> but for those in the bottom half, a four-year degree is scarcely more attainable today than it was in the 1970s.
As someone who came from a working class background, college has enabled me to move up multiple socio-economic classes.
I'll admit I was lucky when I attended, graduating in 2006 right before huge price increases went into effect. Even so, I believe college offers a huge opportunity for social and economic mobility.
> In the bottom half of the economic distribution, it’s less than one out of five for those in the third bracket and fewer than one out of 10 in the poorest.
So what I am seeing here is that college does offer opportunities at mobility. Compared to the almost 0 opportunity so many would have had otherwise.
Let us remember here that we are talking about fifths and tenths of hundreds of millions of people. Ok discount that to only college aged, and we still have tens of millions of people we are talking about.
> Nearly three-quarters of American college students attend public universities and colleges, historically the nation’s primary channels to educational opportunity. These institutions still offer the best bargain around, yet even there, tuition increases have bred inequality.
Ah now, here is a real problem! The cost of in-state tuition has sky rocketed. Let's do something about that, rather than say "college is useless".
As for private educational institutions, the problem seems to be that they have better advertising. They sell a slick message. (Though I have had positive encounters with a few of them that have convinced me that private education does have a role in the overall educational system, sometimes direct skill training is exactly what is needed!)
>As someone who came from a working class background, college has enabled me to move up multiple socio-economic classes.
I'm really happy someone brought this up. Where I went to school, the average student just ended up working in their parents/relatives' car wash, nail salon, or sandwich store, those that didn't fall into the grips of drugs and gangs. Even into high school, a few of us didn't even have an internet connection. Though I used to code a lot as a kid, I never thought of coding as something of inherent value because I never saw anyone around me go into a job that involves coding or even math/science as a skill. Forget working at a startup as a teenager! To me, the folks at Google and Apple (Facebook didn't really exist yet) wore white labcoats and tweaked giant machines and took notes on their notebooks. I was just a kid who could visualize math and physics better than his peers.
It wasn't until I went to college that I realized that I might end up working for a company like that or making a difference in the world of technology. And it's college I thank for giving me the self-confidence and technical ability to work in the world of tech.
College isn't useful for social mobility? Bullshit.
> Ah now, here is a real problem! The cost of in-state tuition has sky rocketed. Let's do something about that, rather than say "college is useless".
Except, the author was not saying "college is useless". The author was saying that college has become no more useful at educating a wider population than it was in the 1970s, while costing the federal government and students more.
Part of the reason was the increase of in-state tuition; basically, state colleges shifting the burden to the federal government and student debt. And part of the reason is the rise of for-profit colleges, which are essentially business optimized to extra as much free federal money as possible with no concern for the well-being of their students.
Because these for-profit colleges have no admission standards, they tend to be attended by people from poorer socioeconomic backgrounds who haven't had as much opportunity to get good high school educations and test prep. So while college is still plenty useful for people from better socioeconomic backgrounds, or those from poorer backgrounds who are able to beat the odds and get into a good school that will cover a large portion of their tuition, people who are stuck paying more at state schools or getting tons of debt and crap education at for-profit schools are getting the short end of the stick.
I don't know how you read "college is useless" out of that article. As far as I could tell, it was all about how useful some colleges are, but how expensive or inaccessible they can be.
"Compared to the almost 0 opportunity so many would have had otherwise."
There's no such comparison to be made. Those people who expended that much effort going to college only to flunk out could have expended that same effort doing something else. Most of them might have failed at that too, but a few might have succeeded. At least none of them would have been saddled with tons of student-loan debt. "College or immediate and irrevocable failure" is the myth that for-profit-college hucksters love to promote, and I'm sure they'd be glad to see that it's working.
The problem is not that college exists as a possible route to prosperity for poor people. The problem is that it's presented - including by comments like yours - as the only route. Instead of comparing college to nothing at all, we should be comparing the real odds of achieving success via college vs. the odds of achieving it by other means. If we're morally compelled to consider the 1/5 or 1/10 who benefited from going to college, we are also morally compelled to consider the 4/5 or 9/10 for whom it failed and left them worse off financially.
The really bad for-profit "schools" don't concentrate on extracting maximum tuition from each student. That would require at least minimal attention to the quality of the service being offered, which erodes margins. They don't care if existing students leave, so long as an at least equal number of new ones replace them, so they spend all their money on marketing instead.
At better schools, there's a whole different set of dynamics to explain why rich kids stay in and poor kids don't. This is hardly the forum for that discussion, except to note that the net result is approximately the same. Lots of kids leave college with a big pile of debt and no degree. When such a high percentage of lower-income students end up worse off than they started, it's quite rational to consider that a more entrepreneurial focus might actually serve them better.
Because there was a huge recession that depressed or eliminated incomes. Student debt often rises during and following recessions, because some people who can't get a job, can get student loans, and choose to go to school.
> but for those in the bottom half, a four-year degree is scarcely more attainable today than it was in the 1970s.
As someone who came from a working class background, college has enabled me to move up multiple socio-economic classes.
I'll admit I was lucky when I attended, graduating in 2006 right before huge price increases went into effect. Even so, I believe college offers a huge opportunity for social and economic mobility.
> In the bottom half of the economic distribution, it’s less than one out of five for those in the third bracket and fewer than one out of 10 in the poorest.
So what I am seeing here is that college does offer opportunities at mobility. Compared to the almost 0 opportunity so many would have had otherwise.
Let us remember here that we are talking about fifths and tenths of hundreds of millions of people. Ok discount that to only college aged, and we still have tens of millions of people we are talking about.
> Nearly three-quarters of American college students attend public universities and colleges, historically the nation’s primary channels to educational opportunity. These institutions still offer the best bargain around, yet even there, tuition increases have bred inequality.
Ah now, here is a real problem! The cost of in-state tuition has sky rocketed. Let's do something about that, rather than say "college is useless".
As for private educational institutions, the problem seems to be that they have better advertising. They sell a slick message. (Though I have had positive encounters with a few of them that have convinced me that private education does have a role in the overall educational system, sometimes direct skill training is exactly what is needed!)