Two-thirds of American employees regret their college degrees:
A college education is still considered a pathway to higher lifetime earnings and gainful employment for Americans. Nevertheless, two-thirds of employees report having regrets when it comes to their advanced degrees, according to a PayScale survey of 248,000 respondents this past spring that was released Tuesday.
Student loan debt, which has ballooned to nearly $1.6 trillion nationwide in 2019, was the No. 1 regret among workers with college degrees. About 27% of survey respondents listed student loans as their top misgiving, PayScale said.
[...] About 70% of college students graduated with student loan debt this year, averaging about $33,000 per student. And as younger grads pay off student loan balances, they're struggling to accumulate wealth or are putting off purchasing homes — some millennials are even struggling to purchase groceries.
[...] College debt was followed by chosen area of study (12%) as a top regret for employees, though this varied greatly by major. Other regrets include poor networking, school choice, too many degrees, time spent completing education and academic underachievement.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bradley13 on Sunday August 01 2021, @07:52PM (46 children)
Government involvement in student loans was incredibly, utterly stupid. "Help the underprivileged." Right.
More like throw money at colleges, which then have no incentive to keep costs down. Massive increase in administration, idiotic degree programs - get that sweet, sweet government money. Who cares if your students have lifetime debt for their useless degrees?
Rip off the bandage. No more student loans, starting now. Painful, but better than more decades of idiocy.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Sunday August 01 2021, @07:58PM (4 children)
Every time easy credit is available, prices run up. This could have been foreseen. I want to help the underprivileged but student loans were the opposite of what was needed.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by anubi on Sunday August 01 2021, @09:29PM (3 children)
"Every time easy credit is available, prices run up."
Notice how house prices increase with low interest rates? Sellers will ask more when the buyers can pay more.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Sunday August 01 2021, @10:33PM
In this particular case the reason is a different one. If I don't get any sensible interest for my money, and if there isn't really a worthwhile investment anywhere, parking it in real estate is the sensible thing to do.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Sunday August 01 2021, @11:01PM
It's Econ 101: supply & demand curves.
"Whatever the crowd will bear" as my dad used to say.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 03 2021, @08:49PM
Yeah, low interest rates is the same as more credit in a twisted sense. You can get more while having less.
(Score: 2, Offtopic) by Runaway1956 on Sunday August 01 2021, @08:10PM (2 children)
Don't forget all the stupid overhead that government imposes. Not going looking for it, but I read an article about one college that had ~500 diversity and equal opportunity officers. Some ridiculous percentage of those officers made as much or more than the professors who teach classes. Of course, they contribute nothing to learning, they are just overhead that has to paid for somehow . . .
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 01 2021, @11:22PM (1 child)
Administration is where the money is going. Specifically to layer upon layer of parasitic management.
In the case of the University of California (UC), administration positions have increased 60% in the last 10 years-- and this has been ongoing for the last 40 years.
There was a movement to run universities like businesses, in the 1980s, and as a result, UC's top leadership now comes from corporate America instead of academia. The numbers of management types in the UC system exploded, at this time as manager types tried to expand their fiefdoms by having many layers of managers below them. Also, emphasis was on profit centers like medical and sports facilities and research (e.g., generates patent licensing revenue) and not on undergrad education-- revenue from student fees were diverted to paying for sports and medical facilities instead of teaching. Pay for the top administration is now *insane*, with nearly 500 managers receiving pay of half a million per year (not including benefits). And, quite a few just above or below the $1M mark-- professors (the folks who do the actual work of a university, are not compensated anywhere near as generously).
These greedy corporate executive types, decided to give themselves a pension funding holiday, so they would not have to pay into their pension sufficiently to fund it (pocketing that money instead), but they could still draw on the pension as if it were funded. So, now the UC system is in trouble having to fund recent retirements by contributing more into the pension plan than would be necessary to fund the retirements of those workers paying the current contributions. And, the UC system just requested a 28% student fee hike to help pay for this pension funding shortfall (Governor Brown told them, "No." He wants them to make up the shortfall with cuts elsewhere. Unfortunately, he did not specify that the cuts be to parasitic management, so they will almost certainly end up being to student services and things like even fewer faculty being offered tenure.).
The sums involved here are massive. University of California has a budget greater than the total budget of 25 US states. But, the problems are not unique, and the inversion of number of faculty to number of administrators has occurred across the board in all university systems in the US; forty years ago faculty outnumbered administrators in all university systems, today the opposite is true.
Fire all the managers*. Require all sports programs and facilities to be self funding, and pay back, with interest, all past expenditures on athletics-- or shut down the programs. No new medical facilities unless they can pay for themselves. Put a cap on pension retirement payments of the equivalent of a final compensation of $100K or even $250K. And use the savings to slash tuition to rates unseen in 40 years.
* https://hbr.org/2011/12/first-lets-fire-all-the-managers [hbr.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 02 2021, @09:53PM
> In the case of the University of California (UC), administration positions have increased 60% in the last 10 years-- and this has been ongoing for the last 40 years.
Not only are there more management layers, they *all* require certifications and safety audits and "training" to justify their existence. The target of all these burdens is the researcher, the thin layer at the bottom in touch with the real world upon whose effort the entire university owes its existence. Without research, it's just another building of managers.
And there's nothing a manager loves more than someone fucking the arcane workplace rituals - a personnel crisis to exercise life-or-death power, ideally with groveling, promises and a little human sacrifice.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by sjames on Sunday August 01 2021, @08:29PM (5 children)
The stupid part was half-assing it by seeking a "market solution". It was a real sweetheart deal for the banks. All the interest but none of the risk for a non-dischargable loan backed by the federal government.
We're repeating the mistake in healthcare. Just cut the insurance companies out of it entirely and socialize the whole damned thing. I don't advise banning non-government offerings. If the conservatives are right, they will compete just fine with the "intrinsically inefficient" government system. If they can't, then they were never the right answer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 01 2021, @11:19PM (1 child)
They do compete well where they're allowed to.
Harley Street still exists, for example.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday August 01 2021, @11:50PM
It looks like they're pretty free to give it a go and a handful actually managed it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 02 2021, @07:39AM
Up here in Canada taxes cover basic services and private companies like Blue Cross get to fight over premium services. Care is about the same as in the US (if you can afford coverage) but at a small fraction of the cost. Note that our government healthcare is not a federal program but is run by the provinces.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bradley13 on Monday August 02 2021, @09:43AM (1 child)
I agree with the first half of your statement. Either government funds education, or you go free-market. You can even have both options, as long as you keep them separate. Really, the system that existed before the 1980s wasn't too awful. You had state schools that provided an inexpensive option for in-state residents. If you didn't want to attend a government-run university, you could go to a private institution. Even at most private institutions, tuition was reasonable enough that students could support themselves if they needed to.
What you have now, is government indirectly financing tuition at private institutions. That's the worst possible half-and-half mix, exactly like you presently have in health care. It means massive bureaucracy, and no incentives for cost control or efficiency. Worse, the government then passes on the paid money as a lifetime debt to the students, so the costs don't even stay on the government books where they belong.
The student loan program is a typical "good intentions" program with the usual "paving the road to hell" results.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday August 03 2021, @11:03AM
I would argue that we NEED both options and as you say, they should be separate. When both are in play, they tend to keep each other more honest.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 01 2021, @08:36PM
That's not it, no cookie for you.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 01 2021, @09:21PM
The issue wasn't government involvement, the issue is that they handed off administration to private businesses and withdrew public subsidies from education itself. Less government involvement is what caused much of this mess, not less.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 01 2021, @11:53PM (18 children)
The money was thrown, first and foremost, at the financial sector. Colleges simply demanded more and more for being the middlemen and banks were happy to oblige.
The removal of bankruptcy for student loans re-created what bankruptcy was designed to prevent: undischargeble debt.
The dream of loan sharks and tyrants since antiquity was gifted to the banks as they could now create unlimited loans on the back of a new special class of debtor who could never escape them. All discipline for lenders was cast aside and the dysfunction ballooned almost immediately.
People get caught up in bullshit arguments about the "worth" of degrees, or the culpability of universities, or vacuous class or moral arguments and completely miss the essential point: If creditors cannot default, debtors can never be disciplined. Without bankruptcy, debt can spiral so far out of control that civilization itself is threatened, as history proves. Does everyone understand why today's the world is so fucked up now?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by stormreaver on Monday August 02 2021, @01:00AM (16 children)
I'm rather dumbfounded by the bad decision making of people entering college. I'm not going to pretend to understand how such horrible cognitive skills are nurtured, but I've been reading about them for decades. While banks are frequently a blight on society, they wouldn't have the control they exert if people made better choices. Banks are just tools, and need to be treated as such. A little common sense goes a long way.
I got my entire college education paid for through a combination of student loans, self-payment (the smallest part of this equation by far), and grants. I didn't date much (not entirely of my own choosing, so that was just good fortune), I lived at home with my parents until well after graduation, I spent my college funds mostly on necessities, and I chose a major with a history of gainful employment. I paid off my student loans while living with my parents, and then saved up a little nest egg to fund the next phase of my life (wife, children, house).
It's all fairly simple.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 02 2021, @03:01AM (3 children)
There have been at least one to one and a half whole generation raised to think that the world owes them something, and that they deserve to receive the good things in life not via hard work, making the right choices, and perseverance, but simply because they should have those riches bestowed upon them because they are special.
This present generation of college grads, with these useless (for employment purposes) degrees that expect everything will just be handed to them on a silver platter is what one gets when all the children are shielded from anything bad, and everyone gets a participation trophy no matter who won the game.
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'Zumi often mods "actual interesting, germane, and relevant point" as troll.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 02 2021, @03:09AM
It's been one and a half to two generations since people could expect to make a living without one. Just getting an application seen by human eyes may require a very specific degree, or the computer shit-cans it unread.
There are apprenticeships available, but the whole educational establishment steers students away Grimm those jobs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 02 2021, @10:14PM (1 child)
You bitch about young kids today, but the only ones I see expecting results on a silver platter are managers who specialize in "running things". I imagine them as little monkeys (Napoleons) sitting on the back of the working mule yelling "go over here", "go over there", etc. Well, little dude, if you're on my back you're going where I'm going.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 03 2021, @01:35PM
Perhaps all those excess "managers" are the same ones who led the sheltered, nothing ever goes wrong, you get everything you ever ask for immediately, and no one loses (because everyone gets the same participation trophy at the end of every game. That kind of sheltered, your every childhood wish granted, life would program them to expect that just because they ask for it, whatever it is, that it should just appear for them.
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'Zumi often mods "actual interesting, germane, and relevant point" as troll.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Monday August 02 2021, @03:41AM
Can be a little more charitable in your thinking than that. Frosh are notorious for their naivety and there are so many scams targeting them it's hard to avoid them all. It's easy to say you'd never fall for any scam, they're so obvious, but the reality is more complicated. The scammers would even get angry with the students who didn't fall for their stuff, as if those students were violating the laws of nature by not being naive enough. They are quite aggressive in using anything and everything to trick, shame, sucker, tear jerk, and peer pressure you into buying. If you are too agreeable about listening, they burn up your time to make you feel like not buying will have wasted those valuable minutes. They'll play upon your newfound feelings of the freedom to spend without having to consult Mommy and Daddy, and any other emotions they can manipulate to get you to spend.
I went for the coupon book idea, in which you pay $30 for coupons worth thousands of dollars. They pitched it as a huge savings of course. If you use only 1 in every 10 coupons, you come out ahead. It wasn't worth it-- the coupons were almost all for products, services, and general junk you just don't need or want. I managed to about break even on that one, if the time I spent looking through the book and traveling about to use the coupons isn't counted. The whole thing was basically an attempt to train the young to become more prolific consumers. Another one was this buying club with the $700 annual membership. Starts with the old postcard offering some little something for "free", if only you will listen to their pitch. They were of course ready for the protest that I didn't have $700, with their finance plan to pay in installments, but which would raise the total annual cost to $1000. I agreed to it just to get rid of the pushy sales guy, then canceled before my 3 day cooling down grace period passed, and most importantly, before I'd spent a thing.
Some of the students got in on the scamming. Several of them started a plain old pyramid scheme. Used this airline personnel naming scheme, to make it sound more serious or elegant or whatever. You'd start out as a Mechanic and work your way up to Co-Pilot and finally Pilot as the people above you finished collecting and exited. Over a period of a couple of weeks, I fended off a dozen acquaintances who tried to get me to join, at the bottom of the pyramid, naturally. When it collapsed, last I heard was that the students who'd started the whole thing were in trouble.
Many scams are more subtle. The textbook racket is one such. Just trot over to the university bookstore for your class books, right? Bzzt, wrong! If you look around, there is often another bookstore adjacent to the campus, with used textbooks for much less money. How many frosh know to do that? But now, if I were entering college this year, I would most certainly hunt around for digital versions of the textbooks, and pirate them.
Many colleges also get in on the parking ticket scams. After all, any student who actually has a car has money, right? Refuse to pay that parking ticket, and the school will show you that they have you by the gonads. If you ever need a transcript, you'll have to pay off all your outstanding tickets. Cities also prey upon motorists, so that's double trouble for the college student with a car.
The worst sort of scam is the abominable student loan itself. It's all dressed up as a very respectable thing, backed and vetted by the government. And pitched as an investment in yourself and a noble thing to do, making yourself more enlightened and more able to help others and help your country. And also as a very fair deal, indeed, a no-brainer, easily repaid from the earnings you will be able to make with the degree you earn. What they don't talk about is that there is considerable risk. One of the biggest is that the damned loan is almost unforgivable, far harder to dispose of than any other kind of debt.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 02 2021, @03:42AM (1 child)
> I lived at home with my parents until well after graduation
> I paid off my student loans while living with my parents
> [while living with my parents I] saved up a little nest egg to fund the next phase of my life (wife, children, house) .
I see a pattern here.
Good for you that you had supportive parents who allowed you to avoid paying thousands in rent, utilities and food each month (current average rent for a small apartment where I live is $2500/mo, and at least another couple hundred in utilities and food (e.g., water bill base rate is ~$75 here, if NO water is used for the month).
$3K savings per month is $36K/year into the bank. Even if just rent, you get to put $30K into the bank per year. That is, at least, $120K toward the down-payment on your future house over just in the four years while in school.
Thanks mom and dad!
In the real world, a lot of us didn't choose our parents as well as you did.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 02 2021, @04:40AM
The number of students I have that were literally kicked out of the door at 18 with zero support is at least 20% each year and yet their income still counts against the student. The number working multiple jobs has gone from zero to around a third over the course of my career. The number of 5th or greater year seniors has also increased to somewhere around 15% of all students because more of them are working to defray costs. On top of that everything is getting more expensive and wages aren't even close to following. Even if you have parents who want to support you or have a minimum wage job, good luck.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Monday August 02 2021, @02:10PM (7 children)
The credit market has been very effective for the past several decades.
Humor me. What's in your wallet? Probably multiple credit cards. Almost everyone has them. Some of us have the less evil debit card, but almost everyone has one or more credit cards in their wallet. Multiple generations of Americans have been brought up to believe it is normal to be in debt.
My grandparent's generation, those who survived the Great Depression, wouldn't go into debt except in dire emergency. Purchasing a home was the only legitimate excuse to go into debt. You can stand in any convenience store today, and watch people buying snacks on credit. Credit is ubiquitous.
If people are willing to buy dinner on credit, why not buy "important" stuff like a college education on credit?
We've been brainwashed quite effectively.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday August 02 2021, @11:01PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 03 2021, @04:07AM (5 children)
Just so you know, a significant chunk of those people you are criticizing for using cards are not actually in debt using them. You may want to stop judging all of them.
Roughly 1/3 of people pay off their credit cards every month. For them, there is no “brainwashing,” only convenience. I’ve never carried a balance on a card in my life, yet I use them pervasively for convenience and to get an effective 1.5% discount from my “rewards.”
You might argue that we’re all paying for merchants fees to card companies, but handling cash isn’t free either (security, insurance, transport to banks, having change on hand, greater likelihood of employees stealing, etc.).
If someone will actually give me a cash discount, I’ll pay cash. Most places don’t. So I use my card to get a better deal than you are if you use cash. (There are legit arguments against cards like privacy issues, but the fact that you can theoretically owe money on them isn’t an issue for many of us who can actually manage money.)
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday August 03 2021, @04:21AM (4 children)
I think you've just made my point for me. If that 1/3 figure is accurate and reliable, that leaves 2/3 of people who do not pay the balance every month, and pay (probably exorbitant) interest on their purchases.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 03 2021, @01:46PM
And, while you stand in line at the convenience store behind three other people, with those stats, two of the three charging their snacks to their card will be carrying credit card debt.
And yes, the interest rates on most cards is highway robbery. 23%, 25%, 27% apr are normal amounts to see charged. And the 'fine print' often has a clause where if you "miss but one payment" your interest rate toes up even higher.
And then, the banks carefully calculate the minimum monthly payment amount so that the holder pays off the minimum legally required principal per month, because that enriches the banks bottom line.
This conditioning of buying things, before you have the money to pay for them, is why, supposedly, 40% of Americans don’t have $400 in the bank for emergency expenses: Federal Reserve [go.com].
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'Zumi often mods "actual interesting, germane, and relevant point" as troll.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday August 03 2021, @02:14PM (2 children)
(Score: 1, Troll) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday August 03 2021, @02:32PM (1 child)
Yes, that is a correct description. Predatory practices do trap people in debt.
Maybe not. Small banks today are still picky about making loans to insolvent people. In fact, the more desperate people are, the less likely that the bank will loan them money. Those predatory practices only work for the huge megacorporations that can afford to play the odds, and play the courts, all while playing an instrumental on their bought politicians.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 03 2021, @07:55PM
Credit cards are, by their very design, rather predatory by nature. One can find numerous articles on the difference in feel between plastic and cash:
How to Avoid Credit Card Overspending [thebalance.com]
Spending and credit cards [psychologytoday.com]
And for far too many people, this difference in feel results in them spending to the point where, at the end of the month when the statement arrives, they simply don't have the funds available to pay the balance off in full (either because the balance exceeds their total worth, or the balance exceeds what is left of their total worth after other bills also get paid). So they have no choice but to only pay part of the balance, and for many folks the allure of that "minimum payment" is too much, and that is all they pay, and so they start a long road of paying the minimum each month, of which 95% of the payment goes to interest and only 5% of the payment goes to paying down any of the principle.
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'Zumi often mods "actual interesting, germane, and relevant point" as troll.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 03 2021, @03:09PM
Do you live in a vacuum? Think of every conceivable variation of child-rearing. It's probable that every permutation exists, and a long ream of shit you couldn't even begin to imagine beyond it. So y'know, maybe you living with your parents was a triviality, but there's plenty of parent-child relationships where that is fundamentally untenable. And then, all that "common sense" you've got, it's not so common, there's a lot of first-generation students out there in the wild, emerged from working class people who don't have experience navigating the academic system. These people don't have trans-generational knowledge to pass down in the context of the topic, the kids are ignorant, and the education system is streamlined to show assessment results, not educe in any meaningful way, so the whole socialized education system will probably fail to elucidate them on the nuances of decisionmaking as an adult. Finally they're shoehorned into college at a young age, I remember when I was 18, I was dumb as fuck and that's despite being fairly precocious and well rounded a lot of these kids are just on rails up to that point, and don't and won't and never did a whole lot of critical thinking so they just follow the ball. This is evidently something you suffer.
And the shoehorning is real, I'm a non-traditional student, I'm in a rather disagreeable position because a large swath of grants are age/gender/race/lifestyle restricted. As a white childless male over 20 with $50k of self-earned cash I don't get a cent's worth of a break. That's forward thinking, though, I don't imagine many of the prospective students make it further than "Dad said so." but that in and of itself is plenty of impetus to commit, and it's further compounded by the social pressures which come from multiple sides. Suddenly you've got a shitload of kids in college accruing huge sums of debt because their parents were sold on the benefits of education in lifelong outcomes which eventually presses them into careers they have little or no interest in because they were literally children when they signed up, and then, y'know sunk cost fallacy.
And if everybody chooses a degree with a "history of gainful employment" do you know what happens? Those degrees are inflated, the compensation is reduced, and the history fails once again to predict the future. Getting a read on that is difficult though, with inflation and benefits being calculated as "compensation", but I assure you it's much easier to negotiate in a pool of 20,000 than it is a pool of 20.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 02 2021, @01:02AM
The world is so fucked up today, genocides, wars, uncontrolled wildfires, and it is all because of the student loan program? Wow. That's not at all what my evangelical preacher has been saying.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 02 2021, @12:53AM (5 children)
Guess you mean government guaranteed student loans.
If I were king, I would organize a public scholarship program. Everyone can take a standardized test, the best get money to cover most of the cost to attend school.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 02 2021, @02:01AM (4 children)
You can't do that. You'd end up with math departments that are all asian, accountancy courses full of jews and engineering full of male nerds.
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 02 2021, @03:04AM (3 children)
Yup, because that would be equality of opportunity meanwhile the current woke want equality of outcome (i.e., no matter who you are, or where you start, everyone ends up with an identical outcome).
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'Zumi often mods "actual interesting, germane, and relevant point" as troll.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 02 2021, @03:08AM (1 child)
Correction: it's not that everybody ends up with an equal outcome; it's that the Left's supporter tribes (classified by race, sex, mental illness, etc.) get most of the good jobs without being qualified. They are simply handed the job.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 02 2021, @06:43AM
The double standards will continue until equity of outcome is achieved.
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.
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.
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... Hah, who are they fooling. Everybody knows the double standards will continue even after that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 02 2021, @10:22PM
> Yup, because that would be equality of opportunity meanwhile the current woke want equality of outcome
Yep, because equality of outcome is working out so well... Retard.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 02 2021, @03:20AM (3 children)
I like your post, but without loans most pepole couldn't afford an education. So you support Universal Education?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 02 2021, @09:46AM (2 children)
FTFY
Bottom line, yes.
If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday August 02 2021, @10:19PM (1 child)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 02 2021, @11:01PM
back in yer hole lizard man
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 02 2021, @04:26PM
It sounds like the solution being proposed here is that "if you don't have money, you can't go to college." That is certainly one solution, but I do not like how it stratifies the class-system even more. (That being said, there is something to be said for making the currently hidden-class system in the US more visible, such as it is in the UK... it'd cause the lower-class to actually realize their situation and demand more, and make the upper-class realize their situation and hopefully result in some Noblesse-Oblige.)
I'd propose the following:
1) Keep loans
2) Require any college accepting such federal loans to publish out statistics on average-job-acceptance rates and average-salaries. Maybe even percentage of people working in-field. (If somebody wants to get a degree in Art History despite knowing how long little job prospects they have, then they get little sympathy for me.)
3) Change bankruptcy laws for student loans. Make them bank-ruptable, but partially so. Students should be able to discharge, but it takes time (maybe make it a 20-year process, with a percentage of their post-bankruptcy earnings being directly subtracted from their income), and make it so the institution which received the student's tuition to be partially liable or the bankruptcy (not 100%, but share in it).
Theoretically that'd better align incentives of all parties involved... but in practice, who knows?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 01 2021, @08:17PM (28 children)
From TFA:
Interesting. Those who got a useful degree were least likely to regret the degree.
But those who got a modern day equivalent to the old joke basket weaving degree, reported the most regret.
I wonder why..... Could it be that humanities degrees are not what employers are looking for their employees to be trained in, in order to hire them and pay them good salaries?
The takeaway from this article ought to be: if you get a useful degree, then you'll get a good job, and you will have few regrets. Get a useless degree (useless for anything other than showing "I have a college degree") and you'll really regret it. So don't go study for those useless degrees.
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'Zumi often mods "actual interesting, germane, and relevant point" as troll.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 01 2021, @08:25PM (5 children)
HAHA! I got my degree in underwater basket weaving! Beat that if you can!
(Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 01 2021, @08:30PM (3 children)
Sorry to break the news to you.. but unless it was an interpretive underwater basket weaving degree then you were ripped off.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 01 2021, @08:36PM (1 child)
Dammit - now I don't know whether to laugh or cry or both! 😂
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 01 2021, @11:48PM
Just go weave another basket. You did get the degree, eh?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 02 2021, @09:50AM
There's an acute lack of talented underwater basked weaving interpreters. So many youtube reacters that don't have something to react to.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by HiThere on Monday August 02 2021, @02:56AM
Unless you're using fancy machinery, all basket weaving is underwater. You need to keep the reeds flexible.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 01 2021, @09:09PM
I for one am proud of my nearly-complete Gender Studies degree and expect to land a high-paying Wall Street job soon... just need to spot five more genders and I can graduate.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Eratosthenes on Sunday August 01 2021, @09:49PM (13 children)
Not, that couldn't be. Employers want employees with humanities degrees, because they want employees who can think, read and write, and do not need to be constantly surveiled like psychopathic business majors and engineers. And, humanities grads know how to make citations, instead of just speculating and making stuff up.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Sunday August 01 2021, @09:55PM (9 children)
On a forum I was reading, someone asked about getting into a legal career. An experienced lawyer suggested not doing pre-law.
She instead recommended a humanities major, saying that law schools enjoy seeing proof that somebody can do a lot of research, think critically about it and draw conclusions, and show their work. Transferable skills in other words.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 01 2021, @10:10PM (4 children)
I'll take anecdotal information for €200 Alex.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 01 2021, @10:20PM (3 children)
It tracks with what I've heard, but it is superseded by more important advice: don't become a lawyer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 01 2021, @11:51PM (2 children)
Just don't. Lawyers are on nearly everyone's kill list!!
(Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 02 2021, @12:16AM (1 child)
Kinda sad, because if you've got a kill list youre gonna need a lawyer.
Or an undertaker, if the cops think you're not white enough.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 02 2021, @02:54AM
And predictably, crime has shot up dramatically because the cops are not harassing those innocent people of color anymore.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 02 2021, @02:08AM (3 children)
Yeah, maybe. But lawyers are the sort of people who would tell people that so as to ruin their careers and reduce competition in the field. After all, the fewer lawyers there are, the more they can charge.
(nb. I think you were modded up by all the humanities graduates.)
(Score: 3, Informative) by HiThere on Monday August 02 2021, @02:59AM (2 children)
You'd think so, but it doesn't really work that way. Most lawyers (well, a couple of decades ago) either worked in some other field or made less than the poverty line. Of course, those aren't the ones you hear about. Connections are extremely important.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 02 2021, @03:04AM (1 child)
Apparently it you want a good law career, you have to attend one of the several top law schools. Anything less, don't bother.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 02 2021, @03:35AM
Or it could be the other way around. Maybe if you are smart enough to make a living as a lawyer then you are good enough to get into one of the top schools.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 02 2021, @03:02AM (2 children)
Humanities majors deal in story telling and fiction. Not making things up? Please. If you want critical thinking and not being seduced by your emotions but sticking to unyielding reality, hard sciences are the way to go. As for knowing how to read and write, Jesus, if you haven't learned that in high school, there is no hope for you. Learn an actual skill.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 02 2021, @07:52AM
It is telling that you cite high school as where basic literacy should be learned. Functional education systems cover that in grade school.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 03 2021, @01:48AM
If everyone did humanities we would have to have the argument about Nazi's being socialist every damn week.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 02 2021, @03:26AM
Nah, the problem is with our greedy society that only values knowledge that can be used to extract economic value. We are going to lose so much culture and head towards the Eloi and Morlocks.
Ideally we would have much more flexible employment and encourage broader education to uplift all of humanity instead of squeezing the most efficiency out of the stones. Personally I prefer a more resilient society with more people having wider skillsets.
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Monday August 02 2021, @02:18PM (5 children)
As an engineer, there are definitely days when I regret my degree. Most likely a symptom of "grass is greener", but I really like working with my hands and most days in my mid-career position is meetings, spreadsheets or powerpoint. I could have been earning money much earlier in life by going into the trades and potentially be working for myself.
Always easy to romanticize an alternate life, particularly when looking back. When I went into school, I didn't foresee my father receiving early retirement from GM and starting his own small CNC business. I'm sure alternate universe Rich is typing a similar message about his lack of a formal engineering degree.
(Score: 2) by sgleysti on Monday August 02 2021, @03:15PM (4 children)
I'm earlier in my engineering career and still do design and test work, which I love. However, it seems that more senior engineers are stuck in meetings all day. What the heck? Why is it structured like this? Presumably you'd want good experienced people doing the work itself...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 02 2021, @06:14PM (2 children)
Sure, but you also want the experienced people overseeing the work of others and doing the planning. We techies like to dump on meetings and management a lot, but believe it or not there is a lot of value in much of it that isn't so obvious from the trenches.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 03 2021, @01:50AM (1 child)
*and a lot of shit.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by khallow on Tuesday August 03 2021, @02:21PM
Oh look, a reason to have good managers, eh?
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Monday August 02 2021, @07:56PM
The trick is knowing what you want and driving for it. If you are honest with yourself and your boss, most companies will support your development into an individual contributor. Even then you need to be honest about where you want to contribute; subject matter experts can work independently but get pulled into every meeting on the planet. I'm not thrilled with the technical tasks I have, so I'm okay with a more project management career track.
The Peter Principle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle) was written as a satire, but I suspect most people on SN will agree that it does occur in practice. Particularly in the USA, the culture is to continue upward advancement until you are incapable. It is hard not to follow that path; if you find a position you enjoy and refuse promotions, it will be difficult for your boss to provide you pay raises. Until I am financially independent I feel the upward career path is the most stable and profitable option for me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 01 2021, @09:17PM
I thought by then everybody was on to this scam. Save your money for the kid's preschool..
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 01 2021, @10:19PM
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 01 2021, @10:41PM (5 children)
They regret living in a shithole country where their degrees cost them as much as the house they grew up in, even though their parents’ and/or grandparents’ degrees cost them less than an iPhone, in some cases *collectively* less than a single iPhone.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 02 2021, @12:57AM (4 children)
You don't really understand inflation, do you?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 02 2021, @03:17AM
And you don't get that inflation us deliberately created in order to prevent the lower classes from escaping poverty. There's no reason to have never ending inflation other than to steal from people too poor to be able to be properly invested.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 02 2021, @04:45AM (2 children)
Obviously, it is you who do not understand “inflation,” because tuition at the University of California in the 1960’s was $0 and $0*i^n for any values of either i or n is still fucking ZERO.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 02 2021, @04:14PM (1 child)
Thank the Republicans for that or more specifically, Regan.
https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/free-college-was-once-the-norm-all-over-america/ [peoplesworld.org]
But the uneducated still in love with getting fucked in the ass by the party they keep voting in.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 02 2021, @06:16PM
Yeah fuck that ghoulish racist Reagan, what a joke. He may be in the running for Best Anti-Christ, charismatic smile hiding death, destruction, and greed. Sure sure he may have been a useful idiot, still a racist scumbag that went along with it all and he fucked up CA with his rightwing lunacy.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 01 2021, @10:52PM
And I've got a college degree to prove it.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 02 2021, @12:53AM (5 children)
This doesn't say as much about college as it does that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. "I hate my job. I should have studied XXX." "I should have married little Suzie Rottencrotch." "I should have bought Google stock when it was $5/share."
The title is horribly misleading as well. Only 12% regretted their major. It doesn't say 2/3rds regret college, but that they regret the debt they accrued. Well no shit. I regret all the shit I bought on my credit card when I can't pay it off every month.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 02 2021, @03:07AM (3 children)
Yes, and there is a hell of a lot of difference between 50k of debt and an Engineering degree vs. 50k of debt and a comparative religious studies degree.
One of those two degrees guarantees a salary sufficient to wipe out the 50k of debt fairly quickly, the other degree promises lots of nights waiting tables for tips.
--
'Zumi often mods "actual interesting, germane, and relevant point" as troll.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 02 2021, @06:08AM (1 child)
Perhaps, but there's only so many of those jobs around. My wife's cousin is married to a man that got a degree in engineering and then failed to manage his way into industry. He's doing OK, but the job he has didn't require any degrees. He effectively lost years of work experience and has whatever fees it cost him to get the degree.
So, perhaps being smug about this isn't the greatest thing in the world. With wealth concentration in the US, you can't just assume that if somebody gets degree X that they're going into field X, and with degrees like engineering, they're damn near worthless in other fields due to the tight focus on niche skills that hardly anybody else uses.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday August 03 2021, @02:27PM
Wealth concentration is completely irrelevant to this discussion. You couldn't rationally make that assumption anyway. And those engineering niche skills are pretty valuable in other fields.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 02 2021, @07:59PM
And, another perfect example of an "actual interesting, germane, and relevant point" being modded troll above.
--
'Zumi often mods "actual interesting, germane, and relevant point" as troll.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by johaquila on Monday August 02 2021, @05:58AM
The issue is that it's not like that in most other countries. Higher education in the US is completely overpriced and often even results in poor learning outcomes.
Higher education has traditionally been rather cheap: Most highly qualified scientists are idealists who will work for very moderate pay if you offer them a secure lifetime position with academic freedom and a reasonable balance between teaching and research. You attract the best not so much by paying them more but by shifting the balance further to research. They are also prepared to accept a lot of the inconveniences that come with a cheap workplace, such as dilapidated houses. In the year when I studied at Cambridge (UK) almost all the buildings I had lectures in were visibly converted from other use and in very poor shape. The computer lab was located in the former dinosaur hall of a museum. There was a temporary ceiling; above it, construction workers were removing asbestos using loud machinery. The computers themselves were a wild assortment of early microcomputers and terminals connected to a single UNIX server. The server's load was displayed on a repurposed computer screen installed in view of all users. We had to monitor it continuously, because when it got too much, the server crashed and everyone's unsaved work was lost.
The higher education market in the US is plagued by perverse incentives that cause its product to be overpriced. Just some points off the top of my head:
- The customers do not immediately pay themselves. The money comes from their parents or from loans. This works because higher education is seen as a good investment, which it historically was. (In the US it no longer is, because the lion's share of its costs has nothing to do with academics, as explained by the next points.)
- Universities are in a tough and expensive competition based to a large part on advertising (including extremely expensive prestigious sports teams), luxury, and other things that have absolutely nothing to do with academics.
- Universities compete with each other for the most prestigious professors based on salaries and personal budgets.
- Textbook publishers have devised a scheme to milk students further; some of the greedy professors attracted/created by the previous point are willing to support these schemes for a tiny share of the profit.
- Universities compete primarily for solvent students, not so much for talented students.
- Universities cater to students who lack independence and self-sufficiency. Universities used to offer cheap courses that provided learning opportunities to aspiring researchers who jumped into the cold water when coming from school and immediately started research -- by independently researching their own educations with the help of high-quality but relatively cheap resources such as libraries, boring lectures held by experts, and talking things through with colleagues and tutors. This has been replaced by spoon-feeding of information.
- In the traditional system, there was primarily one big exam week at the end of the entire degree course. It was the student's responsibility to get to the point where they could pass. Good universities had large failure rates and maintained them that way. Now there is a strong pressure to let almost everyone pass. The big exam at the end has largely been replaced by lots of tiny little exams on the way. This allows students to forget most of their acquired knowledge immediately after the exam and results in a far lower qualification of graduates.
- The costs have become so extreme that by just adding a reasonable percentage on top, universities can make a huge profit. This creates an incentive not to fix the problem, and an incentive to offer bullshit degrees.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by ledow on Monday August 02 2021, @09:06AM (2 children)
"A college education is still considered a pathway to higher lifetime earnings and gainful employment for Americans"
And there's your problem.
If you got your degree expecting it to raise your salary and pay back your student loans? The only thing I can suggest is that maybe you need to go back to school first.
If you got your degree because you were interested in the subject, wanted to study it further, and considered maybe going into academia for it, then maybe you won't have been so disappointed - even if you later decide not to go into academia.
It's an almost uniquely American trait to think that college/university is solely there to get you a better job later in life. It's a sad misapprehension.
Do I have a degree? Yes.
Does that degree relate to my career? No.
Does it prove that I can spend years studying difficult, wide-ranging, high-level, often-boring topics for years on end just because I needed to? Yes.
Does it prove that I can do ANY related job whatsoever? No.
Education is for education's sake, to improve your brain. It's not to get a job. Having a brain helps you get a job. But it does not guarantee one in any way, shape or form.
If you can't afford the gamble not to pay off, don't gamble it.
If you're *only* going to college "to get a better job", rethink your life.
If you're going to college because you love the subject and see all your future career paths down that road, great. Good for you. Just don't expect it to open every door automatically.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 02 2021, @03:38PM
…and especially in places like SN, people autofellate over getting STEM degrees almost exclusively because it got them good jobs, not because they were particularly passionate science, math, or even engineering, but just because they just figured “tech”=“money.” This has poisoned even interesting STEM fields with tedious, shallow brogrammers whose toxic jobs creating weapons of math destruction all around us are doing absolutely fuck-all for STEM except creating a feedback-loop where their bullshit that used to be conveniently isolated in the business schools with the MBAs is driving curricula to produce even more mindless brogrammers.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by khallow on Monday August 02 2021, @10:29PM
The bit about "maybe going into academia for it" gives the game away. You're navel-gazing. Education is not about recycling knowledge back into academia. It's about learning knowledge for your life and everything you do in it. Your job is an important part of your life even if you're just "working to live". It's entirely reasonable to expect something both as costly and valuable as education to do something for your career just like it does every other aspect of your life.
If it's not helping you with that job thing, then it's not improving your brain either. None of this stuff is separate from each other. I believe it completely impossible to educate a person without making them a better worker in the process.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 02 2021, @11:16AM (1 child)
Whatever happened to apprenticeship? College is obviously needed for jobs like doctors or engineers, but is it really needed for jobs like business management, accounting, or technology?
Instead of large student debt, wouldn't it be better to work for a short period of time (i.e. a few years) for a lower wage as an apprentice, learn the skills while working, then move up into a decent salary when you've completed your on the job training? Of course this would require organizations to rethink things in relation to providing the training. You'd have more dedicated and loyal employees or at least create terms of employment agreements in exchange for on the job training. Organizations save money on apprenticeships doing the lower level work as they learn the skills needed to advance.
And trade schools? We are desperately in need of competent skilled trades people (plumbers, electricians, carpenters, masons, etc). A close relative went into a trade school in plumbing after High School. We made fun of him for it at first, but he has been making almost double our salaries for years. Sure trades can be hard physical work, and not everyone is cut out for that, but some are and could really create a good life for society and themselves with no college debt.
(Score: 2) by srobert on Monday August 02 2021, @05:22PM
An apprenticeship with the operating engineers was a very important part of my path. After high school, I progressed from non-union minimum wage jobs in fast food, and sales calls, to Teamster temp labor positions. I then got into the apprenticeship, which led me to journeyman status in the operating engineer's trade. That positioned me to work my way to a degree in mechanical engineering.
The apprenticeship was a critical link in that chain. As a union tradesman, I worked my way through college without loans. No regrets.
(Score: 1) by jman on Monday August 02 2021, @03:19PM
Could I have made more money with that piece of paper? Maybe. Not really a corporate type, though so the extra funds would have just paid for medical bills due to stress and therapy.
Instead, 40+ years later, I'm comfy, and happy with what I do.
So, the score stands: college debt, zero; avocation and vocation matching, one.
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Wednesday August 04 2021, @03:00AM
I spent $12k to go to a bullshit online school and get an associates degree as an adult. I paid $12k to learn to put max 6 words per bullet in PowerPoint.
I regret that I had to spend $12k to check a box so a human could see and consider my resume. It's paid for itself many times over, but it still makes me angry.