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

Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ about education

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

511–520 of 848 posts

Re: Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ about education

#511

Post by jimbokun »

runawaybottle wrote: post #7
xhkkffbf wrote: post #2

I wish I could be more sympathetic to the college industrial complex, but they've been treat us poorly for years. Yes, I know it's our fault for demanding gold plated educational experiences and then going into crazy debt to finance it. But who wants to blame himself/herself? The job can be done better for much less. Indeed, it used to be much cheaper in the past when the dorms weren't so fancy and there were a bazil…

I’m still waiting for someone to explain to me how 15K+ in tuition a year is acceptable. No sympathy here for the college industry.

$15k is a great price, must private universities are far more than that. And public state universities, if you are paying out of state tuition.

Re: Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ about education

#512

Post by fennecfoxen »

jackcosgrove wrote: post #221
jedberg wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All of us should be regularly lobbying our lawmakers to make student loans dischargeable by bankruptcy, just like any other loan. The reason they aren't dischargeable is because what bank in their right mind would give a loan to an 18 year old with no collateral? They only guarantee they get that it will be paid back is the fact that it can't be discharged. Student loans would dry up overnight if they could be disc…

We treat education as a public good. Employers don't have to pay for their employees' educations, and employees can take their skills around with them. Given that banks know their customers need employees they would get around to giving loans out to keep the supply of talent coming. There would just be far less waste if student loans were dischargeable.

Well there's part of the problem. Public goods are nonrival, and education isn't, especially if you want instructor attention and small class sizes.

Re: Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ about education

#513

Post by unexpected »

Macha wrote: post #229
jedberg wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't European colleges the same price as American colleges if you're not European?

Depends where you go. I know we had some Chinese students in my college, they paid €10000 a year, compared to the Irish students who paid €3000 a year. As far as I've heard, US colleges are on the order of $10000+ per semester.

$10,000 a semester is cheap. The current price at the university I attended is $73k a year.

Re: Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ about education

#514

Post by SkyBelow »

teh_infallible wrote: post #264
0xffff2 wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that bad? Humanities departments are already shrinking without any changes because there's just no demand. It doesn't seem entirely unreasonable to me that if you are determined to get a degree in philosophy, which has virtually no job prospects outside of teaching the next generation of philosophy students, you have to go do that at one of a handful of schools that carve out a niche for themselves with a philosop…

As someone who majored in English, I assert that the emphasis on STEM and shift away from the humanities is causing serious problems in our society. Specifically, having a population lacking in critical reading skills makes everyone more susceptible to propaganda, and less able to critique and assess flawed arguments in writing. If you want to know why, for example, our political “debates” are shallow circuses of mis…

>Specifically, having a population lacking in critical reading skills makes everyone more susceptible to propaganda, and less able to critique and assess flawed arguments in writing.

1. Humanities does not teach any sort of critical thinking more than other classes, and if anything I found my STEM classes to teach more critical thinking because of more formal systems of proof or statistics needed to back a point.

2. A very large percentage of the population doesn't go to college. If we wait to teach the basic skills in college, it is already too late. This type of thinking needs to be taught in grade school.

>If you want to know why, for example, our political “debates” are shallow circuses of misdirection and name calling, look at the state of the humanities.

Why wouldn't this be a symptom of the market? There is money to be made in controversy and click bait, and that applies just as well in politics.

Re: Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ about education

#515

Post by gonehome »

ineedasername wrote: post #496
gonehome wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not really the same when the school gets the money either way and it's not clear how the placement rates really translate to good outcomes (it puts the rationality burden on the students which is the wrong place for it and less likely to work for the reasons you describe). Schools are incentivized to not have students fail out and to select hard for students already likely to succeed during admissions, but that…

I think it's more of a problem that the economy simply doesn't need as many people with college degrees as are produced. Even if companies need to filter candidates for competence, they'd still have to do that, and we'd still be stuck with a glut of people with credentials that will go unused due to over supply. I don't have an answer to that. (except that apart from the massive debt problem, I still think it's a net…

College degrees generally? Sure, I agree - the market doesn't need a lot of them.

I think there's a lot of market demand for certain capabilities though - specifically capable software developers.

Maybe there's an argument that there's not enough intellectual capacity to meet this demand, but I think it's more an issue of opportunity (Lambda's student success seems to be evidence of this). I guess I'm not convinced there's oversupply generally as much as there is an oversupply of certain non-economically viable majors (because of this incentive problem).

For the free college, even with those restrictions (which are good), I'd argue it doesn't relieve the incentive alignment problem with the colleges themselves (so it harms potential ISA competitors without solving the underlying problem).

Re: Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ about education

#516

Post by jackcosgrove »

dnautics wrote: post #457
jedberg wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US dug themselves into a hole in the 70s when they disallowed bankruptcies on school loans. That opened up a flood of money to 18 year olds going to college, which in turn led to the colleges massively expanding their offerings. Colleges in the US don't just educate. They are also the minor league sports programs for most sports in the US, and they provide luxury benefits like gyms and movie theaters and so on. T…

I think the US also did some strange things like giving GIs free tuition (not necessarily a bad thing) then artificially supporting those GIs by requiring a college degree as gatekeeping for bureaucratic jobs. If you look around places where there's lots of bureaucracy (like washington dc) there's tons of strange billboards and the like on public transit advertising graduate school (MA and PhD) targeted at beaurocrat…

Credentials are used as a lazy proxy for ability in any number of large organizations all over the world.

Re: Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ about education

#517

Post by irishcoffee »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #506
irishcoffee wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, a comic book hero did comic book hero things in a comic book hero movie. Not sure what point you think you're making.

Well, that just because it's in a movie doesn't mean it's true. Few people would get to any sort of level of understanding of that sort of material just by reading it, and just because a movie genius can do it doesn't mean it's easy. If we replaced all those examples with engineering textbooks, wouldn't it be the exact same, if it not, why? We learn he's an untrained math prodigy later on in the movie, so he doesn't…

So in order to understand something, you need to a.) and then b.) have someone tell you how to think about what you read? While paying them? You can't wrestle with deep and complex topics unless someone tells you how to think?

Re: Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ about education

#518

Post by chrisco255 »

jedberg wrote: post #336
gwd wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The reason they aren't dischargeable is because what bank in their right mind would give a loan to an 18 year old with no collateral? If it's a bad bet for the bank , it must be far worse of a bet for young adults. That's the point -- right now we're essentially suckering millions of naive young adults into a life of wage slavery by giving them a "bet" which they are completely unequipped to evaluate; and many of t…

To be clear, I don't think college should be paid for with loans. I agree with you that we shouldn't be enslaving people. But I also don't think allowing these loans to be discharged in bankruptcy will solve anything (and will arguably make things worse) without systemic changes in the way college is paid for.

In my mind the problem is the system itself was designed for a world that doesn't exist. When the supply of college degrees was low 50 years ago, sure, it paid to have a degree. But now that it has become commoditized, it's not that valuable. There's no supply / demand pricing mechanism to influence a student's major. The cost of tuition is mainly based on an arbitrary credit hour. No matter how worthless a course is for your future, the price of the class is still the same.

I've read this about socialist countries that have free education. You'll have folks with law degrees driving taxi cabs. It's a waste of resources.

Re: Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ about education

#519

Post by smooth_remmy »

SkyBelow wrote: post #501
jefftk wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If it's a bad bet for the bank, it must be far worse of a bet for young adults. That doesn't follow: you could graduate, get your degree, and declare bankruptcy. You're fine, your loan is gone, and the bank regrets their investment.

Back when the loans could be discharged this was not at all common, so why would it be so now?

Because now the internet exists. Back then, probably only a few students knew how to abuse bankruptcy laws.

If bankruptcy laws were abusable by students in the present day, EVERYONE would know how to do it

Re: Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ about education

#520

Post by [deleted] »

SkyBelow wrote: post #501
jefftk wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If it's a bad bet for the bank, it must be far worse of a bet for young adults. That doesn't follow: you could graduate, get your degree, and declare bankruptcy. You're fine, your loan is gone, and the bank regrets their investment.

Back when the loans could be discharged this was not at all common, so why would it be so now?

[deleted]
Post reply on HN