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by learc83 5227 days ago
>state funding

Indirect state (and federal) funding, in the form of scholarships, grants, and loans, is one of the reasons tuition is so high in the first place.

If student loans weren't so plentiful colleges wouldn't cost 10-50k a year, because no one would pay.
2 comments
firefoxman1 5227 days ago
That is a very good point. Yeah, I completely agree with you that the easy access to such high sums of loan money for students has led to the high inflation of college prices, but we don't need anything to raise those rates even higher.
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Joakal 5227 days ago
Some more parts of the equation; deregulation, unemployment pressures, some job degrees aren't helpful, heavy cultural emphasis on degrees to be successful, culture of short-term thinking and lack of financial education.
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firefoxman1 5227 days ago
"heavy cultural emphasis on degrees to be successful, culture of short-term thinking and lack of financial education."

Wow, I'm glad there are others that realize this. I guess hacker news would be the place to find independent thinkers like yourself. One other I would add is:

Lack of school counselors, teachers, parents, etc. that believe entrepreneurship is a viable career option.

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learc83 5227 days ago
>Lack of school counselors, teachers, parents, etc. that believe entrepreneurship is a viable career option.

Excellent point. Since kindergarten, when I tried to sell some crafts I made during play time to the other kids, I've been pulled towards entrepreneurship, but going through school you are eventually led to believe that running your own business isn't an option.

It's not that anyone ever sat me down and told me that I couldn't be an entrepreneur, but it's never discussed as a possibility.

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johnnybgoode 5227 days ago
It looks like this whole story was manually pushed off the HN front page for some reason (or it was flagged and the sorting algorithm takes this into account?), but I just wanted to say while I'm here that I was really glad to read this particular subthread.
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learc83 5227 days ago
True.

>heavy cultural emphasis on degrees to be successful

I think the cultural emphasis on degrees was in large part pushed from the top down. I.e., once more people started going to college (because of loans/scholarships), college became a necessity for jobs where it previously wasn't.

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