> Filtering by college degrees is filtering by family wealth more than anything else

I assume you have the US in mind? This is less true in the many developed countries where education is free and/or programs exist to cover living expenses during studies.

This is true in theory, but I live in a city where tuition to a Top 15 college is $400 per semester, almost nothing.

Yet, people who need to cover their own living expenses have a far smaller success rate, need to drop out more often or need to pause studies to work.

Programs to cover these living expenses exist, but they are limited, and not everyone who is not eligible for these can easily cover all expenses.

This still sounds US related? E.g. many European states will give you a no-questions-asked loan to cover both (reasonable) tuition fees and your living expenses.

When access to education is considered an actual right, living expenses tend to be included in the conversation (as you just pointed out). Unlike merely incidentally affordable education.

Even with education loans, some people can't afford it, because they have to support the family financially now and you lose that opportunity when you're at university.

We've gone from discussing the original point ("Filtering by college degrees is filtering by family wealth more than anything else" is a US centric view: yes or no?) to discussing the efficacy of state bursaries for college education. It's not an inconsequential topic, but it's not the original point anymore.

I don't think the posted is making any discussion of efficacy here, but is simply stating that there are people (non-US) who have to make the economic choice not to attend school, so filtering by degree even outside of the US is problematic.

Unless there is convincing data otherwise it would still be a filter for wealth. If a college degree provides opportunity then the wealthy will arrange for their children to have college degrees.

As an unrelated observation, the effect known as Berkson's Paradox would probably trigger along the way which is an interesting and little-discussed factor in this sort of thing. Two factors for getting in to college being wealth/connections and intelligence/ability.

Link for the lazy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkson%27s_paradox

> Unless there is convincing data otherwise it would still be a filter for wealth. If a college degree provides opportunity then the wealthy will arrange for their children to have college degrees.

As a counterexample: Dutch universities can’t select for students (for most studies), and annual fees are ~€2k annually (regulated). There will be some bias towards wealthier backgrounds that are more able to invest that money and time, but compared to the US/UK systems I expect it is minimal.

This is not unique, I think systems in the Nordics and Germany similar.

In Australia, our entry to universities is dependent largely on a grade resulting from our schooling. The grade is based on two parts: in school assignments/tests and a large end of school exam block. The thing is that the assignment/test part scales based on how well the average student from your school/class went on the final exam.

Wealthy students get the best grades since their parents send them to expensive schools designed to maximise this system. They then get into the "best" universities.

> Dutch universities can’t select for students

What do the Dutch do if there are 10k spots available in a given university and 20k people apply?

Unlikely that this kind of growth suddenly happens. Growth of +\- 20% can usually be handled (eg booking a larger room for the lectures). So studies can usually grow their teaching base as needed.

Exceptions happen: eg the popularity of CSI lead to a huge boom in people wanting to study forensic sciences. IIRC they were allowed to limit the seats for those studies back in the day.

Similarly, dentistry and doctors have a fixed amount of seats. They have a lottery that is biased based on your high school grades.

Overall I think this system has the better outcomes ‘on average’, but that the true top students are not challenged as much as they would be in a more selective system such as the US/UK

They would probably have their government fund building more univiersities and training / encouraging more people to become professors?

Just like that?

I didn't know that the Dutch had unlimited money. Weird that the portion of the population with degrees (44%) is comparable to the US (46%).

There are human beings in developing countries, and the problems with filtering by degree are exactly the same or worse. Family wealth, health and privilege dictate whether you even get the chance to afford the price and the opportunity cost of college.

My family could afford neither, and I don’t know what I would do if it weren’t possible to work in my favorite field without a god forsaken degree.

> Filtering by college degrees is filtering by family wealth more than anything else

I'm not sure it's wealth as much as filtering by situation. My family was not and still isn't wealthy. Quite the opposite in fact. I was fortunate enough to be born near a local college so I could live with my parents while going to school, and working 30 or so hours/week to pay tuition.

I definitely didn't have the 'college experience', but I graduated with almost no debt.

I got my first programming job when I was a sophomore in college through people I met there. A couple different companies asked me to put college on hold for a semester in order to work more, but I'm glad I said no. College is not the only path, especially today. But, it was the best path for me.