Only if the value of a degree is having an edge over others, not if it's value is learning - primary school isn't pointless even though most people master it.

This feels like it links back to the same problem as everything else - as time goes on automation removes less skilled jobs, and more and more people will need to do more skilled jobs.

This means that at some point, university levels of education will probably become necessary for any employment - at that point (and arguably before), asking people to pay for education they need to be a functional member of society seems inherently broken.

Of course, the other option is just to accept that maybe in the future not everyone needs to work, or certainly not everyone needs to work a full time job. Unfortunately for America, the idea of anyone not working as a "freeloader" is so heavily ingrained into the public consciousness, it seems likely people will just be left to suffer (even if they are "freeloading" off the labour of machines).

Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if when we reach that point, people who can't do that level of work are defined as disabled in some way to "justify" it. Or, worse, arbitrary jobs that aren't needed, but are created just to employ them.

My father had been the safety laboratory lead at a Hungarian pharmeutical company from 1989 till his retirement about ten years ago (could be a little less). What he told me about has stuck with me: when he started, he could hire people from vocational high schools but by the end, everything they used became so complex he could only hire people with university degrees.

Previous generations sometimes had a chance to learn on the job as a company was specializing. But current generations needs a lengthy education because they are joining companies that are already highly specialized - am working to specialized even more...

There are some vocational coding schools, but these won't prepare you to do real computer science.

There are some vocational carpentry schools with increased focus on AutoCad and other analytical skills. But these won't equipt you to design bridges..

Another point is that HS graduation rates in the United States have been basically flat (after a long, steady increase) since the 1970's [1], despite constant calls to increase it.

When more than 9 of 10 people already have HS diplomas; when the economic condition of each student's family is highly predictive of graduation; and when and each school tends to have a fairly homogeneous characteristics, it's hard for me to see how you can raise graduation rates without lowering the bar. Unless you're open to adjusting the economic condition around under-performing schools, of course.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_...

Since the early 1990s, what was then a fairly advanced college prep track for math seems to have become the baseline standard, and graduation requirements have increased in other ways. Compared to comparably-named classes, grading or presentation may have become less rigorous, but the baseline curriculum is more advanced, not less.

Yes, and my mom just last month retired from teachig English in a nothing-special (in ratings terms) high school in a relatively poor area, and was teaching Shakespeare, Donne, and the rest of the traditional canon of classic literature, as well as a small number of more current bits of non-juvenile literature that isn't part of the Eurocentric canon, works from Amy Tan and others (many of which I also remember reading—in college.)

But in any case what makes it challenging or not isn't what books they read, but what the expectations are of what they'll be able to do having read them.

Memory is a tricky thing. I wouldn't be surprised if you aren't comparing today's 13 year old to your 16 year old self inadvertently.

That's easy, we live in a world where each generation is smarter than the previous. For IQ tests measuring abstract thinking todays teenagers score an average of 3 points higher than teenagers did 10 years ago.

This is due to better schooling, better edutainment of kids, and many other things such as increased focus on not leaving behind kids with learning disabilities.

The trend is starting to ease of in the developed world. But only in the last 10 years or so...

Whether the bar have been lowered is hard to disprove. But we know for fact that newer generations are far more book-smart than older ones where in their time.

Note. Some forms of pure generalized intelligence don't have the same trends. But analytical and abstract thinking, also commonly known as book-smart or good in school is trending upwords over the generations.

YES: kids today are actually smarter :)

(This is a reference to several jobs posted at MIT and in other Cambridge, MA workplaces on various occasions.)

https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/01/same-p...

In general university costs money, both to the Government/State and the student, and thus incentives are somewhat aligned for both parties. Also, student loans are NOT a common thing here... When I was at uni, the cost of the studies was about 1000€/year (500€ for me as my parents have 3 children), now it's about 2 to 3k€/year, but it's still something somewhat feasible. That's Spain, in Germany for example it's free.

There's no way you can generalise about incentive structures like that for an entire continent.

In my country, only public universities exist and the incentive structure is decided politically. Currently, universities get paid a certain amount for each student that graduates, but they are also deducted some set amount if the student doesn't graduate within a specific amount of time. In addition to that, the sum of money gained from a single STEM student is double that of another kind of student, so the universities have quite clear incentives to promote their STEM degrees.

Obviously, an incentive structure based solely on passing students must also inspire grade inflation. The current structure highly incentivises making STEM degrees easy to obtain. Whether that's actually the case, I can't say, but the structure certainly encourages it.

The university departments get different amount of money depending on the amount of students they have, but this money cannot be spent freely (e.g. on increasing professor's salaries), but must be spent for education-related things like hiring more TAs, which is something that departments that get more students need to do anyways.

The professor salary is pretty much standardized (per the TVL), which does allows for sur-pluses in case that the responsibilities justify them, but university "students" do not play a role here. Things that affect these are, for example, having larger management-related responsibilities. For example, a professor with 4 PhD students and 2 postdocs gets less money than a professor with 30 PhD students, large experimental facilities, 10 mechanics, 5 middle management personell, ... adding up to 60 people under supervision.

So while I agree that the universities do have an incentive to grow the number of students in STEM degrees, the professors do not really have a big incentive to make the degrees easier.

The professors that "get rich" in Germany have large consulting companies on the side to which they try to attract the top talent, so if anything, the incentive is to produce more top talent. This can incentive them both ways, making things easier to attract more students to get more students in their companies, or making things harder to filter out the bulk from the top talent. But that's just supply and demand.

Entire departments are built on this principle.

On top of that, there are no limits on how many times you can retake a class, it is not unusual to be stuck with the same class for three or four years until you manage to pass.

That's sadly not true in all of Europe. I attend university in the Netherlands, and since government allowances were replaced by loans a few years back, having a student loan has become the norm for students.

American universities run on government and private finance. If they don’t graduate a certain percentage of students that financing gets withdrawn. So it’s easy to see where giving better grades leads to higher graduations connected to government financing.

I wouldn’t necessarily call it better. I have friends who have taken 8+ years to get their Bac+3. The lower tier universities have capacity issues. The class you need may be full and can take years to enroll. Also, with no motivation to pass students you are truly in your own. Things like office hours, tutors, study labs, and the library not being open late like we have in the US. These are surprisingly uncommon in France.

A more political reason is because University prestige depends partly on the knowledge of the graduading students. So if someone said they studied in X and they had no idea what they were talking about it'd give quite a bad image for the university. It's not rare to see some students crying at the exam review but it mostly doesn't work.

The main difference between grades in Spanish engineering schools and the rest of Europe seems to be that the grade curve is heavily compressed between 4/10 and 6/10 (passing grade is 5/10). The amount of study needed to reach a passing grade would amount to an A elsewhere. As long as 25% (IIRC) of the students pass there are no consequences for the department. If less people pass, they just award a 5.0 to everyone from a certain grade up, they don't do curves. It is not unusual for people to retake a class for three or four years in a row.

There is not much guidance from professors either, no homework or extra assignments. There is just one or two midterms and a final exam, and if you're lucky there will be official course materials to study from but that is not a requirement. Most exchange students have a pretty bad time here, but on the other hand Spanish students abroad usually ace their exams with half of the work they are used to.

I’m glad my university had more focus on labs and hands on work. I pretty much aced all my labs and did okay on paper exams. Paper exams always felt like an exercise for the professor to put students on an explicit bell curve.

EE->IE->IM->I'm Out.

Electrical Engineering, Industrial Engineering, Industrial Management, transfer.

There is also heightened student pressure for similar reasons. but it is not just students.

I will say however that universities in my country are heavily recruiting foreign students to the point that everything is in English.

Nope. All cultures I've seen so far have this. It's just that immigrants stuck between a rock and a hard place put in the effort to do better, and threaten their kids into doing the same. Or at least, they do so more often than other groups.

Needless to say, the natives try to sabotage this. This is also the same everywhere. In Europe, in Asia, in America. It's worse where there is more state control (ie. it's pretty bad in the Netherlands for example).

You're not too far from Spain's current situation.

We have some lower qualification titles that last two years and are almost free to get that teach a trade, there are courses to become an electrician, mechanic, plumber, hairdresser, cook, etc. There is even one to become a systems administrator and one to become a programmer.

I'm just slightly worried that STEM's problems are too close to their base of physics and math to be that hard for a computer compared to the layers of abstraction that go into the rest of our works.

Yes and no. If it's a political goal that x% of the population must be awarded a degree, then the standards will need to be adjusted, and below a certain point, the value of the learning goes away as well.

That's because the knowledge taught in primary school is way more essential to day-to-day life. If people don't know those skills then our society fails.

...

"You ask for a miracle ? I give you the (T S A) ..."[1]

[1] Die Hard

There will be plumbers and hairdressers long after the last lawyer or accountant has been replaced by AI. There is neither the demand for, nor do the prerequisites exist in the general population for, Tony Bliar's target of 50% of school leavers to go to university and achieve a degree comparable to those of even 20 years ago.

Over recent decades tuition fees have been rising, but they've been covered by a special loan. Paying back this loan is taken out of your pay cheque (via PAYE) based on how much you earn. If you don't pay it back within a certain number of years it gets wiped.

Before the last major increase it was viewed by most of my peers (I graduated in 2013) as reasonable. Graduates could expect to pay it off.

Now graduates finish with £40,000-$50,000 and the interest rate is so high many won't ever pay it off.

Being able to support yourself during university might be a problem but there are bursaries and grants you can get.

Let me know if you want more details.

You pay 9% extra from when you earn over 25k a year (IIRC). So those who need a degree to go into lower paying, yet skilled, professions (nursing, teaching) can do so easily safe in the knowledge that yes, there's this big sum of money that they "owe" but it'll only be taken once they are earning an OK salary, and they don't have to pay it all back if their earnings never rise.

For example, going from £100,000 to £100,001/year immediately costs you 570 hours/year of free childcare (potentially a couple of thousand pounds per year), and all of your tax-free childcare (potentially over a thousand pounds per year).

Note that this does require _one_ person in a couple to be earning over £100,000, so it's hard to have a lot of sympathy in that case - that certainly doesn't count as struggling! On the other hand, it's also not at all progressive - it comes in all at once, potentially meaning you should refuse a pay rise. It's also _very_ different to the headline tax rate of 40% that you _think_ you're paying...

Let's not also forget that interest rates are on a sliding scale depend on income. People earning over £45k have an extra 3% interest slapped on top of RPI, i.e. 6.1% - amazingly similar to those in the US, no?

It's a noticeable sum off your take-home that isn't going towards saving for a mortgage. As another posted pointed out, look at your total take-home pay.

Also, the large sums of money have gone towards lavish new facilities and over-the-top student halls of residences. It seems like students have provided investment capital for universities.

In effect, more successful English graduates subsidise everybody else (because it is supposed to be revenue neutral). And specifically English, because only English students pay the full £9,250 per year. (Scottish students pay nothing, Welsh and Northern Irish a reduced amount).

The English subsidise the "United" Kingdom but are discriminated against when it comes to social provision paid out of general taxation. Unlike Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland we do not have a Parliament for England looking after England's interests. Instead we are ruled by the Union Parliament which includes MPs from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland whose remit and interest is their own respective nations, not England, but who get to vote on legislation that affects England without England having the equivalent ability to interfere in the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish Parliaments.

And as a resident of London, my tax will be counted as English by the books, reinforcing the idea that England subsidises Scotland. But really it was the Scottish government's progressive tuition fee policy which enabled me to go to university in the first place.

If you really want to break the UK down and pit us against eachother, then why not be honest and say that London is subsidising everyone, including the rest of England? The English aren't discriminated against, they just choose to vote for politicians who are against devolution for England, for tuition fees, and against social provision paid out of general taxation. Things would be worse without the MPs from Scotland and Wales.

As for London, it is the capital of England just like Edinburgh is the capital of Scotland. Both are richer than elsewhere in their respective countries. I am not sure what point you are trying to make.

As for the Scottish Government's "progressive tuition fee policy", it was voted in by Scottish MSPs. The tuition fees paid by the English were forced on the English by MPs from Scotland who knew their own constituents would be unaffected - MPs from England (and Wales) voted against these fees but were overridden by Scottish MPs. That is not the fault of those MPs that the English voted for, but rather by a system of Devolution designed by effectively the Scottish Labour Party. And every time anybody who is English tries to address the issue there are howls of outrage from the rest of the UK, and Scotland in particular.

It's more complex than that; Scottish students are liable for the full tuition amount if they study in England, and the repayment terms are different (9% over £18330 currently, but it is changing), but Scottish students studying in Scotland have tuition paid for out of the Scottish government's general funds (and you can argue whether the majority of the government's income through Barnett Formula is fair or not to those elsewhere in the UK), though are still eligible to get bursaries/loans for living expenses.

But what lists? There are so many, Universities choose to showcase the convenient ones of course.

Repayment starts at £21,000pa; so if you earn £30,000 you'd pay back £37 per month

If you think of it as a kind of extra income tax that only applies to those who benefited from a bigger chunk of the education system, then inability to ever pay it off doesn't seem so terrifying.

But once you look at it that way, it becomes very difficult to argue (in non-libertarian ways), why those who got the same benefits without the loan (rich parents) or somehow lucked into high earnings without the education (usually some form of exceptional talent) should be exempt from that tax. In the end, a more progressive income tax would be the same, just without those exceptions.

I mean ideally, degrees shouldn't just be a zero sum game. Ideally, it should mean everyone is better off.

If everyone has access to a shovel, or a computer, does having that thing become pointless?

Certainly the competitive advantage has decreased over time. Having gone through the US university system myself I can confirm that there is... lets say "inflationary pressure", though I've also been at a european university and the same pressure existed there and for all the same reasons.

I agree that the university debt seems to be a uniquely american issue though.

When there is no obvious reason, the purpose is always monetary in nature.

https://blog.prepscholar.com/average-college-gpa-by-major it seems that Grade inflation is more rampant in non-STEM fields because assignments are usually more open to interpretation,

I don't mind and take everything with a grain of salt, but you are right, it'd not be good for most people.

Every single one of them, if implemented, would make the original post worse and the phrasing more awkward.

I may be wrong in this (I'm not a native speaker after all), but at least take it into account as an counterpoint of the above...

Only 55% of students that start at a 4-year university program graduate within 6 years. Only 19.5% of students that start at a non-flagship, 4-year program finish on time.

I think it only becomes pointless if there are limited work opportunities for your studies, however, we're lacking computer science people and having a degree almost guarantees that you'll get a job. In our current context, people who study a 1-3 month course in a code bootcamp are getting jobs, a degree with inflated score still is a degree.

I'm not saying that having an engineering degree is a guarantee that you are competent, and that someone without a degree, or a completely unrelated degree cannot be competent.

Please keep in mind that MANY college-educated people in the US never get to even $100K (teachers, architects, there are more).

Also, it takes at least 10 years (perhaps more) to get to $150K for software engineers (with a B.S. degree), and you need to live in one of the bigger cities (where the cost of living is higher).

The numbers are a bit skewed here because a lot of the posters on HN live/work in the S.F./Silicon Valley area, which is a world onto itself.

Other than not being burdened by debt, Spanish STEM majors are comparatively worse off in pretty much any post-graduation dimension you can think of compared to Americans.

> The Case against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money

The title is a bit much but it explains in great detail the problem with 'inflation' and what you lose by this process.

TLDR: As a Spaniard, I strongly disagree. Neither our universities as institutions nor our teachers as individuals have much incentive to (fairly) fail students, whereas they have many incentives to (unfairly) pass them. As a result, the level has dropped significantly in the latest decades.

The requirements in our degrees have plummeted since 20-30 years ago. Seriously, check exams from 20 years ago for ANY subject that was taught back then, and compare them to last year's. The difference is staggering.

There are several reasons for this:

First, because the level in high-school has been dropping similarly. Students get to the university with a lower base level, and hence they cannot be taught at the same level than before.

Second, because more and more people go to uni as time passes. This also drags down the average level of the average class (with respect to when the uni population was composed mainly of good and MOTIVATED students).

Third, because -contrary to what's been said here- our universities gain significantly from passing students. For one, each degree taught by a school is evaluated regarding the percentage of students that finish the degree in a set time, percentage of students that quit, and percentage of course passes [1]. This is the main evaluation of "quality" of a degree, and not hitting the set goals will lead to the degree being dropped.

Also, teachers gain nothing from failing students. Most will just accept it (because most know they really don't deserve to pass). However, some will complain. Very loudly. And handling such complaints is a huge time-sink not just for the involved teacher, but also for the department and the School itself. The easy way out is to just pass people. Many teachers openly admit that they pass lots of students who they don't think have achieved the goals of their subjects. And many students themselves admit it too.

[1] https://www.boe.es/buscar/pdf/2007/BOE-A-2007-18770-consolid... , Article 8

In the US, living on campus is the norm, a vast array of amenities and services are offered to students, and University bureaucracies are huge and growing by the year.

Contrast this with Europe, where many Universities are simpler affairs with students living at home, commuting to classes (which have higher student to professor ratios) at Universities without student centers, gyms, etc.

It's not that the US through sheer stupidity is missing out on some easy fix for college costs, the issue is simply that in the US Universities offer more than in Europe. This is in keeping with our overall culture.

You have the freedom to be entirely focused on academics in the US, participating in research etc. But you also have the freedom to live off your loans without any serious focus on academics, treating college like a vacation more than anything else. For the "students" who are tempted by the latter option, college is a waste.

The European commission already tried to swap all systems for a loan based one twice.

Which "European model" are you talking about ? If there is any of the models worthy of being called "European model", surely it'd be the commission's model, which would be the US model (with the state going after students who fail to pay, not sure about bankruptcy cases).

The USA is like the EU, where the various states vary as much if not more than the countries in the EU. The USA is far more racially varied than individual EU countries. The USA has used two big main policy tools to right wrongs of the past: home ownership and education. This has led to terrible policies, like the crazy mortgage crisis and student loan act, that means you can never get out of the debt through bankruptcy, which is morally extremely questionable.

When you have debt that can never liquidate, things get a little crazy, and a lot of the US college craziness is as a result of too much guaranteed money.