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Comment by decimalenough | Hacker News Reader

The title is misleading. As the article itself notes, "Large flagship universities—blessed with strong academic reputations and high-profile sports programs—continue to boost local economies".

It's the second and third-tier institutions located in economically depressed areas, like the one profiled here (Western Illinois University’s Macomb campus), that are suffering. After all, why would you fork out a lot of money for a diploma that's worth little and won't even connect you with local job opportunities?

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> why would you fork out a lot of money for a diploma that's worth little and won't even connect you with local job opportunities?

To learn, to sharpen your mind, to grow and change yourself.

And why should you sacrifice the ability to connect with opportunity just because you wanted to expand your mind? It's unfortunate that people should be presented with this forced choice.

> sacrifice the ability to connect with opportunity just because you wanted to expand your mind

Growing as a person and intellectually is a great opportunity, a lifelong change. Better than some immediate cash in an entry-level job.

There are other ways to do that. School is an investment.

> There are other ways to do that. School is an investment

For most people, yes. For our elites, I think one of the great losses over the past generations has been this financialisation of education. Measuring ROI solely in monetary terms, thereby sacrificing the civic and cultural parts for that which is easily measured and marketed.

Imo college sports is a huge driver of this, as schools are more often seen as sports franchises these days than actual educational institutions.

What other ways?

Totally doable online from a beautiful beach in a much more affordable area. ChatGPT is better than a lot of professors I had and I went to a top tier university for my area of study, professors mostly were just there to do research and either weren't good teachers or didn't care to be.

I remember when Reddit blew up I started meeting people that had really specific bits of information, stuff that I would normally only see from someone with some sort of domain expertise, but were oblivious to the context in which that knowledge was produced and couldn't really do anything other than regurgitate the info. Really curious to see the sort of brain rot LLMs will bring.

Agreed, and I've also met many people who have spoken with great confidence and ignorance.

You can do that in many institutions, why would you pick an institution with little reputation in these depressed cities?

The entire point is that reputable and well funded institutions with large campuses and thriving social and civic networks are doing fine. It’s small institutions that popped up to satisfy a once growing are being drained as demand falls.

Education is great, expanding your mind is great, but there is little incentive to foreclose other opportunities along the way in pursuit.

> The entire point is that reputable and well funded institutions with large campuses and thriving social and civic networks are doing fine.

Can everyone get into those schools?

> Can everyone get into those schools?

Obviously not everyone can get into every school. But overall enrollment volume across every institution is down, which means being a top X% student will get you into progressively better schools unless they cut overall class sizes. Obviously it’s the institutions at the bottom of the list which lose students first, which is the “problem” highlighted by this article.

In exchange for 100k in debt? Library is free.

The 100K is a big problem.

The library doesn't even approximate a substitute. Maybe you are a genius, but almost everyone needs teachers. Even experts need people to teach them new things, to mentor them, etc. They also need labs and equipment.

Also, the library you need for real reasearch is not free. It only exists in academia. Your local public library doesn't give you access to nearly the same resources, nor the essential reference librarians. (Maybe the NY Public Library? Does that have JSTOR, for example?)

You are 100% correct about the quality of the resources in a local library. That’s an artificial barrier to learning though. Aaron Swartz died because of this. JSTOR is a crime against humanity.

Libgen is a solution to that.

I agree there is value to learning with experts but not at the cost we are expected to pay these days. The labs and equipment are a tiny fraction of the tuition a student pays and many disciplines do not require anymore more than pen and paper and the aforementioned resources. Why should a math and economics major pay the same as a biochem student? Because the majority of the cost is the bureaucracy and the fancy real estate investments.

I think after industrialization we started realizing how advanced knowledge of complex topics can multiply our impact and wealth. No wonder all nations strived to educate their people and their people aspired to go to colleges and get higher specialized degrees.

The reality is that the economy cannot occupy all these specialists and still requires a ton of fungible generalists. In fact we made so many specialists that themselves became fungible. Look at the tech layoffs, they casually throw under the bus industry legends, simply because everyone has become nearly replaceable.

And even from a societal perspective you would think that with more knowledge we would become more tolerant, more rational etc etc. Well how did that work out?

> The reality is that the economy cannot occupy all these specialists

What is that based on? I haven't heard of any such problem, other than from people who are trying to cut education funding or social mobility.

> and still requires a ton of fungible generalists.

Undergraduate college degree holders are generalists. Nobody considers you a specialist, or will hire you as such, because of your undergraduate degree. Maybe some engineering degrees, but really you need a masters degree for almost every specialist job.

> even from a societal perspective you would think that with more knowledge we would become more tolerant, more rational etc etc. Well how did that work out?

Despite the recent reactionary backlash, we still far ahead of where we were 50 years ago and even more ahead of where we were a century ago. The evidence is overwhelmingly the other way.

> What is that based on? I haven't heard of any such problem, other than from people who are trying to cut education funding or social mobility.

Check any South/Eastern European country. Tons of degrees, insanely high youth unemployment. Devastating lack of labor for businesses. Of course an engineer will prefer to stay home with their parents instead of going to work as a barista.

> Undergraduate college degree holders are generalists. Nobody considers you a specialist, or will hire you as such, because of your undergraduate degree. Maybe some engineering degrees, but really you need a masters degree for almost every specialist job.

With generalists I meant unspecialized labor: servers, farm workers, construction workers etc

> Check any South/Eastern European country.

I thought we were talking about the US - note the headline. I understand some less wealthy countries have that problem; I don't know why but it's an interesting question.

Which you can also do through reading and even YouTube nowadays.

College is great but 1) Not for everybody and 2) only the rich can pay 50K-400K to "sharpen their minds" without a high-paying job in the other end.

We need more middle class jobs that don't require a 4-year college degree

> Which you can also do through reading and even YouTube nowadays.

You cannot. Very few people - geniuses - could learn on their own what a typical person learns with a teacher, and even the geniuses are far better off with a teacher working at their level.

> 1) Not for everybody

That's such a general statement that it's meaningless, not falsifiable. It's for most people.

> only the rich can pay 50K-400K

Yes, I strongly agree that's an enormous problem.

> We need more middle class jobs that don't require a 4-year college degree

That's what the people who want to cut opportunity and education say. But middle-class / poor people have dreams and want to fulfill their potential too, and are also an enormous pool of talent.

The solution is to make college affordable. Multiple presidential candidates have offered ways to do it. There's no reason we can't.

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