Majority Of Americans Say College Not Worth Cost…

[KG1]

i think things got a little out of whack at some point. First there were too many employers requiring a degree when it simply was not needed. A clerk at a retail store does not need a college degree. More and more people that had no business going to college were doing so. If you need to take remedial classes… come on man. The cost of college is now ridiculous. When I went to Bloomington most of my classes were in pretty dumpy looking buidings. But guess what tuition and room and board in a dorm was reasonable compared to now.

my plumber son in law makes more than my college graduate, HR son.

I think it's quite ironic now that those are the types of lower paying jobs some people with a degree have to settle for because they can't find jobs that are hiring them in the fields they went to college for.

 

[DoggyDaddy]

I think it's quite ironic now that those are the types of lower paying jobs some people with a degree have to settle for because they can't find jobs that are hiring them in the fields they went to college for.

Well, there's just not the demand for underwater basket weaving like there used to be. Now there are robots to weave baskets underwater.

 

[Route 45]

Is it the constant decline of wages and buying power?

I pick this one.

 

[littletommy]

Even when I was in high school, way back in the early 80s, that’s all the teachers and counselors talked about, “ Oh, but you HAVE to go to college”. I knew it was bull **** back then.

Sure, if you want to be an MD, nurse, lawyer, engineer, fine, have at it, but the whole ridiculous scam of employers requiring a degree was beyond dumb, and completely encouraged by the “higher learning” industry. It’s really a shame so many people fell for it.

I never graduated high school, and certainly didn’t waste my time with college, but I managed to do quite well anyway. And I KNOW I did much better than if I had started out my working life owing tons of student loans.

 

[jamil]

Get those white vans fired up.

LINK: US college enrolment is dropping, can this be reversed?

"In 2022, 4 million fewer people in America enrolled at a college than ten years ago. The COVID-19 pandemic further accelerated the decline in US college enrolment, with a 10% decrease in sign-ups. Why? A survey of those students opting out of college revealed that almost half doubted seeing a return on the cost and time invested.

College degrees were once considered a ticket to the middle class or better. Yet, for many Americans, a college degree is expensive, less relevant and takes too long to obtain. This explains why only 37.1% of 25 to 44-year-olds have a bachelor’s degree in the US."

Turns out. Antifa doesn’t require a college degree.

 

[BugI02]

Then who will indoctrinate them? I don't think Antifa schools the cannon fodder, just uses the idiots

Maybe that's why they want to move the indoctrination into high schools

 

[jamil]

Then who will indoctrinate them? I don't think Antifa schools the cannon fodder, just uses the idiots

Maybe that's why they want to move the indoctrination into high schools

It’s already in K-12. They’re already indoctrinated.

 

[Ingomike]

It’s already in K-12. They’re already indoctrinated.

True that…

 

[actaeon277]

Despite what Mike Rowe says,

Mike Rowe doesn't tell everyone to skip college.
In fact, he has listed several fields he think it's needed.
He just states that people should stop demeaning Blue Collar Jobs/Workers.
To take college courses if you want them, or if they are NECESSARY for the job.
And that many jobs require a degree, that don't really need a degree to perform.


Everyone wonders why an electrician or plumber is so hard to find, and so $$$ to pay.
Well, years/decades of schools telling EVERYONE to go to school.

 

[Ark]

Well, there's just not the demand for underwater basket weaving like there used to be. Now there are robots to weave baskets underwater.

It is so freaking hilarious to me that the first people AI is replacing are turning out to be writers and "creatives". Yet AI on a computer screen is worthless when the water line to your water heater bursts.

 

[Rookie]

Years ago, when Chrysler was going through bankruptcy, I got laid off. Part of the requirement to get unemployment was to go to this meeting hosted by IUK. They were pushing everyone to go to college, but when the lady told us that we could get a four year degree in only two years, it reinforced my belief that college is a scam.

 

[jedi]

Good. Maybe this will collapse the educational-industrial complex.

It will not.

 

[jamil]

Mike Rowe doesn't tell everyone to skip college.
In fact, he has listed several fields he think it's needed.
He just states that people should stop demeaning Blue Collar Jobs/Workers.
To take college courses if you want them, or if they are NECESSARY for the job.
And that many jobs require a degree, that don't really need a degree to perform.


Everyone wonders why an electrician or plumber is so hard to find, and so $$$ to pay.
Well, years/decades of schools telling EVERYONE to go to school.

Probably for many STEM fields you need a degree. You don't NEED a degree to perform a lot of STEM fields though. You can learn a lot of the math an physics for engineering on youtube. For software engineering MIT has an entire course on youtube for free.

I used to say even if you don't need a degree for the field you want to work in, some college is helpful in terms of being more well rounded. There's a lot of utility in learning to communicate. History has a lot of life-skill type lessons. Philosophy helps teach you how to think. But in many universities it's just become woke indoctrination. It's not that bad in every university, but if you're not going into a field that requires a college degree, you can study communication/English, history, philosophy, and other soft-skill kind of stuff online.

 

[rob63]

I was once a mechanical engineer, graduated from Rose-Hulman, one of the premier engineering schools in the country, in 1985.

That was really about as solid a choice as I could have possibly made at the time. Even so, I was in no way prepared to actually be a practicing engineer. They taught me a lot of things, but most of it was very high-level stuff that completely failed at providing the basic understanding that I truly needed. Perhaps, I was poorly prepared coming out of high-school, my point is not really to point fingers. I'm just saying that for a career that everyone agrees requires a college degree, I still learned almost everything I needed to know on the job. I can't imagine how poorly served most people are with the fluff degrees.

 

[wtburnette]

I went to a community college (Ivy Tech) for a tech degree. Very little cost and it paved my way for a decent career. When I switched career fields, I turned my 2 year into a 4 year at WGU, an online college. Both had some interesting theory that I learned, but not really anything practical. I did learn to manage my time better and some other stuff that made both worth my time. Both were very inexpensive and therefore worthwhile. If I were getting ready to graduate HS today, or had kids about to do so, I would push for them to become electricians, plumbers or welders. Colleges have become overpriced indoctrination mills. There is absolutely no reason for any college to cost $40k+ per year. That's just stupid expensive and what they learn isn't worth it. My stepson ended up going to UND for mechanical engineering. He had to go to college for it and UND wasn't horrid compared to other, similar colleges, but dang, like $45k/yr for 5 years. Yeah, he started out making over $60k/yr, but he's going to be paying off that degree for a looooooong time.

 

[rhamersley]

I was once a mechanical engineer, graduated from Rose-Hulman, one of the premier engineering schools in the country, in 1985.

That was really about as solid a choice as I could have possibly made at the time. Even so, I was in no way prepared to actually be a practicing engineer. They taught me a lot of things, but most of it was very high-level stuff that completely failed at providing the basic understanding that I truly needed. Perhaps, I was poorly prepared coming out of high-school, my point is not really to point fingers. I'm just saying that for a career that everyone agrees requires a college degree, I still learned almost everything I needed to know on the job. I can't imagine how poorly served most people are with the fluff degrees.

ME, Rose 1989...pleased to meet ya.

 

[HoosierLife]

Obviously some fields require a degree.

Lawyer, doctor, nurse, engineer etc.

Most folks would be better off with trade schools.

Or buying courses from folks that are successful in the field you’re looking to get into.

I dropped out of Purdue during my ill spent youth, because partying was all I cared about and I never studied and rarely went to class.

Got saved, but still had no character. Got fired from about 20 jobs in my teen and early 20s.

Became an entrepreneur lol. Just cause I wouldn’t fire myself.

Finally started to get my act together. I went back to school and graduated from Bible college in my early 30s.

Had been doing sales jobs.

Became an insurance agent while in Bible college.

Bought a course on digital marketing from a guy that is worth close to a Billion today.

Leveraged that and other courses/masterminds to grow my insurance agency and software company to a multi-seven figure eval.

Looking back, I would always recommend folks find someone who is successfully doing what you want and straight up pay them to mentor you.

Want to be an author? Great! Don’t waste your time on a degree. Pay someone that has a successful program that teaches you how to implement their process to make money in the real world.

Want to do social media advertising? Great! College professors don’t have a clue. My $15/hour admins know more about social media marketing that those buffoons.

And when they’ve worked for me for a few years, they will walk away with more knowledge in how to successfully run a business than any biz degree.

This is essentially what a trade school is. You’ve got a mentor teaching you how to do it the right way.

Not some overpriced institution designed to keep you in debt and a part of the corporate grind taught by someone that couldn’t do it successfully themselves.

 

[jhyiesla]

So, I think it’s a matter of what you’re shooting for. I went to college because what I wanted to do required it. Could I have gotten into my industry without the degree? Yes, but at a lower level of pay. Fast forward 40 years and perhaps not so much anymore. And I switched careers a few years in for something I was better at and didn’t require a degree and retired making a good salary. I think my college experience helped, but ultimately wasn’t required.

My kids all went to college. Two of them needed to because their career paths really required it. The third did as well not because his career required it, but because it gave him the training and knowledge as well as discipline he needed. At one point he just wanted to do a targeted one year exposure in his area of interest. I counseled him to do that, but only after he did the 4 year degree. I think now he sees the wisdom in that.

 

[rob63]

ME, Rose 1989...pleased to meet ya.

There are a surprising number of Rose grads on INGO!

 

[Destro]

We have got to get the cost of education down.

Uncle Sam paid for most of my education (BA at a private school, MBA at a state university), extremely grateful as there is no realistic way I would have afforded it otherwise.

If I was stuck with $120k in loans making $60k a year, I would probably be pretty resentful.