31–34 of 34 posts
Some great programs are reasonably priced. One example that HN readers may find interesting is Georgia Tech's online graduate CS program. For roughly $7,000, you can get a CS degree from a top 10 school. http://www.omscs.gatech.edu/
How do employers view this program? Are they starting to come around toward online degrees or are they still looked down upon?
"public higher education in this country no longer exists." I graduated from a SUNY school in 1992. My tuition was $675 per semester. Fees were minimal. Especially if you lived at home and commuted, or had an apartment. The minimum wage at the time was $3.35/hr. You could work all summer and pay for your tuition and books, and work a part-time job during the semester to pay for your living expenses. I paid for colleg…
Didn't downvote you, but I think your conclusion doesn't match your anecdote. "We really need to increase public funding for education." Shouldn't the conclusion be to lower costs and not increase funding if it's increased 7 fold in a short period?
"We find that declining state appropriations for higher education is indeed the primary driver of rising tuition, responsible for 79 percent of tuition hikes at public research universities [11] between 2001 and 2011 [12] and 78 percent of tuition hikes at public master’s and bachelor’s universities over the same decade. Increased spending on administration accounts for another 6 percent and 5 percent, respectively, at the two categories of institutions, and increased grant and loan aid has had a negligible effect, at most. Finally, the purported construction boom’s impact on tuition has been minimal as well, as we estimate spending on construction has accounted for 6 percent of tuition increases at both research and master’s/bachelor’s universities."
A large part of the rise in costs is due to the conservative political movement. For one thing, conservatives are very hostile toward higher education because they consider it a hotbed of marxist atheism. In fact, one of the founding books of the conservative movement, by William F. Buckley, focused on exactly this point. Secondly, conservatives believe in making government as small as possible, so they have been shr…
The Chinese are beating us because we let them, to the benefit of consumerism, but at the expense of workers. Yes it let's people buy plastic cooking utencils for $2.50 and cheap computer tablets and phones for $70, but it also means unemployment is up, manufacturing is terrible and wages are stagnant since NAFTA was signed.
People continuously spew that unemployment is a problem, when it is pretty much at the optimal level on a national scale. (5% is actually BETTER than 4%).
Manufacturing is only terribly if you buy cheap products, increase what you pay and mfg quality will increase too.
Yes stagnant wages are bad, I agree.
>What is a 'financial corporation'? Is there a non-financial corporation that exists?
A financial corporation is one that makes its money from services involving money, such as loans or managing pension funds. I find it very hard to believe you didn't know that.
>How have universities abandoned education to favor entrepreneurship?
They put the focus on hiring non-teaching staff, earning money from patents, and forming profit-making partnerships with corporations, and neglect teaching, such as substituting low-paid adjuncts for regular staff. I find I hard to believe you didn't know those changes have been going on.
>How were universities previously not like businesses
For centuries, since their founding, universities saw themselves as engaged in a service to society, like churches or charities, and university presidents earned a modest middle class living. It is only within recent decades that they decided to maximize cash flow. You really didn't know that?
>how do student loans - which have existed for quite some time - make them be 'be like businesses'?
Students become like customers. The goal is to get as much money from them, and loans make this easier.
> If the axes for conservatism are democracy, the free market and religion, where do people who only care about 1 or 2 of those items fall?
They attack the universities for only 1 or 2 reasons.
>Since college enrollment is rising significantly, how is it keeping people out of universities?
Conservatives have conflicting goals here. Because they think universities are hotbeds of marxism, they want to keep students out. Because they see them as recently becoming hotbeds of entrepreneurialship, they want to support them. Besides, conservatives, fortunately, are not the only factor at work.
I take it you are a conservative. Why don't you say what you think of universities today, like how they are good or bad?