"College conspiracy bubble about to burst"

[MatildaGage]

:rolleyes: National Inflation Association (http://www.inflation.us/collegebubbleburst.html)

"...the college education system is a huge bubble that will soon collapse and destroy the lives of millions of Americans....
"...the oft-repeated statistic that Americans with college degrees earn $1 million more in lifetime income than high school graduates without a degree. ... will prove once and for all if indeed this so-called statistic is true or just a myth. ..."

It's not just a statistic, it's a so-called statistic!

"... students were brainwashed into believing that if they were lucky enough to be blessed with the privilege to get half a million dollars into debt to obtain a college degree, they will be on a path to riches and have a guaranteed successful career; whereas those who don't attend college are destined to be failures in life. ..."

If that isn't enough for ya, we wind up with the infamous, "just a piece of paper" argument!!:mad:

"All they have is a piece of paper called a college degree, that is rapidly declining in value even faster than tuitions are skyrocketing in price."

[AmandaM]

My liberal arts bias asks why it is that college education has to be regarded as some kind of vocational training?

[IMST]

While denigrating the general value of a college education is absolutely BS, there is a tiny bit of truth hidden in there: The rate of tuition increases clearly isn't sustainable (although to my bafflement, I went and checked my alma mater's current tuition and found to my astonishment it's almost identical to 10 years ago). I suspect that there will be a point in the near future where the rapid increases in tuition will become a big issue.

[sadhatter]

You know what, i am living proof that the op is wrong.

Smart guy, but out of high school i got stuck in a well paying job in a niche industry ( call center.) things were awesome when they had the money to throw around. My 10.50 ( at the time.) was heavily supplemented with bonuses of all kinds, and advancement was a real and attainable possiblity.

Problem being after 3 or so years, the bubble burst, to coin a phrase. Bonuses were almost non existant, and the ability to advance was soley determined by being young enough to be easily replaceable at the drop of a hat. ( many positions that were reserved for those who had been there for over a year, were going to 17 year old new hires, which ended up getting fired or demoted on a 6 month or so basis. )

When crunch time really hit, and the layoffs started, i found myself standing , metaphorically with nothing but my **** in my hands. The company refused to give references ( to anyone, not just myself.), so i was thrust back out into the working world, with nothing more on my resume that could be proven, than i went in with.

Luckily i worked long enough to get funding for school, and even now, i can see a much brighter future. After 6 years, i will be able to work in any number of pharmacy related fields, ( planning on going for full pharmacist. Starting out in college because it shaves 2 years off of when i go to university.). Sure there is a bit of an investment ( my funding covers only college.) but my life is no longer held at the whim of my last employer.

[paiute]

"half a million dollars into debt to obtain a college degree"?

No wonder the author is mad. Some college charged him $125,000 a year to attend.

[MatildaGage]

My responses to, "It's just a piece of paper."

A) How do you know if the experience of getting the degree is useless--nothing more than a valueless piece of paper--if you haven't had that experience yourself?

B) So is a birth certificate, but you have to do something big to get it. (Yes it can be faked, but that's a non sequitur since we are only talking about real college experiences being useless, not fake ones.)

[Travis]

Who says he didn't go to college? I went to college and it was largely a waste of time for many people who were way more concerned with partying than studying. When they got out they got cushy jobs anyways because they had gotten into the right Fraternities or other social clubs and proceeded to run their new companies right into the ground. Which didn't faze them, they got new cushy jobs, because people that know the right people are never punished for being idiots.



Remember when capitalism was a meritocracy? Those were the days.

[Muldur]

The general point about the relative lack of value of a college degree has some merit. Remember when we were all told that IT was the new Manufacturing (to use an obvious example)? Now IT is outsourced just like manufacturing to Third World dungheaps for 1/10 the US wage or less.

Technology and industrial development have made and are making large-scale applications of labor effectively obsolete. There are no more mass job opportunities no matter WHAT skill you have. Either the job market is small because of lack of demand (the world doesn't need 100s of millions of new doctors), or it has been replaced by large-scale implimentation of "labor saving/enhancing" (read labor REPLACEMENT) technology.

[TriangleMan]

My liberal arts bias asks why it is that college education has to be regarded as some kind of vocational training?

Agreed. At what point did going to college change from it being an environment about learning to this emphasis on getting high paying jobs.

If you're going to college looking to land a high paying job then make sure you major in something that has a good chance of accomplishing that (engineering, medicine, finance). Don't get yourself into debt taking a BA in psychology because you're expecting a $70,000 job when you get out of college. If you're going to college out of a desire to study and learn more about a particular field then definitely do so but be realistic about the employment opportunities once you're done and manage your debt load accordingly. Not everyone can go to grad school or become a professor.

I remember at my university a psychology professor mentioned that the department had over 500 applications for grad school but they had only eight slots. I felt bad knowing that probably hundreds of students weren't going to move on in their chosen field. :(

[TriangleMan]

Who says he didn't go to college? I went to college and it was largely a waste of time for many people who were way more concerned with partying than studying. When they got out they got cushy jobs anyways because they had gotten into the right Fraternities or other social clubs and proceeded to run their new companies right into the ground. Which didn't faze them, they got new cushy jobs, because people that know the right people are never punished for being idiots.

That is interesting because that is almost the exact opposite of my university experience. Most of the heavy partiers got weeded out by first or second year because they started flunking courses. After graduation some did okay and some did not but no one landed a big cushy job because of social connections. Guess some universities are different than others.

[Aepervius]

My experience match yours. The heavy partier mostly got the boot, and the few I still hang out have much less cushier job than I do. But there are exception and those stand out so much as being blinding to the rest.

That said if I had connections or parents with connections, I would have used them too...

PS: I paid something like 1000 francs (170 euro) per years to go into university. And not a bad one. I like public education, really.

[Rasmus]

Who says he didn't go to college? I went to college and it was largely a waste of time for many people who were way more concerned with partying than studying. When they got out they got cushy jobs anyways because they had gotten into the right Fraternities or other social clubs and proceeded to run their new companies right into the ground. Which didn't faze them, they got new cushy jobs, because people that know the right people are never punished for being idiots.

How does that describe a waste of time?

They made the connections that they needed, after all.

[The Fallen Serpent]

College is not a waste but I do agree that we need to reevaluate it. There are two reasons you should go in my opinion: A love of education (in general or a specific field); preperation for a specific career (engineering, medicine, research, ect). In my opinion the problem is that we encourage many people to go to college to find themselves. That is perfectly fine but I do not think that is the best course for everyone. You can find yourself anywhere. Take a year or two to travel a foreign continent. That could be just as cheap and probably just as broadening. Get into the work force. A number of my friends went to college for 2 to 4 years and basically came out high schoolers still. They did not go in with a goal, just to meet expectations that college was the next step. This is not so much a problem if your family can support that, but for the less than wealthy that were the majority of my friends a $20k debt and a communications degree did not improve their lot in life. Vocational schooling is a very valid and not at all lesser alternative. Welders and plumbers are paid very well. They also cannot be outsourced, at least yet.

Personally I never went to college. Though I would have loved to. The problem is 10 years ago I had no idea what I wanted to do beyond just study things of interest. While a degree in mythology would have been enjoyable my family could not support it. There was government assistance available but the additional costs did not seem managable at the time. Now however I am considering going to college to take up some engineering classes. I know now that I enjoy the work. I know I hate office management and general business administration. It is never too late to go and some of us take a really long detour to figure out what it is we want to do career wise. Kudos to those who have it figured out in high school though. My grandma went to college for her software engineering degree in her 50s. She kept up college classes into her mid sixties for certifications and refreshers. She is going to retire in a year or two (early 70s) and does not regret at all the time she spent in college. She will probably take it up again in her retirement. There is a wine tasting class at the local community college she really wants to take when she has the time.

ETA: As others mentioned above, social networking is valid preperation for work in college. Personal enrichment I would place under love of education. There is nothing wrong with taking a class or two periodically with no plans to earn a degree.

[Chaos]

How does that describe a waste of time?

They made the connections that they needed, after all.

But apparently the time spent actually studying seems to have been wasted.

If turning out heaps of well-connected clueless yuppies is the goal, there are easier and cheaper ways to do that than college.

[The Fallen Serpent]

http://www.smbc-comics.com/comics/20110515.gif (http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2246)

[Jeff Corey]

http://www.smbc-comics.com/comics/20110515.gif (http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2246)

Nice . I had a student who bragged about never buying the book. I guess my lectures, powerpoints and daily quizzes weren't enough to compensate for that.
He earned a D.
For a course that cost someone about $1800.

[TheClaw]

The National Inflation Association released their college video online yesterday. It will be interesting to watch the whole thing through (it's an hour long).

In the article from the OP they write:
NIA believes that the future of college education is over the Internet and that Americans in the future will be able to receive a better quality education from the best professors from all around the world at only a fraction of the cost of a traditional brick and mortar college education.

They go on to assert that online learning will be just as effective in the future while remaining less expensive. This is something that can be tested or at least checked. They also claim that the "college-industrial complex" (why does every complex have to be "industrial") is holding online learning back. I don't think that's testable so everyone will have to just form their own opinion.

[Lowpro]

Who says he didn't go to college? I went to college and it was largely a waste of time for many people who were way more concerned with partying than studying. When they got out they got cushy jobs anyways because they had gotten into the right Fraternities or other social clubs and proceeded to run their new companies right into the ground. Which didn't faze them, they got new cushy jobs, because people that know the right people are never punished for being idiots.



Remember when capitalism was a meritocracy? Those were the days.

I think for many people a degree falls into this category. Not so for my particular degree, Biology and Molecular Biology. The classes never ended with my degree. College works best for people who continue studying instead of getting a cushy job =X

[Uncle Otto]

My liberal arts bias asks why it is that college education has to be regarded as some kind of vocational training?

I have to agree with you-----when I got my Bachelor's degree, I had to take things like science classes, literature,history and others. I mean yes my major classes were career oriented, but I feel I still got a good rounded education out of it. It was never intended to be a trades school.