1/ STEM people like to think impossible student debt burdens are self-inflicted by narcissistic art history types. This is self-serving bs.
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2/ While data do show STEM degrees have better ROI, even doctors, lawyers and engineers can end up in deep shit by making ONE bad decision
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3/ It takes a decade of experimenting and trial-and-error today to find your "product-market-fit" in the economy
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4/ In a creative-class dominant economy, you can't invest in humans like pieces of equipment for which you're predicting demand 40 years out
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5/ Both neoliberalism, progressivism share a single existential concern today: investing effectively in humans. Both respond with hypocrisy
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6/ College education choices are where these two hypocrisies meet, creating a perfect storm of stupidity
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7/ The conceit of neoliberalism is that 19-year-olds can place error-free 40-year bets and deserve only debt-funding, bearing all the risk
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8/ The conceit of progressivism is that education choices are human-dignity affirmations for which societies should shoulder all risk
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9/ What when this thing melts down? Neoliberals will want the banks bailed out and the debtors abandoned. Progressives will want a jubilee.
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10/ Post-secondary education should be managed as equity rather than debt, with risk distributed across individuals, institutions, society
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11/ Every human should be considered a startup of unknown future economic value at 14, not a priori a net asset or liability in NPV terms
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12/ This will of course be wrong at the margins. Prior odds for/against certain people becoming net assets/liabilities may be huge
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This would require a profound reduction in self confidence levels for many 19 year olds.
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it can hurt or help self-confidence depending on how/what expectations are created, managed, what they feel they're being held to
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as usual I find Belgium illustrative here. university is cheap and easy to get in to, but classes are brutal and weed people out early.
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that said, washing out of uni isn't a career-killing experience; the community-college equiv. is practical and a lot of people do it
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