Americans Are Losing Faith in the Value of College. Whose Fault Is That? The popularity and perceived value of a college education has gone down fairly dramatically in the last 10 years. The first reason is economics / costs - while college does tend to lead to higher income, for those born after 1980 college doesn’t tend to lead to materially higher net worth on average. The second is political, republicans have dramatically grown to distrust colleges over the last 10 years because they perceive them as too liberal. These trends are actually leading to a net decrease in enrollment.
College did little more than get my foot in the door for me. I already had my General Contractors License before I went back to college. I learned enough in surveying & estimating classes to get me started in those fields but within about 3 months I was beyond anything I learned in school. A year or so in construction management and I left and went back to contracting under my own license. By the late 80s health issues lead me into inspecting, a much less stressful field of the construction industry.
College is a highly profitable venture if you graduate. Worth over $300k. The results are buoyed by the people who start college and don’t graduate. They have debt and no income bump. Results may vary but success factors are simply: Graduated status Major selection Size of debt School attended It’s not a difficult decision. Comprehensive study: https://freopp.org/is-college-worth...estment-analysis-1b2ad17f84c8?gi=2641d391ec4f
It is an interesting question. Certainly the “off topic” classes required out of a degree focus have drawn ire. How many areas of study would collapse without those prerequisites? Oh the humanity of it all. How many jobs require a college degree only as a weed out mechanism vs core knowledge? Now that science is optional, engineers can learn through youtube. I believe that everyone should be lifelong learners, but…
Wonder why you thought it a good idea to disparage a certain type of people. It doesn’t make you look better or smarter…it does the opposite. You would certainly be one of the first to call cons names if the shoe was on the other foot. And we both know the libbies have educational deficiencies with certain parts of their constituencies.
The data shows that conservative have had a tremendous erosion in valuing education. One can only wonder why a group of people have grown to despise the pursuit of knowledge. Usually these threads devolve into conservatives (on a college website) deriding college education with liberals pointing out the benefits. I'll be surprised if this is different.
The British college system is more like what you seem to desire: 3 years where students basically only take classes within their chosen major. US employed a different philosophy when developing its educational system, valuing well rounded education requiring all students take courses from all disciplines. Now many may not agree with this philosophy, but philosophies aren’t something that can be proven be right or wrong. And while I’m not acquainted with every state’s specific curricula, I can tell you that in no way is science optional in the Florida university system. More, to my lights, scientists are charmingly -as well as naively- convinced of the importance of their own fields, so their courses usually more technical and demanding than what seems optimal.
Sorry WC. At this point, it seems disconcertingly plausible that even the most overtly sarcastic comments represent beliefs that could be honestly held by someone.
It's like the game of Life where in the beginning you choose to get a job or go to college. Sometimes that ends up winning you the game at the retirement home and sometimes not. (Picking up those little pink and blue pegs in your car can slow you down). More and more people look at getting a college degree like they would a high school diploma. But the more college graduates there are the tighter the incomes are to pay off student loans and afford to live. Learning a trade may be hard work but the opportunities are there to make really good money (welding, electrical and plumbing). College does provide opportunities for making connections for better jobs and things though. At the end of the day, it comes down to a persons drive and intelligence to make a better life for themselves no matter which way you went.
Wonder if a bunch of people screaming 'most college degrees are worthless go to trade school' had anything to do with that
I am familiar with a number of recent UF grads who 100% think that the time and $ spent was a complete waste. These are business and finance majors fwiw. All employed but making crap money and barely scraping by. Meanwhile some of their buds who went the ‘trades’ route and working for say, Duke Energy, etc are making double what they are.
Why go to college if you can make millions as a social media influencer? I graduated from UF in Building Construction. While I learned almost nothing of value I could use in the industry after graduating, it did get me an office job at 22. Totally worth it in that regard. Otherwise, I would have started out digging ditches.
Anecdotally the US has the most esteemed colleges, highest rated, most in demand plus the US puts out the most productive and among the hardest working labor forces in the world. Kind of hard to argue with the results of our model creating wealth as well. Not sure the English or any other models stack up.
Economist Bryan Caplan agrees with you, arguing for signaling theory of college, where the value isn’t in the transformation that college causes in the students but the signal it sends to others that this person can wake up and jump through hoops and complete moderately challenging tasks. To demonstrate his point, he offers a thought experiment, asking if you would rather have a) all the training of all the classes from a Princeton major without the diploma to prove you went there, or b) a Princeton diploma without having taken any of the classes. People are often split here. He then furthers his point with another example: Now imagine that you will be stuck on a desert island for a year. Before that happens, would you rather have a) all the training of all a program in survival skills without the diploma to prove it, or b) a survival skills diploma without having received any of the training. Everyone usually chooses the same option on this one. I am a college professor, but I think Caplan (and you) at least have a reasonable argument here. As a result, I try to constantly think about what would make the experience of taking my classes more pragmatically valuable. I’m not sure I’ve achieved this in any way, but I think it’s a goal worth pursuing.
