Has the decline of knowledge work begun?

> despite being completely detached from useful skills for a wide swathes of degrees

It's a nice suggestion, but it's one that isn't supported by the evidence. Even controlling for other factors, a college degree makes more productive workers. And given that it's controlling for other factors, "selection bias" becomes a hard argument to make. STEMbros get real arrogant about their degrees (I have one; I've seen it first hand), but like it or not the person with an English degree still learned a lot of useful skills.

Going to uni to major in a specific career is how you get screwed when available careers change.

I don't think there is any doubt spending 4 years studying a subject will increase skills in some areas. The question is whether the benefits are worth the cost (and that question applies both to the individual student and society as a whole).

Remember the cost of all this is absolutely massive. Mostly the 4 years of lost time.

It doesn't have to be though. In Europe the vast majority of people attend public universities that don't require having to end up with a degree and crippling debt.

I left uni almost 20 years ago, but one year of my tuition was about 1000USD at the time, something I could easily afford with a part time job. I'm sure the cost is higher now, but I would have thought it is still orders of magnitude cheaper than in the UK or the US. Germany subsidizes university tuition fees for a huge percentage of students, and adds a monthly stipend for expenses and free public transport while enrolled in uni.

Your point is valid, challenging the worth/cost of higher education. But I think it is the cost part what is broken in some parts of the world, not necessarily the worth part.

I mean we can reform it without necessarily throwing out the baby with the bathwater. In Europe a bachelor's can often take 3 years, and maybe we can even shrink it down to 2 years; this is already kind of a thing in the US with some schools offering a 5 year bachelor+master's program.

Realistically maybe we reform community college to be the required thing instead of traditional undergrad, since the cost and length is more comparable.

associate degrees exist

they exist, but at least employers do not seem to think they currently cover enough to accept them in lieu of a bachelor's.

in fact i would say I don't know how much additional value an associates' holds in that context, and maybe we just merge the two concepts. I haven't ever really seen a posting that is okay with just an associate's.

> Even controlling for other factors, a college degree makes more productive workers

I'd like to see this study. Most of the data I've seen that is pro-college still has massive confounds.

Two twins graduate high school. One gets a crappy copywriting job, and spends her free time reading books on how to write better, and specifically how to do copywriting. The other gets an English degree. I'm not nearly as confident as you are the one with the English degree is going to be a better copywriter.

I don't disagree you can learn skills, but cognitive science literature solidly shows far transfer is not a thing, and when it is it's incredibly inefficient. i.e. Reading the great works of Russian literature might make you a better copywriter but at a vastly slower pace than writing copy, or reading a book on copywriting.

I think an undervalued aspect of college over self learning for most is that college requires you to learn a broader array of things. If I was allowed just pick the classes I wanted to take for four years, they would have all been computer related classes. I would never had taken Chemistry, Physics, Drama, Psychology, History, International Relations, or anything that makes me a more educated and well rounded thinker.

The cost is there regardless. If the ROI is negative then it's making somebody worse off even if the state is paying for it. If the state pays, it's even worse, because people may take the option based on a positive ROI for themselves while it's overall negative. If the ROI is positive but people aren't taking advantage because of the cost to themselves, then you want to look at subsidies.

We look at that positively becomes it's a sunk cost, but if someone were to put the circumstances in front of us would we still be happy about it?

If your job told you that you had to pay 10k to study French poetry for 6 months without pay, would you happy for the opportunity to a more well rounded thinker?

>If your job told you that you had to pay 10k to study French poetry for 6 months without pay, would you happy for the opportunity to a more well rounded thinker?

That's unrealistic.

  1. That's just one subject.
  2. Semesters and/or quarters are not 6 months.
  3. Most colleges don't charge $10K for one subject for 6 months.

Having said all that, yes there were some annoying class requirements that I didn't particularly care for, but I still learned something from it. If nothing else, it allowed me to have more conversations with a broader array of people. Make no mistake, being an educated conversationalist impresses people. Being able to intelligently converse with more people because of a broader knowledge base has significant social and economic value. Imagine if you met your perfect mate by being able to talk about French poetry. Imagine your perfect company has a hiring manager who also loves French poetry. We are ultimately social creatures.

15 years later do you think these classes matter?

Im not totally sure I could tell you most of what I even took let alone what I learned in those classes.

Maybe right after college there's a window of a couple years.

Sometimes "ROI" isn't measurable. What's the "ROI" of a well rounded populus that gets along and doesn't want to kill each other? What's the "ROI" of creating beautiful works of art, or producing great culture? What's the "ROI" of happiness?

Sometimes the purpose of central government is to make a negative ROI into a positive one, because there are greater purpose than the return

It may not be measurable but we still need to think about it and do our best to figure out what things cost more than the benefits they provide.

What about lost opportunity cost though? Or the cost of failure?

My college intake class had 60 enter in the first year, and I was paying $2000 out of pocket a semester. Only about a quarter got the paper in the end; the rest either withdrew or flunked out. And from what I understand, 75% starting but failing to achieve a degree isn't atypical for that course.

What happens to those students? The ones that take on debt and then realize far too late that they can't handle the workload and have nothing to show for it but student debt, years of lost income, and no degree to show for it?

And even for those of us that made it though, I'm... still uncertain it was worth the price. Not just in dollars.

Many people state how much they appreciate their degree. But when it comes down to it almost everyone who goes back from a second degree does so with the specific purpose of getting a credential for their career.

No one really values the intangible personal development that comes with education. If they did I'd have 5 friends who went back for a second degree to enrich themselves instead of 0.

Most European public universities have low tuition because taxpayers are subsidizing them. This can only work if the number of students is kept relatively low. You can't have both cheap tuition and widespread access to higher education. The math doesn't work.

It will also be interesting to see what happens now that Europe has to get real about defense spending instead of freeloading on US security guarantees. Since defense spending is going up there's going to be a lot of political pressure to cut higher education.

A higher education/degree teaches you how to think, not what to think. I’ve never used the knowledge from my physics degrees directly, but they taught me problem solving skills that I have applied to my career.

Here’s a pointed take on it from one of New Zealand’s successful businessmen: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/education/the-art-of-business-...

There was never anything I regretted learning.

What if we don't agree what the benefits are? Tieing the "benefits" to money breaks your system before you even get it off the ground.

We already have a way to discuss that benefit, it's the political process. Doing politics IS figuring out the benefits.

I think there's diminishing returns. A broad, liberal arts, undergraduate education develops critical thinking and reading skills in a zero-to-one kind of way. Once you've attained those skills (whether through a college degree or some other way), further enrichment via self-study is much more easily doable.

More productive or more extractive. Managerial class has the degrees and they pay themselves and each other higher wages. A lot of production is done by those under them... Are they actually more productive or just lot more extractive?

>What about lost opportunity cost though? Or the cost of failure?

Well for a high school grad today, most likely the opportunity cost is minimum wage service sector jobs. Those "temporary" jobs are also really easy to get stuck in for life. That's not a good life.

>Only about a quarter got the paper in the end; the rest either withdrew or flunked out. And from what I understand, 75% starting but failing to achieve a degree isn't atypical for that course. What happens to those students? The ones that take on debt and then realize far too late that they can't handle the workload and have nothing to show for it but student debt, years of lost income, and no degree to show for it?

They're fucked, but at least they know where they stand. They should know their chances with the standardized testing somewhat. You definitely shouldn't go to college if you don't have the aptitude or motivation, but you should go to some sort of trade school: electrical, carpentry, plumber, etc. The safest path to college is graduated study, community college for the AA, then full blown university for the last two. At least you get an AA degree, and if you can't handle community college, at least it isn't very expensive.

>And even for those of us that made it though, I'm... still uncertain it was worth the price. Not just in dollars.

The value proposition is pretty muddied with the negligent inflation of tuition over the past few decades, that is a certainty. Unless you are Ivy League, any college will do. I'm fortunate to live in a state where tuition for public college is on the lower end.

What supports your assertion that low tuition fees limit student numbers in Europe? This would only apply to non-EU students. I could very well claim the opposite, that high tuition fees limit student numbers in the US and make higher education out of reach for most.

> You definitely shouldn't go to college if you don't have the aptitude or motivation, but you should go to some sort of trade school: electrical, carpentry, plumber, etc.

Why are you assuming they would fair any better in trade school?

The money has to come from somewhere. Tuition doesn't cover the cost of operating those European public universities. Most of the cost is borne by taxpayers. More students would thus mean higher taxes.

To an extent this also applies in the USA. Public universities in most states have relatively low tuition (although still higher than their European equivalents) for in-state students. But they are unable to meet market demand, so many students take out loans to pay tuition at lower-tier private universities.

> What's the "ROI" of a well rounded populus that gets along and doesn't want to kill each other?

Calculable.

> What's the "ROI" of creating beautiful works of art, or producing great culture?

The academy doesn’t do this anymore and hasn’t for more than half a century.

> What's the "ROI" of happiness?

Is there any evidence to suggest college graduates are happier which account for differences in childhood socioeconomic status, lifetime earning potential, and similar confounding factors?

> Sometimes the purpose of central government is to make a negative ROI into a positive one, because there are greater purpose than the return

While I agree with you in principle, this rationale can be used as a cover for bad policy. You take a measure that is widely accepted as an indication of worth, and then insist that the system’s failure to produce that indication of worth may actually just indicate that it’s providing an intangible goodness that cannot be measured nor accounted for (beauty, happiness, etc.).

It's an odd attitude to me that I see on this site, and is VERY prevalent among STEM majors, CS especially. The attitude seems to be that the only learning you should do relates to income and/or career advancement. Look at the story on here yesterday about monetizing, or at least publicizing your hobbies.

I do not regret any of the classes I took. I learned something from all of them. And it's not putting a rosy shine on something I was forced to do. I genuinely appreciate being well-rounded and knowing many things. It made me a better person.

If people just want to learn core skills, get a technical degree like a certificate or associates. That's why those things exist. You can do a 6 month certificate in coding at my local community college if your goal is just to go work and not learn things other than that.

>Why are you assuming they would fair any better in trade school?

Maybe they do, maybe they don't, but if they find themselves in service work, they should do anything they can to not be in that position. Some people just don't have any other options due to aptitude or attitude, so that's where they stay. That's not a great place to be in the US for the limited existence we have on Earth.

Something I learned in high school sports, particularly wrestling, is you have to always work to improve your position. That lesson holds very true in life.

>I think there's diminishing returns.

This is definitely true. I think pre-graduate college is pretty eye opening, at least when I went. In most high schools, they just cover the top layer of knowledge; in college they go quite a bit deeper. "They never taught us that in high school," is a saying that applies.

> We look at that positively becomes it's a sunk cost,

I don't care what you "look at it like." I car what the actual statistics demonstrate. Facts don't care about your feelings.

> 15 years later do you think these classes matter?

Yes. A broad, liberal arts education made me a better, more informed citizen. One might even say I know more than the current President (certainly his supporters) about tariffs, what affects the price of eggs, etc.

> Is there any evidence to suggest college graduates are happier which account for differences in childhood socioeconomic status, lifetime earning potential, and similar confounding factors?

I'm not going to read this entire study just to respond to a single comment, but according to ChatGPT, the answer to your question is yes.

https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.25.1.159

https://chatgpt.com/share/67e5793f-e284-800f-8bb4-ebd340e4c9...

"Yes, the evidence strongly suggests that schooling has nonpecuniary benefits like increased happiness, beyond what can be explained by income or family background. But the authors remain cautious and emphasize the need for further causal research."

I don’t necessarily disagree with you but kind of a poor example considering copywrite work seems to be having a severe identity crisis because of AI at the moment. At least the English major still has their education to fall back on while the copywrite might have their entire skillset made obsolete with no other credentials to utilize.

You answer your own question here.

You don’t have to tie the benefits to money, but you do need to understand that there is a cost, some of which is money, and the benefits should be worth it if you’re going to be doing it. Who pays the money is a secondary concern to that.

If you used all that knowledge to disdain others instead of learning from them, then you have learnt nothing.

“Yes but I’m right and they’re wrong” — When you’re 49% of the population, it doesn’t matter.

> "They never taught us that in high school," is a saying that applies.

Equally likely, the kid just didn't pay attention.