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A Generation Hobbled by the Soaring Cost of College

Zyphlin said:
society moving to a point where a basic college degree is viewed similar to how a high school degree used to be as almost mandatory for anything above a menial job
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It isn't just that people woke up one day and said "hey, lets consider college like we used to consider high school". The world has changed radically. 100 years ago our economy was driven by farming. You didn't really need anything beyond grade school to do that work proficiently. 50 years ago it was driven primarily by manufacturing. Most of the jobs in a manufacturing economy only require enough education to operate machines and assemble things, and you get there in high school. But today we are in an information economy. Software companies, pharmaceutical companies, high finance, etc. These fields require a much, much, higher level of education, but have much, much, much, greater rewards.

One way to think of it is like this- in the olden days how much work you accomplished in a day was mostly a function of your level of effort. If you put in a solid 10 hour day in the fields you'd accomplish 25% more than somebody who put in 8 hours more often than not. But as technology has advanced, the productivity of a farmer has steadily had more and more to do with how smart they work. Maybe they will be 40% more productive if they make the right call about making a particular adjustment to the mix of fertilizer they use and the farmer that works 8 hours might dramatically outperform the farmer that works 10 hours if he is making smarter decisions. That's true in every field. Accountants used to be mostly measured by the amount of time they put in tabulating columns of numbers and re-checking it, but now all that is done by computers and they are mostly measured by strategic decisions they make. Computers and machines are steadily shifting more and more of the emphasis in most fields to how smart people work more than how hard they work. A database engineer might be at his most productive spending a whole month researching a particular setting in the database and only making one minor tweak. The same thing plays out on the larger scale. A worker might be more productive spending 10 years preparing to work as smartly as possible and 30 years working than they would be if they just spent 40 years working. As time goes on that ratio will keep skewing more and more that way. For example, we will reach a point where the only human involvement in farming is programming various machines. If the last guy studied how to optimize that programming for 20 years, the odds are that you'll need to study it for 21 years to be able to improve on it.
 
Mr. Invisible said:
I have to argue that as the US is moving from an industrial to a knowledge economy, thus if most people have degrees, it will be better for the economy as a whole.
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Just think that the reality is people have different skills. Not everyone will be smartest like not everyone is the strongest. We still need all sorts of skills that do not require a college education. Look at the German system, where there are strong technical schools for kids to learn the trades. Wish that was stronger here in the states.

On the college front, my sense is that the state universities should be both for the students mainly from their state and materially less expensive than they are.
 
I support the idea of public education and I think the economy would benefit from it, but I think it's a bit extreme to suggest that EVERYONE should have have a college degree.

It's a bit depressing to read science and tech journals these days. You see all these interesting discoveries and innovations coming out of US universities, and swell up with pride a little, and then you look at who's doing the research and so often its a student from India or China or wherever. And then, due to our idiotic immigration polcies, we send those folks who've taken so much from our university system back where they came from and lose the benefit of their learning.
 
KevinKohler said:
Cars also used to run on mechanical devices called carburators, that most handy men knew how to fix/tune, etc...now they are fuel injected, and require RATHER technical, detailed expertise to work with, not to mention equipment beyond a flat head screw driver and a basic socket wrench set.

Times have changed. Things aren't as simple anymore. As technology increases, so too does the demand for what employees are expected to deliver. This all points to more precise skill sets, and more specific educations. We are leaving behind the age of generalists, in favor of specialists. Highschool level education is exactly general education.

As for people doing crap jobs, who have diplomas for specific jobs...that's a sign of a couple of things, foremost of them, technology reducing the need for as many workers. Fewer employees are doing more. Forcing others to take work where ever they can find it.
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When things became too technical to learn on the job, employers made a big mistake to not continue earning-while-learning. College education must be replaced by paid professional training. It is as dysfunctional as offering someone a good job if he will spend four years working for nothing. As for the objection that such an employee actually produces something immediately available to the company while the college student doesn't, short-term thinking is damaging in the long run. Besides, it may take a year or more for a researcher to produce something marketable, but he still gets paid.
 
teamosil said:
What? Of course it does... Not sure what you mean there... Obviously an education makes an employee more productive... Why do you think employers pay so much more for more educated people?
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If you redefine productivity perhaps. But in reality, the amount of education one has, has nothing to do with how productive they are. I've seen high school graduates up to PhD's waste away time and be anything but productive.

Second, it means increased demand. More educated people make more money, they buy more products, that creates more high end jobs, those employees buy more products, etc...
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I never said the pool of jobs was fixed, I said it was driven by demand. And giving everyone a PhD means you have a lot of people with a 'high education', it does not mean that magically there are high paying positions for all of them. BTW, when people 'buy more products', it most often requires more unskilled employees (or minimally skilled) to make all that stuff. Just try to get a PhD to take a job on the assembly line.
 
Zyphlin said:
I know, but since you quoted the key quote of her's that I cared about I just stripped down to her comment...that's why I left the " "'s around it to make it clear (failed at that) I was talking about her statement, not your view
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Sorry, my bad, I just didn't see it at first.
 
cmakaioz said:
Again, with the illiteracy. I never said everyone should get a degree. Rather, that college education should be free to the student. Note: free to the student doesn't mean free...it means the expenses are not billed to the student. Students would still pay indirectly (through taxes and other contributions) before and after their time as students in their capacities in other roles.
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If it is free, far more people will go, a lot of them being people that probably are not suited to such things. Why worry, it's "free"

If it was up to me, almost no one would have jobs...and that would be a good thing...
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Yes, perhaps it is a good thing to not extend the utopian dreams too far in this discussion.

Ahh, I see...so you actually DON'T want a meritocracy after all...because you're perfectly OK with preserving artificial barriers to performance and pretending away the obstacles presented by several major demands on the time, energy, and opportunity of students.
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You know, the rest of your wall of text just isn't worth responding to. I just listened to Ed Schultz for the past hour to see what that idiot was up to, and now that I find a lot of the same thought processes, I am just to numb to care to respond.
 
Arbo said:
If you redefine productivity perhaps. But in reality, the amount of education one has, has nothing to do with how productive they are. I've seen high school graduates up to PhD's waste away time and be anything but productive.
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Not sure how you think that responds to my position... Sure, of course some people with any level of education waste time... That doesn't change the fact that more educated people tend to be more productive... What did you think the point of education was? Why do you think employers pay so much more for people with more education? Why did you think all the highest income brackets are overwhelmingly dominated by people with advanced degrees?

Arbo said:
I never said the pool of jobs was fixed, I said it was driven by demand. And giving everyone a PhD means you have a lot of people with a 'high education', it does not mean that magically there are high paying positions for all of them.
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Well, we've been over that several times now. If you have any counter arguments, I'd be happy to hear them. Like I have said several times, it increases demand, opens up new industries and improves our ability to compete with other countries. Did you have any arguments against any of those claims? Or are you just going to keep asserting that you disagree generally?

Arbo said:
BTW, when people 'buy more products', it most often requires more unskilled employees (or minimally skilled) to make all that stuff. Just try to get a PhD to take a job on the assembly line.
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This is just fundamentally what you're misunderstanding. Did you know, for example, that there is more intellectual property than physical property in the US? The information is worth more than the physical stuff today. When you buy an iphone you are buying maybe $2 worth of labor from China and $198 worth of software development, market research, chemical and mechanical engineering, design, financial analysis, etc, from the US. We live in an information economy. That isn't just a catch phrase- that is the bread and butter of the modern economy- information. The folks squabbling over the $2 with other economies that can provide manual labor for pennies an hour are missing the whole game. It's that $198 that matters and that is where we are set up to dominate. We just need to push harder educationally to retain and expand our edge there.
 
ogochukwu said:
education over the course of time has transcended from a commodity that only the wealthy and powerful in society can afford to the (in president obama's words) "great equalizer" but the current trend would say other wise, the prize of having a good college education makes the body go numb. the greatest asset in the global market today (a good education) is being sold in the united states at prices which the average earner can not afford comfortably. this is a great contrast to Asia and in my opinion thus the reason for the sore in the Asian standard of living and development.
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We are not Asian coolies. It is unnatural for an American 18-year-old to not have a full-time job. Our standard of living soared when we had a grow-up-quick attitude. This childish, depressing, and insulting indentured servitude of unpaid education is only fit for Asians. We started slumping when we tried to treat Americans like coolies.
 
teamosil said:
It is absurd to charge people for education. It's a totally ridiculous policy on every level. The more people who get educated, the better our economy will do. That is a benefit to all of us, not just the person that gets the education, so all of us need to chip in. For somebody not to go to college because they can't afford it is just economic waste. Virtually every other first world country has figured this out...
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People who suggest free education are only going half-way and will fall on their faces. People must be paid a salary to go to college. That way we will get the most talented and get them to study. Since the ruling class imposed this indentured servitude on us, they should give us the same allowance they give their own children in college.

A college athlete gets expensive housing, expensive food, expensive entertainment in addition to free tuition. How many of the talented athletes would go to college if all they got was free tuition and had to pay living expenses with part-time jobs? How many would have the energy to practice hard?
 
Arbo said:
Several years ago, my daughter, then maybe 9 or so, made a comment that things like apples should be free. My son that is 2 years older, actually said to her "that is stupid, someone picks the apples, do you think they would pick apples to give them away for free? Would you go out there and do that?"

So an at the time 11 year old got what it seem so many others don't. Free education? Who's paying for the buildings, who's paying for the supplies, the power and water for the facility, who is paying for those that teach? Yes, a socialist fantasy land.
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In "sink or swim," most people drown. The survivors deliver seafood to the rich parasites partying on the beach.
 
just sticking with the person cited in the OP...if you knowingly go to a school with 50k a year tuition...then yes...its your fault. If you didnt 'know' what it was going to cost then you maybe shouldnt ought to have signed on for the program. How on earth do you make the decision, attend the school, and then complain that it costs too much?
 
Why should any undergrad program cost 50 grand a year?

High schools spend around 10 grand or so, more in affluent areas and in pockets of poverty that attract federal dollars perhaps, but still somewhere around that figure. High school kids are still not considered to be adults, and so have to be watched all of the time they're at school. Universities, on the other hand, have them in class for two or three hours a day at most, and leave them on their own the rest of the time. Moreover, the college can put 200 students into a big lecture hall with one professor. Try that with high school kids and see what happens. Higher education is much less labor intensive, then, and yet the cost is a lot more. Sure, the professors have to have a high degree of education, but most of them still aren't payed any great salary. I've interviewed college professors wanting to go back to K -12, and why? Because the pay is better.

So, why should college be so expensive in the first place?
 
AdamT said:
It's a bit depressing to read science and tech journals these days. You see all these interesting discoveries and innovations coming out of US universities, and swell up with pride a little, and then you look at who's doing the research and so often its a student from India or China or wherever. And then, due to our idiotic immigration polcies, we send those folks who've taken so much from our university system back where they came from and lose the benefit of their learning.
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As I understand it, we do make room for people you describe and even offer them a special path to permanent status - So long as there is demand for science/tech/discoveries/innovations that isn't being filled by current US citizens, a foreign student with those skills can take the job and in so doing, achieve permanent resident status.

I'm sure there's a ton of red tape, and it puts extra pressure on the employer who has to sponsor the person and demonstrate that they can't find existing citizens to fill the position - but that's supposed to ensure that people who stay have a job and fill a necessary role.
 
Dittohead not! said:
Why should any undergrad program cost 50 grand a year?

High schools spend around 10 grand or so, more in affluent areas and in pockets of poverty that attract federal dollars perhaps, but still somewhere around that figure. High school kids are still not considered to be adults, and so have to be watched all of the time they're at school. Universities, on the other hand, have them in class for two or three hours a day at most, and leave them on their own the rest of the time. Moreover, the college can put 200 students into a big lecture hall with one professor. Try that with high school kids and see what happens. Higher education is much less labor intensive, then, and yet the cost is a lot more. Sure, the professors have to have a high degree of education, but most of them still aren't payed any great salary. I've interviewed college professors wanting to go back to K -12, and why? Because the pay is better.

So, why should college be so expensive in the first place?
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Well, $50k is the total cost of tuition + housing + living expenses + food that they estimate for that school. So you're not comparing apples to apples. The tuition there is $35k. That is a lot more than high school though.

College professors at community colleges often make comparable amounts to high school teachers, but not usually at four year colleges. Ohio Northern, where that person went, is a pretty solid school. They're ranked #2 in the midwest of the regional colleges. So, I'd be willing to bet most of the professors there make 2-3 times as much as a high school teacher. And, teaching a college course isn't like teaching a high school course. High school teachers might teach 5 classes a day and only have one hour a day to prepare, which means very limited chances to meet with students, adapt and update their curriculum, tailor things for individual students, etc. A college professor on the other hand typically is going to be teaching only 1 or 2 courses at a time so that they have plenty of time to prepare, have office hours, do the research that keeps them up to date in their field, etc.

But, you also have to have much more sophisticated facilities at the college level. You can get through a high school science class with like some beakers and buntson burners, but college level science might require all manner of sophisticated and expensive equipment. A university library has at least dozens of times as many books.

And, universities perform more functions for society than just educating students. They conduct huge amounts of scientific research, provide a foundation where people can write the articles and whatnot that progress is built on, advise policy makers, etc.
 
teamosil said:
No, no. Somebody who isn't living up to their potential is a drain. If you take a person who could have been generating $250,000/year in GDP as a software engineer had they been educated and instead you have them generating $25,000/year in GDP mowing lawns, then their failure to get an education costs $225,000/year.



No of course not. Exactly the opposite- many people who are closer to the bottom of the ladder education wise needs to buck up and get back in school to do their part and everybody needs to be making sure that their kids stay in school as long as they can hack it.
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Finally, someone distinguished between quantity and quality. I was a National Merit scholar but I couldn't stand working without pay, which is all college means. I was never allowed to contribute my talent to society unless I sacrificed by living like a 15-year-old until I finished college and graduate schools. So I never generated the $200,000 a year extra that you state I could have generated. Only people like me could have generated that, not the people who put up with working without pay. I only would have required half of that for salary and tuition and for only 4-12 years. Businessmen and society benefit from getting the most talented to go to college. By not paying them to go, these freeloaders are getting less than they would net if the few who belong in college were paid to go there.
 
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Arbo said:
If it is free, far more people will go, a lot of them being people that probably are not suited to such things. Why worry, it's "free"
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This falsely presumes that removing personal finance as a barrier means ending all forms of screening or selectivity. It does not. It just means that those who are qualified to pursue a college education but otherwise could not afford to attend may be able to do so.

Arbo said:
Yes, perhaps it is a good thing to not extend the utopian dreams too far in this discussion.
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You're welcome to take that up with someone if they bring up utopian dreams. Note: a practice or change being beyond *your* political imagination doesn't make something utopian.

Arbo said:
You know, the rest of your wall of text
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Unless you have some kind of disability, referring to the post in question as a wall of text suggest you have an incredibly low tolerance for reading.

Arbo said:
just isn't worth responding to. I just listened to Ed Schultz for the past hour to see what that idiot was up to, and now that I find a lot of the same thought processes, I am just to numb to care to respond.
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So, to be clear...because you just listened to Ed Schulz, you can't be bothered to put together a reasonable and responsible response to basic points? Ok...got it.
 
AdamT said:
I support the idea of public education and I think the economy would benefit from it, but I think it's a bit extreme to suggest that EVERYONE should have have a college degree.

It's a bit depressing to read science and tech journals these days. You see all these interesting discoveries and innovations coming out of US universities, and swell up with pride a little, and then you look at who's doing the research and so often its a student from India or China or wherever. And then, due to our idiotic immigration polcies, we send those folks who've taken so much from our university system back where they came from and lose the benefit of their learning.
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I also noticed that most of the names are male, which is not because of undeserved prejudice that the femininnies cry about, but proof that men are more numerous at the high end of the Bell Curve. And the fact that there are more women in college only proves the real-life fact that a female student doesn't need a job and a car to get a date. But the males do; they get sick of being losers and drop out.
 
teamosil said:
And, universities perform more functions for society than just educating students. They conduct huge amounts of scientific research, provide a foundation where people can write the articles and whatnot that progress is built on, advise policy makers, etc.
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A new professor may get a small amount of money from the University to get started on research, but for the most part it's up to researchers and professors to secure outside funding for the "huge amounts of scientific research" that are conducted. The equipment in their labs is mostly purchased with grant money.

The huge increase in college tuition has not benefited students - it's largely gone to administrators, athletics, salaries, etc. Today's student gets much less for their money than they once did.

A college professor on the other hand typically is going to be teaching only 1 or 2 courses at a time so that they have plenty of time to prepare, have office hours, do the research that keeps them up to date in their field, etc.
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I'm sure it varies a lot by university, but my experience has been that professors are required to teach 3-4 classes at a time and actually pay the university to "buy out" of having to teach. They spend little or no time preparing unless it's the first time they've taught the class - they know the stuff backwards and forwards, and graduate students do most of the grading, and other administrative stuff. Office hours are limited.

It's all about the research. That's what they care about and that's what the University cares about. You can be a phenomenal instructor, but if you don't publish you're gone. If you're a fairly poor instructor they really don't care so long as you can bring money into the University and conduct research that helps to distinguish its reputation.
 
Taylor said:
A new professor may get a small amount of money from the University to get started on research, but for the most part it's up to researchers and professors to secure outside funding for the "huge amounts of scientific research" that are conducted. The equipment in their labs is mostly purchased with grant money.

The huge increase in college tuition has not benefited students - it's largely gone to administrators, athletics, salaries, etc. Today's student gets much less for their money than they once did.

I'm sure it varies a lot by university, but my experience has been that professors are required to teach 3-4 classes at a time and actually pay the university to "buy out" of having to teach. They spend little or no time preparing unless it's the first time they've taught the class - they know the stuff backwards and forwards, and graduate students do most of the grading, and other administrative stuff. Office hours are limited.

It's all about the research. That's what they care about and that's what the University cares about. You can be a phenomenal instructor, but if you don't publish you're gone. If you're a fairly poor instructor they really don't care so long as you can bring money into the University and conduct research that helps to distinguish its reputation.
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Aren't you contradicting yourself? On one hand you're saying it is "all about the research", but on the other hand you seem to be saying that they don't spend much any paid time researching... It has definitely been my experience that professors spend at least as much time writing and researching as they do teaching. That may not be true at lower tier schools, but lower tier schools also generally don't charge as much.
 
teamosil said:
The reality is that in the modern information economy most people can't really do anything at all to advance the economy without at least a college degree. We're at a point where running a successful landscaping business or whatever is probably more of a drain on the economy than a boost. It pulls down our average. The opportunity costs need to be considered. Every person doing manual labor means one less person doing a job that might generate 10 times, or even 100 times, as much GDP. So, while definitely it is possible that somebody gets a degree and makes nothing of it, it is becoming increasingly unlikely that people who don't have a degree will make something of themselves.
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Who will mow the lawns of all these wealthy people?

Like it or not, even the more "manual" jobs are needed and will always be needed. Somebody needs to do landscaping. Somebody needs to run a dry cleaner. Somebody needs to fix cars. And no, not all of them legitimately require a college education.

A friend of mine told me once that he has two friends... one a judge and one a plumber... and the plumber makes more money per year than the judge. Sounds like the plumber made 'something' of himself to me.

When your pipes break, are you going to fix them? Probably not. Shoot, even changing one's oil in their own car is fast becoming a lost art.
 
teamosil said:
What did you think the point of education was? Why do you think employers pay so much more for people with more education? Why did you think all the highest income brackets are overwhelmingly dominated by people with advanced degrees?
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The amount of pay a person receives is not indicative of their productivity.

Well, we've been over that several times now. If you have any counter arguments, I'd be happy to hear them. Like I have said several times, it increases demand, opens up new industries and improves our ability to compete with other countries. Did you have any arguments against any of those claims? Or are you just going to keep asserting that you disagree generally?
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If you want your claims to have any standing, you must back them up with data. It is not necessary for someone to prove you wrong, you must prove yourself right. That's how debate works. So far we have your opinion, zilch else.
 
Dittohead not! said:
Why should any undergrad program cost 50 grand a year?

High schools spend around 10 grand or so, more in affluent areas and in pockets of poverty that attract federal dollars perhaps, but still somewhere around that figure. High school kids are still not considered to be adults, and so have to be watched all of the time they're at school. Universities, on the other hand, have them in class for two or three hours a day at most, and leave them on their own the rest of the time. Moreover, the college can put 200 students into a big lecture hall with one professor. Try that with high school kids and see what happens. Higher education is much less labor intensive, then, and yet the cost is a lot more. Sure, the professors have to have a high degree of education, but most of them still aren't payed any great salary. I've interviewed college professors wanting to go back to K -12, and why? Because the pay is better.

So, why should college be so expensive in the first place?
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Why should a Lamborghini cost $450k? And who cares that it does? You could have got into that brand new Hyundai for $14k. Some people like the Lambo just cuz they like it and have the money to throw at it. Dont hate...just dont complain if you were the one foolish enough to sign the loan for it.
 
VanceMack said:
Why should a Lamborghini cost $450k? And who cares that it does? You could have got into that brand new Hyundai for $14k. Some people like the Lambo just cuz they like it and have the money to throw at it. Dont hate...just dont complain if you were the one foolish enough to sign the loan for it.
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I agree with you Vance...it's one thing to say rising tuition is a major problem it's another to whine about paying loans for an expensive private school!
 
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