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Comment by tekla | Hacker News Reader

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can be made more relevant to the skills that students see as being useful and actually will use than the centuries-out-of-date fare in the bachelors of arts.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?

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