Conrad Bastable

Yes they are real, though harder to achieve without something amazing on the student's resume. This article was enlightening for me: https://www.conradbastable.com/essays/the-uncharity-of-college-the-big…

The claim of this article that real college prices are not increasing is at odds with the well-known fact that student loan debt at graduation has been rising steadily, especially relative to income: https://educationdata.org/average-student-loan-debt-by-year There has certainly been more sticker price growth than real price growth due to scholarships/aid but this article is the first I've read to assert that the real price growth isn't there. And I definitely know many people who paid the full sticker price at elite schools (they were lucky to have families who can afford it, so not too much pity necessary). Here's an older but very good article around why colleges raise prices to levels they know they'll need to subsidize: https://www.conradbastable.com/essays/the-uncharity-of-college-the-big…

I found Conrad Bastable‘s essay [1] on the subject fascinating. [1] https://www.conradbastable.com/essays/the-germany-shock-the-largest-ec…

I strongly believe that going to college in the US is a good financial investment and that this will become increasingly true over time. I don’t believe that it’s just, but there are fewer decent jobs for people without a degree every day. That said, everyone should also read this post explaining why college costs so much. It’s probably not what you think: https://www.conradbastable.com/essays/the-uncharity-of-college-the-big…

Agreed. Don't forget the massive implosion of the real estate market 30 years ago that turned a whole generation off of buying property and bankrupted vast swathes of the population. Said "breathless articles" usually just grab some "rate of price increase" chart benchmarked to the most severe recession in recent decades and start celebrating just because Tokyo also has good housing policy. But in trying to advocate for good policy elsewhere, they just end up championing national recession, international stagnation, depressed wage growth, and more. see charts & data etc here: https://www.conradbastable.com/essays/japans-housing-crisis-what-the-y…

If you aren't paying, you're the product, per https://www.conradbastable.com/essays/the-uncharity-of-college-the-big…

>or that the labour costs are too high (also true for Germany, which has a thriving manufacturing export industry) Germany can get packaged cheap labor from East of Europe when they need it. Infact, a lot of German companies have their labor intensive units in East. Only highly automated manufacturing and management/finance and R&D work in done in Germany. Australia doesn't have the same advantage which Germany have had for years now: http://conradbastable.com/essays/the-germany-shock-the-largest-economy…

Schools have all the info and yet they still are more than happy to sign kids into mountains of debt. Nothing would have lowered tuition because it doesn't take all of the money brought in to school the kids, most of the money is going into growing the school's endowment and to maintain their status as a charity so they don't pay taxes. So 58% of kids MUST take some form of aide or charity. And as society has plummeted, more kids are pushed into Uni and therefore tuition MUST be raised to keep the charity status. https://www.conradbastable.com/essays/the-uncharity-of-college-the-big…

Well, is there a psychological factor that makes people disregard observable reality and seek fake safety in numbers? The census data don't show anything of the kind of "doubling" for the average american. The table is "per capita". And even at that, it doesn't take into account the cost of college, house, services, etc. relative to 1970s. https://www.conradbastable.com/essays/the-bermuda-triangle-of-wealth https://www.conradbastable.com/essays/the-uncharity-of-college-the-big…

About colleges... this was posted some days ago: https://www.conradbastable.com/essays/the-uncharity-of-college-the-big…

Look at the working age male labor force participation rate. We have plenty of unemployed, and underemployed workers, especially in specific geographic regions that have proportionally suffered the most through globalization and exporting of domestic production. These places have steadily lost population. Meanwhile, more people have crowded into a subset of metros in US chasing the remaining jobs leading to real estate costs outstripping any potential wage benefit. >costs to shoot up. So what? Henry Ford knew you could pay your workers more and they'd have more money to spend. The losers here will be multi-national corporations and wall st. who won't maximize profits by minimizing wages. My local area has lost many people in the last few decades. The people without good paying jobs don't have the income to benefit from supposed cost savings of cheap imports. If more people, and businesses, see increased production, complimentary business and economic gains will be seen in entire regions who have lost out from globalization. Here's a good article covering the many ways regional economic loss occurs from globalized free trade where domestic production declines, through the lens of German and Chinese economies[0] Here is quoted Chinese economic scholars describing the CCP policy of rejecting the American economic decline from loss of domestic production, in favor of embracing a German style industrial economy[1] [0] "The Germany Shock: The largest economy nobody…

http://greyenlightenment.com/college-a-necessary-evil/ In spite of increased debt and tuition, no matter how you crunch the numbers, college grads--especially 'high-ROI' subjects such as computer sci, econ, math etc.--do better than non-grads. And the gap in wages and employment between grads and non-grads, especially since 2009, is the widest it has ever been and shows no signs of narrowing. In the aftermath of the financial crisis, college is more expensive but also more necessary, partially due to the continued decline of manufacturing jobs, but the failure of middle-class, medium-skill jobs such as construction and auto to recover to their pre-crisis peaks . This guy ran the numbers and found even the worse-ranked college still provided a positive ROI https://www.conradbastable.com/essays/the-bermuda-triangle-of-wealth And this is the WORST university we give a ranking to? A $309,000 estimated return on investment, not-adjusted-for-major. You have to visit Payscale, click “See Full List”, and scroll past 1,752 colleges before you find one that doesn’t have a positive RoI — not-adjusted-for-major.