having seen the teaching methods and rat race, I am pretty sure I can learn better if I go on my own. But there are too many stakeholders in the ineffective process, that would prevent such a thing from happening.
But even if they conduct college through online classes for the next year, I would be happy, because I would save on accommodation expenses by staying at home :).
[0] The ineffective four years of education is probably why many people complain about Indian SWEs. The entire thing is rat race for sustaining jobs - then mechanically clearing exams, copying GitHub repos, lying on resumes etc... If all of these people chose their subjects with genuine interest, about only 10% would be studying in CSE and "Indian SWE" would've had a better image worldwide.
Learning from top experts who teach online classes that can be accessed from many institutions while having local tutors would allow students to learn from experts who are good teachers and get in-person help as needed.
For some, MOOCs can be better than live lectures. Many students dare not ask any questions in a lecture room anyway. They can pause to think, review materials if they get a quiz question wrong, and ask questions more openly in the MOOC forum.
In addition, the MOOC system can record student's performance in quizzes and some even have an AI designed to detect cheating, e.g. whether the typing pattern of the user is anomalous.
But MOOCs can't compete with the best live lectures, where students have an opportunity for meaningful discussion, challenging and original projects, and building relationships.
(In case anyone else is as pedantic as me about definitions: yes, there were two kinds of homework. The first was you read something at home, and then discussed it in the next class. The other was you learnt something and when practiced it at home afterwards.)
We don't charge any up-front fees. We only get paid as a share of your income after you graduate (or complete at least 60% of the course) so we have a strong incentive to provide effective tuition.
On a more serious note, at least consider adding a "shameless plug" notice while promoting your own stuff on HN.
I am not really interested in this kind of stuff but looked at it.
> Our 12-week live online training course ....
No, thanks.. that's not the scope of a CS degree. You are promoting something irrelevant here - no offence.
Why don't people have millions invested by the time they retire? Because no matter how much money people make (up to a certain point, depending on the person), they spend it. If you give the average high school graduate $150K and tell them to invest it for 40 years, I pretty much guarantee that it will be gone long before the 40 years are up.
To be fair, I don't have millions invested and I'm scarily close to retirement. So I'm not trying to be critical of others ;-)
It does work.
But if you spent all your income, you'll never have money.
Ehhh, yes and no. Plenty of people who bought nice-ish houses in the Bay Area in the '70s and '80s sold them in 2014-2018 and retired outside the bay with a nice extra pile of cash.
You need housing, but you don't need a crazy expensive house in a crazy expensive area.
There is no difference. Incomes have held stagnant for the entirety of those 40 years, despite the transition from people of equal calibre being only high school graduates 40 years ago to being college graduates today. $0 invested at 7% still leaves you with $0.
I never finished mine, and it took me a long time and a lot more work to catch up to my peers financially. I might never have done it if I didn't get lucky and make a few right choices in my 30a.
You can guarantee that colleges would fall in line quickly. there would be also attempts to circumvent the charges but those can be dealt with. they could though try to up sell you on amenities you may not otherwise have chosen to pay for but do now through high tuition.
So summary, Federal student loans only apply to programs with set rates per course credit and degrees. fall outside of these degrees; lets be honest there are some degree programs we should never back; and you pay your own way and colleges can charge what they want.
Many having no problem with it does not mean it has happened or that it would work. You are talking about the only other industry in the US with similar cost increases to colleges.
1. It’s only fair to compare the retirement amount vs the average marginal increase of salary obtained from having a college degree. Not sure this is a large number these days.
2. Most don’t pay full ride but for those that do it’s hefty. And also, those that can afford it, typically have a lot of money to begin with.
3. I raise this question because unlike the smoker comment, I can determine if I just want to put money away for my kids (in a trust) and give them that lump sum when they are older (not 60 but maybe much older) as opposed to pay for college. I likely won’t do this but for argument sake, if you have a motivated kid, I’d bet they’d find a way to learn what they need to learn.
4. As from the “Silicon Valley” show. “The real value of education is intangible!”. I do think I gained a good amount from college but I think a majority of that was social/independence growth rather than learning. Although, one or two of my computer science courses really got burned in my head and I believe added a ton of value to my way of thinking.
Anyway, original comment was a bit in jest but it’s still an important discussion because I think we should be paying for education and not “branding” which, let’s be honest, is a lot what school is used for - a market-accepted currency for purchasing a good career.
Sure, if you had 150k at age 18 and weren't going to need another cent until you turn 65, you could drop that money in the stock market and wait for riches to come to you. But as it is, you're going to need some kind of job. And while there's a few pleasant careers available without college these days (software engineering being one of them), for most jobs that aren't heavy physical labor or minimum wage drudgery, you're going to need that college degree.