Comment by paulorlando 4 days ago
Better than asking "is college worth the cost," and getting into ROI calculations per major is asking "could we provide a similar (or better) educational and social experience at a fraction of the cost"? To that the answer is yes.
And resultingly, if you do go to college and immerse yourself in the educational experience, you come out with superpowers compared to your peers.
Getting companies to see those superpowers in a hiring pipeline of course is a different story
Do American colleges not give degree grades? In the UK your degree class (grade) is moderately important for your first job
American colleges give out a GPA, which used to mean something but has now been inflated to the point of meaninglessness. 60% of my college class 10 years ago had a 3.5/4 or higher. The median grade at Harvard is an A. I am told that since COVID, B grades and below now require a written explanation by the professor at several schools.
As prices for college go up, the student is more of a customer than anything, and therefore the pressure to raise grades goes up. Who is going to go to a college where people tend to need an extra year to graduate, when each year is 60k? Or one where only the top 5% of a class gets a top grade?
You are already seeing grade inflation in the UK too: Go look at the percentage of first class degrees over time.
The only place where a modern US university can be used as a filter is in their own admissions, where they can still be pretty stringent. Harvard could fill their class 6 times with people that are basically indistinguishable from their freshman class, so just getting into the right university already shows that you must have had some skill and maturity by the time you were a junior in high school.
This is also why hiring juniors is so difficult nowadays for software: Having successfully finished a CS degree at most universities says nothing about your ability to write any code at all, or analyze any complex situation. And with the advent of leetcode training, it's not as if you can now tell who happens to be good because they remember their algorithms and data structure classes really well. You have no idea of how good the new grad is going to be when they show to the interview, and even those that pass might not be all that great in practice, as they might just have spent 3 months memorizing interview questions like an automaton.
The only entity that has ever cared about my college GPA has been other colleges when I signed up for grad school. And even in that case it is just a "stat check" in gamer parlance. 3.0 or greater, yes. Lower, no. That kind of thing.
Zero employers have ever asked to see my college GPA after graduating almost 17 years ago.
Yes but it is not standardized at all. Every college has its own way of doing things. Even every degree or school within a university can be different in how they handle grades. Some places put every student on a curve, so that a particular distribution of grades is always enforced. Some places operate on more of a pass/fail basis - often this is done for the first couple years to avoid measuring students when they’re adjusting to a new lifestyle (meaning partying a lot). Some places tend to give out easy grades. So you cannot compare students across different degrees and colleges.
This is the dumbest idea ever because it forces students to take easy classes instead of interesting ones.
> it forces students to take easy classes instead of interesting ones
The UK system doesn't really let students choose which classes to take
I don’t think this is strictly true, but I do think it’s true that college GPA is not a differentiating factor.
I partied my way through an easy major with nothing to do with my job. The people who didn't have no "superpowers" that I don't. The degree is a bunch of status signalling bullshit.
Which strongly suggests that one reason 4-year degrees have lost value, is the piece of paper has lost value. Because of (most?) people only getting a degree for the paper.
Two improvements then: Degrees that earn the reputation of not being given for anything less than excellence in studies. Where the earned reputation is used both to discourage the non-serious, and enhance the value of the degree.
And of course, bring down the costs. Create a high octane alumni network to match. Foster an opinionated high work ethic, college-as-daycare / party-scene repellent culture. Anything and everything rethought from scratch.
For instance, why are degrees based on years? Why so standardized when neither students or jobs are? Why not a skill chart that can be custom traversed per student - with students expected to move on whenever they choose to, or have a good opportunity. A high percentage of students leaving for good jobs after just one year would be a win.
For just one slice of education, to start.
As with anything complex, start with something small and focused. Like a low population cutting edge practice/research AI school. Start from scratch with the thing that is new, challenging and in high demand.
Then expand into other fast changing, high demand areas. Keep figuring out better ways, keep taking on more, keep reducing costs, as long as all three of those efforts tradeoffs are compatible.
You can provide the piece of paper at a fraction of the cost too. Nearly all of Europe does, I believe.
That doesn't have prestige value. Prestige comes from scarcity and the ability to exclude the lower caste.
If people want to play those exclusivity games that's up to them. What's wrong is asking the taxpayer to fund it under the false mask that the entire product is education.
> You can provide the piece of paper at a fraction of the cost
This isn’t socially useful.
And what we're doing now is? Telling 17-year-olds to take on six figures of debt and then replacing them with ChatGPT while making it impossible to discharge their debt?
Did Europe find a cheat code that gets free $$$ for education?
Nothing is free - once you graduate you are hit with 50% tax that gets back all you "free" tuition costs many, many times over.
Not saying education should not be subsidized via taxes (I think it's good overall), but it's not free at all - the price is just hidden and spread out over many years (similar to student loans but less visible).
Europe has a much lower expenditure per student compared to the US.
https://www.aei.org/articles/the-crazy-amount-america-spends...
From what I understand European education and degree programs are typically much more structured and narrow, and thus finish a lot faster. A student who finishes K-Ph.D. in the US will have a lot more breadth of exposure than such a student in most of Europe, if I recall what I read on the topic a while ago correctly.
When used in a social context, "free" has a different meaning than in many other contexts. It does not mean, for example, "there is no cost for this thing". Rather, it means "the person receiving this thing is not responsible for paying the costs associated with it (at least not at the time)".
Free health care doesn't mean "nobody gets paid to provide health care", it means "patients do not pay for health at the point of service".
If you'd prefer that we use some other term to describe this, please suggest it. I do find it interesting that the Scottish NHS uses "No fees at point of service" as part of their branding (or did, back in 2019).
That's what taxes are for. Subsidizing public good.
Affordable access to good education is a good outcome from the heavy taxation I pay.
The taxation is conditional on earning enough income though, which aligns incentives better.
Was it much more subsidized in the US when it was much cheaper, though?
I think most people (namely high school seniors) go to college for neither. They go because that was the expectation, and was assumed to be at least approximately productive path.
While arguably that's indirectly 'for the piece of paper', I'd argue the pleasant experience is a factor too, even if not quoted as such. i.e. if it was a purely rational, economic choice (my interpretation of going to college just for the degree) we'd see higher enrollment in high-ROI majors.
I agree the answer is “yes”. But I think people are also forgetting that the reason college was a useful thing to pay for, was it was effective in differentiating between someone who was highly capable and someone who wasn’t. In a world where anyone can get a degree by simply spending enough time and money, there’s no real differentiation happening. Even if someone gets a degree, their fundamental competency (I guess I’m talking about something like IQ) is going to be whatever it is. And so it’s going to be hard to find jobs and the perceived value goes down.
If you want to make money, go and train to be a plumber.
If you're a kid and you want to be making money (or at least a comfortable living) in 20 year's time, become a farrier.
Because we are going to be ploughing with horses again soon, the way things are going. And even if we're not, a horse needs shod every couple of months and costs a couple of hundred every time.
I've never seen a hungry-looking farrier or scrap metal dealer.
Many (most?) people go to college primarily for the piece of paper, not for the educational and social experience.