Is going to college still worth it?

[marylander1940]

OP note: depends on your circumstances, how much it costs, and your educational choices. 

 

A majority of Americans now think getting a college degree isn't worth it, a new WSJ poll says

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A WSJ poll found 56% of Americans believe a college degree isn't worth the cost. The poll highlighted a growing skepticism about the value of college.

Is College Worth The Cost? Pros Vs. Cons

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If you’re in high school, guidance counselors, teachers and other well-meaning adults have likely told you—repeatedly—that you need to attend college to earn a...

 

[Guest]

A college education has been oversold as the ticket to success. Vocational training in the trades should be emphasized as a perfectly respectable and rewarding alternative. That said, a college degree in a practical course of study with proven track record for employment makes sense for those with the aptitude. Not to diminish general liberal arts degrees if it’s your passion, but appreciate that it’s tough to translate it in the real world.

[pubic_assistance]

Obviously, this question is broadly posed

For many, it's a complete waste of time. But there are many careers that require a solid college education.

I think the biggest waste of cash is students who attend high-cost, name-brand schools and then take bull*hit classes aiming for a moderate salary career.

Community colleges and/or State University education suffices in most "normal" jobs.

The other question is whether most students are ready for college at the end of High School. I did a gap year. Best decision I could have made.

[Guest]

1 minute ago, pubic_assistance said:

Community colleges and/or State University education suffices in most "normal" jobs.

Community college is a huge money saver and a testing ground for students that either aren’t sure they have the aptitude/interest in college and/or don’t yet know what course of study they’re interested in pursuing.

[BuffaloKyle]

My siblings all went to college and from what they tell me they'll be paying off student loans for the rest of time. I'm glad I don't have to deal with that.

[+ Pensant]

I’m increasingly running into young guys who have decided to start their own businesses or enter trades. These are all bright, good-looking young men. One straight blond guy has been running a window cleaning and roof/gutter cleaning business since high school. When he was 19 he made $95k. Now 24, he just does estimates and has a crew of cute guys working for him. Another guy is managing money for high-net worth people and getting them excellent returns. The US has hundreds of colleges that are barely holding on and will likely close or merge in the next five years. Also, the drop in birth rates means a smaller pool for colleges to draw from. And some of the majors that kids are going into debt for? Really sad. This notion that everyone should attend college is absurd, and many now realize it.

[soloyo215]

I deal with this question about universities and colleges being worth the expense. Like everything else, the right answer is that it depends on many factors. I work in the healthcare industry, and my health system has performed kidney transplants to humans from genetically modified pigs. They have conducted face transplants, and have an entire ward dedicated to gender affirmation surgery. Would you like a kidney transplant performed by a person who learned how to perform surgery on the streets? I don't think so. So university education is essential in that arena. Same goes for Engineering and the law. Those are regulated professions that require formal education in the areas of expertise, and requires maintenance by continuing education, research and additional professional studies.

Now, when we talk about BS (and that's not short for Baccalaureate in Science) degress, such as women studies, philosophy, gender studies, and other similar areas, the panorama can be different. Professions that don't require licensing, certification, or that are not regulated don't seem to be very useful regardless of how expensive or inexpensive the cost of obtaining a degree in that area is.

When it comes to learning and education, it is a completely, all-over-the-place situation. First, especially since the pandemic, learning technology has become quite critical. However, teachers are not required to learn technology, not even learning sciences. Yet, there has been a major exodus of teachers delving into instructional design and learning technology, as well as L&D in corporate settings. The issue is that there are no reliable numbers about the result of that exodus because our wonderful government doesn't even list learning technology or instructional design as legitimate professions, so there isn't any data collection about it (from the same who claim to want to fix education). So in that respect, it's the wild west out there. Depends on how you market yourself, what made-up concept you make up that becomes catchy, and how you sell yourself.

Furthermore, another major issue is that we keep attacking higher education as if companies actually have their act together when it comes to managing, training and even appreciating areas of expertise in people. Something common to hear now in companies is them saying "we can train skills, so we prefer to hire people who fit in our organizational culture", which is the biggest bullshit ever since they never train skills to people; it's just a way for them to choose and hire candidates based on personal preferences. That is a larger issue to deal with that should be addressed as we also address the cost disease of higher education.

Edited January 3 by soloyo215

[+ JEC]

Statistically, advanced education improves your income potential dramatically.   Note, that education can include the trades - lots of money to be made by tradesppl.  

[+ sniper]

It hasn't helped that for decades a lot of companies insisted that everyone, includong the people whose job was just to answer the phone,  have four year degrees. 

[+ Vegas_Millennial]

3 hours ago, JEC said:

Statistically, advanced education improves your income potential dramatically.   Note, that education can include the trades - lots of money to be made by tradesppl.  

But that usually means completing advanced education.  Unfortunately, too many students drop out half way through, saddled with half the debt but none of the increased earning potential of a completed degree.

My parent was concerned that I chose to attend a state school instead of a higher priced university.  My academic advisor told me that choosing a school that I was comfortable at and more likely able to finish a degree, was better than attending but then dropping out of a "better" school that was not the right fit for me.  I am glad I listed to my advisor.

Edited January 3 by Vegas_Millennial

[soloyo215]

3 hours ago, Vegas_Millennial said:

My parent was concerned that I chose to attend a state school instead of a higher priced university.  My academic advisor told me that choosing a school that I was comfortable at and more likely able to finish a degree, was better than attending but then dropping out of a "better" school that was not the right fit for me.  I am glad I listed to my advisor.

That's great, but it's a major challenge to first-generation college graduates who don't have parents that can tell them things based on experience (even if bad advice, they do know about university life). I am a case of having to figure everything on my own, and I could not have chosen a worst college for my undergrad simply because I didn't know better and that's what felt right to me. So I think it's more about making educated decisions. Parents don't have all the answers and can give bad advice, but if they went to college they can provide the right kind of support. My parents were just happy that I got access to the education that they didn't; that's as far as they could go.

[+ Vegas_Millennial]

9 minutes ago, soloyo215 said:

That's great, but it's a major challenge to first-generation college graduates who don't have parents that can tell them things based on experience (even if bad advice, they do know about university life). I am a case of having to figure everything on my own, and I could not have chosen a worst college for my undergrad simply because I didn't know better and that's what felt right to me. So I think it's more about making educated decisions. Parents don't have all the answers and can give bad advice, but if they went to college they can provide the right kind of support. My parents were just happy that I got access to the education that they didn't; that's as far as they could go.

Yes, I am a first generation college graduate, too.  The best advice I received in high school was to talk with an older professional in the career I wanted to be in, and ask them about how they got started.  My parents suggested I talk with my science teacher who was a retired engineer.  My parents said they had no idea what engineers did, but that they're good at math (math was my best subject) and they get paid more than either of them did!  So I talked to my high school science teacher and learned about engineering classes at a cheap community college.

[Beancounter]

A degree in accounting has served me well financially.  

[+ Charlie]

If someone has a specific career goal and successfully pursues a college education targeted at that goal, then college is probably worth it. For anyone else, it's a crap shoot. My best friend thought he wanted to enter the diplomatic corps, so the guidance counselor told him that since he was good at languages, he should go to a top tier liberal arts college, and major in Russian, which he did. Unfortunately, he didn't have any idea what kind of person the State Dept wanted for the kind of job he envisioned, and he wasn't it (he came from a rough working class family and had no social graces). However, a major insurance company was looking for young grads to train for their data processing department, and their theory was that anyone who had demonstrated that he could become proficient in a difficult new language would be able to learn programming skills, so they took him into their programmer training program. He turned out to be so good that the NY Stock Exchange recruited him away from the insurance company as a programmer analyst, and he ended up making more money than he ever would have at the State Dept, where he probably wouldn't have risen above the level of a translator. He was just lucky that college turned out to be worthwhile for him.

On the other hand, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, but everyone told me that I should go to college because I was smart and would "find my path" there. After two years, I still had no idea where I was going, and since I had to declare a major, I just made a list of all the courses I had taken, with the grades, and chose English literature because those were my highest grades. My mentors kept pushing me towards becoming a literary scholar, and when a national organization awarded me a fellowship to pursue a Ph.D., I couldn't turn it down, even though I still wasn't convinced I wanted to keep going. After two years of graduate school, I had had enough, and I started to look for a real job. To my surprise, I was hired immediately by a hospital as their data processing coordinator, for the same reason as my friend: the boss assumed that anyone with a degree in a language could teach himself to program a computer. Duh! No. I had always thought I didn't want to be a teacher, but I found that a job teaching English was the only reasonable alternative, and to my amazement, I discovered that I loved it, and did it for 37 years. So although I took a long way around, going to college did help me "find my path" after all.

[Rockey]

English was the toughest class for me in high school. I loved reading literature, but writing my ideas out coherently was a challenge. When I went to college, I had to take a remedial English class first. Charlie, you’re a great writer. I love reading your messages!

Edited January 4 by Rockey

[+ Charlie]

7 minutes ago, Rockey said:

English was the toughest class for me in high school. I loved reading literature, but writing my ideas out coherently was a challenge. When I went to college, I had to take a remedial English class first. Charlie, you’re a great writer. I love reading your messages!

Thank you. I imagine that I would have loved having you in one of the remedial English classes I enjoyed teaching.

[pubic_assistance]

13 hours ago, soloyo215 said:

it's a major challenge to first-generation college graduates who don't have parents that can tell them things based on experience

That's why high schools have guidance counselors. 

My parents weren't college graduates so obviously they couldn't help me navigate. Thanks to my counselors and teachers in high school I got accepted to a great school with tens of thousands in student aid. 

Your parents are in charge of making you a good person and teaching you to wipe your ass, not getting you into college.

[soloyo215]

1 hour ago, pubic_assistance said:

That's why high schools have guidance counselors. 

My parents weren't college graduates so obviously they couldn't help me navigate. Thanks to my counselors and teachers in high school I got accepted to a great school with tens of thousands in student aid. 

Your parents are in charge of making you a good person and teaching you to wipe your ass, not getting you into college.

Not if you also go to the wrong public high school, like I did. Again, all I got was decisions that I had to make, surrounded by adults who couldn't or won't provide guidance. My high school counselor was more interested in counseling young girls in mini skirts, and I was in a vocational high school, which means that every teacher there saw us as people who are not supposed to be college material because we were learning a trade.

My parents were supposed to do a lot of things that they didn't. They also did a lot of things that they should have.

[+ Charlie]

I probably should have mentioned in my post that my high school friend and I both came from lower middle class families, and none of our parents had finished high school. They wanted us to go to college mainly because they were told that was how we would improve our financial and social prospects. Our high school guidance counselor was only interested in getting students into good colleges because it made her look better, and she did a good job at that--we both went to good private liberal arts colleges, with financial aid packages, and a few of our classmates went to the Ivies. She was annoyed that one of the brightest guys in the class opted for a technical school.

Getting higher education degrees did improve our social and financial status, though in my first college teaching job I made less money than my father, who worked in a cardboard box factory. That didn't bother me, because I had a job I enjoyed and the prospect of rising farther in a stable career. However, I didn't have a family to support, and before long I had married someone who had gone to college to pursue a specific professional career, so together we ended up financially better off than my parents had ever been.

[Act25]

15 hours ago, Beancounter said:

A degree in accounting has served me well financially.  

Second that.  

[pubic_assistance]

1 hour ago, soloyo215 said:

I was in a vocational high school, which means that every teacher there saw us as people who are not supposed to be college

Because you weren't. 

That's the whole point of a vocational high school. 

Obviously you don't have counselors for college applications in a school where everyone has declared they aren't going to college. You would have needed to declare you wanted a change back to academics by your Junior year. Water under the bridge at this point. 

[+ WilliamM]

My dad died when I was in high school.

However, although my mom didn't complete freshman year highschool she was determined that I go to college

(She was born in 1908; the youngest of eight children)

I graduated Boston College in 1965

 

[Ali Gator]

As an employee in a prestigious business university, I will answer a bit differently...it's not a question of 'whether college is still worth it' ; it's a question of whether the potential student 'is worth college'. 

I hate to keep saying it, but the majority of this current generation who are ready to enter college or currently attending college is not mature enough nor responsible enough to attend college. So the answer is - no, college is not 'worth it' because this generation is not capable of getting any worth out of college. 

I would love to invite all of you to work by my side for one day. You wouldn't believe what I - and my colleagues - have to deal with on a day to day basis. And yes, I blame the parents - for coddling them and babying them. 

[pubic_assistance]

8 minutes ago, Ali Gator said:

it's not a question of 'whether college is still worth it' ; it's a question of whether the potential student 'is worth college'. 

*Bingo*

Best answer

[soloyo215]

19 hours ago, pubic_assistance said:

Because you weren't. 

That's the whole point of a vocational high school. 

Obviously you don't have counselors for college applications in a school where everyone has declared they aren't going to college. You would have needed to declare you wanted a change back to academics by your Junior year. Water under the bridge at this point. 

So let me see if I get this right. First you say that you know what my parents are supposed to teach me, now you were able to read the minds of the student population of a vocational high school in the early 80s, so you can assert that they "declared" that they don't want to go to college. You really are a millennial. Good God. Moving on...

11 hours ago, Ali Gator said:

..it's not a question of 'whether college is still worth it' ; it's a question of whether the potential student 'is worth college'. 

I hate to keep saying it, but the majority of this current generation who are ready to enter college or currently attending college is not mature enough nor responsible enough to attend college.

I agree with some things, but disagree is other things. This past May I finished another MA at NYU, and I was surprised at how watered down education at a Master level has become. The school involves a lot of digital media classes, and I couldn't believe that some students were unable to produce a simple, coherent video. So yes, I've seen first hand that there are many people in college that might use some additional support.

I am all for not telling anyone that he/she isn't college material, for that precise reason. There's a lack of some foundational knowledge in college students that I'm quite sure many people have. It's more about interest. In my education sciences classes, I learned that there are several approaches to learning that are intended to be more inclusive, and also more encouraging and supportive of learners, providing what they named "scaffolding" which is specific support for their particular challenges. Also, that approach allows people to bring their own experiences and realities to the classroom. It's a great approach, at least on paper. Unfortunately, educators seem to think that a constructivist approach to learning means participation trophies, never correcting learners, make things up as you go along, and "the sky is the limit" type of bullshit, which is why we have poor quality higher ed students. And that is not even mentioning specialty areas where constructivism isn't adequate.

Because of that, I wouldn't place the blame on the students not being prepared; they have been made believe that they deserve everything, that the self-discipline that comes with some learning is punishment, and that cognitive dissonance that is meant to be used for learning, is now being used for getting offended.

The cost of education issue, on the other hand, is an entirely different one. There are plenty of research on the topic of the "cost disease" of higher education in USA. It is particulary terrible in for-profit universities, which goal is to provide the minimum and charge the maximum. I went to a for-profit university in my undergrad, and it was very, very bad.

The foundational education (at least in USA) needed to prepare students for college is severely politicized, and as such, some of the solutions that they want to apply come from EdTech companies that have never set foot in a classroom. When it comes to social issues, we have an entire crowd of people attacking education over what, when and how to be taught, and the problem of parents who are too involved ready to sue or literally fight over a decision made by a teacher, or otherwise parents who are never seen in school because they use school to get rid of the children. And that is not even mentioning that now there isn't a guarantee that children will come back home alive from school. Who on Earth will be ready for college under those conditions.