Tour some campuses and you’ll see that they have been massively upgraded from what they were in the past. College campuses in the 80’s were more basic and functional. But when colleges started competing for student tuition dollars, they had to upgrade their campus to stay competitive. Now campuses have extensive recreation facilities with things like rock walls and spas. The food at the dining hall is much better than the typical cafeteria mystery casseroles. The classrooms are upgraded with modern technology instead of a room with a bunch of cheap desks. Dorms are upgraded. All those kinds of upgrades cost money. When students are looking for the best college experience, those superficial upgrades are often a major part of their decision.
But that is something that students need to be more thoughtful about from a cost perspective. The actual education is not necessarily going to better at a campus which is like a country club. If a student is taking out massive loans to go to an expensive school with a high-cost campus, that’s not necessarily a good use of the money.
Note that per your first link, the most common jobs (in order) for Women’s studies majors are elementary school teachers, college teachers, lawyers, managers, and educational administrators, almost all of which require additional education/degrees or significant job experience.
The average wage of an entry level elementary school teacher (again, requires additional training/education beyond just a bachelors in women’s studies) per your second link is $39k.
The average wage of a entry level mech engineer (typically with just a BS in Mech Eng, straight out of college) is $62k.
As an employee of an online university that charges far less for tuition than these gold-plated state universities and Ivy Leagues (thus making me a biased source,) I’m hoping this pandemic inflicts major damage on the $50,000-a-year Harvard Model and forces America to finally confront the overpriced higher education issue once and for all.
Almost anything you can learn about history, literature, social sciences, accounting, economics, business, etc. in a traditional classroom, you can learn online. Sure, something like biochemistry, medicine or things that require hands-on work in a lab would be difficult or impossible. But there is no reason people must spend $120,000 on an economics degree from Stanford when they could get it for one-fourth of that at a fully-accredited online university.
Not all online schools are good, of course. But it’s time that all of America gave it a hard serious look.
For profit colleges are on the decline. Enrollment at for profit colleges in the US peaked in 2010 at about 2 million students, that has dropped to just over a million in 10 years. Yes, the graduation rate at for profit colleges is significantly lower compared to public and private non-profit colleges and universities. And the default rate on student loans for students at for profit universities is higher also.
But, for profit enrollment only represented about 10% in 2010 and about 5% now.
The bigger issue is that federal government guarantees about 92% of all student loans.
Yes, Women’s Studies majors actually go on to become productive members of society, teach our children, become lawyers, and so on, and are not the useless pieces of crap that people seem to imply they are in these types of discussions. Do I have that right?
Nobody is saying that women’s studies majors are “useless pieces of crap.” What I did say (and you sort of proved my point) is that any discussion on how to improve this is riddled with land mines.
But your cites do illustrate my point. Why would a person invest $30k to $40k for a degree which gets you an average salary of $39k per year? Would you advise your kid or your niece or nephew to take that deal? I wouldn’t. And it has nothing to do with the political aspect of it, so just imagine that the degree is something else.
If it was anything else in society, people would be outraged at the return on such an investment and would likely want to prevent the university from taking peoples’ money for such a thing, let alone subsidizing it themselves. But for some reason, we can’t even start there or start anywhere, even though there is universal agreement that the system is broken and has been that way for a long time.
Another issue is the “degree bloat.” A hundred years ago a high school degree was a nice accomplishment. Fifty years ago the same with a bachelor’s degree. Anymore a bachelor’s is just a stepping stone to a graduate degree. Is there any real need for a middle class office worker to have a total of 16 to 18 years of schooling? Why not condense it in a sort of job training?
I know the whole thing about having a “well rounded education” and being able to talk about history or literature or statistics when the topic comes up, but is it really worth it to a person when everything is taken into account? Would you rather not be $50k in debt yet not be able to talk about Shakespeare? Further, it seems that if a topic interests you, you learn on your own. I’ve learned far more about history, for example, because of my own interest in it and not from classroom learning.
It just seems to me that there is way too much inertia in this. Someone decided that if we loan everyone money for college that everyone would go to college and everyone would have good jobs and make a lot of money. Of course that is silly and its time for a massive change I think.
I like this. It accomplishes a lot of good policy goals.
It puts downward pressure on tuition because larger tuition will be less likely to be paid back.
It keeps people from being forever burdened by student debt when something goes very wrong in their lives and they are just never able to make headway.
It’s a long enough time to bankruptcy that it would eliminate the “strategic bankruptcy” right after graduation. No one who’s capable of making good money is going to waste a decade+ to discharge the loans this way.
I’m not sure why you want to continue to hijack your own thread, since this seems to have nothing to do with making student loans dischargeable.
Anyway, my cite showed that women’s studies majors earn more than mechanical engineers. Now, maybe the had some continuing education, but it looks like their undergraduate major encouraged them to get that extra education so they can educate our children or join our judicial system. Mechanical engineers are apparently slackers who don’t continue to educate themselves and their salaries stagnate after starting higher. Or, at least that’s the impression I would get from my cites and YamatoTwinkie’s response.
Regarding becoming well-rounded, it’s not just that you have to study Shakespeare to become an engineer, but too many engineering students, for example, don’t write well, haven’t read any history, no nothing about finance, etc. That said, in the UK, students only take classes for their major – maybe their high schools are better or something.
I teach at a community college. A lot of people seem to think most of the general education requirements in colleges are unnecessary. I think that opinion is underpinned by a bias toward your own experience, as well as your own recollection - “I didn’t learn anything in freshman comp, so it was unnecessary! [presuming that your recollection of not learning anything in freshman comp is accurate]”
While I’m sure you and everyone important in your life came to college an excellent writer who was both knowledgeable on philosophy and poised to interact with coworkers of many different cultures in a pluralistic society, I assure you that many - in my estimation, most - students have holes in their background that mean they aren’t. I don’t teach freshman comp, but my students have to be able to clearly express themselves in writing for me to accurately assess their subject matter knowledge. I don’t teach cultural anthropology, but my students need to understand how culture influences preferences to understand how and why trade between different nations occurs. And, not to put too fine a point on it, I don’t teach American Pluralism, but my students need to treat each other respectfully in class. They don’t come to college with these skills, and they need to learn them to function in a college, and work, environment.
If you’re unmoved by that, I’d also like to throw out there that college is not synonymous with job training; even if some subjects aren’t practical for some students, that impracticality doesn’t mean the subjects aren’t worth studying for their own sake.
Bolding mine. You left out “entry level”. I was making less than that until eight years post-BA, but it took much less time to triple it. My degree cost a lot more, but hell yes it was a good deal. Would it have been a good deal for a marginal student who was iffy on even graduating? Maybe not.
Someone immediately working full time out of high school probably gets paid more than the engineering student while she’s in school, but that, like your point, is similarly low-relevance.
Yep. You better be able to communicate well (written, oral) to both specialists and others, and have some sense of economics and finance to join my team. I’ve found it’s not a standard set of skills. Although the US engineering programs IME are increasingly doing a better job on the $ side of things.
