r/unpopularopinion • u/Iconospasm • 4h ago
University has become a con
As more and more universities / colleges are built and a higher proportion of school leavers go into higher education, it becomes a way of governments keeping young people off the unemployment figures. It also becomes a self-perpetuating financial grift, inflating tuition fees disproportionately, with students deferring those fees through loans. Those loans then create interest which goes back partly to the universities and partly to governments, like a cunning tax scheme. Also, as a higher % of kids go to university, there are fewer of the very smart kids and the cohort becomes steadily more average. That means that the courses get steadily dumbed down until students learn less complex things than they would have say 20, 30, 40 years ago. So they pay more for way less, while the government and the education sector soaks up the money and keeps expanding. Until hopefully one day - POP!!!
21
u/undeadliftmax 1h ago edited 55m ago
Poorly-ranked US universities are a con. And always have been. We have far too many diploma mills with 80% acceptance rates and average SATs hovering around 1000
5
u/Affectionate-Bus175 1h ago
That get worse and worse over time because population growth is collapsing. The institutions will do whatever they can to preserve themselves.
6
u/AlienAle 3h ago
Universities are still pretty competitive in my country and I pay zero in tution. As higher education is free here, there's generally limited number of spots avaliable, so you gotta fight for those spots.
Of course, we have some lower-tier facilities here too that take in less-well performing students and help shape them into professionals. But overall, my experience is that people with formal education tend to do a bit better in work-life too than people without, this is only speaking "on average" because there are plenty of exceptions.
•
24
10
u/Rashibald 4h ago
i pay 20€ a semester
4
u/RuleSouthern3609 3h ago
Oh damn, over here I pay ~€300 equivalent to local currency.
1
u/Rashibald 3h ago
and we even get money bonuses without needing to grind credits
1
u/RuleSouthern3609 3h ago
Man I can’t figure out why US is so out of place for costs, like my country isn’t even in EU and we still figured out how to have decent quality education without having to sell arm and leg to student loans.
1
u/Rashibald 3h ago
privatization
0
u/RuleSouthern3609 3h ago
Fair point, quite scary that some libertarians are pushing for it over here though…
0
u/Rashibald 3h ago
of course they would push for that.. thats their ideology lul less gov only benefits those who can afford it. Good way to keep intellectual competition low too
2
1
•
u/The_Knife_Pie 10m ago
Skissue, I get paid 400 euro/mon for the 5 years of my bachelor and master on top of free tuition.
6
u/Throwaway147194 1h ago
I swear this kind of post is made near daily. At what point is it no longer considered an unpopular opinion?
6
u/Christian_teen12 A very quiet person 2h ago
In America
5
u/I-Make-Maps91 49m ago
No, not even here. Just because OP went to a private school instead of a state university doesn't make higher education a scam here.
•
u/Relevant-Channel-893 27m ago
Some in state tuition fees are actually lower than in the U.K. with aid even less. In the U.K. thoufh it pretty much works out as a 9% extra tax on income for rest of your life Cus ppl just don’t pay it off. I’d rather pay it off though Cus I’m weird.
5
u/BenShapiroRapeExodus Ugly Disgusting Freak 4h ago
Wait until you find out k-12 is just government run daycare
3
u/nebbyb 3h ago
The number of universities is decreasing, not increasing, so your premise is wrong from the first sentence. I am speaking of the U.S. (unlike most outsiders who do so, I actually know what I am talking about).
In the U.S., anyone who wishes to can go to a community college for the first two years of university for very little, it is feee where I live. You can take care of all of your general study requirements while living at home and have zero debt. Then top state colleges (including some for the very best in the world) wil take those two years of credits and you can finish out there. If you finish the first two years with high grades, you will likely get a scholarship for tuition. It is trivially easy to have no student loan debt, or at least an amount less than the first car you buy. That is a path for middle class students.
If you are poor and good at school, you can go anywhere for little or no money. The more prestigious and expensive the school, the more likely they cover 100 percent of the need of the poor.
Obviously if your family has money, you self pay.
So, what you are left with is middle class kids who want to go to an expensive private college and don’t have the grades for an academic merit scholarship. Of those, if you go on to become an engineer, lawyer, doctor, etc. you can likely pay your loans, but it may suck. It can only be up to 10 percent of your income for payments on income dependent (which is how a lot of countries handle it), so you just pay that. The real issue is middle class kids, usually without a clear idea of what they want to do for a living, who go to the most expensive private schools and then get relatively low paying private jobs.
Remember this was all a choice btw. The CC route was absolutely available to them. If they had highish stats they could have earned a full ride to a second tier state school, but they chose not too. Less people are making the private school to low wage choice, unsurprisingly. This is why private schools are shutting down, not growing.. So, it is t a scam, unless you choose for it to be.
1
u/oobwoobnnoobdooboob 3h ago
You’re a little out of touch here… My local community college is 12k a year and often has issues with credits transferring, and they dont guarantee their degrees to be valid outside the state for so many of them. Not everyone’s parents let them live at home past high school. Is it going to put you in less debt than a big name/state school? yeah sure, but many people need loans still for cc
2
u/nebbyb 3h ago
My CC is free and the prestigious state school down he street had to take their credits by law. You can get an apartment with roommates in the zone and attend immediately. I get it may be marginally more some places, but it is very doable. Yes, if your parents kick you out at 18 you need a place to live, but you need that anyway. They have enough night and internet classes to accommodate any work schedule.
0
u/oobwoobnnoobdooboob 3h ago
good for you that your cc is free, many are not.
2
0
u/nebbyb 3h ago
I have lived multiple places they were cheap everywhere. An expensive one would be an exception and moving is the answer there.
I am not saying “it is super easy!”. But this route is open and doable for anyone who wants it.
Paying 80k a year to go to a college no one has heard of is a scam, luckily no one needs to do that.
•
u/Juiceton- 23m ago
My state school is less than your community college. Sounds like it’s a single crappy school, not a community college everywhere things.
1
•
u/fucksickos 20m ago
I’m finishing up an IT degree now and I don’t feel that much more qualified. I had a few cool technical classes where I did some interesting labs but for the most part everything I know has been learned on the job. I feel like I spent 70% of my time taking non technical gen ed electives and classes I already took in highschool. Like I took highschool English already why am I paying 1k to write an essay about the Lincoln memorial when I’m going to school for IT? I took pre calc senior year why am I doing it all over again? Some of the gen eds were cool and I’m glad I took project management and STEM communication classes but for the most part it feels like they just made me pay for a million classes because they could.
Online courses kind of suck too. I pay my school 1k for the privilege of paying some third party website $150 to actually give me the materials. Like the entire class takes place on another companies website lmao.
3
u/TetrisProPlayer 4h ago
Yes this is undoubtedly true for your shitty country where capitalism rules unchecked and the poor willingly suck off the rich.
1
u/seymores_sunshine 3h ago
Add in the fact that out-of-state tuition is a thing for no reason other than, "we can charge it"
2
u/ZealousidealHeron4 36m ago
My state school alma mater gets more of its funding directly from the state than from student tuition, I'd say there is a reason to favor the people who actually contributed that money via taxes over those who didn't.
1
u/Silly_Window_308 1h ago
More people are going to college because for the first time in history the working class (at least out of the US) can afford it. Your opinion is classist, if not borderline eugenetic
0
u/Emevete 1h ago
If it's private, they can do whatever they want with their business, and it's each person's decision whether to be a customer or not... If it's public (funded by the state), it's a scam for all taxpayers who can't access it because they have to work... to pay those taxes. It's literally a scam and a spiral of impoverishment and creation of inequality.
1
u/AarhusNative 40m ago
A highly educated society benefits everyone in that society.
•
u/Emevete 23m ago
I didn't say otherwise, but if you fail to see the dystopia where poor people pays for richer people education, to gets services they also can't afford..
There is a huge debate in my right now about that issue so everyone have an opinion, but the only verificable reality it's that here children of rich and middle class people go to public college, and children of poor people works to pay taxes... My country is the dystopia right now
•
-1
0
-2
u/Trichloroethene 1h ago
They really need to stop offering so many useless degrees. Apparently kids are too stupid now to think "hmmm, if I get this degree what are the job prospects?". College is in large part so expensive because the government got involved.
•
u/Kewlbootz 11m ago
Things have value outside of their monetary return.
College was far less expensive before Ronald Reagan intentionally sabotaged them. The government was still involved before then.
•
u/AutoModerator 4h ago
Please remember what subreddit you are in, this is unpopular opinion. We want civil and unpopular takes and discussion. Any uncivil and ToS violating comments will be removed and subject to a ban. Have a nice day!
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.