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

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

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Post by alistairSH » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 9:11 PM UTC

tengbretson wrote: post #535

mikeg8 wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So students remain undecided as long as possible to enroll in as many undergrad classes as possible? your proposition makes no sense to me. I believe as an 18 year old, you need to begin seriously taking responsibility for your decisions, and if you choose to go to school, you absolutely should pay for it. the cost argument is totally separate, colleges should be much more affordable IMO, but there shouldn't be free…

I guess what I said was too ambiguous. What I meant was that undecided or undeclared should not even be allowed to go to university

I'm not sure I agree with that. I was undecided for 2 years (of the typical 4 at a US institution). It wasn't a problem and didn't cost me anything. Expecting an 18 year old to commit to a program seems a bit excessive (yes, we do it for professional programs like nursing and engineering - but not all students are the same, both of those programs have high wash-out rates, and at least with engineering, if you get a job doing other things).

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

#562

Post by jimbokun » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 9:13 PM UTC

abnry wrote: post #374

gwd wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He had some massive college bills too and i didnt understand how those worked, but you cant get rid of them like you can a car loan. This is the thing that is really the most shameful and outrageous thing about the US system. Our entire K-12 educational system and our culture is set up to paint a college degree as a ticket to "the good life". Then an 18-year-old, potentially with parents who aren't great at math bu…

The government will give out a loan to students for basically any reason, as long as their family doesn't make too much money. Think about the insanity of that kind of investment practice. No "business plan", no estimates of ROI, no collateral, little to no grade submissions. It's a bad way to invest. If a student is going to get a loan, what I think the government and banks should do is require them to file a propos…

Sounds good in principal, but would require a very large investment in a bureaucracy to carefully evaluate and vet the load applications of every student in the country.

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

#563

Post by SketchySeaBeast » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 9:13 PM UTC

irishcoffee wrote: post #548

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not at all, but having someone who can provide context sure helps with a lot of works - often these works are building on centuries or millennia of thought that they may assume you're aware of and that help place the arguments. Again I ask, given that textbooks exist, can you make the argument that STEM is any different?

As a STEM major at a large public university, my classmates and I decided that at a meta-level, STEM majors learned how to learn new and complicated things quickly in order to get good grades in classes. Also, as a STEM major, I found attending class less than helpful most of the time. I do remember spending quite a lot of time in either a computer lab or in the library fighting my way through problems. Math, physics…

> STEM majors learned how to learn new and complicated things quickly in order to get good grades in classes.

That's a skill that the liberal arts pick up as well.

> I do remember spending quite a lot of time in either a computer lab or in the library fighting my way through problems.

Will did that all on his own, without the need for a college. You're also describing a technical institute.

I don't see any skills there that really require a university either.

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

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Post by eldavido » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 9:13 PM UTC

yellow_lead wrote: post #533

eldavido wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have this evolving metaphor of the US as a financially overextended household or business. We've lived large since WWII. Bought new cars every few years, built the suburbs, provided quality education to a lot of people, etc. Is it all that surprising that people want to "go back" to this? For many people in the US, it was GREAT. But it's all been at great cost. The '60s through the '90s were a time of huge debt acc…

> Now we get to pay for it. Partly that means higher taxes, so we can finally properly fund social security and medicare, and repay the literal trillions of dollars we just borrowed in the past few weeks. Sounds like a great deal for those who were alive then. I don't think it's as simple as you suggest.

I'm not saying borrowing for the stimulus was necessarily a bad idea. Only that, unless you think the current level of debt is either sustainable long-term (maybe?) or that it can continue to rise, that the only rational conclusion is that our material standard of living has to decrease. That seems to be the only rational conclusion when you see 25% increases in US national debt in an environment where GDP is growing 1-2%/year.

We've made a lot of "promises" in this country in the past 50 years. Senior healthcare. Education. Old-age pensions. Government worker pensions. Being the world's police force. I'm only saying that if you take a hard look at all this, and we can't or won't continue to afford it, some things have to be cut. Will it be four-year college for everyone? Or will it be granny's healthcare? Anyone who says "we have to continue to do all if it" is just kidding themself. We just don't have the money.

I'm not long-term optimistic about what it means that the US isn't funding NATO as heavily as it used to be, but I do have to give Trump credit for making this a kitchen table issue. Being the world's police force is damned expensive and I wouldn't mind if we cut that back a bit if that's what it takes to balance, e.g. social security.

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

#565

Post by pfdietz » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 9:14 PM UTC

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #189

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…

>colleges won't reduce their rates nor increase their scholarships, they would just be completely out of reach of poor and middle class students. If you let that run its course for a couple years then either the employers will have to relax their degree requirements or colleges will have to relax their price requirements. It'll be a game of chicken.

Do employers have degree requirements? A 1970 SCOTUS case put strong constraints on what employers could require, at least with respect to high school diplomas. The same logic would apply to college degrees. Unless a direct link to a job (not just a general linkage) could be demonstrated, if there is a de facto racial discriminatory effect (and there would be, just from different rates of graduation from college) then the requirement would be illegal.

I've been waiting for someone with a bone to pick against higher education to file a lawsuit over this. It could devalue college degrees.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co.

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

#566

Post by btilly » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 9:15 PM UTC

irishcoffee wrote: post #521

btilly wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is to demonstrate that if a fictional character in a work of fiction does X and it works out, that does not serve as evidence that a real person doing X will work out in reality.

You can't read a book and understand it unless you pay someone to sit in a class and tell you how to think about what you read?

Do you understand the distinction between "does not serve as evidence" and "serves as evidence against"?

Now in fact it is possible to learn from self-directed study. But your odds of learning are massively better when you get to ask questions, test your understanding by talking with others, and have your ability to explain your understanding graded.

Which means that, on average, people get more value out of going through a book in a classroom setting than they get by reading it on their own.

Whether that is enough value to justify tuition is another story entirely...

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

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Post by ZoomerCretin » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 9:15 PM UTC

LudwigNagasena wrote: post #492

jedberg wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is that bad? It depends on your point of view. Should college be a trade school or should it stick to it's roots of broadening one's horizons? I found my philosophy classes quite enlightening. They were required for my degree in CogSci. If my school didn't have a philosophy major, it wouldn't have a philosophy department, and I would never have had those classes. Also, there are some majors that lead to professiona…

The problem is that universities are neither trade schools nor a place to broaden your horizons. It is a way to get a credential that you can use to signal your worth on the job market. If testing your skills was done outside of school GRE-style, would all these people who pay many thousands of dollars to get a diploma pay so much? I really doubt it.

>It is a way to get a credential that you can use to signal your worth on the job market.

What a sad state of affairs we find ourselves in that this attitude is common.

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

#568

Post by Upvoter33 » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 9:16 PM UTC

Not all colleges are the same. For example, at the UW-Madison, over half the students leave with do debt at all. There is a Bucky tuition promise so that any low-income person will have college paid for in entirety.

All of the negative comments on here treat "college" as if it is one unified thing, when in fact the experiences across institutions (both educationally, as well as financially) are quite different.

All of that said, to those who say "free college": try telling that to a person in the middle of the state, who has never been to Madison, has never had a kid go to Madison, and who has to pay their tax dollars to support the University. It is a hard sell. Sure, it'd be great if people were willing to support colleges so that they were free. But the taxpayers, by and large, aren't.

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

#569

Post by slg » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 9:16 PM UTC

dabbledash wrote: post #528

slg wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think we should invest in public colleges (increasing supply) and stop subsidizing loans with special bankruptcy protections and federal money (reducing demand at higher price points).

Sorry, I phrased that last comment incredibly poorly. I was referring to the supply of financing which in turn impacts demand. When the demand curve shifts, they supply being provided by colleges decreases. The overall amount and quality of education is not something we want to be decreasing.

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

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Post by freeone3000 » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 9:16 PM UTC

eldavido wrote: post #547

rch wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we could train students to be much better at evaluating such a bet Maybe... but we could definitely alter the nature of risk involved. Why not reduce cost of tuition (e.g. <$1K/semester), while raising the bar on academic rigor as a means of controlling demand?

This is probably what's going to happen, but only if we take a LOT of human labor out of it. Either that, or accept that every class will be huge (200-500 students) with minimal attention given to students, no office hours, and low-paid labor doing all the grunt work (grading, answering questions) I see a lot of parallels to medicine here. Both are highly regulated and seen as a "right" we ought to fund. Maybe, but u…

College at $60k a semester while an adjunct earns $28k a year and somehow this doesn't result in a 1:1 student:teacher ratio means someone's skimming off a ton of money.