A conversation in the other thread indicates lots of people have interest and differing opinions of how the US should fund education and to what extent. Here’s some statistics I did a quick google to find:
- The number of postsecondary Title IV institutions in 2020–21 was 5,916, compared with 7,021 in 2010–11. Fast Facts: Educational institutions (1122)
- About 25 million students are enrolled in postsecondary institutions.
- Americans owe $1.74 trillion in federal and private student loan debt as of the second quarter of 2024. https://www.lendingtree.com/student/student-loan-debt-statistics/
- Students and parents borrowed an estimated $98.2 billion in the 2022-23 academic year.
- 51% of the class of 2022 bachelor’s degree recipients who graduated from four-year public and private nonprofit colleges had student loan debt. They left school with an average of $29,400 in federal and private student loan debt. Those who graduated from private nonprofits had $22,200 in debt, while those from public colleges had $20,700 in debt. Private school graduates were slightly more likely to leave school with debt than public school graduates — 52% versus 49%
- 46.2 million borrowers have federal student debt as of the second quarter of fiscal year 2023.
- Wiki says there are about 43 million people 15-24 years old in the US.
- Of the 3.1 million people ages 16 to 24 who graduated from high school between January and October 2023, 1.9 million, or 61.4 percent, were enrolled in colleges or universities in October of that year. https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2024/61-4-percent-of-recent-high-school-graduates-enrolled-in-college-in-october-2023.htm
What are the benefits of post HS education for the student
- increased skills for future employment
- more well rounded, more experiences, etc.
- loss of income while in college
- cost of education often including debt
- risk the education does not pay off with better future income
Other players in the system
- colleges and post HS educators
- educational lenders
- employers
- society as a whole?
If the system is broken how can it be fixed it? What are its biggest problems?
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What is meant by “education” here? I ask because . . .
Don’t forget about trade schools
I think one of the things that is “broken” in today’s society is this HUGE emphasis on “going to college” and the messaging done around that and very little around the value of entering a trade.
Biggest benefit of going into the trades is that you’re actually paid to learn and once you’re licensed, you have zero debt and will generally have a starting salary on par with a lot of college grads.
It looks like of the 5,916 post secondary institutions 1,985 are non-degree granting. I assume those are trade schools.
I know when I owned a CPR training center one of my clients was a medical trade school with certificates in medical related claims, billing, etc and patent care like home health care. I trained all their students in CPR until they could get their own training center up and running. My concern with this type of trade school was unless they were partnered with an employer the students spend $10,000 to $15,000 on a certificate that may be useless.
I am a big proponent of the trades and trade schools but I think employers need to be tied in at the beginning. A trade school cranking out 1000 electricians when the market is saturated at 200 is just a smaller version of the college degree mills. So how do we get employers to invest in some dumb 18 year old HS grad?
It’s true but I think people assume that salaries are static. If people start attending trade school instead of college, the salaries for the trades will plumbet.
Weld, weld weld, what have here, a punber? (The “b” is silent.)
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Why should an employer do it when they’re not guaranteed the grad will work for them after being trained? If there is a social good to have more electricians (because it will take people off the streets, or stop them from wasting money on a useless college degree, the government should pay for it, or at least lend the student the money for it, or maybe some combination of those.
There should be partnership with employers so trainees are reasonably sure of at least one job offer if they do well in the program.
I heard Germany’s economy hasn’t been doing so well, and they are the poster child for educational tracking. They were doing really well in the decade prior to the pandemic though.
With that logic maybe we should stop teaching people how to read because then the wage premium for literacy will drop and be a net negative for everyone.
Perhaps the rate for current services will go down, but that allows resources to be freed up and devoted towards more advanced/productive products and services. More of the plumbers will be able to address the more expensive plumbing needs that aren’t being addressed because there aren’t enough plumbers to address them at the moment.
Their comparative advantage when it came to manufacturing was tied to cheap energy (via Russian gas).
They then decided to decommission their nuclear power plants because of the demands of their green party.
Ukraine war has upended their entire manufacturing model.
And this has now affected their educational model, which used to be very good (via apprenticeships).