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[oagboghi2]

but there is scant campus support for spending resources to boost male attendance and retention.

We give these people unlimited taxpayer money.

but they can't spare a dime?

 

[oagboghi2]

If there are more jobs that need to be filled requiring (useless) degrees than there are people with degrees, then you will see more and more jobs dropping that requirement so they can have someone fill the position. Obviously it won't be some sudden overnight change.

Based on what? And how does having a degree mean you can think on your feet and overcome diversity?
Getting a BA isn't particularly difficult. You pay the tuition (with most people borrowing money to pay, or having someone else pay for them), and then show up to class, and as long as you don't do a terrible job on the assignments, you will get the degree. What part of this process means you can think on your feet? What part of this process has you overcoming adversity?
If someone has already held a job down for multiple years, then that gives you a better idea of what kind of work ethic they have, versus whether they just have a degree or not.

many companies will select to interview the degree holder first. 85% of my interview requests/ job recruiter talks have at some point enquired on some level my post secondary education.
You got to do something. Maybe it not a BA, but it has to be something.

and let's be serious. Most people graduate college in their mid 20's. Lets assume they have the average amount of college debt, which is like 30-40k. Over your lifetime you can't pay that off?

 

[gatti-man]

If there are more jobs that need to be filled requiring (useless) degrees than there are people with degrees, then you will see more and more jobs dropping that requirement so they can have someone fill the position. Obviously it won't be some sudden overnight change.

Based on what? And how does having a degree mean you can think on your feet and overcome diversity?
Getting a BA isn't particularly difficult. You pay the tuition (with most people borrowing money to pay, or having someone else pay for them), and then show up to class, and as long as you don't do a terrible job on the assignments, you will get the degree. What part of this process means you can think on your feet? What part of this process has you overcoming adversity?
If someone has already held a job down for multiple years, then that gives you a better idea of what kind of work ethic they have, versus whether they just have a degree or not.

That’s a nice fantasy. This hopeful idea that men and people in general will become so uneducated that jobs are forced to lower requirements. OR will the market just tighten and become a hard barrier for those without. More women are going to college and less men. Also companies will just hire outside the country.

Oh man what college did you go to lol. “Just do your assignments and you will get a degree” LOL. That’s what high school is not college. College is you get a midterm and a final pass or fail bitch. It separates the committed from the non committed. The reliable from the people who can’t be bothered to take their work home. A BA from a quality school means something absolutely. Go to UT and get through the first two years and tell me you weren’t overcoming adversity and stressed out. The hardest years of my life were the college years. Granted I worked and didn’t take out much loans but still.

 

[thefool]

Curious to know what courses where this is happening.

 

[DeepBreath87]

That’s a nice fantasy. This hopeful idea that men and people in general will become so uneducated that jobs are forced to lower requirements. OR will the market just tighten and become a hard barrier for those without. More women are going to college and less men. Also companies will just hire outside the country.

Oh man what college did you go to lol. “Just do your assignments and you will get a degree” LOL. That’s what high school is not college. College is you get a midterm and a final pass or fail bitch. It separates the committed from the non committed. The reliable from the people who can’t be bothered to take their work home. A BA from a quality school means something absolutely. Go to UT and get through the first two years and tell me you weren’t overcoming adversity and stressed out. The hardest years of my life were the college years. Granted I worked and didn’t take out much loans but still.

A BA from a “quality” school often means you have something to wipe your ass with.

 

[strange headache]

That’s a nice fantasy. This hopeful idea that men and people in general will become so uneducated that jobs are forced to lower requirements. OR will the market just tighten and become a hard barrier for those without. More women are going to college and less men. Also companies will just hire outside the country.

Oh man what college did you go to lol. “Just do your assignments and you will get a degree” LOL. That’s what high school is not college. College is you get a midterm and a final pass or fail bitch. It separates the committed from the non committed. The reliable from the people who can’t be bothered to take their work home. A BA from a quality school means something absolutely. Go to UT and get through the first two years and tell me you weren’t overcoming adversity and stressed out. The hardest years of my life were the college years. Granted I worked and didn’t take out much loans but still.

True, other countries are not sleeping on education. Like it or not, higher education is necessary.
Also the "sink or swim" attitude is what shapes your capacity to think on your feet and to organize yourself. College is supposed to be tough otherwise your degree means nothing.

Educational rigor has all but vanished as colleges are forced to babysit adult babies:


Do you truly expect these coddled snowflakes to survive in any competitive field, be it research, academia or the job market if they can't even deal with a Halloween costume?
No wonder higher education has become a joke in the eye of the general public. These institutions once meant something!

 

[EviLore]

Educational rigor has all but vanished

Not true. Academic rigor is fully intact at competitive universities and in STEM programs virtually everywhere. "Studies" majors are easier than most other options, but there have always been useless, lower effort majors at schools, e.g. Communications.

 

[dave_d]

They mention the "arts & sciences" faculty which sounds a bit "***-studies" related? It is perfectly possible to be successful in trades or tech without university/college. Obviously not so much the case for Engineering or Medicine. But there is probably less reason to go into massive debt for a "Studies" degree that barely qualifies someone to be a starbucks barista. I suspect there are more course offerings of that type than ever before? "Higher Education" is a business after all.

Edit:
This is coming from a low-salt perspective. I completed a "Hard" degree decades ago, and got out with barely any debt which I paid off in my first year of full-time work. Some of what I studied is even tangentially related to what I actually do now. But I would probably be even further ahead if I had just worked my ass off in my actual industry for that same period of time.

Well that depends. At least where I went the "Arts & Sciences" had the worthless garbage like "studies" programs but that's also where Chem, Physics, Math, Computer Science where. (Well ok, back in the day it was called the college of liberal arts. Yes, they had an engineering school too.)

 

[dave_d]

I should point out another reason to go to some colleges and universities is networking opportunities. If you have a chance to go to say Harvard sure there will be smart people but there will also be well connected people(related to major executives and or politicians) and knowing them can be very helpful. Hell a couple of them might even be smart too.

 

[BouncyFrag]

Weak men create bad times.

 

[strange headache]

Not true. Academic rigor is fully intact at competitive universities and in STEM programs virtually everywhere. "Studies" majors are easier than most other options, but there have always been useless, lower effort majors at schools, e.g. Communications.

That's why I've said "educational" rigor, not academic. That being said, even Ivy League universities have to increasingly rely on international recruitment:

In fact, if many of those departments in our leading institutions of higher learning had to rely on American students alone for enrollments, they would probably have to shut their doors. Experts have complained for decades that Americans don’t excel enough in the so-called STEM (i.e. science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) disciplines. But leading trends in our higher education suggest that the U.S. is fast approaching a STEM crisis like no other---one that systematically benefits foreign countries and companies, at the expense of our own.

America's STEM crisis is a growing concern as the US struggles to compete with other global powers:

Overall, the data shows that enrollment of international students in U.S. science and engineering university programs has been steadily rising since 2008, while the number of U.S. citizens and permanent residents enrolled in those programs has steadily declined. We are witnessing a gradual withering away of American college student engagement in the very same STEM disciplines that will determine who dominates, and who is dominated, in the twenty-first century.

Academic achievement is in free fall as the US is lagging behind most other developed countries:

How do U.S. students compare with their peers around the world? Recently released data from international math and science assessments indicate that U.S. students continue to rank around the middle of the pack, and behind many other advanced industrial nations.

Most students are also ill prepared to attend college as many lack the required educational foundations:

The national rates of remediation are a significant problem. According to college enrollment statistics, many students are underprepared for college-level work. In the United States, research shows that anywhere from 40 percent to 60 percent of first-year college students require remediation in English, math, or both. Remedial classes increase students’ time to degree attainment and decrease their likelihood of completion. While rates vary depending on the source, on-time completion rates of students who take remedial classes are consistently less than 10 percent.

Higher education is by most regarded as a waste of time as more and more people refuse to enroll:

This enrollment decline has taken place against the backdrop of well-intentioned and well-funded college attainment campaigns across many states and from many high-profile supporting organizations. Despite the big push to get more Americans into and completing college, the numbers have gone in the opposite direction. And they won’t improve any time soon. The latest data reported by Strada Education Network last week was an eye-opening reminder that declines will continue. The percentage of aspiring adult learners who believe education will be worth the cost dropped from 77% to 59% since 2019; those believing education will help them get a good job dropped from 89% to 64%. On top of continued declines in the perceived value of higher education, the population age demographic of traditional aged college students is going to drop by roughly 15% between 2025 and 2030 – just about when many colleges hope to recover from the lingering financial hits caused by Covid-19. Given all this, it’s quite possible that the enrollment decline will continue for at least another full decade.

The US used to be the leading office for patent filings until the early 2000s, since then China and Japan have taken the crown:

This is an older article from 2011, but it still holds true and The New Yorker usually puts out decent stuff:

Almost all the élite colleges saw a jump in applications this year, partly because they now recruit much more aggressively internationally, and acceptance rates were correspondingly lower. Columbia, Yale, and Stanford admitted less than eight per cent of their applicants. This degree of selectivity is radical. To put it in some perspective: the acceptance rate at Cambridge is twenty-one per cent, and at Oxford eighteen per cent.

But, as private colleges became more selective, public colleges became more accommodating. Proportionally, the growth in higher education since 1945 has been overwhelmingly in the public sector. In 1950, there were about 1.14 million students in public colleges and universities and about the same number in private ones. Today, public colleges enroll almost fifteen million students, private colleges fewer than six million.

From the same article, almost half of American students show no improvement in essential skills and critical thinking after two years of studying:

The test was given to a group of more than two thousand freshmen in the fall of 2005, and again, to the same group, in the spring of 2007. Arum and Roksa say that forty-five per cent of the students showed no significant improvement, and they conclude that “American higher education is characterized by limited or no learning for a large proportion of students.”

Educational rigor cannot only be of importance for a select few elite universities, no matter what you study. It needs to be upheld in primary education in highschool and public colleges alike otherwise you risk widening the social gap even more.

 

[EviLore]

Misleading statistics across the board, Strange, and Forbes Contributors are not exactly great sources. You see a disproportionate amount of foreign national master's degree students in STEM fields at US universities because STEM majors in graduate programs are given H1-B visas, a path toward permanent residence and citizenship. Universities don't subsidize tuition for these master's programs, typically, so they bring in a lot of money but can discourage domestic participation. Within industry, getting an advanced degree (depending on the field) is often deemed unnecessary if you have proper qualifications at the bachelor's level, favoring experience from that point onward. Thus, master's STEM programs are loaded with foreigners, skewing the statistics.

 

[Tschumi]

"i was told it would be just getting drunk and wasted and humping in a smelly dorm but now i hear that's generally looked down upon"

 

[oagboghi2]

That’s a nice fantasy. This hopeful idea that men and people in general will become so uneducated that jobs are forced to lower requirements. OR will the market just tighten and become a hard barrier for those without. More women are going to college and less men. Also companies will just hire outside the country.

Oh man what college did you go to lol. “Just do your assignments and you will get a degree” LOL. That’s what high school is not college. College is you get a midterm and a final pass or fail bitch. It separates the committed from the non committed. The reliable from the people who can’t be bothered to take their work home. A BA from a quality school means something absolutely. Go to UT and get through the first two years and tell me you weren’t overcoming adversity and stressed out. The hardest years of my life were the college years. Granted I worked and didn’t take out much loans but still.

We get it, you are proud of your school, but let’s be honest here. Getting a BA isn’t a Herculean feat if you have the money, or are willing to take on debt.

most classes are “do work and pass two tests”, and that depends a lot on the degree. Some are less than that, some are more. Let’s not pretend it’s more than what it is.

 

[jason10mm]

The push to forgive student loans makes more sense now.

 

[gatti-man]

We get it, you are proud of your school, but let’s be honest here. Getting a BA isn’t a Herculean feat if you have the money, or are willing to take on debt.

most classes are “do work and pass two tests”, and that depends a lot on the degree. Some are less than that, some are more. Let’s not pretend it’s more than what it is.

I haven’t even named my school. I run 9 businesses and have been GM’ing DMing stores for 20 years now. I manage annual payrolls in the millions. I’m telling you about what employers want. And if it was so easy college grad numbers would be 80-90%. They aren’t. Even among the people who get accepted when I went grad numbers were around 50% I think they are up to 70% now which is considered high.

It’s not easy to get a BA unless someone is richly paying your way and even then requires some amount of intelligence and fortitude.

 

[Mistake]

I’m glad I dropped out when I did. The first two years of my college wanted to saddle me with mundane classes that had nothing to do with what I wanted at the time. That’s 32k for jack shit. No thanks. Instead I got to travel the world before covid hit.

 

[Halo is Back]

Can confirm from personal experience. I went to LSU and it seemed like there were more women than men, even just walking around campus.

 

[LordPezix]

I think this is a great thing. I have a degree but I don't agree with men seeking degrees. For too long men have held the primary responsibilities of being leaders in politics and business. The weight of societies depended on men to act accordingly but now that is fading and honestly it is awesome.

The great leisure renaissance of men is about to begin where we abandon the shackles of social pressures and seek to do only what brings us happiness.

I say usher in the new era. Why can't men take a break? We have brought humanity this far. Time to let someone else take the reigns, grab a beer, kick back the recliner and fucking relax.

It's time to BIG CHILL BOYS!

 

[StreetsofBeige]

I’m glad I dropped out when I did. The first two years of my college wanted to saddle me with mundane classes that had nothing to do with what I wanted at the time. That’s 32k for jack shit. No thanks. Instead I got to travel the world before covid hit.

Yup. Pending someone's interests and career, college isnt for everyone.

I did business class due to many reasons like my fam pushing me and I know that trying to get into business in the finance path you cant realistically get hired as a new analyst with a high school diploma. Certain jobs need some minimum level of credentials, some dont. It helps my dad and some fam members also did business, so it all connected together and made sense by luck.

Not sure when it happened, but I'm guessing somewhere around the 70s(?) is when college and university started getting pushed to kids. Forget about the blue collar role and gun for an office job. And many white collar jobs require some academic basics. So as more moms and dads got white collar jobs, so is the push for their kids to copy them.

But I totally get their reasoning. I dont think most parents are doing it to piss off kids. They are just trying to reinforce in their kids a piece of paper is a leg up vs. someone without it. And looking at companies I work at, it's true. Most people hired have a university degree. Only people who might not are very experienced vets who grew up doing jobs in the 80s grassroots style out of high school. Their immense experience will outweigh a new grad. But for most jobs with 100s of applicants, a company might as well pick one with a degree if tons have similar experience but some have a piece of paper to go with it. And the better the piece of paper, the better.

Hiring isn't as complex as people think. HR and employees asked to interview are rummaging through tons of applicants and have to narrow it down to maybe 6-7 interviewees. And most of the people conducting interviews have little experience. The main filter at first blush is the resume of skills and education. So if you got the key points on the resume you get the call in for an interview.

 

[Sakura]

many companies will select to interview the degree holder first. 85% of my interview requests/ job recruiter talks have at some point enquired on some level my post secondary education.
You got to do something. Maybe it not a BA, but it has to be something.

and let's be serious. Most people graduate college in their mid 20's. Lets assume they have the average amount of college debt, which is like 30-40k. Over your lifetime you can't pay that off?

I didn't mean that the debt was difficult to pay off. More that they aren't even paying with their own money, so it isn't exactly overcoming adversity or anything.

That’s a nice fantasy. This hopeful idea that men and people in general will become so uneducated that jobs are forced to lower requirements. OR will the market just tighten and become a hard barrier for those without. More women are going to college and less men. Also companies will just hire outside the country.

The article in the OP says enrollment overall is down. Women are making up a larger portion of those in school, because there are less men. The increase in the number of women going to school isn't making up for the decrease in the number of men no longer going to school.

Oh man what college did you go to lol. “Just do your assignments and you will get a degree” LOL. That’s what high school is not college. College is you get a midterm and a final pass or fail bitch. It separates the committed from the non committed. The reliable from the people who can’t be bothered to take their work home. A BA from a quality school means something absolutely. Go to UT and get through the first two years and tell me you weren’t overcoming adversity and stressed out. The hardest years of my life were the college years. Granted I worked and didn’t take out much loans but still.

You make it sound like a midterm or final is difficult. Obviously a technical field, science, etc will be different. But in regards to a BA? Yeah, it is that easy.
The most prestigious schools in the country? I would expect them to be more difficult. But the average school? Nah.
My final for one class was a paper we had to write. We had about a month to do it. It was the day before the paper was due and I hadn't even touched it yet. I went out drinking with some friends until late. Got home at 3am, started writing the paper, and I was done in like 2 hours. Went to school the next day to hand it in, and got a B.
In the majority of my classes, ATTENDANCE is worth 40+% of the grade. You can do a shitty job on the final, but if you showed up to class, you've already got 40% of the mark, and even if you just got 50% on the final (assuming the final was the other 60%), well now you've gotten 70% in the course, congrats.

The vast majority of the content in courses in the Arts is just shit you could learn on your own.
I think it would make more sense, if you could just take an exam or exams, to prove you have the knowledge equivalent to what a course is supposed to offer, and get a degree for it.
Much like if you dropped out of high school, after the fact you can go and get your grade 10 or 11 or 12.

 

[Azurro]

You blackmail yourself into companies. Universities have used their networks to make sure that everybody has a diversity and inclusion officer and similar bs jobs.

That's true, it's a parasitic degree. However, there's a limit of how many "diversity officers" and "diversity minded" people can fit in HR. Most of them once graduated can't parasite their way into a company, and not many of them can turn it into a successful YouTuber/blogger career.

I just feel sad for so many of these girls. Imagine, so many have gotten duped into signing up for these worthless programs that charge them tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. The worst part is that it doesn't even bring them joy, they are just left bitter and angry, blaming a ghost like "the patriarchy" for all of their failings.

How many of these kids memeing about job requirements have worthless degrees to begin with?

 

[BadBurger]

I worked for the IT department in college. I remember sitting in on meetings with the university president and a bunch of department heads and such as they discussed curricula and other things. This was years ago, long before apps like Zoom existed and teleconferencing was simple, so some low-level IT person (and they don't get lower than the 20 year old kid working part time on mostly desktop stuff) usually had to be around in case there was a problem with the software, the internet connection, or any of the laptops.

It was all business. It was striking how none of the conversations seemed to be about what to teach students so they could actually use it and grow and be successful. Rather, it was pretty much how much crap they could stuff into a degree to maximize profits. Like tons of arts and humanities shit added to computer science and information systems degrees for no reason other than to generate revenue. They used a different term than "revenue", I can't remember which, but that's essentially all they cared about. Oh, and donations from previous graduates. They spent a lot of time on figuring ways to reach out to graduates for donations.

 

[Coolwhhip]

So many people study pointless things anyway. Sure, enjoy your partying, banging and drinking (tho zoomers dont even do that anymore right?).

 

[Bernd Lauert]

The push to forgive student loans makes more sense now.

Feels good to live in a country where the payback is capped at €10k and the interest rate is 0%.

 

[Amiga]

“If I was going to be a doctor or a lawyer, then obviously those people need a formal education. But there are definitely ways to get around it now,” Mr. Briles said. “There are opportunities that weren’t taught in school that could be a lot more promising than getting a degree.”

This.

Germany focuses more on vocational training, they also update education faster. that's why they are better at industrial advancement than other western nations.

 

[Punished Miku]

Can confirm from personal experience. I went to LSU and it seemed like there were more women than men, even just walking around campus.

 

[LordCBH]

It doesn’t help that about 70% of all jobs in this country realistically don’t need a single degree in order to do well. What’s the better choice here?
1) go 50k in debt to attend an indoctrination factory and get an entry level position making 34k a year?
Or
2) not attend said crap university and still get an entry level job making 34k a year?

with both choices the job still heavily relies more on on the job training than the useless degree, and both scenarios likely offer career advancement or training that other jobs would see as valuable.
The best way we can get people going to college again is a core shakeup in the system itself. No more federal loans, take that income source away from the corrupt universities, because it’s not the universities who lose money if you default on the payment, so they have every incentive to keep driving the cost up. No more “general education courses”. I, as a comp sci major, don’t need courses like Tennessee history and history 101. That’s a way they pad the bill to help pay for the instructors that teach those useless courses.
Finally, make it about actually educating the students again.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

It doesn’t help that about 70% of all jobs in this country realistically don’t need a single degree in order to do well. What’s the better choice here?
1) go 50k in debt to attend an indoctrination factory and get an entry level position making 34k a year?
Or
2) not attend said crap university and still get an entry level job making 34k a year?

with both choices the job still heavily relies more on on the job training than the useless degree, and both scenarios likely offer career advancement or training that other jobs would see as valuable.
The best way we can get people going to college again is a core shakeup in the system itself. No more federal loans, take that income source away from the corrupt universities, because it’s not the universities who lose money if you default on the payment, so they have every incentive to keep driving the cost up. No more “general education courses”. I, as a comp sci major, don’t need courses like Tennessee history and history 101. That’s a way they pad the bill to help pay for the instructors that teach those useless courses.
Finally, make it about actually educating the students again.

As a business major with both undergrad and grad degrees, I'd say hardly any of what I learned applied to the real world. Most of it could be learned on the job, with exception of accounting/finance knowledge which is something you need a new employee to already know. Which can be learned in university as well as starting the basics from high school. You cant have a new hire learn this on the job from scratch.

But sales and marketing can be learned on the job from vets. And many roles arent even covered in college or university at all like category management, pricing, packaging design, and probably all/most jobs in demand planning kinds of roles. You just need some interest in working in business and in an office and hopefully are half decent with numbers, using a PC and dont have the personality of a rock. The strategy and application in real life is a total 180 from text books.

Maybe for certain fields like medicine, engineering and law all that academic foundational stuff truly applies to real world jobs working in a hospital or building bridges (I dont know), but it definitely doesn't apply much to your typical business job.

 

[Durask]

all built during the longest bull market in history. which jobs get cut next recession, though?

Theirs will be the last one cut.

Remember the 30 year old joke:

A Japanese company and an American company decided to have a boat race on the Missouri River. Both teams practiced hard and long to reach their peak performance before the race. On the big day of the race the Japanese won by a mile.

Afterwards, the American team became very discouraged and morally depressed. The American management decided that the reason for the crushing defeat had to be found. A "Measurement Team", made up of senior management was formed. They would investigate and recommend appropriate action.

Their conclusion was that the Japanese team had 8 people rowing and 1 person steering, while the Americans had 1 person rowing and 8 people steering. So American management hired a consulting company and paid them incredible amounts of money. They advised that too many people are steering the boat and not enough people are rowing.

To prevent losing to the Japanese again the next year, the rowing teams management structure was totally reorganized to 4 steering supervisors, 3 area steering superintendents and 1 assistant superintendent steering manager. They also implemented a new performance system that would give the person rowing the boat greater incentive to work harder. It was called the "Rowing Team Quality First Program", with meetings, dinners and free pens for the rower. "We must give the rower empowerment and enrichment through this Quality First Program."

The next year the Japanese won by 2 miles. Humiliated, the American management laid off the rower for poor performance, halted development of a new canoe, sold the paddles, and cancelled all capital investments for new equipment. Then they gave a High Performance Award to the steering managers and distributed the money saved as bonuses to the senior executives.

 

[Hari Seldon]

I haven’t even named my school. I run 9 businesses and have been GM’ing DMing stores for 20 years now. I manage annual payrolls in the millions. I’m telling you about what employers want. And if it was so easy college grad numbers would be 80-90%. They aren’t. Even among the people who get accepted when I went grad numbers were around 50% I think they are up to 70% now which is considered high.

It’s not easy to get a BA unless someone is richly paying your way and even then requires some amount of intelligence and fortitude.

One thing I learned as a TA in grad school teaching freshman engineering is that there is a tremendous amount of dumbasses who should not be in college.

 

[Halo is Back]

I don't get it

 

[CrankyJay™]

There’s nothing wrong with learning a skilled trade. Not everyone is made for college and to be honest the way they’ve turned into extreme revenue centers I don’t blame people for bailing.

 

[Punished Miku]

I don't get it

It's an old GAF meme. Just means I want to go there.

 

[DeepBreath87]

The key to college is having a pretty solid idea why you’re there. Just going to get a piece of paper because you think it’s the ticket to a good life is idiotic. If you have a solid plan, go for it. Just figure out what you’re doing first.

 

[Hari Seldon]

I worked for the IT department in college. I remember sitting in on meetings with the university president and a bunch of department heads and such as they discussed curricula and other things. This was years ago, long before apps like Zoom existed and teleconferencing was simple, so some low-level IT person (and they don't get lower than the 20 year old kid working part time on mostly desktop stuff) usually had to be around in case there was a problem with the software, the internet connection, or any of the laptops.

It was all business. It was striking how none of the conversations seemed to be about what to teach students so they could actually use it and grow and be successful. Rather, it was pretty much how much crap they could stuff into a degree to maximize profits. Like tons of arts and humanities shit added to computer science and information systems degrees for no reason other than to generate revenue. They used a different term than "revenue", I can't remember which, but that's essentially all they cared about. Oh, and donations from previous graduates. They spent a lot of time on figuring ways to reach out to graduates for donations.

Exactly. There is no industry with as much bogus PR as American Colleges and Universities. They convince the world that they are bastions of liberalism, but the business model is literally to suck as much federal loans out of an 18 year old kid as possible no matter the cost.

 

[strange headache]

I can only recommend this book if you want to see how social justice theories are invading and crippling all aspects of academic life on American campuses:

 

[n0razi]

We get it, you are proud of your school, but let’s be honest here. Getting a BA isn’t a Herculean feat if you have the money, or are willing to take on debt.

most classes are “do work and pass two tests”, and that depends a lot on the degree. Some are less than that, some are more. Let’s not pretend it’s more than what it is.

Its not a Herculean feat by any means to get a BA/BS but you are just jumping to the other extreme by saying its easy. There would be a much higher graduation rate if that were true.

 

[Glockmarksmen]

That’s a nice fantasy. This hopeful idea that men and people in general will become so uneducated that jobs are forced to lower requirements. OR will the market just tighten and become a hard barrier for those without. More women are going to college and less men. Also companies will just hire outside the country.

Oh man what college did you go to lol. “Just do your assignments and you will get a degree” LOL. That’s what high school is not college. College is you get a midterm and a final pass or fail bitch. It separates the committed from the non committed. The reliable from the people who can’t be bothered to take their work home. A BA from a quality school means something absolutely. Go to UT and get through the first two years and tell me you weren’t overcoming adversity and stressed out. The hardest years of my life were the college years. Granted I worked and didn’t take out much loans but still.

Disagree. I have friends who’ve graduated from state colleges by brute force and debt increase alone. Some people can brute force college especially if they’re willing to go for 6-7 years instead of the standard 4. One of my friends who graduated from MSU literally learned nothing in 7 years and is in 100K debt for his degree. Of course that’s not everybody but it’s becoming more common place than you think. Some universities for sure will hand tou a degree.

 

[Go_Ly_Dow]

A good discussion on the role of men in the west at the moment.

 

[Pegasus Actual]

I love the dual system here in Switzerland, you can work and later still go to a technical university to become an expert in your job.

Also, it takes a lot of leverage from universities, you have several routes towards your future.

That kind of path would have made a lot more sense for me. Out of high school I probably had the skills to handle an entry level coding job, or at the very least entry level IT. Hitting university a couple of years later with some more perspective of what I need to learn and why would have been a big help.

Also, not gonna lie, I would not have complained if my college era was 2-1 chicks to dudes ratio. Then again I'm guessing the Comp Sci scene is still a total sausagefest.... because... every girl growing up has a white man tell her she can't do math or computers destroying her dreams because patriarchy or whatever.

 

[DeepBreath87]

So one thing. Anyone saying they didn’t go to college because colleges are mean to men or whatever. Don’t do that. You sound just like the whiners of the past who think the patriarchy held them down or white supremacy kept them from succeeding (although this was somewhat true in the past). No one is trying to keep you down enough to stop you. If you’re a man and you want to have a career that requires a degree, go get that degree. Don’t let some asshole professor or institutional nonsense stop you.

 

[I_D]

This is a problem that has been growing for more than a decade, and now we're finally starting to see the results.
I question the effect of things like wokeness or cancel-culture on college attendance. It seems to me like most of the people harboring such beliefs are college students and graduates themselves. I can see how it would turn some people away, but I doubt it's a big player in terms of pushing away specifically boys. But even if I'm totally underestimating their effect, I don't think they matter in the long run anyway.

I argue this was bound to happen even if those things didn't exist.


So, quick disclaimer: It's REALLY difficult to find information on this type of stuff, because everybody involved is underage, and each state has different standards, and each school has different policies, and each teacher has different levels of tolerance, but I'll try...
I also have my own personal experience that I can use as a reference for the past ten years, for what it's worth.


Over time, boys have become increasingly likely to behave badly in school, whereas girls have remained consistent or improved.
This means that the time out of school is more severe for boys than for girls, as they are more likely to be punished, and then have growing punishments over time. This means less education.

Over time, the amount of dual-income households has increased.
This means that there is nobody at home to supervise and/or punish the kid for getting a referral. This means that the positive and negative behaviors are not properly handled. This goes for basically all of the kid's life; not just school. This eventually equates to less success overall.

Over time, scores have steadily increased across pretty much all areas. Gaps in performance between subgroups of people, though, has remained consistent.
This means that even though the minority population has exploded in the past few decades, they haven't really managed to get a solid hold on success. And that means more people who are not college-bound are attending schools, but not attending colleges. That same source shows how this lack of success is more prevalent among boys than it is for girls, and it has been this way for quite some time.

Now that these kids are finally college-aged, we're seeing the results of decisions made twenty years ago which do not mesh with the modern world of today.



And I don't want an even longer post, so I haven't even mentioned the changes in attention span over time, the overuse of prescription medicine in children, the general lack of boredom and ability to deal with challenge, the loss of inferencing, a general lowering of school standards over time nationwide (which is the part that's really hard to search for) , increasing rigor in colleges, and so much more.


So yeah, add all of that stuff together, and you'll find that boys succeed less often than girls, and minority boys are the lowest. Add that with various population bubbles, various economic bubbles, various college reputations, etc., and you get today's college situation, with or without wokeness and cancel-culture.

 

[dave_d]

The best way we can get people going to college again is a core shakeup in the system itself. No more federal loans, take that income source away from the corrupt universities, because it’s not the universities who lose money if you default on the payment, so they have every incentive to keep driving the cost up. No more “general education courses”. I, as a comp sci major, don’t need courses like Tennessee history and history 101. That’s a way they pad the bill to help pay for the instructors that teach those useless courses.
Finally, make it about actually educating the students again.

Big problem is that the feds don't want to do that since they're almost certainly making a killing on those student loans.(They were very profitable.) I'd also like to point out that I empathize with you point of view on requirements. For example It was really hard for me to believe that they actually thought a foreign language was necessary for my education When foreign language professors basically refuse to teach those courses. (I'm a bit jaded.)

 

[OmegaSupreme]

A generation of men lost you say? Sounds like they need to read the good book

By (Author) Jordan B. Peterson: 12 Rules for Life An Antidote to Chaos https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0839HKC44/?tag=neogaf0e-20

 

[EviLore]

It doesn’t help that about 70% of all jobs in this country realistically don’t need a single degree in order to do well. What’s the better choice here?
1) go 50k in debt to attend an indoctrination factory and get an entry level position making 34k a year?
Or
2) not attend said crap university and still get an entry level job making 34k a year?

People with a degree earn far more, on average, over their lifetime.

Just like you can learn a valuable trade and make more than someone with a Gender Studies degree, you can get an engineering degree and earn more than someone in a trade. Nothing wrong with doing what's right for your specific circumstances, but viewing a college education as useless in general is not supported by the evidence.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

People with a degree earn far more, on average, over their lifetime.

Just like you can learn a valuable trade and make more than someone with a Gender Studies degree, you can get an engineering degree and earn more than someone in a trade. Nothing wrong with doing what's right for your specific circumstances, but viewing a college education as useless in general is not supported by the evidence.

Totally.

It's like NA pro leagues paying the highest average salaries for basketball, hockey, baseball etc..... vs. foreign leagues. But on an individual basis tons of players overseas make more than an MLB or NHL guy making $1 million minimums.

 

[gatti-man]

I didn't mean that the debt was difficult to pay off. More that they aren't even paying with their own money, so it isn't exactly overcoming adversity or anything.


The article in the OP says enrollment overall is down. Women are making up a larger portion of those in school, because there are less men. The increase in the number of women going to school isn't making up for the decrease in the number of men no longer going to school.


You make it sound like a midterm or final is difficult. Obviously a technical field, science, etc will be different. But in regards to a BA? Yeah, it is that easy.
The most prestigious schools in the country? I would expect them to be more difficult. But the average school? Nah.
My final for one class was a paper we had to write. We had about a month to do it. It was the day before the paper was due and I hadn't even touched it yet. I went out drinking with some friends until late. Got home at 3am, started writing the paper, and I was done in like 2 hours. Went to school the next day to hand it in, and got a B.
In the majority of my classes, ATTENDANCE is worth 40+% of the grade. You can do a shitty job on the final, but if you showed up to class, you've already got 40% of the mark, and even if you just got 50% on the final (assuming the final was the other 60%), well now you've gotten 70% in the course, congrats.

The vast majority of the content in courses in the Arts is just shit you could learn on your own.
I think it would make more sense, if you could just take an exam or exams, to prove you have the knowledge equivalent to what a course is supposed to offer, and get a degree for it.
Much like if you dropped out of high school, after the fact you can go and get your grade 10 or 11 or 12.

Again idk what college you went to but a two test semester is by definition difficult. It gives you zero opportunity to correct bad grades or poor studying behavior. The subject being “technical” or not means absolutely dick all. A midterm and final says you either know the subject and material being taught or not. If you study, and are prepared yes the final and midterm shouldn’t be hard that’s the entire point. Tests gauge understanding and retention of the material being taught.

While I was getting my degree I heard people legit crying more than once during finals and midterms. And again the simple data published by colleges about graduation rates show that no getting a BA is not easy. You’re objectively wrong.

 

[gatti-man]

Disagree. I have friends who’ve graduated from state colleges by brute force and debt increase alone. Some people can brute force college especially if they’re willing to go for 6-7 years instead of the standard 4. One of my friends who graduated from MSU literally learned nothing in 7 years and is in 100K debt for his degree. Of course that’s not everybody but it’s becoming more common place than you think. Some universities for sure will hand tou a degree.

This again is objectively false. You can not brute force a degree. Being 100k in debt is laughable for a BA but even so you still have to pass the tests and show retention. If they took classes that don’t relate to any use in modern society that’s on them. There are no universities handing out degrees without testing. Also the 6-7 year degree is the VAST minority of BAs most people doing that method just never graduate at all.

again if brute forcing a degree was possible then graduation rates wouldn’t be as low as they are (67% give or take)

Fast Facts: Undergraduate graduation rates (40)

The NCES Fast Facts Tool provides quick answers to many education questions (National Center for Education Statistics). Get answers on Early Childhood Education, Elementary and Secondary Education and Higher Education here.

nces.ed.gov

 

[Porcile]

Universities are only as good their teachers. These days are plenty of good teachers online doing stuff for free, so I don't think it's worth it anymore.