Colleges face student lawsuits seeking refunds after coronavirus closures • Hacker News Board

Re: Colleges face student lawsuits seeking refunds after coronavirus closures

#211

Post by baryphonic » Sat, May 30, 2020, 1:30 AM UTC

jawns wrote: post #28

The reason there is such a large premium for on-campus education versus online universities is because on-campus education is an experience as much as it is a service. If you're only interested in mastering the content, then online learning may be the place for you. That's why we see so many people pursuing online courses for their master's degrees and when they return to school later in life. They just want the cont…

I used to say stuff like this, but now I think it's mostly a lie I would tell myself. For most people, the "experience" of college/university is basically the a four-year party (or five- or six-...). For those who attend elite schools, they get a networking benefit. Most people aren't learning anything in classes, nor are they learning much outside of class beyond their ethanol tolerance.

I think you stumbled onto a big truth, though: college kids have by and large zero "real world" experience outside of contrived scenarios posed by their teachers/coaches, so college classes can often devolve into the Chinese Room thought experiment with students memorizing the lookup table without having any concrete idea of what they are talking about, based on lack of experience. (When I realized that this was also true for a significant number of the faculty and almost all of the administration–people whose only cultural experience is within academia,–I started treating my time in college more honestly.) I think a better system would be one in which people actually do gain some experience before attending college. It would be much more efficient (working for free as an intern or apprentice seems preferable to paying several tens to hundreds of kilobux to maximize learning during free time).

Re: Colleges face student lawsuits seeking refunds after coronavirus closures

#212

Post by unishark » Sat, May 30, 2020, 1:33 AM UTC

mattr47 wrote: post #186

wasdfff wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At USC something like over 2/3 of kids are on some form of aid.

Aid = student loans.

No they give tons of scholarships and grants which amounts to a lot more than the loans these days. At least when it comes to tuition. This is true for private schools at all rankings.

Jacking up tuition then offsetting it with scholarships is both a bigger phychological drawn for students who end up paying the same, plus gets more money from the small set of students for whom money is no object.

Re: Colleges face student lawsuits seeking refunds after coronavirus closures

#213

Post by stephen_cagle » Sat, May 30, 2020, 1:34 AM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #199

zbrozek wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was obvious while I was a student that the ratio of administrators to faculty was ridiculous. And the growth rate ratio between them was 3:1. At no point was it clear to me what real value they were adding. I was the captain of a more capital and real-estate intensive than average student group, and it was absolutely infuriating to try to figure out how to get anything done. There was always some new bureaucrat co…

That's why companies grow to a certain point, and then start failing.

Fortunately, in the United States we have figured out how to avoid failure by continuously bailing out companies that get too large. So we fixed that.

Re: Colleges face student lawsuits seeking refunds after coronavirus closures

#214

Post by lumost » Sat, May 30, 2020, 1:35 AM UTC

hagy wrote: post #189

darwinwhy wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

College presidents/chancellors don't do as much administrating as they do fundraising from alumni and donors. This is more true the higher up in university prestige you go. The amount of value they bring in from donor contributions far outweighs their salaried cost.

Exactly. University presidents easily pay for their salary many times over just through their fundraising activities. Presidents aren't chosen for their administrative prowess, but instead for their professional network and informal connections. Further, most people that could serve as president could easily draw a much larger salary in the private sector and many were formally C-level executives at larger companies…

No one works in a vaccuum. If students and alumni are paying for prestige, then you need staff to ensure the prestige is maintained and grown. However if students and alumni are paying/investing in education you may need significantly less staff and more professors/teachers.

If you add the staff that a university president brings in to the payroll is the 5 million dollar/year president actually worth more than the 500k/year president?

Re: Colleges face student lawsuits seeking refunds after coronavirus closures

#215

Post by lumost » Sat, May 30, 2020, 2:07 AM UTC

jawns wrote: post #62

jerf wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is, if you're going to fall back on that perspective, Real Life (TM) has all those things too, and it will continue to do so, for essentially free. There will be clusters of that sort of thing somewhere, just as there are "retirement communities" and "bedroom communities" and such. Universities certainly aren't bringing anywhere near enough value for their marginal improvement on those matters vs. what wo…

The counterpoint to your argument is that if it is so easy to create those types of communities for much less money than what universities are charging, why hasn't it happened? I would guess that it's a combination of 1. not being as easy as it seems and 2. network effects. Because of the latter, you would basically have to persuade a large number of students to make the switch at the same time for them to feel as if…

Social acceptability is a big reason. Historically there were many socially acceptable ways to spend your late teenage years and early 20s including

- The Frontier

- Artistic Cities such as Paris/Venice

- Apprenticeships in factories and major industrial centers.

- University

The rise of the middle class also coincided with a consolidation into the University as being the only socially acceptable path. In practice one could probably lose money slower, have new social experiences, and learn more about art/culture spending a year in Brooklyn rather than spending 50k at a liberal arts college. Even in the realm of software development jumping straight to incubators, bootcamps and similar entry-level opportunities may provide better out of class learning opportunities than some university programs for the money and time.

Re: Colleges face student lawsuits seeking refunds after coronavirus closures

#216

Post by geomark » Sat, May 30, 2020, 2:14 AM UTC

naveen99 wrote: post #61

Few people I know with children in private schools(k-12) are planning on paying full tuition regardless of weather the next academic year is virtual or physical...

Same with me. My kid is in an international school. The school offered an insultingly small refund that made a lot of parents angry. Not me personally, because I understand that their largest cost by far is teachers, and that cost does not go away unless they furlough the teachers, which is a big problem since they probably can't get them back when they reopen. Second thing is that most parents depend heavily on the daycare aspect of school which is not being delivered.

Re: Colleges face student lawsuits seeking refunds after coronavirus closures

#217

Post by gumby » Sat, May 30, 2020, 2:30 AM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #201

gumby wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I learned (when MIT shut down my former dorm) that they track the six year graduation rate (doubt anyone is attending all of the six years). That seems more sensible.

When I was in college, there was one (only 1) student who took 6 years to graduate. Students passing by him would often mumble "7 years of college, down the drain!" (I won't spoil the joke, google it!) As I recall, only a small handful took 5 years. This drifting along failing to graduate seems to be a modern phenomenon.

I was class of 1986, graduated 1988 (though TBF I had a full time job in another part of the country for my last two years so taking classes was...complicated).

This is undergrads, I know of a grad student who took 13 years (and three theses he refused to submit) until they handed him a PhD and showed him the door. Obviously in his case he didn't lack brains, just had a longstanding psychological issue.

Even for those who get doctorates, outside a small number of fields (e.g. CS) there's a long, soul-killing gantlet of post docs and RAs before either a position is obtained or you give up.

Re: Colleges face student lawsuits seeking refunds after coronavirus closures

#218

Post by TheSpiceIsLife » Sat, May 30, 2020, 3:26 AM UTC

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #181

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was under the impression remote / online leering was most popular with older learners? Aren’t there schools that specialise in this segment. This post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23353796 mentions University of Phoenix for one, and I’ve know more than a few people here in Australia who claim to have enjoyed their remote / online courses as older learners.

Sure, some folks enjoy them. I'm not arguing this at all: It is just that it is hard to say that folks actually prefer them if they cannot comply with a standard university's requirements - class times, for example. Which really is the reason the colleges would go after older learners. I'm going to guess that there are a few schools that do specialize in this segment - I know Ivy Tech in Indiana use to make an attemp…

Ah, right, yes. I see what you were getting at now. Thanks for clearing that up.

Re: Colleges face student lawsuits seeking refunds after coronavirus closures

#219

Post by p1esk » Sat, May 30, 2020, 3:26 AM UTC

secabeen wrote: post #81

A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #56

Anecdata from my little corner. My 'non-profit' university's president is at 800k, his VP is 500k and multiple other admin officials in similar range. It is hard not to have a bitter taste as they just offered the students $500 grant application for their COVID19 trouble. If there is one good thing about this pandemic, it is shining a light on all this.

And from the other end of the spectrum, at my University of California campus, the top salaries are all in the 300k range, and all go to world-class engineering and sciences faculty who bring in millions in research grants each year. The chancellor, deans and one coach also break 300k, but that's it. So, different schools, different governance models, different outcomes.

Looking at UC system, I see that UCSB chancellor received $415k compensation, 9th highest at UCSB, but only 750th highest across UC campuses! Top two salaries went to athletic coaches at UCLA.

https://dailynexus.com/2018-09-06/ucsb-payroll-totaled-appro...

Re: Colleges face student lawsuits seeking refunds after coronavirus closures

#220

Post by [deleted] » Sat, May 30, 2020, 3:28 AM UTC

secabeen wrote: post #81

A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #56

Anecdata from my little corner. My 'non-profit' university's president is at 800k, his VP is 500k and multiple other admin officials in similar range. It is hard not to have a bitter taste as they just offered the students $500 grant application for their COVID19 trouble. If there is one good thing about this pandemic, it is shining a light on all this.

And from the other end of the spectrum, at my University of California campus, the top salaries are all in the 300k range, and all go to world-class engineering and sciences faculty who bring in millions in research grants each year. The chancellor, deans and one coach also break 300k, but that's it. So, different schools, different governance models, different outcomes.

[deleted]