Those aren't facts, they are premises

It is as likely that tying a university degree as the minimum pre-requisite for a decently paying career is driving the price upwards. Increased competition for desirable placements is the classic limited supply high demand scenario.

The problem isn't the availability of loans which are just a side effect but the focus of education as a gate to future success.

BTW from ancient times up until the last couple of centuries, patronage was often the primary income source for artists and scientists, the rich and powerful would subsidize them, offer sinecures to allow them to create, and the patron would get to show how wealthy and sophisticated they were.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patronage#Arts

Alright. Can you dispute them though?

> Increased competition for desirable placements is the classic limited supply high demand scenario.

I would suggest that if you believe the issue facing the US higher education system is a limited supply of places, you may not understand the US higher education system. In fact, if you look globally you'll find that the countries with low tuition are the ones who ruthlessly control the number of places.

In the US in particular you'll note that we went from around 45% of high school grads enrolling in college in 1970, to 70% enrolling in 2010, even as tuition climbed far faster than inflation. If 70% of all high school grads represents a "limited supply", what do you think the demand is?

(The number of places at elite schools is limited. It's actually not hard to explain why Harvard is expensive; the question is why everywhere else is too.)

> patronage

That was my point; I took skwosh to be arguing against a system where the wealthy purchased art/science/journalism for their own ends; my point is that this is the system we've always had: Private individuals (and latterly, corporations) being patrons of the arts, publishing newspapers, and funding scientific investigation. I believe skwosh was suggesting we move to a system where society as a whole should fund such things via taxation; I was pointing out that we've never had that.

You misunderstand the point about limited "places" (or at least the point I believe is intended).

For sake of argument, assume 90% of jobs out there are "bad jobs"--no prospect of real wage growth, declining stability, decreasing benefits--and the remaining 10% of jobs are "good jobs" (with some wage growth, stability, and benefits).

Assume also that it is widely believed that in general, to have a chance at landing a "good job" you need at least an undergraduate degree (necessary, not sufficient!).

In such a situation, will you not see everyone throw as many resources as they can into getting their kids a better chance of making it into one of those good jobs?

There's a lot you can quibble with but that's the "limited places" of significance, with demand for university education a byproduct of that more fundamental demand (for better positioning vis-a-vis the "good jobs").

This is thus more of a race to establish relative position vis-a-vis other entrants, so IMHO looking at tournament theory (etc.) is helpful for understanding the overall dynamics.

> In such a situation, will you not see everyone throw as many resources as they can into getting their kids a better chance of making it into one of those good jobs?

Absolutely, but the resources you can throw at it is strongly dependent on the availability of loans. Hence why we have $1.3 trillion in aggregate debt.

Basic income. Free tuition. An outright grant, no repayments. Literally zero barriers except ability for anyone, for any level of academic achievement in anything. Result: a culture with a lot more understanding of the real world, and the preservation of human and humane values, rather than a laser focus on the hand-to-mouth of Jobs Right Now.

That sounds like a very nice world to live in. It also doesn't sound much like our world. It's certainly not how any country on Earth operates.

One day, I hope and imagine, we will live in a post-scarcity world, and then yes, that sounds like a great plan for organizing society.

> rather than a laser focus on the hand-to-mouth of Jobs Right Now.

Perhaps we should wait to relax that focus once we've actually solved the problem. If you look around, you'll notice employment, especially among people 18-29, is a real challenge, while government finances and pensions are grossly underfunded.

It's the old hierarchy of needs thing; self-actualization is at the top of the pyramid not only because it's the most important, but because it relies on all the others being fulfilled in order to be an acheivable goal.

"That sounds like a very nice world to live in. It also doesn't sound much like our world. It's certainly not how any country on Earth operates."

We've had a system not a million miles different from the one described in Ireland since the 70's/80's. There are grants for school uniforms and books for those that cant afford them, the cost of a college degree is not exorbitant and is again covered by a grant for those that cant afford it (I went to college with several guys who were on the grant) There's always the focus on getting a job, for obvious reasons, but there are plenty of people who go back and re skill with a 2nd degree.

That is in no way even close to the imagined situation that the response you are quoting is referring to.

In Denmark students have since 1970 and actually dating back to the 50's had the right to SU (Statens Uddannelsesstøtte = government support programmes) in form of government grants and government subsidized loans for any students studying on a government approved list of mostly government subsidized secondary and higher education. Hope that triggers some anti-big gov't folks over there.

It is extremely unlikely that a post-scarcity world will ever occur without, say, a collective global work project. There is no financial incentive for private capital to initiate it. Just like the Internet (in its current form) would have never occurred without government funding.

The technology to bring about a post-scarcity world mostly exists, and we could get there very quickly (maybe 5-10 years). But, how do you convince the upper classes (who control the capital) to support it? How do you temper the common idea that 'the lazy people' will just do nothing all day? (like that's a bad thing)

"But, how do you convince the upper classes (who control the capital) to support it?"

This is a red herring. It's easy to assuming that such an enormous undertaking can be solved by "tax the rich". It doesn't work that way. There isn't enough money in the top 1% of the United States to pay for such a program. Inevitably a UBI would be paid for by the middle class, the meaty part of the bell curve.

This means people who took on debt loads to become a doctor, lawyer, whatever, and have worked hard to pay it down (and probably still are paying it down). $250k/yr sounds like a lot, but when you're paying back $400k worth of loans, it's really not as exorbitant as it sounds to many people -- especially if these same people are trying to buy a house, save for their kids' college, etc.

This seems more optimistic than I usually hear. Do you mind going into what you mean by "post-scarcity" and how we'd achieve it? Does it just mean a living UBI, or is there tech/infrastructure (extensive solar, e.g.) to be developed/built out as well?

Our current global scientific and engineering output is staggering, and it is continuously accelerating. If there was a global 'manhattan project' focused on this, then it would happen.

Global economic output is $80 trillion. There are 100s of millions of scientists, engineers, programmers, technicians in the world. Aside from the ideological complexities, which are probably intractable, it seems like it would be pretty easy to me.

What would it really take to provide basic housing, food, water, clothing, energy, and medicines to 7 billion people? Robotic automation, free / cheap energy, and access to natural resources.

we bulldoze away houses, we throw away food. meanwhile, people are homeless and hungry. Clearly we already live in a society of overproduction.

The difference is that the owners of the capital aren't willing to lose on their investments, and it's cheaper to bulldoze and throw away than to give it away or provide work maintaining the communities that these properties exist in/on.

> we bulldoze away houses etc

People can do whatever they want to their property, no?

Do you personally allow homeless people into your house?

Problems you mentioned are real and tough, but the objections are very simplistic. Its very easy to demand others to do something, and distance yourself away.

appealing to individualism won't solve systemic problems. I don't have to house syrian refugee immigrants in my home personally to realize that europe has an ethical problem by refusing them and treating them the way they have been.

There is a long and historical precedent for demanding that people with excess amounts of capital owe a greater portion than those who own relatively little. There are material differences between the capitalists and all the rest of us, and those allow us to demand specific concessions from them.

> 'the lazy people' will just do nothing all day?

IMHO It's a bad thing considering the fact that a lot of people worked hard to get us to where we are today.

Sorry that I wasn't clear. My point is that it's a subjective qualifier. My productive may be your lazy and vice versa

That sounds great, but there's no free lunch and when you ask people to pay (a lot) for something, you're going to get their opinion.

Here's mine. I roughly divide human activities into jobs and hobbies. One ultimately builds enough value to support existence, one is primarily done for enjoyment. Education for the former can and should pay for itself over the long haul, so we're discussing who pays for hobby education.

Personally, I don't want to pay for other people's hobbies. I've volunteered to teach people some of mine, spending hundreds of hours with educational groups. But, I can't imagine forcing taxpayers to pay for university education in these things.

I'm sorry but, insinuating that humanities and arts are "hobby educations" is pretty rude and smacks of superiority complex.

Look at the achievements that have stood the test of time and become valuable to us as a species. It's a pretty beautiful blending of scientific achievement and artistic achievement. If this system can't encourage both, let's not go to war with the arts, let's make the system that we invented, support the things that are important to us.

Beyond that, from my perspective, more of my tax dollars will go towards issues and causes that I am personally conflicted with than ones that I agree with. The college loan issue will never compete with the size and scope of something like the military. So it's beautiful that you would be personally affronted by this use of tax dollars but: welcome to the club, est. 1776

Don't apologize for personal attacks, just refrain from them.

Any argument made by starting with calling someone rude or accusing them of having a superiority complex, can only be made better by instead empathizing with rather than dismissing opposing viewpoints.

What's even worse is patronizing a mis-characterization of someone's statement.

> I roughly divide human activities into jobs and hobbies.

This indeed is a rough characterization of life. At no point does shaftoe insinuate humanities and arts are 'hobby educations'. Rather it seems to me a simply capitalistic view that anything humans do well can be done for money, at which point we call it a job. Certainly that also includes artists and philosophers. Or another way to think about it, to be truly great at something you must spend the majority of your life doing it, at which point it probably also needs to pay the bills.

People should only be investing 5-figure sums of taxpayer's dollars to learn what they expect will be lifelong skills that will significantly increase their lifetime earning potential. In almost all cases, this is not Art History class.

Telling someone that their humanities education was all a hobby is a much greater insult than calling someone out, so I'll let the universe sort out who was the true meanie-head here lmao.

If humanities are so valuable, why aren't they valuable?

They are valuable. Myself and most of my colleagues make 6 figure+ with arts degrees. Journalism, Visual Arts, etc. On top of that, most of them manage engineers, or lead their projects. And the engineers who work with them would never be so naive as to insult their work or their education in the way that the individuals in this thread do.

Great, you won't have any issue repaying your loans then I can safely assume?

I make 40k a year due to not growing up wealthy enough to attend college, I should be subsidizing people like you?

You're right, they're not valuable in the capitalistic sense.

They're valuable if you don't want to live in the world depicted in Brazil (1985), or Neuromancer, or pretty much any cyberpunk dystopia.

Why don't you tell me how much you have donated to "the arts" before you demand that everyone else does so.

For context, I give 8% of my humble income to charities that feed the hungry and care for the sick. Is my dollar better spent funding a play that few will ever wish to see?

What? I'm not forcing anyone to do so nor even asking them to.

As far as I'm aware, none of us are allowed to pick and choose what our taxes go to or else I probably would give more to the arts than, say, the military.

This discussion has been on the public funding of college education.

So, the crux of your argument is: because money is squandered in one area its fine to do so in another?

No. It's not. I'm not trying to be rude here but I don't know why you keep making arguments for me. I never said that nor the last thing you think I was saying.

All I said was "hey maybe you're right there isn't a tangible value in terms of money in and money out but perhaps there are other, more-difficult-to-track reasons why the arts are important."

Basic income I think is going to have to happen at some point in our lifetime. There are just simply not enough jobs.

Please stop saying 'free' tuition. It's not free, it is just not paid by the student. Keep in mind that many states already have just this setup for in state students to use lottery money.

Basic income is my one hope from the next 4-8 years (because socially, we are screwed)

Much like with Obama, Trump and the Republicans are going to learn what is and isn't possible for the POTUS. And while there are many factors in the election, a significant chunk of the votes were poor whites who are traditionally opposed to social programs.

So on the off chance we build more factories, they are going to be modern (automated), dispelling that myth.

Which should set the stage for the Dems (or even the Republicans, but I doubt it) to pivot back toward being "the poor people's party" and finally get to push some of those social programs.

And the only one that really makes sense (at least, to me) is some form of basic income/guaranteed minimum income.

I am still sceptical that we'll see the real thing in our lifetimes, but I do think we can start down that path sooner than later.

It's also the mode of operation for ages 5-18, with a nation wide avg of 12K / year in spending per student. So that 160k-ish in spending is downright American, but spending 1/4-1/2 of it on college is a give-away, socialism, the very demise of lady liberty

Why stop there? Why not have it be open to everyone, forever, at any point of their life? Why should anyone have to work at all?

The scope of someone going to college for say 40 years (from 20-60, for sake of argument) is a lot different than saying 4 years of education should maybe be an institutionalized cost. If you figure:

1. At 12K/year, base education runs a cost of 156K 2. At 20K/year, college education for 4 years runs 80K 3. At 20K/year, college education for 40 years runs 800K

Then what we're saying is 80K represents 50% of the educational costs we're all comfortable with sinking into base education. But letting someone never work and just go to college for free for 40 years would cost over 400% of the base educational costs. That seems like a totally different scale of issue to me. We're also probably hitting diminishing returns over what 4 years would prepare someone for, and I don't think the audience is that large. Most people want to go to college to get skills to then contribute something to society, whether or not today's economy specifically values what they want to contribute.

> Then what we're saying is 80K represents 50% of the educational costs we're all comfortable with sinking into base education.

You're making assumptions that we're all comfortable with paying for 12 years of education. I think the majority of that is a waste of time (and by extension money).

> Most people want to go to college to get skills to then contribute something to society, whether or not today's economy specifically values what they want to contribute.

Sure but I don't want to pay for that either. If people didn't get hand outs that hide the true price of college (i.e. government backed loans), the price of college would come down drastically. It's artificially inflated to match amount of money a student can expect to beg / borrow.

If there was going to be any type of "college for all", the only approach I'd advocate would be free education that was provided by the government itself (i.e. community colleges). At least that would have a downward pressure on tuitions at private institutions that would suddenly have to price compete against it. Anything else will just increase the problem further.

Sorry to lump you in, caveat that statement in whatever way makes you feel comfortable. Hopefully we can agree that at least as far as level of discussion goes, much more is made of college costs than of childhood education costs. I found to be a little absurd given the financial numbers involved (every kid goes through primary education, even if college is free it'll never rise to the level of every kid utilizing it, etc.)

> Sure but I don't want to pay for that either

I left a comment in another thread, but the amount of shit that is in the budget leaves every American with a feeling of "I don't want to pay for that". The DoD budget alone clocks in at over 8x the projected cost of free college education, very few people talk with vitriol about the hand-outs we're creating for the myriad of people that make up that apparatus.

> It's artificially inflated to match amount of money a student can expect to beg / borrow

I'm not as well read here as I'd like to be, but I have a hard time understanding how this is going to be such a magic fix. Professors aren't going to be too keen to take a pay cut here, and state universities aren't exactly making out like gangbusters right now. Is the idea that we'd have less students and less professors? What's the economic impact of seeing those jobs, and the dependent jobs in school communities, eliminated?

> Sorry to lump you in, caveat that statement in whatever way makes you feel comfortable. Hopefully we can agree that at least as far as level of discussion goes, much more is made of college costs than of childhood education costs. I found to be a little absurd given the financial numbers involved (every kid goes through primary education, even if college is free it'll never rise to the level of every kid utilizing it, etc.)

The big difference is that childhood education costs are primarily borne locally. Most, if not all, comes from local real estate taxes. If I pay those taxes I can reap the results (via my children attended a school I pay fore) ir I can vote with my wallet and live somewhere else that has lower taxes (and by extension lower quality education). Either way it's up to me.

> I left a comment in another thread, but the amount of shit that is in the budget leaves every American with a feeling of "I don't want to pay for that". The DoD budget alone clocks in at over 8x the projected cost of free college education, very few people talk with vitriol about the hand-outs we're creating for the myriad of people that make up that apparatus.

Saying, "He gets his daisy cutter so I want my free college!" is a fools argument. Just because there's other crap in the budget doesn't mean we should increase it further with more crap. It's just a different pile.

> I'm not as well read here as I'd like to be, but I have a hard time understanding how this is going to be such a magic fix. Professors aren't going to be too keen to take a pay cut here, and state universities aren't exactly making out like gangbusters right now.

I'm sure you'll find plenty of professors willing to teach for less. I don't even think they're a significant part of most budgets anyway but I doubt it'd be a problem.

> Is the idea that we'd have less students and less professors?

No the idea is to remove the artificial upward pressure on prices by having people pay for the education they want to receive.

> What's the economic impact of seeing those jobs, and the dependent jobs in school communities, eliminated?

They're being artificially inflated and maintaining a college loan bubble to keep them employed is asinine. Nobody has a right to a government subsidized job.

Plus it'd be better than the economic impact of trillions of dollars of student loan guarantees or the weight of those loans on our youth. College graduates with $160-200K of debt are common nowadays, even for in-state schools. That's a mortgage payment and they don't even have a roof over their heads to show for it!

If someone can just get on Basic Income, why even bother with attending college and putting in all that hard work?

This is a serious question. Most people are not intrinsically motivated; the hacker news echo-chamber is an anomaly.

Most people ARE intrinsically motivated. It's just that in this society, the things you do for intrinsic motivations are called "hobbies" or "play".

Hobbies are basically non-job things to get good at that don't pressure you with an economic sword of Damocles.

In a Basic Income world, essentially, ALL jobs are hobbies. Those that suck too hard to be hobbies had better automate.

People always want more. I've met plenty of people who had enough inheritance / other random windfall to just get by who still went to college and careers. If those who get it by random chance or family act as such, why should we assume that those who would get it from Basic Income would be any different?

You do realize that you met those people who did get that random windfall because they were working, not because they just took the money and ran, right?

Sure you might have met 20 of them. How many haven't you met because you're busy working instead of being where those folks hang out while they're not working?

If we have basic income, why do we need to be educated at all? Just stay home and live minimally.

Because self-actualization is a human need and for a lot of people education is a means for that. Because some of us enjoy creating things that are of value to others. Because life is more than survival, basically.

You may be right on some, but if it was a good idea you would have said most.

Are we talking about UBI, or about education? Because if it's UBI, what I mentioned was just one of the mechanisms by which it could work. But I honestly don't know if it would. I suspect it would, but we can't know without more research and tests. Human behaviour is too complex to model a priori.

People like to learn things, if the desire hasn't been regimented out of them and their energy drained to the dregs.

Because democracy. One of the major reasons we need education now.

> Basic income. Free tuition. An outright grant, no repayments. Literally zero barriers except ability for anyone, for any level of academic achievement in anything. Result: a culture with a lot more understanding of the real world, and the preservation of human and humane values, rather than a laser focus on the hand-to-mouth of Jobs Right Now.

Scarcity is a thing in the real world. We are nowhere near a point where we can produce more than is necessary for everyone to have everything they want at every point in their lifetime. Assuming that's even possible as there are things that are naturally limited. I mean, under the everything is free to everyone model, how do you determine who gets to live in the house on the cliff overlooking the ocean and who gets to live inland surrounded by tract housing?

Terrible, dystopian idea. You know education can't be "free", right? Unless you want to enslave educators and force them to work for nothing. In reality, the middle class will have half their income seized to subsidize the dependent class, being worked to the bone in mega corporations. Meanwhile, the elite will reap all the profits and pour them into more social control programs. Result of basic income will be a culture of demoralized serfs, totally dependent on a feudal corporate state for their survival.

Mr. Orwell? Big fan - may I have your autograph? :)

> Basic income. Free tuition. An outright grant, no repayments. Literally zero barriers except ability for anyone, for any level of academic achievement in anything. Result: a culture with a lot more understanding of the real world, and the preservation of human and humane values, rather than a laser focus on the hand-to-mouth of Jobs Right Now.

Incorrect. This will foster a culture of inferiority because not everyone is equal. No matter what you do, the lower class will be jealous of the upper class and will always demand for more.

Money and education is solved? What about universal access to entertainment? Universal food? Universal housing?

By this line of argument, its not "incorrect" its just a wall to keep to separate ones of the others. Just because theres always a demand doesnt mean satisfying demands wouldnt make peope happier or better.

If I was designing policy?

Really all I'm talking about is not defunding/sidelining Arts etc "because it's not financially viable".

The idea is really to provide a well rounded education, (giving students a broader perspective on the world, a stronger vocabulary for expressing ideas, etc), as opposed to a purely career focused one. I think it would be detrimental to culture and society in general if everyone was groomed from high-school to only ever consider the safe, paved, career footpath.

This may take the form of allowing for more electives in vocational courses, encouragement to take double degrees, or eliminating barriers for later study (letting people change their minds, or even just reskilling when the robots take over).

What I was meant by "subsidisation" is just the "somewhat" free education that exists in some places today, but has been more prevalent/widespread in the past. And while prioritising vocational degrees is fine to some extent, crippling participation in the Arts by making those qualifications prohibitively expensive (by not providing loans) is a bad idea imo.

Part of it is just a shift in mentality. When we viewed education as a net benefit to society that society was willing to pay for, there was a natural downward pressure on the cost of education since the public was shouldering most of the burden to educate people. Once we shifted to the mindset where an education was valued based on how much extra money the recipient could make during his/her lifetime, that downward pressure went away and market forces took over. Suddenly it was acceptable to charge hundreds of thousands of dollars for an education because that shift in mentality meant that people would pay that much.

The result is our current educational system, where costs have ballooned and administrative and facilities costs dwarf the spending on actual education. I wish I could remember where I read it, but there was an excellent article that traced beginning of our rapidly increasing education costs to the era when Reagan was governor of California and he pushed that shift in mindset. The whole system and all the problems we're experiencing suddenly make perfect sense when you view it from that perspective.

I'd personally like to see a hybrid approach. We should identify a core curriculum that leads to a well-educated populace. Things like statistics and formal logic that make it much harder to manipulate people the way that our current politicians and media do. It should be free to study that curriculum. Anything beyond that, including vocational training, could be market based and lenders should consider the likelihood of repayment when loaning money for tuition.

I agree of course - a society with at least some understanding of statistics, logic, anthropology (of media), etc is essential to a healthy democracy.

It would be great to see political/cultural literacy taken more seriously, but the trend as you point out has been in the opposite direction (and has been/will be for some time).

Being burdened with debt and not having the choice to pursue further education are the real problems, and can hopefully be solved in a way other than restricting access to those fields.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in this thread... it's pretty cynical (but not uncommon) to suggest that one's primary value to society is what they contribute economically (or otherwise validated economically).

I'm lucky that the situation is a bit more optimistic here in Australia...

> statistics, logic, anthropology (of media), etc is essential to a healthy democracy

Thomas Jefferson said something similar:

  An ignorant people can never remain a free people.

> one's primary value to society is what they contribute economically

There's an excellent video [1] of former Supreme Court Justice David Souter (if only we could get judicial nominations of this quality these days from either party, let alone Republicans) where he makes the point that lack of civics education is the largest problem in America today. I think he'd argue that one's primary value to society is being an informed citizen who votes and properly holds the government to account, which doesn't mean simply voting for the opposite party every 8 years because you're dissatisfied with life.

Especially after an election where it's so clear that many people are not being responsible citizens, either not voting or voting ignorantly, I with you in wondering why more people in this thread can't understand the value to society of a well-educated populace, regardless of how that education provides an economic benefit.

[1] https://youtu.be/rWcVtWennr0

> Fact 2: If you are loaned money to obtain a degree which is not economically valued then you will not be able to pay it back

But for the vast majority of jobs people don't care what degree you have! In technology yes you often want someone with a particular degree. But if you're hiring a civil servant, a advertising executive, a business consultant, or any one of hundreds of other jobs, you can have any degree you like.

I have friends with theology degrees who work in business and earn more than I do in technology with my CS PhD. The companies that hire them value having people with a very wide range of academic backgrounds.

And that is obviously ridiculous.

> I have friends with theology degrees who work in business and earn more than I do in technology with my CS PhD. The companies that hire them value having people with a very wide range of academic backgrounds.

That has nothing to do with their degree and everything with their ability. They would probably still get hired without the degree.

Degrees only really matter in formal subjects, if you're, say, studying to become a doctor. Attending a good university is not about the degree, it's about the network.

Its actually not ridiculous at all.

There is a lot of study on the idea that the main value of education is not what you actually learn but much more signal that you are dedicated, motivated and have the ability to learn.

There is a huge argument going on right now about how much of the value is signal vs actual knowledge you need for the job. There is a lot of evidence that suggest that signal is a huge part of the value.

Network does not really apply as a expiation because the effect appears even when transition to a place that you have no relationship with it.

If you are interested consider listening to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpk_u_VmPD4

(Be aware, this is a strong version of the argument, deliberately picked to break with the tradition view that many people have)

> There is a lot of study on the idea that the main value of education is not what you actually learn but much more signal that you are dedicated, motivated and have the ability to learn.

A signal, I can agree with that. But isn't that only because someone is unable to signal that (s)he can be a valuable asset in other ways? The type of person to only rely on their degree is probably a person that isn't creative enough to find more effective ways to market themself.

I think education is great and learning new things is massively important in life. I just personally don't believe in the degree fetish that a lot of people have. Just look at the quality of the average graduate in a lot of universities and/or colleges in the US and Europe.

To me, at best, a degree is an inefficient way to differentiate yourself from a group of similar people with similar skills. Maybe not a bad thing if you're at the start of your career. But at worst, it has zero additional value.

I basically agree with you, but there is just a lot of people that don't. In IT you can get pretty far, without a degree. I did so, and I am very happy with that choice.

I don't see that working for a lot of other people I know.

I think the US is approaching numbers where you might really be better of without a degree in a increasing number of fields.

Most places will not take your resume seriously if you don't have a degree attached. Startups tend to be more lenient sometimes, but Big Corp. isn't going to touch you without a degree, nor will you have a promotion path without one.

It's the reality of the situation, and until there's a significant change in attitude, not having "a" degree is going to hurt your career prospects unless you're a wildly successful entrepreneur or have great connections/independently wealthy.

Well if that is the case, and the degree doesn't matter, then the government has no reason to subsidize 200k college degrees.

Just provide free community college to everyone for a 10th the price and call it a day.

Why should the provide anything if the argument is true.

If anything this argument would suggest that you should have a private system of education and the government should spend all this money on research grants for things that are interesting, and/or useful.

I don't think they would get hired anyway.

As I said, their companies value diverse academic backgrounds. Not no academic background.

Let's look at some real jobs, outside the technology industry.

The UK civil service: "you need, or expect to have, a 2:2 degree in any subject or higher".

UK NHS project management role just requires "a degree" (the NHS is one of the biggest employers in the world).

Goldman Sachs graduate analyst "open to final year undergraduate and graduate level students from any field of study".

That's the reality. They don't care what degree, they just care about a degree. So if you're passionate about art history, get a degree in it. Almost nobody cares.

I’m not saying you’re not right, I just think it’s ridiculous. I've met plenty of people with various degrees (BS, MS, Phd) who are stupid as a rock, and I’ve met plenty without a degree who are well rounded individuals / smart as hell / can get the job done. That’s even outside of tech. In the end it really comes down to the individual.

Also, as an ability metric it’s an outdated one, and personally I would never pass on an employee just because (s)he doesn’t have a degree. Having a degree doesn't even mean someone will make a good employee. Results are infinitely more important than credentials. Most people just can't get stuff done.

> Most people just can't get stuff done.

I know this is tangential, but after working in engineering for the last 6 years its absolutely mind blowing how much this is a factor. Smart, likable, normal people who just never get any real, meaningful work done seems to be the complete norm. Hiring people (not a position i'm presently in) is an absolutely terrifying prospect to me, because I can't figure out any real way to separate the former from the latter.

> That has nothing to do with their degree and everything with their ability. They would probably still get hired without the degree.

You would think that, and it would logically seem to work that way. But in practice, it often doesn't.

A lot of employers are lazy, and use "has a degree" as a filter to cut down their applicants. And since there are so many applicants in nearly every field, it doesn't hurt the employer much. The biggest value in many degrees is literally just the ability to truthfully claim "I hold a degree", regardless of the field.

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To improve that, we'd need to get employers to drop fake requirements from their job listings. But since there's (typically) only benefits to them for inflating their requirements, I don't think it's likely employers will willingly drop that requirement.

Variable interest levels for different courses of study commensurate with default or late payment likelihood. Required post-graduate government service for those who struggle but are ready to sacrifice. Critical demand area bonuses. There are practical ways to measure and respond to these problems.