

College Enrollment Hits All-Time High, Fueled by Community College Surge - cwan
http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1391/college-enrollment-all-time-high-community-college-surge

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jamesbressi
This is why you have to look at the flip side when you hear a word like
"recession". When people are losing money, someone is making it.

Recession is bad for many, but lines the pockets of others.

Conversely, there are people who lose money or aren't making as much money
when the economy is doing well (for an in-your-face example, Walmart)

On another note, it does not necessary make me smile to see enrollment is
increasing. I feel institutional learning has hurt a lot of the ingenuity and
creativity in the U.S. and many don't take away the true value of post-
secondary learning because they feel they have to go to college or will be
left out.

The other side, it does make me smile because it is less competition for me
when so many get wrapped up in an additional four years of education. -- My
sentiments here by the way are supported by the evolution of education in our
country. How so? It is accepted fact that the reason we made secondary school
(high school) mandatory in the United States was to help us get out of the
great depression and high unemployment by causing less competition in the work
force for adults. When high school became mandatory it caused a lot of
outrage, especially in the blue-collar communities where after 8th grade
children would go to work and begin careers to help support their families.

I could go on, but there is some interesting food for thought.

~~~
dantheman
You're very first point is completely wrong. It is very easy for people to
lose wealth and no one receive it.

1\. Factory Burns Down -- Lost wealth 2\. Factory no longer competitive - Lost
Wealth 3\. Built too many houses/widgets/etc - Lost Wealth

You lose wealth when jobs that a skilled worker had disappear, not because of
technology but because it's not needed anymore. Say for instance you trained
1000 people to run a specialized machine that was used to mine gold in a
certain region. As soon as that gold runs out all the investments made in that
specific region that are not transferable are lost.

~~~
jamesbressi
Sorry, you are actually completely wrong =/

All three of your examples are wrong in fact. In every case someone else is
going to make money.

1\. "Factory burns down -- lost wealth" -- Well a competing factory will pick
up that business, sorry. Not to mention if the factory wants to rebuild,
construction workers make money.

2\. "Factory no longer competitive - lost wealth" Again, no. If a factory is
no longer competitive, a competitor will take that business.

3\. "Built too many houses/widgets/etc - lost wealth" Lastly, again, no. Let's
look at the housing market which was your first mention. People are losing
their houses right? Then there are people that buy those houses at huge
discounts from Sheriff's sale, fix it up, resell it later for profit.

And for the paragraph at the bottom of your comment, wrong again. As soon as
the gold runs out in that region, a company in another region with gold will
be picking up that loss of business and making money.

Thanks for the debate though.

~~~
dantheman
I still think you wrong.

1\. Even if a competing company picks up that business wealth is still lost;
Sure the other company may earn more money but the total wealth in the world
has gone down. That other company could've productively produced some other
good, and now has to produce what the other did. Also, the construction
workers rebuilding it is just bastiat's broken window fallacy
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window>). If the factory
didn't burn down the construction workers could have built new things, not
merely replacing old.

2.I may have not stated this one clearly enough; when a factory looses it's
competitive edge due to mismanagement it's losing wealth. If they were able to
properly manage the company everyone would be richer on average.

3\. When you build too much of a good that isn't needed then you've lost
wealth overall. The housing example might be too complicated, it has a lot of
interrelated factors, but lets assume I make action figures. If I produce 100
Billion of them and there are only 1 million people that want them -- we've
lost wealth... The time and energy producing the extra ones has now been
squandered. Sure the market may expand to 10 million people with deep
discounts but wealth was still lost.

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bh23ha
This community college surge is what might pop the higher education bubble.

Let me explain, first I don't think pop is the right word, stock bubbles pop,
real-estate bubbles deflate much more slowly and this will take a looooong
time.

Also, I do not believe there is a higher education bubble in the "you don't
need college" sense. I believe there is a bubble in how much many colleges are
charging for a 4 year degree.

And I think that as lower tier schools gain respectability, this will create
downward price pressure.

Obviously some places will remain ridiculously expensive and exclusive,
because that is the very point of their existence. But hopefully future
generations will be able to get a respectable degree without having to
literally mortgage their future.

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yurisagalov
We've seen a similar trend in _graduate_ enrollment in Toronto. Although I
don't have an article to link to, last year the University extended graduate
enrollment 3 times (from a January 6th deadline, to a May deadline) in an
effort to attract more _local_ students.

It appears that in the midst of the recession, the government has made it more
expensive to bring in international students (one quote I got was "one
international MASc student is similar to one local post-doctoral student") on
a year-by-year expense, since our engineering graduate programs are research
based and are thus funded. This was meant as an attempt to provide local new-
grads with more opportunities in a dire job market, and in that sense, it
certainly worked

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jswinghammer
I wonder if there will be jobs for any of these people who have heard for the
last 12 years of their lives that college and success are synonymous. My guess
is not so much and we will be hearing more stories about massive debts that
can barely be serviced by people working in restaurants or Starbucks. I expect
a lot of people will end up be disillusioned with the narrative they've been
given their whole lives and that doesn't seem like a bad thing to me. I just
wish they could avoid it in the first place though.

~~~
blackguardx
I have recently been struggling with how one defines success. Many people
(including those on HN) define it in terms of accumulated wealth or social
status ("successful startup," IPO, etc.). More and more I and finding that
this definition of success doesn't necessarily lead to happiness in life.
There is probably no correlation between the two. If this is the case, why do
we always speak in terms of "success?" Shouldn't we instead speak of
happiness?

Shouldn't the question be, "Will going to college make one happy?" That
Starbucks barista with a B.A. in Polynesian languages might actually be
happier than the hotshot programmer at the startup of the month.

~~~
jswinghammer
Yeah but that programmer probably doesn't have a ton of pointless debt
weighing them down.

