Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ about education • Hacker News Board

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

#551

Post by WalterBright » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 9:03 PM UTC

gvjddbnvdrbv wrote: post #444

WalterBright wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering that humanities majors tend to believe in socialism does not burnish their critical reading skills and resistance to propaganda. The reality of the history of socialism is one of failure. And yes, I do understand that everyone thinks that those who disagree with them are ill-informed and susceptible to propaganda, and those who prefer socialism will think that of me :-)

Socialism in the form of social democracy has built some very very nice countries here in Scandinavian.

20% of Norway's GDP comes from oil pumped out of the ground and flows to the government. It's enough to cover the deficits of socialism. The others keep enough of a free market to keep things afloat, but are not known for being economic powerhouses. None have tried communal food production yet, for good reason.

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

#552

Post by amiga_500 » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 9:03 PM UTC

kanwisher wrote: post #208

amiga_500 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, financialisation black hole. Cratering living standards, partially hidden by printing ever bigger numbers next to people's house prices and ignoring that they have no retirement savings. Many of the "industries" beloved by this site are showing they are only viable on top of a backbone of "real" jobs like industry and manufacturing. No N95 mask manufacturers, but we can write how sad we are about this on faceboo…

3M one of the biggest n95 manufactures in the world, originated and still has factories in America

Yes and the Greeks invented math, but times move on:

https://www.wired.com/story/decades-offshoring-led-mask-shor...

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

#553

Post by lordnacho » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 9:03 PM UTC

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…

Is it not the case that most people still do not go to university? Then what is having a few humanities majors going to change?

Political debates are a circus because the political system was designed in a different era that didn't have reality shows and endless mind melting entertainment.

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

#554

Post by jefftk » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 9:04 PM UTC

markdown wrote: post #542

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.

Do you know what bankruptcy does? One does not simply declare bankruptcy unless they're willing to have their lives suddenly become much harder and stay that way for a while.

Let's say I've just graduated from college with a degree. I have minimal assets (clothes, computer) and lots of debt (100k in student loan debt). How does bankruptcy work out poorly for me?

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

#555

Post by alistairSH » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 9:07 PM UTC

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #451

basch wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The job can be done better for much less. First and foremost, the lecture part of education is extremely inefficient. I know "watch the video" just doesn't work for some people, but charging for a live rendition of a repeated script, and then not valuing the person who watched the same recording equally, is absurd. Education needs to acknowledge a couple things. 1) Theres probably a "best" lecture or lecturer out th…

> Charging for a live rendition of a repeated script, and then not valuing the person who watched the same recording equally, is absurd. I went to a small college where most lectures had fewer than ~20 students (if that), so I realize this doesn't scale as well to 100-person lecture halls. But, I got a lot out of the interaction in my college lectures. I almost always sat in the front† where it was easy to ask and an…

I was just about to post something similar. I attended a large state U and I got the most out of smaller lectures/discussions than the large classes with 300 students. FWIW, only the most introductory classes had large head counts. Everything 200 level and above was somewhere between 20-50 students (and most had an associated discussion with 10-15 students, usually led by a grad student, but sometimes the professor).

That's where the value in live classes lies - the interaction with peers and professors. Not the listening to pre-scripted lectures.

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

#556

Post by lordnacho » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 9:07 PM UTC

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #460

entropicdrifter wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Philsophy majors are a common target for ridicule, but the fact of the matter is that corporations go out of their way to hire Philosophy majors to be problem-solvers of various types because they essentially have a degree in critical thinking.

They'd be better off hiring people with engineering degrees (non-software). That's applied critical thinking and creative problem solving all in one. I really don't know why there's this insistence that humanities has a monopoly on teaching critical thinking.

What's wrong with software engineers? Surely there's a fair bit of critical thinking involved there, too?

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

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Post by snapetom » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 9:08 PM UTC

czinck wrote: post #59

vidanay wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gotta pay for those basketball and football programs somehow. (Yes, SOME athletics programs are net positive - most are not)

Your source says "athletic departments", not football or basketball programs, which is an important distinction. Football and basketball are the only money-makers (I think hockey or baseball make money at a few schools), and all of the other sports drag down the athletic departments budget. That's also ignoring that FBS is basically advertising. There's been a steady increase in applications (and subsequently an incr…

Boston College received triple their number of average applications the year after Doug Flutie threw his Hail Mary.

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

#558

Post by ZoomerCretin » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 9:09 PM UTC

btilly wrote: post #405

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…

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. And yet somehow banks were happy to do so until 2005. Student loans would dry up overnight if they could be discharged at bankruptcy. That being said, I actually think that's a good thing, b…

> The bulk of their customers are able to pay thanks to loan guarantees backed by special government rules.

Universities are not businesses. Students are not customers. Student tuition was much more heavily subsidized by states, but funding from states to universities has declined in the past few decades. This is the reason for tuition hikes.

In the past, there was an agreement between states and universities: The states will provide a certain level of funding for students, and in exchange the universities will be barred from raising tuition above a very small rate annually. Then some states decided that having a "balanced budget" during all years, including recessions, was better policy than keeping education well-funded. Now recessions cause huge drops in education funding, which are accompanied by removing the limits on yearly tuition hikes.

Because it's generally better to have a more educated population, the federal government picks up some of the slack with grant and loan aid, and banks pick up more slack with private loans to students who otherwise couldn't afford it. Then funding never returns to prior levels.

Stop blaming universities. The blame very clearly lies with states and their asinine balanced budget policies.

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

#559

Post by jimbokun » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 9:10 PM UTC

slg wrote: post #450

dabbledash wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The interest rate would be very very high, as it should be. You can’t on the one hand encourage people to loan money to those who aren’t credit worthy and on the other hand bemoan the fact that people end up with loans they can’t pay back. The former policy is guaranteed to produce the latter outcome. It also artificially inflates the price colleges can (and will) charge. Allowing people to discharge education debts…

Reducing the supply for colleges isn't going to make overall college education cheaper while maintaining the same quality of education. There is certainly some waste in college budgets, but it will mostly force colleges to cut the least profitable programs. Education is a social good. We should invest in it like we do with other public services. It shouldn't need to be profited minded.

> We should invest in it like we do with other public services.

Yes. We should invest in public universities to have very low cost or free tuition, and stop pouring public money into private education institutions.

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

#560

Post by chadash » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 9:10 PM UTC

MattGaiser wrote: post #163

chadash wrote: post #25

I think it's time to decouple education from all of the other things tied to colleges. When I studied abroad in Australia, things like the gym or meal plans were available, but not "bundled in" to your tuition. The idea of tying competitive sports teams to a university would be laughable. We need to remove all of the "excess" stuff from higher education and get back to the core of education and research. Sure, things…

There are schools without all those things. They are just not the ones students choose to attend.

And that's the problem. Malcolm Gladwell has a great podcast about this focusing on Bowdoin college. Bowdoin (apparently) spends a lot of money on luxuries like great food for the dorms, etc.

As a result, the rich kids who can afford it naturally prefer to go to Bowdoin. Now, the school becomes more prestigious because of the rich kids... it's a place to go to meet other rich kids, which builds valuable connections that ultimately help your career. Meanwhile, schools that prioritize financial aid over things like gyms and food go down in the rankings and become less desirable.

Now, this is all fair game in my opinion. The schools are basically turning into country clubs of a sort and I think country clubs have a right to exist in America. BUT... I don't want to see them subsidized by the rest of us. If you are a school and you want to receive state/federal money directly or via student loans and you want to maintain your non-profit status... scale down the amenities.

At the very least, I don't want tax breaks going to subsidize (mostly) rich kids' gyms.