The Next Bubble to Burst?

Yep, you nailed it. The same cheap loans and chatter that got everybody on the housing bandwagon to the advantage of the bankers worked again. It's true, you can fool some of the people all of the time.

Even college administrators reacted the same as homebuilders, ramping up features figuring they'd be paid for with E-Z credit underwritten by FedGov. They've certainly built their share of McMansions on college campuses all across the country.

I've almost started this thread several times when particular articles suggested it. If I can remember where I saw them, I'll add some pertinent bits from them.

I'll read the whole article (just found it linked at the bottom of your post). One bit did stand out, at first glance, though:

If 70.1% of high school graduates enroll in a college or university, how does a college degree give you an advantage over the rest of the population?

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Enrolling in college and completing a degree are two entirely different animals.

~STS~

strictlytopsecret said:

Enrolling in college and completing a degree are two entirely different animals.

~STS~

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I was going to raise the same point.
I see quite a few people bailing out of my college in the first few weeks, and more later on, though that's more gradual.

Looks like the actual number is closer to 27%, as far as percentage of adults who are college grads (bachelor's +).

~STS~

Which means 43% of the people wasted a shitload of money and time by listening to bad advice. I wonder how many of those are paying off a year or two of college loans with McJobs?

But don't forget the two year degrees that train peeps for a particular job/field like Hospitality Industry, Network Admin, Computer Programming, Automobile Technician and many, many more. No college degree, but an Associates and usually an ability to get a pretty damn good job.

Haggis said:

But don't forget the two year degrees that train peeps for a particular job/field like Hospitality Industry, Network Admin, Computer Programming, Automobile Technician and many, many more. No college degree, but an Associates and usually an ability to get a pretty damn good job.

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Been there, done that, ate the t-shirt. Five years after I got my four-year degree I went back and got a two-year to improve my marketable skills.

Not to judge, but many of the kids without a clear direction typically get caught up in the college hype and experience. They go somewhere where they are promised to be nurtured and their personal interests will be developed (with no marketable skills). It takes a lot of work to turn something generic into earning potential.

And, if you can't afford anything, what's the difference between borrowing $40k and borrowing $160k?

Don said:

Which means 43% of the people wasted a shitload of money and time by listening to bad advice. I wonder how many of those are paying off a year or two of college loans with McJobs?

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Or they're just lazy ne'er do wells. Like most things in life, you get out of it what you put into it.

MattW said:

Not to judge, but many of the kids without a clear direction typically get caught up in the college hype and experience. They go somewhere where they are promised to be nurtured and their personal interests will be developed (with no marketable skills). It takes a lot of work to turn something generic into earning potential.

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Bolding mine, of course. We need to do a much better job of helping young people decide IF college is right for them, rather than just tell them "you must go" by rote. This process should start around 10th grade, instead of in the spring of their senior years.

Entrance standards need to be higher. Coursework needs to be more rigorous. The curriculum should focus on the course material they need to excel in their field, instead of having one-third to half of the coursework (and cost) going to satisfy general ed requirements that don't relate to the major. We could substantially lower the cost, increase retention, and produce better-qualified graduates. The glut of graduates is one of the things cheapening the value of college.

robeiae said:

Or they're just lazy ne'er do wells. Like most things in life, you get out of it what you put into it.

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Lazy or not, the money is still gone, just as it was with people who couldn't manage their home loans. In addition, a student who busts her butt gets thrown into the same job candidate pool with the "lazy ne'er do wells" who, on paper, are indistinguishable from our star student. Her only hope is to participate in internships, etc. (which the other students have as well) and has stellar references to back her up.

In either case, the degree itself doesn't set her apart.

Chris P said:

The curriculum should focus on the course material they need to excel in their field, instead of having one-third to half of the coursework (and cost) going to satisfy general ed requirements that don't relate to the major.

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With the cost of college going through the roof, that makes sense, but philosophically I'm not sure it's a good thing. College seems to be morphing into an advanced tech school model.

Tech schools are great if you know what you want to do. If you want to be an aircraft mechanic or an engineer, intro to philosophy one doesn't make much sense.

But the original idea of college was to produce an intellectually well rounded individual, capable of excelling in any field they wished to enter. Graduate school was when you decided what to pursue.

When I went to the university of Chicago, back in the day, there was a two year mandatory course schedule required before you could start taking electives and finding your niche. The courses included science, math, sociology, English, foreign language, etc. The requirements could be waived if you demonstrated proficiency in a subject -- basically, being able to pass the final exam without taking the class.

That rounded education did not help me with a specific career path, but it has served me very well in many ways all through my life.

Of course, in those days, it wasn't impossibly expensive, even at prestige schools. You could afford to take your time.

Chris P said:

The curriculum should focus on the course material they need to excel in their field, instead of having one-third to half of the coursework (and cost) going to satisfy general ed requirements that don't relate to the major.

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Here, I'm going to disagree some. One of the major functions of education is to teach an individual how to analyze and solve problems in general, not just the specific ones related to a particular intended career field, which commonly doesn't wind up being the career field the student winds up in. A certain level of numeracy, for instance, is valuable for almost any field you wind up in, not just if you want to be come a mathematician or engineer. Same is true of literacy and economics.

Now, we all know there are a lot of fluff or fuzzy courses that have proliferated for decades, for God knows what reason. Way back in the 1960s I was required to take a two-semester course in "social sciences" entitled "Man in Society". Utterly useless, by any standard of judgment.

More recently, as an instructor, I got called in to teach a course in Environmental Science entitled "Earth Systems". It was conceived of as a fluff course on "sustainability" of resources. I'm a geologist. I immediately ran into an issue with the department chair, who insisted that it was unnecessary and inappropriate in this class to teach anything about plate tectonics. I wound up ignoring her, and teaching it anyway. Then we had the Japanese tsunami catastrophe, and I haven't heard a peep from her since.

But if you insist on making colleges and universities nothing more than vocational education institutions, you're headed in the wrong direction, IMO.

sulong said:

It seems to me that getting an advantage over 29.9% of your competition isn't really all that big of an advantage after all.

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Being at a disadvantage to 70.1% of your competition sounds like a pretty big disadvantage to me.

strictlytopsecret said:

Looks like the actual number is closer to 27%, as far as percentage of adults who are college grads (bachelor's +).

~STS~

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Don said:

Which means 43% of the people wasted a shitload of money and time by listening to bad advice. I wonder how many of those are paying off a year or two of college loans with McJobs?

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No, it doesn't mean that at all, especially when we're talking about rates that have been going up for decades. I'd guarantee the percentage who have degrees in the 25-35 crowd is much higher than that of the 55-65 crowd.

The 70% and 27% are looking at different sections of the population.

I knew I would run into resistance by suggesting that liberal arts/general ed curricula be cut. Although a scientist, I did enjoy my "American Revolution" and "Peace Studies" classes. I'm not arguing that such classes aren't beneficial to the individual. But to the employer after graduation? I'm not so sure about that.

In light of skyrocketing tuition, cut after cut by state funding agencies, and the mountains of student debt being incurred, what's the alternative? It's in the college's/university's interest to turn out a competitive product via their graduates and this won't happen if the students have to drop out due to lack of funds.

I strongly disagree that the first two years of college should be a time for the students to decide what they want to do. They should go to college because they do know what they want to do and only if it is necessary to their career goals. That's why I think discernment should start much earlier than it does. As pointed out by the OP, there is a bubble of debt incurred by students who are no longer in the field they took out the loans to study. It seems all of this could have been avoided by some good guidance earlier on.

I'm not arguing that such classes aren't beneficial to the individual. But to the employer after graduation? I'm not so sure about that.

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I'd like to think the money I pay for my children's education will go toward making them more intellectually fulfilled and better citizens of the world, and not just efficient cogs in the larger machine. But I'll be the first to admit that's a luxury, and I'm lucky to be able to afford it.

Where does that leave us? The rich get/stay richer -- even in opportunities to have a clearer, more nuanced understanding of the world -- and the poor get/stay poorer. And thereby more easily led. Again. Some more, even.

As someone just entering a PhD program, this topic is rather interesting to me.

Here's another related article: The PhD problem: Are giving out too many degrees?

Personally, I think the expectation that any old college degree will guarantee you a better job than someone with only a high school diploma is inherently flawed. It hopefully gives you more marketable skills, but that's no guarantee, and there are some degrees that are more applicable and employable than others.

Have no link, but what about all the monies that are given out to the gobs of 'tech' schools that are scams/jokes? You see them put ads on the TV all the time. A lot of them are not what or can not provide what they say but they do get fed grants for programs. I know of one such person that is now in his 6th year of getting nothing. At $30,000 a year, for what was to be a two year program, he is very content to keep on going to school. I know of several that have 'completed' the programs and can not even get into any line of like trained work.

Chris P said:

I strongly disagree that the first two years of college should be a time for the students to decide what they want to do. They should go to college because they do know what they want to do and only if it is necessary to their career goals. That's why I think discernment should start much earlier than it does.

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Now that would place the burden on the individual, or the high school programs to prepare for college and to define direction. Why do that when there is a socially acceptable (and government subsidized!) way to do that already, and to take as long as you want?



It takes a lot of drive and vision to cobble together a post-graduation plan, and colleges have no reason to try to enforce that. Many smart people I know who drifted through HS just on academic ability continued their ways through college and a degree, and still had no idea what to do with it all, nor how to pay the bill when it came due.

kuwisdelu said:

Personally, I think the expectation that any old college degree will guarantee you a better job than someone with only a high school diploma is inherently flawed. It hopefully gives you more marketable skills, but that's no guarantee, and there are some degrees that are more applicable and employable than others.

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I agree, and I'd even state the reverse as a problem - arbitrary requirements for a bachelors degree are a poor substitute for many entry level jobs.

Coming out of engineering school into a pseudo-engineering job, I needed Excel proficiency 70% of the time, analytical thought 20%, and hands-on engineering 10%. Was that worth 5 years of training?

MattW said:

Now that would place the burden on the individual, or the high school programs to prepare for college and to define direction. Why do that when there is a socially acceptable (and government subsidized!) way to do that already, and to take as long as you want?

It takes a lot of drive and vision to cobble together a post-graduation plan, and colleges have no reason to try to enforce that. Many smart people I know who drifted through HS just on academic ability continued their ways through college and a degree, and still had no idea what to do with it all, nor how to pay the bill when it came due.

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I was very lucky that I knew exactly what I wanted to do after high school, but there are many bright and smart people who don't and only discover that once they get to college. However, I do think there should be more guidance toward finding that direction, and in my experience, I don't think individual counselors are very good at that. Many departments have seminar that introduce first- and second-year students to research and the kinds of employment in their chosen field; often this involves speakers from a wide range of areas of research and employment coming in to talk about their work. I think a general seminar class in which speakers from various fields and areas of employment come to speak to students about what they do could be immensely helpful, and would allow students to see what people actually do in different fields. Sometimes it's not what they expect.

Chris P said:

I strongly disagree that the first two years of college should be a time for the students to decide what they want to do. They should go to college because they do know what they want to do and only if it is necessary to their career goals.

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In rare cases, a person at 17 or 18 knows exactly what they want to do with their life, but most don't, nor should they.

Many students switch majors after taking a class that inspires them, that makes them realize that's what they want to do -- often, it's something they would never have considered without the opportunity for exploration.

Directed education may be more efficient, (which is what the Soviets thought) but it doesn't produce better individuals, imo. And since society is made up of individuals, it's not so good for society either.