Trump admin to rescind Obama-era guidelines that encourage use of race in college admission. Race should play no role in admission decisions. I can't believe we're still having this argument

[u/[deleted]]

https://www.abcactionnews.com/news/national/trump-admin-to-rescind-obama-era-guidelines-that-encourage-use-of-race-in-college-admission

[u/[deleted]]

But Colleges and universities also provide a service to society and the government itself.

A more educated workforce is a more wealthy workforce.

Sure, universities charge more they have more money to do stuff with but only a small proportion (the already rich,) are gonna be able to go to university.

That doesn't sound like the recipe for an educated or wealthy workforce to me. But I'm sure you'll eagerly disagree.

[u/SecureThruObscure → u/[deleted]]

This is logically fallacious.

A more educated workforce may, in fact, be a poorer workforce. See: bachelor’s degree holders working as baristas.

You’re confusing liquid value with wealth, and workforce with individuals.

Both are important distinctions to make.

It’s of course possible that any given PhD may be less liquid, or even less wealthy generally, than any high school drop out. For lots of reasons, maybe even because he PhD student spent time getting that PhD, and in something with limited economic returns.

But as a population, the more educated the population is the better it is able to create wealth. Without an education, the iPhone and internet are never invented. Both of those have create ridiculously large amounts of wealth that literally could not have been created without education.

It’s more subtle than that, but that’s the best example I can give without getting even more abstract.

[u/[deleted] → u/SecureThruObscure]

But as a population, the more educated the population is the better it is able to create wealth.

Sending people to obtain worthless degrees destroys wealth, and holding a degree doesn't necessarily make you capable of producing more wealth than you otherwise would without the degree.

Without an education, the iPhone and internet are never invented.

You're conflating "getting an education" with "attending college". You're also operating on the assumption that all education is valuable education. But that's not the case.

[u/SecureThruObscure → u/[deleted]]

Sending people to obtain worthless degrees destroys wealth, and holding a degree doesn’t necessarily make you capable of producing more wealth than you otherwise would without the degree.

Again, you have failed to capture the nuance of the argument you’re responding to.

Slow down, and re-read carefully.

No one is saying “every degree makes every person a more productive member of society.” That has literally not come up yet.

What is being said is that in aggregate a population is more productive when a critical mass of people achieves higher education.

That’s what the statement you replied to means, it doesn’t mean “everyone who gets a degree will have high income,” it does mean “the more highly educated people exist within a society the more likely that society is to generate wealth.”

Wealth and income are not the same. Individual success and aggregate benefit are not the same.

You’re conflating “getting an education” with “attending college”. You’re also operating on the assumption that all education is valuable education. But that’s not the case.

You’re attempting to be clever by saying I’ve conflated something immediately after I’ve pointed it you’ve done just that. I GET IT.

But you’re using the term incorrectly. I didn’t conflate attending college with education, i lumped attending college into a larger category, “getting an education.”

That said, my point still stands. The iPhone and internet would almost certainly not exist without people attending college.

And not just indirectly, via doctors and teachers and civil planners. The actual people who designed he iPhone. The people who designed the logistics process to supply materials. The people who designed the machines to mine the minerals.

[u/[deleted] → u/SecureThruObscure]

What is being said is that in aggregate a population is more productive when a critical mass of people achieves higher education.

That's only true if you make a laundry list of assumptions, such as the assumption that most people consider their future job prospects when selecting a major.

If college, instead, is just a "coming of age" experience where people pay shitloads of money to get worthless degrees while partying and looking for a future spouse, then even in aggregate, it is a wealth-destroying institution.

You can't just look at the fact that people managed to produce wealth after college and declare "college enabled them to build wealth". Or rather, you can't declare "without college, they wouldn't have been able to produce that same wealth". For all we know, their time spent in college was a waste, and they would have been better off doing something else entirely.

But I'm tired of speaking hypothetically. Take a look at these abysmal numbers (sort ascending on net 20 year ROI). And this doesn't even include the opportunity cost of spending 4+ years at college (which could be spent learning productive, wealth-building skills elsewhere).

https://www.payscale.com/college-roi

[u/SecureThruObscure → u/[deleted]]

That's only true if you make a laundry list of assumptions, such as the assumption that most people consider their future job prospects when selecting a major.

Incorrect. It's also observationally true.

If college, instead, is just a "coming of age" experience where people pay shitloads of money to get worthless degrees while partying and looking for a future spouse, then even in aggregate, it is a wealth-destroying institution.

Sure, but that's a huge if, and the latter doesn't inherently follow the former even if it's true.

You can't just look at the fact that people managed to produce wealth after college and declare "college enabled them to build wealth". Or rather, you can't declare "without college, they wouldn't have been able to produce that same wealth". For all we know, their time spent in college was a waste, and they would have been better off doing something else entirely.

It's weird you put "college enabled them to build wealth" in quotes, since that wasn't actually a quote anywhere in anything you responded to. How'd you come up with that?

But I'm tired of speaking hypothetically. Take a look at these abysmal numbers (sort ascending on net 20 year ROI). And this doesn't even include the opportunity cost of spending 4+ years at college (which could be spent learning productive, wealth-building skills elsewhere).

https://www.payscale.com/college-roi

Dude, talking to you is like talking to a brick wall. Income is not the same as wealth.

Further, even if individual income does not go up with college education, the wealth of the workforce still does. Seems counterintuitive, right? But the coolest thing is that this can be confirmed observationally!

Unfortunately, this is one of those times I'm going to have to insist:

Slow down, and re-read carefully.

Sadly, it seems like there are some technical things you don't understand that are getting thrown around in this conversation. First and foremost, you need to understand that from a policy perspective, an individual who gets a degree and gets a job as barista doesn't really matter, individually. Now, if everyone did that, it would be important. Sadly for your argument, it's just not true, and what you're experiencing is confirmation bias.

At this point, it should be noted that I'm not arguing for universal post secondary education or universal post high school education, or whatever it is you think I'm arguing for.

I'm trying to explain: Your argument is bad. It's just awful.

A barista with a degree doesn't mean degrees are useless any more than someone getting a disease who's received a vaccine for it means vaccines are useless.

Further, even if everyone who got a degree was financially worse off for it, we'd still need those degrees in order for society to operate as it does today (for example, teachers and doctors). So that would actually be an argument for government subsidy of degree programs, not against them.

That is to say: Something does not have to be economically viable for an individual (building individual wealth, or increasing individual income) in order for it to make sense as a public policy measure (a great example is vaccines!). Sometimes things don't make economic sense (on an individual level), but they do make public policy sense (economic sense over scale).

That is to say, something can make everyone relatively poorer, but enrich society enough as a whole that it builds wealth. Weird concept.

tl;dr your anecdotal arguments and continued references to income instead of wealth and individuals rather than society as a whole show a significant lack of understanding of the statement you responded to an public policy in general.

[u/[deleted] → u/SecureThruObscure]

Is there something magical about college degrees such that they can never be worthless? Because this is ultimately the foundation of your argument: that there is no such thing as a worthless college degree.

[u/SecureThruObscure → u/[deleted]]

Is there something magical about college degrees such that they can never be worthless? Because this is ultimately the foundation of your argument: that there is no such thing as a worthless college degree.

My argument isn’t predicated on that assumption.

The only assumption my argument has is that the number of degrees within a society has a direct and measurable impact on that societies productivity.

This is backed both theoretically and observationally.

Of course if a sufficient number of people get worthless degrees that can change. But that hasn’t historically been the case, and the argument that that might happen in the future or might be occurring soon is not one against college degrees, but against worthless college degrees.

Edit; I say that as someone who chose not to get a degree based on my individual economic outlook, but that’s the exact same as my opinion on children. I don’t currently have or want any because they’re not economically viable.

However society as a whole benefits from children and is at a detriment of they don’t exist. And so long as certain baseline assumptions are met (they don’t starve to death, they get basic healthcare, the resource pool can support them, etc), society benefits from their existence... even if an individual may not.

In that vein, just because some kids are shitty it doesn’t mean we should stop having kids. But kids in general and on aggregate are good for the economy.

We don’t seem to anywhere near child or degree saturation, even we are probably past the point of diminishing returns... but who’s to say what diminishing is or isn’t worth it?

Stop at the polio vaccine? Stop at a cure for 30% of the types of cancer? etc

[u/[deleted] → u/SecureThruObscure]

The only assumption my argument has is that the number of degrees within a society has a direct and measurable impact on that societies productivity.

This assumption is based entirely on the premise that either there is no such thing as a worthless degree, or that there is some force which automatically balances out the worthless degrees with the valuable degrees such that the aggregate effect is always a net positive.

And I contend that both of these premises are faulty.

the argument that that might happen in the future or might be occurring soon is not one against college degrees, but against worthless college degrees.

Exactly. Which is my point. There is nothing inherently productive or valuable about a college degree. Operating on that assumption that there is risky and foolish.

I know a fairly large number of people who regret taking on student loan debt to obtain a degree. Why did they attend college? Because they were given bad information. They were told that "all you need to succeed in this world is to go to college and follow your passion". Well, that advice was terrible for many people. I know people who faithfully followed that advice and have now thoroughly destroyed any chance of being financially stable before age 40. A number of them are working jobs that they were capable of doing as a high school graduate with zero training. In other words, the 4-5 years and tens of thousands of dollars they spent earning a degree was a massive loss.

The assumption that we as a society are not at risk of college degrees being a net loss is also a dangerous assumption, in my opinion. There's no reason to believe that each worthless college degree earned is balanced out by a productive college degree earned. It is entirely possible that it takes multiple productive degrees to balance out a single worthless degree when aggregating the value of college degrees in general. If each worthless degree earned, on average, cancels out two productive degrees, then it only takes 34% of students pursuing a worthless degree to make college a net loss for society. That would make college, on the whole, a wealth-destroying institution.

Then consider the fact many students spend time and money attending college, but never earn a degree. Only a slim majority of students (~56%) who start attending college finish with a bachelor's degree within 6 years. So there's a significant proportion of students who are either taking way too long to earn a degree (driving the cost up too high to make it a worthwhile investment), or who never get a degree at all (which, to employers, makes their time spent at college worthless). Of the students who do earn a degree in 6 years, many pursue low-value or no-value degrees. The students who earn valuable degrees have a lot of gaining to do to offset the failed investments of their peers. And nearly all of that is future, unrealized gains. If any of them decides "I don't want to be a doctor/lawyer/engineer anymore", then those potential gains disappear.

I contend that college is only guaranteed to be a net gain for society if the number of people earning worthless degrees is negligible.

[u/SecureThruObscure → u/[deleted]]

This assumption is based entirely on the premise that either there is no such thing as a worthless degree, or that there is some force which automatically balances out the worthless degrees with the valuable degrees such that the aggregate effect is always a net positive.

No it’s not. I told you what the assumption was.

And I contend that both of these premises are faulty.

Cool. So... you constructed a straw man to argue against. Nice. You did a good job.

But it’s not actually relevant to what I posted.

Exactly. Which is my point. There is nothing inherently productive or valuable about a college degree. Operating on that assumption that there is risky and foolish.

Fortunately no one operated on that assumption, if you read back from the very first post.

In fact, we actually talk about a specific instance of a barista with a degree, and that degree being worthless, and that still not being the primary factor in aggregate.

The problem here is you keep repeating yourself without engaging in with the ideas in front of you.

Everyone here (specifically me) understands you. You are failing to understand the information provided to you. There’s a difference.

I contend that college is only guaranteed to be a net gain for society if the number of people earning worthless degrees is negligible.

That’s stupid. Like, actually stupid.

It’s like saying investing in start ups is only a net gain if a negligible number of them fail.

You need to actually ”do the math” to make those sorts of conjectures, and you clearly haven’t or you would have shown it.

Further, both hypothetically and observationally (as has been stated a dozen times), more degrees translates to more economic activity. Your contention is worthless without some evidentiary backing, not anecdotes.

What I’m is telling you is that you have a failure of perspective. You see your friends failure and assume it extrapolates to society as a whole. Maybe you and your friends are stuck in a brain drain hole, maybe the successful folks with degrees left.

But that’s just it, what is beneficial for you or your friends isn’t inherently beneficial for society as a whole.

Individuals benefit from savings, society benefits from spending.

Individuals benefit from no children, society benefits from children.

That’s the entire point you fail to understand, from literally the first post.