How valuable is a college education for most people?

Dreamer

Argument Topic: In an economic bubble goods or services exceed their intrinisic value.

@MayCaesar

"From the market perspective, there is none: the price one is willing to pay for the product cannot exceed the expectation of the value said product has to them." MayCaesar

No, that argument doesn't work when it comes down to degree inflation, artificial demand, intrinsic value, and economic bubbles.

"An economic bubble (also called a speculative bubble or a financial bubble) is a period when current asset prices greatly exceed their intrinsic valuation"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_bubble

Considering a local private college is about 50k US dollars a year we should really question the intrinsic value of a college degree. That is just to commute another 12k if you are residential.  That's 200k if you commute for a bachelors and finish on time.  250k for residential. The college has one of the lowest alumni success rates and pay too.

My argument is much more than personal opinion the 1.6 trillion dollar student debt crisis, Biden investing in blue collar jobs, etc.  As for no student loans to repay somebody has to foot the bill. It is possible if a person goes to community college, transfers, commutes, and gets lots and lots of scholarships and education awards like Alyshia Hull did. Yet, they still have to actually land a job which usually requires lots and lots of networking.

This is a statistical outlier many don't even finish community college with less than 40% completion rate. 

https://www.npr.org/2019/03/13/681621047/college-completion-rates-are-up-but-the-numbers-will-still-surprise-you

Dreamer

Argument Topic: Britain has a problem with the higher education bubble too. This is not a United States only issue.

"Britain is facing a shortage of workers with programming skills, fuelled by poor-quality training courses in universities and colleges" Jeevan Vasagar

"

Figures for the graduate class of 2010 show computer science graduates have the highest unemployment rate of any undergraduate degree, at 14.7%.

There is particular criticism of specialised video games and effects courses. In 2009, just 12% of graduates from video games courses found jobs in the sector within six months of graduating. Employers in the games industry say graduates of these courses lack expertise with the relevant gaming platforms, have poor technical skills in areas such as maths and programming, and lack management skills"

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2012/jan/09/computer-science-courses-digital-skills

As you can see poor education is to blame according to Jeevan Vasagar.

"Computer science graduates: why do they top unemployment tables?"

"Secondly, employers need to be incentivised to reintroduce graduate training schemes and stop offshoring graduate jobs, to provide employment prospects for new graduates that will rebuild the pool of talent and experience for the UK IT industry." Liz Bacon and Lachlan MacKinnon

https://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/blog/2013/sep/16/computer-science-graduates-unemployment-bme

I am not sure about this last one, I don't think protectionism is the answer. Free trade helps poor countries.

John_C_87

Argument Topic: From a market perspective there is none. How true...

Your point is hollow for calculus professors are a tiny minority of the professions colleges prepare people to take. There are many college programs that feature no calculus whatsoever. There are also many graduates who do not have to repay any student loans (I was one of such graduates).

Good to know that your education was paid for by someone who didn’t know they had to pay for your education as well as their own. I do not think the educational institution shares the same definition of bribery or crime as the judicial system. I find this a conflict of interest as it is the police who receive their criminal training from the very institutions who do not share the same definition of crime or bribery as the established justice system. It makes perfect sense that more education at higher cost must be applied to officers of the law by the learning institutions to be educated on this style of more perfect states of the Union.

John_C_87

"Britain is facing a shortage of workers with programming skills, fuelled by poor-quality training courses in universities and colleges" Jeevan Vasagar

Programmer shortage had been triggered from a transfer of programming skills by the industry in lieu of the many real Y2K issues created during low level programming to high level programming as the risks of low level programming became to abundenly better understood, this exposed the high level of risk to insecurity the computer industry was shielding its consumer from. Computers are still a great tool but the truth of the matter is they are great like a wrench  as we can grab it out of anyones tool box and it works on the same nut if the ends of the wrench are honestly marked as the right size.

Dreamer

Argument Topic: Hmmm, I wouldn't know do you have a source?

@John_C_87

Thank you for responding.

"In February 2023, about 39.6 percent of recent college graduates were underemployed in the United States."

https://www.statista.com/statistics/642037/share-of-recent-us-college-graduates-underemployed/

This is further proof that college degrees are inflated and lack intrinsic value.

John_C_87

@Dreamer
In February of 2023 100% of all college students graduates had become self-employed the day of graduation in all nations not just the United States of America.

This is further proof that college degrees are inflated and lack intrinsic value.

The data can be interpreted as establishing the idea that college degrees lack intrinsic value. The data can also suggest a much simple fact that college degrees do not motivate people as the degree's owner to pay any or specialized income tax to support the principles of value of education. As a more personal not it is found that college degrees promote more international students to attack by breaking states of the union set by American United States Constitutional right as they feel without introduction of fact ideas or principles paid for in the educational environment supersede those said to be more perfect unions found by practice of assembly of self-evident truth. In life.

Argument Topic: Hmmm, I wouldn't know do you have a source?
Control Data Corporation v. IBM - Court Documents, 1972-1973 | Hagley Museum and Library Archives
Sealed IBM files in age-discrimination case now public • The Register
Opinion | What the Microsoft Antitrust Case Taught Us - The New York Times (nytimes.com)
List of mergers and acquisitions by Microsoft - Wikipedia
Amiga, Inc. Sells the Amiga Operating System, to focus on AmigaDE and the Mobile Market. (hyperion-entertainment.com)
AmigaOS - Wikipedia

MayCaesar

Dreamer said:

@MayCaesar

"From the market perspective, there is none: the price one is willing to pay for the product cannot exceed the expectation of the value said product has to them." MayCaesar

No, that argument doesn't work when it comes down to degree inflation, artificial demand, intrinsic value, and economic bubbles.

"An economic bubble (also called a speculative bubble or a financial bubble) is a period when current asset prices greatly exceed their intrinsic valuation"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_bubble

Considering a local private college is about 50k US dollars a year we should really question the intrinsic value of a college degree. That is just to commute another 12k if you are residential.  That's 200k if you commute for a bachelors and finish on time.  250k for residential. The college has one of the lowest alumni success rates and pay too.

My argument is much more than personal opinion the 1.6 trillion dollar student debt crisis, Biden investing in blue collar jobs, etc.  As for no student loans to repay somebody has to foot the bill. It is possible if a person goes to community college, transfers, commutes, and gets lots and lots of scholarships and education awards like Alyshia Hull did. Yet, they still have to actually land a job which usually requires lots and lots of networking.

This is a statistical outlier many don't even finish community college with less than 40% completion rate. 

https://www.npr.org/2019/03/13/681621047/college-completion-rates-are-up-but-the-numbers-will-still-surprise-you

There is no such thing as "intrinsic value", hence this wiki definition is invalid. People always make value judgements when choosing between multiple courses of action, and their value judgements can change over time. A bubble is completely unrelated to it: a bubble is the situation in which the market price of a class of products is significantly higher than it would be under hypothetical conditions of perfectly rational and informed market players, due to misjudgment of the market situation on their part. It is not about someone being confused about the "intrinsic value" of the product, but about someone being confused about its current position on the market. As far as the end customer goes, he will never intentionally purchase something that is worth less to him than the money he is paying for it (at the moment).

You are pointing at some local college. I am not saying that every single college is worth attending. The question in the title, however, is not about every single college, but the education opportunities available to most people. No one is forced to go to that particular college, or a community college in general. Anyone can go to a decent university and obtain a decent and marketable degree. It is true that many people do not get their money's worth when they go to college, but that is a product of their choices: the particular college and program they chose, the amount of effort they put into studies, et cetera.

I have never heard of a graduate in a STEM program from any university anywhere in the world who would have serious issues finding a job in their field. If you know such people, I would be very much interested in talking to them and trying to understand how they manage to not be able to sell all those extremely useful skills they had to acquire in order to graduate.

Dreamer

Argument Topic: There are plenty of people who struggle with computer degrees.

@MayCaesar

"All of this adds up to an incredibly tough entry-level job market. And the inability to land a solid role in a worker’s desired field right out of college can impact their careers in a major way, for a long time."

" More than 60% of listings for entry-level software and IT Services jobs, for instance, required three or more years of experience. In short, it seems entry-level jobs aren’t for people just entering the workforce at all. "

By Kate Morgan 20th September 2021

 https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20210916-why-inexperienced-workers-cant-get-entry-level-jobs

There is more to this article you often need an internship to get an internship. Or the fact that many people can't relocate due to family obligations and financial reasons.

MayCaesar

@Dreamer

The "entry-level" characterization of a job refers to the amount of skills one is expected to have when starting it, not to the stage one is in their career (the employer does not care about how you feel about your position on the market, he only cares about what he can do for him), so it is perfectly reasonable to have an entry-level job that expects you to have some experience. Note that, first, in virtually all cases that requirement is soft and can be lifted if the candidate at the interview convincingly displayed the ability to do the job, and second, often research you have done when pursuing your degree (e.g. Masters or PhD research) counts towards those years. A typical PhD student in a STEM field has 3-4 years of research behind their back, which in this case would be equivalent to having 3-4 years of job experience.

What is wrong with an internship predicating previous internship experience? It is perfectly reasonable, say, for a Microsoft chip research lab to expect you to have some work experience (including internship-ing) before they will give you access to more sensitive and fragile venues of research.

As for people who cannot relocate... Relocation is virtually free within the country and you can literally hitch-hike your way across the country, so being unable to relocate for financial reasons makes no sense. As for family obligations... the most basic logical reasoning suggests that you do not form a family with people depending on you before you get your finances somewhat fixed - and if you are struggling with finding an internship for the summer, then your finances definitely are not fixed.

You seem to think that a proper market should magically make sure that everyone who wants to have a nice job gets one. Good education allows you to acquire some marketable skills that are hard to come by otherwise, giving you a strong competitive edge. But that education will not magically throw jobs at you: you still have to, first, make a good use of that education opportunity and learn a lot of things, do a lot of networking and so on, and second, convince your potential employer that you did all that. Some people are worse at this than others. Some people do not believe in themselves; some people are terrible at being interviewed; some people wasted their university years on men/women, drinks and video games and did not learn much of anything... My central point is that if you get into a decent university program and put some effort into extracting value from it, then you will be much better off than you were before starting it, good enough that, barring any devastating personal shortcomings, you will not have much trouble on the market. It is not that getting a degree solves all of your problems.

Bogan

Just using my knowledge gained from newspapers and other media, my understanding of higher education is that too many people today are expensive taking university courses in the hope that they will gain very well paying prestigious employment.     Unfortunately, unless they attain honours or very high marks in their examinations, most of them will find that employment opportunities are not that common.    This results in large numbers of graduates who can not obtain work in their hoped for professions.    This is especially so for students who find STEM courses above their abilities, and who drop out to do bum Artz degrees, or "African studies", or Gender studies"   In the USA today, unemployed law graduates are a dime a dozen.   For many of them, employment within the public service in some elevated capacity is their only hope of emplyment, or any hope of ever paying off their huge student loans.     Which is why so many of them are staunchly left wing.    For these unemployable graduates, anything which expands the public service is good.     No wonder so may of them hate Trump.     No wonder so many of them voted for Biden, the most corrupt President in US history, because he promised them that he would forgive their student loans.    This was a promise that Biden knew he could not keep, but he knew how desperate the unemployed graduates were, so he got their vote.     

Dreamer

Argument Topic: Are you sure you are correct? Maybe it is because white sounding names are more likely to get a callback.

@Bogan

"white-sounding names spurred 50 percent more callbacks than the ones with black-sounding names" Jalen Ross

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2015/mar/15/jalen-ross/black-name-resume-50-percent-less-likely-get-respo/

Even if you are correct that Black people are more likely to go into African studies, can you blame them?

Bogan

@Dreamer ;    

Dreamer quote    Even if you are correct that Black people are more likely to go into African studies, can you blame them?

If a simpleton borrows a massive amount of money from the US government to waste it on a degree course that is just socialism cooked again, which will not help him, or her, or it, get a job, which will allow them to pay back the amount that they borrowed, then of course I blame them.

 If an African borrowed a massive amount of money from the US government, and used it to buy a ski boat, and then could not pay it back, what would you think of his, or hers, or it’s, IQ level?

Dreamer

Argument Topic: College is not just about getting a job. I wish colleges would give more life skills including critical thinking.

@Bogan

I think higher education institutes are too job focused. With outsourcing there are now computer science majors in Africa. So why would a person in the 1st world even try to compete with the lower wage economy of the Philippines or South Africa? 

Ever hear of American gold farmers in the online games like World of Wacraft? No, because they are out competed by people from other countries willing to work for less. We only need so many people in any given field. Since we cannot predict the future universities should hedge their bets and teach life long skills.

In the future African studies may be more valuable than any STEM, science, technology, engineering, and math degree. I am a big fan of outsourcing and work vistas. Have people from India willing to take $8,000 a year out-compete all the computer science majors in the USA would be a terrific start. It just doesn't make sense to pay an American $200,000 a year when someone from Brazil will be happy with $12,000 for the same job.

Dreamer

Argument Topic: Higher education has become about prestige not merit.

Oddly, college can help increase anti-intellectualism. This can happen in many ways, quackademia, supporting mythic past, and now universities have become about prestige.

"This does not mean that there is no role for universities in fascist politics. In fascist ideology, there is only one legitimate viewpoint, that of the dominant nation. Schools introduce students to the dominant culture and its mythic past. Education therefore either poses a grave threat to fascism or becomes a pillar of support for the mythical nation."

https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/2022/01/28/why-is-there-now-such-an-affinity-between-antivaxxers-and-fascism/

To understand what I mean by prestige in lieu of merit, look at the number of people who almost made into the ivy and similar schools. They had the merit, but not the extracurricular activities to stand out. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varsity_Blues_scandal

Now ultra parents can legally use all sorts of shady but legal methods to do what the scandal above aim was. Higher education is about providing a public good, teaching, and increasing knowledge. Not this prestige arms race.