patrick.net

education is falling fast as a result of huge demographic shifts, our next generational workforce will be the first one to be "dumber" than the one before it, that alone will result in lower prices

"Dumber"???? Maybe.

The whole college degree thing is a sham. Much of what is being taught as college level material was trade school material 30 years ago. Huge numbers of baby boomers went to college to avoid the draft. College's exploded in size. The availability of so many people with degrees enabled employers to require degrees for jobs that previously were held by by hs grads with 6-12 months of trade school training. This cycle got totally out of hand. I've seen adds for things like retail sales (the gap no less) and route stocking (putting twinkies on the shelf) that say degree required. Ridiculous.

Then there was Robert Bennett secretary of education under Reagan. Bennett hated the idea of federal funds going to anything but 4 year degree granting institutions. After a very pitched political battle he managed to get almost all trade schools out of federal funding. That is why you now see auto mechanics and welding being taught in "colleges". What a waste.

When I first got into IT (very early 70's) programmers were usually someone in the company who had expressed an interest then got sent to a 6 month course. The idea of a programmer with a degree wasn't that popular. Engineers got degrees, programmers were considered basically high end clerical workers. Now it's impossible to even get an interview without a master's. Again what a waste. Anyone who is reasonably sharp can do basic business programming with at best 12 months of training. They won't be writing an OS, but they can certainly do inventory, and billing.

Higher education is very important, but for the right reasons. It must add value, not just be a ticket punch. I've recently seen an article that was very interesting on this subject. A group of companies started hiring hs grads for certain positions that previously required a degree. After 2 years on the job there was no difference in performance compared with the degreed workers hired previously.

Nomograph says

Your prospects are much better than just about any previous generation in human history.

So we have that going for us, which is nice.

Are you a real estate agent or an army recruiter. You would be excellent at both I think.

I hope you are right. Care to back your assertions up with any real numbers and data?

It seems to me that thirty to forty years ago the average college debt was many multiples less than today. It seems to me that thirty to forty years ago the price of an average home was closer to the average annual salary rather than multiples of annual salary, and it seems to me that thirty to forty years ago the United States (corporately and privately) was not in debt up to its eyeballs. But I suppose if we just pull ourselves up by our bootstraps (or get the government to pay for our med school by joining the army) we too can live the life of prosperity. Huah!

Thanks for the pep talk from the ivory tower.

Nomograph says

AdHominem says

Thanks for the pep talk from the ivory tower.

Your welcome. At the university where my ivory tower is, I see young people all day long who are working hard and putting in long hours to achieve bachelor and advanced degrees. I see recruiters line up to hire them every year, even during the height of the current recession. This is at a public UC campus, where many of these students are children of poor immigrants. Most made HUGE sacrifices just to get a shot at what YOU were born into.
You need to ask yourself what is it they are doing that you aren’t. You are being out-competed by your peers, and it has absolutely nothing to do with housing, the Fed, or Ludwig von Mises. Those are things you use to avoid hard work and point blame for your personal lack of success.
P.S. It sounds as if you need some structure and discipline in your life. I seldom recommend it, but in your case perhaps the military wouldn’t be such a bad idea.

Professor, in your entire lecture (which is worth what we paid for it), you failed to mention how this generation has better prospects than the last. You failed to address the points in the previous post or the fact that college education is perhaps the biggest bubble of them all. By the way, I am doing quite well thank you, as someone who has risen from poverty as a child to a hardworking debt slave today. Moreover, I am happy with my job, my income etc... My accomplishments are much more successful than your judgmental comments would have condemned me to and well above the vast majority of my peers, not that you care. But, I see the party is over for America sooner rather than later, and it is people like you who are in denial that are racing us toward the cliff.

AdHominem says

But, I see the party is over for America sooner rather than later, and it is people like you who are in denial that are racing us toward the cliff.

But you posting on a housing crash forum are doing your part to save us?

surfingerman says

education is falling fast as a result of huge demographic shifts, our next generational workforce will be the first one to be “dumber” than the one before it, that alone will result in lower prices

Absolutely untrue, the new hires we have at the firm will definitely be more productive than me at the same stage in career. They are more educated, more connected and more savvy. The motivation and desire will easily put them over the top.

Our education system is built on no child left behind theory, which to me means everyone is slowing down as well. I believe that education should be top heavy and those who cannot keep up should take a different path. The world is too competitive to use the no child left behind model.

Nomograph says

(1) Completely incorrect. Our next generational workforce will be more educated and savvy than the one before it. We are churning out B.S., M.S., M.D., and Ph.D. graduates at an unprecedented rate.

You have to look at what exactly is an educated person. Just because you have a B.S., M.S., or Ph.D doesn't mean you're highly educated. Sure you may know you field more than those who don't hold those credentials, but even that's not always the case. I know or even heard of a few workers who hold good valuable degrees ranging from the three mentioned above, but usually they lack some type of general knowledge or even common sense, though they're book smart.

I knew an engineer who had a M.S. degree but didn't know how to manage his finance for beans (And always wondered why he was broke). There are even those who do not even understand the political system or even know common geographic locations, and etc. But I have also met smart individuals who has no experience in higher education.

Though if you were to ask me, I think the future generation are losing their IQ due to countless media propaganda and beliefs.

Also I think specific knowledge has less value than generalized knowledge. With generalize knowledge you won't be the master but you'll certainly be the leader. You'll be able to come up with new ideals by combining everything you know. Just like what Ford believed in, why get into specifics when you can hire anyone or ask anyone with that knowledge, but yet if you ask them how other non-related variables work or how to make them work together they'll have no clue.

Education might not show how intelligent a person is, or how they are better suited than someone else, it may not even give a person a better advantage than someone who comes out of HS and does a job for 2 years, but here is what it does for a business:

Someone who is educated, obviously has a few skills.
1) They figured out education was important, or would help them.
2) Their parents probably helped them, or they did it themselves, which shows that within their family there are values that push excellence
3) That the person is intelligent enough to get through school, whether it's figuring out ways to cheat, memorize or think their way through. They've got something that did it for them.
4) The person has training and is already further along than someone out of HS. YES, in two years, the HS kid MIGHT be as good, or better but they aren't currently. It means taking a RISK as a business owner. What if you get the idiot who can't do anything right? Why risk hiring the idiot, when you can start off with someone who has at least proved they've got SOME skills in life.
5) It shows that when you're in an environment, you can obviously prioritize things adequately. Whether it's studying every day and zipping through exams, or being smart enough to realize you can cram for them in 3 days. HS doesn't really push a person very hard. Teachers are always there checking up on students every day. college is much more like a real life job than highschool.
6) If you've got a long list of great candidates, WHY look at someone with a HS degree, if everyone else has a higher education? Why even risk it from a business stand point? Get the best candidate you can.

That being said, if you're looking for a PHD to stock shelves, you've also failed your company because you're putting an intellectual into a position that is just manual labor, and they WILL quit eventually. They'll likely still have resumes going out every day, from day one. If you hire someone who's goals in life don't exceed that of a shelf stock boy, you're going to have someone who is with you for a long time and won't require retraining every 3-4 months. Maybe for shelf stoker the retraining isn't expensive, but for any position requiring more than 2 weeks training, it can be pretty costly.

Education doesn't mean you're better than others, it's just showing you're willing to go the extra mile and proved yourself to many people. There might be many diamonds in that long stack of HS resumes, but why dig, when you can get a huge stack of decent diamonds already sorted for you?

pkennedy sums it nicely.
That is what college education is about. I honestly think sending kids to college is better than not doing so. Of course, college education does not automatically mean something superior. College kid right out of bet may not be skillful enough to compete HS graduate with 10 years of field experience though, the knowledge and value he can learn in college alone mean something, and no one can take it away.

But boy, isn't that tuition expensive in these days? $400/cr hr for in-state undergrad? If you have two, three kids in college.... oh, man...

You gotta be financially prepared enough to support your kids, or gotta be freakin poor to get some aid, or your kid gotta be smart enough to get grant. Otherwise, the kid will end up with 100~200K debt at the time the kid gets out of the college. And he'd better get good paying job, because usual 40K/yr salary won't get him anywhere.

pkenndy- I would probably say that few your points are right. But ultimately most business hire based from your interview, not your background. Also most of the time it's a who you know thing rather than what you know. And education plays no role in the two. Really the only time education plays a deciding factor is there are two equal candidates who performed well in the interview.

An education gets you an interview, but sometimes that's not even required if you know someone who can get you in.

The credit I give for going to college, is not the stuff they teach you (because really you can learn anything on your own) but the network you establish by introducing yourself to other colleagues. Which in turn betters your chances of landing a job. And lets face it people only go to college to increase their job prospects. Sure you learn but most of the time people/students get a job that's unrelated to their field or they use only 1/2 of their skills they learned while in school. Which means the cost and time of college can be cut down.

seaside says

You gotta be financially prepared enough to support your kids, or gotta be freakin poor to get some aid, or your kid gotta be smart enough to get grant. Otherwise, the kid will end up with 100~200K debt at the time the kid gets out of the college. And he’d better get good paying job, because usual 40K/yr salary won’t get him anywhere.

Now days most jobs start you off with 40k sometimes 30k for even college grads. But then again there are lots out there who are unemployed. Not to mention wages have gone down but tuition is still going up and if the trend keeps going up I don't see how education can be an investment unless someone else paid for it. Not to mention it's the worst debt to hold.

Zeik says

And lets face it people only go to college to increase their job prospects.

What ever happened to the idea of going to college to improve oneself ? I think a primary objective is career, but in the back of their mind many are in to the idea of improving themselves. And then there are also those who love learning or who have majors in areas they are gifted in, such as art, music, and so on.

I have also heard it suggested that a good strategy is getting a liberal arts degree as a foundation, and then getting a masters in a field that is more career targeted. I often suggest this to kids, because many aren't aware how much support there is out there for financing advanced degrees.

SF ace says

Our education system is built on no child left behind theory, which to me means everyone is slowing down as well.

pkennedy says

HS doesn’t really push a person very hard.

What you both might not realize is that there are honors classes and AP ("college level")classes .

I'm a public HS Math teacher. I have issues with the one size fits all idea, which is somewhat implied by "no child left behind." It's very obvious in Math that every 10th grader isn't going to be doing the same thing at the same age. We have 10th graders that have not nearly grasped elementary Algebra, and we have a few 10th graders in AP calculus classes. We have many more 11th and 12th grade students in Calculus. One thing misunderstood about our education system, as bad as it is on average (that is in spite of many students who don't want to be there and who do almost nothing), we do an excellent job of preparing students who are well motivated and who come from families that emphasize education from a young age.

In other words the kids we send to college, especially to upper tier schools are very well prepared, and many have work habits and discipline much better than I had as an undergrad.

marcus says

What ever happened to the idea of going to college to improve oneself ? I think a primary objective is career, but in the back of their mind many are in to the idea of improving themselves. And then there are also those who love learning or who have majors in areas they are gifted in, such as art, music, and so on.

You can claim that one is going to prove one self which is also true. But the real goal is to better your job opportunities. Look at today, people are going back to school to improve/learn new work skills. If it was about proving themselves they would of entered college well before getting laid off or realizing that they needed to improve their skills. But the economy has changed and many businesses require a degree for most of their job offerings.

I think back in the day, pre-90's those who went to college thought more so on bettering themselves and job opportunist second. But back then a college education was just a privilege or bonus. Now it's becoming a requirement and thus many people are enrolling, which is why we now have a college enrollment problem.

@marcus
There are always people who do better than others, and who strive to do better.

HS and college isn't the same in the way it treats kids. It's not the same in the amount of work or the number of unsupervised activities that need to be done. The kids have different responsibilities when they get there. Perhaps a job, living on their own, or whatever else. If they figured out how to do the HS routine and get through, can they make the necessary changes to get through college? Are they a one hit wonder, or can they do it twice?

The other thing I've found is that people in college tend to behave in a more standard way. I'm going to fail, do this. I'm going to approach this problem this way, and break it down that way. Where as people without those skills come up with their own methods, which are great, but different. Which means if they quit, it's a real training exercise. If they start to fail, it isn't as simple a fix, because the problem might not be seen, or understood by management.

It's really about creating intelligent people, who really can think for themselves and who behave relatively similarly.

I do agree with the comment about making networks and what not. But that comment is more about going to ivy league vs community college. Both give the same educations, but only one provides super high end networks.

pkennedy says

I do agree with the comment about making networks and what not. But that comment is more about going to ivy league vs community college. Both give the same educations, but only one provides super high end networks.

I guess you're right if you want to be a top level executive or manager, politician, board member, the president, or be a part of wall street, and etc. The last 4 presidents we had were from Ivy league schools.

But networking applies for all levels of college. I got my job through college networking and it was from someone I knew at the community college level. And I know many others who are/were in the same boat.

Speaking from my own experience, its difficult to qualify for a mortgage when you already are 100k+ in the whole. (Loose lending non-withstanding)

If anything, those in their 20's and 30's may be the first generation to on a purely statistical basis be less well off than the generation that preceded them. The true death of the American dream.

For years I have said that "30 is the new 20" college forces many of us to achieve societal milestones (first spouse, first "real" job, first child, first house, etc.) almost a decade later than our parents did.

In all likelihood college costs will decline abruptly somewhere in the next few years, rather than prices falling "drastically" as the OP postulates.

thunderlips11 says

What’s the difference between a College Grad and a HS Dropout?
Both work for $11/hr at Radio Shack, but the latter doesn’t have $50k in student loans.

Good point thunderlips,

What's the difference between a homeowner and someone who walked away? One of them has a house, the other a nicer rental in a better part of town and a new iPad.