Comment by teachrdan | Hacker News Reader

Comment by teachrdan | Hacker News Reader

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> barely breaks even in terms of lifetime earnings

If you have any evidence to support this, I invite you to post it. Because according to the study below:

"Getting a Bachelor's degree adds another large increase in lifetime earnings. With median earnings of $56,700 ($27.26 per hour), or $2.3 million over a lifetime, Bachelor's degree holders earn 31 percent more than workers with an Associate's degree and 74 percent more than those with just a high school diploma."

But more importantly, college should NOT be job training. It should be a place to learn critical thinking, to experiment in a safe environment, and a place to learn what you even want to learn about. A college graduate should be able to learn what they need to learn, including pursuing a career in the trades.

I agree that we need more plumbers. But the idea that young adults -- in practice, working class and poor ones -- should be denied the opportunity to learn and grow and instead be offered trade school or nothing, is profoundly unfair.

This is not to say that we couldn't improve the status quo. We could make college less expensive or free, consolidate degrees (getting a law degree in 4 or 5 years of college rather than 4 years of college + 3 more of law school), etc. But a blanket statement that "college is net detrimental to society" seems ignorant even in the kindest light.

https://www2.ed.gov/policy/highered/reg/hearulemaking/2011/c...

A bachelor degree makes $541,000 more in life time earnings than an Associate's degree, according to your source.

College costs on average $26K and $52K per year[1] according to my google skills. 4 years of college therefore amounts to roughly $100 to $200K, which in fairness you have to subtract from that initial $541K difference. Still a nice difference.

However, the parent poster mentioned plumbers. According to my google skills again, a plumber makes $55,160 on average, compared to the $56,700 bachelor average. That difference is rather small, and a bachelor probably is worse off than a plumber once you factor in cost of education.

[1] https://www.topuniversities.com/student-info/student-finance...

[2] https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/plumber/salary

$120k sitting in a fund earning 5% a year for 30 years will be worth $518k.

Sure, and taking out loans for the $100K - $200K you need for college will also cost you more in the end, once you consider interest.

The thing tho is that people who do not go to college quite often do not have $120K just laying around to invest for 30+ years. In fact a lot of people who go to college (or their parents) do not have that kind of money lying around either.

And let's not forget that the people who do go to college and get that additional $500K can invest that additional $500K as well. Not as a lump sum either, of course.

Except that the plumber’s knees and back will be shot before they hit 50.

People forget that “real” work is not kind on the body.

The college you're speaking of doesn't exist today. Students are absolutely going to college to be trained for a career afterwards, and they are incurring decades worth of debt in order to do so.

Your vision is good, but its not reality.

I've never met a college grad who came out of college having learned critical thinking while in a bachelors program in college. If they are critical thinkers it was a predisposition. If anything it teaches conformism to a central line of thought. More critical skills seem to be developed if they decide to pursue a higher degree and/or engage in some research which not nearly as many people pursue.

Increase in earnings is a poor way to look at it, that is mainly from the credentialism that companies look for (which is horrible but it is what it is), and the networking that happens.

Does college actually measurably teach critical thinking? How is that measured?

Are sociology majors measurably better at critical thinking than plumbers?

I kind of suspect a significant portion of the "college teaches critical thinking" meme is just something college educated people say to feel superior.

Sociology teaches the sociological imagination, which is specifically a form of critical thinking. This isn't something people tend to just pick up on without higher education

The problem would be separating correlation and causation. It’s obvious that higher education is correlated with critical thinking (uneducated adults are far more likely to deny climate change or believe in pizzagate etc)

But maybe this isn’t causality, maybe people with better critical thinking are going to be more attracted to college

I don't like how you presented your argument. You make it sound like trade schools, with real practical skills like plumbing, involve neither learning nor growing.

Similarly, critical thinking should be learned long before college age. If you're learning that during college, you've got a very late start.

Maybe that's not what you meant, but that's pretty much what you've written.

By definition, a trade school is designed to teach people a trade, not what lies outside it. A liberal arts education (which OP was clearly referring to) exists to teach people about a variety of different things.

This might sound like I'm biased against the trades. I'm not! I think they're crucial, and I, along with about half the software engineers I know, often daydream about becoming a fine carpenter.

I'm also not biased against trade schools in particular. They provide an important service and are a pipeline to good union jobs. The criticisms I make at the top of this comment apply equally to students who go to a top music program like Juilliard or the Oberlin conservatory, as those graduates will tell you themselves. They go to learn music, not to broaden their horizons.

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