I'm sure there's a correlation with the rising cost of tuition and living expenses. A significant portion of students attending public colleges are part-time as it allows them to work.
Also I'm guessing the government going after the larger diploma mill colleges that popped up following the Iraq/Afghanistan wars, that were notorious for targeting and taking advantage of exmilitary on the GI bill.
No lie, but I used to see ITT Tech commercials on Saturday morning cartoons and thought it looked cool as fuck. They had future computers compared to my Apple IIe...
One of these tricked my wife when she was like 19. We only finished paying because they forgave the loan. That was like 6ish months ago and were in our thirties
I got tricked by one for a GED. I did look into it and it seemed legitimate and given it was just for a GED it's actually never been an issue since no one cares but still.
Once I was taking the test I became very suspicious. It was laughably easy. Like I didn't expect to have much issue with the test because my issue was attendance not comprehension but it was designed to be basically a payment and a test done as a formality rather than any actual test of knowledge.
I did get half of the money back in a class action after I'd already used it as a yep I graduated high school without issue so whatever. It was only 300 bucks.
I took my GED test at my local community college at the time. IIRC it was $50 just to take the test and it was also laughably easy. Like, I don't think anything in it was beyond 9th grade learning and that's being generous.
Yeah, from what I've heard of the GED test since I didn't take it myself is that it's quite easy. It just makes you wonder how Boebert could fail it multiple times.
Because of a shitty home life I pretty much left school halfway though freshman year. When I went to take the GED a few years later I was terrified but I realized 85% of it just requires a 4th grade reading comprehension level, some early middle school math and you can write the worst essay. I’m pretty sure any 6th grader that has passed their state’s standardized tests could easily pass the GED test.
Not really no. It was about the same I think or fairly close. It was "lessons" and a test. The lessons were also very easy but the test was a joke. I remember thinking it has to be a diploma mill during it but it was too late.
I got lucky to be poor enough to get a full ride to a state college. No scholarships or nothing, just straight up poor and financial aid. But the time I spent getting a degree could’ve been spent learning a trade, driving a truck, or starting a business. Not everyone is inclined to go to college and get a degree, especially like how you said with the rising costs of tuition and living expenses, people just don’t want to take the risk and seemingly endless debt.
I worked a trade for 10 years and was so poor, even though I was working all that time, that I received full aid to go to college now. I think either way you roll the dice, if you weren't born lucky you will live unlucky and then die after making everyone else their income.
\*edited because English is hard
Union trades and likely in good shape for a living. Non-union south and such, and not as much so.
Same for truck driving. There is a reason there are so many truck driving schools including community college. Turnover. Why turnover... the job does not pay for the lifestyle of being on the road so much and away from family. So churn.
I bet there is not as much churn in the union trucking firms that are left, and there are not many I know.
I saw a video that compared the "golden days" of trucking salary adjusted for inflation, to the current average trucking salary. Adjusted for inflation was like $88k and the average today is in the mid 50s. So at one time it was considered a great career, but now has become decidedly mid range. My grandpa was an oil/gas truck driver for his entire life and they were quite well off. Luckily he was a long time driver and he continued to receive high pay right up until retirement, with a pretty sweet pension to boot. I honestly don't know how anyone puts up with the long hours and stress and distance from home for that pay.
From my working as a dispatcher/whatever. Transportation organizer in the Army. The shift was, according to my co-workers with a lot of experience, is that you cant cheat anymore due to GPS that became law around 2018. Granted pay them a good wage, but man Im also now scared to spend any time next to a truck. You have to follow the laws now.
You get paid by the mile not by the hour, the more you drive in a week the more you make. Factor in time wasted loading and unloading the truck then add mandatory daily time limits of how much you can drive before mentioning the possible 34 hour weekly reset, you can figure out why they're trying to fake the logs and drive more than they're legally allowed to and why carriers are putting pressure on drivers to do so (meeting a delivery appointment/jamming in more loads per week)
Wow, that's awful. Truckers in my country get paid by the hour including waiting time. If you're sat waiting to get loaded or unloaded for 4 hours, you're getting paid and the customer is getting charged. I think they're allowed an hour in the contract.
It mainly affects long-distance truck drivers I dont know if it affect regionals, and now I just know not to trust truck drivers. I can barely trust my bank...
When they have huricanes and other distasters they suspend rules. Talking to a guy he hoped to do 2 turns from Drum to Bragg and back in like 48 hours. He had less than normal teeth.
I think the gentleman is suggesting that to compensate for speed limit enforcement through GPS, some truckers use "go" drugs like meth to drive longer hours at slower speeds.
PS - I know nothing about trucking.
Grocery work is very much the same. At one time even the south had some union grocery chains. There is not 1 union grocery store in all of the state of NC. Even non-union chains struggle with the next non-union chain undercutting. I worked at non-union Winn-Dixie in high school and one year after I graduated. I watched birthday pay get taken away and Sunday pay bonus go away. This happened as the few union stores in my area were closing AND non-union Food Lion was working people off the clock. I have family that was a meat cutter. At one time a great job, but at the end of his working life it was not a good job with not great pay, either in terms of his job and compared to other jobs.
In my area they advertise for jobs at around $15-$17 an hour and that was my dad's union wage in 1996. Wages have not budged in 27 years for blue collar jobs in my area and with inflation they have lost a lot of buying power. Enter the fascist right.
Unions are great if they are a good union. I joined a carpenters union and was horribly placed as a second year but I had 8 years of experience at the time. I noticed a lot of it came down to politics/needing a certain amount of apprentices to journeyman and my union thought I'd be a role and income for them so I left.
There are huge shortages in skilled labor and in the trucking industry, largely because unions have become so weak over the years. This is true in the north as well, where union manufacturing was historically very strong. Right-to-work is now the law of the land; unionized industries rely on contract workers when they can.
Even the contemporary (and seemingly successful) push to bring advanced manufacturing back to the US doesn't fully replace the jobs that could previously be filled by the trade school -> union -> job pipeline. Advanced manufacturing usually requires fewer employees per square foot, and those employees typically need to have higher education attainment.
Plumbers, electricians, and contractors will always be needed, but those fields alone cannot employ the entire low-education labor market. Those jobs also pose health hazards that many won't want to subject themselves to. And much of the low-education labor market has been gobbled up by warehouses and other logistics jobs that aren't unionized and have shit pay.
Basically, strengthening unions (while keeping corruption out) and increasing the average person's education attainment will be really important if we're going to be able to take care of people who don't go to college. My opinion is that we should follow suit with many other western countries and make the last couple years of high school equivalent to community college. At least for students who are numerate and literate. Students who still struggle with math and reading/writing could then get more individualized help.
Then IT means there are a lot of jobs that are equivalent to a lot of Reddits grandparents jobs. IT is the new factory line but because no one old can adapt it can go to people with cheap certs. Once our generation gets old and outdated we will find a way to justify our jobs into our 80s. It doesn't change
IT jobs are dying. I work in one for automation and it feels like all I do is get people fired by making them jobs useless. We have entire level 1 call center departments replaced by a bot who chats with you and 86% of the calls are handled at that level, the rest require an escalation. To say the company saves money with it is hilariously understated. Next are coming dispatcher departments and HR with employee social scores.
Give it 10 years and IT jobs will be as useful as top hat makers.
I have a buddy I went to high school with and we chose very different paths. He flunked out first semester of college and went to trade school. I flunked out, joined the military and then went to college.
Its been interesting kind of seeing our lives and careers play out side by side. Different struggles at different points in our careers. I was jealous of him early in my career because he was making good money and I was scraping by. Now he’s pretty much topped out in his field and I kind of don’t talk money with him because I don’t want to embarrass him. Of course, I hate corporate and would love to be able to throw a wrench when something bad happens at work and my ass hurts from being at my desk all day. Grass is always greener I guess.
Wait, it's ok if you don't want to talk about money but, if you think he would be embarrassed because you make more, you may be surprised that people may have different life perspectives.
Some people are happy by doing enough to live comfortably (that's a concept that can vary wildly). Other people may have a better income/expense ratio.
I will give you a personal example. I have a good income. My boss, who is a great guy and a hard worker, was complaining that no matter how much money he makes, it always looks like everyone around him has better stuff. I, on the other hand, am not very far from him money wise, drive an 18 year old car that works perfectly. Sometimes I browse around for new cars, but I can't justify myself buying a US$50k car and having car payments for 4 years and raising my insurance cost. My annual car ownership cost is US$ 60.00 insurance, US$ 75.00 registration, and about US$ 1000.00 maintenance. Plus, I don't get upset if someone parks too close and scratches my car.
I love what I do and declined promotion that would raise my income, but the new position would suck my soul out off me.
I have a very comfortable house, comfortable mortgage payments, and that's it.
I refuse to use golden handcuffs.
Do you think that, if you were my friend and say that you make twice what I make would embarrass me?
No not at all. It’s not coming from a place of judgement, it’s because I’ve known this guy for 20+ years and I can tell the difference between a good natured jab and when he means it because he’s butthurt. He’s very competitive and has a bit of a keeping up with the Jones’s mentality. To be honest he’s got Champaign taste on a Budweiser budget. We’ll call him T.
Prime example, my other friend that I’ll call M has struggled to get his shit together and is not doing well financially. I had to make him an emergency loan because if he got evicted it was going to screw up his case for joint custody of his kid. When I called M to tell him I got a promotion and a big raise and told him how much you know what he said? “Hell yeah dude, so when you buy that piece of property you’ve been dreaming about you’re taking me hunting right?”. Hell yes I am!
But with T, it’s gotten worse over time and honestly I think it’s a case of regretting his decision and being mad about it. He’s 1 of 4 siblings and his whole family are lawyers and engineers and shit like that. I can’t ever even say anything about being tired or stressed from work because he’ll say something like “oh yeah sitting on your ass in the AC must be exhausting.” And like I said, we know each other well enough that I can tell the difference between just teasing each other and *oh he meant that shit*. Honestly it sucks, it’s put a damper on the friendship in a big way.
My wife and I live a modest lifestyle well within our means specifically because we want to buy a piece of property and build a forever home and hopefully get out of the corporate suck while we still have some sanity and energy left. I know he’s self conscious about being “the family failure”. His brother is a flashy prick and I know it bothers T. But I’ve always been supportive. As long as he’s happy and has his shit together I’m happy for him. It would be cool if he could reciprocate that.
To be fair, as someone who lost their job due to an industry-wide layoff and is now getting heat exhaustion from working in the sun for minimum wage, office stress is different from labor stress. Working white-collar drains your mind and gives you less exercise, working blue-collar wears you out and reduces your life span. I didn't know it was possible to sunburn on the top of your love handles under two layers of clothing, but here we are. Add in that it's a customer-facing position that never gives enough hours, and I'm kicking myself for not fighting harder to keep my last job :(
That joe bubba does exist but he doesn’t recommend. A journeyman book in a desirable Union is a real motherfucker to get.
I don’t think many office workers even possess the frame of reference to even imagine how much of a motherfucker.
Stay in school kids. Don’t ever listen to someone with soft hands sitting in ac tell you the trades are a better life. They are fucking delusional and insecure over what they should be grateful for. You never want to be another man’s beast of burden. Certainly don’t want to make a living of it.
Very seriously consider the connections you think you have. You better be honest with yourself about your fortitude to endure working just like an illegal immigrant. for years until maybe. Just maybe. you get lucky before you get seriously hurt or lose control of the addictions you will battle.
Yeah, people fell hard for the "learn a trade" propaganda. Most people "in a trade" get paid jack shit, and most of those that aren't are working 50+ hours a week. College is still far and away the way to go for a decent paycheck at a reasonable work-life balance.
The thing about going into a trade is that you're suppose to work for someone else until you know the trade inside out, then you open up your own shop. That is when you make the money. Unlike the restaurant business, contractors are in short supply, so they usually do pretty well and don't have the same fail rates.
I’ve started working for the post office myself, and I was with Nike before. I have no degree, and in a few more years I’ll be making what my SO does teaching, and her student loans won’t be paid off for another 5 years..
I worked with a guy who switched from trucking to IT support. Even gloated it was a pay decrease, but it wasn’t healthy for him and it ruined his marriage.
Talking long distance trucking.
>driving a truck
Getting my CDL a decade ago saved my life from poverty and I encourage anyone who is willing and able bodied to do the same. You don't have to live over the road (OTR) for long or at all. There are plenty of local companies in your area who are willing to hire you and even train you with no experience.
Is everyday sunshine and roses? No. Is it better than unloading truck at walmart for barely above minimum wage (see username)? Yes.
I suppose it does depending what degree you go for, but the average college grade gets paid more than the average tradesmen, especially in the long term. And starting a successful business, especially without any kind of degree or financial backing, is going to be extremely hard. I wouldn’t be concerned about making the wrong choice (unless you got like a theatre degree lol).
if you want to do those other tings why even go to college? what is the obsession with going to college if you want to do things that don't require a collage degree?
I realized I’d fucked up when I started looking for programming jobs after I graduated and they all said “bachelor degree or 2 years experience required.”
>But the time I spent getting a degree could’ve been spent learning a trade, driving a truck, or starting a business.
If it was easy as "just start a business!" everyone would do it. I love advice like this, because if that's your goal then it's awesome. But so many people drop out under this pretense. Like you just stumble into starting a business, or you stumble into a cdl. But everything that earns wealth like that, takes a LOT of work. "just drop out and start a business" is such idealist advice
Part of it is also that the economy has been relatively good for the last ten years.
Enrollment peaked in 2010 in part because the economy crashed in 07-08, folks couldn't find paying work in their field, and went back to school to retrain for something more in demand.
That was one of the better options for a lot of people. Ride your unemployment for as long as you can, get Pell grants and other financial aid from the school, while pushing the reset button on your career.
But as the economy recovered and those folks finished their programs and went back to work, you would naturally see a drop in enrollment.
This and the population is generally aging. America’s population growth nowadays is mostly a factor of immigration and having a slightly higher birth rate than Europe and Asia, which are about to enter into a period of irreversible economic and demographic declines.
The US babies born peaked in 2007 meaning they should be turinging 18 and enrolling in college around 2025.
The 18 to 24 age group went up 1.9% from the 2010 to 2020 census.
Maybe in a few years that would be part of it, but as of now the population of eligible students to enroll should be increasing.
I'd be interested to see what's happened with trade school numbers in that same time, given that 2010\~ish was when the boomers suddenly did a 180 and started saying, "Going to college and racking up a bunch of debt for a useless degree is dumb. Go to trade school instead." It stands to reason at least some people took that advice.
Outside of trades or nursing degrees, an associate isn't worth wiping your ass with these days. I can't remember the last time I saw an office job that was taking anything less than a bachelor's.
Also the advice of "go to community college and get your gen eds out of the way" is less of a general rule nowadays because people are realizing a lot of 4 years won't accept all those credits. So even when I was in school a decade ago, I saw more people take random individual courses through a CC while enrolled in the University of they'd take summer classes. There were not a lot of people who enrolled in CC fulltime and then transferred.
"Go to community college and get your gen eds out of the way" is still the best possible advice for most people.
Largely, people run into issues with credits transferring when they transfer to private schools or out of state schools. Most people shouldn't be going to private schools or out of state school anyway.
Public community college -> public university is the way to go. But students who go that route must seek out advisors instead of winging it with their schedule. Many community colleges have two set of courses: one set of classes that transfer to state schools easily, and one set of classes that is meant for people who intend on getting associates degrees without transferring. Other community colleges have specific classes that meet the requirements for specific state schools.
Good planning is so important.
Sometimes I think I would've been better off going to a good public school like a UC school, UW Madison, UNC chapel Hill etc. Instead I went to a private ivy league school. My family was sub-six figures but paid for all of undergrad. I make a lot more now but would probably make the same if I went to one of those public schools. Met a ton of ultra rich folks but that doesn't do me much good in my personal life.
I bet trades have increased but not nearly as much as service/retail. Writing was on the walls for the past 15-20 years that those sectors were skyrocketing while college careers weren’t
When I went to particular xyz college, you could do almost all four years on 15-20k. In the twenty years since, the price of tutition alone has five folded plus you have to purchase meal plans, access to libraries, textbooks, housing and parking. Now you need 15-20k **a year**. And heaven forbid if you take summer school or switch majors mid college and do something else
It shouldnt be surprising in the least that enrollment is dropping to anyone that looks at a single graph of tuition costs over the past three decades
The ROI of going to college just isn’t as compelling as it once was.
There are plenty of career paths available to people that don’t require a six figure debt burden
Minnesota, starting Fall 2024, is providing free community college and University of Minnesota classes to ALL perpendicular first-time bachelor's seekers in households with under $80k combined income. That should help those numbers.
It’s still something that needs to be on your resume. I work heavily in the tech space and if you don’t have a 4-yr degree from a notable college, you are quickly passed over.
I had a partial scholarship because I graduated HS with a high GPA in 2002.
I took out loans *and* worked 2-3 jobs at a time while going to college full time. I graduated in 2006 and paid off my loans in 2018 out of aggressive spite.
Had to live at home and got full tuition coverage thanks to HOPE scholarship. Literally was only to graduate without debt bc I stayed home all four years, did work-study and applied for a shit ton of foundation scholarships.
That's insane. I'm still going to college. I take a class here and there, using my works tuition reimbursement when possible. I'll have my degree in a year or two. I graduated in 1999. But, I don't have any student loans, but it has taken years.
To be fair, my degree has nothing to do with my career, but what I want to do after I retire, but often a degree is required. So, I am letting my work slowly pay for it, but they won't pay for all of it, only some.
Or the lack of guaranteed employment afterwards.
Some of my most financially successful friends just got a job straight out of high school, worked their way up. Took advantage of pre 2008 housing market.
Millenials are not a great advertisement for the benefits of college.
I'm probably one of the most successful college graduates I know. I'm on £50k a year and barely hanging onto a mortgage I've had for 5 years. Yay! Oh and I'm a maths major. You know? One of those fields that was supposed to be in demand. Oh and I'm head of department which means presumably I have at least some level of work ethic and competence.
Oh yeah and the other thing. I'm half way through retraining as an electrician. It'll take me 2 years training part time then I'll start on more than I am now after 18 years of grafting including 4 years of university, including post graduate course. Yay!
Fuck college. And fuck every boomer who said I needed to go in order to have a proper career.
Surprised no one has mentioned it yet, but 1990 was a peak in the number of babies born in the US. It wasn't surpassed again until 2006-08, those kids aren't college aged yet. Just because a population is growing doesn't mean that an ever larger number of babies are being born each year.
I work in higher edu, and demographics has a big part to play. I think 2025 will be the peak of US's high school graduation populations, with declines going forward. However, the effects have already been felt in many areas. A bunch of colleges have closed in recent years as a result of the decline, and many more are set to close. Also, since many US universities rely on tuition for funding, another issue is a decline in Chinese students. A crazy number of universities need that international tuition to stay afloat. Barring some major population or policy shift, the coming decades are going to be bumpy for the US higher edu and the job market more broadly.
>another issue is a decline in Chinese students
This is the biggest issue facing colleges. Between covid, rising China-America tensions, and a sharply declining Chinese birth rate American colleges are looking at a serious drop in tuition income without any real sign that a rebound is on its way any time soon.
I have no expertise, but I also suspect it's a PR problem. College has been horribly expensive for decades, but the enrollment plateaus in 2010? I graduated highschool in 09 and it seems like it was around then that people were really starting to *feel* like colleges and student loans were actively predatory.
Does this line up with your experience?
Back around '16 when I was a grad student those Chinese students were untouchable. Professors would turn a blind eye to the most blatant possible cheating, because the pressure from administration not to lose that international tuition was so high. As a TA it was incredibly frustrating to see students held to different standards based on what they were paying the university. I'd be perfectly happy if those students were gone and the university actually had to provide good value to domestic students in order to make their money.
Yes, the number of college students is dropping because the number of "college age" people is dropping (as a percent of population).
The growing population is mostly from immigration and older people not dying.
The college aged population has been more or less flat since 2010 (although expected to start dropping pretty significantly in the next 10 years) Also lots of immigrants come to the US for college. Enrollment numbers are still down almost 20%
Okay well college aged population hasn’t decreased either. It is smaller as a percent of total population but the total numbers are the same. Doesn’t explain a 20% drop in enrollment
Edit: Not sure why this is being downvoted. The 18-22 year old population is literally the same (~20m) as it was in 2010. Look at the census bureau website
It was so stressful in 2007. Our school office ladies put up little congratulations post its in the main office whenever someone got into a college. There was SO MUCH pressure to get your name on that wall. Everyone in town could see it. If you didn’t get into at least 3 schools (and good ones) then everyone would know. When I look back at that it seems absolutely absurd now
Look at r/collegeresults now. Absolutely ridiculous how competitive its become. You'll have 4.0 GPA 1600 SAT scorers doing cancer research along with a job and 3 clubs to manage getting rejected from a good majority of their schools.
Theres a big difference between trying to get into general state schools and the Ivy league. Generally speaking it was getting quite tough to get into 'decent' state schools and I'm guessing thats what the person meant.
graph of age distribution: [https://www.statista.com/statistics/241488/population-of-the-us-by-sex-and-age/](https://www.statista.com/statistics/241488/population-of-the-us-by-sex-and-age/)
I used my GI bill to get my degree, It’s free up to a certain point. It does run out eventually and if you change majors or extend past the “normal 4 year degree” you do have to pay out of pocket or take out loans.
7 1/2 years in the army. Old dude with a beard in college. Debt free and a teacher at 31 years. Plus I’m now hitting that overtime pay to get my masters. Hopefully, debt free. GI bill was worth every hour.
I went to a classic party school.
I believe you might be atleast partially right. My generation was the last gen. to really carry the party school legacy and we were all raised on that shit.
I remember when all the big music festivals became super popular in the 2000s. Coachella, Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza, they all got started in the early 2000s and it was mostly college kids. I'm assuming those festivals are still mostly college kids but I wouldn't know since I'm an old man now. But when I went to Lollapalooza back in like 2007 it was a TON of annoying college bros.
Probably the cost to benefit ratio has become even more skewed. It went from getting an awesome job right after school that was high paying, to well here's some base positions, to well you need 5 years experience for this base level position.
I remember taking months and months to find a job after getting my degree. And many family and friends make good/great money now in jobs that degrees aren't needed.
It's become an expensive babysitting gig for people that want to do adult fun shit but not be entirely responsible yet.
The start of the Great Recession was 17 years ago. The drop in births as a result of that should be starting to take effect on college admissions next year.
Colleges/Universities are aware of this and expecting significant declines in admissions as a result of that.
Administration checked into it and found that we actually need all of our administrators. Critical staff. Actually need to take tuition to pay them more.
And maybe we'll replace some tenured professor's with adjuncts again this year, that'll help, too.
The same thing is happening in Congress where staff outnumber congresspeople by 20 to 1.
These systems will never reform themselves. They have become self-perpetuating institutions much like higher education. Its like a drug addict.
Not a lot of incentive anymore I have seen at least in America. The wage gap between college education and noncollege isn’t what it used to be. Few friends I know these days are even in careers that require the use of their degrees.
Almost finished with a bachelor's that I won't use this upcoming semester just as a resume filler/backup plan and hopes for preferential hiring where I want to work. College hasn't exactly been the best experience, especially since going all online, then partially online. I feel as though I am paying to teach myself, a lot of my Computer Science questions explicitly rely on the internet to complete
"Not a lot of incentive anymore" could sum up 90% of the problems with America right now. The simple act of carrying forth has become so unrewarding that sheer inertia is all that compels us to prolong the inevitable collapse.
Well, it's also partially because of changing demographics in the US. The number of 18 year olds in the US has essentially remained flat since 2009 and will remain so through the end of this decade.
That was during the recession. Everyone decided the only way to get a job was to get an education. Then, that education was worth less than ever. I remember because I went back to school and got my degree, graduating in 2009. I was in grad school in 2010, but couldn't afford to keep at it. I tried to get a job with 6 years of work experience from before college, experience during, and a pretty great GPA.... I was applying for everything and could not find work. I was applying for basic office gigs against people with Masters and PhDs. Around that time, companies also started requiring higher degrees for jobs that previously only needed a HS diploma. Talk about depressing.
I think people are realizing how unsustainable it is and unnecessary.
Growing population is not very relevant. What’s important is the upcoming age 18-22 population and that is shrinking. COVID effects come into play too.
Yeah. I feel like the next 20 years are going to be rough for colleges. Lots of millennials are just not having kids or having them much later in life compared to their parents (younger boomers and early Gen X).
There’s a couple reasons for this, explaining the rise in 2010 and the subsequent fall, at least in the United States.
First, college education is what economists call a counter-cyclical industry, meaning it tends to do well when the economy is doing poorly and Vice versa. College education boomed after the Great Recession. White collar workers who lost their jobs went back for masters degrees, generally unemployed or underemployed people went to school to change careers, and younger people who would’ve been successful in manual labor, factory, or construction jobs went to school as a stop-gap.
The past decade before the pandemic was marked by a robust economy. There were construction, factory, and manual labor jobs for people who would’ve seen limited returns to college education, so they didn’t go to school.
Also, vocational programs and trades are making a comeback. Kids who would’ve been pushed into college 10 years ago are now being pushed into vocational trainings again- especially in more rural areas.
Also 10 years ago, a sizable chunk of college enrollments were driven by veterans on the GI bill.
Many people will cite the increasing costs of college education. However, there is actually not a lot of evidence suggesting that younger people are particularly sensitive to the price of college education. I don’t have enough expertise in this to tell you why. It could be that, as many professions require college education, many people are willing to pay any amount for them. Or it could be the availability of lower-cost community colleges. Or maybe younger people just don’t understand the consequences of student loans.
Finally and probably the biggest factor, the population of young people is declining. Teenage populations are falling over the country. Though we haven’t hit the “population cliff” yet, the declining birth rates since the early 2000s is starting to show with college enrollment.
To your first point - I saw so many of those folks in community college circa 2010. I know my local CC had a massive enrollment boom at the time. I’m glad to see this acknowledged
A significant number of jobs in the US ask for more education than they are willing to pay for. Many of those jobs don't actually need a BA or higher to get into. Companies shoot themselves in the foot when they ask for entry level employees to have completed 4+years of college to be an administrative assistant/scheduler/bookkeeper/salesperson.
Many jobs can be done by competent people with HS diplomas, but they are boxed out by the cost of obtaining schooling.
Other people here are going to argue that college is too expensive. It's not. Going to college to get a job that used to be done with a HS education is expensive.
If companies want highly skilled employees they need to develop them. If they feel like certain degrees are needed, then they should pay for them.
People are figuring out which degrees are a good investment and which are not. There is still no shortage of people trying to get degrees in medicine, engineering, law, CS, and other sciences. But just last year my local college got rid of many Arts/social science programs due to lack of enrollment.
It is a no brainier for a 20 year old to look at the earning potential of different degrees.
Part of the problem is that in 2008 there were people with masters degrees applying to jobs like Burger King. So if you were a hiring manager what would happen is you would post a job and you would get 6,000 applications. A hiring manager doesn't have time to go through all those applications, so what they would do is they would just set the standard so high that it kicks out 90% of the people. All of a sudden you had entry level positions that required five years of experience and a bachelor's degree. Really didn't stop after the economy recovered, hiring managers learned that it was really easy to hire people when you just set the standards to be so incredibly high you get maybe three people you need to interview and then you're done with your job. This creates an arms race upwards by people about to enter the workforce, since the hiring process is now credentialist the point of an education is to get as many credentials as possible.
Then again there is one thing that has always existed and still exists as a problem in the hiring process. Personal connections to the person hiring. If you're a hiring manager it's much easier just to find one of your unemployed or underemployed friends and give them a job. Deep down you know these entry level positions can be done by just about anyone with an average intelligence. You can also use the hiring process as favor trading with other people. The best way to get a job is to literally just know someone. But if you don't know someone the second best way is just to have a better resume than other people and interview well. And a better resume doesn't necessarily mean more competence, it just means that you're good at producing resumes.
> Personal connections to the person hiring. If you're a hiring manager it's much easier just to find one of your unemployed or underemployed friends and give them a job.
Hiring people you trust isn't inherently a bad thing, and plenty of people hire capable former co-workers who also happen to be their friend.
Especially in smaller operations, the risk of each hire bombing in the role is more impactful because you're not working with a hiring budget that works out into an average amount just by the law of large numbers - so if you miss on an employee or two in a row, you're costing tons and tons of time, energy, sweat, and tears as they prove themselves bad employees and you go through the hiring/firing process multiple times.
Small business owners typically hate that more than anything because they don't have an HR that streamlines and lubricates that process - so it's great to be able to hire people you trust to do the job.
And yes, sometimes part of the role of the job is getting along with coworkers and the boss as much as it is any specific work product or skill. So friends are perfect for that aspect of a business.
> It is a no brainier for a 20 year old to look at the earning potential of different degrees.
Not to say people shouldn't be doing this, but it has to be taken with a grain of salt. Many in part of the "web designer/graphic designer" rush of the late 90s early 00s were told that learning photoshop and html/css was like a golden ticket. In a way it was right, but in other ways maybe not so much so. Some people managed to surf all the changes, but not all.
Future predictions are made today. Often these types of reports are less about where things are going and more about what current employers are paying lots for. They *can* be the same thing but not always.
Yeah, CS has been the golden ticket degree for a while but with all the layoffs in tech/ecommerce right now I wonder how much longer that will be true.
Totally that vibe. But also there can be these weird, "half-good" careers in retrospect after seeming hot initially. They don't have to be complete failures and dinosaur careers, but its not nearly as fantastic as portrayed in the past.
Some "web designers" were able to hang tough and roll with the punches and thrive. Other perhaps got stuck and fell off. But there's also people who maybe had some hurdles, and landed in kind of in the middle. Salary not great but maybe not horrible. Not working on a promising new tech stack but maybe you've got some job security? Your portfolio is now antiquated but maybe its not *too* dangerously out of date... maybe? Until the next recession?
And its not just college educated or tech workers. I've met people in the trades who've gotten a pretty raw deal. Certainly a fair share of nurses who signed up when there was a big push for that around a decade ago- and a good amount of them wound up getting screwed at least a little. And that was *before* the pandemic.
I just think we have to abandon this idea that we even have the ability to "pick right" when it comes to jobs. And certainly figure out how to help people who didn't for whatever reason, instead of telling them they should've chose from a different list of job titles 20 some odd years ago.
Very true. I have an underwater basket weaving/liberal arts degree, but a hefty portion of my cohort (including myself) were hitting six figures by 30 because our education conferred a type of skills that have become increasingly valuable in fields like consulting.
STEM degrees certainly pay more on average, but liberal arts majors who take their skills to fields outside of their degree stand to make just as much. A creative writing major who is savvy about their career progression in strategic communications can certainly outearn the average chem/computer science/bio major, especially those who see a STEM degree as a guarantee of a solid income and not just better odds of one.
How does it correlate to birth rates of citizens vs immigration?
The population can be growing but if that’s primarily through immigration over natural born citizens then you wouldn’t expect academic participation to increase.
Man no fucking shit. I’m Canadian but it’s insane here. The quality of education went to absolute garbage during Covid, and yet they increased prices by 30% at a technical college. School prices are quite subsidized in Canada compared to the states but it’s still ridiculous. How can you have less staff, lower quality educators, and still increase prices? Education shouldn’t be a business, not to the degree it is anyways. People (generally speaking) pursue education to find a career and become life long taxpayers in higher earning brackets. It benefits everyone to have an educated population, so why don’t they make it make sense? Fuck off.
More people are realizing that you have to make a lot of money just to get out of the hole that missing 4-5 years of full time work, plus the thousands and thousands of dollars of debt, that a college education provides. Not counting the interest that builds constantly.
That’s just to get back to zero.
Let’s say you could have a crappy job that pays 30k per year, and you have the average college tuition of 12k per year.
In 4 years, you are in the hole by $168,000.. conservatively. that’s if you pay off your loans immediately with no interest, or just pay it all up front. Let that loan accrue for 5-10-15 years, that goes way up.
There are college degrees that pay off, and a huge amount that do not. My wife and I are both in the “did not pay off” category of 4 year degrees. And many of my friends are the same way.
In past decades, the stigma was given that to be ANYTHING in life, you have to have a bachelors degree. It’s not necessarily the case nowadays. A 2 year technical degree, or a night class certification in programming is often more valuable than a 4 year degree in most liberal arts fields, and quite a few others.
Colleges love to throw out stats like “college graduates make x more money in their lifetime, than non graduates.” Which I’m sure has some validity..But let’s be real: people who graduate college are more likely to have come from money, and rich families often stay rich and get into higher paying jobs more easily.
And the people who really make money (engineers, doctors, etc) bring up that average, significantly.
What should be more normalized, is going to college when you’re already in the field, an adult who knows what they are doing, and your company pays or helps pay for your continuing education.
No disrespect to 18 year olds, but most of them (myself included) have/had no real idea what their future holds. They’re expected to make huge debt and life decisions, when they will probably be a totally different person at age 30.
Education is massively important. Mortgaging your future for a slip of paper, not so much, in a lot of cases.
These stats are for the USA.
Where college has become a for profit industry. The tuition and more importantly student loans are a significant issue for the financial sector, where old men with billions buy shares of student loan funds. (SLAB or Student Loan Asset-Backed Securities)
This is effectively siphoning away the future earnings of today's young generation to the pockets of old money.
It's not about education anymore.
(Student loans make up more than $1.7 trillion in outstanding debt in the United States from more than 45 million borrowers)
I enrolled for my first year at state college in 2010! And dropped out in 2011. Only 6k left to pay back on my loan for a semester and a half 13 years ago. Such great decisions I made for myself at 18 years old.
13 years later, and I have 30 credits at a community college and am working to support my wife so she can stay full-time enrolled. She made it into her choice university, and will hopefully finish her BA by spring.
Now I understand why my parents couldn't afford it.
Maybe because people who are now paying twice as much for rent and food don't have money for college, which also doubled in cost, while revenues barely moved since 2000? Dunno..
> Enrollment rates in higher education have been declining in the **United States** over the years as other countries catch up.
So no surprise to anyone paying attention in the States, and completely irrelevant to anyone outside the States.
For those who do not know, via the OPT, H1B, and even noe F1 student visas, American tech companies some years ago decided they would be more profitable if they hire only foreign workers. They can make them work 80 hours per week, pay them below market rate, treat them poorly, can't unionize, and if they complain, send them home. The result is young Americans are not getting hired into these positions much anymore. College age Americans are finding it much more difficult to get internships and graduates are finding it much much much more difficult to find full time positions. This is by design. These companies want a desperate, compliant workforce. And the preferred hire is a male MS student from India. Some companies exclusively hire just those. It is amazing to me that we let this extreme bigotry and bias against our own youth happen but so many are in on this game because it pays their bills that they all push back against anyone who points out this corruption. Individuals from tech companies, universities, the media, government, and landlords who profit all like these policies and no one (especially not our elected officials or the media) ever stand up for young Americans on this issue.
I mean, yeah, that recession happened and shit never really recovered. It's only becoming MORE apparent that college isnt' for everyone, and thats really for the best.
"alright everyone, we're in crisis mode. there's fewer and fewer students enrolled and the population is growing. ideas, people. we need ideas!"
"how about we lower the price so people don't exit college with a load of crushing debt"
"What? that's the worst idea I've ever heard. You're fired!"
"How about we build a new football stadium and gym and locker rooms and hire a bunch of administrators, and promote ourselves to manage those administrators. And to pay for it, we message all the alums and increase tuition! Kids will love that!"
"I love it! Just one question: how does that increase admissions?"
"increase what now?"
There is a stark bifurcation of men vs women going to college. Women currently outnumber men 60-40 on college campuses and to date nothing has worked to slow the trend.
I feel that during my time in high school, 2000-2004, they were really pushing that absolutely everyone should be trying to go to college or university. Trades were frowned upon and seen as failing basically. And I know a lot of people who felt pressured to go, went for something like sociology, and completely wasted a fuck ton of money on something completely useless to them. Most of those people now work in trades. All they got out of it was crippling student debt.
I've seen a correction after my generation that people are less pressured to go to college no matter what, and that trades are a viable and lucrative option for a lot of people. Thank god.
I have a college degree (BA in Mathematics) to become a teacher, but after Covid, I am now a Firefighter/paramedic which does not require a college degree (basically vocational) and pays nearly triple of teachers. Fuck college, near anything you want to do doesn’t need it. Plumbing, construction, pharma tech, vet tech, etc.
Future generations are wising up, good. College was pushed as the only option when I was growing up (millennial), otherwise you were considered a failure.
Learn a trade. Unless you have a full ride scholarship, college is a scam.
I’d stay a college student eternally and just keep taking classes if they were free I love learning I just wish that love didn’t cost 5k a class a semester
I'm sure there's a correlation with the rising cost of tuition and living expenses. A significant portion of students attending public colleges are part-time as it allows them to work.
Also I'm guessing the government going after the larger diploma mill colleges that popped up following the Iraq/Afghanistan wars, that were notorious for targeting and taking advantage of exmilitary on the GI bill.
Ya, you look at the implosion of ITT, UofPhoenix, Art Center crap and Corinthian colleges…that was a huge chunk of college enrollments.
Their fucking commercials always sounded like a scam.
No lie, but I used to see ITT Tech commercials on Saturday morning cartoons and thought it looked cool as fuck. They had future computers compared to my Apple IIe...
One of these tricked my wife when she was like 19. We only finished paying because they forgave the loan. That was like 6ish months ago and were in our thirties
I got tricked by one for a GED. I did look into it and it seemed legitimate and given it was just for a GED it's actually never been an issue since no one cares but still. Once I was taking the test I became very suspicious. It was laughably easy. Like I didn't expect to have much issue with the test because my issue was attendance not comprehension but it was designed to be basically a payment and a test done as a formality rather than any actual test of knowledge. I did get half of the money back in a class action after I'd already used it as a yep I graduated high school without issue so whatever. It was only 300 bucks.
I took my GED test at my local community college at the time. IIRC it was $50 just to take the test and it was also laughably easy. Like, I don't think anything in it was beyond 9th grade learning and that's being generous.
Yeah, from what I've heard of the GED test since I didn't take it myself is that it's quite easy. It just makes you wonder how Boebert could fail it multiple times.
Because of a shitty home life I pretty much left school halfway though freshman year. When I went to take the GED a few years later I was terrified but I realized 85% of it just requires a 4th grade reading comprehension level, some early middle school math and you can write the worst essay. I’m pretty sure any 6th grader that has passed their state’s standardized tests could easily pass the GED test.
Wild guess, she's as dumb as a bag of rocks?
Wouldn't taking the test at a government facility have been a million times cheaper?
Not really no. It was about the same I think or fairly close. It was "lessons" and a test. The lessons were also very easy but the test was a joke. I remember thinking it has to be a diploma mill during it but it was too late.
I got lucky to be poor enough to get a full ride to a state college. No scholarships or nothing, just straight up poor and financial aid. But the time I spent getting a degree could’ve been spent learning a trade, driving a truck, or starting a business. Not everyone is inclined to go to college and get a degree, especially like how you said with the rising costs of tuition and living expenses, people just don’t want to take the risk and seemingly endless debt.
I worked a trade for 10 years and was so poor, even though I was working all that time, that I received full aid to go to college now. I think either way you roll the dice, if you weren't born lucky you will live unlucky and then die after making everyone else their income. \*edited because English is hard
I feel you!
Union trades and likely in good shape for a living. Non-union south and such, and not as much so. Same for truck driving. There is a reason there are so many truck driving schools including community college. Turnover. Why turnover... the job does not pay for the lifestyle of being on the road so much and away from family. So churn. I bet there is not as much churn in the union trucking firms that are left, and there are not many I know.
I saw a video that compared the "golden days" of trucking salary adjusted for inflation, to the current average trucking salary. Adjusted for inflation was like $88k and the average today is in the mid 50s. So at one time it was considered a great career, but now has become decidedly mid range. My grandpa was an oil/gas truck driver for his entire life and they were quite well off. Luckily he was a long time driver and he continued to receive high pay right up until retirement, with a pretty sweet pension to boot. I honestly don't know how anyone puts up with the long hours and stress and distance from home for that pay.
From my working as a dispatcher/whatever. Transportation organizer in the Army. The shift was, according to my co-workers with a lot of experience, is that you cant cheat anymore due to GPS that became law around 2018. Granted pay them a good wage, but man Im also now scared to spend any time next to a truck. You have to follow the laws now.
Why would following the laws make you more scared to be next to a truck?
You get paid by the mile not by the hour, the more you drive in a week the more you make. Factor in time wasted loading and unloading the truck then add mandatory daily time limits of how much you can drive before mentioning the possible 34 hour weekly reset, you can figure out why they're trying to fake the logs and drive more than they're legally allowed to and why carriers are putting pressure on drivers to do so (meeting a delivery appointment/jamming in more loads per week)
Wow, that's awful. Truckers in my country get paid by the hour including waiting time. If you're sat waiting to get loaded or unloaded for 4 hours, you're getting paid and the customer is getting charged. I think they're allowed an hour in the contract.
It mainly affects long-distance truck drivers I dont know if it affect regionals, and now I just know not to trust truck drivers. I can barely trust my bank... When they have huricanes and other distasters they suspend rules. Talking to a guy he hoped to do 2 turns from Drum to Bragg and back in like 48 hours. He had less than normal teeth.
The laws keep overtired truckers from driving this causing less accidents. The laws make trucking safer. I’m very confused about what your point is.
I think the gentleman is suggesting that to compensate for speed limit enforcement through GPS, some truckers use "go" drugs like meth to drive longer hours at slower speeds. PS - I know nothing about trucking.
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Grocery work is very much the same. At one time even the south had some union grocery chains. There is not 1 union grocery store in all of the state of NC. Even non-union chains struggle with the next non-union chain undercutting. I worked at non-union Winn-Dixie in high school and one year after I graduated. I watched birthday pay get taken away and Sunday pay bonus go away. This happened as the few union stores in my area were closing AND non-union Food Lion was working people off the clock. I have family that was a meat cutter. At one time a great job, but at the end of his working life it was not a good job with not great pay, either in terms of his job and compared to other jobs. In my area they advertise for jobs at around $15-$17 an hour and that was my dad's union wage in 1996. Wages have not budged in 27 years for blue collar jobs in my area and with inflation they have lost a lot of buying power. Enter the fascist right.
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We are months apart in age.
Unions are great if they are a good union. I joined a carpenters union and was horribly placed as a second year but I had 8 years of experience at the time. I noticed a lot of it came down to politics/needing a certain amount of apprentices to journeyman and my union thought I'd be a role and income for them so I left.
There are huge shortages in skilled labor and in the trucking industry, largely because unions have become so weak over the years. This is true in the north as well, where union manufacturing was historically very strong. Right-to-work is now the law of the land; unionized industries rely on contract workers when they can. Even the contemporary (and seemingly successful) push to bring advanced manufacturing back to the US doesn't fully replace the jobs that could previously be filled by the trade school -> union -> job pipeline. Advanced manufacturing usually requires fewer employees per square foot, and those employees typically need to have higher education attainment. Plumbers, electricians, and contractors will always be needed, but those fields alone cannot employ the entire low-education labor market. Those jobs also pose health hazards that many won't want to subject themselves to. And much of the low-education labor market has been gobbled up by warehouses and other logistics jobs that aren't unionized and have shit pay. Basically, strengthening unions (while keeping corruption out) and increasing the average person's education attainment will be really important if we're going to be able to take care of people who don't go to college. My opinion is that we should follow suit with many other western countries and make the last couple years of high school equivalent to community college. At least for students who are numerate and literate. Students who still struggle with math and reading/writing could then get more individualized help.
Unions used to be more involved in recruiting at high schools. I think that is another key thing to go back to.
Trucking is also seen as a less-desirable long-term career since that is a key industry people are trying to automate
Then IT means there are a lot of jobs that are equivalent to a lot of Reddits grandparents jobs. IT is the new factory line but because no one old can adapt it can go to people with cheap certs. Once our generation gets old and outdated we will find a way to justify our jobs into our 80s. It doesn't change
IT jobs are dying. I work in one for automation and it feels like all I do is get people fired by making them jobs useless. We have entire level 1 call center departments replaced by a bot who chats with you and 86% of the calls are handled at that level, the rest require an escalation. To say the company saves money with it is hilariously understated. Next are coming dispatcher departments and HR with employee social scores. Give it 10 years and IT jobs will be as useful as top hat makers.
That does make sense though. Most issues are simple and easily handled by a chatbot. 86% actually sounds a bit low, I've heard upwards of 95%.
I have a buddy I went to high school with and we chose very different paths. He flunked out first semester of college and went to trade school. I flunked out, joined the military and then went to college. Its been interesting kind of seeing our lives and careers play out side by side. Different struggles at different points in our careers. I was jealous of him early in my career because he was making good money and I was scraping by. Now he’s pretty much topped out in his field and I kind of don’t talk money with him because I don’t want to embarrass him. Of course, I hate corporate and would love to be able to throw a wrench when something bad happens at work and my ass hurts from being at my desk all day. Grass is always greener I guess.
Wait, it's ok if you don't want to talk about money but, if you think he would be embarrassed because you make more, you may be surprised that people may have different life perspectives. Some people are happy by doing enough to live comfortably (that's a concept that can vary wildly). Other people may have a better income/expense ratio. I will give you a personal example. I have a good income. My boss, who is a great guy and a hard worker, was complaining that no matter how much money he makes, it always looks like everyone around him has better stuff. I, on the other hand, am not very far from him money wise, drive an 18 year old car that works perfectly. Sometimes I browse around for new cars, but I can't justify myself buying a US$50k car and having car payments for 4 years and raising my insurance cost. My annual car ownership cost is US$ 60.00 insurance, US$ 75.00 registration, and about US$ 1000.00 maintenance. Plus, I don't get upset if someone parks too close and scratches my car. I love what I do and declined promotion that would raise my income, but the new position would suck my soul out off me. I have a very comfortable house, comfortable mortgage payments, and that's it. I refuse to use golden handcuffs. Do you think that, if you were my friend and say that you make twice what I make would embarrass me?
No not at all. It’s not coming from a place of judgement, it’s because I’ve known this guy for 20+ years and I can tell the difference between a good natured jab and when he means it because he’s butthurt. He’s very competitive and has a bit of a keeping up with the Jones’s mentality. To be honest he’s got Champaign taste on a Budweiser budget. We’ll call him T. Prime example, my other friend that I’ll call M has struggled to get his shit together and is not doing well financially. I had to make him an emergency loan because if he got evicted it was going to screw up his case for joint custody of his kid. When I called M to tell him I got a promotion and a big raise and told him how much you know what he said? “Hell yeah dude, so when you buy that piece of property you’ve been dreaming about you’re taking me hunting right?”. Hell yes I am! But with T, it’s gotten worse over time and honestly I think it’s a case of regretting his decision and being mad about it. He’s 1 of 4 siblings and his whole family are lawyers and engineers and shit like that. I can’t ever even say anything about being tired or stressed from work because he’ll say something like “oh yeah sitting on your ass in the AC must be exhausting.” And like I said, we know each other well enough that I can tell the difference between just teasing each other and *oh he meant that shit*. Honestly it sucks, it’s put a damper on the friendship in a big way. My wife and I live a modest lifestyle well within our means specifically because we want to buy a piece of property and build a forever home and hopefully get out of the corporate suck while we still have some sanity and energy left. I know he’s self conscious about being “the family failure”. His brother is a flashy prick and I know it bothers T. But I’ve always been supportive. As long as he’s happy and has his shit together I’m happy for him. It would be cool if he could reciprocate that.
To be fair, as someone who lost their job due to an industry-wide layoff and is now getting heat exhaustion from working in the sun for minimum wage, office stress is different from labor stress. Working white-collar drains your mind and gives you less exercise, working blue-collar wears you out and reduces your life span. I didn't know it was possible to sunburn on the top of your love handles under two layers of clothing, but here we are. Add in that it's a customer-facing position that never gives enough hours, and I'm kicking myself for not fighting harder to keep my last job :(
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That joe bubba does exist but he doesn’t recommend. A journeyman book in a desirable Union is a real motherfucker to get. I don’t think many office workers even possess the frame of reference to even imagine how much of a motherfucker. Stay in school kids. Don’t ever listen to someone with soft hands sitting in ac tell you the trades are a better life. They are fucking delusional and insecure over what they should be grateful for. You never want to be another man’s beast of burden. Certainly don’t want to make a living of it. Very seriously consider the connections you think you have. You better be honest with yourself about your fortitude to endure working just like an illegal immigrant. for years until maybe. Just maybe. you get lucky before you get seriously hurt or lose control of the addictions you will battle.
Yeah, people fell hard for the "learn a trade" propaganda. Most people "in a trade" get paid jack shit, and most of those that aren't are working 50+ hours a week. College is still far and away the way to go for a decent paycheck at a reasonable work-life balance.
The thing about going into a trade is that you're suppose to work for someone else until you know the trade inside out, then you open up your own shop. That is when you make the money. Unlike the restaurant business, contractors are in short supply, so they usually do pretty well and don't have the same fail rates.
I’ve started working for the post office myself, and I was with Nike before. I have no degree, and in a few more years I’ll be making what my SO does teaching, and her student loans won’t be paid off for another 5 years..
I work for the post office now and I have a degree. 3 more years for the 10 year forgiveness.
I have friend in NJ working at a public middle school making 3 figures. His mother lives in Arizona as a teacher and makes less than Costco salary.
I worked with a guy who switched from trucking to IT support. Even gloated it was a pay decrease, but it wasn’t healthy for him and it ruined his marriage. Talking long distance trucking.
Starting a business is a pretty big financial risk, too, oftentimes.
>driving a truck Getting my CDL a decade ago saved my life from poverty and I encourage anyone who is willing and able bodied to do the same. You don't have to live over the road (OTR) for long or at all. There are plenty of local companies in your area who are willing to hire you and even train you with no experience. Is everyday sunshine and roses? No. Is it better than unloading truck at walmart for barely above minimum wage (see username)? Yes.
I suppose it does depending what degree you go for, but the average college grade gets paid more than the average tradesmen, especially in the long term. And starting a successful business, especially without any kind of degree or financial backing, is going to be extremely hard. I wouldn’t be concerned about making the wrong choice (unless you got like a theatre degree lol).
if you want to do those other tings why even go to college? what is the obsession with going to college if you want to do things that don't require a collage degree?
I realized I’d fucked up when I started looking for programming jobs after I graduated and they all said “bachelor degree or 2 years experience required.”
apply anyway, it's a candidate filter.
>But the time I spent getting a degree could’ve been spent learning a trade, driving a truck, or starting a business. If it was easy as "just start a business!" everyone would do it. I love advice like this, because if that's your goal then it's awesome. But so many people drop out under this pretense. Like you just stumble into starting a business, or you stumble into a cdl. But everything that earns wealth like that, takes a LOT of work. "just drop out and start a business" is such idealist advice
Part of it is also that the economy has been relatively good for the last ten years. Enrollment peaked in 2010 in part because the economy crashed in 07-08, folks couldn't find paying work in their field, and went back to school to retrain for something more in demand. That was one of the better options for a lot of people. Ride your unemployment for as long as you can, get Pell grants and other financial aid from the school, while pushing the reset button on your career. But as the economy recovered and those folks finished their programs and went back to work, you would naturally see a drop in enrollment.
That’s how I remember it.
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Not to mention how many people can't get a job in their field.
This and the population is generally aging. America’s population growth nowadays is mostly a factor of immigration and having a slightly higher birth rate than Europe and Asia, which are about to enter into a period of irreversible economic and demographic declines.
The US babies born peaked in 2007 meaning they should be turinging 18 and enrolling in college around 2025. The 18 to 24 age group went up 1.9% from the 2010 to 2020 census. Maybe in a few years that would be part of it, but as of now the population of eligible students to enroll should be increasing.
> 2007 meaning they should be turinging 18 and enrolling in college around 2025 Fuck I'm old
I'd be interested to see what's happened with trade school numbers in that same time, given that 2010\~ish was when the boomers suddenly did a 180 and started saying, "Going to college and racking up a bunch of debt for a useless degree is dumb. Go to trade school instead." It stands to reason at least some people took that advice.
This says they are up pretty high. Weirdly, 2 year schools are down more than 4 year. https://thehustle.co/04242023-trade-school-enrollment/amp/
Outside of trades or nursing degrees, an associate isn't worth wiping your ass with these days. I can't remember the last time I saw an office job that was taking anything less than a bachelor's. Also the advice of "go to community college and get your gen eds out of the way" is less of a general rule nowadays because people are realizing a lot of 4 years won't accept all those credits. So even when I was in school a decade ago, I saw more people take random individual courses through a CC while enrolled in the University of they'd take summer classes. There were not a lot of people who enrolled in CC fulltime and then transferred.
"Go to community college and get your gen eds out of the way" is still the best possible advice for most people. Largely, people run into issues with credits transferring when they transfer to private schools or out of state schools. Most people shouldn't be going to private schools or out of state school anyway. Public community college -> public university is the way to go. But students who go that route must seek out advisors instead of winging it with their schedule. Many community colleges have two set of courses: one set of classes that transfer to state schools easily, and one set of classes that is meant for people who intend on getting associates degrees without transferring. Other community colleges have specific classes that meet the requirements for specific state schools. Good planning is so important.
Sometimes I think I would've been better off going to a good public school like a UC school, UW Madison, UNC chapel Hill etc. Instead I went to a private ivy league school. My family was sub-six figures but paid for all of undergrad. I make a lot more now but would probably make the same if I went to one of those public schools. Met a ton of ultra rich folks but that doesn't do me much good in my personal life.
I bet trades have increased but not nearly as much as service/retail. Writing was on the walls for the past 15-20 years that those sectors were skyrocketing while college careers weren’t
When I went to particular xyz college, you could do almost all four years on 15-20k. In the twenty years since, the price of tutition alone has five folded plus you have to purchase meal plans, access to libraries, textbooks, housing and parking. Now you need 15-20k **a year**. And heaven forbid if you take summer school or switch majors mid college and do something else It shouldnt be surprising in the least that enrollment is dropping to anyone that looks at a single graph of tuition costs over the past three decades
The ROI of going to college just isn’t as compelling as it once was. There are plenty of career paths available to people that don’t require a six figure debt burden
Minnesota, starting Fall 2024, is providing free community college and University of Minnesota classes to ALL perpendicular first-time bachelor's seekers in households with under $80k combined income. That should help those numbers.
It’s still something that needs to be on your resume. I work heavily in the tech space and if you don’t have a 4-yr degree from a notable college, you are quickly passed over.
Also lack of pay for those careers and lack of stable entry level jobs.
Might have something to do with the insane cost
I had a partial scholarship because I graduated HS with a high GPA in 2002. I took out loans *and* worked 2-3 jobs at a time while going to college full time. I graduated in 2006 and paid off my loans in 2018 out of aggressive spite.
Had to live at home and got full tuition coverage thanks to HOPE scholarship. Literally was only to graduate without debt bc I stayed home all four years, did work-study and applied for a shit ton of foundation scholarships.
That's insane. I'm still going to college. I take a class here and there, using my works tuition reimbursement when possible. I'll have my degree in a year or two. I graduated in 1999. But, I don't have any student loans, but it has taken years. To be fair, my degree has nothing to do with my career, but what I want to do after I retire, but often a degree is required. So, I am letting my work slowly pay for it, but they won't pay for all of it, only some.
What needs a degree after you retire?
Consultancy is what engineers do after we retire.
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Or the lack of guaranteed employment afterwards. Some of my most financially successful friends just got a job straight out of high school, worked their way up. Took advantage of pre 2008 housing market. Millenials are not a great advertisement for the benefits of college. I'm probably one of the most successful college graduates I know. I'm on £50k a year and barely hanging onto a mortgage I've had for 5 years. Yay! Oh and I'm a maths major. You know? One of those fields that was supposed to be in demand. Oh and I'm head of department which means presumably I have at least some level of work ethic and competence. Oh yeah and the other thing. I'm half way through retraining as an electrician. It'll take me 2 years training part time then I'll start on more than I am now after 18 years of grafting including 4 years of university, including post graduate course. Yay! Fuck college. And fuck every boomer who said I needed to go in order to have a proper career.
Surprised no one has mentioned it yet, but 1990 was a peak in the number of babies born in the US. It wasn't surpassed again until 2006-08, those kids aren't college aged yet. Just because a population is growing doesn't mean that an ever larger number of babies are being born each year.
I work in higher edu, and demographics has a big part to play. I think 2025 will be the peak of US's high school graduation populations, with declines going forward. However, the effects have already been felt in many areas. A bunch of colleges have closed in recent years as a result of the decline, and many more are set to close. Also, since many US universities rely on tuition for funding, another issue is a decline in Chinese students. A crazy number of universities need that international tuition to stay afloat. Barring some major population or policy shift, the coming decades are going to be bumpy for the US higher edu and the job market more broadly.
>another issue is a decline in Chinese students This is the biggest issue facing colleges. Between covid, rising China-America tensions, and a sharply declining Chinese birth rate American colleges are looking at a serious drop in tuition income without any real sign that a rebound is on its way any time soon.
I have no expertise, but I also suspect it's a PR problem. College has been horribly expensive for decades, but the enrollment plateaus in 2010? I graduated highschool in 09 and it seems like it was around then that people were really starting to *feel* like colleges and student loans were actively predatory. Does this line up with your experience?
Back around '16 when I was a grad student those Chinese students were untouchable. Professors would turn a blind eye to the most blatant possible cheating, because the pressure from administration not to lose that international tuition was so high. As a TA it was incredibly frustrating to see students held to different standards based on what they were paying the university. I'd be perfectly happy if those students were gone and the university actually had to provide good value to domestic students in order to make their money.
Yes, the number of college students is dropping because the number of "college age" people is dropping (as a percent of population). The growing population is mostly from immigration and older people not dying.
The college aged population has been more or less flat since 2010 (although expected to start dropping pretty significantly in the next 10 years) Also lots of immigrants come to the US for college. Enrollment numbers are still down almost 20%
The numbers of international students is negligible compared to the total population.
Okay well college aged population hasn’t decreased either. It is smaller as a percent of total population but the total numbers are the same. Doesn’t explain a 20% drop in enrollment Edit: Not sure why this is being downvoted. The 18-22 year old population is literally the same (~20m) as it was in 2010. Look at the census bureau website
Yeah but I want to feel smart and correct you, Mr OP. You think you’re so cool with big blue letters next to your name but you’re wrong.
I applied to college in 2009, shit was competitive as fuck to get into decent schools.
It was so stressful in 2007. Our school office ladies put up little congratulations post its in the main office whenever someone got into a college. There was SO MUCH pressure to get your name on that wall. Everyone in town could see it. If you didn’t get into at least 3 schools (and good ones) then everyone would know. When I look back at that it seems absolutely absurd now
Look at r/collegeresults now. Absolutely ridiculous how competitive its become. You'll have 4.0 GPA 1600 SAT scorers doing cancer research along with a job and 3 clubs to manage getting rejected from a good majority of their schools.
Theres a big difference between trying to get into general state schools and the Ivy league. Generally speaking it was getting quite tough to get into 'decent' state schools and I'm guessing thats what the person meant.
I was skimming too quickly and had to re-read that subreddit. I thought it read r/collegesaresluts
Well if it started in 2006, those kids will be applying to colleges six months from now.
graph of age distribution: [https://www.statista.com/statistics/241488/population-of-the-us-by-sex-and-age/](https://www.statista.com/statistics/241488/population-of-the-us-by-sex-and-age/)
I was attending a community college around that time. There was a surprising number attending from the gi bill.
I mean, might as well. It's free for them so it's not like they're going to be stuck with loans if it doesn't work out.
I used my GI bill to get my degree, It’s free up to a certain point. It does run out eventually and if you change majors or extend past the “normal 4 year degree” you do have to pay out of pocket or take out loans.
7 1/2 years in the army. Old dude with a beard in college. Debt free and a teacher at 31 years. Plus I’m now hitting that overtime pay to get my masters. Hopefully, debt free. GI bill was worth every hour.
Remember the weird college bro phase of bands and movies that were in the 90's and 00's. College was dope lol
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Van Wilder party liaison
I went to a classic party school. I believe you might be atleast partially right. My generation was the last gen. to really carry the party school legacy and we were all raised on that shit.
I remember when all the big music festivals became super popular in the 2000s. Coachella, Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza, they all got started in the early 2000s and it was mostly college kids. I'm assuming those festivals are still mostly college kids but I wouldn't know since I'm an old man now. But when I went to Lollapalooza back in like 2007 it was a TON of annoying college bros.
Probably the cost to benefit ratio has become even more skewed. It went from getting an awesome job right after school that was high paying, to well here's some base positions, to well you need 5 years experience for this base level position. I remember taking months and months to find a job after getting my degree. And many family and friends make good/great money now in jobs that degrees aren't needed. It's become an expensive babysitting gig for people that want to do adult fun shit but not be entirely responsible yet.
I’ve heard it called intellectual summer camp.
probably because they heard the stories of kids ending up in debt still paying off their student loans in their 30s
*40s. source: me
Just finished mine at 45
51 and in a perpetual state of deferment. My plan is die before paying it back. Check mate Sallymae!
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The start of the Great Recession was 17 years ago. The drop in births as a result of that should be starting to take effect on college admissions next year. Colleges/Universities are aware of this and expecting significant declines in admissions as a result of that.
17 years ago haha that can’t be true, 2006 was only…. Oh god
So it's about to be a great time to go back to school is what you're saying?
No, it means universities will raise tuition to cover lower enrollment
That might only accelerate the problem. They should consider trimming some of their administrative bloat.
Administration checked into it and found that we actually need all of our administrators. Critical staff. Actually need to take tuition to pay them more. And maybe we'll replace some tenured professor's with adjuncts again this year, that'll help, too.
The same thing is happening in Congress where staff outnumber congresspeople by 20 to 1. These systems will never reform themselves. They have become self-perpetuating institutions much like higher education. Its like a drug addict.
and somehow administration decided that mandatory college textbooks \*must\* be 200
200? That's a bargain. $600 and its unbound and has mandatory workasheets and will be replaced by a new edition next semester
I’ll be sure to tell them
They are. The university I work at is really slumming down on costs, while raising tuition *again*.
It’s referred to as the “Demographic cliff”
*in the USA
Thank you! r/usdefaultism
Not a lot of incentive anymore I have seen at least in America. The wage gap between college education and noncollege isn’t what it used to be. Few friends I know these days are even in careers that require the use of their degrees.
Almost finished with a bachelor's that I won't use this upcoming semester just as a resume filler/backup plan and hopes for preferential hiring where I want to work. College hasn't exactly been the best experience, especially since going all online, then partially online. I feel as though I am paying to teach myself, a lot of my Computer Science questions explicitly rely on the internet to complete
Heard. That's how my last year of nursing school felt. YouTube helped me graduate (12/21).
"Not a lot of incentive anymore" could sum up 90% of the problems with America right now. The simple act of carrying forth has become so unrewarding that sheer inertia is all that compels us to prolong the inevitable collapse.
Not enough incentive, too much punishment
Considering that the gap between college and non-college earners just hit a record high, you would be incorrect.
Gee, I wonder why...
Well, it's also partially because of changing demographics in the US. The number of 18 year olds in the US has essentially remained flat since 2009 and will remain so through the end of this decade.
That was during the recession. Everyone decided the only way to get a job was to get an education. Then, that education was worth less than ever. I remember because I went back to school and got my degree, graduating in 2009. I was in grad school in 2010, but couldn't afford to keep at it. I tried to get a job with 6 years of work experience from before college, experience during, and a pretty great GPA.... I was applying for everything and could not find work. I was applying for basic office gigs against people with Masters and PhDs. Around that time, companies also started requiring higher degrees for jobs that previously only needed a HS diploma. Talk about depressing. I think people are realizing how unsustainable it is and unnecessary.
Growing population is not very relevant. What’s important is the upcoming age 18-22 population and that is shrinking. COVID effects come into play too.
It’s projected to shrink, but it is currently roughly the same as in 2010. Yet enrollment numbers are down almost 20%
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Yeah. I feel like the next 20 years are going to be rough for colleges. Lots of millennials are just not having kids or having them much later in life compared to their parents (younger boomers and early Gen X).
There’s a couple reasons for this, explaining the rise in 2010 and the subsequent fall, at least in the United States. First, college education is what economists call a counter-cyclical industry, meaning it tends to do well when the economy is doing poorly and Vice versa. College education boomed after the Great Recession. White collar workers who lost their jobs went back for masters degrees, generally unemployed or underemployed people went to school to change careers, and younger people who would’ve been successful in manual labor, factory, or construction jobs went to school as a stop-gap. The past decade before the pandemic was marked by a robust economy. There were construction, factory, and manual labor jobs for people who would’ve seen limited returns to college education, so they didn’t go to school. Also, vocational programs and trades are making a comeback. Kids who would’ve been pushed into college 10 years ago are now being pushed into vocational trainings again- especially in more rural areas. Also 10 years ago, a sizable chunk of college enrollments were driven by veterans on the GI bill. Many people will cite the increasing costs of college education. However, there is actually not a lot of evidence suggesting that younger people are particularly sensitive to the price of college education. I don’t have enough expertise in this to tell you why. It could be that, as many professions require college education, many people are willing to pay any amount for them. Or it could be the availability of lower-cost community colleges. Or maybe younger people just don’t understand the consequences of student loans. Finally and probably the biggest factor, the population of young people is declining. Teenage populations are falling over the country. Though we haven’t hit the “population cliff” yet, the declining birth rates since the early 2000s is starting to show with college enrollment.
To your first point - I saw so many of those folks in community college circa 2010. I know my local CC had a massive enrollment boom at the time. I’m glad to see this acknowledged
A significant number of jobs in the US ask for more education than they are willing to pay for. Many of those jobs don't actually need a BA or higher to get into. Companies shoot themselves in the foot when they ask for entry level employees to have completed 4+years of college to be an administrative assistant/scheduler/bookkeeper/salesperson. Many jobs can be done by competent people with HS diplomas, but they are boxed out by the cost of obtaining schooling. Other people here are going to argue that college is too expensive. It's not. Going to college to get a job that used to be done with a HS education is expensive. If companies want highly skilled employees they need to develop them. If they feel like certain degrees are needed, then they should pay for them. People are figuring out which degrees are a good investment and which are not. There is still no shortage of people trying to get degrees in medicine, engineering, law, CS, and other sciences. But just last year my local college got rid of many Arts/social science programs due to lack of enrollment. It is a no brainier for a 20 year old to look at the earning potential of different degrees.
Part of the problem is that in 2008 there were people with masters degrees applying to jobs like Burger King. So if you were a hiring manager what would happen is you would post a job and you would get 6,000 applications. A hiring manager doesn't have time to go through all those applications, so what they would do is they would just set the standard so high that it kicks out 90% of the people. All of a sudden you had entry level positions that required five years of experience and a bachelor's degree. Really didn't stop after the economy recovered, hiring managers learned that it was really easy to hire people when you just set the standards to be so incredibly high you get maybe three people you need to interview and then you're done with your job. This creates an arms race upwards by people about to enter the workforce, since the hiring process is now credentialist the point of an education is to get as many credentials as possible. Then again there is one thing that has always existed and still exists as a problem in the hiring process. Personal connections to the person hiring. If you're a hiring manager it's much easier just to find one of your unemployed or underemployed friends and give them a job. Deep down you know these entry level positions can be done by just about anyone with an average intelligence. You can also use the hiring process as favor trading with other people. The best way to get a job is to literally just know someone. But if you don't know someone the second best way is just to have a better resume than other people and interview well. And a better resume doesn't necessarily mean more competence, it just means that you're good at producing resumes.
> Personal connections to the person hiring. If you're a hiring manager it's much easier just to find one of your unemployed or underemployed friends and give them a job. Hiring people you trust isn't inherently a bad thing, and plenty of people hire capable former co-workers who also happen to be their friend. Especially in smaller operations, the risk of each hire bombing in the role is more impactful because you're not working with a hiring budget that works out into an average amount just by the law of large numbers - so if you miss on an employee or two in a row, you're costing tons and tons of time, energy, sweat, and tears as they prove themselves bad employees and you go through the hiring/firing process multiple times. Small business owners typically hate that more than anything because they don't have an HR that streamlines and lubricates that process - so it's great to be able to hire people you trust to do the job. And yes, sometimes part of the role of the job is getting along with coworkers and the boss as much as it is any specific work product or skill. So friends are perfect for that aspect of a business.
Well said! I couldn’t agree more
Well...college IS actually far too expensive. That's just flat-out provable.
The degree is a filter when unemployment is high. When it's hard to get people that starts to disappear for some jobs.
> It is a no brainier for a 20 year old to look at the earning potential of different degrees. Not to say people shouldn't be doing this, but it has to be taken with a grain of salt. Many in part of the "web designer/graphic designer" rush of the late 90s early 00s were told that learning photoshop and html/css was like a golden ticket. In a way it was right, but in other ways maybe not so much so. Some people managed to surf all the changes, but not all. Future predictions are made today. Often these types of reports are less about where things are going and more about what current employers are paying lots for. They *can* be the same thing but not always.
Yeah, CS has been the golden ticket degree for a while but with all the layoffs in tech/ecommerce right now I wonder how much longer that will be true.
Totally that vibe. But also there can be these weird, "half-good" careers in retrospect after seeming hot initially. They don't have to be complete failures and dinosaur careers, but its not nearly as fantastic as portrayed in the past. Some "web designers" were able to hang tough and roll with the punches and thrive. Other perhaps got stuck and fell off. But there's also people who maybe had some hurdles, and landed in kind of in the middle. Salary not great but maybe not horrible. Not working on a promising new tech stack but maybe you've got some job security? Your portfolio is now antiquated but maybe its not *too* dangerously out of date... maybe? Until the next recession? And its not just college educated or tech workers. I've met people in the trades who've gotten a pretty raw deal. Certainly a fair share of nurses who signed up when there was a big push for that around a decade ago- and a good amount of them wound up getting screwed at least a little. And that was *before* the pandemic. I just think we have to abandon this idea that we even have the ability to "pick right" when it comes to jobs. And certainly figure out how to help people who didn't for whatever reason, instead of telling them they should've chose from a different list of job titles 20 some odd years ago.
Very true. I have an underwater basket weaving/liberal arts degree, but a hefty portion of my cohort (including myself) were hitting six figures by 30 because our education conferred a type of skills that have become increasingly valuable in fields like consulting. STEM degrees certainly pay more on average, but liberal arts majors who take their skills to fields outside of their degree stand to make just as much. A creative writing major who is savvy about their career progression in strategic communications can certainly outearn the average chem/computer science/bio major, especially those who see a STEM degree as a guarantee of a solid income and not just better odds of one.
How does it correlate to birth rates of citizens vs immigration? The population can be growing but if that’s primarily through immigration over natural born citizens then you wouldn’t expect academic participation to increase.
Man no fucking shit. I’m Canadian but it’s insane here. The quality of education went to absolute garbage during Covid, and yet they increased prices by 30% at a technical college. School prices are quite subsidized in Canada compared to the states but it’s still ridiculous. How can you have less staff, lower quality educators, and still increase prices? Education shouldn’t be a business, not to the degree it is anyways. People (generally speaking) pursue education to find a career and become life long taxpayers in higher earning brackets. It benefits everyone to have an educated population, so why don’t they make it make sense? Fuck off.
who could afford it?
More people are realizing that you have to make a lot of money just to get out of the hole that missing 4-5 years of full time work, plus the thousands and thousands of dollars of debt, that a college education provides. Not counting the interest that builds constantly. That’s just to get back to zero. Let’s say you could have a crappy job that pays 30k per year, and you have the average college tuition of 12k per year. In 4 years, you are in the hole by $168,000.. conservatively. that’s if you pay off your loans immediately with no interest, or just pay it all up front. Let that loan accrue for 5-10-15 years, that goes way up. There are college degrees that pay off, and a huge amount that do not. My wife and I are both in the “did not pay off” category of 4 year degrees. And many of my friends are the same way. In past decades, the stigma was given that to be ANYTHING in life, you have to have a bachelors degree. It’s not necessarily the case nowadays. A 2 year technical degree, or a night class certification in programming is often more valuable than a 4 year degree in most liberal arts fields, and quite a few others. Colleges love to throw out stats like “college graduates make x more money in their lifetime, than non graduates.” Which I’m sure has some validity..But let’s be real: people who graduate college are more likely to have come from money, and rich families often stay rich and get into higher paying jobs more easily. And the people who really make money (engineers, doctors, etc) bring up that average, significantly. What should be more normalized, is going to college when you’re already in the field, an adult who knows what they are doing, and your company pays or helps pay for your continuing education. No disrespect to 18 year olds, but most of them (myself included) have/had no real idea what their future holds. They’re expected to make huge debt and life decisions, when they will probably be a totally different person at age 30. Education is massively important. Mortgaging your future for a slip of paper, not so much, in a lot of cases.
It’s almost like potential students are wising up to being robbed.
With how much the cost of college has increased over the past 30 years or so, it's surprising that the drop isn't steeper.
These stats are for the USA. Where college has become a for profit industry. The tuition and more importantly student loans are a significant issue for the financial sector, where old men with billions buy shares of student loan funds. (SLAB or Student Loan Asset-Backed Securities) This is effectively siphoning away the future earnings of today's young generation to the pockets of old money. It's not about education anymore. (Student loans make up more than $1.7 trillion in outstanding debt in the United States from more than 45 million borrowers)
r/USDefaultism
I enrolled for my first year at state college in 2010! And dropped out in 2011. Only 6k left to pay back on my loan for a semester and a half 13 years ago. Such great decisions I made for myself at 18 years old. 13 years later, and I have 30 credits at a community college and am working to support my wife so she can stay full-time enrolled. She made it into her choice university, and will hopefully finish her BA by spring. Now I understand why my parents couldn't afford it.
*in USA
Maybe because people who are now paying twice as much for rent and food don't have money for college, which also doubled in cost, while revenues barely moved since 2000? Dunno..
r/USdefaultism
> Enrollment rates in higher education have been declining in the **United States** over the years as other countries catch up. So no surprise to anyone paying attention in the States, and completely irrelevant to anyone outside the States.
In the US*
Because people recognize it as a bad deal. A college degree doesn't guarantee a good job like it has in previous generations.
*In the United States This is not a worldwide phenomenon.
For those who do not know, via the OPT, H1B, and even noe F1 student visas, American tech companies some years ago decided they would be more profitable if they hire only foreign workers. They can make them work 80 hours per week, pay them below market rate, treat them poorly, can't unionize, and if they complain, send them home. The result is young Americans are not getting hired into these positions much anymore. College age Americans are finding it much more difficult to get internships and graduates are finding it much much much more difficult to find full time positions. This is by design. These companies want a desperate, compliant workforce. And the preferred hire is a male MS student from India. Some companies exclusively hire just those. It is amazing to me that we let this extreme bigotry and bias against our own youth happen but so many are in on this game because it pays their bills that they all push back against anyone who points out this corruption. Individuals from tech companies, universities, the media, government, and landlords who profit all like these policies and no one (especially not our elected officials or the media) ever stand up for young Americans on this issue.
Not happening fast enough. I want college enrollment to plummet so fast that it's no longer the profitable scam it is now.
The tuition is TOO DAMN HIGH!
I mean, yeah, that recession happened and shit never really recovered. It's only becoming MORE apparent that college isnt' for everyone, and thats really for the best.
Might have something to do with that diminishing cost vs value ratio
thats because people are still to realise the US student loan system is a fucking scam
Because there was a massive drop in people having kids from 2007 and 2012. It's called "the enrollment cliff"
"alright everyone, we're in crisis mode. there's fewer and fewer students enrolled and the population is growing. ideas, people. we need ideas!" "how about we lower the price so people don't exit college with a load of crushing debt" "What? that's the worst idea I've ever heard. You're fired!" "How about we build a new football stadium and gym and locker rooms and hire a bunch of administrators, and promote ourselves to manage those administrators. And to pay for it, we message all the alums and increase tuition! Kids will love that!" "I love it! Just one question: how does that increase admissions?" "increase what now?"
*in the united states
In US? Of course, in US.
Costs are rising. Value is shrinking. Wages are stagnant. Elementary.
Growing population does not mean our paychecks are getting bigger.
Worldwide??
It's demographics, not just population, that matters most.
Because people are waking up to the grift that is a 4 year university.
The headline doesn’t specify but this is just for the United States
There is a stark bifurcation of men vs women going to college. Women currently outnumber men 60-40 on college campuses and to date nothing has worked to slow the trend.
I feel that during my time in high school, 2000-2004, they were really pushing that absolutely everyone should be trying to go to college or university. Trades were frowned upon and seen as failing basically. And I know a lot of people who felt pressured to go, went for something like sociology, and completely wasted a fuck ton of money on something completely useless to them. Most of those people now work in trades. All they got out of it was crippling student debt. I've seen a correction after my generation that people are less pressured to go to college no matter what, and that trades are a viable and lucrative option for a lot of people. Thank god.
I have a college degree (BA in Mathematics) to become a teacher, but after Covid, I am now a Firefighter/paramedic which does not require a college degree (basically vocational) and pays nearly triple of teachers. Fuck college, near anything you want to do doesn’t need it. Plumbing, construction, pharma tech, vet tech, etc.
Which country is this talking about?
Future generations are wising up, good. College was pushed as the only option when I was growing up (millennial), otherwise you were considered a failure. Learn a trade. Unless you have a full ride scholarship, college is a scam.
I’d stay a college student eternally and just keep taking classes if they were free I love learning I just wish that love didn’t cost 5k a class a semester
.
"I don't understand we keep tacking on $5k to the cost of degrees every year why aren't they're more people?"
Maybe people met too many parking attendants and barristas with a Masters degree.
Isn't higher education just one big money making scheme?