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A college degree is a lousy investment

People that went to wake in the 80s are dumb

I understood that much - my question was to why my statement led to his statement. Was he saying that my statement was incorrect? If so, then he is the moron because it was simple fact.
 
I understood that much - my question was to why my statement led to his statement. Was he saying that my statement was incorrect? If so, then he is the moron because it was simple fact.

People in the 80's decided to pay elite school prices for a non-elite school.
 
I have a professional understanding of how higher education economics work. It's not like pricing soap.

But apparently you can't grasp that demand does not just equal desire. It equals willingness and ability.
 
Tuition goes up because demand for education is high and cost of education is used as a proxy for prestige ("you get what you pay for"). We may look at $60K a year as ridiculous, but it's one way that Wake claims to be peers with Duke, Stanford, and the Ivies.

If the spigot dried up, you'd see supply of higher education go down as for-profits close and colleges admit fewer students. But demand would stay high as long as employers want to hire people with college degrees.

Now I do think drying up the spigot would slow the rate of tuition increase, but tuition would definitely stay high.

The problem with this analogy is that the spigot did dry up, so the govt came in and subsidized it, creating artificial demand.
 
Wake was on the Best Bargains list in the 80's. Prices didn't really start getting jacked until 1990.

Make up your own narrative though.
 
Wake was on the Best Bargains list in the 80's. Prices didn't really start getting jacked until 1990.

Make up your own narrative though.

So much this. Wake came on my radar bc it was in Money magazine's Best Values. Back then, that was considered a good thing. Tuition freshman year was $6600 and $10k my senior year. Every year the rationale for the sharp increase was "for faculty pay," which I see they continue to use. The 90's brought the hyper-inflation to Wake, and nationwide. One year in the 90's, the University of Richmond (a regional school ranked just under Wake before we went national) doubled it's tuition in a single year... Took it from $17k to $34k (or thereabout).
 
The problem with this analogy is that the spigot did dry up, so the govt came in and subsidized it, creating artificial demand.

The analogy is talking about the current government spigot. We've been assuming that no other lender would enter the market if the federal government reduced loans.
 
it seems like too many kids my age go to school and dont really understand what they want to do and what the job market needs, they go 4 years get a history degree and work a shitty job.
 
it seems like too many kids my age go to school and dont really understand what they want to do and what the job market needs, they go 4 years get a history degree and work a shitty job.

Right. Because sadly that's a better alternative to not getting any degree and working a shittier job.
 
Right. Because sadly that's a better alternative to not getting any degree and working a shittier job.

i left college after a semester and i have a fantastic job, its about finding the right company and work your way up, i have 0 debt and would prb make more than getting some 4 year degree and have 50+grand in debt, now if I was planning to go to school for say a doctorate or something similar with a amount of pay that will offset the amount of debt than I can see that its worth it, but for a average person that doesnt really know what they want to do and go blindly into a 4 year college out of high school is on them, i wish i wouldve gone to community college out of high school to actually know what I wanted to do that would actually make me money
 
i left college after a semester and i have a fantastic job, its about finding the right company and work your way up, i have 0 debt and would prb make more than getting some 4 year degree and have 50+grand in debt, now if I was planning to go to school for say a doctorate or something similar with a amount of pay that will offset the amount of debt than I can see that its worth it, but for a average person that doesnt really know what they want to do and go blindly into a 4 year college out of high school is on them, i wish i wouldve gone to community college out of high school to actually know what I wanted to do that would actually make me money

That is a mighty impressive series of comma splices.
 
Right. Because sadly that's a better alternative to not getting any degree and working a shittier job.

The problem is most history majors are working the same shitty jobs as the kids who didn't graduate. Waiting table's with a history degree and paying off student loans is far worse than just waiting tables.
 
Wake was on the Best Bargains list in the 80's. Prices didn't really start getting jacked until 1990.

Make up your own narrative though.

And one of the best bargains on that list. Wake used to be rational option for middle and upper-middle class families.
 
idk man. based on the posts from 8xdeacs it seems to me the quality of education at that point was seriously lacking.
 
i left college after a semester and i have a fantastic job, its about finding the right company and work your way up, i have 0 debt and would prb make more than getting some 4 year degree and have 50+grand in debt, now if I was planning to go to school for say a doctorate or something similar with a amount of pay that will offset the amount of debt than I can see that its worth it, but for a average person that doesnt really know what they want to do and go blindly into a 4 year college out of high school is on them, i wish i wouldve gone to community college out of high school to actually know what I wanted to do that would actually make me money

This is quite the run-on sentence.
 
i left college after a semester and i have a fantastic job, its about finding the right company and work your way up, i have 0 debt and would prb make more than getting some 4 year degree and have 50+grand in debt, now if I was planning to go to school for say a doctorate or something similar with a amount of pay that will offset the amount of debt than I can see that its worth it, but for a average person that doesnt really know what they want to do and go blindly into a 4 year college out of high school is on them, i wish i wouldve gone to community college out of high school to actually know what I wanted to do that would actually make me money

what year did you drop out of college
 
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