- cross-posted to:
- usa@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- usa@lemmy.ml
The latest NBC News poll shows two-thirds of registered voters down on the value proposition of a degree. A majority said degrees were worth the cost a dozen years ago.
Americans have grown sour on one of the longtime key ingredients of the American dream.
Almost two-thirds of registered voters say that a four-year college degree isn’t worth the cost, according to a new NBC News poll, a dramatic decline over the last decade.
Just 33% agree a four-year college degree is “worth the cost because people have a better chance to get a good job and earn more money over their lifetime,” while 63% agree more with the concept that it’s “not worth the cost because people often graduate without specific job skills and with a large amount of debt to pay off.”
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No longer? I didn’t see them as worth the cost fifteen years ago. That’s why I emigrated back to my home country so I could study virtually for free.
Your specific situation doesn’t apply to everybody.
They didn’t say it did
They expressed incredulous disbelief in why people don’t agree with them.
They had an option others don’t.
The only important part was the first. I kept thinking, how in the world is it acceptable to charge that much for a degree and endebt students for the majority of their lives? What if you fail to find a high-paying job to pay it back? People would simply shrug it off as if it were normal and shared “tips” like paying the minimum of $50 forever without caring that they’d end up paying twice as much as they borrowed.
And because of that, our high school admins made sure to show us that trade jobs and community college were viable alternatives. I took the third option because of the family circumstances at the time.
Well, that was you.
'Twas I!
Shit, I figured this out 20 years ago. Where has everyone else been?
In college.
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This can’t be that shocking to the news media and “analysts”. Kids have been practically railroaded into getting at least a BS for decades, a lot of the time to the tune of 10s of thousands of dollars in debt if not more. Now that nearly everyone entering the work place has one it is not the selling point to employers that it was once. Supply and demand and all that.
And that’s before you even get into the usefulness of so much of the coursework in a lot of these degree programs. I only have an associates degree and probably half of the program was unrelated to the stated purpose of the degree. I can’t imagine how much junk is required for a 4 year or more in the name of being a well rounded person.
Maybe, just maybe, everyone is starting to wake up to just how self serving the college industry has become.
I should have been an escalator repairman. Those guys look like they have job security.
I notice they always have their shoelaces tied, too.
Escalators don’t break, they turn into stairs.
Edit: This comment has been up 2 days and no one get the Mitch Hedberg reference. Fo same, Lemmy.
Escalators break, they just remain useful while broken. However, everyone would still rather they get back to how they were before (moving).
There are still plenty of jobs that are gated by a college credential. Tech was the biggest way aorund skipping it, and tech is imploding.
I don’t doubt what you say is true, but could you list some examples of jobs that are gated by a college credential?
Anything in healthcare, which are the last college degree jobs that consistently pay over average.
I approve of our healthcare providers having college educations & being paid well :-)
I would hope so?
Why are you asking?
Community college admissions continue to rise because of this. Even students with excellent grades in high school bypass the 4-year institutions as long as possible. It’s the same classes either way. Why pay 10 times more?
Good maybe we will finally have some market correction and colleges realize they are not a staple for the American dream anymore.
I recall a podcast I listened to years ago talking about some schools trying out a new model that worked something like…
Instead of taking out a loan, you just enter into a contract with the school that x% of your paycheck for the first z years after graduation go to the school. Kinda like child support.
Get an unemployable degree and now your making burgers for minimum wage? Then you don’t owe anything.
Get an amazing job that pays a ton? That degree is going to cost you.
Now it’s in the school’s best interest to A) offer degrees that are actually worth something instead of misleading students down a dead end path, and B) help students find and keep good positions after graduation.
It sounded awesome. But what I found infuriating were the people they interviewed that benefitted from the program, now had fantastic high salary jobs, and were whining about how much they were having to pay for the education and program that got them into that high paying job in the first place.
This just sounds like IBR with
extrafewer steps.The issue with this is that knowledge should be it’s own reward. Where I live college costs a pittance. If you want to study fine art, that course should be available and is.
What you’re suggesting sounds great in a very practical respect but would only further benefit capitalism at the cost of wider knowledge. Many of the things that are worth learning in life to so many would immediately disappear from college curriculums.
The goal should be to make third level education cheap enough that anyone can do it without crippling themselves financially.
Could easily be hybrid… You pay some up front, they get some on the back end. This and other subsidies might be able to save the arts.
I proposed this to a boomer 15 years ago and man was he so angry at the thought of wages being garnished to pay loans for 10 years.
Like how does that change the situation if I have to pay regardless? If anything it might be great for me to reduce my taxable income.
It sounded awesome.
Maybe only to US-americans? To me it sounds equally, but a tiny lil less, horrible than it is now.
Why not fund it entirely by the state? You know, the one profiting very much from a good paying job you’d get. Maybe just invest a few billions less in Military, but more in education and its own people. Like a civilized nation should do. It could do wonders to a society.
this is kinda the way australia works for citizens: the government sets the cost of courses (usually about $10000-$20000AUD per semester) and then pays for them entirely, and you get a HELP debt with the government which is kinda like an interest free (though indexed so it doesn’t get cheaper with time) loan which is automatically taken out of your paycheque pre-tax and only after you start earning a certain amount… if you never earn that bottom limit, the debt disappears if you die
I’ve felt like this for over a decade. I don’t even want to know what cost is now.
Much to the joy of GOP politicians everywhere.
Dramatic? It was practically manufactured.
Damn that sucks. Here I am sitting at Uni only paying for the public transport ticket basically.
I feel so free to be able to do this.
Yup, and educated citizens make better citizens. Your country cares about having a civilized, egalitarian society.
The U.S. just wants obedient workers the bourgeoise can control.
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I think it depends pretty dramatically where you go. It might not be worth it if you go to a school that costs 40k a year. But college in general opens doors to a lot of positions.
Not to say college is the only viable option.
