Meh. This is (mostly) the students' and the families' who abet their stupid decisions fault.
If you go to an in-state community college and then matriculate to an in-state university in my state the total cost of college is (~$4500 for 2 years of CC living at home + ~$25000 for 2 years of closest to home in-state school) ~$30000 + the cost of living at home.
Meanwhile people continue to whine about sending their kids to school in places where they wrack up that much in debt per academic year before accounting for housing and travel expenses.
If you don't want to be in debt and you aren't rich or dirt poor make reasonable decisions and stop whining. If you can afford to replace your mini-van with a Prius, you can probably afford to send your child to college, especially if you save the difference during the CC years.
The real issue is that people feel entitled to the best schools and will so make absurd decisions to enable it regardless of what their child is studying or how well they actually do in college.
And all of the above said, I do agree that college is increasing in price more than it should. I think it's because research and lifestyle costs are getting pushed into tuition combined with state legislatures who don't want to support colleges in their state budgets that are really doing it. This has many pernicious effects, like transforming the college meal plan into a clone of your closest mall's food court.
Wow. I like you blamed this entire mess on students and parents.
>>The real issue is that people feel entitled to the best schools and will so make absurd decisions to enable it
Nonsense. People want to send their kids to the best schools because the best schools are the gatekeepers to the upper class. Someone who graduates from an Ivy League school gets to build a network with affluent alumni and has a high chance of landing a job that pays six-figures right off the bat. Someone who goes to a merely good state school though? There is a very good chance they won't even find a job after graduation.
You exaggerate. Mostly it's people who don't do well at their colleges that have trouble. At Ivy Leagues it's fewer people because they have the worst grade inflation and don't accept many borderline students.
For state schools there are lots of people at the margin - IE they don't do well enough to really reap a benefit from their degree.
Maybe getting good grades at a public won't get you 6 figures in your first job, but in most fields you aren't going to get that from an Ivy League, either.
But if you do well or choose a good major your in state school will be fine - you'll get a job, and it'll pay alright.
This is 3 or 4 times as true if you're planning on being something like a Nurse or a Teacher and less true if you're planning on being a hedge fund manager, but frankly if I were a student I'd be happy for the future hedge fund managers of the world to go somewhere else.
I have a degree from a cow college. I'm very good at what I do. But I'm at a disadvantage: my network doesn't include people who are valuable to know. The dudes who started Dropbox are dudes friends of mine knew in college. People like that aren't in my rolodex. That's what these colleges are for: social entry into that class of mover shaker, be it MIT for tech or an Ivy for politics. This stuff is the difference between having doors open to you and needing a crowbar to get anywhere. I happen to be both good enough to demand attention and savvy enough recognize when there's an opening, but I get that getting where I am now has been a luck-based thing.
And that's a tech degree, mind. I get the feeling you really have no idea how hard it is to find a livable-wage job if aren't in tech or cleaning bedpans. The idea that fundamentally irrational people - teenagers! - should be expected to make decisions to actively limit their upside based on a downside risk they literally cannot contextualize is a failure to understand humans.
I think it's fine to expect teenagers to make decisions.
The real problem is that we enable them with low expectations. Give students high expectations and teach them how to evaluate their options instead of giving them tripe, rule of thumb, and aspiration without realism or planning.
(Also, I do know people who've gotten 4 year degrees and then done things like become correction officers or pharmacy technicians (which don't require degrees).)
That said, there is something to be said for luck. And paying for entry isn't the only way to make connections. It's just the most disgusting, and part of the reason people think certain things resemble giant fraternities.
Hope is not lost in this situation - you just have to work at it more. I'm a stellar mind who also went to public schools for undergrad and grad, but I focused on self-development and networking after.
I went from $50k a year to likely over $120k (that is in negotiation) in the span of 1 1/2 years of hard effort &learning.
I too racked up lots of debt from school, about $200k total. I am forced to focus on money because of this. I made the decision to go all in on developing my career & making the decisions I deferred until after grad school.
> Someone who goes to a merely good state school though? There is a very good chance they won't even find a job after graduation.
You can't underestimate the psychological value people put on attending even just good colleges in your state, even when doing so isn't financially sound.
"Someone who graduates from an Ivy League school gets to build a network with affluent alumni and has a high chance of landing a job that pays six-figures right off the bat"
Absolutely not the case
So if I graduate anything from an Ivy League I'm getting a 6 figure job? No. Especially when fresh out of the school.
This is an idealization of schools in detriment of personal effort.
After some years of experience SCHOOL DOESN'T MATTER It doesn't. Really
A better school certainly helps in that initial step but it is more clear than ever it's not worth it
>>There are always places that won't hire you because of your school, that's usually a red flag.
The point is that there are many more places who will hire you simply because you have an Ivy League degree than there are places who won't even consider you because you are Ivy League. Whereas the exact opposite is true for local schools and community colleges.
Heck, forget the USA. Having a degree from a place like Harvard will pretty much guarantee you at least an interview anywhere in the world.
>Nonsense. People want to send their kids to the best schools because the best schools are the gatekeepers to the upper class. Someone who graduates from an Ivy League school gets to build a network with affluent alumni and has a high chance of landing a job that pays six-figures right off the bat. Someone who goes to a merely good state school though? There is a very good chance they won't even find a job after graduation.
If this is the case then these people need to quit whining. It's their choice - this is like saying that you need to mortgage your house to join a yacht or country club so you can make connections. Some people just have to work harder than others to make it, life isn't fair cry me a river. Many people from cheaper institutions are better at making connections because they excel in the personality and charm dept (thus they have the advantage). Is that fair? Many poorer people make it big because they are smarter or luckier... Is that fair? Your argument just shows how blatantly ridiculous this is.
People are complaining that education is so expensive and yet they are going to the most expensive school is ridiculous. This is like complaining that your Mercedes was too expensive when you could have bought a more reliable and efficient car for less money.
You are absolutely right about the relative value of community college, but you pointed out the major problem: community colleges are not thought of highly at all, even though 2 years of CC credited to a bachelor's degree at a more prestigious university counts just the same.
I'm not sure how CC's get over the stigma attached to them, but it really needs to happen. They are good value.
Because when there are fewer jobs than candidates, artificial distinctions are used to judge them, and rent seekers exploit that to extract all the economic surplus.
This is basic stuff, people. If everyone is going to college, everyone should know this.
> Because when there are fewer jobs than candidates, artificial distinctions are used to judge them, and rent seekers exploit that to extract all the economic surplus.
But that isn't what is happening in this situation. If Candidate A attends 2 years of community college and then transfers those credits to State College, his resume will still say "Bachelor's Degree - State College" the same as Candidate B who attended State College for a full 4 years.
It doesn't have anything to do with job candidates, it is purely the psychological aspect of not attending a big state uni for your first two years in college.
> This is basic stuff, people. If everyone is going to college, everyone should know this.
I'm not sure if this is snark, but is it really basic stuff for people coming out of college to know about rent seeking? I guess in an ideal world...
Maybe the community colleges in your area are different. I attend a state run college which gets a number of these types of transfer students from a few nearby community colleges. Even at my school the standard of education is not particularly high but the transfers from community colleges regularly drop out or need remedial classes because they paid half the price and got one tenth the education.
It depends a lot on the field. At my community college, the STEM classes had standards. Totally incompetent people disappeared after a semester or two of going up the coursework chain. Meanwhile, the liberal arts professors had to deal with people that couldn't write a coherent sentence if their life depended on it, even in advanced classes. However, I constantly read similarly demented and completely mangled english sentences written by graduates of the local public four year university.
I can't really recommend community college for STEM, since at least in my original state, you had to start as a freshman at university even if you had an associate's degree in science that was "guaranteed" to transfer for credit. (The engineering department's justification was "we'll accept your credits, but you still have to take everything over again.") It's a good way to get screwed, and community colleges offer very few second year science and math classes. (The liberal arts people had much less difficulty transferring.)
However, I did learn my calculus and sciences very well because I had excellent teachers that I could ask questions of if I needed to. My physics professor had been teaching for over four decades--and with a small class size of around ~20, I had plenty of opportunity to absorb the material and understand it completely. As a result, I now find myself tutoring my buddy at a $60,000/year private tech college, because my knowledge of the subjects is sound and the quality of the teaching at his school is completely terrible. Interestingly, the homework assignments and test questions are near identical in terms of subject matter covered and difficulty--the main difference is that the private tech college curves, which my professors at my community college were explicitly forbidden from doing.
In my state the universities must accept equivalent course credit from in-system community colleges. And within my own city it's widely accepted that 1st and 2nd year calculus classes at community college will have vastly better quality of teaching than you'd get taking them at the 4 year. (This reputation doesn't apply to other subjects.)
Makes it a lot easier to get personalized letters of recommendation, too. My first year science and math professors all remember me, since the class sizes were small and enthusiastic students are easily noticed. I doubt that would have been the case at a university, where I'd have been crammed in with several hundred people.
It probably isn't obvious from my original post, but I agree with you.
In my community college, there were a number of professors with incredibly low standards for academic work. However, I tend to think this is a reflection on the level of preparedness of students coming out of high school.
The issue is, and maybe it is sad that it is this way, but it is probably better for people to end up with 1/10th of the education at 1/2 of the price and end up with less debt overall due to what they end up doing with their degrees.
And if you apply yourself, you'll learn no matter where you go. Heck, you'll find plenty on YC who advocate skipping school entirely, so community is a step up from that.
Also, most people at my school are either really wealthy or really poor. This is because the middle class isn't poor enough to get financial aid, but not rich enough to pay tuition.
Are you arguing that it would be a good thing to limit the best education to the richest elite? Coming from a free education country this sounds like a very strange idea...
No. I think private schools are destructive to the fabric of democracy. I also think the 'best education' line is a fallacy propagated to serve the interests of the rich elite and resolve their cognitive dissonance.
If you go to an in-state community college and then matriculate to an in-state university in my state the total cost of college is (~$4500 for 2 years of CC living at home + ~$25000 for 2 years of closest to home in-state school) ~$30000 + the cost of living at home.
Meanwhile people continue to whine about sending their kids to school in places where they wrack up that much in debt per academic year before accounting for housing and travel expenses.
If you don't want to be in debt and you aren't rich or dirt poor make reasonable decisions and stop whining. If you can afford to replace your mini-van with a Prius, you can probably afford to send your child to college, especially if you save the difference during the CC years.
The real issue is that people feel entitled to the best schools and will so make absurd decisions to enable it regardless of what their child is studying or how well they actually do in college.
And all of the above said, I do agree that college is increasing in price more than it should. I think it's because research and lifestyle costs are getting pushed into tuition combined with state legislatures who don't want to support colleges in their state budgets that are really doing it. This has many pernicious effects, like transforming the college meal plan into a clone of your closest mall's food court.