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False Advertising for College Is Pretty Much the Norm

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Re: False Advertising for College Is Pretty Much the Norm

#91

Post by skate22 »

CPLX wrote: post #41
topkai22 wrote: post #36

The real problem with higher education is really how we finance it. Give the lenders the ability to discriminate based on major and borrowers the ability to default easier and all of a sudden you’ve got some banks seriously motivated to ensure students get economic return on their investments. Besides, it just shouldn’t take a decade or more for someone to discharge a bad debt. Student debt seems uniquely oppressive…

Or instead, like most other advanced societies, we could stop trying to quantify higher education in purely personal economic return on investment grounds and consider an educated populace a public good.

I really like CS don't get me wrong, but I would not have majored in it if I could get the same ROI on somthing I enjoyed more.

Re: False Advertising for College Is Pretty Much the Norm

#92

Post by jwally »

The U.S. would do itself a huge favour by allowing student debt to be bankruptable. College prices can rise infinitely because there is an unlimited supply of AAA+ debt to feed it. Drop that rating to reality and investors don't buy the debt, loans don't get originated, demand for college at $250k dries up.

Re: False Advertising for College Is Pretty Much the Norm

#93

Post by alasdair_ »

cptskippy wrote: post #65

It's odd that no one has addressed the issues of the rising cost of higher education. Once upon a time you could work a full-time job during the summer and part-time during the school year to pay for your education and graduate debt free. This wasn't that long ago either, I paid for my college education in the late 90s in cash I earned.

>I paid for my college education in the late 90s in cash I earned.

If you went to a public school, taxpayers paid for a large portion of it.

Re: False Advertising for College Is Pretty Much the Norm

#94

Post by [deleted] »

jwally wrote: post #92

The U.S. would do itself a huge favour by allowing student debt to be bankruptable. College prices can rise infinitely because there is an unlimited supply of AAA+ debt to feed it. Drop that rating to reality and investors don't buy the debt, loans don't get originated, demand for college at $250k dries up.

[deleted]

Re: False Advertising for College Is Pretty Much the Norm

#95

Post by RobertRoberts »

eslaught wrote: post #19
RobertRoberts wrote: post #4

I taught college for about a dozen years (part time on the side), and may get dragged back into again soon. I can say emphatically, the quality of the schooling only helps people who would succeed anyways. Those that won't or can't, no school can help them. There are just too many lazy, unmotivated or simple defeatist students out there. To not be too harsh, there are many students over their head in life (debts, rel…

As someone who spent a number of years doing free tutoring for CS classes (i.e. the kind where you can't choose who is coming in to see you), I strongly disagree with this. Yes, there were students who started and ended the quarter hopelessly overwhelmed. But there were also students who through determination and hard work and lots and lots of help managed to dig themselves out of that hole. Many of those students wo…

>"If you mean to say that they succeed because of their willingness to ask for (and make use of) help, then sure."

Yes, this is exactly what I mean. Success often requires asking for help.

Countless times I tried to help students that really didn't seem to care too much, they just wanted to get through the class. (it was required for the degree)

But I regretted splitting my time equally with people that just wanted to eek their way through, when they didn't even care, and didn't really need my help to pass, just to get a better grade.

Where as I wish I had devoted more effort/time towards students that really wanted to excel, even if their skills weren't great, or their talent was near non-existant.

The students that had a drive and need to learn, but still needed help, were the ones that succeeded.

Half the students were there for unknown reasons and would play games in class. Try and tell me how much I should care that they have run out of time to get their projects done at the last minute?

It's better for them to fail than to get shoe-horned into the next class because I helped them maintain their last minute freakout sessions. This did not help them succeed at school or life.

Re: False Advertising for College Is Pretty Much the Norm

#96

Post by russfink »

The author's position is that the only reason to go to college is to learn academic subjects and obtain a job when graduating. If the same logic were applied to automobiles, there'd be no reason to choose a Lexus over a Nissan. College is about the whole experience: friends, contacts, travel, opportunities, and yeah, for some, it just comes down to wanting to to go to a place that "doesn't suck." As for innate ability - well, students were selected based on the college wanting specific types of students, largely because they want to create an unsuckish experience for the students. (There are unmotivated, immature, and/or improperly-backgrounded people in every class, but is it just a couple, or a majority?)

As for the focused universities, the ones that bill themselves solely as get-smart-get-job/promotion/whatever, and that fail to deliver, those must be held accountable. If I bought a "Cheaperson S Hatchback" and it consistently failed to take me to work, and a significant portion of other Cheaperson owners reported the same thing, then the problem is in the car, not me, and Cheaperson should be held accountable.

Re: False Advertising for College Is Pretty Much the Norm

#97

Post by RobertRoberts »

dagw wrote: post #57
RobertRoberts wrote: post #4

I taught college for about a dozen years (part time on the side), and may get dragged back into again soon. I can say emphatically, the quality of the schooling only helps people who would succeed anyways. Those that won't or can't, no school can help them. There are just too many lazy, unmotivated or simple defeatist students out there. To not be too harsh, there are many students over their head in life (debts, rel…

There are just too many lazy, unmotivated or simple defeatist students out there. That was me for a long time (I even dropped out once), until I took a course from a teacher that actually inspired me in a subject I found fascinating. Next thing you know I had a Masters degree in math.

Which is awesome, congratulations.

Some of my students were inspired in my classes and have good jobs in the industry. They were looking for something, and I had something to offer. I suspect your experience wasn't too different.

Unfortunately, most students don't find what you found...

Re: False Advertising for College Is Pretty Much the Norm

#98

Post by jononor »

jimhefferon wrote: post #87
martin_bech wrote: post #37

I find it funny that these numbers are not available. In our free education system (Denmark), almost all of this data is freely available, also as the government, want students to make an informed choice. So most schools its easy to get graduation rate, salary estimates and even how many from the last class are employed, and how many in relevant fields.

I work at a college and we are required by the federal government to report all kinds of numbers. I know grad rate is among them, and I am 99% sure it is broken down by major. Those reports are public.

Where can I find them? Interested in mining the data

Re: False Advertising for College Is Pretty Much the Norm

#99

Post by CM30 »

Eh, even most normal colleges are pretty honest in their ads compared to game design ones:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAFLfx3mvIg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRWvfMLl4ho

But seriously, the fact of the matter is:

1. Too many people go to college, so its original value (as a status indicator) is now virtually non existent

2. It's too expensive, so unless a good job is a near guaranteed outcome, people will laden with debt after going.

3. Most people and most jobs don't need college, and the push to send everyone to college has led to rampant degree inflation in terms of academic requirements.

The only solution to fix that would be to somehow get employers to stop caring about degrees, to make it less 'necessary' for many people, and to encourage less people to attend for the career 'boost'.

Re: False Advertising for College Is Pretty Much the Norm

#100

Post by jdietrich »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #3

It would be interesting for someone to perform such a study in the UK, which already has a near-perfect and near-complete data set of which schools made an offer to each student. You wouldn't even need any data from the universities themselves: - UCAS has the data for university offers and admissions (including subject studied) - HMRC (UK equivalent of IRS) knows whether you were employed and how much you earned If t…

The Department for Education did exactly that. You can see the median earnings for graduates one, three and five years after graduation, broken down by subject and institution. You can download the whole dataset as a CSV. The data is also available in a user-friendly format on Unistats, the official website for comparing higher education course data.

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/graduate-outcomes-f...

https://unistats.ac.uk/

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