1,500,000 fewer students are going to U.S. colleges and universities than 5 years ago

Did a 4 year undergrad in and 2 year masters to become a UX designer. Now there are month long UX bootcamps where you don't pay for the course until you get a job. If those were around when I was in school I would have saved sooo much money lol.

Having interviewed design candidates from both academia and bootcamps, I'll say bootcamps do put out qualified candidates. They also tend to come from more varied fields/backgrounds which is interesting.

 

Yeah I'm definitely not sending my kids to school in the US (unless they get a full or nearly full scholarship). In Canada, people basically told us to save up $50,000 and you'll more than cover your tuition costs. That's not even one year of tuition in the US. If you have residency in a place like Quebec, you can send your child to McGill for less than $3000 a year and there's a lot more government grant and scholarship money here than the US. And as you note, health care is covered by the government. My wife is getting a non-STEM masters for free right now which is almost impossible to pull off in the US.

 

Seems like a good thread to plug Capital IDEA again.

https://www.statesman.com/story/lif...istance-resume-build-dream-career/7927527002/

https://www.capitalidea.org/

Covers IT, healthcare and construction trades that require some level of school. The reason education in these industries is covered is because of the extreme shortage in qualified employees in these fields. Full tuition costs, books, parking passes, bus pass if no personal vehicle, and up to 2/3rd of child daycare if a parent with no one to babysit while attending classes are covered if you qualify. All you need to do in order to qualify is be below a certain income bracket and a resident of Travis County.

Also great for networking. At least in IT, I can say most of my former professors are current or former IT Admins that set up IT infrastructure for the Texas Capitol, or City of Austin. You get a paid internship with reputable top 100 companies around the Austin area or access to unions like IBEW, if for instance, considering a construction trade like being a journeyman electrician as part of joining the program. Have former classmates that work for DoD, Boeing, ULA, NSA and VISA's Cybersecurity department, to people that have since migrated as network admins for public schools around the Austin area, or your less ambitious graduates that just do remote support at home earning $60k a year which is a huge boost compared to their prior earnings.

If you're a good student, being able to ask professors with decades of experience and connections in the IT industry to be your work referrals on resume helps a lot. Having 2 years of paid internship experience with top 100 companies around Austin also helps a lot once you graduate. Often times the place you intern at, upon graduation, asks if you'd like to stick around longer.

The beautiful thing about this program is that it also yields on average a $1.10 rate of return for every dollar invested into the program. Reason being is people that take this program are poor and typically qualify for government assistance programs funded through tax dollars. By improving their work experience, and education, they qualify for jobs that immediately put them into a higher tax bracket while also disqualifying them for government assistance programs they may have been dependent on prior. It's also shown to break generational cycles of poverty and cause graduates to teach their own children self sufficiency so they too don't become dependent on government assistance programs upon entering adulthood.

 

I do think college is still a good idea. Like others have said, the last thing we need for this country is a less-educated population.

I just think kids should make better choices.

• Choose a major that is going to get you a good job/career right out of college. Take it from me....
• If you have to take a student loan, go somewhere cheaper and don't go out of state.
• Cash-flow it if at all possible.
• Live at home and go to a Jr College your first 2 years to get the basics out of the way
• Get a job while you're in school to help with costs.
• Live in a crappy duplex with roommates, not the most expensive townhouse in town.
• Don't buy a new car with your student loan money.........

We have a student loan crisis, true, but I think it much of it can be avoided if kids and their parents make better choices on the front end.

 

We definitely screwed this up. I keep telling anyone in my family that will listen to me, that there is nothing wrong if you don't go to college, and if you want to go, but are undecided, then go to a community college. I also tell them that if they want to pursue a certain type of degree, don't go to some expensive ass school if you can stay home and get that same degree here.

I told one of my cousins this and she got super offended and thought I was just a tightwad. She also told me that people need to do what make them happy, even if it is just an art degree. I told her "Alright, then let your niece find out the hard way how unhappy life can be having massive student debt and a shitty paying job."

Some people are really short sighted.

 

For tech, you'd mostly want a degree for the harder math stuff in order to do Electrical Engineering (hardware), FANG scale work, or AI/cryptography/security. Even w/ FAANG, you mostly have to be good to great at algorithms found in coding practice sites like hackerrank, though a Stanford or MS degree would bring attention.

I'm not too familiar with data science, but usually a graduate degree would promise 135k+ salaries at the entry level.

I liked my college experience but I wouldn't argue that I wasted a lot of time to figure things out. It really opened up my worldview and that's something online classes or a community college wouldn't be able to replace.