Fifth largest economy in the world. We must be doing something right.
1. The largest public university system in the country (Cal State - 3rd largest on the planet)
2. The absolutely massive UC research machine
3. An established, inexpensive feeder system with the California Community Colleges (hello social mobility)
4. Plenty of world-class private universities (Cal Tech, Stanford, Claremont Colleges, Deep Springs)
5. Access to the Cali-Baja industrial cluster (California has a LOT of manufacturing, it's just in the other California)
6. Some insane levels of cultural diversity (many folks from different cultures can feel at home here - more so than say, Oklahoma)
7. Over 7 medical schools
8. Relatively cheap land in the fast-growing Inland Empire and the Antelope Valley (all it needs is a dash of HSR)
9. Massive agriculture in the San Fernando Valley
10. A massive aerospace industry (Antelope Valley - Skunkworks, etc.)
11. The port of Los Angeles is the largest port in the country followed by the second largest port in the country ....Long Beach, 9th largest is Oakland.
12. The San Diego biotech cluster with its ties to UCSD (Celera, which produced the first draft sequence of the human genome was up north in Alameda, California)
California is an economic machine with infrastructure no other state in the country can come close to.
Welcome to California.
Housing is actually very available and inexpensive in the inland areas, which are fast-growing (Inland Empire, Antelope Valley, etc.). Cheap housing in places like Palm Springs, plus the influx of coastal money has put a LOT of children of landscapers and restaurant workers, and hotel workers, etc. through the California public university system.
California is a sanctuary state with an excellent community college system, so the children of those disadvantaged minorities have a definite shot of transferring to a school like Berkeley, or even a Cal State, which offers an excellent education at a reasonable (in a relative sense) price.
The economy in the mountains is BOOMING right now, as that coastal wealth funnels into a myriad of small businesses.
Business can and will move.
Sure the port is nice. I'm not sure how many jobs are tied to that thou?
California Community Colleges already enroll over 2.1 million students. That's more than the population of the state of Idaho.
Port infrastructure is widely documented as a key driver of economic growth.
https://jshippingandtrade.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/...
The port of Los Angeles alone offers direct employment to 1.6 million people worldwide.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_of_Los_Angeles
That's over double the population of the state of Wyoming.
How many of the 1.6 million need to live here in LA?
> University attendance may dip, but with the rock-bottom prices
You can't compete with online prices if you have brick and mortar, hence Amazon. I would argue some disciplines still need shared spaces like medicine but even then, a lot of the learning could be done online.
Uni's competitive advantage has been certification. There are now better ways to track a candidates fit for employment that also don't require deviations into non-career focused learning like art, literature or history. These classes are not meritless, they just don't help employment.
I don't believe rock bottom prices will save the onslaught to come.
I suppose neither of us has a crystal ball. We'll just have to see what happens in 20 years.
How do you think a model would operate for university-level instruction that would both prepare kids for employment, offer a competitive level of socialization, collaborative problem-solving experience in multiple fields, and generalized knowledge so they don't turn into pigeon-holed hyperspecialists?
How do you expose kids to a wide-enough variety of things that they are able to discover something they truly want to do for the rest of their life?
How will you ensure that a university-degree doesn't remain a symbol of status?
Basically, how do you go from University of Phoenix, to what you are describing?
Fair enough
> How do you think a model would operate for university-level instruction that would both prepare kids for employment
Not sure, but Uni level instruction is probably sub-optimal for a large portion of the population. You are also still tethered to the pace set by the professor/instructor. Online would allow for students to move at their own pace.
> offer a competitive level of socialization
I don't think there's much MORE benefit to College socialization. I think this is a normal time period in everyone's life of being free of parents and responsible for yourself that Uni's use as evidence of benefit. EDIT This time period involves socializing with new people.
> collaborative problem-solving experience in multiple fields
I don't think this requires physical presence.
> generalized knowledge so they don't turn into pigeon-holed hyperspecialists
I don't know the numbers but I'm guessing the overwhelming majority of jobs never get much outside of hyperspecialization. This is a benefit of modern economies. Specialization allows for more productivity. But like with any job, people who want to can branch out. It would be easier if you didn't have to adhere to a college schedule.
> How do you expose kids to a wide-enough variety of things that they are able to discover something they truly want to do for the rest of their life?
The friction and overhead in Uni's to try different things is way higher than clicking a link online. Spending the remainder of 16 weeks studying something you hate, then changing majors is infinitely more cumbersome than just bailing and learning something else.
If you want to force a broad subject matter on students, well that model will die out due to inefficiencies.
> How will you ensure that a university-degree doesn't remain a symbol of status?
It totally will. But it will be for the rich. Everyone else doesn't need to blow $200k to do software engineering, operate a camera, make art or pursue mathematics research. Google is already working on a program that will certify job applicants sans a college education.
>Basically, how do you go from University of Phoenix, to what you are describing?
Not sure. Online stuff evolves unlike Uni's which have been essentially the same for the last 50 years. Go to class/lab, listen to a lecture, take a test. Prices skyrocket.
Online, things get better and cheaper faster.
The $200k figure is something you arrive at when you start sending your kids to schools like USC. Their tuition is $58,000/year.
Assuming you could pony up $3,600/year, what would be an argument for not sending your kids to college in favor of them doing an online thing?
If they can't keep up with the material, they can enroll in fewer classes. If they're bored, they can take more, or take graduate-level classes.
Online education will be cheaper. With state subsides it'll probably be free.
khanacademy is already free. Check out this lecture on cellular energetics: https://www.khanacademy.org/science/ap-biology/cellular-ener...
If you want to know why college will be disrupted this is the best essay ever: https://a16z.com/2011/08/20/why-software-is-eating-the-world...
It's no different than what's happening to every other industry.
> If they can't keep up with the material, they can enroll in fewer classes. If they're bored, they can take more, or take graduate-level classes.
It's still rigid compared to online. Still have to study things that might not be necessary for your job or you don't care about. Taking more or less classes doesn't mean at your own pace, it means a rigid schedule you can handle. What if I can complete a course in 6 weeks instead of 16? What if I only want to concentrate on one course at a time for a smaller period of time? What if I'm 9 weeks in, hate it and want to change majors? What if I want to sit at my computer instead of commuting to school or physically going to class? What if the professor talks too slow and I would rather have them go 1.5x speed because It holds my attention? What if I want to rewind them because I missed something they said? What if I can't understand the professor?
That lack of physical space and material allows for greater flexibility.
This stuck with me, I guess because it also implies a lack of social space as well.
For this to work, the majority of people thinking of attending college would need to have an aversion to sharing physical space with others. Otherwise they would derive some utility from sharing physical space with others, which could then be assigned a dollar value.
The dollar value is tuition.
I would concede that there is a nonzero percentage of college students for whom the utility of sharing physical space with others is a net negative. I would also argue that this percentage is in the minority, and although they may not, their parents might derive positive utility from increased socialization of their child.
For the vast majority, the opportunity to share physical space with others engaged in the same pursuit generates positive utility, and can therefore be assigned a dollar value.
As long as there is a dollar value there, tuition will be collected.
There is also the motivational aspect. Due to fundamental adaptations in human nature, external structure is often needed to motivate productivity. Although there are those who are outliers, and are truly motivated by intrinsic interests, these seem to be in the minority. Therefore, having external structure to motivate also generates positive utility and willingness to pay.
You can do all of what you described in your room with a textbook and practice problems, but why doesn't anyone just do that for four years, and then go out and get a job? Sure, it happens in software, but that's unique in that in software you can literally go from NAND gates to DOOM in a sandbox-like environment, but the rest of the world doesn't have that ability to manipulate their field of study from first principles in an interactive environment.
Or it's cheaper and more convenient. Like online shopping.
> their parents might derive positive utility from increased socialization of their child
I think college is less necessary for this. I have friends who didn't go to college. They're fine.
> external structure is often needed to motivate productivity
I think for most getting a job is enough of a motivating factor.
> but why doesn't anyone just do that for four years, and then go out and get a job?
Eventually the necessity for credentials will morph into assessments or accepted online credentials.
> but the rest of the world doesn't have that ability to manipulate their field of study from first principles in an interactive environment.
I would argue that "rest of the world" get's smaller every day. If you're a doctor their are probably a ton of classes that could be done all online.
If someone can cook up a way to deliver remote higher education of complex subjects in an interactive environment with dynamic, real-time feedback in a way that is comparable to in-person education in fields other than software, for your average person of average motivation, with no negative impacts on socialization cheaper than $1,600/year, I really can't argue with that.
Whoever figures out a mechanism for this, they will make a whole wheelbarrow full of cash, and I would be the first to sign up for that program.
Dumb hypocrisy. I’m sick of these false narratives and bullshit causes. If we’re going to tackle problems in this state we need to actually do it. Not pretend we did and glorify the attempt then brag to others about how great we are. What a joke.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/wildfires-sibera-russia-burned-...
But even now, California's population is stagnant [0], and most likely currently shrinking. So, no, it likely cannot continue and be just fine.
[0] https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/population-shrinks-in-cal...
> It depends on what you mean by "just fine." If you mean "maintain its population,"
If you mean something else, you should say what you mean.
It depends on whether you consider ethical behavior important.
States bordering just east of California should be taxing California for their monopolistic taxation of economic activity between them and Pacific trade.
I'm a native Californian but I've never understood the odd "fifth largest economy!" flag waving given that it is a product of population size. The "doing something right" may not be the thing you are trying to imply.
Per capita its still the 5th(6th if you include DC) highest and 30% more than the median state.
I think people reference the fifth largest economy factoid because it also speaks to how Californian has several large industries from tech to agriculture.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...
I'm also a native California, born, bred and educated, and I've seen this U-Haul trucks headed for the border tripe every few years, this one from Stanford's (notoriously conservative) Hoover Institute. It's the usual right wing nonsense.
It's #5 among states, a little over 7% behind #1 Massachusetts, and over 20% ahead of the US as a whole, and over double #50 Mississippi.
> Having a large economy is a function of having a large population, it doesn't imply an exceptionally productive economy.
California has both a large population and, on a per capita basis, an exceptionally productive economy among US states. It's true it's abstractly possible for the former to substitute for the latter in aggregate output measures, but that's not really the case for CA.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/248063/per-capita-us-rea...
It makes California a true melting-pot, and the externalities of the wealthy areas serve as an engine to bring people up out of poverty in those other areas. You can grow up as the child of a dirt-poor undocumented farmworker, attend a California Community College, and transfer to a world-class public university.
Not exactly that sequence of events, but this congressman is kind of an illustration of that arc: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raul_Ruiz_(politician)
If by that you mean a combination of soil and climate suitable for some of the most productive agriculture in North America, that's true.
Otherwise it's more a series of other industries, starting with extractive (1849 wasn't known for a “nice weather rush”) but more recently mostly creative & technological.
> Now that that's gone, well...
It wasn't gone during the long drought, and it's not now.
Throw in Hollywood, Silicon Valley, piggy-backing off the US as a whole, and having a beautiful coastline and great social culture. What do you expect?
I do everything I can to minimize my involvement with California for my businesses.
The US as a whole net extracts from California; the piggy-backing goes the other way.
Kansas, et al, owe their continued solvency to California's continued generosity.