Comment by scarface_74

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”