Free loans & Easy admissions
Loans carry no risk
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Ample money supply for universities
& no pressure to cut costs
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Increase in budget and expenses
University FOMO for not being
competitive on shiny offerings
(Admin, fancy facilities, etc.)
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Perpetually raising costs
Students take bigger loans
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Student loan crisis
The easiest lever to pull is adjusting the student loan situation. Students need to be able to discharge their debt, which will put risk calculus back into the equation. STEM degrees, graduation rates, degree value, and student academic performance will be directly correlated with risk.
Under these changes, a student with so-so academics going to an expensive school for art history won't work anymore. STEM degrees at local community colleges will be affordable and abundant. That's what the country needs rather than a system that buys fancy academic buildings.
Our ancestors could make do with learning in decrepit old buildings. They didn't have staycation amenities. They turned that into incredible productive value and didn't go into debt. That's what we need again.
If we want to continue to provide access as a matter of policy, then we should make universities meet strict standards on budget and degree cost to offer non-dischargeable loans to students. Then universities can decide whether they want to meet those eligibility requirements or continue inflating their own costs. The market will fix itself.
Why US Men Think College Isn’t Worth It Anymore- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43788914 - April 2025
Pew Reseach: Is College Worth It? - https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2024/05/23/is-coll... - May 23rd, 2024
There is some progress here on companies removing the credential requirement, and the situation should improve as labor supply continues to decline into the future due to structural demographics (forcing employers to loosen hiring requirements).
Learn a trade, get a CDL (~$5k), etc.
What are the jobs that "require" an engineering degree but don't actually require any engineering knowledge?
1. Students going into debt to get a degree simply because a job req calls for it, but potentially doesn't use the degree. Think "business administration" amongst others. The "Bachelor's Checkbox" on an application if you will. The debt they incur is the cost to increase their white collar lottery odds.
2. Degrees in domains that are crucial for the work to be done, but the financing model is fucked. Engineering, MD, etc.
Both require solving for, but in this context, I am addressing the former.
The beautiful thing is that making the debt dischargeable fixes all that.
Nobody will write a loan for your slapdash STEM program that doesn't actually correlate with earnings.
Same goes for a basket weaving degree from a prestigious university.
>Learn a trade, get a CDL (~$5k), etc.
Spoken like someone who's never been with spitting distance of either. They are not at all easy money compared to office stuff. The trades are all regulatory captured by the professional associations, licensing bodies, etc so you'll toil for 4-10yr making peanuts while you destroy your bodies and sometimes you can't even make the big bucks without going into business yourself and taking on huge risk. CDL jobs are all 60hr a week slogs, more if your company has someone overseas editing the E-logs which a good chunk of them do.
If you can hack it an office job that requires "real math" is almost universally better.
You could attach a financial penalty in case they refuse, but you can't collect money from people without a job.
Within the article, the education part definitely differs by gender. For males, the college degree has been oscillating upward, downward, and flat over the last 50 years. 75-85 semi-down, 85 big jump, mostly flat till mid-90's, rose till maybe 2002, yet then down till 2015. Finally up in the last decade.
Also, in comparison, without a degree has been uniformly horrible for the most part, with down or flat for 40 years (except maybe the bump in mid-90's). (Provides a big push to get a degree, probably get a lot of "don't do what we did, go to school")
Women on the other hand, after the drop in 73-74, have had almost nothing other than upward or flat for 50 years from getting an education. $40,400 to $65,000. Without a degree has mostly been flat. The story for them is "get a degree, it enables earning (and probably independence). Creates very different views and kind of a strange gender dynamic in the discussion.
On that, it seems like a possibility that the last decade trend (and a lot of the manosphere stuff that's shown up recently) may have been when the High School or Some College crowd male pay started approaching the High School or Some College female pay. Personal opinion, yet it seems likely to set off lots of societal issues about family breadwinner, provider, head-of-family, ect...
On the original topic of the post, "If employers provided training and did not require a degree", this likely works for many jobs, and I agree there is probably a lot of false "check-the-box" requirement nonsense in the job market. However, there are quite a few jobs where the starting tasks presume that you have a significant amount of prior familiarization with concepts. You actually use semi-complex math (derivatives, integrals), you need to demonstrate significant skill in liberal arts (production concept art), you need to be familiar with a relatively complicated system with lots of fine details (legal, laws), ect...
There's also an issue in there somewhere, that if the jobs are so simple that all they require is walking in the door and getting training, then those jobs are: relatively low actual skill required, likely limited creative personal input needed, and probable for replacement if there's a way to replace it with tech. That said, the trainee/novice, apprentice, journeyman, master thing has worked since probably the middle-ages in a lot of fields, so there's possibilities.
Also, my standard reply to lot of these issues that's underneath much of the American education "Loyal workers are selectively and ironically targeted for exploitation" https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00221... The issue being that you go through all this education, and then work in an environment where your diligence is mostly exploited, and you simply get extra work for being skilled, while people who just faked it get promoted.
I have a associates in science in cyber security, most credits didn't transfer to a bachelor's of science in cybwrsecurity program despite both being public schools and not private colleges. Its set my education back years all because most jobs demand a bachelor's and certifications.
Seems like you haven't even gone down the path most of the world operates on and just assume the system as it exists can't be modified.
If your solution is to make all higher education free and turn this into yet another tax, then I have to ask where that money is going to come from.
There's already tremendous inefficiency and malinvestment in higher education. Is it really worth diverting productive capital and private money into a system that is bloated?
The frequently suggested fix is to remove the crutches and allow the system to fail, ie. make student loans dischargeable in bankruptcy.
Risk has been foreign to the equation since the student loan system was established. With the reintroduction of risk, the system will balance itself. People will stop taking expensive degree programs with low ROI because there won't be any loans available. No lender will write loans for bad degree programs.
Additionally, when the universities are forced to stop competing on what amenities they offer, they can lower their tuitions to a point where some form of public subsidy could be possible and sustainable. But in no way should we be spending tax dollars on present-day college tuition costs. Those costs need to drop substantially.
The US would add another 0.5 - 0.7 trillion dollars to the deficit if we funded all universities at their present day costs. That would sink the entire ship. It'd be insane to add that to our budget.
I don't understand, and won't follow further someone who doesn't understand how public good works.
Sorry you wasted your time.
The other finalist school she didn’t choose is also private but has every amenity under the sun. The newer dorms which she would have been in because of her major have state of the art gyms inside them and parking garages under them which she would have been assigned a spot in. Multiple dining facilities whith a wide range of high quality food. The school has a full array of D1 sports programs and new atheletic facilities built within the last 5-15 years. It is located in a large metropolitan area. It doesn’t have near the same quality of academics as her choice.
The estimated cost of attendance for 25-26 is with $500 of each other. Both being around $89k before any aid. She doesn’t qualify for federal financial aid. Luckily both offered very substantial merit aid. She did also consider one of our state schools. Although not as nice as the private she didn’t choose it is much closer to that than the school she did choose. They, along with all our state schools, are known for giving almost no aid beyond federal financial aid. The cost to attend would have been more than the two private schools after their merit aid awards.
I guess my point is they get you whether they give you amenities or not and whether they are private or public.
The initial correspondence was also addressed to "the parents of $student".
Someone certainly felt confident in their clever little scheme to milk their endless supply of cash cows.
$90K/year in 1982 was fuckin’ rolling in it.
However, jobs that pay $300k vastly over-index to a few coastal major metros, where $300k a year is at the lower end of ever being able to own even a condo within a reasonable commute.
If they want to keep out the middle class how do you explain many of the top colleges now waiving tuition for students from upper middle class families, and waiving tuition and room and board for students from lower middle class families?
Scholarships and financial aid will basically expand as necessary to meet tuition demands for students. Therefore, the colleges can name their price, as it is basically funny-money, and any given student will be on a combination of scholarship, FAFSA, mom/dad funds, loans.
In fact it is sort of a joke. When I was in community college, Phi Theta Kappa made overtures to recruit me. One of their seminars featured a few students who had earned a lot of scholarships by virtue of their membership and service. And I do mean "a lot". I think one of the figures tossed out there was $23 million in scholarships. For a community college student. And to think I was baffled how to spend an extra $500 or so kicking around.
I got really disillusioned, even with community college, after my final years there. It seemed that the tuition was the right price, and all the instructors were highly credentialed, knowledgeable, and helpful. The classes themselves were great. But the whole package was draining, and exhausting. It was like a neverending exposition of clubs, events, deals, and engagement. Every table on the mall, every student leader next to me, was simply dying to gain my loyalty, membership, and engagement in whatever they had going on. And I personally could not keep a lid on that, so I just sort of got torn to pieces. I was in 5 clubs and doing honors and all kinds of extra stuff that just wore me out.
All I had wanted to do was just Take some Classes, Earn the Credits, and get out of there. But that is not a satisfactory goal for the colleges of today.
Also realistically, you're likely getting a loan, so you need to factor in interest.
(and there's nothing wrong with you expressing this opinion)
Not everyone in the US makes 500k TC doing remote work.
400k for a degree is absolute bonkers!
Here is the IRS about this;
Student loan interest is interest you paid during the year on a qualified student loan. It includes both required and voluntarily prepaid interest payments. You may deduct the lesser of $2,500 or the amount of interest you actually paid during the year. The deduction is gradually reduced and eventually eliminated by phaseout when your modified adjusted gross income (MAGI) amount reaches the annual limit for your filing status.
If your family is reporting a family income of $122k, you're already at approximately the upper 25% threshold. The $61,000 number hides a really L-shaped distribution skewed heavily toward the $2,500,000+ crowd. Previously calculated 2024 statistics from another post.
in the most recent tax filing season data available (2024), there were tax returns of:
Top 1% Top 5% Top 10% Top 25% Top 50% Bottom 50% All Taxpayers
Number of Returns 1,535,899 7,679,495 15,358,991 38,397,477 76,794,954 76,794,954 153,589,908
Average Income Taxes Paid $653,730 $187,468 $108,251 $50,963 $27,891 $667 $14,279
Adjusted Gross Income (Millions) $3,872,395 $6,182,180 $7,745,525 $10,613,602 $13,191,209 $1,531,038 $14,722,247
1 2-5 6-10 11-25 26-50 51-100
Number of Returns 1,535,899 6,143,596 7,679,496 23,038,486 38,397,477 76,794,954
Income Taxes Paid (Millions) $1,004,063 $435,594 $222,966 $294,234 $185,068 $51,225
Adjusted Gross Income (Millions) $3,872,395 $2,309,785 $1,563,345 $2,868,077 $2,577,607 $1,531,038
Average Tax Rate 25.9% 18.9% 14.3% 10.3% 7.2% 3.3%
Average Per Capita Income $2,521,256.28 $375,966.29 $203,573.91 $124,490.69 $67,129.59 $19,936.70A college degree in the industry you work in also means your job security is MUCH higher than those without a degree.
It’s actually quite stark how bad it’s gotten. I’d rather just give a kid that money to invest and have them live at home doing whatever work floats their fancy until they can live comfortably on interest alone.
Inequality would fall substantially and many universities will be forced to drop prices down to around 10-20k.
Given that non-athletics are funding the lambo’s some universities give to all their football players (and huge paychecks) … if people thought the past 10-years tuition inflation was bad, watch what the next 10-years will be like.
Universities are now longer in the business of education. Its effectively competing with NFL.
https://www.espn.com/college-sports/story/_/id/44787232/ncaa...
littlexsparkee•9mo ago