Comment by scarface_74
20 days ago
Instead of going through the scavenger hunt, quote the numbers you believe support your viewpoint.
But just looking at one source it says no community colleges were represented and 60 private colleges and 12 public colleges were represented.
That automatically skews the results to more privileged people who can consider it an outlet to “be a better person in the world and mommy and daddy can support me while I get my unpaid internship in NYC and then become a journalist who can’t support myself” over the people who will eventually have to depend on themselves to exchange enough labor for money to support their need for food and shelter.
https://www.acenet.edu/Documents/HERI-TFS-Brief.pdf
Also notice that 80% went to college to get a job. Where is the related statistic that poorer people spent money and time to go to college without the expectations of getting a better job 50 years ago?
>quote the numbers you believe support your viewpoint.
HN guidelines expect intellectual curiosity, not spoon feeding (maybe that's also a change in cultural norms). I've already clearly described the trend and given you multiple avenues to look at the data, if you were curious enough to do so. If it's not apparent, the two goals are not mutually exclusive. Figure 14 of the previously mentioned paper gives you the numbers:
-In 1966,about 85% said developing a philosophy of life is a priority, while about 42% said being very well off financially was a priority
-By 2006, nearly 75% said being very well off financially was a priority while developing a philosophy of life dipped below 50%
In other words, priorities inverted.
>That automatically skews the results to more privileged people
The authors took measures to control for "more privileged" students when comparing public/private data. From the paper:
"By disaggregating CIRP median household income by public and private institutions and comparing each set of reporting students, we are able to tease out the differences in parental income over time relative to each other and relative to the national median household income"
>Where is the related statistic that poorer people spent money and time to go to college without the expectations of getting a better job 50 years ago?
Note the paper also discusses how the relative wealth of parents of incoming freshman has increased. Implying poorer students were a larger share of the student body at the time when developing a philosophy of life was a more dominant priority.
You should read the report and look at the data. It's rare to find longitudinal data that spans so many decades.
I've already clearly described the trend and given you multiple avenues to look at the data
You have described the trend with no evidence that people have someone overcome their need for food and shelter with no concrete data and just to look it up.
HN guidelines expect intellectual curiosity, not spoon feeding (maybe that's also a change in cultural norms)
It’s also the norm to back up your assertions with citations and quotes.
And you are cherry picking something that doesn’t support your evidence of something obvious - most people need to work to eat. There is a difference between “building wealth” and not being homeless and hungry. Poor people without the support of mommy and daddy must focus on the very bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
You did say 40 years ago
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/beyond-the-countercultur...
Notice that before the 60s, neither the poor or especially minorities had access to the schools that were populated (and surveyed) by people who saw college as a way to obtain “self actualization”
Also notice it was in the 60s when schools became accessible to people who weren’t in a high income household and had to stay at home. These students were also more interested in getting better jobs
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/286516315_The_Rise_...
And family background - ie people with money was the main determinant of people getting into college before the 1960s
https://lhendricks.org/Research/borrowing/paper.pdg
It has always been people who knew that they weren’t going to be homeless or hungry that could afford to think about higher levels of needs like “self actualization” could focus on that over “I need to get a degree to make sure I’m not homeless, hungry and naked”
You think people are going to get in tens of thousands of debt, without the support of affluent parents as a back stop aren’t mostly concerned about getting a job to pay off said debt?
Those opportunities simply weren’t available to poor people before the 60s. I bet you a paycheck they never surveyed HBCUs in the 60s in the south where attendance was by people trying to deal with and escape the limitations of the Jim Crow south.
And the entire purpose of the GI bill was retraining so that ex military could get a job.
And even then the survey was skewed because an entire class of people who would have gone to college to get a job were excluded
https://www.npr.org/2022/10/18/1129735948/black-vets-were-ex...
Of course if you exclude people who need college to get a job from going to college in the first place and then there is a big influx of people going to college to open of doors, you’re going to get more people saying they see college as a way to have a better life.
They aren’t going to get a Journalism degree and then do unpaid internships to “pursue their passions”