Just randomly curious

[tyrannosaurus vex]

Inquiring minds have to know!

[Lies]

In my world, higher education involves a joint and  couple of tabs of acid while looking at the sky and wondering what it's all about.

[Jenne]

What do you mean by "in your world"?  I have many uh ATMOSPHERES in the same world where education has different value and experiences vary widely.

I do expect it for my kids, otherwise their father will probably ship them off to Afghanistan...

But I also want them to avoid the mistakes made by my brothers who hit a glass ceiling i n their careers at 30...

[Disco Pickle]

What do you mean by "in your world"?  I have many uh ATMOSPHERES in the same world where education has different value and experiences vary widely.

I do expect it for my kids, otherwise their father will probably ship them off to Afghanistan...

But I also want them to avoid the mistakes made by my brothers who hit a glass ceiling i n their careers at 30...

what was the nature of the ceiling they hit?  I'm sort of at that point myself, where if I go back and pick up a few more skills I'll be able to command a better salary.

in answer to the OP, I'm the first in my family to attend, and never finished.  I was working full time to support myself and had to bend to any changes in schedule. 

My son will have to option to go, and I'll encourage it, but I wont force him to do it.  I expect the costs will have risen 10x by the time he's old enough.   

[Thurnez Isa]

between Infrequent and common. College education in Ontario slightly more common right now thanks to more powerful student unions keeping costs down. Probably take about another 10 years to get caught up with the costs of the US (right now the gov in Canada still pays 40 to 55% depending on province, they pay a little more for me thanks to me being sick in the head) ... don't know where the US will be by then. I suspect "Only for the Rich" category.

[Jenne]

What do you mean by "in your world"?  I have many uh ATMOSPHERES in the same world where education has different value and experiences vary widely.

I do expect it for my kids, otherwise their father will probably ship them off to Afghanistan...

But I also want them to avoid the mistakes made by my brothers who hit a glass ceiling i n their careers at 30...

what was the nature of the ceiling they hit?  I'm sort of at that point myself, where if I go back and pick up a few more skills I'll be able to command a better salary.

in answer to the OP, I'm the first in my family to attend, and never finished.  I was working full time to support myself and had to bend to any changes in schedule. 

My son will have to option to go, and I'll encourage it, but I wont force him to do it.  I expect the costs will have risen 10x by the time he's old enough.   

It was a salary ceiling.  And for my older younger brother who's in his mid 30's, a hiring ceiling for jobs he needing a higher wage for.  His experience is high, he's owned 3 businesses (all failed, but still), been his "own boss" since he was 19 or 20...and yeah, when he struck out on his own to find work, he found that 1) he was undervalued due to lack of ANY degree or certification and 2) he was considered not a trustworthy candidate for any hiring position entailing leadership of any kind.  He has to prove himself faster and harder and just more more more because he doesn't have a degree.

And the guys interviewing him were very upfront about all that.

[AFK]

I tend to think of it as generational.  I was the first in my family to go to and graduate from college.  I'm talking about extended family too.  None of my aunts or uncles have college degrees.  I'm also the only one with any kind of post-graduate degree.  Now amongst my other high school classmates, I'd say about 85-90% of them went on to college.  So, from my universe, it seems pretty expected these days.  Of course, it is also expected that your parents are going to be too poor to contribute to your education and that you will live under a big mountain of debt for 10 or so years after you graduate.  

[Disco Pickle]

between Infrequent and common. College education in Ontario slightly more common right now thanks to more powerful student unions keeping costs down. Probably take about another 10 years to get caught up with the costs of the US (right now the gov in Canada still pays 40 to 55% depending on province, they pay a little more for me thanks to me being sick in the head) ... don't know where the US will be by then. I suspect "Only for the Rich" category.

I have a discussion with a friend of mine semi-regularly about the "why" on the 200+% increase in tuition costs in 10 years.  Other than demand, which I can see driving costs up due to limited space in existing universities, what's the real deal behind the nearly overwhelming rise in the costs while the wages paid for the professions have remained stagnant and even decreased?

We kick theories, but never agree on anything precise.

[Jenne]

between Infrequent and common. College education in Ontario slightly more common right now thanks to more powerful student unions keeping costs down. Probably take about another 10 years to get caught up with the costs of the US (right now the gov in Canada still pays 40 to 55% depending on province, they pay a little more for me thanks to me being sick in the head) ... don't know where the US will be by then. I suspect "Only for the Rich" category.

I have a discussion with a friend of mine semi-regularly about the "why" on the 200+% increase in tuition costs in 10 years.  Other than demand, which I can see driving costs up due to limited space in existing universities, what's the real deal behind the nearly overwhelming rise in the costs while the wages paid for the professions have remained stagnant and even decreased?

We kick theories, but never agree on anything precise.

For state universities in CA, it's all funding.  The CA residents pay LESS tuition by law, and with the fact that The Governator cut funding for state schools FIRST before cutting anything else in education, the state unis and colleges had to fight harder for the same amount of money, plus inflation.

So up go tuition fees, and out go CA residents, in come the out of staters who can pay more.

It's all $.  Not just demand (we graduated the largest class of high school students ever last year in the US), but also the fact that state budets are ass right now.

[Jenne]

I tend to think of it as generational.  I was the first in my family to go to and graduate from college.  I'm talking about extended family too.  None of my aunts or uncles have college degrees.  I'm also the only one with any kind of post-graduate degree.  Now amongst my other high school classmates, I'd say about 85-90% of them went on to college.  So, from my universe, it seems pretty expected these days.  Of course, it is also expected that your parents are going to be too poor to contribute to your education and that you will live under a big mountain of debt for 10 or so years after you graduate. 

I had an aunt and uncle that went 4-year on my mom's side, but I was the first post-grad on my mom's side and the first university graduate on my dad's, period.  But my brothers had oppotunities and drank the koolaid that they didn't need higher education, because hey, my DAD made it in the wide, wide world with none, so why can't they?

Guess what he's wanting to do once he gets out of the clink, btw?  Yeah, go to college.

(good for him, but he could've started that in the jail system for free)

[Thurnez Isa]

between Infrequent and common. College education in Ontario slightly more common right now thanks to more powerful student unions keeping costs down. Probably take about another 10 years to get caught up with the costs of the US (right now the gov in Canada still pays 40 to 55% depending on province, they pay a little more for me thanks to me being sick in the head) ... don't know where the US will be by then. I suspect "Only for the Rich" category.

I have a discussion with a friend of mine semi-regularly about the "why" on the 200+% increase in tuition costs in 10 years.  Other than demand, which I can see driving costs up due to limited space in existing universities, what's the real deal behind the nearly overwhelming rise in the costs while the wages paid for the professions have remained stagnant and even decreased?

We kick theories, but never agree on anything precise.

I don't know with the US.
Here it's just regular costs, ie technology, and with the baby boomer's kids out of school now there is less political pressure dedicated to education, more towards taxes. There's also a philosophical question: Is education more beneficial to the individual or to the society? And like typical Canadians we can't make up our mind, so we want European style education with American style financial support.

[Cain]

4/10 students who do A levels in the UK go on to University.

That is, if you consider the standard 3 year BA or BSc at a former polytechnic, half remembered through a haze of binge-drinking and drug abuse higher education....most people I know left Uni no smarter than they entered and with little in the way of any extra knowledge.  I would say in terms of actual education, with a facility that holds itself to high standards, probably one in ten A level students get that - so no different from the 50s and 60s.

In my town, most people haven't been to University.  Ironically enough, the most educated segment of the workforce here are the Polish immigrants, the few that are left - there are numerous teachers, engineers and chemists here in particular.  They mostly do factory and retail work, however.  Even at the school where I work, the teachers and myself are the only staff members with a University education - the support staff definitely outnumber us.

University costs are rising, and fewer places are being offered each year.  As a consequence, overall applications are down, even as many Universities are at full capacity.  With the downturn in the job market and insanely high rent prices, many are being put off, knowing that student loans alone wont support them, and that their chances of scoring summer work are slim.

[Jenne]

The Polish in the UK sound like the Middle Easterners that came here in the 80's, Cain.  Most shopkeepers in Los Angeles were engineers and university grads.  My husband has SURGEONS who can only work as nurses in his clinic because they are from Mexico, and so is their medical degree.  So they perform surgery in TJ and environs on the weekends, and do nursing duties during the week in CA.

[Cain]

Sounds like it.  Only a few have gone into business for themselves, mostly selling Polish food for those missing the taste of home, but most tend to work the shitter end of the job spectrum for others.  In town here, one of the biggest employers is a factory, and about a quarter of their workforce is Polish.  Or was when I was there, at least.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

Personally none of my family has been to University, myself included. Of my high school friends, I know of one who has graduated and is now working in the field, and another who keeps dropping out and going back. Beyond that, I wouldn't put the number of people in my High School class who have continued their education past 10%, mostly due to the town my high school was in offering nearly guaranteed, high-paying jobs at the mine whose company owns the town and trains the schoolkids to love everything about working in the mine.

So in my case, higher education is rare, and doesn't necessarily pay off even if you do it. I make a decent living at a white-collar job despite my lack of formal higher education, but I have no illusions that I got here by any means other than luck (the 13 sacrificed virgins may or may not have influenced it).