Comment by echelon | Hacker News Reader

Comment by echelon | Hacker News Reader

We've been talking about this for two decades at this point. Nothing is happening because too many people are willing to go in debt to get their degree.

    Free loans & Easy admissions
        Loans carry no risk

                |
                v

  Ample money supply for universities
      & no pressure to cut costs

                |
                v

   Increase in budget and expenses 
   University FOMO for not being 
   competitive on shiny offerings
   (Admin, fancy facilities, etc.) 

                |
                v

      Perpetually raising costs 
     Students take bigger loans


                |
                v

         Student loan crisis

It's a perverse positive feedback system.

The easiest lever to pull is adjusting the student loan situation. Students need to be able to discharge their debt, which will put risk calculus back into the equation. STEM degrees, graduation rates, degree value, and student academic performance will be directly correlated with risk.

Under these changes, a student with so-so academics going to an expensive school for art history won't work anymore. STEM degrees at local community colleges will be affordable and abundant. That's what the country needs rather than a system that buys fancy academic buildings.

Our ancestors could make do with learning in decrepit old buildings. They didn't have staycation amenities. They turned that into incredible productive value and didn't go into debt. That's what we need again.

If we want to continue to provide access as a matter of policy, then we should make universities meet strict standards on budget and degree cost to offer non-dischargeable loans to students. Then universities can decide whether they want to meet those eligibility requirements or continue inflating their own costs. The market will fix itself.

People go into debt for the credential because employers require the credential. If employers provided training and did not require a degree, you’d see demand evaporate. Instead, they require a degree the role may not even need, which externalizes the cost onto the student and future candidate (who then goes into debt as a gamble to increase future lifetime earnings). A college degree was marketed as a ticket to a secure, middle class life, and that marketing has been seen through.

Why US Men Think College Isn’t Worth It Anymore- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43788914 - April 2025

Pew Reseach: Is College Worth It? - https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2024/05/23/is-coll... - May 23rd, 2024

There is some progress here on companies removing the credential requirement, and the situation should improve as labor supply continues to decline into the future due to structural demographics (forcing employers to loosen hiring requirements).

Learn a trade, get a CDL (~$5k), etc.

Corporations can (and should) provide training for tradespeople, but you can't do the same for specialized degrees, like engineering. To train engineers it takes 4-5 years of academic + project work, which is what colleges and universities provide. There's nothing wrong with degrees, what we have in the US is a broken aid system with perverse incentives around the financing of such degrees. Don't conflate one thing with the other.

I don't disagree that there is a legit need for engineering degree holding workers, but, how many folks in the US are getting engineering degrees just to check a box to get a job that requires a degree? This is a distinct issue versus dysfunctional funding of necessary degree paths.

I may just be misunderstanding what you're saying but if you're just getting a degree to tick a box that says "Must have a degree" why would you pick engineering?

What are the jobs that "require" an engineering degree but don't actually require any engineering knowledge?

Sorry for any misunderstanding. To be clear, there are two problems:

1. Students going into debt to get a degree simply because a job req calls for it, but potentially doesn't use the degree. Think "business administration" amongst others. The "Bachelor's Checkbox" on an application if you will. The debt they incur is the cost to increase their white collar lottery odds.

2. Degrees in domains that are crucial for the work to be done, but the financing model is fucked. Engineering, MD, etc.

Both require solving for, but in this context, I am addressing the former.

>People go into debt for the credential because employers require the credential.

The beautiful thing is that making the debt dischargeable fixes all that.

Nobody will write a loan for your slapdash STEM program that doesn't actually correlate with earnings.

Same goes for a basket weaving degree from a prestigious university.

>Learn a trade, get a CDL (~$5k), etc.

Spoken like someone who's never been with spitting distance of either. They are not at all easy money compared to office stuff. The trades are all regulatory captured by the professional associations, licensing bodies, etc so you'll toil for 4-10yr making peanuts while you destroy your bodies and sometimes you can't even make the big bucks without going into business yourself and taking on huge risk. CDL jobs are all 60hr a week slogs, more if your company has someone overseas editing the E-logs which a good chunk of them do.

If you can hack it an office job that requires "real math" is almost universally better.

I have a CDL and have driven a Class 8 semi for a short stint (it’s a valuable life skill from an optionality perspective imho). I did let the hazmat endorsement expire though. A family member was a long haul truck driver, I am familiar with the industry and what the experience is. As long as trucks are used to transport, it’s an economic option requiring minimal investment.

People don't stay at companies long enough for it to be worth it to train them deeply.

That’s contractually solvable. Training payback periods are not uncommon.

I doubt it. Legally you might, but in effect, you can't force someone to come to work and if you do they can sabotage or refuse to work.

You could attach a financial penalty in case they refuse, but you can't collect money from people without a job.

Correct. A financial payback is how it works.

Cool that you posted a Pew Research article, they tend to get rarely shown and are often well substantiated. This one, maybe a bit less (5,200 adults vs the usual 10,000 survey respondents, yet still pretty substantiated.

Within the article, the education part definitely differs by gender. For males, the college degree has been oscillating upward, downward, and flat over the last 50 years. 75-85 semi-down, 85 big jump, mostly flat till mid-90's, rose till maybe 2002, yet then down till 2015. Finally up in the last decade.

Also, in comparison, without a degree has been uniformly horrible for the most part, with down or flat for 40 years (except maybe the bump in mid-90's). (Provides a big push to get a degree, probably get a lot of "don't do what we did, go to school")

Women on the other hand, after the drop in 73-74, have had almost nothing other than upward or flat for 50 years from getting an education. $40,400 to $65,000. Without a degree has mostly been flat. The story for them is "get a degree, it enables earning (and probably independence). Creates very different views and kind of a strange gender dynamic in the discussion.

On that, it seems like a possibility that the last decade trend (and a lot of the manosphere stuff that's shown up recently) may have been when the High School or Some College crowd male pay started approaching the High School or Some College female pay. Personal opinion, yet it seems likely to set off lots of societal issues about family breadwinner, provider, head-of-family, ect...

On the original topic of the post, "If employers provided training and did not require a degree", this likely works for many jobs, and I agree there is probably a lot of false "check-the-box" requirement nonsense in the job market. However, there are quite a few jobs where the starting tasks presume that you have a significant amount of prior familiarization with concepts. You actually use semi-complex math (derivatives, integrals), you need to demonstrate significant skill in liberal arts (production concept art), you need to be familiar with a relatively complicated system with lots of fine details (legal, laws), ect...

There's also an issue in there somewhere, that if the jobs are so simple that all they require is walking in the door and getting training, then those jobs are: relatively low actual skill required, likely limited creative personal input needed, and probable for replacement if there's a way to replace it with tech. That said, the trainee/novice, apprentice, journeyman, master thing has worked since probably the middle-ages in a lot of fields, so there's possibilities.

Also, my standard reply to lot of these issues that's underneath much of the American education "Loyal workers are selectively and ironically targeted for exploitation" https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00221... The issue being that you go through all this education, and then work in an environment where your diligence is mostly exploited, and you simply get extra work for being skilled, while people who just faked it get promoted.

I got a stem degree via community college, but had to goto a state college and get a bachelor in the same degree for employers to even consider hiring me or being able to move up in a company.

I have a associates in science in cyber security, most credits didn't transfer to a bachelor's of science in cybwrsecurity program despite both being public schools and not private colleges. Its set my education back years all because most jobs demand a bachelor's and certifications.

Isn't the problem that education is a public good and therefore shouldn't cost anything special, and a system to sort prospective students into correct tiers based on honest merits would be better, but because rich people, it's what we have?

Seems like you haven't even gone down the path most of the world operates on and just assume the system as it exists can't be modified.

> Isn't the problem that education is a public good and therefore shouldn't cost anything special

If your solution is to make all higher education free and turn this into yet another tax, then I have to ask where that money is going to come from.

There's already tremendous inefficiency and malinvestment in higher education. Is it really worth diverting productive capital and private money into a system that is bloated?

The frequently suggested fix is to remove the crutches and allow the system to fail, ie. make student loans dischargeable in bankruptcy.

Risk has been foreign to the equation since the student loan system was established. With the reintroduction of risk, the system will balance itself. People will stop taking expensive degree programs with low ROI because there won't be any loans available. No lender will write loans for bad degree programs.

Additionally, when the universities are forced to stop competing on what amenities they offer, they can lower their tuitions to a point where some form of public subsidy could be possible and sustainable. But in no way should we be spending tax dollars on present-day college tuition costs. Those costs need to drop substantially.

The US would add another 0.5 - 0.7 trillion dollars to the deficit if we funded all universities at their present day costs. That would sink the entire ship. It'd be insane to add that to our budget.

The money is going to come from the same place the money already comes from.

I don't understand, and won't follow further someone who doesn't understand how public good works.

Sorry you wasted your time.

It is also hard to discharge student loan debt in bankruptcy.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com