Timely and interesting read today in the New York Times that connects with this topic. Caitlin Zaloom is the author.
Here is the link to the article. https://nyti.ms/2Lbj1P0
Lots of valuable points made.
@Cheeringsection- Thank You! I tried to include a direct link but when I went back to it I had reached my limit of free articles. This morning I read through some of the 600+ comments and was interested and moved. The burden of providing an undergraduate education is putting a tremendous strain on a wide range of parents.
The debt levels are actually burdening the economy (preventing the purchase of houses, the start of a family… for young people and blocking older adult projects for their parents).
Don’t worry about the debt. We owe it to ourselves, lol.
My original question really asks another question… how long until middle class families give up on the 4 year undergraduate experience? Will the next generation, those recently finishing college and piling up massive student debt push their own children to do the same? Assuming that college costs continue to grow at this breakneck pace, I think we will see a very different landscape in 20 years when they have college-aged children. Many small colleges will be out of business (already happening on a small scale) and the debt vs value of an undergrad degree is going to be questioned.
Depends on the definition of “middle class”. The forum middle class is probably much more strongly biased toward the “4 year residential undergraduate experience”. But reality is probably different – most students (“middle class” or generally) commute to a community college or commuter-based university.
https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2019/06/despite-rising-costs-college-is-still-a-good-investment.html suggests that the college graduate pay premium over a high school graduate is still substantial, and a bit larger than a generation ago. (Some other studies suggest that the pay premium is growing, but mostly because high school graduates are paid less than before.)
Return on investment of college education is still quite high. Of course, what it means is that if college continues to become less affordable, more people will be unable to take advantage of the investment opportunity of college education because of their parents’ financial circumstances and choices. So that will trend college education to be even more of a marker of parental wealth versus one’s own academic merit, and that situation will become self-perpetuating across generations due to the pay premium associated with a bachelor’s degree.
Most middle and upper middle class parents want their kids in a “good” (stable and providing disposable income) job. Unfortunately, that’s impossible if you have a HS diploma and graduate now (or for the past 10 years or so). There just aren’t any good, stable, decently paid jobs for recent high school graduates. No meaningful number of middle class families are going to advocate for their kids to take jobs that don’t even allow them to rent a one-bedroom apartment anywhere in the country.
Farming has become rarefied as small farms are bought out by large conglomerates (many foreign-based) and trucking requires enough driving experience that you’ll find very few truckers under the age of 22 or even 25 AND the tariffs have hurt the trade enough that there’s trouble for the men who work the job. So, farming and trucking jobs are becoming harder to get. In a generation, they’re likely to be unrecognizable due to automation.
Middle and upper middle class parents may consider wielding or other trades with apprenticeships but the path isn’t very well-known. So we may see a shift in these pathways and the information provided. You can become a ranch hand etc., if you’ve developed special skills in HS and live in the right region. Plumbing, mechanics, etc., all require post high school education. Even becoming a firefighter or a police officer is difficult for an 18 year old who just graduated HS.
In addition, few 18-year olds know what job they want to have right away and many want to “try” college before settling on a trade.
In short, I don’t think we’re going go see a generational shift in the direction of “no college”.
Finally, the economy needs as many people with post-high school education (technical AS, certificates, and college degrees) as possible. Global competition goes through attracting international students to one’s country (that’s why China has gotten into this big time: once graduated, the students generally become advocates for the country where they studied, they want to find the products they got accustomed to during college so they buy more products/brands from that country, and a fair number of them become powerbrokers so positive networks have been established) but also through sheer mass of educated people they employ. Growing one’s graduate and skilled population is major economic challenge globally.
Businesses want people who have shown the skills that it takes to go from mandatory education to something else. Ending one’s education with high school is perceived as a “lack of” - and businesses don’t want to settle where many people are content with that “lack thereof”. That’s why Tennessee has the Tennessee promise: enough businesses were not coming because of the education levels of future employees that the status quo became too costly to sustain.
In short, the supply and the demand will always be there (…barring a zombie apocalypse :p)
So, either we make the cost-effectiveness happen, or we don’t and pay the consequences with rising prices, rising inequality, and a declining place on the world stage. That’s a collective choice but a very difficult one because individual&short-term answers would push us toward the status quo ante. Even choosing to do nothing when other countries switch gears means we’re behind. (For instance, after being at the forefront of college completion rates for decades, we have slipped.)
There are very few solutions to the problem that aren’t collective choices rather than individual ones.
A few random comments:
I was living under a rock apparently because I had no idea college had gotten to be so expensive. I mean, no idea in tangible numbers until our state flagship said we were expected to pay $30K per year. Seriously, in my head, I was living in another era — when state schools were affordable & a student could work their way thru college.
I would not underestimate the cultural and peer pressure on your student (& possibly the patents) over choice of college. One of my kids HS there was tremendous pressure to go to a GOOD school and what was a good school and what was a school that was looked down upon was part of the HS student chatter
Even the teachers seemed to pick up on it and light up like a Xmas tree when students were matriculating to X school and giving polite tight lipped nods when students were matriculating to Y school
Don’t let this get under your skin
None of it will matter a year from now
Apologies for the lack of punctuation it’s not working on my phone right now
On these forums, it seems that many advocate these paths for other people’s kids.
Meanwhile, the US and some other countries have popular sentiments seemingly intent on throwing away these advantages with anti-immigrant measures (including becoming more restrictive against legal immigration, including university students and skilled workers) and general hostility against immigrants.
Last year I met my first “college going” senior who chose not to attend any college. He had grades and activities such that he could have gotten into several schools. He was very very computer savvy and planned to take only trainings that would provide specific skills for coding. No traditional college of any kind in his plans. If employers like Google are waiving the typical bachelor degree requirements, how long until others follow suit? A friend who was unable to finish his degree is in a career making twice my salary in the tech industry doing contract staffing work.
CS is different because learning is often achieved outside of school- and to progress in/keep his career the senior will need to go back to school ~ age 35.
Writing is a time intensive learning process till you are excellent and can produce good copy efficiently. You need the feedback and the breadth of learning that college brings.
You cannot just"self teach" as a HS kid then be a nurse, a teacher, an engineer, an architect, a lawyer, a doctor.
Yes, self-education can be an alternative to formal education in college in some subjects like CS. It also helps that (a) the cost of materials to support the education is relatively low (no expensive labs needed, just a computer and internet connection that many people already have), and (b) some of these self-educated skills can be demonstrated in job interviews.
But most people who want to learn CS will do so more effectively with the aid of instructors and structured curricula in a college setting, so those who have effectively self-educated CS to employability are outliers in ability and motivation in the subject.
Not necessarily true, though there are other issues (age discrimination and other factors that may look like age discrimination, etc.) that one can encounter, as well as some employers that actually do base hiring and pay on degrees earned.
Those professions where there is external accreditation for the school and/or external licensing are obviously much harder to enter from a self-educated background. Indeed, the external accreditation and licensing has the effect of keeping non-traditional learners out (perhaps an intended effect to protect incumbent practitioners from more competition) in addition to the usually stated or assumed intention of setting quality standards for those entering the profession. Also, where the education requires expensive equipment or facilities (e.g. labs), that can be another barrier to self-education.
Just in case any parents came back to this thread…in the case of my son, he committed to an intensive self-study and raised his ACT from 32 to 34. He just bought 2 books and grinded. Mostly he kept taking practice tests and learned how to work the ACT faster.
In his particular case, the increase from 32 to 34 made a considerable difference and he qualified for an out of state full tuition award that he would not have received with a 32.
As someone who works in public education, I believe standardized tests are an incomplete if not downright poor indicator of a student’s potential but that is the game my son had to play in order to have an affordable option for his undergraduate studies that didn’t leave him with tremendous debt.
@JD7777 - That’s awesome! My big regret in this college prep journey with my first was not pushing improvement on the ACT. We called a 31 good after the second attempt but found out later a couple more points could have changed things significantly and he probably could have attended his first choice school which we crossed off for financial reasons (there was an auto departmental scholarship that kicked in at ACT 33).
Great to hear!
The game is what it is.
I am generally not a fan of US News rankings but one thing I do commend them for is relying on test scores to an extent, which induced college to provide a clear cut path to affordability at some colleges that kids in the doughnut hole would otherwise not be able to afford.
And honestly, so much of success in life does come down to setting goals, preparing, and hitting them (including in high-pressure situations), so aiming for certain standardized test scores and AP scores to gain scholarships/entry to cheaper foreign unis (essentially earn money) does teach worthwhile life lessons.
Thanks for the update!! I love when parents circle back. So glad it worked out for your student!
I just want you to know that you are not alone. We are facing this exact situation with my daughter (she’s a top 1% kid). Our EFC exceeds our take home pay so we would be looking at spending nearly $300,000 for a private university. That’s just insane, and I would argue that no undergraduate education is worth that! She will mostly be applying to big public universities, and that fit is entirely wrong for her (but we need to know that we have a few places that we can actually afford to send her). We will be applying to a few private universities in hopes of hitting the lottery with a full ride scholarship. She has the stats and ECs but so do many other kids, and we just cannot count on that. She’s a STEM kid so most LACs are out since they do not offer engineering. I pray daily that she ends up at the best place for her and that she has at least one affordable option where she will be happy (it doesn’t have to be top tier).
In my state of Massachusetts so many smart kids are going to UMass. When my son’s soccer team went around the room discussing where they were going for college every kid mentioned how money was a factor. My son goes to a private college and is having a great experience but if we couldn’t pay for it there is no way i would have taken on debt for the experience. I did not read all the entries but possibly your son can get merit money or attend a public university honors program. There are other options that are good options.
There are certainly smaller state schools with good engineering programs. You don’t have to do the big schools if that is a bad fit. We went through the engineering school search last year and had a couple really nice smaller schools on our list. My son thought he would want small and personal and coming from a small private high school the mega schools intimidated him on our visits. but go figure he landed at super mega Minnesota and loves it there. So, you never know!