"The bottom line: For the large majority of college students, rising tuitions have nothing to do with the availability of student loans or Pell Grants. What’s happening, instead, is that the burden of paying for college that was previously provided directly by government has now been shifted onto the backs of students, in the form of crippling debt."
So you're telling me... in your country, making more debt financing available and then seeing people go into more debt doesn't trigger any thoughts of causality?
So you're telling me... after seeing an explosion in housing prices after more debt financing was made available, it's not conceivable that the same dynamic is at play in education?
I have never seen evidence of this. There is evidence to the contrary, that the real cost of college is rising, and that students and government have both been increasing spending.[1][2]
The purpose of the college degree is to provide insurance against economic change. Learn a trade, and you're good as long as that trade is valued (and not outsourced). College is supposed to provide general-purpose skills that guarantee residence in, at least, the middle class.
That's no longer true, because college degrees have been overproduced and there's a shortage of people who (a) can actually do things and (b) want to do them.
The real problem, though, is that society doesn't train people up in the trades (and help them relocate) when their jobs go away. They're just discarded, and the fear of that happening is what keeps middle-class people going into college-- which is designed to insure against the ups-and-downs of specific trades (e.g. plumbing). Widespread college is a partial solution that is now clearly failing.
Why is there an onus on "society" to train people? Shouldn't the onus be on the individual or perhaps businesses that need folks with unique skills? (Think Ross Perot's famous training boot camps for EDS where they hired teachers or English majors and taught them systems engineering)
It's the same concept in programming. No one learned COBOL and stopped (at least most didnt). You are constantly learning new skills to stay relevant. The business world is indeed moving faster and it used to be true that you could learn a single skill and have a career (e.g. assembly line workers). Clearly that is no longer the case and if you havent realized this you've been asleep at the wheel of life.
You are right, college is not solely about learning discrete skills as it is about learning efficient ways to gain new skills. I am sure most people on hacker news would agree with my experience that the first 6 months of working in the "real world" post graduation I learned more discrete skills than my 4 years in undergrad. However undergrad gave me a solid base from which to build those skills on.
I'd argue that a certification from a technical school (auto tech, HVAC guys, plumbers, electricians, etc) is worth more than a lib arts degree from a state uni at this point.
I sometimes think the "T" in STEM should stand for "Technology/Trade skills".
http://www.salon.com/2012/05/11/tuition_is_too_damn_high/