[zdragnar]

I don't know about the UK, but in the US this is only half true. Degree-requiring jobs still have better social status over trades and low/no skill work, at least from a "what do you want to be when you grow up" point of view.

However, many more people than previously are skeptical of the math behind the cost of a college degree. Going into significant debt only to find a field flooded with others, competing with overly ambitious expectations for AI, and it's much harder to see the value in becoming a desk jockey at big corp versus becoming a plumber or field tech, or welder.

I'm sure someone will point out the math still works in favor of getting a degree, but I'm not really the one that needs convincing.

The local state flagship public university has $18k listed for annual tuition for residents of the state, and double that if you're from out of state. Add in their estimates for books, housing, food, and a surcharge for computer science majors, and you're looking at $40k for the 2025-26 school year... $160k worth of debt for a 4 year degree, at a public school, with nothing but a piece of paper and a bad economy to greet you on the other end.

Conversely, trade schools in the same city offer $8k tuition for a full 20 accreditation course load, no book costs, and no mandatory dormitory stays. You'll spend the rest of the time probably in a lower paid apprenticeship, especially if you do go for being an electrician or something similar, so it isn't all roses.

[bad_haircut72]

Theres simply no reason why college is as expensive as it is. The cynic in me says price increases are about setting up class boundaries and pushing people back into the necessary but less desirable factory/trade jobs of previous generations

[jack_tripper]

>The cynic in me says price increases are about setting up class boundaries and pushing people back into the necessary but less desirable factory/trade jobs of previous generations

This makes absolutely no sense when you spend two seconds to think about the supply and demand.

Case in point, college is free in Europe and that has led to the exact problem you fear: oversupply of college grads and devaluation of degrees "pushing people back into the necessary but less desirable factory/trade jobs of previous generations".

In my European college town it's easier to find a ML developer than a skilled HVAC tech or EV mechanic.

[mono442]

I can't speak for the whole Europie but in my experience those kind of jobs just don't really pay well. They kind of make sense when living in a cheaper area but I personally wouldn't imagine actually making ends meet from this kind of job in a capital city in my country.

[nradov]

European countries have used free college education as a technique to artificially hold down the youth unemployment rate. Full time students don't count as unemployed. The problem is eventually they graduate and then many still can't find a job, or they end up underemployed in a job that doesn't really require a college degree. At least they don't have huge student debts but this system is tremendously inefficient for the rest of society which has to pay the taxes.

[jack_tripper]

>At least they don't have huge student debts but this system is tremendously inefficient for the rest of society which has to pay the taxes.

Depending on which country, but yes it definitely can be very inefficient in the nations with super generous welfare states. I know people still being students well into their late 20s or even early 30s because why not, when government pays for your education and as a student you get a lot of discounts like free public transport, cheaper phone plans, free bank plans, laptop and travel discounts, etc, so then why bother with a bad jobs market with low wages and no more discounts when you can postpone the harsh reality of adulthood?

Hot take here, but honestly IMHO, the government's constant putting their thumbs on the economic free market scale via the overly generous welfare state has been doing more harm than good to society and will lead to a rude awakening for people when the system is not solvent anymore and will have to pull the rug from under them and you have a generation of people who grew up without the skills to survive without the state holding their hand every step of the way. I expect massive political turmoil, extremism and maybe wars.

[kakacik]

Not true for ie doctors... and generally your example is an outlier not valid for most Europe.

[jack_tripper]

Because med school still has, and for good reason, very hard barriers to entry and to exit, no matter if it's free.

[variadix]

Government backed loans inflate demand. If banks had to consider the risk of repayment prices would come back to reality.

[nradov]

Colleges should be on the hook for a least a portion of defaulted student loans. That would give them a direct incentive to hold down tuition.

[theoreticalmal]

Is defaulting on student loans possible? I thought, at least in USA, the only way to get out of student loans is: pay it off, work for a qualified nonprofit for awhile, or die

[tekla]

Government student loans made college prices effectively a made up number. If you can just make up a number and anyone can afford it because they're backed by the government, why wouldn't you just make the number go up?

Of course you can also juice up the numbers by lowering standards so that people who don't understand numbers or basic math above a 6th grade level take on these loans without actually understanding what they are doing.

[boplicity]

Not every college has crazy tuition. The school I attended in 2000 to 2004 has kept pace with inflation generally. Annual tuition is now around $10k, which is a lot, but not unmanageable for many middle class families. I'm curious how this compares across universities throughout the U.S. Maybe the tuition story has bifurcated somewhat?

[johnnyanmac]

Tuition for my college in 2012-2016 was around 6k per year. A quick Google shows me this increased to 11k.

And it's worse than it looks, because this doesn't include cost of materials, the dreaded "other fees", and of course, room and board. Room and board increased 50%.

And this used to be considered a "best value" college. I'm sure it's only worse fr private schools in the state.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

> Theres simply no reason why college is as expensive as it is.

There is a perfect reason, though I might sympathize if you say there is no excuse. If one wanted to engineer some incredible Rube Goldberg machine to cause prices to spiral out of control beyond all lunacy, one could hardly do better than what we have in the United States right now.

Young people were told that without college/university they were doomed to a life of destitution and misery. They were hounded by teachers, guidance counselors, pundits, politicians, advice columnists, celebrities, journalists, you name it. The propaganda machine was relentless, gigantic, and hilariously un-self-aware. Then grants were minimized and replaced with student loans (unforgivable in bankruptcy, thanks Biden!).

This sets the stage. College administrators knew that everyone could now attend, and that they were guaranteed loans to pay for it, that they were young and foolish and didn't see debt as a millstone around their necks during mandatory swim time, and that they were fickle, fashion-seeking, and indifferent to lack of academic rigor. These universities needed to expand capacity to capture all those loan dollars, they were competing with other universities, and they knew their market. They built resort spa dorms... no longer were these places the dormitories of old, where you packed 6 freshman into a broom closet and made them sleep on floors. They build gorgeous grounds that looks like royal gardens. Expensive new labs and facilities and lecture halls. Why not? The kids would be paying for it (all their lives, thanks to the omnipotently powerful force of compount interest).

The kids, on the other hand, barely more than children, didn't choose the best value schools. They chose the prettiest... it's not as if they couldn't afford them. For most people, the fanciest product seems like the highest quality, and who would choose low quality? Nor could universities be the sanity limit here even if they wanted to. If they refused to build out their own little Versailles, they'd just see enrollment drop. And their costs were going up quite a bit too, when you double the size of the institution, you need more than double the staff. When the buildings are fancier than yesteryear, full of computer labs and high tech, you need more than just janitors. Entire bureaucracies were spun up just to deal with it all.

But a curious thing happened, with every university and college competing for those dollars, none really got ahead near as much as they wanted to or expected to. So they just doubled down, and tried to make their schools more attractive to prospective students. The state school in my city still strives to reach an enrollment of 50,000 last I heard (this would put it more than double its late 1980s enrollment, I think).

In summary, we have a gigantic slush fund of money that means no one has to be price-conscious, perverse incentives prodding those who administrate to jack their own expenses/costs to astronomical levels, and a society that still insists and even demands that everyone be college-bound despite the ambiguous evidence that it is good-value. Until one (or ideally all) of those things changes, there's no way for college to be any less expensive than it is.

[schmidtleonard]

Right, and it's worse when you remember that the people who voted for this knew exactly what they were doing because it's how they made their money in the real estate market: obtain property rights over inelastic supply, pump cheap debt into the counterparties, price spiral, laugh all the way to the bank.

We really are a society of ponzi schemes.

[nradov]

There's no class warfare grand conspiracy going on. Like any businesses, colleges charge more because they can. Customers have been willing to pay, and the availability of government subsidized student loans made those customers relatively price insensitive. That model is finally starting to break.

To be fair to colleges, their costs have also increased somewhat. Baumol’s Cost Disease means that it's impossible to achieve significant productivity gains in education and so labor costs continuously increase. But that only accounts for a fraction of the total increase in college tuitions and fees.

https://www.chicagobooth.edu/review/diagnosing-william-baumo...

[schmidtleonard]

"It's not a war because side X won" is truly one of the arguments of all time.

[nradov]

You're really missing the point. The college administrators who make those decisions are well paid but generally not wealthy or true members of the upper class.

[johnnyanmac]

If you look at admin's average pay, many would be inclined to disagree. Saying "but they aren't billionaires" isn't very comforting.

[boplicity]

The state school I went to 20+ years ago, by contrast, has around $10k in annual tuition, which isn't bad compared to a trade school. No mandatory housing/food costs either. I got a great education there and am still friends with some of my profs. I also got one of the least practical (for most people) degrees (creative writing), and turned it into a comfortable job for myself, though I recognize that's the exception and not the rule.

I never thought of university as a way to get a job. It certainly did help me in many, many ways though, and can't imagine having my current career without it.