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Even during a crisis, colleges abuse their economic and reputational privileges

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Re: Even during a crisis, colleges abuse their economic and reputational privileges

#71

Post by DeathArrow »

mikeatgl wrote: post #12
fastball wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US is 72.4% white. You would then expect there to be 27.6% non-white students at any particular institution, assuming no racial discrimination, etc. So then why is 40% non-white a desirable outcome? I thought the point was to compensate for exclusion / marginalization / discrimination, in which case the target should be that aforementioned 27.6%. EDIT: since many people are replying to me saying that using the na…

"The White, non-Hispanic or Latino population make up 61.3% of the nation's total, with the total White population (including White Hispanics and Latinos) being 76.9%." - Wikipedia "White alone, not Hispanic or Latino, percent: 60.4%" - census.gov

But asians are in same boat as whites, lumped together in by the diversity promoters.

Re: Even during a crisis, colleges abuse their economic and reputational privileges

#72

Post by MaxBarraclough »

I'll zoom in on the diversity point, but I realise it's not the whole focus of the article.

Seems to me the real point here is both blindingly obvious, and for some reason never discussed. Education is a pipeline, and everyone is obsessing over the final stage, forgetting the rest. It's short-term thinking that misses the real problems.

If you want your society to produce successful university graduates from all demographics, you need to ensure all demographics have access to quality pre-university education. As I understand it, this simply isn't the case in the US today. No-one seems to have any interest in improving the state of affairs. (Perhaps because it's less glamorous than talking about universities?)

As it stands, the left-leaning suggestion is to explicitly weight the universities' admissions criteria to ensure an increased number of disadvantaged candidates are able to gain admission, despite falling short of the usual academic requirements (branded positive discrimination). A disproportionate number then fail in their studies, as the article says. The right-leaning suggestion is to do nothing at all, as far as I can tell.

Neither is a solution. Solve the pipeline problem. Invest seriously in pre-university education. I'm continually surprised that articles on the topic don't even mention this in passing.

Disclaimer: I'm not an American, I'm not an academic, I'm just a random muppet on the Internet.

Re: Even during a crisis, colleges abuse their economic and reputational privileges

#73

Post by mettamage »

firebacon wrote: post #63
mettamage wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In The Netherlands education is cheap (compared to the US) and there's a test that you're allowed to take when you're 21. If you pass that test, then you can study any undergraduate degree that you want. I know this is the case for Dutch citizens, not sure about other nationalities. The reason I'm writing about this is because this test is not well-known at all. I found it by Googling when I was a student, for fun. A…

In Germany there are, as far as I know, also a number of ways to get an exception. The normal way to attend Uni if you did not get the right Abitur from your high school however is to simply repeat high school from age 18 to ~21. This is called "Zweiter Bildungsweg" (Second Path to Education). There is the colloquium doctum in the Netherlands, but you're still at a relative disadvantage if you're not put on the right…

> There is the colloquium doctum in the Netherlands, but you're still at a relative disadvantage if you're not put on the right track (VWO) as a child. So while the Dutch do a lot of things much better than the Germans, I think this one is only marginally improved.

I disagree. I'm curious what you believe the disadvantage is. There is adult high school education in which you can obtain the VWO level (pre-university level -- loosely translated to English). You're a few years behind, but that's not too much of a disadvantage, unless you live in very poor (unsustainable) circumstances. The issue then becomes simply surviving and doing well academically, that is really tough.

I've seen my family member go through this and the odds were stacked against her. Yet, she transformed from someone who I considered as ignorant[1] to someone who was articulate and quite well-measured. All she had going for her was that her situation was stable. But:

- She had a child to take care of.

- She had a rough childhood and all the educational disadvantages that come with it.

If she can do it, then most people can. A lot of people in her situation miss the drive, or don't have a stable situation.

On an educational/state level, I can't see how the government can improve it, the opportunities are there. There are adult schools, there is a relatively fair entrance test. To make it more fair, they'd need to give disadvantaged youth a break from their abusive parents because that's how ignorance is cultivated in the first place: a fucked up/very toxic family situation. But how is a government going to do that?

[1] Little skills, really strong unfounded opinions, forcing them down your throat to the point of throwing a huge temper tantrum, not curious about anything.

Re: Even during a crisis, colleges abuse their economic and reputational privileges

#75

Post by plausible »

liveoneggs wrote: post #69

> ever more marginal students who stand little chance of graduating > Before their inevitable withdrawal... > ...even larger pool of likely dropouts... rambling mishmash of concepts and overt racism gets in the way of complaining about tuition and crass lack of support for students during COVID here. Oh well.

It's like they couldn't resist saying that those non-white students are inherently less performant. "They're condemned to failure if they get in (look at their slightly lower grades), so it's better not to give them an opportunity at all!"

Their barely contained despise, hatred and anger bleed through the lines. It's funny how decades of racial segregation were simply ignored, almost like diversity initiatives popped out of nowhere in a society that has always provided equal opportunities.

Re: Even during a crisis, colleges abuse their economic and reputational privileges

#76

Post by DeathArrow »

linguae wrote: post #55

As someone who has planned on returning to grad school this fall to finish my PhD in computer science in hopes of becoming a professor at a teaching-oriented university, I am worried about the future of the occupation of being a university professor, particularly from the standpoint of being able to do research. One of the things I wonder about the post-COVID-19 world is what's going to happen to research as a career…

>1. Industry has largely moved away from funding long-term blue-sky research, increasingly shifting toward short-term, product-driven research projects. We have moved from places like Bell Labs and Xerox PARC where researchers had a large degree of freedom to places like Google today where researchers are assigned to product teams (see the paper "Google's Hybrid Approach to Research" which describes how research at Google is operated: https://research.google/pubs/pub38149/)

Industry wants their money to produce other money fast. Maybe having the state sponsor long time research is a better thing to do. In some parts of Europe much of the research is sponsored by the state. I think that's true for China, too.

As for online teaching, I don't think that can be as good as participating in person.

Maybe the crisis will cut just the beaurocrats and live knowledgeable people to do their work.

Re: Even during a crisis, colleges abuse their economic and reputational privileges

#77

Post by no_mercy »

samizdis wrote: post #2

> Almost no college is considering a tuition rebate, which implies that online learning should be valued at the same rate as an on-campus class. Students and their parents may start to ask why they should pay astronomical fees for a campus experience if they can get the same instruction over the web. Prof Scott Galloway's blog (No Mercy, No Malice) recently took a swipe at higher-ed fees and the ever-increasing finan…

Apparently, if one engine of a four engine airplane stops working, the airplane flies 10% slower. But this doesn't mean if all four engines stop working, the airplane will fly 40% slower.

What I am saying is: if a large number of the newly unemployed are not satisfied with their life circumstances in a few months, there could be a complete breakdown of society. It is unlikely the "everything will be the same, but only accelerate" model will play out when the acceleration also depends on the "cooperation" of 10s of millions of suddenly unemployed people.

Here is my counter prediction to the entire article: A lot of prediction makers are going to go back to the drawing board and come up with better models for their predictions, because no model can adequately capture the chaos which is almost guaranteed to ensue now.

Re: Even during a crisis, colleges abuse their economic and reputational privileges

#78

Post by DeathArrow »

battery_cowboy wrote: post #6
aurizon wrote: post #3

Yes, a true racket in Ponzi style, and in Ponzi style, the crash will be huge...

Tech is gonna get hit hard just like every sector, so you better learn how to say that phrase too, buddy.

Every non essential sector will be hit. Tech by large is essential. Beaurocrats are not.

Re: Even during a crisis, colleges abuse their economic and reputational privileges

#79

Post by eulenteufel »

fastball wrote: post #54
eulenteufel wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You will need at least 1k-1.5k EUR net per month, which means earning 2k or more gross. I am currently living as a student with ~ 500 EUR per month from working a student job in Berlin. This is not the most comfortable life, but is certainly is doable. On top of that we have BAföG which, if your parents don't earn very much, can be enough to study or at least be a good support. While BAföG is still some kind of loa…

> I do think that a system where access to higher education is tied to formal graduation sounds fairer than a system where you have to be well off or very gifted to make it to uni. Seems like a false dichotomy.

You can have both success in school and wealth as a filter if that is what you mean, but I don't think that is very desirable outcome.

The other answer mentioned state scholarships, which are offered to gifted and poor students. The options to go to uni are now: - Have parents who can pay for your studies - Be gifted/hard working enough to get a scholarship (I don't know how easy that is.) - Be lucky to get a state scholarship for poor people - Take massive student debt

This still doesn't look very nice in my eyes. Of course I am heavily influenced by my own perspective. I most probably wouldn't have been able to study in the US system. My teenage self was way to inexperienced to even consider taking a massive student loan.

Re: Even during a crisis, colleges abuse their economic and reputational privileges

#80

Post by battery_cowboy »

DeathArrow wrote: post #78
battery_cowboy wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tech is gonna get hit hard just like every sector, so you better learn how to say that phrase too, buddy.

Every non essential sector will be hit. Tech by large is essential. Beaurocrats are not.

A bunch of tech is advertising and shit, there's a lot of techies working in that and other areas. Not all of us have jobs at places where they can weather the storm, remember that. Also, there is a lot of required essential work outside of tech and science, and your narcissism has blinded you to thise workers' value.
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