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Colleges Serve the People Who Work There, Not the Students

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Re: Colleges Serve the People Who Work There, Not the Students

#21

Post by mapleoin »

jbooth wrote: post #20
alexandros wrote: post #4

"A glance at scholarly journals or university-press catalogs might make one wonder how much of this "research" is advancing knowledge and how much is part of a guild's need to credentialize its members." A glance? Really? Judging the life's work of a few thousand people who got into academia to do research is easily judged in a 'glance'? It's interesting that some would like universities to be little more than vocati…

It's the WSJ editorial page. Punching hippies is one of their 3 reasons for existence.

Ok, I'll bite. What are the other 2?

Re: Colleges Serve the People Who Work There, Not the Students

#22

Post by harry »

philk wrote: post #17
alexandros wrote: post #4

"A glance at scholarly journals or university-press catalogs might make one wonder how much of this "research" is advancing knowledge and how much is part of a guild's need to credentialize its members." A glance? Really? Judging the life's work of a few thousand people who got into academia to do research is easily judged in a 'glance'? It's interesting that some would like universities to be little more than vocati…

It's a fair point, but he's probably focusing on the arts and soft sciences because those degrees are the most overpriced for the value they deliver. To put it another way, an MIT grad with an engineering degree is going to be much better off career-wise than a Harvard grad who majored in gender studies.

The long term studies of technical degrees vs 'soft science' hasn't been looked at in depth on a national scale with relation to earnings and salary. These studies are just beginning.

From AACRO: after 10 years the earning potential for an engineering degree drops below someone with an English degree. Technical degrees are way more valuable out of the gate while soft science take time to develop.

To put it into other words: where an engineer can make 65k right after graduation an english major will start at 35k. The engineer's salary increases on par with inflation while the english major increases substantially over time and overtakes it on average at the 10 year point. The paraphrased quote from AACROs lobbyist: 'we're seeing through earnings study that technical degrees go stale over the career of an individual, this is shown when comparing the average english major vs the average electrical engineer' There's alot of background nuance (politics) there behind the study but the idea hasn't really been broached before in higher ed. It's really quite interesting to look at on a US scale, but that data hasn't been collected yet.

Oh: I'm not contesting that some soft science degrees aren't total wastes of money. Just that there will always be a place for a gender studies Harvard grad. We just don't need 10,000 of them.

Re: Colleges Serve the People Who Work There, Not the Students

#23

Post by jbooth »

mapleoin wrote: post #21
jbooth wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the WSJ editorial page. Punching hippies is one of their 3 reasons for existence.

Ok, I'll bite. What are the other 2?

Well, the number 3 was arbitrary, but let's say..

2) Spending 8 years advocating "deficits don't matter", then changing their opinion 180 degrees within 24 hours of a new President being inaugurated.

3) Writing screeds castigating liberals for being coastal elitists and out of touch on an iPad from the back seat of the author's car service, while drinking a latte on the way to yoga class.

Re: Colleges Serve the People Who Work There, Not the Students

#24

Post by harry »

RK wrote: post #18

Isn't the old joke that colleges are the only place where the employees get all of the good parking and the paying customers get the shitty, far away parking.

Man, if only that was the truth here at KU. Everyone has shit parking here unless you carry a massive title or tenure. maybe 100 cars total don't have to hike up a hill.

Re: Colleges Serve the People Who Work There, Not the Students

#25

Post by harry »

neilc wrote: post #13
Vivtek wrote: post #6

Oh God yes, I can't agree with this more. My wife worked as an adjunct at Indiana University, killing herself with a 15-hour load for eight thousand bucks while the president of the university, who arguably contributes nothing whatsoever, earned a cool $425,000 and had a free luxury house on campus. This year, she's got a real job (for a year as a visiting professor) for $35K and benefits; it's going to feel like we'…

the president of the university, who arguably contributes nothing whatsoever, earned a cool $425,000 and had a free luxury house on campus. University presidents may well be overpaid, but it is simply uninformed to claim that they "contribute nothing whatsoever." Besides setting the direction of the entire institution, an effective president will raise far more income for the school via fundraising than the cost of t…

This is true, the chancellor/president position really does the full time baby kissing for a University. It's hard to say that's not worth a half mil.

Re: Colleges Serve the People Who Work There, Not the Students

#26

Post by baddspellar »

harry wrote: post #22
philk wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a fair point, but he's probably focusing on the arts and soft sciences because those degrees are the most overpriced for the value they deliver. To put it another way, an MIT grad with an engineering degree is going to be much better off career-wise than a Harvard grad who majored in gender studies.

The long term studies of technical degrees vs 'soft science' hasn't been looked at in depth on a national scale with relation to earnings and salary. These studies are just beginning. From AACRO: after 10 years the earning potential for an engineering degree drops below someone with an English degree. Technical degrees are way more valuable out of the gate while soft science take time to develop. To put it into other…

Do you have a link to back this claim up? I don't believe it.

If you look at PayScale.com, for example, you'll see a ranking of undergrad majors, with starting and mid-career salaries, where mid-career is defined as "full-time employees with at least 10 years of experience in their career or field who hold a bachelor's degree and no higher degrees."

ref: http://www.payscale.com/best-colleges/degrees.asp

English Majors start at $37,800 and get to $67,500 after 10 years. Electrical Engineering Majors start at $60,800 and get to $104,000 after 10 years.

AACRO has an incentive to overstate the benefits of non-technical college degrees, as these are the most common types of degrees, and these are the degrees that are leading more people to question the value of a college education.

Re: Colleges Serve the People Who Work There, Not the Students

#27

Post by joelmichael »

alexandros wrote: post #4

"A glance at scholarly journals or university-press catalogs might make one wonder how much of this "research" is advancing knowledge and how much is part of a guild's need to credentialize its members." A glance? Really? Judging the life's work of a few thousand people who got into academia to do research is easily judged in a 'glance'? It's interesting that some would like universities to be little more than vocati…

A lot can be discerned in a glance.

Re: Colleges Serve the People Who Work There, Not the Students

#28

Post by baddspellar »

alexandros wrote: post #4

"A glance at scholarly journals or university-press catalogs might make one wonder how much of this "research" is advancing knowledge and how much is part of a guild's need to credentialize its members." A glance? Really? Judging the life's work of a few thousand people who got into academia to do research is easily judged in a 'glance'? It's interesting that some would like universities to be little more than vocati…

Some years ago, I saw a 60 minutes episode on issues in higher education. The reporter picked a biology journal off a shelf, read its arcane title, and exclaimed "who actually reads this stuff?" to back up her claim about how useless journals are... as if she were somehow qualified to judge the importance of a paper by its title.

I couldn't help but imagining what she would have said if she picked up a paper titled "A Mathematical Theory of Communication" or "On formally undecidable propositions of. Principia Mathematica and related systems".

Re: Colleges Serve the People Who Work There, Not the Students

#29

Post by ultrasaurus »

baddspellar wrote: post #26
harry wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The long term studies of technical degrees vs 'soft science' hasn't been looked at in depth on a national scale with relation to earnings and salary. These studies are just beginning. From AACRO: after 10 years the earning potential for an engineering degree drops below someone with an English degree. Technical degrees are way more valuable out of the gate while soft science take time to develop. To put it into other…

Do you have a link to back this claim up? I don't believe it. If you look at PayScale.com, for example, you'll see a ranking of undergrad majors, with starting and mid-career salaries, where mid-career is defined as "full-time employees with at least 10 years of experience in their career or field who hold a bachelor's degree and no higher degrees." ref: http://www.payscale.com/best-colleges/degrees.asp English Major…

Does anyone know of any studies that take into consideration labour-force dropout as well? It's a bit less enlightening if you compare the 95% of science grads who are employed doing science with the 60% of soft studies grads (both numbers purely hypothetical), to compare the most career-driven X-students with all the Y-students is unfair to Y-studies.

Tenored professorships are nicely paying, hard to get but exist in every discipline (let's pick on Gender Studies) so if 2/100 GS grads become 100K/year tenured profs and 98/100 opt out of the labour force, you're really measuring the wrong thing.

Re: Colleges Serve the People Who Work There, Not the Students

#30

Post by vondur »

I don' think that this is news to anyone that works in higher ed. I work at a University and its repeated all throughout the campus. Basically administrators want to set up their own little empires on the campus and make themselves seem indispensable. I'm pretty sure things like this happen at most large organizations in some form.
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