College education: Do we overemphasize and spend too much on it?

A liberal arts degree helps with many skills that are useful in many different careers. They will have learned to at least some degree how to work in groups, problem solve, have wide breadth of knowledge from which to draw in tasks, how to communicate, be improved in leadership, have skills in seeing tasks through to completion, understand critical thinking, logic, etc.

There are also places in the work force for those who focused on skill specific learning such as accounting, supply chains, etc.

At many universities most degrees require some amount of liberal arts courses regardless of degree specific courses. It's all valuable, but the wide breadth of skills and knowledge gained in liberal arts degrees should also be valuable to employers.

 

No doubt someone who took classes in critical thinking (literature, humanities, sociology) and soft skills can make them a force in the office, but are they "office ready" when they're newly graduated? Would they want to start from the bottom fetching coffee and preparing presentations after loading up 150k in debt and spending a year studying in France?

That was the sticker shock millennials had early last decade when they realized their diplomas were mostly worth as much as the paper it was printed on as well as the advent of online courses. They could find 30k entry level jerbs, but they mostly chose to be under employed with barista jerbs while looking for a profession that aligned with their work twice or thrice that pay level. At least they could read a book and live life while making coffee.

Most students in top 50 colleges follow the money (+ease of effort/difficulty) and don't choose stem off the bat. Brilliant math folk might pick finance or quant fields. Sales has always been lucrative and high pressure. If you're a male white who's attending Stanford, prep up on biz admin and entrepreneurial finance...the bro network is waiting for you. Undergrad enginnering is stable but it's nowhere near getting lambos and throwing pool parties with filthy money.

So again, it's all about managing expectations and removing the veil from these degrees. A sociology grad with a masters at Sam Houston State might not want to work in government but that's where they'll be headed if they don't want to brew coffee and spend another ten years shooting for a very select doctorate.

It's usually at that point where they'll pivot, join a company at the bottom, then discover the wonderful journey of climbing up a white collar environment.

 

I would contend that most job applicants are not fully ready on day one. There are industry and company procedures and culture that anyone would still need to learn. At least parts of that are likely to gathered by someone who has liberal arts background perhaps faster because of their skills learned though their courses and experience at the university.

 

No one is fully ready, but the farce works on both the supply and demand levels. Lib arts majors are too snobby and pot committed (100k+ debt) to entertain these jobs until time or reality sets in.

Companies on the caliber of hiring these grads rely heavily on diplomas as work proxies and won't necessarily take fliers on people without a diploma or those without work experience.

 

This is prob why student loan forgiveness is such a thorny issue right now among the late 30s and over group...between those who were able to pay it off and those who still haven't and are likely paying the bare minimum out of past resentments or salary limitations

 

Great take on this....

It shouldn't take 4 years to get a degree for your career.. Colleges are only stringing this out for financial reasons....

So for example I have 6 software developers and 2 of them have degrees and the other 4 have certification...
1. There's not a big difference in pay because one has a degree and the other doesn't
2. The guys that have the certificate are actually stronger developers.
3. The guys with the degree spent 4 years in college - where as the guys with the certification spent 6 to 9 months..

So imho College's are ripping people off with a lot of unnecessary classes and the programs should be revamped...

T_Man

 

I think ideally there would be a mix. There are places for people with liberal arts backgrounds as well as those with specific training in relevant areas.

 

HS education does a piss poor job of preparing individuals for the real world. You should be able to learn in HS to think critically and make better life choices without having to go to college. If you want further training to become a philosopher and you have the money (whether through grants, scholarships, well off parents) then by all means, go spend an additional 4 years spending money getting a paper that likely won't land you a well paying job after college. The reality is that HS does not teach us about these issues and choices we have after graduating and we start making poor decisions right after which becomes a domino effect later in life if we don't correct it early on.

We should not have to pay to become better critical thinkers and make better choices with life. I'm not advocating for free higher education because I don't believe that's the solution. If our reasoning for wanting people to get degrees is to prevent the stupidity of producing another Trump voter, then that is piss poor reasoning.

I'm a civil engineer from UT, probably one of the easier engineering paths, and yet I saw countless people struggle and some that just weren't meant for engineering. I myself struggled through it, but my reasons stemmed from lack of preparedness due to going to a lower income HS that did not prepare me. I spent countless hours in the library, gave up partying, and just focused on making it and here I am 11 years later, able to lift myself out of US poverty and have a decent life.

I do talk to individuals on occasion and encourage them that there are many ways to make ends meet in life and lift yourself out of poverty and make decent wages. You don't have to college to do that. We need plumbers, electricians, carpenters, welders, etc and we should hope that those individuals can be well educated based on just an HS education. They shouldn't have to go to college to be smarter. Those trades are going to make you decent money to live a comfortable life, we just need to arm those people with the tools to make good life choices and currently we suck at doing that.

 

You’re talking about society, I’m talking about the individual. It benefits the individual to get the useless degree how and why? Ok, they got the useless degree to make society more well rounded, meanwhile they’re drowning in debt and can barely pay rent or support a family. How have they benefited exactly? This just sounds like we need people to go and take the L for the benefit of society.

 

From a future job perspective...

I'm from a technical background. STEM / technical is great but it only gets you so far. I believe the future has a baseline requirement of STEM (not to the level today but a lower level) that should be higher than what students in the US get out of today's HS. Beyond that, I think the future is going to be about great innovation and problem-solving, which requires much more than that baseline. In my technical fields, I already see very creative solutions and problem-solving more from folks that aren't very technical than from technical folks. I will encourage my kids to be well-rounded and not so narrow-focused (STEM) as I was early on.

“I personally think there’s going to be a greater demand in 10 years for liberal arts majors than there were for programming,” Cuban tells Bloomberg.

Why? Because when the data is already being “spit out” for you in industries like finance or tech, he says, companies will want employees who are “freer thinkers” and can bring a “different perspective” to the information.

 

No on over emphasize, people with a degree make a lot more money on average than those that don't have one.

And yes, on spending too much, there is no way it should cost more than 100k for an education.

DD

 

The kids not getting useless degrees are getting paid quite well
The kids getting masters in some pointless liberal arts degrees are the ones serving you coffee bro

 

If that’s how you want to look at it fine. Take teachers for example. Four years at UH will run you about $45k which is about the starting salary for an elementary school teacher. Paying that loan while trying to pay rent, utilities, save for a home, retirement, emergency fund, I guess our kids educators are taking the L for the benefit of society since they didn’t go for STEM.

But what would we do if no one wanted to teach and take that L?

Again I don’t know the solution and this is just one example but if everyone went for engineering and not teaching and a whole host of other disciplines it would be terrible for society.

 

I would probably probably be fine with a lot of teachers not needing a bachelors degree.

 

Tuition is a problem certainly.

Then there's the problem of cost of living. It costs a lot of money to feed, house, clothe, insure and otherwise fund a persons lifestyle for 4-5 years.

At least 20K a year or so no?

 

I have 2 in college right now and they both cost about 30k per year........we saved in a 529 for years for both, so they will get out without any debt but that is super rare.

I graduated owing 20k - and paid my way through bartending - I remember taking 18 hours and tuition was 1k for the semester, I just paid 6.4k for Spring semester for 15 hours at Texas State, that is more than 6 times the cost, and graduates are not making SIX TIMES the salary getting out of school.

I graduated in 1990, prorgrammers were making about 40k per year as graduates, they are now making around 70k per year going into the workforce, yet the cost of college has gone up 4-6 times.......that is some bullshit.

DD

 

Maybe all degrees shouldn't be priced the same.
Sure we need art degrees but why would you pay insane amount of money for one?

 

Yea, I'm thinking in a hypothetical where we make college tuition free in the future, does that mean we also pay every 18-23 year old enrolled in college $20-$30k a year for housing, food, clothes.... lifestyle expenses etc etc?

*Congrats on getting away with only $13,000 a year in tuition for your kid. That's a friggin steal. I went to UT and it was similar 10 years ago.

But to your other point, yea, folks born around 1982- present or so are really getting boned hard with the cost of college. It's really tough, that combined with how housing has gone and how wages haven't it's just a mess.

 

My oldest goes to Summer school too, so our tuition for Texas State is around 16k overall - and then there is the apartment, food, living expenses - both kids consume about 30k per annum in college expenses......now the younger has a full ride scholarship to Utah Honors college for Physics and Engineering, so he only costs a few hundred a month and his 529 will transfer to his kids.....at some point......But both are over 30k on the books per year.

The younger had multiple full rides offered, he had soccer scholarships to Michigan, Duke and Umass, but decided to focus on academics....

There is no way that State sponsored schools that get our tax dollars should be in the neighborhood of private schools yet they are.....

DD

 

Going to college used to be a lot less expensive. My significant other managed to get two degrees from the University of Houston during the late '70's and early '80's while working parttime. She lived with roommates to cut costs, but she was able to support herself and without working nights. No help from her parents and no debt to pay off when she graduated with her master's degree. It wasn't easy, but she enjoyed getting a "well rounded education" and put it to good use. It didn't hurt that she's incredibly smart, but pulling that off would be a lot harder today.