Edit: as an example, we got from your comment to "you're an insufferable cunt" in 3 hops—and you contributed 2 of them. Obviously that comment was completely beyond the pale, but the more important thing is not to go into such flamewar territories in the first place.
"Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents."
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
* https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
This follows from the organizing principle of the site:
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
In fact, tediously and/or angrily repeating correct things (or things one feels to be correct—a distinction without a difference for internet purposes) is the thing commenters should most avoid on HN. It's the root evil, relative to the mandate of the site.
It may be more important to you, but I don't care. For me, truth is important, and I wrote the truth.
People often use the word "truth" (or "facts") as if it were a sort of trump card, but if you think about it, being true is neither a sufficient nor a necessary condition for a good comment - I wrote about this recently here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32697044.
There are infinitely many truths—they don't select themselves. People have to do that, and the selection process has to do with their own motivations, not truth.
Once you've selected a truth, there are infinitely many ways to express it—including how/whether you're going to take other people into account, how to encode your emotions in the expression, and so on. These also don't select themselves—you choose them, and again that has to do with your own motivations, not truth.
There is also the question of how perfect your access to the truth is, or to what extent you might be mistaken. Other people have very different ideas about the truth than you do (I don't mean you personally, of course). How lightly or tightly you hold that possibility is super important for conversation and again, has nothing to do with truth per se.
Obviously not.
Which is a fine sentiment; the problem is that it makes no sense for people to be going deeply into debt to become well-rounded citizens. If you're gonna end up with tens of thousands of dollars in the hole at the end of an education, at the start of your adult life, then yes, it's reasonable to need that education to reliably produce economic dividends.
Like, just think of all the other things that can help people become more well-rounded or better citizens, like community service, or international travel. Once you have the list in your head, think to yourself: how many of these would you recommend that young adults spend years of full-time labor in, and go into major debt to pursue?
I'll turn this around on its head: if we recognize the civic and social benefits of having a well-rounded population, then we ought to treat the current rash of students who knowingly go into debt for their degrees as performing a remarkably selfless act.
Like so many problems in the US, this one is entirely self-inflicted: you can get a liberal arts degree for virtually nothing in much of the rest of the developed world. This hasn't caused crises anywhere else, and hasn't caused students to flock away from technical programs (which are also civically necessary). None of this has to be the way that it is.
From an individual perspective, people should not be willingly going into large debt for poor or relatively uncertain financial prospects.
I don't disagree, but I want to highlight some factors that (IMO) at least partially absolve people who do take that route:
* We do a really pitiful job of teaching financial literacy in the US, especially below the undergraduate level. I suspect that many people see 30K debt after college and think that they can subtract that directly from their salary over a course of years, without factoring in taxes, interest above the principal, etc.
* At a societal level, we avoid crushing peoples' dreams: we all know that we can't each be this century's defining investigative journalist, art critic, &c., and yet we (socially) also understand that we can't get those successes unless lots of people strive towards those goals. Maybe this points to a fundamental error in how we value labor, but that's probably an even harder problem to solve for Americans than restructuring college tuition.
https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/economy-budget/28362...
Since politicians don't want to repeal the Clinton-era law, the logical choices for many students will be to skip college or to leave USA for college overseas. We are really harming our children with this debt.
At the time Biden served in the (GOP-controlled) Senate, and not on the relevant committees there.
Do you have evidence that Biden specifically was involved in negotiating about this? Or do you just mean that, insofar as he was a member of the Senate, he “helped” by voting for a ~250 page bill that passed 96–1?
"he used his leadership role to limit the ability of other Democrats who had concerns and who wanted the bill softened"
"Senator Biden supports legislation that will fall hardest on women,” she wrote. “Why? The answer will have to come from him … He is a zealous advocate on behalf of one of his biggest contributors – the financial services industry.” -- E Warren in 2005
This 2005 bill would have passed with or without Biden. If you want someone to blame, this ~200 page bill was written by Chuck Grassley (R) and sponsored by 10 GOP senators and two Democratic senators (Biden is not on that list). The House version was written by Rep. Sensenbrenner (R) and sponsored by 80 GOP members and 8 Democratic members. Then it was signed by George W. Bush (R). This is exactly the kind of bill you can expect when the GOP gets unified control of the congress and presidency. https://www.congress.gov/bill/109th-congress/senate-bill/256
It’s fair to criticize Biden for voting for this bill, especially in the context of the Democratic primary – Elizabeth Warren is much more aggressively pro-borrower, and in this case Biden was actually on the Judiciary Committee where this bill was debated so could have conceivably have spent his political capital making a big stink and trying (unsuccessfully) to sink it – but even then this article is pretty exaggerated / out of context: 2019 clickbait trying to attract views by speculatively scaremongering about intra-party differences.
It is ridiculous to say “Clinton changed this”.
Edit to add: If someone wants to see this changed, make sure the Democratic party maintains control of the House in the upcoming midterm elections and then start lobbying GOP Senators. Getting to 60 votes on a bill to help “woke college grads” is going to be an uphill fight in the current political climate.
“‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens”
applies to so many things in the US.
Americans’ absolute refusal to even attempt to learn anything from comparable countries abroad is pathological at this point.
Degree attainment is much lower than the U.S. for much of the rest of the world[1] (usually from more restrictive admissions, from my understanding). Also, from talking to people in other countries, universities over there are often much simpler and don't resemble the 4-year summer camp that schools in the U.S. do (studying in a lot of other countries is probably closer to studying in American night school). I'd say it's a good model to consider, but many would oppose it because it's so different from the typical American college experience.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiary_...
A real fix for the student loan crisis would be to make a national competency test instead of using a bachelor's degree gauge competence. Then get rid of government backed student loans.
My time in college could have been halved if I could have not taken a bunch of the classes that added no value to my education. Honestly, it's shameful how bad those Gen Ed classes are. They exist to check a box.
And I'd be pretty upset to pay for someone else to get a liberal arts degree, especially when it doesn't contribute anything and could have been gotten for free if the person took some initiative.
When I talk to people with STEM degrees who are around my age, it frequently comes out that their “gen ed” classes were pathetically easy. They generally feel some kind of mild resentment around this, since they’re (1) paying for a degree, and (2) generally intelligent people who can handle a more challenging class.
But there’s a reason it’s that way, one that I experienced firsthand when CS students popped into my philosophy courses thinking they’d be easy: they frequently performed miserably and were suddenly at risk of having their CS progression slowed by a non-major requirement.
In other words: many schools have thrown up their hands and (tacitly) admitted defeat on STEM students, funneling them through no-fail liberal arts requirements rather than actually challenging them (where they might fail, slow down their STEM degree, and complain about all the irrelevant coursework they have to do even more). And that hasn’t worked so well either: instead of keeping STEM students happy, it’s produced a generation of undergraduates who think their kid-glove treatment is what liberal arts is actually like.
One of the reasons they are easy is because they are intro courses at the doorway of an entire field of study that is not lacking in depth or complexity. Intro to CS is also very easy (this is a variable, this is an if statement, this is a while loop), but that doesn’t mean the 400 level OS or AI course is a walk in the park. The same goes for philosophy, physics, biology, chemistry, history, or any other subject you perhaps thought was a joke. The ease of the 100 level course is so it doesn’t scare you away entirely, not because the field is intrinsically easy.
Many students will take that gen ed course and then switch into that major because they found the topic fascinating. You took it and found it dull, which actually did add value to your education because it reaffirmed your choice of your major. Some people aren’t so lucky and pick a career they hate, only to find something they love much later in life.
Anyway, this idea that opencourseware is equivalent to a university education is not true in my experience. From my perspective, learning is a multiplayer activity. My students learn best when they are helping each other, doing group projects, teaching eachother things they’ve just learned, and going through the college experience as a cohort. University isn’t just about the facts in the book or the curriculum. I think if that were true, the University system would have been obviated long ago by open courseware. But that has t happened and it won’t because open courseware is just a projection of a university education, not the full thing.
Would be interesting to see data on though.
My anecdotal sense is that STEM is significantly more expensive. Here are some factors:
1) Salaries for STEM faculty are higher than non-STEM, due to competition from the private sector.
2) STEM education often requires additional lab courses, with their own dedicated staff, space, and equipment.
3) Non-Stem additional instruction (discussion sections, etc.) is taught by non-STEM grad students, who are much less expensive than even STEM grads.
Also STEM classes are much larger, with many state school having more than 50% of their students declare a STEM major of some form.
Kinda like a microcosm for society.
Humanities/sociologies: $4400 to $6200 depending on subject.
STEM: $6200 to $9200
Above rates are for Danish students. Universities gets paid more for exchange students.
source: https://ufm.dk/uddannelse/institutioner-og-drift/okonomi/til...
a) Universities in Denmark have no sports teams, facilities or similar. Sport is something you do in your spare time in facilities that the city provides and you do sport with people doing all kinds of other education.
b) Universities have no dorms (there is a single exception to this). Dorms are independent "self-owned companies" which houses students from many different schools/unis.
c) No real prestige in impressive buildings. Students don't choose uni by how impressive buildings etc are.
As the state pays for the education, it has a huge incentive to keep costs low.
The current reality is that that many (not all) humanities majors are societal annoyances with little to show for their education and also have a ton of det.
Society then profits through the resulting efficiency of spherical person transport, with highways replaced by high speed rollways.
The apotheosis of universities achieved, the almost-well-rounded college administrator - rounded enough to round the next batch of students but not round enough to use a rollway himself - celebrates this random process of collisions.
He names the motion of students through this process after his university where it is first developed: the famous Brown University.
I do however completely agree that going into deep debt to do just that is a bad idea, but that's more of a societal problem in the US. Most rich countries heavily subsidize young people's education, including travel and service.
Luxembourg is an example of doing this incredibly well: most young people I met there were really well adjusted, broadly educated, and also quite happy.
I'm from Europe as well, mid 30s, so my friends/peers have no significant college debt. Somehow I grew up with people who all went to art school (mom pushed me in that direction early on) - and all my childhood friends that went to art school are now in entry level/low paid jobs with low job ambitions, limited options in life because of income, no long term relationships, no children.
Subjectively I'm not seeing the "complete people" produced by this system. Compared to my friends that only finished high school they may have more complex opinions, but the reality is they are still in dead end situations - I would not call them any more "complete" personalities. Both end up wasting time on "moms couch" and smoking weed, just discussing different topics.
Life expectancy may have extended (although that's average so it's kind of a moot point I'd argue), but prime age for having children has not.
Having children later on in life not only increases pregnancy risks but also gives you more childbirth defects. Objectively the modern "waste 20s to jump around and party" and "spend your 20s/30s building a career" is leading to a societal collapse.
Perhaps if the US was Germany levels of selective in University admittance and Germany levels of efficient in the administration of the various degree paths, costs in the US would look more like Germany.
There are more options in the US, all those choices have costs that make the US more expensive.
I only ever seen people bring up the cost of university in Europe such as Germany's free system but never the other differences. I'm beginning to think most people only know about the cost difference and don't realize there are many other differences, and by the time someone points out those differences (and how they relate to cost) the person has already formed an opinion which disagrees with the new information and thus choose to ignore it.
How long was the leisure river constructed in the shape of the University's initials? This one is kind of egregious, but most will have an expensive stupid something.
Human capital is a big difference between Germany and the US. My wife attended medical school in Germany. Her year, veterinary was more competitive due to higher demand. If you select for the top n% and demand excellence lots of things are easier and cheaper.
What was the dropout rate from your program?
Lots of money is flushed down the toilet in the US, but the university already got paid so there's not much incentive. Much of the noise around affordability still ensures the university gets paid.
No idea what a leisure river is.
Remedial math (algebra) is often required even for the cohort getting useless degrees. Which program / university would admit this cohort in Germany? In the US everyone who applies will be admitted somewhere. Pushing this cohort through their program adds costs that everyone bears.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/carolinesimon/2017/09/05/bureau...
For example of the difference, look at the per capital rate of school students going to university in both countries. It can be a bit messy to compare because you need to break down different routes. University not being the same as trade school which is not the same as apprenticing, though sometimes these will be lumped together in different ways. Last time I looked it up the acceptance criteria to get into university in Germany was stricter than the US. Not necessarily if you are looking at the really good schools, but those often have scholarships that work on a combination of academics and need based, but for a degree in general.
There is also the issue of in state vs out of state in the US, where an out of state can be double or more the price compared to instate. Rarely is out of state a requirement, it is a personal preference and one that costs greatly if the difference isn't covered by a scholarship.
I suspect if the US followed a similar path, we woukd see similar results. I've not heard calls to make US admission more selective or academicly rigorous.
Medicine, Psychology and the like have hard requirements on grades. Sometimes these requirements are so absurd that they are considered unconstitutional. But most things are both for free and easy to get into.
> really well adjusted, broadly educated, and also quite happy
Being obscenely rich helps.
That's partially true. The reality is that most rich countries (That we are talking about) purposefully make young kids stay out of the workforce, unemployable, until their very late 20s pursuing "well rounded people" education that is not useful and leads nowhere but extended unemployment. They have even culturally codified some of this (see: erasmus) This is how they keep unemployment stats low, said countries classified every u-26 as out of the workforce and not looking for work.
In contrast, the US is at least minting some U-21's that end up becoming millionaires, plus by the time most american grads hit their 30's , the majority have a very upward career trajectory, even bought 1-2 large assets.
Meanwhile, their economic peers outside of the US are still at their first job, trying to make ends meet. They could only dream of buying an apt, let alone a house.
You can have differing opinions on what this extended education model provides, whether its more/less useful vs USA, and what it means for social cohesion and peace (by keeping a very large contingent of young kids hooked education freebies). However, it is not up for debate that the limited economic opportunities connected to extended education are severely diminishing the economic prospects of those young kids
Which can be done through online resources, MOOCs, libraries, and using free resources that colleges from such as access to the college library and ability to sit in on guest lectures (the ones that aren't tied to a specific class, they tend to be open to anyone who wants to attend). One will have to miss out on the college experience, especially the parties, but that shouldn't be an issue because it is all about becoming a well rounded citizen, right?
Dropping the sarcasm for a moment, one of the reasons colleges cost so much is because they are investing so heavily in the student experience. How many admins do they pay that aren't related to education (and who make so much more than the professors actually teaching, especially the non-tenured ones). Revamping if not rebuilding buildings that are perfectly fine because they have a dated look. Adding numerous amenities that aren't related to education. Some young adults save quite a lot of money by skipping out on these colleges, at least for the first two years, and going to cheaper ones more focused on just education. Sadly, at least in my experience, there is a correlation between having all the extra experiences and having a higher ranked degree program.
Doesn't/shouldn't this already happen in public school? That sounds like something shilled by higher ed.
This sentiment was true maybe 50-60 years ago but today, college today is purely for career prep. What drives me nuts is seeing jobs where a degree is necessary but required by the company. I took a peek a "non-STEM" jobs on some job board a while back, I basically wanted to answer the question: "what are my career prospects if I majored in PolSci instead of CS".
What drove me crazy is the number of "humanities of other associated major" requirements when the job was something that clearly did not require you knowing any of that, it was just a blanket "need a degree" requirement, what that degree actually entailed be damned.
One thing I noticed is these jobs seemed to ask for degrees more often than tech jobs. Some tech jobs want to see a 4yr degree but I would say the majority are pure merit based (needs X years in this, Y years in that, some experience with Z tech).
TBH that's the root of the problem we have with education. The reason we see so many useless degrees is that they are literally useless, the only purpose is to full-fill a line item on some job applications. Makes me wonder how much more competitive those jobs would be with stem if they didn't require a degree.
You might make less working in a non-STEM field, but your "edge" is that you didn't have to go to college and take on debt. A software engineer may make way more, but they have student loans to pay down. Getting a degree just to show that you have one seems to be a massive waste of time for everyone but those that collect tuition checks.
This is such a weird perspective. Look at any modern business. A lot of employees will have studied something in humanities. There are valuable skills (particularly writing and communication) that are learned in these degrees that might not be seen as valuable by your average techie.
The problem is not "useless degrees" (they're all useful, regardless of what you may think of them), the problem is insane cost of education.
Depends on the business and the degree. They may be valuable, but they are not 500k usd valuable.
>(particularly writing and communication)
You should learn that in grade school.
(The rest of the comment is ridiculous -- it should be obvious that there is much more to learn about writing or communication than just what can be taught in grade school.)
Are those skills valuable enough to warrant a 500k usd loan? clearly not, or else they should have no problem repaying it.
With regards to value: do you actually want to live in a society where the sole metric for human worth is one's predicted salary? That sounds miserable.
I wish we'd normalize furthering your education later in life after establishing a career and having more funds to do so. It should be less about advancing your career and more about improving and expanding oneself anytime in adulthood.
Yes: even 30k in debt can be crippling, and there is a complex of macroeconomic pressures (like liberal arts jobs concentrating in HCOL areas) that make getting out from under that debt much more difficult than it otherwise would be.
That being said, the solution is not to disincentivize people from getting liberal arts degrees. It's to just make college cheaper, the way every other developed nation does, and to ensure ample non-undergraduate career paths for anybody who is merely going to college because they're told "it's the thing to do."
> I wish we'd normalize furthering your education later in life after establishing a career and having more funds to do so.
I agree completely!
Have you ever actually heard of someone who amassed $500K in student debt to get an undergraduate degree?
I’m sure people get in to that much debt, but it’s going to be rare. The largest number I’ve known of personally is $320k from undergrad, law school, and an MIS.
Sad how fake info is the top thread at HN. In particular Columbia will never make you take out loans: https://cc-seas.financialaid.columbia.edu/how/aid/works.
The kind of people who would get zero aid from Columbia would be very unlikely to be taking out loans to begin with.
Do you really think it’s reasonable to expect eleven year olds to write and communicate at the same level as a fully grown adult?
Minimum page requirements are often the bulk of your grade in non stem. If you wrote the minimum pages, followed the style guide given to you, used mostly correct English, and followed citation guides. You will get a passing grade. It encourages finding a bunch of sources that back up your point ad nauseam, and paraphrase them repeatedly.
I am sure that you have watched a teacher grade 50+ 10 page papers in the span of a week and heard their rational behind each grade though. Having graded some of those papers when being a TA, its all about the rubric, not the content, and most of the rubric is stuff like "Did they follow formatting rules? Did they hit page requirement? Did they have correct citations? Did they follow citation format?" Because not having a space in the wrong place during their works cited page is super important, but writing utter nonsense? Eh. Stuff like "the content" is sometimes low as 10 points on the paper. Usually about 20.
I was hoping that DEI would be more about inclusivity toward majors and not merely about one’s genealogical expressivity.
I think this, and it's something I factor into my hiring decisions.
Just like nearly any corporate initiative, DEI is about what corporations can do to appease their critics, and right now that largely means gender and ethnic background.
Other forms of diversity, based on career path, religion, ideology, or even nationality, are not considered priorities.
And if businesses didn't require 4 year degrees for jobs that don't need them, they wouldn't.
We literally gatekeep careers based on your ability to finish a 4+ year $10k+ degree program, and then you actually get the job and essentially nothing you learned was useful.
The number of coworkers i've met with degrees outside their career is basically the majority (as i work outside of STEM), and their skills mostly correlate to how well they were trained on the job. There's PLENTY that never needed college, or that college didnt change jack about their poor skill set (in fact reinforced it).
The people I know who are making the most are doctors/lawyers (and thats a whole OTHER story), and then right after that are the trades (mostly union workers) who never went to college.
I'd much rather see a proper focus on the public education we already have (and varies WILDLY in quality depending on where you are) than basically saying "well we're going to require you to go to school until you're 18, and then we're going to say that no matter how well you excelled there you're only worth minimum wage unless you force yourself through college, and then get a job where you're useless until they finish the on the job training."
A large majority of the economy is based on jobs that just do not require a 4 year degree (MAYBE 2, but even then it should just be a credit requirement). I'm all for better educating the populace, but accomplishing this by just kneecapping those with life circumstances that make a 4 year degree difficult isn't helping.
We won't see widespread de-escalation of credentials until there are labor shortages, at which point it's no longer in anyone's interest to keep potential workers sidelined in school.
It's hard to shake off the bias that a post-secondary graduate would be more likely to be a quick learner than a high school graduate even if in reality they're effectively the same
In terms of learning “critical thinking”, it’s just selection bias.
Most smart people go to college and people misattribute the intelligence as somehow being a product of the college. No, it’s not.
Obviously students will learn how to game the system and pass all the essays/tests over their 4 years.
That doesn’t imply that they’re more useful for society or better placed for their futures.
It just means that they know what words/phrases to use to get an A on their paper.
But to you point, I define critical thinking as the ability to analyze and synthesize disparate data in order to form thoughts and opinions which are well founded. When they come to me out of high school, this ability is often completely lacking. When they leave after 4 years, they are being sought after by top companies, forming their own companies, and entering into public service well equipped to meet the demands of their new careers.
No one is graduating from our programs by regurgitating words/phrases. I don't know where you got that perception. That would be descriptive of high school, not a top-ranked university.
That’s quite a take if that’s what you’re saying, and also disproven by the fact that students absolutely differ in ability depending on how much they apply themselves (studying vs partying). Also disproven by the fact our non-traditional students also improve in their abilities in the same way the 18 year olds do, despite being much older.
What you’re saying here essentially is that the entire institution of education, something developed societies universally recognized as a cornerstone of civilization, is entirely without merit. Maybe you should rethink that position?
Critical reading is a skill you can practice. The specifics depend on the field, but there are many common features such as analyzing and comparing texts, interpreting them from various points of view, and putting things in context. In order to practice critical reading, you must learn something deep enough that you start understanding the nuances of the arguments the experts in the field make.
Fresh STEM graduates tend to have worse critical reading skills than arts/humanities graduates, because they never had the chance to practice it. On the other hand, advancing to true senior positions often requires similar skills, and many learn them later in the life.
I'd be curious to see evidence that STEM majors actually have worse critical reading skills. Or is it a subjective ranking you've derived?
STEM degrees are essential for modern society, humanities degrees are pure luxury that could be replaced by just reading the course syllabus for free and discussing online or with local groups
As for the cost of education, that could be fixed overnight by allowing loans to be discharged. Colleges would instantly stop providing most humanities courses because they know the students won't be able to repay them because they provide no real world value
And that's before we consider the intangible nature of "real world value." Very few of us want to live in a world where value is a pure function of expected production.
Whether or not the thing we call "universities" continues to exist into the indefinite future is not of particular concern to me.
The primary thing I'm concerning myself with in this conversation is the recurrent and myopic belief among the HN commentariat that everything, especially anything that isn't STEM, needs to fit into the bottom line of some profit structure to be worth any of society's time and effort.
we are talking way more fundamental things here. If all of society suddenly had a ton of humanity major knowledge but no farming knowledge, society dies.
The government is only able to subsidize a luxury like humanities majors because all the other basic needs are taken care of by the miracles of technology created by engineers and physicists. Otherwise, everybody would still be doing subsistence farming to survive and wouldn't have time for the humanities anyway. You can't fake productivity and economic output, it all comes down to technology
How about a severe and widening disconnect between the people paying for the loans, the people guaranteeing the loans, and the measurable value received by the recipient?
Going into debt for a humanities degree is akin to consumer credit. The individual is free to take on that debt, but it is by no means an investment.
I do not think people should weight the intangible value of the degree that they are going 50k in debt for. Doing so will lead to the current student debt crisis.
Humanities teach you that life isn't a ROI thing.
The world is perfect. Those students and society are getting their monies worth in intangible benefits.
One could possibly acquire that particular knowledge for free.
Also, life may not be a ROI thing, but being heavily indebted is still misery. Do the teachers whose salaries depend on their students being heavily indebted teach that, or do they prefer not to talk about this issue? Or the administrators?
I would call it a material (and painful) lesson on conflicts of interest.
closing implies the government does it by force, my point is that things that provide value- whether economic or more abstract, will be fine without government subsidizing it. Research labs have proven ROI and benefits for society, humanity majors no so much. If humanities majors had so much value companies would be paying for them or other nations governments would be recruiting these debt ridden students and poaching them to benefit their own country
Like I said, people can learn anything humanities related by reading free resources online. No need to rack up massive amounts of debt to do that
The fact you have to make a value judgement of it being "reprehensible" and act like without humanities majors we'll be "a world where value is a pure function of expected production" is a sign of a weak argument. It's a very common argument style I see of people stuck in the past with rose-tinted views of what college is about
They do, all the time: as journalists, economists, political dissidents and, most saliently in this context, programmers. It turns out that obtaining a well-rounded education means that those who can program (or perform other technical roles) do so better than their purely technical counterparts!
You can learn anything online, with enough effort, discipline, and engagement from others. Lots of people try to learn programming (not Computer Science, just the technical aspect of programming) online each year, and I'd wager that the overwhelming majority fair. It turns out that the classroom environment is conducive to learning in ways that self-directed online learning is not!
Yes, it is a value judgment. It is one I stand by: it is reprehensible to eliminate sources of value in our society just because we don't have an instrument capable of measuring them. One wonders how many fewer adolescents and young adults would be inspired to study aerospace should Tom Wolfe have been told to study it instead of writing The Right Stuff; one also wonders whether we'd even be having this conversation over the Internet were it not for a bunch of "worthless" philosophizing in Viennese cafes over the nature of mathematical structure.
Your basic point is that education is worthless. What do you propose as a substitute? And please explain also why it is better at the scale of a society?
Given your view on the ease of effective writing, it is fair to expect that your answer is well structured at the level of the entire essay, the paragraph, and the sentence. Your reply should also include appropriate historical references demonstrating your points.
If you cannot meet that standard, then by your own argument you have proved yourself wrong.
The scope of writing for effective communication and writing software are very different, but I do also agree with this. SE and CS degrees aren't for writing software though.
I think specialized education has far fewer benefits than most people think. Basic language and mathematical skills are a good baseline, but expecting to teach the whole population advanced algebra for instance, does not seem productive. It's why people question what they were taught in school.
> If you cannot meet that standard, then by your own argument you have proved yourself wrong
Funny you say that, since I have always had good English without trying and my communication skills have been commented on by a number of different people I've worked with so my perspective on this is somewhat biased.
I want to first give you full credit for an honest and thoughtful debate, in the true spirit of HN. You have my respect.
Second, I fully believe that you have exceptional talent in communication.
That bias, however, is the issue. You do it naturally. You also point out that this is exceptional. What do we do with the 90% of the population who are not exceptionally gifted? Maybe they would benefit from a structured approach which trains them on the skills which come to you naturally?
Same for many other things. The best programmers I've known all were really good without the Uni education. And the structured education of a good masters program brought them to a new level.
Danger! sports analogy. You can't play in the majors without a great deal of natural talent. But the people with talent ANSD specialized training ("intentional practice", "good coaching", or however else you want to phrase "education") are going to dominate.
Respectfully, there has also been a multi-decade large scale concerted attack by big business and the US Republican party with the explicit aim of getting people to question education and teachers.
And please make the distinction between what was taught and what was learned. If you go back and look at what the teachers had on the curriculum you might be surprised.
suggests that effective writing could be a social good, and that apparently it does not come naturally.
In my experience tech people value communication and clarity as much and maybe even more than your average person. Try to write code that would be unintelligible to your colleagues. You are not going to get praised for that.
> The problem is not "useless degrees" (they're all useful, regardless of what you may think of them), the problem is insane cost of education.
Absolutely useless. It is ridiculous to think that it should require 14+ years of schooling to learn to communicate.
That's true, as someone working in tech I admit, I am illiterate. I cannot read or write. My communication is very poor. I normally just scream until someone from HR brings me more snackies.
they use it as an IQ filter, nothing more.
What's the deception here? Was the government going around saying how much money you could earn from a humanities degree? Statistics about earning potential degrees of degrees were available for decades. Caveat emptor.
I'm not sure what the exact messaging your school told, but I imagine it's something to the effect of "degree holders earn x% more than non-degree holders on average", which is a true statement. The "on average" part might not been stressed, but anyone with rudimentary knowledge of how the labor market works (ie. some jobs pay more than other jobs) should be able to figure out that earning potential by degree varies.
The educational system utterly fails at equipping every graduate with the knowledge and skills to succeed in the modern economy in the 14 years they have already. Why are we giving them four more years of everyone’s life and hundreds of billions of dollars more money?
It's been a long time, but if I recall correctly, funding and rankings were partially determined by the number of high school graduates continuing on to college. There was constant pressure to take the right classes and participate in the right activities to meet college admissions requirements. The messaging came from administrators, teachers and counselors.
Exactly, that's the scam. Requiring a 'Tax' that you pay the college that is nothing but a useless piece of paper, that makes you lose years and enslave you in debt.
Obama 2015:
"the single most important way to get ahead is not just to get a high school education, you’ve got to get some higher education. That’s why all of you are here."
"But you’re also here, now more than ever, because a college degree is the surest ticket to the middle class. It is the key to getting a good job that pays a good income -- and to provide you the security where even if you don't have the same job for 30 years, you're so adaptable and you have a skill set and the capacity to learn new skills, it ensures you're always employable."
https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2015/0...
Then why do people with college degrees need bailing out?
Just allow the debt to be discharged conditionally. That’s in my mind the cleanest and fairest way to deal with this issue.
No, it is not clean and fair to allow someone who spent 4 years getting a degree that will put them ahead of the non-degree-citizens and then force the non-degree-citizens to subsidize it.
It is nothing more than theft.
Which would eliminate about 93% of his audience
https://hbr.org/2019/10/americans-need-to-get-over-their-fea....
Who got deceived here? If you were told that the government would be guaranteeing loans, then it follows that they're potentially on the hook if the loan goes bad. That's not something that's hidden, it's literally part of the definition of what guaranteeing loans mean.
>Furthermore, the colleges continuously raise prices because they know they will get the money, regardless, if the student defaults.
That sounds more like unintended consequences than deception.
The deception is in the belief itself, and the government has a tremendous power to shatter it, yet they choose not to.
The only standard the college should be held to us complying with false advertising rules and laws. They shouldn’t be allowed to market a degree that can’t get you a job as one that can.
S/E/M aren't as appreciated.
I don't wish ill on anyone, but hopefully the incoming recession will re-balance the incentives once more, it's crazy to see all this hate addressed at humanities on a website/forum set-up by a guy made "famous" (among the geek "elites") for writing a book called "Hackers and Painters". Must be those crazy high comps, they now allow them to ignore almost anything in life that's related to "painters".
Since some STEM fields are well paying, people think argue they aren't as much of a waste of money. But they still suffer from excessive cost (both monetary and time) and the bloat of useless classes that other degrees do.
Not even, really. Average student loan debt for new graduates (Bachelors) with loans last year was $28K. Even for someone with a humanities degree, that's far from an insurmountable debt to pay over 10 years. It's obviously higher for people getting graduate degrees, law degrees, medical school, etc., but so is their compensation. The stories you hear about people racking up $200K in debt to get a Bachelors in Art History range from extreme outliers to basically memes. I support reform, but there's so much misinformation in this space it's ridiculous. A one time debt forgiveness isn't even "reform" IMO, as we're going to be right back where we started in a few years.
It also creates boom-and-bust cycles. I graduated with a degree in physics, just as the Cold War collapsed and mandatory retirement for professors was outlawed. There was an absolute glut of physicists all looking for jobs at once.
We should not subsidize it at schools trying to play the rankings game with artificially small cohort sizes and commensurate high costs to the taxpayer for no additional payoff.
Why should we subsidize it at all? Because it's a public good.
I certainly do not believe in the slightest that humanities graduates can “critically evaluate public policy” any better than, say, STEM graduates. In fact, they’re probably worse. They were the ones pushing Marxism on Americans back in the day and similar insanities today, like eg. demonizing and defunding the police. I believe that it makes them negative externality.
Now, you may of course disagree. But the point is that there is no agreement that they are a public good.
They are better at evaluating certain types of policies than STEM graduates.
I've met a lot of engineers who are incapable of understanding what a social construct is, or the societal consequences of hate speech, or who don't know what market failure is, or who are totally ignorant of the history of slavery and the indigenous genocide, who don't know anything about international relations, or various other things which are just child's play for humanities graduates which all have deep relevance to certain policies. This shows me that a polity with just STEM graduates and tradespeople is a polity that can't function properly. Without humanities education (whether self-education or otherwise), the only response to Biden talking about "white supremacy" in his speech is pitchforks and fascism, because voters miss the reasons why Biden would make such an utterance. The only response to a carbon tax is pitchforks, because they don't even understand what a market failure is. The only response to transgender protection is pitchforks, because they don't even know what a social construct is. STEM graduates don't know what they don't know, and they label their blind spots as negative externalities out of a combination of supreme arrogance (primarily), ignorance and confusion.
Policy evaluation isn't really the main point. The antidote to populism is the point.
> demonizing and defunding the police.
The topic of police demonstrates my point. It's only people from a humanities background that showed an interest in critiquing the police, and they were the ones running the studies on policing going back decades. The STEM folks had zero interest. They'd rather ignore the situation rather than study and address it. That's why society can't function with just STEM graduates. They don't know what they don't know.
> But the point is that there is no agreement that they are a public good.
I understand that fascists and nationalists and right-wingers are against humanities education because it provides an antidote to their toxic ideology. And that's about 30% of the population against it by default. Argumentum ad populum. That doesn't detract from the correctness of what I'm saying.
The word “properly” does a lot of work here. In context of the previous sentences, it most straightforwardly means “it cannot function according to the left-wing likings”. And I very much agree with this: if humanities department (as they currently exists) were actually calling the shots, the society would indeed “function properly”, i.e. it would be left wing in all its policies. However, nobody then should be surprised that the right wingers most certainly do not consider funding humanities departments to be public goods: they believe that what these departments promote is in fact the opposite of good.
The rest of your comment is some sort of weird attempt to convince me that the society ran only by STEM grads would actually not be good, which is not the view I ever espoused: note how I added “say, STEM graduates”, which clearly implies that they are just an example. I hope that you do not actually have a humanities degree, otherwise you should ask them for you money back!
> I understand that fascists and nationalists and right-wingers are against humanities education because it provides an antidote to their toxic ideology.
I guess it’s easy to assume that your opponents are just wrong and “toxic” in everything they say, but if you make them understand that a reasoned discussion with you is impossible, given how you dismiss it all a priori, they might come to a conclusion that the only way to achieve their goals is, as Clausewitz said, politics by other means. This is an extremely dangerous way to proceed, and I think you should not be so convinced about your side’s invincibility. The society is negotiated peace, and you’d better work to make future negotiations possible.
Further, neoclassical economics is typically considered a centre-right or at least neoliberal paradigm and is taught to all econ students. The way of addressing market failure that I mentioned (e.g carbon tax) is actually a right wing preferred response to climate change. It's only the hard right which doesn't understand this and opposes a carbon tax. Perfect example of the need for liberal arts. The educated old-school fiscal conservatives know better. Because they are educated in these topics.
International relations which can inform non-pacifist intervention is taught by the liberal arts. At least this domain is not tied to the left-right spectrum in any way. It's simply informing foreign policy. It's pretty valuable to have voters who know foreign policy, left or right!
The solution, going by your opinion that no left-wing boosting thing should be funded, is clearly not to defund climatology, medicine, sociology, history, economics and international relations. You don't stop agitation for change. You just get uninformed agitation like the Bolsheviks. A smart left that is capable of picking and choosing what to change is a necessity, because their moral impulse to drive needed change in the face of perceived unfairness isn't going away by removing their education.
"I guess it’s easy to assume that your opponents are just wrong and “toxic” in everything they say"
I consider myself to be center-right economically, in favor of lower taxes and lean regulation and smaller entitlements, so my comment is about the anti-intellectual reactionary right. I can see eye to eye with non-science denying anti-authoritarians individualists (which is to mean non-nationalists, for example, because nationalism is a collectivist morality) on both the left and the right.
Why then education and knowledge boosted right wing policy as recently as 15 years ago? As recently as 20 years ago, college graduates were something like 50% more likely to identify as republican than democrat. How could that be?
> change happens to be advocated for by the left most of the time
Yes, and that change is often very much a bad thing, and the “experts” advocating for it are very much wrong. Consider, for example, the transgender issue you brought up. In UK and Sweden, for example, “experts” on transgender care for past few years have advocated similar policies to the ones advocated for by “experts” in US today. In past few months, however, “experts” in both countries had a big turnaround there, and now very much advocate against policies promoted in US (eg. against puberty blockers, surgeries for minors etc). Regardless of which “experts” are right, the others are wrong. If ours are wrong, they are doing indeed criminal damage to children. Who will oppose them? Same point can be made about COVID “experts”, or, to a lesser degree, climate change policy.
That’s the problem with experts: if people notice they are full of shit (and you often don’t even need a lot of expertise for that, when policy proposals are completely incoherent, like “keep churches closed but strip clubs open”), the whole notion that education is a public good really stops being so convincing, and for good reason too.
> You don't stop agitation for change. You just get uninformed agitation like the Bolsheviks.
So I should keep funding humanities, otherwise they’ll start murderous revolution? I, uh, remain unconvinced.
In all, the fact of the matter is that trust in institutions and in media is steadily falling down, and this makes me happy, because I don’t believe they deserved much of this for last 30 years or so, and what trust their predecessors have earned, they are working very hard at squandering. On their carcasses, new life will grow once again.
The trans treatment issue and covid response issue is just like any other intersection of academic study and public policy. You balance the pros and cons based on the empirical evidence. Sometimes policy makers may get that balance wrong one way or the other. Treatment may lead to life-destroying outcomes X percent of the time, but lack of treatment can lead to life destroying outcomes (e.g empirically increased chance of suicide) Y percent of the time. Lockdowns are a trade off between your freedom of movement and the freedom of old people to not die. It's not an easy issue, because you've got the incomplete and evolving science on the one hand, and public morality on the other, combined with a dash of administrative incompetence. So you shouldn't presume that getting the balance wrong in one direction is criminality but getting it wrong in the other (thereby increasing suicides) isn't, or that there's any better alternative that involves uneducated people making such decisions.
"So I should keep funding humanities, otherwise they’ll start murderous revolution?"
That's nice positive externalities to have, but not once have I seen any evidence that the average humanities graduate possesses those qualities you claim they have.
IOW, it's a nice thing to have, but what makes you think that it comes from a humanities degree?
Nobody should pay for it directly. It should be virtually free to go to college, the way it is everywhere else in the developed world. It should be that way because it's single most obvious investment and high-returning investment any country can make in its future.
If you are going to invest into something, it should be good investment that gives returns. An Useless degree clearly do not give enough returns not even to pay for itself.
Whatever your particular country's failures are might be unfortunate, but they don't counteract the track record of success here. It might be worth considering whether both of our countries would do well to change, rather than presuming that your country's failure will also be mine's.
You're assuming that individuals capture the entirety of the value they generate for society (and that they do so exclusively in the form of income), which is essentially never the case.
If so, we're already agreeing in principle and just disagreeing where the line is.
Having come from a liberal arts program: excellence there is a strong predictor for general workforce competence, including in technical fields (like I am now). I studied 18th century German philosophy, and now I work on compilers. But even this shouldn't be a necessary justification: developing our understanding of history, society, and the human condition is sufficient in itself.
[1]: https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/the-50-most-expensive-colle...
[1]: https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/stony-brook-suny-2838/p...
Me getting a STEM education will pay me back quickly. Thus I can afford to pay for it.
Society probably need someone to do those other things as well, which don't pay as much. So therefore we should pay for it.
It's largely the process of developing and practicing critical analysis and how to effectively communicate it.
Yes, most humanities degrees involve a lot of writing about things written, but it's wrong (and patronizing) to say that the takeaway from the degree is merely the ability to read and write.
Effective communication is a thing a lot of STEM students have a deficit in, to boot. It's not a coincidence that they're the ones often brandishing the humanities as wasted effort.
Merit based scholarships and/or government grants for university humanities departments is a far better way of ensuring we get the most bang per dollar subsidized.
Right, if you are going to take on tonnes of debt, it should probably before for a degree that has a reasonable chance of repaying the debt.
> colleges offered useless degrees to people that do not need them except for vanity [..]
Not useless, but it is difficult to get a profitable career in this subject areas.
> This is one of the biggest scams in history.
Not even remotely close, unfortunately. Tax is way worse. Your employer gets tax, you then get tax, anything your buy is taxed, if you don't spend it before you die you get taxed, if you try to leave it to somebody you get taxed, if you try to save money the government uses inflation to slowly tax it away from you.
The next biggest scams are likely debt traps (checkout who owns the largest amount of debt of poorer nations right now and how they got there), followed by crypto (which is a glorified pyramid scheme - prove me wrong).
It is not wrong, but as long as it replaces the far, far worse pyramid scheme that is Fiat, I'm fine with it. But we digress :)
But if this figure includes a dorm, food and utilities, then it makes sense. Otherwise, it's absurd a cost.