Jaded with education, more Americans are skipping college | Hacker News Reader

Jaded with education, more Americans are skipping college

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25 pointsjohntfella51 comments

I don't think "jaded" is the right word---it's like saying homelessness is increasing because people are jaded with habitation. The problem with college is the same as the problem with housing: the cost has climbed much more rapidly than wages. People on the margins fall out of the market as a result. Why does everyone act as though this is mystifying?

It's interesting to compare this to the usual cycles in (other) financial markets. Products fall from favour, become under priced, get noticed for being under priced, become fashionable and prices rise, become over priced and we're back at the beginning...

If other people are fleeing college (or convertible bonds or MBSs) then now is a good time to get in I imagine. Or it soon will be.

Most comments here are completely missing the point: remote learning during the pandemic era was worse than useless. As a result, the pandemic era created a HUGE bifurcation in the student population between autodidacts and non-autodidacts.

You can see this in high school test scores, in placement exams, in Freshman college performance, and even in new grad hire cohorts.

The autodidact set has realized that they can teach themselves a lot of what they would've learned in coursework at colleges. There are still some elite career pathways where formal education is necessary, but an autodidact who doesn't want to follow one of those career pathways now knows that they can go without.

American colleges provide a useful-if-overpriced service to non-autodidacts, but their product is not ready to deal with students who are YEARS behind in their formal education.

> if overpriced

"overpriced" is a vast understatement. overpriced would be if it costs $8k but is sold at $12k.

Instead the pricing is crippling, and instead of 8k it's 48k, and the average student will roll out with between 100k-200k in debt. debt that is not dischargable except in very rare, specific cases.

> overpriced would be if it costs $8k but is sold at $12k. Instead the pricing is crippling, and instead of 8k it's 48k

The average college tuition and fees at four-year schools in 2020-2021 was $19,020.

> and the average student will roll out with between 100k-200k in debt

The average federal student loan debt is $37,338 per borrower.

Like I said, everyone keeps missing the point.

A seemingly growing trend of anti-intellectualism and anti-education, probably can't be good.

I think there is large aspect of price vs value. If the perceived net return on getting education does not look good enough it makes little sense to get one.

Being educated for huge cost is not that valuable.

All current data still points to college as being the best investment one can make in life, on average.

Check the math on median college cost, vs median gain in income, compared to time spent, investing the cost instead, etc., and you can check it yourself.

Perhaps also factor in lifetime unemployment rates between education classes, and the difference becomes even greater.

Plus the future will likely reward the degreed even more, since that's the trend for decades.

That assumes the best measure of a career is income. Perhaps now we're looking at a transition away from the pursuit of money and toward work that's less abstract and dull and more tangible and personally meaningful.

I know a lot of people who were paid well to work in mind-numbing roles administering corporate processes and services, but hated it. I think I'd much prefer to explore a succession of less-skilled jobs where I learn on the job rather than spend years full-time in a formal college program where I dedicate my days to memorizing a multitude of meaningless factoids that I know I'll never use.

In my 40 year career writing software, the instruction I've valued the most came DURING my current job, part-time in night school, as opposed to full-time studies that took place prior to seeking work. I wasted probably 85% of my full-time undergrad years speculatively learning subject matter which didn't especially interest me but was required for admission to various professional degree ptograms, which unsurprisingly I never used (zoology, pre-med, pre-vet, etc).

Surely academia can be made more relevant to the skills that students see as being useful and actually will use than the centuries-out-of-date fare in the bachelors of arts. Until it is, I foresee many more impatient kids voting against college with their feet.

> That assumes the best measure of a career is income

Plenty of studies show a strong correlation between income and happiness, with recent work extending this increase well into higher incomes.

Certainly your few anecdotes don't invalidate such large volumes of data across so many peer reviewed and replicated studies.

Other factors correlating with happiness include relationships and marriage, and a leading stress in marriage is lack of money.

I'm not saying pursuit of money alone is the goal, but it can provide stability, better health outcomes, security, often comes from jobs providing high satisfaction, and lack of it affects all of these.

Plenty of personally meaningful things pay so low as to be unsustainable. If those things weren't unsustainable, people would already do them.

Money at least helps provide capability to do some meaningful things not otherwise obtainable.

The data are skewed by the lazy (low conscientiousness) people who tend to both, a) never go to college, b) never get a job.

I’d be wary of generalizing based on skewed data like that. Control for conscientiousness (big five) or don’t bother because you’re just proving that the lazybones don’t want to work hard.

And plenty of studies do take all such low hanging arguments into account, and still demonstrate net positive returns on college.

And even without those studies, when employers want to quickly screen out your lazy (low conscientiousness..) people, what do you think they can filter on most easily?

Bingo. And we're back to the expected value of college opening doors and provide better income is net positive.

I'm always surprised how many people try to object to simply digging into the data and evidence and work put into finding the value of higher education, as if their bias or anger or beliefs make a bit of difference to the facts.

Yeah, but doesn't mean the costs should be astronomical. Many other countries manage to provide college education financed by taxes or reasonable fees. Colleges should focus on educating at an affordable rate, and not charging tens of thousands of dollars to babysit students.

Pretty much every one of those countries has a lower amount of students going to college, and have significantly higher taxes to pay for it.

Go look some up. The fact is the US system results in a larger percentage of college educated people, while providing significantly higher PPP adjusted disposable household income.

There's nothing so anti-intellectual as the idea that a college or any formal institution is the only place for any kind of intellectual life.

It's not, but let's be honest: few if any 18 years olds have what it takes to pursue an intellectual life if their parents aren't wealthy.

Removing college, for the most part, will dump youth into low-wage service jobs.

I’m all for folks dropping or opting out and making their own way, that’s what I did as a drop out a good 15 years ago.

I still think there is a certain point to the anti-intellectualism association. If you’re if the mind that universities are involved in something of a scam, printing degrees for low-quality, low-effort students in exchange for those sweet, sweet loan dollars… that will naturally lead to folks having a raised eyebrow at work wondering if Timmy in the corner is really worth is salt or just has a gimme-degree not dissimilar from the perception issues of the Affirmative Action hires - one now begins to question if everyone, or just most, have a bullshit degree and an inability to really think… just another NPC.

It can and does erode societal trust.

It’s more like anti-100k debt for no apparent gain.

People shouldn't be forced into lifelong debt because of social convention

You can have social convention without the debt. The social convention in the US is to have debt.

In many countries university is free. An investment incurred by society.

In those countries, what fraction of the population goes to a university?

Sure, we could do that in the US, too. Maybe not for 60% of the population, though. (In the US, 62.7% of high school graduates attend some additional schooling - though fewer graduate from college.)

About 55% in Germany. Note it is only this low because Germany has a second, alternate system of higher education (the crafts degree system), which remains a viable avenue toward high-income jobs for many. If you put academic and professional education together, I think around 70% on average pursue higher education (over 80-90% in cities). Largely for free.

No system is perfect, but the idea of paying for university (or making young people pay for university) still strikes me as bizarre and preposterous. What's the point of organized society if not providing education to improve everything for everyone?

Good. The purpose of college in the US is not to educate but to create a market for student debt tied to non-dischargeable high interest federal loans, predatory pricing for books, materials, housing, etc, all for degrees with very little value in a job market being cannibalized by automation, outsourcing and AI. It's a racket, and newer generations are only right not to participate.

Yes. Education should be and is free. Anybody who wants it otherwise is morally confused. The universities restrict education, to extract economic value from the essential human experience of learning. It’s a trillion dollar industry built on restricting access to what should be and is free, knowledge. It’s a way of sorting workers into classes. It’s all it can ever be until the money is removed.

Universities do not have a monopoly on education or on learning. You can go teach someone today, no questions asked. You can even charge them for the favor, if you want.

Universities DO have a monopoly on credentialing. Credentialing, contrary to popular opinion in these parts, is actually a useful function.

Providing education and credentialing is not typically free. You need to acquire physical space, hire teachers, and so on. Education could be at least one order of magnitude less expensive than it is now, and it some cases probably even two orders. Education could also be subsidized 100% for the first N most qualified candidates, at point of use, using tax dollars. But there is no way to make it free.

Good for them. Saving money and exploring alternative career paths is a wise move for young people. Less indoctrination as well.

What you call indoctrination most countries would call learning the ability to reason and escape previous indoctrination. Uneducated people are more easily misled and abused by narcissistic leaders.

Lower wages, more unemployment, and an even larger gap between more educated and less educated, is not that great a plan, on average.

Public schools provide that for 12 years - I think young people can take the gas off the "education" for the 4 years following graduating high school. You can live in the real world for a bit, and college is still there if you decide you want it. I don't see the need to rush young people into destitution and more of the same.

The facts, if you care to dig into stats, are that sitting out increases the chance you don't return, and less education pays less over a lifetime.

Also claiming "destitution" is nonsense. See my other post with actual numbers, including context to what else people buy.

Can they even really consent to lifelong debt at that age?

Four year college stats: over 40% of students don't have loans. Of the remaining under 60%, mean debt is ~$30k and median debt is ~$20k of low interest loans. Average lifetime income gain is well over $1m.

That's not lifelong debt. Most people buy houses that are many multiples of this, cats that are similar to this, and many other items with far less benefit.

Calling this lifelong debt is nonsense and fringe outcomes at best.

source me, cuz I don't believe that.

and if true, I'm keen to see how -- I bet heavy enrollment in community colleges and dubious for-profit online schools may skew the numbers.

Google college loan stats. Dozens of places to read, for example, [1,2,3]. All on the first few links.

> I bet heavy enrollment in community colleges and dubious for-profit online schools may skew the numbers.

When you have beliefs that are not formed by looking at well sourced data, but are made from anecdotes, then it's hard for you to believe actual data. Spend some time looking up proper sourced data, then claim disbelief.

Or simply type a few words into google and read a few things.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/advisor/student-loans/average-student...

[2] https://educationdata.org/student-loan-debt-statistics

[3] https://www.lendingtree.com/student/student-loan-debt-statis...

I do believe they can consent. K-12 could do way better teaching financial literacy.

Also how come they can be drafted or sing up for military service. Shouldn't we put stop to that and set minimum age to much higher level let's say 25 or 30? It can be similar lifelong mistake.

> What you call indoctrination most countries would call learning the ability to reason and escape previous indoctrination.

It's turtles all the way down...

I for one am glad I went to University. I was exposed to topics and classes I would have laughed at earlier (philosophy, for one), met a lot of interesting friends, and had a really, really good time in general. In fact, I'd say that those years were some of the best in my life.

My only regret is that I didn't go on any exchange program. Really should have done that.

I think that if you only view higher education as a ticket to a better paying job, and nothing more, college could suck. But that's also under the assumption that you actively avoid social activities, and only go there to get your degree.

I really miss the youthful naïveté - all my peers were really motivated to do things.

> I was exposed to topics and classes I would have laughed at earlier (philosophy, for one)

Same here. Thought I left the horrors of pointless essays and open-ended questions ( what do you mean there isn't a correct answer? ) once I left high school. My college required that we take philosophy, literature and history classes as electives. Turned out to be my favorite classes and where I learned the most. Especially philosophy and history.

> I really miss the youthful naïveté

Yes. And the LAN parties.

Biden needs to move faster and not just with the debt jubilee but drastically change how much unnecessary cash American universities spend on bullshit. Visiting campuses in other parts of the world, I am always shocked how much they do with so little while keeping education relatively free.

The main problem with American higher education is the profit motive. As is often the case, capitalism eventually ruins everything, especially when it’s treated as the state religion.

It doesn't work because the state interfered. College is so expensive because of federally guaranteed loans. This means colleges can charge any price they want because the student has access to any sum of money.

Depends what you mean by interfered. The government subsidized loans as far back as the 1960s, and this I remember clearly.

Not having to pay interest while in school was very helpful to someone like me.

Somewhere around the 1990s to the early 2000s is where things went awry, but it’s also around the time colleges became more (too) accessible.

While colleges set entrance minimum standards, who determined loan eligibility and size in the 1980s and earlier?

Was it the lending institutions?

This is the #1 problem

I think the profit motive is downstream from the root causes. There are MANY issues with higher education at the moment. IMO, federally backed loans which can't be discharged in bankruptcy is the single worst factor.

Without this protection loans become more costly since you'd move risk to lenders. Where else can an 18 year old get an unsecured loan for this amount and rates? Nowhere, for good reason.

> Where else can an 18 year old get an unsecured loan for this amount and rates? Nowhere, for good reason.

If schools competed on price, prices would be lower.

if kids couldn't get loans, they would have to compete on price.

as it stands now, there is no economic incentive to compete on price.

Schools most certainly compete for students, and a major factor is price.

Loans are not some boogey man whose simple presence suddenly throws out all cost consciousness.

If you look at surveys of biggest concerns about students (and their parents) selecting colleges, cost is the biggest factor (42% of them put this as #1 in the survey I'm looking at).

So no, loans are not letting prices run free by any means.

Private lenders used to do this.

The Federal interest payments gave a stream of income to the lender.

But I thought in decades past someone used to assess the risk of someone not repaying, and limit the amount.

Or was it always a small amount no matter what? I remember not being able to afford even the state schools, even with the loans and meager scholarships.

This is in the early 1990s.

Price will have to come down so the risk isn't so bad

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