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The value of a college degree was questionable before the recession of 2022. Take this simple example for a person with a Bachelor Degree in English and ending up working at a museum, library or as an corporate secretary or administrative assistant.
Let's assume Person A began working at an office as an office assistant immediately after high school and made the following wages per hour and put in the following hours per year:
Year 1: $14.50 per hour, 20 hours per week. 52 weeks. Got paid for Christmas through New Year, Office closed.
Year 2: $15.00 per hour, 35 hours per week. 48 weeks. Two 2 week vacations or up to 20 business days off however to use it.
Year 3: $18.25 per hour, 40 hours per week. 48 weeks. Same vacation/holiday time. Took 1 accounting class and 1 typing class.
Year 4: $22.15 per hour, 40 hours per week. 48 weeks. Same vacation/holiday time. Maxed out on pay.
Person B worked a few temp jobs throughout college but their work suffered and they wanted to focus on their grades. Then they resumed worked and kept studying hard and diligently. In the final year they took out a $15k car loan in addition to $10k tuition. In year 2 and 3, they failed a few classes; adding to their accumulated debt. They started their career maxed out on pay. They feel college was worth it.
Person B also spent most of their money earned while in college on parties, presents, gatherings and a 2 week vacation to Spring Break. They knew, they would be able to make up for it after graduation. They were very confident about themselves.
Let's look at the data in Numbers:
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Wow. The person without college ended up getting a $35k car loan in year 4 of employment. To build their credit for a home mortgage, even though they could have bought the car cash and walk out the door with keys in hand, no hassle, no fuss, no questions asked about ability to pay. They have a bank statement to prove they can pay the vehicle if needed.
This assumes taxes aren't necessary. But taxes would not skew the numbers too much in the USA as taxes are required to be uniform and proportionate meaning the same percentage for everyone.
Columbia University which is an Ivy League College has dropped its requirement for SAT scores. This is likely because a lot of very intelligent people opted to go to private universities and diploma mills which have more or less the same or similar academic requirements due to regional accreditation. A diploma mill is a college that accepts anybody and lets people pass or fail out of the program each semester. Regardless of outcome, the school receives their tuition costs for academic expenses, classroom time, school resource access, and professor time. Presumably "they don't really care" if a student wants to attempt to succeed by paying their per semester tuition costs.
Perceptions aside, there are various updates to the college system. Harvard has an online, continuing education, and a campus extension program. Their latest updates allows a bachelor or masters degree, completely almost completely online with tuition costs posted on the website. The only oncampus requirement is a weekend at Harvard in the Fall or Spring, or 3 Weeks at Harvard during the Summer. This is done near the end of the program and other universities have taken notice.
Upcoming post on online schools, lecture halls, university auditoriums, and the distributed campus systems. Its worth noting the emerging Global Campus system and the online accreditor DEAC which has not yet published a stance on regional accreditation U.S. Department of Education degree requirements.
In the USA, the "most prestigious colleges" are Ivy League, Tier 1 State College, Tier 2 State College, then everyone else.
The story on MSN News: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/careersandeducation/columbia-dumps-sat-admissions-requirement-for-good/ar-AA189Vw0
In the USA around a 1400 to 1600 SAT score is required to get into Tier 1 or Ivy League school. However, people have gone to low admission standard schools and obtained similar educations where admission scores are as low as 500 to 600 to get started and there are very few quizzes or exams. Besides tuition, a student must pay room and board, meaning a place to stay. While there are economic thresholds for FAFSA loans, those are more lenient and students can qualify as independent at younger ages. Grants and scholarships are in decline but tuition costs are trending downward and often tied to job role and cost of living over a 10 year period.
Columbia is now willing to accept almost anyone as long as there is room in the class and the teachers feel the student might be a good fit with the university. Other universities however, have expressed concern about the cost of failing out of several universities over various semesters.
Hypothetically, if a professor changes the rules last minute and it is assessed that they likely suffer from an inferiority complex and are over competitive for no reason. In my opinion, this professor may be overly strict. As it relates to the workplace, if a job starts at 6 A.M. and the employer wants workers to arrive at work by 5:45 A.M, then they would most likely require additional pay and advanced notice to schedule those extra 15 minutes. Similarly, if assignments are due at midnight andthey are submitted at 11:59:59 P.M then they are considered timely. If the professor does not follow a similar policy, the students may have several comments made to the administration including allegations of unprofessionalism and belittling harassment. In worse cases, this might end up requiring academic reprieve, a psychological assault assessment, and a possible psych evaluation for the "professor", that includes conduct observation and retraining.
Students should be aware that there is not a valid reason a professor for a professor to engage in this level of hazing, harassment, bullying and academic intimidation towards students that are looking up to them for leadership, mentoring and guidance. It would be considered ridiculous that this type of behaviour is acceptable in a developed nation workplaces or academic environments. What makes it infuriating for most people is that the behavior is coming from a figure of authority and a possible government worker. All public school workers are considered government workers today.
Context to the comments is a story on MSN News: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/this-students-assignment-was-due-at-midnight-they-turned-it-in-at-1146-pm-but-their-teacher-marked-it-late-and-people-have-thoughts/ar-AA17tzYe
Overall, discretion is often positive, meaning that they have an ability to offer additional time for homework assignments, request additional assessment, or provide lists of appropriate tutoring services for their classroom that are within school policy. They also have the discretion to request that a student be transferred to another class or to have their homework graded by a different professor within the same program. Overall, this has to meet professional conduct standards for working adults.
Academic Integrity and Assistance with College Essays. There's a saying that goes its better to fail on your own merit than to achieve by taking credit on someones else's accomplishments. This is because a persons own work can be modified, refined, reworded and phrased to appeal to different demographics, dialects, and cultural groups. For example, if a person wrote an essay for publication in their natural language and received three offers to publish. They would be able to rewrite it for different magazines they had an agreement with. For example, a financial magazine, a technology magazine, and an educational magazine. They would all cover the same content by the same author but they would be worded differently to make the content accessible to different audiences.
College admission prep introduces students to the culture at their desired universities that is acceptable and guides students on vocabulary that may have double meaning or imply a different context than what was intended. In a college admission setting, many essays will be the same; similar to how in a job application many resumes will look alike. The evaluation is on why a student is attracted to a program, what they envision for a career after graduation and how they will contribute to their area of study for the next 10, 15 or 20 years. Very few people can afford a degree with only a 5-6 year commitment after graduation.
CommitmentMany people stay in their career for around 15 years but some start experiencing burnout around 8 to 10 years into their career. With updated programs, the goal is to change or add job roles every 5-6 years and to make a career change around the 15-20 year threshold. The consideration is doing the exact same job role from 16 to 85 and the implications that has for professional and personal development.
The goal with an admissions request is to explain why a person would would fit into a certain career with the credential they are seeking. It is ok to talk about an interest that started at a young age without making that the whole focus of a writing sample provided during admission. Burnout is a topic being addressed already and being able to persevere is a requirement of professional workplaces. A good focus is an overview of modern developments in areas of interest and a brief overview of how those developments can be studied at the desired university. The ppropriateness of this approach will vary by school.
Seeking critique and explanation about the school or industry culture and highlighting academic achievements is acceptable if it is brief and concise. Admissions essays are mostly about the university and not so much about the student. They are often only 1 page single spaced written as a letter describing why the student wants to attend the university, how they fit into the program, and a small blip about related items and activities.
Ghost writing services and large edits to admissions essays are often advised against because they can border on unethical conduct and plagiarism. Delegation is often a process for much later in the university system, if it is necessary.
Grades are supposed to be representative of workplace performance, meaning that the whole point of going to college for a lot of students is to receive good or at least accurate, grades. First time college students view academic programs as being responsible for preparing them for the workforce. Programs are also viewed as an expensive adult preparatory school when compared to on the job training, apprenticeships, or using other financial stability programs that are available in the USA. The point regarding expense is that the other programs usually provide a housing option or referral to affordable housing whereas college is just loans, loans, and more loans. Except for those that do not have a first bachelor degree yet. They get a few grants and access to a small number of scholarships.
That being said, grades are based on a syllabus meaning that a student has a list of assignments with due dates each semester or program term. Those turned in on time and per requirements receive an A those who do not meet the requirement or are late receive a reduced grade. Many universities have a point system in addition to the traditional grade system. A reduced grade does not neccesarily mean B or lower, it can still be an A with less points, with most of the requirements met, or with very few errors. The grade depends on various parameters that are set before the start of class, such as flexible requirements, non-flexible requirements, and weight attached to each grading value. Most college students get A's and B's to remain competitive otherwise they end up with debt, lower wages and few viable employment prospects. Breaks due to exhaustion are recommended to be scheduled at the end of a semester.
As far as going above and beyond the syllabus guidelines. These are some often heard comments:
Consider how a college program might compare to other financial stability programs that people have innovated through an implied understanding of program requirements. Some of these innovations include full time workers pillaging for a bunk beds at a homeless shelter while studying college catalogs and flipping burgers as a side hustle, or getting a low level felony in order to obtain a felony bonding and work training through programs like WIOA, ETPL, or GR/GROW in large metropolitan areas.
Keep professionalism in mind when speaking to other adult workers.
The USA is a developed nation and participates in developed nation financial stability programs with people from other places. Some of these places include Europe and their Financial Safety Net program, and independent worker programs from minority countries where regular work is probably not as often as in the US.
To Summarize, as it relates to job training; if an employer asks a worker to go above and beyond the job description, a frequent response is that the worker needs the employer to go above and beyond the agreed upon pay rate. Other responses include a request for additional pay such as a bonus, a request for promotion or more time off, a request to reschedule, or a request to reprioritize work tasks in order to complete the newly requested work task. The additional time off is viewed as increasing pay i.e. a pay of 50k a year with 2 week vacation compared to a pay of $50k a year with 60 days off plus bank holidays is viewed as a pay difference.
Relating this to academics
A professor outlines how they modified the late assignment policy to make it more work realistic in the middle of a course. Using a work sample, a person showing up at work frequently, most likely won't be given an option to complete a presentation 2 hours before a sales meeting. The person who is frequently late, will likely be given 1 or 2 weeks before a sales meeting to complete a presentation giving them enough time to review, critique, and provide quality work without high levels of anxiety. Modifying this work task policy in the middle of a financial quarter will likely be met with resistance, a request to agree to the terms by the end of the quarter or possibly the next one, an assessment of time schedule, a comparitive work performance, and an evaluation of how the new policy will affect their job role and ability to complete it successfully.
A description of a professors decision to modify a grading schedule in the middle of a semester can be found here:
https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/effective-classroom-management/rethinking-deadline-and-late-penalty-policies-again/
Notification for Discretionary Policy
A student on an internet forum is asking if they should notify the professor of a late assignments even though they have a lenient submission policy. As a point of professionalism its a good idea to send the professor an email that is causaul in tone: hi professor, submitted the assignment to the assignments portal. Would I be able to obtain a confirmation that the assignment was turned in before the answer key was posted?. Some professors may find this excessive once the policy is fully implemented and its a good idea to request the correct communication policy near the start of the class or when the first late assignment is submitted.
Relating this to work
At work, a lot of employers have soft deadlines meaning that if they say Wednesday they usually mean no later than Friday. No later than Monday however, means Wednesday for sure. A professor acts as a supervisor and time management based on worker, or student, performance is part of a supervisory role, and their performance review.
Its important to remember that policies on dismissal are to be uniform and nondiscriminatory. This is an HR question. Most people are busy with their own schedule and may not have time to review a task requirement the minute it is done. If there is an issue with several tasks that took 2-3 weeks to address during a meeting, they will often provide an updated schedule to allow time for correction and a due date for when they may be expected to be caught up on missed assignments. Regarding late assignments, professional ettiquette allows sending an email after an assignment or task is late: hey boss, did not get a chance to complete this, task or assignment, last night. Sending it over now, its a bit late.. Note that established policy will dictate the response and they are not required to make accomodations beyond the established policy. For example, that may have been the evening they were going to work late to grade everyone's assignment or complete the workplace performance review.
Time management and professional communications are part of supervisory qualification processes. Supervisors are able to measure group performance and response times and they will make adjustments based on the group or teams ability to complete agreements. The goal is try to be on time as much as possible but most workplace environments have eliminated most deadlines since 2010. Things most often run ahead of schedule to account for emergencies and time off with the exception of taxes and financial reports.
Note. Internet forums are most often read only with the exception of self posted content. They do use lawyers to evaluate copyright compliance. Many people have minimized the total number of internet forums they participate in simultaneously since 2014 due to time management. The recommendation is to participate in less forums more often instead of more forums less often.
Its a good idea to be aware of the type of forum a person is visiting.
Internet interactions and socialization is considered to be healthy, even if it is occasionally negative or in breach of required conduct. Participating without worrying to much about data retention or copyright compliance is encouraged in a limited or moderated format. Beginners also need places to post content, request peer review, are start discussions about workplace topics. They often will not have an experienced and professional legal skillset yet.
Hint: There is advice about not posting work diagrams or schematics on any forums, chat rooms, or social media, and to let marketing or sales do that.
In 2014, there were over 7,000 colleges and now there are about 3,500 ranked universities. The numbers vary based on a lot of factors and Department of Education College Scorecard a searchable database. Here are some important data statements:
Will half of all colleges shut down?
The cost of a bachelor degree in the USA is about $40k to $50k. If a person only has work prospects of less than $50k and the degree will get them to a job that pays $80k to $135k then it might be worth it if they have good enough grades to complete the program and be offered ongoing work. People making less than $35k a year job and who will spend 5 years getting an associate or 7 years getting a bachelor degree will be more heavily scrutinized for workplace performance when they start their first professional job.
Attending mostly to audit classes and achieving bad grades will most likely be assessed as being more suitable for work training programs and enrolling in pass/fail classes at a community college.
Work training programs and assessments through American Job Center, the majority vote, work focused financial stability program for the USA; might leave participants who are unable to meet minimum school performance requirements, in a better financial situation. This helps with the United States regaining and maintaining its developed nation status.
A primary goal of socialization through academic programs is best suited for community college or MOOC. Free and low cost courses with a pass/fail grade or no grade at all are excellent for socialization and friendship requests. They also help with subject or topic assessment. For example, enrolling in a MOOC and deciding the course is too hard, boring, or not interesting preserves limited Pell Grant money, conserves the requirement to take out a student loan, and minimizes financial costs for non interesting classes. Free no grade courses or low cost pass/fail courses also help with personal development and can provide conversation pieces about personal goals, interests, and assessments.
College costs have both financial and time management considerations for most people
Financial Considerations
Loan interest can not only accumulate during deferment, the loan can completely default in a bad economy. People have apparently had loans in deferment for nearly 20 years. This is not a success indicator for college programs and it negatively affects the entire school that the student attended. It shows that the student does not understand borrowing or or how debt accumulates through interest charges. It also makes the United States look bad with Central Bankers and casts doubt on the quality of financial information they are providing to its citizens, residents, and inhabitants. The Federal Reserve is often viewed as the most likely responsible party for the cause of student default.
A recent development in fiancial responsibility is an evaluation of not zeroing out debt on a regular basis. While not having a debt go into collections or a repossession status, i.e. default, is commendable, not paying the debt at all makes the person look financially illiterate or like they are committing intentional fraud. This affects the persons school, employer, and local policy makers.
A protest developed where students take 1 college course at a time so the loan is put on deferment for the current enrollment period and they intentionally take low paying jobs after going to college so they won't have money left over for student loans. While this was perceived to be smart and financially savy by the students, it was assessed as bank fraud and possible intellectual disfunction by unbiased policy makers. There was also an assessment of passive aggressive resentment directed at their local governments.
A consistent theme of not zeroing out debt regularly can also cause problems with economic assessment within a region, area, state or nation. The reasoning is that approving debt without viable economic activity is irresponsible and negligent, if the group of people accepting the loans is a specific demographic and the policy maker knew they had no means to make timely remittance of payments, additional allegations can result during a hearing.
Forbes Student Loan Debt Statistics
https://www.forbes.com/advisor/student-loans/average-student-loan-statistics/
Student Loan Default Rate - Does not include perpetual deferment
https://www.bestcolleges.com/research/student-loan-default-rate-facts-statistics/
College is viewed as one of the 3 industrial complexes that the government uses to churn money in the USA. The other two are prison and military. The theory is that the government allows the schools to charge students more than the market value to attend college. Then the government pays the schools a big portion of tuition for various reasons, then the students write off the interest on their taxes, and the government ends up with no money to pay their taxes, this however provides the government funding to pay for college for all kinds of people in need. Money they will likely never get a payment for and will remain out of the US Governments bank account. The perplexity still creates additional funding opportunities for the government by solving how to make participants more financially savvy and it incentivizes people to do so by allowing them attend college on a loan where it is permissible to write off the interest on their tax forms.
The similarity in prisons is seen through a remarkable perception. The police are paid to put people in jail on a quota. If they do not do so, they will lose their job and be deemed financially inept in contributing to their organizations. The courts are then paid to conduct the hearings where it will be determined that the prisoners will remain in jai. This allows the prisons make a lot of money, not only from required salaries and equipment costs, but from construction contracts and from funding to keep people in jail while completing their sentence. They additionally get family members to purchase food items and conveniences through a monthly ordering kit. Non profits are also paid by trying to help keep people out of jail and completing studies on how to reduce recidivism. Even though low crime rates and low recidivism is encouraged through policy, police have to keep up with their quotas and this creates additional funding opportunities for the government, in comprehending the prison policy environment.
The military, is more complex and difficult to simplify. They get paid to train and maintain a force operational status. They then get paid to help recruits re-enter civilian life through all kinds of funding opportunities. There are also more complex issues, such as the need to return to base if they are unable to integrate with civilian quarters in a loving and peaceful manner. This might require them to sign a new military contract or to live in the infirmary with access to a military grade psychologist until it is deemed they are ready to attempt living among civilians agains.
The cost of college can be problematic, and a proportion of people have considerations besides cost and time schedule. Market values, ability to pay loans, economic assessment, and job opportunities, are seen as valid reasons to decide whether college is the correct financial stability program or not but, people aalso make assesments about prolonged detention without cause, due to constant work and study schedules, that are unrelenting and provide no rest periods. For many, college does not lead to a job acquisition or financial stability because the market is over saturated with similarly skilled college attendees.
How does $40k to $50k for a bachelor degree in the USA compare to Europe?
In Europe, the most popular costs for college tuition are:
€0 per year
€1,000 per year
Less than €5,0000 per year
Europe focuses more on academic preparedness instead of focusing on things like personality and non academic activities that are unrelated to the program. In other words, knowing the content of the courses and degree program are more important than being well liked or having a great enthusiasm for the subject matter that will be studied in college. They care about ability to complete a program and performance level. They leave personal development to other departments.
European Learning Model
https://europa.eu/europass/en/european-learning-model
European Transparent Admission Requirements p10
https://www.collegexpress.com/interests/international-students/articles/campus-life-culture-shock/foreign-universities-vs-us-colleges-what-you-need-know/
Cost of College in 28 Countries
https://www.insider.com/cost-of-college-countries-around-the-world-2018-6#united-states-8202-28
Cost of College in Europe
https://www.topuniversities.com/student-info/student-finance/how-much-does-it-cost-study-europe
$35k total to be paid at $466 to $900 per month in less than 10 years with a preference for 4-5 years. Work costs to include payment for a professional home and luxury vehicle in addition to savings, retirement, insurance, vacation, clothes, food, utilities, and ongoing medical costs. To be marked as financially stable as soon as possible
On average college graduates claim to be able to afford between $250 to $325 a month for student loan payments and would prefer to not to pay the loans for more than 5-6 years due to interest charges. This gives a college program a value of approximately $30k to $39k for first time attendees including all educational costs. Beyond this value, an additional level of education is required in economic assessment and financial stability requirements.
College is not currently recommended for jobs where a person can receive job training or apprenticeship through a different program because they will end up like Person B instead of Person A after 4 years of school and the wage differences afterward will be minimal to non existent. The current job training and apprenticeship programs have been updated to reflect college perceptions and actual environment.
For high paying jobs it is not recommended to enroll without being able to achieve a grade point average above 3.25 to 3.5 because below 3.0 you will increase the probability of having a financial situation similar to Person B. Programs vary in GPA requirements. Currently the lower requirement for GPA is 1.8, 2.5 or 2.8 with 2.8 being considered good and similar to a 3.0.
It is also currently desired to drop the length of study for PhD to 4 years from high school diploma. This is necessary to achieve the actual work qualificaton for roles like doctor or lawyer and maintain interest from new workers that are interested in and potentially qualified for the job.
Advanced to expert work requirements can often be achieved at a much faster pace than the same or slightly more difficult requirements when compared to requirements that are approximately 15 years old. This is because each generation of humans can memorize information and discover why it is the correct conclusion rather than going through lengthy learning and experimentation processes where the correct or most likely conclusion is already known. These frees up their time to learn about and experiment on things that are still unknown to the entire population.
A request from those interested in college programs for financial stability is to use better work and study plans that are time efficient. They perceive that achieving the same requirements, on a different time management plan would make it possible to complete educational requirements for PhD in 3-5 years for high performing students with no previous college experience. It has also been assessed that average performers would not need more than 5-6 years to complete a phd. They find it intriguing that a PhD would be required for a large portion of workers and and theorize about potential human progress under these hypothetical conditions. An associate or bachelor degree would be estimated at 1.25 and approximately approximately 2.5 years of study respectively, under these theoretical conditions.