"That being said, with AWS Certs going for between $75-$300 how long do colleges think they can survive?"
Colleges shouldn't be in the business of training people for jobs - that is what tech schools are for. If you just want to get a job, go to a tech school, don't go to college. College is (or should be) about expanding your mind, your horizons. It should be about exposing you to new ideas and thoughts you hadn't been exposed to before. There is a reason why University and Universe have the same root.
Colleges sell themselves as providing remunerative employment training when it suits them, and hide behind this excuse when kids (esp. Humanities majors) can't garner gainful employment. "What, you thought you were paying $200k to increase your earning potential?! Crazy kids---this is all about personal development. Life is about more than money!" (Try not paying your student loans back, and you can see exactly how little they care about money.)
Even if we pretend that the majority of people attend college not for the purpose of increasing their value to employers and getting out of their parents' house, but for personal edification, colleges don't even accomplish this ostensible goal! Most students are more ignorant in most subject matter than the day they step foot on the campus - https://www.nysun.com/new-york/students-know-less-after-4-co... ; https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/01/whats-c.... Often they're propagandized for four years, saddled with debt, and told that they got an "education", so it's nobody's fault but their own if they can't find a decent job.
Three cheers for the AWS certs and modern-day educational options and good riddance to the corrupt university system (propped up by taxpayer-subsidized monies, of course).
the colleges are guilty of a motte and bailey argument
the motte being the liberal arts/wholistic focused learning (only a philistine would be against that) and the bailey being the economically useful learning salesmanship.
Letter from John Adams to Abigail Adams, 1780-05-12:
> I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy. My sons ought to study Mathematicks and Philosophy, Geography, natural History, Naval Architecture, navigation, Commerce and Agriculture, in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry and Porcelaine.
And the great grand children don't get to study because they have to get a job right away. After a few generations they finally save up enough that some kid can can study "Mathematicks and Philosophy, Geography, natural History, Naval Architecture, navigation, Commerce and Agriculture" and the cycle repeats.
Nothing wrong with the arts, but the fact is very few can support a reasonable lifestyle on it. By burning the inheritance you can produce art but nothing remains for your children. Study art by all means, but make sure you have something to support yourself on without burning up the hard work of your ancestors first.
There were only a ~dozen colleges at the time, and women couldn't attend. 90% of colonists were farmers. I don't see where there can be much nuance. American's today have vastly more ability to study a bunch of nonsense.
> If you just want to get a job, go to a tech school, don't go to college. College is (or should be) about expanding your mind, your horizons
This is patently false. Colleges compete and advertise based on their job placement rankings. Just a few years ago, law schools were sued for misrepresenting their employment statistics.
Whatever ideal, romanticized version of university and college experiences are touted, the reality is that they are marketed to parents and kids as the way to a better lifestyle.
Sure, "Liberal Arts" are largely about enriching the mind, but that doesn't change the fact that very, very few people can afford the luxury of going to get a 4 year degree just to "expand your horizons".
I fully agree that you can't ignore the broader education that college provides, even when that diverges from marketability.
But then you have to be clear-eyed about what we're talking about here: from the perspective of a college student, is it worth paying 1-200k[1] to become more worldly, with some auxiliary benefits to their income potential? I would probably still send my (future) kids to such a place, but then I'm in a pretty high income/wealth percentile. I suspect that many people (including my family when I was a kid), looking at this clear-headedly, would rationally decline this deal. If you think the pricing of college reflects the "broaden your horizons" aspect instead of the perception that it's "protection money for a middle-class career", you're sorely mistaken. Which means there are and can be far, far, far more cost-effective ways to broaden your horizons, particularly in the era of Internet communities, cheap travel, and all of humanity's knowledge at your fingertips at all times.
[1] I'm aware that there are ways to get through college more cheaply, like starting in community College. But a system in which the majority of people are going through ccs first is a very different system, so the thrust of GP's point still stands.
Today it’s hard to make an economic case for a well-rounded liberal arts education — but I’d bet that in ten years, computers will be pretty good at everything except the stuff you get from a good liberal arts education.
Ten years? Do you really think software development as we know it will be gone in ten years? I think it’s important on hacker news that we have perspective on our place in society and history and that we don’t think of ourselves (speaking for software engineers mostly here) as gods or something, but it seems very extreme to suggest that what we do will be gone or severely reduced in ten years.
The timing is a guess. But I do believe that we’re not far away from a point at which computers are much better at generating a CRUD app, or finding the most efficient algorithm, etc, but are still far from crossing the uncanny valley of making a truly moving piece of music, or work of art.
I don’t think programmers will be obsolete; but I think the skill set will shift away from the analytical and mathematical traits that set programmers apart today, towards the fuzzier knowledge of the humanities. (Though my personal belief is that liberal arts educations must include science and mathematics as a core pillar.)
Specialization in algorithmic and mathematical thinking will still be of extremely high value, but the level of achievement required to be successful in that area will likely be crushingly competitive.
But, this is just a fun guess — let’s check back in ten years so we can see how utterly off base I was :)
In regards to art and music, it is more about artificial scarcity and popularity. The few artists at the top make a lot of money. As for the rest - the term "starving artist" describes them.
Also, given that computers can test stuff on billions of people, I would say there is a good chance that you could have popular pieces of music and art that are produced largely by algorithms in the very near future.
Actually, it's becoming increasingly less difficult to make a living in art by finding a niche, because the niche that any given person can access has grown.
Colleges shouldn't be in the business of training people for jobs - that is what tech schools are for. If you just want to get a job, go to a tech school, don't go to college. College is (or should be) about expanding your mind, your horizons.
I keep seeing this on HN. Only the privileged can afford to go to college to “expand their minds”. The middle class and even the upper middle class are not spending tens of thousands of dollars a year to go to college to “expand their minds”. They are doing it so they can get a job.
Where are all of these students with “expanded minds” going to get a job? I specifically told both of my sons that I would not support them in getting a degree that didn’t have an outlook for a decent paying job. I specifically had them look at the starting salaries of graduates, the placement rates, and the five year salary averages for the school and the degree they choose.
>Colleges shouldn't be in the business of training people for jobs - that is what tech schools are for.
Whatever it "should" be for doesn't really matter. The majority of people (in America) operate under the assumption that going to College helps you get a job.
What is it with this attitude that somehow learning new things is only honorable when those things are useless in the job market? Do you really think that anybody is taking up 4 years of their life and 200 thousand of their (probably borrowed) dollars just for the purpose of "expanding their horizons"?
Who is paying 200,000 for college? That's crazy. I have 2 kids attending a private college and each one pays $2000 a semester. They both have academic scholarships - so their tuition is covered - but even if it wasn't, that is less than $20,000 over 4 years. You can get a good education without attending an ivy league university.
It's terrific that you've found a private school that would cost $20K total for four years but everything that I've read indicates that such a school is a tremendous outlier. The average tuition for a public school last school year was $5500 for in-state students and $12K for out-of-state students; private schools tended to be substantially higher.
Anecdotally, the college I went to, New College of Florida, is a public liberal arts school whose costs aren't too far out of alignment with other state schools in Florida. According to their fees page, in-state tuition fees, room and board would total $16K a year; for out-of-state students, that would be $39K a year.
Actually, I'd like to gently question your figures: you're indicating your kids are paying $2000 a semester -- so that would be $4000 a year, or $16,000 over four years. And you're saying that doesn't include their tuition, so that's just room and board, right? (That's under half the cost of New College's, which again sounds like quite a deal.) Further, room, board and tuition at this private college would still be under $20,000 over four years? Unless I'm missing something, that would mean tuition at this private school is less than $500 a semester. I can't help but suspect that either one of us has our math wrong, or you have the best school deal in the history of ever.
I didn't say anything about room and board (their housing is about $1300 a semester). The $16,000 would be the tuition cost. I was saying that they have academic scholarships which is covering their tuition. But, if they didn't have those scholarships, the 4 years (8 semesters) of tuition would be less than $20,000. I know of at least 3 private colleges with similar tuition. I imagine there are lots more if I bothered to look.
I too am very interested in the answer to this question. if you're spending that much and not going to a top 30 school, you're a chump. if you are going to a truly elite school, you're not paying anything close to the sticker price unless your parents are quite well off.
I'm not saying college isn't unreasonably expensive these days, but I often see this number for undergrad and I always wonder where the hell it came from.
I just googled the current tuition at the school I went too and roughly multiplied by 4. The exact number isn't my point just that it's a ridiculous amount.
At the same time, maybe college shouldn't charge that much for a major/profession that might not pay off the student out of his/her student loan back, in like decades?
Sounds like you had a bad experience with college but I think you raised a couple of good points:
- college is in every way, dumped on teenagers as THE ONLY way forward
Absolutely true in my experience. High schools are entirely structured around two things: standardized test performance, and pushing kids into college. If you are not a college-bound kid, you essentially don't exist.
- No one is there to mature. No one is there to improve their concept of individuality. No one goes to college to learn for the sake of learning.
"No one" is too strong, but I think this is true for the majority. Most people in an undergraduate program (and probably also a majority in Master's programs) are there because they think it is the path to a good job. Because that is what has been drummed into them since elementary school. Learning, expanding horizons, etc. are secondary.
If most people at college were there simply for the sake of learning, enrollment would be a small fraction of what it is.
>No one goes to college to learn for the sake of learning.
I studied Ancient Near Eastern Studies and Historical Linguistics, neither of which is part of anyone's plan for getting rich. But I studied those things because I was interested in them, purely for the sake of learning without any hope of financial reward.
Also, I made the best friends of my life in college, many of whom, 20 years later, are still my best friends.
Overall, I feel like I matured a lot in college.
As for my own kids, I'm encouraging them to do what I think will be best for them and their future based on their skills and temperment. My two oldest I encouraged to go to college. But my third I am strongly encouraging to go to trade school. I encouraged the two oldest to study whatever made them happy in college and to not worry about studying to make money. One is studying non-profit management and the other is studying animal behavioral psychology (she loves working with dogs). Neither of those are good career paths, but they are things they enjoy learning.
You don't need to pay tens of thousands of dollars for college. My wife and I graduated without any student debt. My two oldest are about halfway through and so far they have no debt either (through a combination of working their way through college and academic scholarships).
You are claiming a lot of absolutes in this. I attended college to expand my mind, learn new things, and mature into an adult. I went to a large but reasonably prices state school and did everything you said no one does. I don't even use my degree but going through thought me a lot of lessons I still use (working well with people I don't know, learning things quickly and applying them, making new friends). I, and I bet a lot of others, learned and grew a lot during University with out the notion of finding a career.
Colleges shouldn't be in the business of training people for jobs - that is what tech schools are for. If you just want to get a job, go to a tech school, don't go to college. College is (or should be) about expanding your mind, your horizons. It should be about exposing you to new ideas and thoughts you hadn't been exposed to before. There is a reason why University and Universe have the same root.