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This Is Why The American Dream Is Out Of Reach

thelastpsychiatrist.com

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Re: This Is Why The American Dream Is Out Of Reach

#141

Post by pjscott »

roc wrote: post #54
lionhearted wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Essentially, a good liberal arts education transforms your world-view of those subjects the same way a good engineering education does. I think most people agree with that, they just disagree that it's worth paying $50/hour to get. Go into any high end coffee place and you'll find someone you can have a good discussion with about liberal arts-related topics. I was talking about Jeffersonian vs. Hamiltonian democrac…

Isn't that like arguing that you can pick up programming knowledge on internet discussion boards cheaper than a degree program? In theory, sure, you can. In your spare time you might run into someone who really knows his shit and enlightens you. But, just as with the coffee shop, more times than not you run into people whose facade of knowledge would shatter the first time you ask a question. Trick being, if you bare…

There are other options. For example you can get a huge number of humanities lectures from good universities online. Try out "iTunes U" sometime if you haven't seen it already; it's got top-quality lectures, but not the discussion. (This discussion component should be cheaper to provide than the whole package. There's probably a startup opportunity here. I don't know where you can get such discussion now, though.)

Anyway, it's a large part of what you'd get in college, free. All you have to do is make a commitment to watch some lectures and study supplementary material if you don't understand something. It's a hell of a bargain.

Re: This Is Why The American Dream Is Out Of Reach

#142

Post by potatolicious »

djb_hackernews wrote: post #127
potatolicious wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not always. I went through an engineering degree and took exactly two non-engineering courses in my 4.5 years - and that was only because I loaded one of them on as an extra credit (damn near killed myself doing it too). The way the college system works today, the "well roundedness" aspects are disappearing, and quickly. Don't blame the schools, blame ourselves - we're the ones balking at paying top-dollar for a hard…

Whoa! really? Which school?

University of Waterloo, in Canada.

Re: This Is Why The American Dream Is Out Of Reach

#144

Post by jazzdev »

cynicalkane wrote: post #132
encoderer wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Hard to argue that price inflation in education hasn't reduced its value. Not its worth -- that's remained or even increased. But its value .

I don't understand the distinction you're making. Did you mean "marginal value" instead of "value"?

I interpreted that to mean

  value = worth - price
So as the price goes up, the value you get goes down.

Re: This Is Why The American Dream Is Out Of Reach

#145

Post by redrobot5050 »

cynicalkane wrote: post #24
yalurker wrote: post #13

Sigh, another blogger trotting out the tired, false cliche that college is useless. From the article: "Were you smarter at 21 post college than your Dad was at 21? And whatever the difference, was it worth the $50k-$200k he paid to get you it?" Yes. Yes I was smarter. And I didn't pay 200k because I went to a state school. I graduated a wholly different person with a completely different world-view and a ton of appli…

I'm rather bothered by all the people knocking liberal arts degrees, in this and other threads. I did go to a school with a reputation for having a hard liberal arts core education, and it turned out to be a great decision. (In retrospect, I now wish I had gone to a different school, but the one I chose wasn't bad at all.) It's hard to explain why it's good to be able to think about these things, but it's hard to exp…

The point is, there is a shortage of engineers, doctors and lawyers. This is why the market pays them higher starting salaries and higher salaries overall. There will forever be a shortage in my field, as current graduation rates go.

On the other hand, there are a glut of "enhanced worldview" liberal arts majors applying for jobs with little to no experience or day 1 vocational skills. They are not failures or cogs -- but from a hiring perspective there is little to distinguish one from another when sorting through resumes.

A liberal arts degree, from an employment perspective, is ubiquitous and a commodity. Specialization is worth more.

If I told members of my generation they could get a job in Pittsburgh, PA starting at $55,000, requiring 36-hour work weeks in 12 hour shifts, with city benefits and pension, and that it started 15K higher than my first job out of college, most would be interested.

When I told them it was working as a Pittsburgh Waste Disposal job (aka Garbage man), most would tell me to kindly fuck off. Their "degree status" is insulted that a starting garbage man will make 20-25K more than them, despite the fact I could never pay them enough to do the job themselves.

Re: This Is Why The American Dream Is Out Of Reach

#146

Post by teyc »

yalurker wrote: post #13

Sigh, another blogger trotting out the tired, false cliche that college is useless. From the article: "Were you smarter at 21 post college than your Dad was at 21? And whatever the difference, was it worth the $50k-$200k he paid to get you it?" Yes. Yes I was smarter. And I didn't pay 200k because I went to a state school. I graduated a wholly different person with a completely different world-view and a ton of appli…

Even Engineering degrees aren't necessarily the solution. It really depends on the times and severity of a recession. I lived in Malaysia through a time when the term "walking engineers" (unemployed engineers) was commonplace.

Lots of stories on the net about rocket scientists losing their jobs, and conducting tour buses.

What about the name of that guy who's preliminary work on bio-luminescence won someone else a Nobel prize, but he himself is now unemployed?

It's human nature to think that we can avoid somebody's misfortune by simply following some known heuristics. It is true only some of the time.

Re: This Is Why The American Dream Is Out Of Reach

#147

Post by Tamerlin »

yalurker wrote: post #13

Sigh, another blogger trotting out the tired, false cliche that college is useless. From the article: "Were you smarter at 21 post college than your Dad was at 21? And whatever the difference, was it worth the $50k-$200k he paid to get you it?" Yes. Yes I was smarter. And I didn't pay 200k because I went to a state school. I graduated a wholly different person with a completely different world-view and a ton of appli…

"Go get a science/engineering/JD/MD heck even an MBA and you damn well better be smarter at the end."

Are you sure about that?

Re: This Is Why The American Dream Is Out Of Reach

#148

Post by Tamerlin »

encoderer wrote: post #124
lionhearted wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Isn't that like arguing that you can pick up programming knowledge on internet discussion boards cheaper than a degree program? Nah, it's more arguing that you'd be better off learning by contributing to Open Source - then you'd get lessons and contacts for free instead of paying a lot of money to get. > The reasonable component in the price of higher education is about the quality of the interpretation and dialogu…

Agreed. Hard to argue that price inflation in education hasn't reduced its value. Not its worth -- that's remained or even increased. But its value .

So, define "value" in the context of an education.

Re: This Is Why The American Dream Is Out Of Reach

#149

Post by Tamerlin »

cynicalkane wrote: post #24
yalurker wrote: post #13

Sigh, another blogger trotting out the tired, false cliche that college is useless. From the article: "Were you smarter at 21 post college than your Dad was at 21? And whatever the difference, was it worth the $50k-$200k he paid to get you it?" Yes. Yes I was smarter. And I didn't pay 200k because I went to a state school. I graduated a wholly different person with a completely different world-view and a ton of appli…

I'm rather bothered by all the people knocking liberal arts degrees, in this and other threads. I did go to a school with a reputation for having a hard liberal arts core education, and it turned out to be a great decision. (In retrospect, I now wish I had gone to a different school, but the one I chose wasn't bad at all.) It's hard to explain why it's good to be able to think about these things, but it's hard to exp…

The folks here are knocking liberal arts degrees because they don't believe that there are any worthwhile careers outside of hacking.

That's obviously false -- there are quite a few non-technical professions out there that are perfectly viable for careers beyond teaching.

For this forum, non-IT related degrees don't mean much, but that doesn't mean that they don't have value in one of the legion of other fields out there.

Re: This Is Why The American Dream Is Out Of Reach

#150

Post by Tamerlin »

endtime wrote: post #97
fuzzmeister wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As am I. A liberal arts education makes you better able to understand and explain the world around you. The notion that every moment of college must be teaching you a skill that you will directly apply in your future career is positively stifling.

>As am I. A liberal arts education makes you better able to understand and explain the world around you. The notion that every moment of college must be teaching you a skill that you will directly apply in your future career is positively stifling. A computer science education is not merely vocational training, as you imply. But theoretical CS is still a hell of a lot more meaningful than postmodern literary theory.

By what standard? And to whom?
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