The latest NBC News poll shows two-thirds of registered voters down on the value proposition of a degree. A majority said degrees were worth the cost a dozen years ago.
Americans have grown sour on one of the longtime key ingredients of the American dream.
Almost two-thirds of registered voters say that a four-year college degree isn’t worth the cost, according to a new NBC News poll, a dramatic decline over the last decade.
Just 33% agree a four-year college degree is “worth the cost because people have a better chance to get a good job and earn more money over their lifetime,” while 63% agree more with the concept that it’s “not worth the cost because people often graduate without specific job skills and with a large amount of debt to pay off.”
Well they made college and grad school cost upwards of 200k+ so no shit
I recall a podcast I listened to years ago talking about some schools trying out a new model that worked something like…
Instead of taking out a loan, you just enter into a contract with the school that x% of your paycheck for the first z years after graduation go to the school. Kinda like child support.
Get an unemployable degree and now your making burgers for minimum wage? Then you don’t owe anything.
Get an amazing job that pays a ton? That degree is going to cost you.
Now it’s in the school’s best interest to A) offer degrees that are actually worth something instead of misleading students down a dead end path, and B) help students find and keep good positions after graduation.
It sounded awesome. But what I found infuriating were the people they interviewed that benefitted from the program, now had fantastic high salary jobs, and were whining about how much they were having to pay for the education and program that got them into that high paying job in the first place.
The issue with this is that knowledge should be it’s own reward. Where I live college costs a pittance. If you want to study fine art, that course should be available and is.
What you’re suggesting sounds great in a very practical respect but would only further benefit capitalism at the cost of wider knowledge. Many of the things that are worth learning in life to so many would immediately disappear from college curriculums.
The goal should be to make third level education cheap enough that anyone can do it without crippling themselves financially.
Could easily be hybrid… You pay some up front, they get some on the back end. This and other subsidies might be able to save the arts.
This just sounds like IBR with
extrafewer steps.
Much to the joy of GOP politicians everywhere.
Very noticeable here in the US how much college has become unaffordable and out of reach
Shows in everyday life here from the conversations to just any day to day interaction
In the media all comes out like it is made for young school kids with the words getting smaller and simpler with less sentence structures
Even if voting was not rigged here can tell with way people see our elected officials as football team members to rally behind
Higher education becoming unattainable will lead a country to poorer health, more underpaid factory workers, less quality of life for everyone, less progress, more repeated failures from history, etcetera
Student debt has been increasing faster than ceo pay. Its not a sustainable system but it also will lead to more companies importing workers with hb1 visas, which is probably honestly the corporate plan.
Why pay for workers with rights to go to school when you can just import people who already have a degree you didnt pay for and who you can treat like shit?
Conservatives: Then get a high demand and high paying job!
the field becomes too competitive and saturated and couldn’t find jobs
Also conservatives: Then work in a factory!
factory jobs gets taken over by AI
Conservatives for the final and umpteenth time: Fuck you!
Community college admissions continue to rise because of this. Even students with excellent grades in high school bypass the 4-year institutions as long as possible. It’s the same classes either way. Why pay 10 times more?
There are still plenty of jobs that are gated by a college credential. Tech was the biggest way aorund skipping it, and tech is imploding.
I don’t doubt what you say is true, but could you list some examples of jobs that are gated by a college credential?
Dramatic? It was practically manufactured.
Of course it’s being seen that way.
If I were to go to my university this year, doing the same course I’d have:
£9250 x 4 = £37000 for the 4 year course
£9504 x 4 = £38016 for rental accommodation including bills (I picked a rental property that included bills for ease of calculation)
£5000 x 4 = £20000 for food (based on £100/week)
That’s £95016
And how much of my degree do I use day to day? Jack shit. Anyone starting my job technically does not need a degree. I work with a niche piece of software that is well known in it’s field but outside of that is not. No degree would ever cover this
Good maybe we will finally have some market correction and colleges realize they are not a staple for the American dream anymore.
Because it should be more affordable
I’ve felt like this for over a decade. I don’t even want to know what cost is now.
Employers no longer universally take a college degree as a way to skip ahead in the line of employment. A college degree should basically be a ticket to any job within that degree field. In practice, that’s incredibly unlikely. I started at minimum wage with my first job out of college lmao. My second job netted me like 50¢ more.
But you do need one in retail to move from line worker to management in most companies
Many college degrees (looking at you, biological sciences) don’t even have jobs available for fresh grads. When I graduated I was competing with thousands of others for like 5 jobs in the country. After my internship ran out I was never able to work in the field again.
Schools keep pushing those degrees though because it gives their professors a constant supply of free labor (interning in a lab is usually required to graduate).
I taught onco research for 6 years (not as a professor, but as a research consultant)… there were professors that would seemingly purposefully give huge and long projects to grad students a few years in and then they ended up not graduating until year 5 or 6.
Right on target! Keeping the masses uneducated is one of the main goals.
