re: If one of the Democratic Candidates becomes President, what to do with your money?

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Unless we become socialist then we’re screwed

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Wake up. We are already pretty dam socialist.

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This follows a narrative very popular on all of TD that I don’t think is true. There really is no such thing as worthless degree. I have business meetings everyday with people from all different industries. I always do as much research as I can about the person and their educational backgrounds vary so much. I scheduled one yesterday for August. I’m meeting with a woman who has a BA in English from UNC. She is a CEO of an utility company and makes $217k as a base salary per year.

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This, x1000.
College isn't supposed to be job training. If you want direct ROI on skills, then go to trade school: plumbing, electrical, finish carpentry, instrumentation will pay off immediately, and the cost of education will be low. Jobs in skilled trades are abundant, and smart people are needed in those areas.

College is (supposed to be) about broader personal & intellectual development. IOW, you're learning to think, analyze, write, and speak/argue/support a position. You're training your mind to be flexible, adaptable, and orderly/logical. The traditional humanities and social sciences fields will develop a student's analytical skills.

Lots of people know folks who overpaid and were undereducated: who's fault is this? The student who didn't apply him/herself & was a lazy, bare-minimum scholar? The university, for admitting a student who wasn't really a very good prospect for serious education at 17 or 18? The curriculum, for lacking sufficient rigor in the material & assignments? The parents, for encouraging/allowing a student to borrow ridiculous sums instead of suggesting that a student live at home & work while earning a degree? Lots of factors impact this one.

But the "useless degrees" argument is an anti-intellectual stance reducing college to job training. They're NOT the same thing.

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But the "useless degrees" argument is an anti-intellectual stance reducing college to job training. They're NOT the same thing.

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I realize they are not the same thing, but to say all degrees are worth the amount spent to get the degree is just not true.

Certain degrees have absolutely no nominal value upon graduation. Sure, if the person is willing to work hard, the graduate could go work, work hard and earn their way up, etc. but having a work ethic is essential no matter the degree.

If you spend $50-$100k or more for a job that never pays more than $30k, it's just not smart. Either way, less than 50% of working aged adults (25-65) have a college degree. Forgiving the debt means that the majority of Americans that do not have a college degree are paying for the minority. When I decided to go back to school after dropping out a few years before, it was to start a career I could not achieve without the degree. I made damn sure that the debt I was putting myself into was worth it after graduating.

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We agree...it's dumb to overpay for a degree. But too many students are not going into debt over tuition--they're in debt b/c they live in an apartment & don't share a room or bathroom, drive a late model car, spend $$ on food/coffee/entertainment. IOW, esp in LA public schools where basic tuition is subsidized by the state for most attendees, you see rampant "lifestyle" spending by college students. Many parents aren't curbing this impulse--they're encouraging students to keep up with the Joneses.

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I do agree with that one. In BR, there are 2-3 new apartment complexes every Fall that cost $700+ for each bedroom. The complexes are generally thrown together and run down within a few years. The dorms are seen as beneath most students.

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Additionally, I’m not sure that humanities/ social science are anywhere as rigorous as they used to be a generation ago. So I’m skeptical that they do as good of a job instilling these skill s as you say.

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I can’t speak to future but I can tell you that what I see everyday is that what people got a degree in and what they do for a living at age 50 are often very different. In fact I would think most people would say that what they are doing at age 50 is something they never would have suspected 25 years ago. In some cases what people are doing now didn’t exist 25 years ago.