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A Generation Hobbled by the Soaring Cost of College

Dittohead not! said:
"poorly paid adjuncts" i.e. graduate assistants, are paid more than 45 grand on average? No kidding? I think I'll go back to grad school.
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Lowest median was $45,900, average is 59k. Do you ever look anything up?
 
teamosil said:
Yeah that's true most places. IMO education should all be totally funded out of taxes like most first world countries do. We should be eliminating as many barriers to education as possible. We're already sliding because of our lackluster pursuit of education and the next generation is going to require a lot more education than we do. We need to be ramping up educationally and when people aren't going to college just because their parents don't have a ton of money, that's huge economic waste. It's like not cashing in a $100k lottery ticket because you don't want to spend $5 on the gas to get to the store.
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There are other ways to go to college than paying for it. The GI Bill and state schools...someone could get a MBA.

And when does the free pass stop? Should we give out free PhDs? Keep people in school until 37 on free education? We have to put the breaks on it somewhere, and highschool is fine. We aren't even performing well on that stage and we want to extend education for another 4 years? Let those who are taking the lead, lead. Those who want to fall off to the wayside...fall away.

To quote a great, "If there is a will, there is a way."
 
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Blue_State said:
And when does the free pass stop? Should we give out free PhDs? Keep people in school until 37 on free education? We have to put the breaks on it somewhere, and highschool is fine.
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Actually Phds usually are free. A student that is operating at that level is usually more valuable to the university than the cost of their education. They TA classes and get published and build up the reputation of the school and help get research grants and all that, so more often than not schools either don't charge them or charge them very little.

As for how far we go, I think all education should be free. Of course, you should have to qualify for it. Not everybody is cut out for graduate level work, but everybody should be able to at least go to college. High school just isn't enough education anymore. It was 30 years ago, but it isn't today, and it certainly won't be 30 years from now, and people who are 18 today will certainly still be working in 30 years. It just seems pathetic to me that so many people are ready to just give up on the future and say "eh, whatever, we can just be a country of car wash operators and ditch diggers"... Come on man! Where is your patriotism? We should be striving for a future where we are leading the world in science and whatnot! Quit giving up so easy! You shouldn't be hoping your kids end up holding down the same kind of job your dad did, you should be hoping that your kids work in a field that hasn't even been invented yet doing work that you can't even begin to understand.

Blue_State said:
We aren't even performing well on that stage and we want to extend education for another 4 years?
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That makes zero sense. If kids aren't educated enough when they turn 18 that means they need more education, not less.

Blue_State said:
To quote a great, "If there is a will, there is a way."
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You just fundamentally misunderstand the whole situation... The goal isn't to weed out those who are less worthy or something lol. The goal is to try to build up as many people as we can as far as we can.
 
Dittohead not! said:
Nothing is free.
Things that benefit us all need to be paid for by us all. Such things as parks, schools, hospitals, roads, bridges, and street lights are a benefit to us all, and so should be paid for collectively.

Clothes, cars, TVs, computers are a benefit to the purchaser, and so need to be paid for by the user.

We all benefit from having an educated populace.
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but how much education ??
Last year the USA graduated about 120,000 engineers, and if we double that number the wages of those engineers will go down. We only need so many....
Clearly we have way too many lawyers and politicians....do we need more of those?
As a technician, I watched my profession change such that we need fewer and fewer techs, since electonics is cheaper to replace than repair, not to mention that the reliability is so much better now and long before our gadgets need repair, they are obsolete anyway.
It is a waste of resources to train or retrain people into dying professions, something else that we seem to do a lot...
 
UtahBill said:
Last year the USA graduated about 120,000 engineers, and if we double that number the wages of those engineers will go down. We only need so many....
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That is emphatically false. Many engineering jobs are being filled by people that come here from other countries on visas. There are many engineering jobs in other countries working for companies that would be here if we had more highly capable engineers. There is an infinite amount of engineering work to do. It isn't like every day the trucks drop off 100 pounds of engineering problems and once you get through them there isn't anything left to do... We have an infinite amount of things that have yet to be invented and problems that are yet to be solved. We haven't even really started in on nanotech for example and that holds incredible promise and is not that far around the corner. We don't have a moon base yet or flying cars or 200 year lifespans or an iphone with a screen that doesn't get greasy yet. More engineers means moving the ball forward faster, more inventions, more new fields of research, more new gadgets, etc.
 
teamosil said:
Well of course not. What it means is that we'll generate high end jobs 5% faster than we would have otherwise next year or that the productivity of those workers that got educations will go up 15% and whatnot. And then we'll nudge it up again a bit faster the year after that, and the year after that, and the year after that. That's how progress happens- a little bit at a time. But why is that an argument against it?
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not really....
we trudge along creating apps for old technology til new ideas come along. The last major breakthrough was by Einstein in 1930....we have been working on better understanding E=mc2 for a long time now, and will continue.
Most progress puts people in the position of having to work smarter, not harder, and more leisure time is created.
We might be better off adding birth control chemicals to the water supply...
 
Dittohead not! said:
How would you define "basic"? Should free public education end after the third grade? The sixth grade? where?

You do bring up a good point, though. there is no point in training more sociologists and English majors than there are jobs. Free higher education needs to be tied to actual needs. Maybe then, we wouldn't have so many out of work college graduates.
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9th grade for those academically challenged...3 more years of OJT for those who want it, or 3 more years of pre-college...
 
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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but which of today's knowledge will be useful tomorrow?
 
UtahBill said:
not really....
we trudge along creating apps for old technology til new ideas come along. The last major breakthrough was by Einstein in 1930....we have been working on better understanding E=mc2 for a long time now, and will continue.
Most progress puts people in the position of having to work smarter, not harder, and more leisure time is created.
We might be better off adding birth control chemicals to the water supply...
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Uh, who did you think comes up with those breakthroughs lol? It seems like you were thinking they just like magically appear one day and until they do we're just basically waiting...

Also the notion that e=mc2 is the last significant breakthrough is obviously ridiculous. The computer came sense then and that has created more sophisticated jobs than anything ever has. The largest engineering project of all time isn't the hoover dam or the sears tower or something, it is Microsoft Windows. By far. New discoveries are made every single day by scientists that warrant further research and development. Every hour really.
 
teamosil said:
That is emphatically false. Many engineering jobs are being filled by people that come here from other countries on visas. There are many engineering jobs in other countries working for companies that would be here if we had more highly capable engineers. There is an infinite amount of engineering work to do. It isn't like every day the trucks drop off 100 pounds of engineering problems and once you get through them there isn't anything left to do... We have an infinite amount of things that have yet to be invented and problems that are yet to be solved. We haven't even really started in on nanotech for example and that holds incredible promise and is not that far around the corner. We don't have a moon base yet or flying cars or 200 year lifespans or an iphone with a screen that doesn't get greasy yet. More engineers means moving the ball forward faster, more inventions, more new fields of research, more new gadgets, etc.
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look it up yourself....
instead of just denying it...
The USA does not NEED all the education it has, if a large percentage of our grads can't find work in their major...
 
teamosil said:
Uh, who did you think comes up with those breakthroughs lol? It seems like you were thinking they just like magically appear one day and until they do we're just basically waiting...

Also the notion that e=mc2 is the last significant breakthrough is obviously ridiculous. The computer came sense then and that has created more sophisticated jobs than anything ever has. The largest engineering project of all time isn't the hoover dam or the sears tower or something, it is Microsoft Windows. By far. New discoveries are made every single day by scientists that warrant further research and development. Every hour really.
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computers are not a scientific breakthrough, they are the result of man needing better tools to speed up research.
Name some of these breakthroughs, and trace them back, Einstein gave us a great leap forward, and we are still trying to fully apply the knowledge that continues to spill over from his thinking.
Engineering projects are not breakthroughs...
and Windows remains.....a very sophisticated tool.
 
UtahBill said:
look it up yourself....
instead of just denying it...
The USA does not NEED all the education it has, if a large percentage of our grads can't find work in their major...
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No, no. Those are two different things. We need all the education we can get. That is what propels us forward. It's like the gas in our engine. That we're still coming out of a recession at the moment doesn't change that one bit. People getting an education now are still going to be working 30 or 40 years from now. Making decisions about our nation's educational needs for the next four decades based on this week's employment situation would be insane.
 
UtahBill said:
computers are not a scientific breakthrough, they are the result of man needing better tools to speed up research.
Name some of these breakthroughs, and trace them back, Einstein gave us a great leap forward, and we are still trying to fully apply the knowledge that continues to spill over from his thinking.
Engineering projects are not breakthroughs...
and Windows remains.....a very sophisticated tool.
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Not sure what your point is. If computers created a huge economic boom and tons of demand for engineers and spurred hundreds of thousands of massive innovations, why does it matter if you choose to call it a "breakthrough" or a "tool"?
 
teamosil said:
Actually Phds usually are free. A student that is operating at that level is usually more valuable to the university than the cost of their education. They TA classes and get published and build up the reputation of the school and help get research grants and all that, so more often than not schools either don't charge them or charge them very little.

As for how far we go, I think all education should be free. Of course, you should have to qualify for it. Not everybody is cut out for graduate level work, but everybody should be able to at least go to college. High school just isn't enough education anymore. It was 30 years ago, but it isn't today, and it certainly won't be 30 years from now, and people who are 18 today will certainly still be working in 30 years. It just seems pathetic to me that so many people are ready to just give up on the future and say "eh, whatever, we can just be a country of car wash operators and ditch diggers"... Come on man! Where is your patriotism? We should be striving for a future where we are leading the world in science and whatnot! Quit giving up so easy! You shouldn't be hoping your kids end up holding down the same kind of job your dad did, you should be hoping that your kids work in a field that hasn't even been invented yet doing work that you can't even begin to understand.



That makes zero sense. If kids aren't educated enough when they turn 18 that means they need more education, not less.



You just fundamentally misunderstand the whole situation... The goal isn't to weed out those who are less worthy or something lol. The goal is to try to build up as many people as we can as far as we can.
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A) You don't need to worry about my patriotism, I served for 10 years before being wounded in Iraq.
B) PhDs aren't free. Maybe Bill Cosby gets one for showing up and talking, but the rest of us have to work for them.
C) It makes total sense to stop trying to educate those who do not show promise at 18.
D) We can build up more people by focusing our energies on those that can achieve, not those that hope they can.
 
teamosil said:
That is emphatically false. Many engineering jobs are being filled by people that come here from other countries on visas. There are many engineering jobs in other countries working for companies that would be here if we had more highly capable engineers. There is an infinite amount of engineering work to do. It isn't like every day the trucks drop off 100 pounds of engineering problems and once you get through them there isn't anything left to do... We have an infinite amount of things that have yet to be invented and problems that are yet to be solved. We haven't even really started in on nanotech for example and that holds incredible promise and is not that far around the corner. We don't have a moon base yet or flying cars or 200 year lifespans or an iphone with a screen that doesn't get greasy yet. More engineers means moving the ball forward faster, more inventions, more new fields of research, more new gadgets, etc.
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Why do you think these engineers from other countries get hired over our engineers. The ones who know our culture and fit in better?
 
Blue_State said:
PhDs aren't free. Maybe Bill Cosby gets one for showing up and talking, but the rest of us have to work for them.
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Again, yeah, they usually are. Schools usually cover tuition with grants. At least they do if you're a strong candidate at a good school.

Blue_State said:
C) It makes total sense to stop trying to educate those who do not show promise at 18.
D) We can build up more people by focusing our energies on those that can achieve, not those that hope they can.
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We need as many well educated people as possible. The more the better. The notion that we should just write off most people and doom them to doing jobs from earlier eras is silly. It's just leaving money on the table for no reason. Even somebody of just average intelligence can be far, far, more productive and far more viable in the modern economy with an education. And in the economy of the future, that education means the difference between them being able to participate in the economy in any meaningful way at all or not.

Every decade a larger share of the jobs require more advanced education. Maybe that's what you're missing. If we don't continue to get more and more of our population more and more educated, we won't be able to compete in that kind of an environment in the future. Somebody who is just able to get some kind of manual labor job today with their high school diploma is not going to have any job at all in 20 years.
 
teamosil said:
No, no. Those are two different things. We need all the education we can get. That is what propels us forward. It's like the gas in our engine. That we're still coming out of a recession at the moment doesn't change that one bit. People getting an education now are still going to be working 30 or 40 years from now. Making decisions about our nation's educational needs for the next four decades based on this week's employment situation would be insane.
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Only some of us need all the education we can get, not all of us.
Look around all day tomorrow, how many of the people you interact with in public need a degree to do what they do?
 
Blue_State said:
Why do you think these engineers from other countries get hired over our engineers. The ones who know our culture and fit in better?
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The main reason is that they have far more people at that level of education. I used to run the professional services department in a software company. As far back as 2002 or 2003 we started getting applications from people from Asia that had Phds in computer science. We would get like a handful of applications from folks in the US. Maybe one or two would have an undergrad degree with a major in computer science, one or two more would have no degree, but a couple years of work experience with software. And then we'd get a dozen applications from people in Asia with graduate degrees and almost always at least one with a Phd. It was professional services, so lots of working directly with clients, so we strongly preferred to hire Americans who knew the language and culture better, but still, we couldn't pass up that kind of opportunity some of the times. For our engineering department it was a no brainer since they were not client facing, so they loaded up on highly educated, super skilled, programmers from China, Southeast Asia, Pakistan and India.
 
teamosil said:
Again, yeah, they usually are. Schools usually cover tuition with grants. At least they do if you're a strong candidate at a good school.



We need as many well educated people as possible. The more the better. The notion that we should just write off most people and doom them to doing jobs from earlier eras is silly. It's just leaving money on the table for no reason. Even somebody of just average intelligence can be far, far, more productive and far more viable in the modern economy with an education. And in the economy of the future, that education means the difference between them being able to participate in the economy in any meaningful way at all or not.

Every decade a larger share of the jobs require more advanced education. Maybe that's what you're missing. If we don't continue to get more and more of our population more and more educated, we won't be able to compete in that kind of an environment in the future. Somebody who is just able to get some kind of manual labor job today with their high school diploma is not going to have any job at all in 20 years.
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Show me a free PhD. They do not exist.

Who is denying that there are jobs that require advanced education. We do not need to educate as many people as possible. We can't find advanced jobs for the highly educated now. We have people with college degrees that are holding down high school level jobs...or none. Less 50% of college grads last year got a job.
 
UtahBill said:
Only some of us need all the education we can get, not all of us.
Look around all day tomorrow, how many of the people you interact with in public need a degree to do what they do?
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Two things. First, what you're doing is kind of like saying that you don't need to fish all day, you just need to fish for the three different five minute intervals when you caught fish. We don't have any way to know which people are going to turn out to be able to make the most of their education in advance. Some folks get an advanced degree, then can't find any work except in a coffee shop for a couple years, then they start up their own company or get a research job somewhere. Other folks get high end jobs right out of school. Other folks never do. But the more times you roll the dice the more times they come up sixes.

Second, you are still just thinking about today. Compare what percentage of jobs today require post-high-school education to the percentage that did 30 years ago. It's easily 2-3 times as many as it was then. That is going to keep happening. In another 30 years, 2-3 times as many jobs as today will require at least a college degree. People who are deciding on their educational path today need to be planning for the job market 30 years from now, not just today.
 
teamosil said:
The main reason is that they have far more people at that level of education. I used to run the professional services department in a software company. As far back as 2002 or 2003 we started getting applications from people from Asia that had Phds in computer science. We would get like a handful of applications from folks in the US. Maybe one or two would have an undergrad degree with a major in computer science, one or two more would have no degree, but a couple years of work experience with software. And then we'd get a dozen applications from people in Asia with graduate degrees and almost always at least one with a Phd. It was professional services, so lots of working directly with clients, so we strongly preferred to hire Americans who knew the language and culture better, but still, we couldn't pass up that kind of opportunity some of the times. For our engineering department it was a no brainer since they were not client facing, so they loaded up on highly educated, super skilled, programmers from China, Southeast Asia, Pakistan and India.
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Sounds like your company was making educated decisions...as they should be. If someone is more qualified they should get the job. America is losing its get up and go. Good thing America can still import people who want opportunity...oh yeah...we founded a nation on that notion.
 
Blue_State said:
Show me a free PhD. They do not exist.
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How would I show you a free Phd lol? You apply to schools, the schools decide what to offer you if you are accepted. Most folks, at least at high end schools, end up with a free ride.

Just trust me on it man. I know a lot of people that have gotten Phds and as far as I know, none of them have had to pay much anything for them. Most have to TA classes or be research assistants to cover living expenses, but that's about it.

Blue_State said:
Who is denying that there are jobs that require advanced education. We do not need to educate as many people as possible. We can't find advanced jobs for the highly educated now. We have people with college degrees that are holding down high school level jobs...or none. Less 50% of college grads last year got a job.
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The notion that you can plan for the educational needs of the next 30 years just based on the unemployment figures of today when we're in a recession is just silly.
 
Blue_State said:
Sounds like your company was making educated decisions...as they should be. If someone is more qualified they should get the job. America is losing its get up and go. Good thing America can still import people who want opportunity...oh yeah...we founded a nation on that notion.
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YOU are the one losing your get up and go! You want to just give up and let the other countries beat us out by educating their people better... Why? Just seems too exhausting to keep trying or something?
 
teamosil said:
Two things. First, what you're doing is kind of like saying that you don't need to fish all day, you just need to fish for the three different five minute intervals when you caught fish. We don't have any way to know which people are going to turn out to be able to make the most of their education in advance. Some folks get an advanced degree, then can't find any work except in a coffee shop for a couple years, then they start up their own company or get a research job somewhere. Other folks get high end jobs right out of school. Other folks never do. But the more times you roll the dice the more times they come up sixes.

Second, you are still just thinking about today. Compare what percentage of jobs today require post-high-school education to the percentage that did 30 years ago. It's easily 2-3 times as many as it was then. That is going to keep happening. In another 30 years, 2-3 times as many jobs as today will require at least a college degree. People who are deciding on their educational path today need to be planning for the job market 30 years from now, not just today.
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yes, we do know how to determine in advance which of us will better use higher education...we just don't do it because of liberal ideas like "no child left behind". We can't generate equal outcome in economics, nor can we generate equal aptitudes in our kids, or equal attitudes for that matter.
 
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