[quote=EconProf]LivininCali you are sooo spot on.
HS grads are rapidly waking up to the misrepresentations of the entrenched interests, AKA the education industrial complex, lenders, guidance counselors, tenured professors, etc. They know that many of the titans of high tech did not have time for college. They know of too many college grads working as barristas and waiters living in their parents’ basements and contemplating their $100,000 debt. And when they throw in lost income from four years (or five, or six) when they could have been learning a trade or building a business, they are rapidly changing their minds.
The employers too are learning that the college degree is devalued and proves little in terms of their productivity. Too many high school grads go reflexivly to college that do not have the aptitude, interest, or finances for it. They go for the social life, or their parents’prestige.
On-line education promises to cheaply and effficiently teach specific courses and skills, and then award certificates after testing and proof of mastery of that particular subject. Job seekers in the future will have to prove certain competencies in line with the employer’s needs in order to be hired. No more using a mere college degree as a “signaling system” to hire a dozen college grads and hope that a few turn into long-term employees.
Many of today’s colleges and universities will be gone in ten years, and the survivors will be vastly restructured. Learning will be vastly cheaper and more accessible to the poor (esp. in the third world), and the anachronism of tenure will be on the way out. It’s all good.[/quote]
I wish I could say that I see long-term systemic changes in the college/University cost structure in the next decade but I just don’t see that being the case. While some institutions might not be here in ten years, I don’t think the costs/fees are going to go down in the next decade.
Unfortunately probably the contrary. This kind of thing is hard to turn around as we’ve mentioned.
Personally, I don’t think you actually learn a whole lot in college. I think you learn much more with real life work experience and on the “street”. However, a University degree from a credible/respected University will probably always be a necessity to get a good and decent job (or at least higher paying).
College to me is a necessary “stepping stone” and part of something you have to go through to get a good entry level position of any decent pay while you’re young.
I do think more and more people are taking a good look at what they decide to major in. When I went to school, parents didn’t really have too much input on what their kid’s major was. Now, many of my friends and client’s tell their kids if they want to have their college paid they need to have a dual major with at least a degree that isn’t fairly worthless.
I wish I was as optimistic as some of you with how the online education will change the cost structure of a college degree but I don’t see this happening anytime soon.
My prediction is a University degree from a respected university will be much more expensive 10 years from now as it is today.
