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[scriver]

Would most republicans pretend

[JoshuaFH]

Not to mention that master's degree "nobody wants" is usually about stuff that's actually really important but difficult to monetize.

I suppose that's my biggest beef with modern education, that it's just gotten about getting a job. I understand that was kind of inevitable with  capitalism, but it depreciates the value of learning and knowledge squarely to an economic investment. I'm in love with reading old books and learning about how colleges a century ago worked, and it focused more on preparation in the things you need to be a "Gentleman", atleast in the British-side of things. Granted, that was learning arcane, useless things like Latin and Greek, but it obviously produced individuals connected to their past and knowledgeable in great works of art. Now, it also had lots of downsides: the intentional exclusion of women, corporal punishment, a brutal unpoliced social hierarchy, the counterintuitive hatred of the very smart and gifted, and the love of philistines and philistine-activities. And additionally granted, the old college system was more intended to fit you in your place in society (as being a remnant from aristocratic times, education gave you very little vertical movement) and so the harshness of the educational system was more to prepare you for the innate cruelty of the world you existed in and how to function as a good member of the caste you were born in.

It was ultimately not a very good system, but it was uncorrupt in it's own weird way; it actually knew what it wanted to do, and tried to do it. Now it seems that the pursuit of the dollar has corrupted the system, and now the educational system doesn't fulfill it's societal goal of instilling the values of a good individual and citizen into the student, and then sometimes not even the economic goal of enabling the student to meaningfully contribute to society. That's just what it feels to me.

[MrRoboto75]

The average American whacks off on how stupid they are these days anyways.

[JoshuaFH]

The average American whacks off on how stupid they are these days anyways.

That's what I'm afraid of: the return to philistinism. That because the system only values money and money-earning, that's the value that's taught to people and they internalize that; as opposed to other values of being a good person and appreciating knowledge and art.

[Reelya]

Reelya straight shooting Boomer memes at us now...

I'm pretty sure you're smarter than to believe what you're saying here.  Not really sure what's going on...
.

bullshit, Breaking it down:

- universities have pretty inflexible student quotas, and the administrators job is to "fill places"
- what places are offered has more to do with campus politics / departmental finance grubbing that it does with any feedback from what jobs are available
- they also make profits from the student loans, so they suck the student's dicks and lie to them about prospects

This is a problem at for-profit colleges but also afflicts public colleges.

So it's up to the students to do homework before applying to colleges about what jobs are available in which industries, because sure as hell you're not going to get that information from the colleges. You'll only get platitudes about how such-and-such course will be great and you totally gotta do it. And of course, before you apply, the dunning-kruger effect is in play: you don't know the field yet, so you can't properly assess the opportunities, so you can't actually determine what real job opportunities there will be. A catch-22. Hence, it should be the job of colleges to correctly assess the opportunities and only take the student's money if they actually have a shot. Sure, more people will be turned away from courses then, but overall it will be protecting their interests from a predatory industry.

however, the upshot is that we also shouldn't concoct things to do at anyone else's expense because you got duped into studying something nobody actually needs. Remember: this applies equally to creatives as it does to people who did useless MBAs. If we take the "underemployment" argument and apply that to MBAs then we should concoct cushy corporate jobs for all the excess MBAs to make sure their egos aren't hurt by ending up flipping burgers, and we should concoct extra medical jobs for the more incompetent medical graduates who nobody will hire.
 
The student loan issue is a problem because it artificially hides the true cost of education from the student, while the colleges make unsustainable promises, since they're not the ones on the hook for the losses. But student loans are also a type of economic signal. Because if you boost access to credit in one area of the economy then it will boost growth in that sector of the economy. So the end result is that college administrations inevitable end up taking up a predatory position, feeding off students willingness to believe this particular course is a good idea, purely to fill student place quotas so that their faculty budget isn't slashed in later years.

You talk about how if there's a crash in a field then there's a problem because the expected places aren't there after the three years. I call bullshit on that. Even in the good years this is fucking people up. The only time that it was guaranteed that every college graduate got a good job was back when there were shortages in literally every field and they'd hire a trained monkey because they couldn't find enough people. In any sort of mature industry, only the top 50% of each course are going to find decent work. The rest are there to pad places and pad the budget, and have little chance of getting a job in their industry.

The thing is, you don't need to fix things so masters degree graduates don't end up flipping burgers. You need to have a decent minimum wage and pretty much abolish the current student loans scheme, rather than the current strategy of just throwing more money down the hole. A good start would be a rule that private colleges cannot make more than X% of their income from federal student loans. That would clean the industry right up. Right now some of the most predatory private colleges get 85%+ of their revenue from the student loans scheme, so they're literally just leeches off the public system. Limiting how much they can take to, for example, 33% would mean that private colleges need to raise up-front tuition, which means students will be more vigilant, while also raising more money from industry partnerships, meaning it's more likely that they jobs are actually there at the end.

[SalmonGod]

Reelya straight shooting Boomer memes at us now...

bullshit, Breaking it down:

...

I can't even tell what your ultimate message is supposed to be here.  You kinda sway back and forth multiple times.  I understand the situation you're describing.  But the best interpretation I can make of what your overall conclusion is supposed to be is you're admitting that it's impossible to expect the economy and education system to be structured reasonably, so we have no choice but to conclude

The solution here is that people shouldn't study shit that nobody needs then expect to get paid a lot of money for it.

I supposed it's a very slight step up from Boomers making jokes about underwater basket weaving out of direly ignorant smug self-righteousness, since it's at least founded in some understanding of the situation.  But the sentiment still doesn't sit right with me.

Especially when you're admitting that you don't have to be guilty of studying "stupid shit" to get caught in the traps you're describing, but still double-down on the message anyway?

[Reelya]

The key there was "expect to get paid a lot of money for it".

Sure you can study whatever you like, but that doesn't mean anyone else is required to bend over backwards to accommodate you for having done so.

Remember the original point was that somethings wrong if a "masters degree" person needs to flip burgers. My point was that there's no connection between the two things. If that's the case then you must have by definition studied something nobody else needs, no matter how awesome the course was. Point being in my last post I mentioned that excess MBA graduates count as "masters degrees" too, so we'd have to create MBA welfare to give them the high flying corporate life they apparently "deserve" on account of having studied an MBA.

The other point I made is that it would be a waste to expend resources to find something for masters-degree person to do that "uses" their degree, because then you have less resources for other people (hence my line that you'd have to relegate 10 other people to burger-flipping). The degree was a waste of time basically, and it's the sunk cost fallacy to think we're going to necessarily improve things by "utilizing" that if it's not utilized already.

[SalmonGod]

Ok, you edited that last paragraph in which circles back around to how the economy and education system should be structured more reasonably.  Don't know about the latter stuff about limiting revenue from federal student loans specifically.  But I agree that it's unrealistic to ever expect that everyone with a degree in a field can be guaranteed a job in that field, and eliminating predatory loan schemes + universally increasing economic justice for full-time work is the proper answer.  Not only for quality of life, but on the principle that education should be valued as more than the basis of a career.  If you can make a decent living flipping burgers, then you can also be more free to pursue self-actualization and push forward the intellectual maturity of humanity apart from whatever you do to make money.  Neoliberal productivist culture needs to die.  It's producing an epidemic of people who might have impressive job marketable technical skills, but have about as much understanding of logical fallacy, ethics, propaganda, etc as a caveman.  Gullible and ripe for dystopia.

The key there was "expect to get paid a lot of money for it".

Sure you can study whatever you like, but that doesn't mean anyone else is required to bend over backwards to accommodate you for having done so.

Remember the original point was that somethings wrong if a "masters degree" person needs to flip burgers. My point was that there's no connection between the two things. If that's the case then you must have by definition studied something nobody else needs, no matter how awesome the course was. Point being in my last post I mentioned that excess MBA graduates count as "masters degrees" too, so we'd have to create MBA welfare to give them the high flying corporate life they apparently "deserve" on account of having studied an MBA.

The other point I made is that it would be a waste to expend resources to find something for masters-degree person to do that "uses" their degree, because then you have less resources for other people (hence my line that you'd have to relegate 10 other people to burger-flipping). The degree was a waste of time basically, and it's the sunk cost fallacy to think we're going to necessarily improve things by "utilizing" that if it's not utilized already.

But the point is, which you conceded

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

So it's up to the students to do homework before applying to colleges about what jobs are available in which industries, because sure as hell you're not going to get that information from the colleges. You'll only get platitudes about how such-and-such course will be great and you totally gotta do it. And of course, before you apply, the dunning-kruger effect is in play: you don't know the field yet, so you can't properly assess the opportunities, so you can't actually determine what real job opportunities there will be. A catch-22. Hence, it should be the job of colleges to correctly assess the opportunities and only take the student's money if they actually have a shot. Sure, more people will be turned away from courses then, but overall it will be protecting their interests from a predatory industry.

that it's impossible to predict what degree the economy is going to be demanding by the time you've finished your education, when you are beginning your education.  Especially for teenagers...

And it just reeks of Boomer memes pointing and laughing about how millennials are all struggling because they're getting worthless degrees in underwater basket weaving.  And I know you could probably pull up stats about how many people are getting worthless humanities degrees or whatever.  But it would be missing the point because there's plenty of people getting what are commonly considered high value degrees, too, and finding no demand for them.  And skirting around the issue that those humanities degrees are valuable, just not directly awarded value by the economy.

[Reelya]

And it just reeks of Boomer memes

This is just eye-roll worthy and it's followed by a bunch of straw-man stuff. Nobody except yourself mentioned "degrees in underwater basket weaving". Pulling up made-up stuff like that is borderline ad hominem, poisoning the well.

The whole discussion was whether it's a waste that we're not creating jobs for people with master's degrees. That's stuff like MBAs and masters of science. Point is: if someones qualification isn't something other people need then how exactly do we justifying forcing other people to spend money on it? That will generally only lead to a worse allocation of resources than we have now, it creates a make-work / waste-work culture. It's like saying that because you made a shitty movie or shitty game we should force people to watch it / play it because otherwise the effort to create it would be wasted. No, the sensible thing is that you cut your losses and find something else to do.

We can go full communist about it, and pre-allocate education, but that does the same thing I said - you limit intake to only the places required for future job requirements. The trade-off would be that you take away student choice to a large degree. Yes, the state will fund you to study things, but only the exact things that are required by the planned economy. you'd no longer have the master's degree guy flipping burgers, but the reality would probably be that we was a burger-flipper from day one and didn't get the degree.

[scourge728]

It's producing an epidemic of people who might have impressive job marketable technical skills, but have about as much understanding of logical fallacy, ethics, propaganda, etc as a caveman.  Gullible and ripe for dystopia.

That's one of the goals though

[MrRoboto75]

Gotta stamp the young under unavoidable debt

[Reelya]

Yeah, I don't think that's a goal. People in debt make lousy consumers. College debt is just fallout. The fact that it's so bad, and not intentional actually points out how contradictions in the system lead to these sort of distortions.

If you think it's an intentional outcome you're giving them way too much credit. It's like saying they want everyone in crippling poverty. No, they don't. People in crippling poverty isn't a profitable situation. Their goal is that everyone has a house, two cars, and a fat mortgage, but the means to pay it off. If you're so much in debt and you lose you job or go bankrupt, the fat-cats lose a lot of money.

[MrRoboto75]

Student loans are not removed by bankruptcy, and are backed by the US government.

[SalmonGod]

And it just reeks of Boomer memes

This is just eye-roll worthy and it's followed by a bunch of straw-man stuff. Nobody except yourself mentioned "degrees in underwater basket weaving". Pulling up made-up stuff like that is borderline ad hominem, poisoning the well.

The whole discussion was whether it's a waste that we're not creating jobs for people with master's degrees. That's stuff like MBAs and masters of science. Point is: if someones qualification isn't something other people need then how exactly do we justifying forcing other people to spend money on it? That will generally only lead to a worse allocation of resources than we have now, it creates a make-work / waste-work culture. It's like saying that because you made a shitty movie or shitty game we should force people to watch it / play it because otherwise the effort to create it would be wasted. No, the sensible thing is that you cut your losses and find something else to do.

We can go full communist about it, and pre-allocate education, but that does the same thing I said - you limit intake to only the places required for future job requirements. The trade-off would be that you take away student choice to a large degree. Yes, the state will fund you to study things, but only the exact things that are required by the planned economy. you'd no longer have the master's degree guy flipping burgers, but the reality would probably be that we was a burger-flipper from day one and didn't get the degree.

Accuses of ad hominem and straw man.  Proceeds to respond to a bunch of stuff I didn't say.

*shrug*

[Doomblade187]

I mean, if you make it so burger flippers and baristas can live decently on one job, the "useless" degrees will then become more useful as people actually pursue their passions instead of working 80 hours a week to live. Of course, student loans are still a huge issue, but the fact that if you get an "unviable" degree, it's considered a waste is an issue.