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A college degree is a lousy investment

Rafi said:
I like Warren, but I think that money would be much better focused on pre-K and improving public K-12 schools.
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Agreed. Do that and fewer students will need to go to college. Making college free increases credentialism. There are other ways to do affordability.
 
TownieDeac said:
As in her universal child care plan? https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vo.../22/18234606/warren-child-care-universal-2020

Or her k-12 comments here? https://mobile.edweek.org/c.jsp?cid=25920011&item=http://api.edweek.org/v1/blogs/49/?uuid=78751
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No, I know that her plans released today included both pre K and k-12 public education, but I think it would be better to focus the money on those two areas only, instead of trying to pay off a bunch of student loans and make public college free.
 
Paying off student loans is a very good idea.
 
Rafi said:
No, I know that her plans released today included both pre K and k-12 public education, but I think it would be better to focus the money on those two areas only, instead of trying to pay off a bunch of student loans and make public college free.
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Disagree but more than that her higher ed policy also makes it much harder for for profit universities to exploit students of color, first gen students, etc. Additionally, student loans can’t be erased by bankruptcy, something we should probably look harder at.

We frame the way we talk about higher ed costs in a bizarre way. Few 18 year olds can foot a $50k bill on the cheap end of good public higher ed. It’s a false narrative that kids should just make better economic choices or go into STM to pay off loans. Without a safety net of a family to support a student, it’s a proper barrier to entry.
 
TownieDeac said:
Disagree but more than that her higher ed policy also makes it much harder for for profit universities to exploit students of color, first gen students, etc. Additionally, student loans can’t be erased by bankruptcy, something we should probably look harder at.

We frame the way we talk about higher ed costs in a bizarre way. Few 18 year olds can foot a $50k bill on the cheap end of good public higher ed. It’s a false narrative that kids should just make better economic choices or go into STM to pay off loans. Without a safety net of a family to support a student, it’s a proper barrier to entry.
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I don’t think more support for college is a totally unreasonable long term goal, but I think it is much more important to focus that money on first fixing pre K to 12 public schools, as there are many that are failing and moving in the wrong direction. It’s going to be an expensive fix, and that’s where the money should be focused.

Plus, I have a hard time supporting the idea of incentivizing students to go to a school like UNC, where they ran a fake classes scheme for decades and then lied about it and covered it up.
 
Doesn’t have to be zero sum, and I’m all for punishing schools like UNC for academic fraud. Don’t see these as great arguments.
 
Education is gonna be reformed by the tech companies sooner rather than later. Other issues are a better focus of massive government programs. Free high speed internet for all, for example
 
Universities are an anachronism. It used to be that education was rare, and you had to go to it. (TV's and computers have followed this same arc) Libraries were special and meaningful. With the internet and smartphones, education is everywhere. There is really no need to travel and reside at a university for the purposes of learning. The only purpose they serve is credentialing (give and grade a succession of tests) for employers. There is an opportunity for an entity that could get employer buy-in to provide this credentialing at a fraction of current costs. They wouldn't even have to provide educational content - it is already out there. They could sell advertising directing their students to certain content sites. I'm thinking this entity might be the College Board. Instead of giving tests to say a student has an aptitude for college, they could provide this credentialing service. Instead of paying tuition, you pay $100/test.
 
That is a very cynical take which assumes that students (whatever that means in your hypothetical) are not morons and immediately absorb and understand everything they're told. We're not all lectro-level autodidacts

The purpose of university is not just to be lectured at and memorize everything.
 
awaken said:
Universities are an anachronism. It used to be that education was rare, and you had to go to it. (TV's and computers have followed this same arc) Libraries were special and meaningful. With the internet and smartphones, education is everywhere. There is really no need to travel and reside at a university for the purposes of learning. The only purpose they serve is credentialing (give and grade a succession of tests) for employers. There is an opportunity for an entity that could get employer buy-in to provide this credentialing at a fraction of current costs. They wouldn't even have to provide educational content - it is already out there. They could sell advertising directing their students to certain content sites. I'm thinking this entity might be the College Board. Instead of giving tests to say a student has an aptitude for college, they could provide this credentialing service. Instead of paying tuition, you pay $100/test.
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A lot of necessary growing up can happen at a physical university. We're still churning out baby-people at a break neck pace, but I have to think that getting out of mom's basement is a good thing for a lot of the kids. Does it need to be 4 years? Probably not. 2? Yeah, I could see that.

Maybe just make military service mandatory instead? 18 months?
 
It might be interesting for those with "college is unnecessary" takes to investigate why they'd want to deny people the same opportunity that got them to where they are today. Much of the rhetoric bottom lines as "stay in your social station."
 
I don't want to deny anyone anything. I want to lower the barrier of entry and devise options from the price gouging, debt-loading option.

I do agree there is a "growing up" aspect of college. It's a wonderful time of life where you get all the benefits of being treated like an adult without many of the responsibilities. Hard to put a six figure price tag on that though.
 
TownieDeac said:
It might be interesting for those with "college is unnecessary" takes to investigate why they'd want to deny people the same opportunity that got them to where they are today. Much of the rhetoric bottom lines as "stay in your social station."
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Yep. I wouldn’t know what “country club causal” is if I sat at a laptop in eastern NC instead of going to Wake.

If your social station growing up was similar to the culture of Wake, I can understand why you wouldn’t think going to college is a useful experience. You didn’t meet “new” people and have “new” experiences.

Universities offer that to people especially large public universities that bring in people from very different backgrounds from all over the world.
 
I'm not in the "going to college is a waste of money" crowd but I do believe that paying for than 50K total for an undergraduate college education is a waste of money. Now I can see paying significantly more for graduate degrees, especially ones which are specialized, but undergrad degrees mean very little these days.

The smartest route I can see is to go to a CC for two years, transfer to a reasonably priced, but academically respected public school, and then spend the "big bucks" for grad school.

Or just go be a social media influencer.
 
If anything, most masters degrees are even more of a waste. Unless you can get into Harvard, Stanford or Wharton an MBA is increasingly viewed as worthless. I laugh when I see high school classmates going to business school at NC State. I have a couple friends at Fuqua right now and obviously there are people who do quite well out of there (in finance specifically) but one just accepted an offer at Comcast in some strategy group making $125k plus a moderate bonus. Tuition at Fuqua is $70k per year....
 
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