11 replies to this topic

[duke_Qa]

Found this article to be quite interesting. I think I recall someone mentioned here on the forums that they had £200'000 worth of loans after five years of education, which sounds to me as a horrible horrible waste of money for the measly opportunities one get out of it.

I’m not alone in this sentiment. A widespread public skepticism is fueled by poor short-term job prospects. It’s not surprising that 57 percent of those surveyed by the Pew Research Center said that higher education doesn’t provide a good value and 75 percent said it’s just too expensive for most people. As young people attempt to enter the workforce and face an unemployment rate twice that of the majority of the general population, you have to take pause and examine what’s happened to create this bleak situation.


After World War Two, employment was plentiful. People who wanted a decent job in manufacturing or the white-collar sector could find one and stay there for 30 years. About one-third of private-sector workers were guaranteed union benefits, healthcare (even in retirement) and defined-benefit pensions. Productivity was on the rise and consumers drove the economy because they had plenty of disposable income and little debt.

That era, called the “Great Prosperity” by former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, ended in roughly 1977. Over the past 30 years, collective bargaining, decent manufacturing jobs and guaranteed benefits began to disappear. I remember that time because I was just getting out of college in the middle of a nasty recession and took a low-paying job myself.


[...]

Yet the depletion of household wealth and earnings in recent years has made the gap between college bills and incomes even wider. While consumer inflation has soared some 107 percent since 1986 (through late 2010), college tuition has ballooned 467 percent.

Why the huge disparity between consumer prices and higher education bills?

Colleges benefited from a huge influx of students — the children of baby boomers — so they didn’t see their enrollment numbers decline significantly. The opposite was true; leading them to believe that there was a robust demand for their services. Universities kept investing in bricks and mortar and hiring professors while raising their prices to pay for it all. At the same time, states dialed back on their funding for public universities.

Then the catastrophic meltdown of 2008 skewered the economics of paying for college. Those who lost home equity had less collateral for home-equity loans or cash-outs. Bond returns were dismal and stocks had a bum decade.

It seems to be a quite good summary of the situation right now. Universities with their noses in the sky believe they are the alpha-omega within education, but we are getting more and more of our knowledge from the internet, thus making them redundant

[Copaman]

I think you might have possibly been thinking of me with all that debt. I'm already 20K USD in debt, and I just finished my Freshman year. I will be in school for 5 years, in order to get 2 degrees. With some help from my parents, if I'm lucky, I'll only be 175-200K USD in debt by the time I graduate.

Thankfully, I'm in a cream-of-the-crop honors program at a top-35 university, graduating with two degrees. The program itself has over 99% job placement, so I'm not terribly worried about that, nor am I worried about upwards mobility after entering the workforce. Even after only 1 year of school, I've had an incredible learning experience and done some great things that most people won't do until their senior year, if at all.

I'm not concerned about getting a job or succeeding once I'm in the workforce. I'm concerned about the giant reeking heap of debt I'll have to carry with me for decades. In order to be debt-from-school free in a timely manner, I'm going to have to land a very well paying job (somewhat concerned about that) and then move up quickly. I fear that by the time I'm halfway through school, I'll feel like I'm drowning in debt.

I think that in my particular case, the cost of Uni is somewhat justified. 40K per year is a ton of money. If the cost of the school was more like 30K I would say that it is justified, honestly.

Our tuition was increased by about 3 or 4% this past year, the lowest increase in several years. Apparently, the sum of all students' tuition isn't even enough to fund the school for an entire year; more like half a year... the rest comes from grants or something like that. Given that the rate of inflation was severely slowed here by the "Great Recession," the relative increase in tuition is truly higher than 3 or 4%.

WTB bubble burst soon pl0x

Edited by Copaman, 08 June 2011 - 02:04 PM.
20K in debt at a 40K/yr school and I still make spelling and grammar mistakes.

[Phil]

That's fucking insane! My yearly tuition fees amount to $1500 at the most.

Of course mine is a public university and as such funded by taxes obviously, but I'll finish my whole education entirely debt-free. As far as I'm aware there are no "real" private universities in Switzerland anyway and most of our public universities have a pretty good reputation and decent requirements for students. Future employment isn't guaranteed, but very likely if you have somewhat good grades.

However, our student-teacher ratio for law school is ridiculous. Something like 1 teacher for 70 students. As such you don't get much personal support and need to figure out everything more or less by yourself.

[Puppeteer]

UK tuition fees are set to go up to 174% for 2012 applicants. While £9000 p.a. does not sound a lot in comparison, we pay our taxes to cover these costs. Same with the NHS, explaining why there's such a furore over devious charges such as prescription charges or NHS dentists. Our taxes are a lot higher to cover these costs. Parents cannot afford to start setting up large 'college-funds' alongside 'pension-funds' when they have to pay their taxes and cope with higher living costs. Something's got to give. Unfortunately, the Conservatives (and Labour) are set on leaning to increasing point-of-service charges, and not taxes. Not for the NHS - just for universities, mind you. Andrew Lansley wouldn't introduce POS charges. It's only the Liberal Democrats who are/were/are-theoretically-guaranteed-to-(with-crossed-fingers-behind-their-backs) higher tax brackets.

[Nertea]

College/university is only "worth it" if you have either a desire to pursue research or are trying to pursue a career that needs a degree (for example here, you can't get into highschool level teaching without a basic undergraduate degree). However, I still think it's useful. Technical schools and such are very effective at fast-tracking to a career, but lose out on the freedom of choice that I had when doing my B.Sc. I probably wouldn't have ended up where I am now if I hadn't screwed around and taken random courses in that period. Me being in Canada, I have a similar situation to Phil - my tuition for my M.Sc right now is about $4000 CDN per year, which is reasonably affordable. The cost of education in the US/UK always shocks me.

*Some* things that people go to school for are utterly strange to me, and I agree with duke that many of these can be self-taught via the Internet. For example, I've taught myself everything I know about programming and 3D without touching one of those digital design institutions (which here are prohibitively expensive at at least 15-20k per year).

However, regardless of how much we get from reading/watching tutorials, primary knowledge generation still tends to take place in universities, so we still very much need them. Maybe the emphasis on you-need-to-go-to-uni should be toned down, but people who end up doing relevant research don't start out that way and early-years uni is a good place for that to happen (where else is it going to?). Then you get trickle down of technology into corporations that actually make it useful, which still requires some level of training that I don't think you can get anywhere but a college or university.

My 2 cents.

[Vortigern]

Yep, my degree is going to be absolutely worthless. English Language and Linguistics, and it's not even going to be particularly good, largely because I spent a hefty chunk of the last three years pissing about and taking drugs. That part was definitely worth it, by the way. And it helps that my parents can afford to put me through university without dragging me into a shit-mountain of debt, so I'm going to be free and clear in about six weeks. Then I'm going to try and do something completely unrelated to my subject, and possibly even unrelated to even possessing a degree. I'm thinking blacksmith.

Higher education is a massive waste of time and money as it stands. Either the graduate job market needs to improve dramatically, or somehow university needs to improve its inherent value. But I can't think how that would happen.

[Copaman]

I am studying Materials Science & Engineering in a special program, as I noted above. After 4 years, I will have a Business Bachelor's with a concentration in MatSci; after 5, I will get an additional Bachelor's in Engineering for MatSci (accredited engineering).

My school has some great research opportunities too, so that's a good thing, as mentioned above.

I wish the government would subsidize higher education better, honestly. Especially for people going to the top universities - the people who are more than likely going to decide how America develops and progresses in the future. As someone has said, my parents have crap to pay for, they can't just sign their paychecks over to my education. They're trying to build their dream farm right now (a rant I'll save for later), and save for retirement, and try to save for my sister's education in 3 years, and try to help me pay for school, and still have a place to live, cars to drive, and stuff to eat...

Edited by Copaman, 08 June 2011 - 08:11 PM.

[Phil]

Curious, what are you studying, Copaman and Phil?

I'm studying law. Just finishing my second year now.
Obviously to become a lawyer, academic education is the only option. Then again, I probably would've gone to university anyway just for the sake of it. I really enjoy the atmosphere and I value my education highly.

What I don't understand is why a country would want to create a university system in which public ones are shitty and ignored on the job market and the private ones so ridiculously expensive that you basically sell your soul at the age of 20 - if you get in, that is. Clearly higher education should be open to the smart and willing no matter the social standing.

Also, why do you have such lousy job prospects as a graduate in the UK? Does that only count for people with business-wise "worthless" degrees (sorry Vort ) or most degrees? Do you suffer from degree inflation?

[Vortigern]

That's okay, Phil, I've long since resigned myself to the fact that my degree will be most valuable when laminated and used as a placemat on the dinner table.

The massive worthlessness of higher education in this country is almost entirely down to Tony Blair's Labour government. Soon after he was first elected, it was brought to the cabinet's attention that university graduates pay some £100'000 more in taxes over the course of a lifetime than non-graduates. So, naturally, TB and his braindead cronies assumed that the more graduates there were, the more money they would make in taxes, so they set the country a target of getting 50% of kids to university. However, they failed to take into account that graduates only earn more money then non-graduates when employed in graduate-level jobs, the number of which did not increase. So all the excess students found themselves with no suitable career options and £20k of debt on average. There was also the matter of the polytechnics, 'universities' that used to be specialist colleges and schools affiliated with the real universities, but then they were changed to have the same position as the old universities, but naturally weren't even close to the same level, so they've been playing catch-up ever since and draining the funding that once went to some of the best universities in the world, so now fees are going up to accommodate these shitty, pointless wastes of space that call themselves universities. Some of these places devalue the very word, believe me.

So yeah, two major problems with the British higher education system, yet for some reason nobody in government is willing to address them. The polytechnics have become the educational elephant in the room.

[duke_Qa]

Vort - Yeah, I only got (points from, got more education but no public recognition of that) a bachelor's degree from a rural college, and I can say that the title and papers are more fancy than what the study itself was, which wasn't much.
But it was a place to make contacts and get a basic education on the topic of media, so eh, not really high education. If I want something more I'll probably take a masters degree in "software programming", but I'm sick and tired of educations that focus more on research and report-writing than practical "get-your-hands-dirty" production, so probably won't happen.

I think you might have possibly been thinking of me with all that debt. I'm already 20K USD in debt, and I just finished my Freshman year. I will be in school for 5 years, in order to get 2 degrees. With some help from my parents, if I'm lucky, I'll only be 175-200K USD in debt by the time I graduate.

[...]

I think that in my particular case, the cost of Uni is somewhat justified. 40K per year is a ton of money. If the cost of the school was more like 30K I would say that it is justified, honestly.

Feth, the two years I had at one of the more expensive private schools in Norway cost about 18k per year, and that is considered too much by most up here(public is about $200 per year in administration taxes, with $17k given in loans, and 36% of that paid as stipend if you pass your studies). And minimum wage here is about what American engineers would get when done with school.
After five years of education I got a loan of about 50k, but if I used all my reserves I would only be about 3k in the red. And its not like Norway is coasting off on our oil revenues to support our education either. About 23% of Norway's GNP comes from the oil-sector, the rest comes from normal industry and business. I really wonder what makes all these universities around the world worth all the cash students are bleeding into them.

[Ash]

The real problem is even more apparent than Vort illustrated it:

The more people who have something that is a prerequisite for something else, the less valuable that first something is.

It's true in economics (the way quantitative easing shoves up inflation). It's true in any 'fad' (once everyone has it, it's not a fad anymore - it's mainstream). It's true in education, which pretty much is a fad nowadays.

In the UK, it goes like this:

Up to 16 years old, education is mandatory. That means (just about) 100% of the population have GCSEs. These are therefore worthless in selecting candidates as all the candidates have them.

Up to 18 years old, education is not mandatory, but is free and available to anyone. That means a high and still-rising proportion of the population have A-Levels. Which, if we're brutally honest, aren't very tough exams and get easier every year. These are therefore worthless as, because nearly all potential candidates have them (and the media propagating the fact that A-Levels are easy, so they're no account of aptitude), they don't narrow down the selection process. In addition, I have never seen a job advert that specified "A-level qualification" as a requirement.

18 to 21, you have uni. Which, socially, is fantastic. But academically, is a waste of money. For the reasons Vort specified: Soon enough, everyone is going to have a degree. Because it's the done thing. When 50% of young adults have them that means a massive selection base to compete against for a drastically limited number of jobs.
And that is, of course, assuming that your chosen career will even accept an undergraduate degree. Which most don't - most require postgraduate training or PhD-level knowledge. Guess what the government don't give funding/loans for. Also, the vast majority of undergraduate jobs that I have seen, unless they're in some field like banking or accounting or sales, tend to pay sweet fuck-all. Which is fine if you don't want to pay your student loan off, but not so fine if you actually want to eat sometime this month. On £17,500 you end up worse off than your average dolist, purely because the dolist doesn't have to fork out the inordinate amount of taxes you do. Hell, I'm (purportedly) on £25,962 (I don't see anywhere near that amount after stoppages) and I still couldn't afford not to live at home with my parents. And given that I do 58 hours weeks when am I ever supposed to find time to cram in getting on a postgrad course? And how am I supposed to survive whilst I am doing said course?

Seriously. Unless you intend to do a teaching or nursing degree, or law, or accounting, don't bother. You're wasting your time. Just spend three years getting pissed whilst claiming proper free money on the dole. Oh wait, you could do that for your whole life, like 99% of the lowlifes I encounter on a day-to-day basis...