Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Colleges Serve the People Who Work There, Not the Students

online.wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 121 posts

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

#61

Post by josh33 »

jessriedel wrote: post #54

All of this outrage just stems from a confusion over the point of private research universities. The Purpose of Harvard is Not to Educate People: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2008/05/29/... State universities, yes, those are supposed to educate people. But not Ivy League schools. Their purpose is to produce new knowledge. The authors of the OP article then conflate two discussions: (1) Should priv…

Um, really ignorant question here, but what book on reasoning can I read to be able to see through arguments and debates like you just did? I want to learn about empirical and normative questions, etc.

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

#62

Post by jbooth »

crystalis wrote: post #52
Aaronontheweb wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are people voting up this idiot? Is it time for yet-another "this isn't reddit" admonishment?

Yes. This isn't reddit. Please provide some rationale for your namecalling, but preferably please just stay at home.

/me watches the comment thread change over time as those who are more motivated by tribal allegiances start to outweigh those who appreciate a fair joke

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

#63

Post by harry »

chadmalik wrote: post #56
harry wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Actually, there are plenty of competent administrators who would probably work for ~ $150K plus benefits (no free house). Having administration who are paid like landed gentry while professors and grad students are paid peanuts and students have to engage huge amounts of debt relative to their expected future earnings IS THE PROBLEM.

This is very true. We don't see too many administrators who are paid outrageously, our athletics department handles all of that. Highest paid state employee for a few years - the ex Coach Mangino.

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

#64

Post by harry »

ars wrote: post #53
harry wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not have any reports to back this up as the transcript from the meeting is yet to be released. I've been curious to dig into the distinctions and locations used for the selection populations. The discussion I paraphrased was made at an AACRO tech conference during a talk about the creation of a federal student tracking database - the speaker was Barmak Nassirian who is a lobbyist in DC for higher ed. I'm going o…

I bet you have some tremendous selection bias going on. I bet they only looked at the english majors who still had a job in the field after many years. If you include all the english majors, including the failed ones who work in a different field then the numbers might make more sense.

Definitely, it's from an AACRO conference which is full of collegiate registrars and provosts. The message may ignore contrary data to get a political agenda across. Until I can review the actual reports the argument is based upon, I can't really say for certain. To truly analyze the information across the nation the feds will have to create a US student tracking and lump it in with K-12 & IRS data. There's a quiet movement to do so - but there's resistance to that idea hence the discussion. Resistance stems from the orwellian aspects while proponents trend along "we spend federal dollars on these diplomas, we need to make sure they're doing GOOD for the society somehow." A figure quoted at the same talk was that we spend 3% of our GDP on education.

I didn't say I agreed with what was said, it's just something that higher ed is talking about at the top of the greater organization and was worth a mention.

Personally I feel state academia is bloated and backwards and many changes need to be made. Admissions should be highly curtailed where the whole nation makes an effort towards math and science instead of 'getting a degree so you can get 10k$ extra starting out.' I'm still not convinced that the federal dollars lost to defaulting loans wouldn't be better spent on k-12 education.

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

#65

Post by [deleted] »

crystalis wrote: post #52
Aaronontheweb wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are people voting up this idiot? Is it time for yet-another "this isn't reddit" admonishment?

Yes. This isn't reddit. Please provide some rationale for your namecalling, but preferably please just stay at home.

[deleted]

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

#66

Post by [deleted] »

crystalis wrote: post #52
Aaronontheweb wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are people voting up this idiot? Is it time for yet-another "this isn't reddit" admonishment?

Yes. This isn't reddit. Please provide some rationale for your namecalling, but preferably please just stay at home.

[deleted]

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

#67

Post by anamax »

noname123 wrote: post #59
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…

This is very true. Most young male engineering grads like to gloat the fact that they make a lot more than their humanities counterparts (perhaps to make up for the misery and lack of female companionship during their undergrad?) But the reality is that if you graduated with a humanities/social science degree from a ivy league or sub-ivy school, you are bound to do pretty well. As opposed to their state school counte…

> But if you are a true-minded humanities major, you might even become a true humanitarian for a couple of years; maybe travel abroad to a Peace Corps or get a masters at a International Studies program. Then only later, you get on the fast-track to a management program at some Fortune 500 to manage some engineers.

Keep telling yourself that.

Only a small fraction of humanities grads make that transition.

Oh, and the Peace Corps wants folks who can actually do things. Food, shelter, etc come from applied technology.

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

#68

Post by Aaronontheweb »

crystalis wrote: post #52
Aaronontheweb wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are people voting up this idiot? Is it time for yet-another "this isn't reddit" admonishment?

Yes. This isn't reddit. Please provide some rationale for your namecalling, but preferably please just stay at home.

You don't see the irony in your comment, do you?

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

#69

Post by harry »

noname123 wrote: post #59
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…

This is very true. Most young male engineering grads like to gloat the fact that they make a lot more than their humanities counterparts (perhaps to make up for the misery and lack of female companionship during their undergrad?) But the reality is that if you graduated with a humanities/social science degree from a ivy league or sub-ivy school, you are bound to do pretty well. As opposed to their state school counte…

Ahhh this is one of the issues I've heard tossed around - what makes for a successful individual post graduation? How can we measure it?

The feds are putting in place systems to track income as the best metric. But... I hesitate to call a 100k$ rockstar EE major ten times more successful than a rockstar chem e doing water purification work in Guatemala for 10k$ as a humanitarian.

Post reply on HN