Everything is terrible.

Basically, yeah.

It's hard to not want to be just overbearingly pessimistic. I already am, and I wish I could ever say anything about anything other than "you see this thing right here? it really ****ing sucks".

But neoliberal propaganda be damned, any honest assessment of the facts will make anyone feel a kind of dread about the future.

If it's societal collapse that gives you existential dread, it's probably because you are still too physically healthy.

One thing about all the college stuff: it's a fact that many jobs do require a college education. But it's a question of whether they should, again, given that college is such a burdensome financial obligation. It must be especially frustrating to many students, especially those that are more eager to work than to be in school, that they have to take on that burden, and that, by the end of it, feel they have little to show for it. I'm sure many students do want universities to do more to give the more relevant skills.

I loved learning and wanted to remain in the academy for the rest of my life, at least until I had a clearer sense of what that would actually entail. Universities are really broken. Many can't sustain themselves financially anymore. The academic job market is horrible, in large part because universities are still being squeezed from 2007-2008. There's a lot that could be fixed. But it also doesn't seem like people know what universities should even be for. Given that people are more aware of the student debt crisis now, there's definitely a push to make university teach skills for work. On the other hand, a decade ago, I was more sympathetic to arguments that the university played an idealistic role providing individuals with the capacities required to be a good citizen, a fully formed person, etc etc.

The problems of undergraduate education and academic careers are totally unrelated.

I'm honestly tired of debating the latter problems. People either don't understand what's going on, or they have a bone to pick. Comments like "many can't sustain themselves financially anymore": for-profit degree mills aside, universities all play shell games with their bursaries, stacking their capital fund and running the university on fumes so they can get bigger grants and subsidies from the government. The idea of a self-sustaining university is silly to me speaking as a Canadian. Our universities don't even try to be self-sustaining. American state schools may run under a profitability mandate, but when push comes to shove, the state government's not gonna shut the doors to their university system and the administrators know it. The real problem with academic careers is the fact that professors are teaching too many graduate students. That's happening for a lot of reasons, but the big one is academic culture, and that's not going to change. Like I said, though, I'm tired of debating these issues.

For undergraduate education, I feel like I'm on the verge of repeating myself. "Whether jobs should require degrees, given that blah blah blah". You're moralizing about a market outcome. Don't waste your time. If you want to force employers to hire qualified workers without degrees, your only option is collective action.

I can't think of anything more toxic than forcing universities to engage in vocational training. For starters, how? There are literally thousands of different jobs for which employers hire english and psychology grads. What skills can you teach those students that aren't already being taught? Which jobs do you target, the most popular one, ten, hundred? Do you require English students to take some vocational major? If so, how will that student change careers later on? How will that affect their income?

There's far too much hand-wringing about poor widdle undergwaduates taking underwater basket weaving or whatever. Some do, but for the most part it's bunk. The vast majority of undergraduate students are keenly aware of their career prospects and choose an undergraduate program that helps them achieve their professional goals. Even most programs people make fun of, like english, are highly employable for the skills learned in undergraduate coursework. The problem isn't english or psychology or gender studies or underwater basket weaving or whatever other bugbear. The problem is biological sciences. Pre-med, pre-dds. The problem is people taking undergraduate programs to qualify for professional school, and then being rejected from those schools. Or people in similar situations, like engineers - who may have completed the coursework, but may never qualify as a professional engineer if they can't find an employer to spot them while they build up enough hours. Those are the problems you ought to be worried about, not universities which somehow aren't teaching skills employers demand (even though they oh so clearly are).

Eh, fine: if you don't want to talk about it anymore, then you don't want to talk about it anymore. But I suspect that, if the reason for training too many PhDs is really academic culture (which I think is probably right), then the issue of undergraduate education (even if not undergraduate preparedness for work) and the glut of PhDs on the academic job market are actually more intimately related than you suggest. After all, there are reasons why the system is producing more PhDs than the job market needs: it's perhaps not insignificant that academic professionalization often begins at the undergraduate level, and has the effect of keeping people some people pursuing PhDs when they probably shouldn't. But I suspect even more problematic to that end is the cult-like aspects of academic culture that make people feel like personal failures if they don't go on the next rung of the ladder, whether it's on to graduate school, or on to a tenure-track job, or whatever.

In my graduating class there were ~500 bio science majors, meaning most of them wanted to go on to medical school. Clearly most won't ever make it.

This is a real problem, teaching undergraduates to compete for only a few slots, dangling that carrot without a sensible and concrete pipeline and warning system for people who should/should not continue on that path.

It might help to remember that levels of debt are skewed. The average debt is some $25000, but the median is $12000. It's about 1/4th of the student loan holding population whose debt meets the average or is higher.

The students who end up with $50k+ in student loan debt (about 1/5th of debt holders) are the exception rather than the rule. It's still too many, but when you consider that the average salary of degree holders ($71k) is much higher than the average salary of non-degree holders, the 75% who hold onto <$25000 in debt will pay it off with little issues. Even among the people taking out higher amounts of debt, it isn't a 100% default rate.

This is just a case of the media warping perceptions. Most people who take on some debt to go to college are fine, and long term reap the benefits. But once the media ****s out 500 pieces talking about how oh-so-awful student loan debts are, and all of the stupid memes people post all over about it, it can give you the false sense that most students are drowning in debt, when the numbers don't really add up to suggest that.

This isn't to say there aren't disturbing trends for degree seekers, but I'd ask: which trends in degree holders aren't just reflections of trends in employment more generally?

Also, part of what I dislike is the phrasing of the issue. The problems are always phrased as an issue of individual choice conflicting with a non-existent societal pressure, and not a systemic problem with employment in America creating certain rational incentives. It's the latter.

Also, seriously, ****ing nobody has ever said everybody needs to go to college. That whole thing is knocking down a huge strawman argument.

That sort of thing, obviously, is a very sad affair for students. Unfair absolutely seems like the right word for it. But it also makes sense to think of it in terms of the 10X engineer model that Jon mentioned above. Having so many bio science majors -- a glut, really -- gives med schools more options in terms of who they elevate to the next level. Which probably allows them to make only the best of them doctors. There are also sorts of injustices associated with that (e.g., plenty of qualified people aren't allowed to be doctors, which is especially frustrating, when some say that the US has a a shortage of doctors), but it also may be a good for society in some ways that only the very best people, out of a wide number of people, are able to become doctors.

With academia, too, it seems like there are advantages to the competitive nature of it. In the humanities (and I suspect other academic disciplines as well, although it probably happens more often in disciplines where there isn't an easy transition to industry), graduates from the very best programs often end up teaching at colleges that aren't nearly as prestigious as the institutions that they studied at. That may be humiliating for recently graduated PhDs, as might be their paycheck which barely keeps them above the poverty line, but it's a great thing for their students, at least to the extent that it keeps the quality of teaching high.

The numbers I've been seeing are a little different (higher generally), but the general idea here is right. It's definitely true that students who graduate with debt graduate with very different financial situations. For example, there's a non-trivial number of people who take on student debt but then don't finish their degrees. That's a really bad position to be in, because they have the debt without any of the advantages of a college degree. For others, the debt burden isn't that onerous. But obviously student debt is still bad, and it's only getting worse. Each year the average student debt is higher than the last.



The default rate seems to be close to 10%, but defaulting on loans doesn't seem to be the most important issue here. All this student debt has a high social cost, and a large personal cost to be people who are in debt. It makes saving difficult, which, in turn, makes homeownership more difficult, pushes back lifecycle events like getting married and having children, makes starting a business more difficult, etc. Given how widespread student debt is, all of those things will ultimately affect economic growth in the long term.

Well... sure, but there are some pretty obvious advantages to going to college that must lead many to feel like they've been coerced into to take on debt. People who go to college make significantly more income over the course of their lives than those who don't, generally have higher life expectancy, are generally more healthy, etc. And, as Jon said:



In other words, the jobs available to people who don't go to college aren't very desirable or lucrative.

I guess I'm a little surprised that you are coupling the student debt issue with the "corporate Titans say don't go to college" issue, and that you see fixation with student debt as a primarily right-wing thing. Fighting student debt with free college was Bernie Sanders's signature policy issue during the election! (Obviously, Sanders would agree with you that it's the latter.)

I'm not a fan of Bernie's views on college in the sense that, the most serious issue the left faces is the working class, college expense is an issue pretty much effecting only lower bourgeoise families.

I was going to try and compare the left and right solutions to the college debt issue, and I realized the right doesn't have a solution, they have an alternative. The left wants to bring down costs while maintaining high enrollment, the right wants to use the problem to push people in the direction they want for other reasons.

Liberals think the cost is explained by market forces.

(No answer to the issue is present.)

So you object to this goal?

Idk. Oppose? No, I guess.

I'm not sure what you think you are saying when you say that. But from what I gather, it depends on the type of institution. State universities are probably the most relevant here. The tuition of state universities are going up because state government are cutting funding to universities, which means that universities need to raise tuition in order to offset the loss of state government funding. And since state universities have less funding from the government, they're encouraged to proactively seek new sources of funding. So often they'll spend money on projects in order to attract new students (especially out of state students, since the are charged more), which results in further increases to tuition for in-state students. Another trend is that the body of non-teaching administrators at universities is growing rapidly, which is contributing to the total costs of running a university.

I’m repeating myself now:

Undergraduate students think about their career prospects. Undergraduate students think about their career prospects. Universities actively present graduate school as an option and opportunity to their best undergraduates. These are students who have every rational reason to believe they will be competitive in academia and are willing to take the associated risks.

Mine had ~3700.

Every economic signal is telling people to go and become a doctor: huge, well publicized shortages; long hours for those already in the profession; rodonkulous pay. The problem is the med schools and colleges doing economic engineering in order to enhance the pay and prestige of their profession. Med schools have been turning out lower than replacement rate for decades in North America.

Nice thought buuuuuut

The first pick is kids from medical families, regardless of academics.

Then they pad out the class with <1% of applicants with the highest academics.

The purpose isn’t to choose the best, it’s to be choosey.

Yep. Universities engage in perfect price discrimination. They charge everybody exactly what they can afford.

Which is to say, their math is probably very wrong. Middle class people also have higher consumption, so might not have any more left over to spend on tuition than a poor person does. They’d probably need to change consumption habits to afford it, effectively being knocked down an entire class.





The liberal solution to most problems is undischargeable, government-insured debt.

Yeah, I disagree. Anecdotally, I've seen nothing that makes me think undergraduates who go into PhD programs are well informed about the decision that they are making, nor about how impoverished their prospective career opportunities are. That's largely because of the cult-like aspects of academia, where people's sense of self-worth are tied to metrics that are entirely rooted in the academic community, which creates a stigma around seriously considering alternatives, and which also fills their calculations with wishful thinking. And everything I've seen from the data confirms my suspicions. The vast majority of students who graduate with PhDs from the very top 1-3 programs in their disciplines fail to get adjunct positions, never mind a TT job (as in, one student will get a job or a two-year post-doc per year). Attrition rates at some programs are as high as 50%. In a graduating class, it's not rare for no students from such programs to get a job. Nearly everyone who's below the top 10 is wasting their time. Nobody has any reason to have any confidence that they will be competitive, and if they are, they don't know what they're signing up for.

By the way, I'm talking primarily about humanities and social science disciplines. I'm sure the situation is somewhat less bleak in quantitative disciplines, where graduates can get highly lucrative jobs in industry. But in humanities and social science disciplines, a graduate is effectively in the same situation that a person is in if they hadn't done a PhD at all, except they're 6 to 10 years older than they were when they completed their undergraduate degree. I know someone who finished their PhD and afterwards was working at Starbucks.

You can disagree all you want. I worked this exact problem during a research assistantship and I know better.

Fewer than 8% of undergraduates apply for graduate programs. Of that 8%, only the top students will be admitted into a graduate program - top doesn't just mean good grades, it means summer research internships, strong letters of recommendation from faculty showing research potential, good aptitude test scores (GRE). Most students who move on to graduate studies express this desire when they apply to their undergraduate program, and begin efforts to build a strong application from this point (establishing relationships with professors and pursuing internships).

You are wringing your hands about an extreme minority of students with exceptional academics who are just as capable of googling for "tenure track positions" as you and I are. Even if these students fail out of their programs, whether as graduate students or because they can't find a tenure track job, they are going to do perfectly fine professionally. They don't deserve your crocodile tears.

The people you should be worried about are the kinds on academic probation who get a random degree because of sunk costs, who are fooled by for-profit tech institutions, or, like I said, pre-med students who have no hope.

Well, then again we can agree to disagree. It's not a problem that affects many people. It is still a problem.

What does "agree to disagree" mean to you? I'm willing to acknowledge that you can't be convinced, so discussing the issue further serves no purpose other than to breed acrimony. Just to be clear, though, I'm not validating your opinion. Mine comes from data. Yours comes from anecdote. Others reading this thread would be wise to note that.

Heh, nice try, but no. I already said I agreed with the parts of your post where you cite data. Incidentally, nothing there was new to me either. Where we actually disagree, your argument comes from anecdote. Your argument was "I was able to figure something out, therefore all undergraduates can figure it out".

I disagree to agree.

Disagree to disagree to agree to disagree?

(Disagree to disagree) to (agree to disagree)

I guess agreement isn't associative.

I didn’t figure it out, my PI did. Do you know what a research assistant is?

Write an op ed, he'll be quoting you next week

What a fun thread this is sometimes.

we try

I'm confused.

Donald Trump imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum imports under a national security exception, right? But Wilbur Ross said Trump was imposing those tariffs to punish Canada and Mexico for not agreeing to his proposed 5-year NAFTA sunset provision, with no legitimate national security concern. Just straight-up violating a US law.

Why can he do that? Shouldn't that be something the courts can strike down?

Comment on r/economics: "This was essentially America deciding to sanction itself."

This is one of the better conservations that Ezra Klein has had on his podcast recently: https://art19.com/shows/the-ezra-klein-show/episodes/c191513b-a57e-4361-b7d3-6dfc86c08b32

One of the key contentions: the reason why there is such a wide disparity in wealth between whites and blacks is because of discriminatory policies that made it easier for whites to take out credit than blacks. (It goes back to the policies of the Federal Housing Administration, created under the New Deal.) There's also some discussion here about why banking services are so much more expensive for the poor (e.g., there are onerous penalties that target the poor and are designed to deter them from using their services, because banks don't want poor people as customers). And there's even a pretty reasonable policy suggestion on what can be done to address the problem (run banking services out of the post office, or even provide Walmart with a license to provide banking services more cheaply than private banks do).

Why would Walmart want poor people as banking customers?