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Stanford cancels plans to bring half of undergrads back to campus

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Re: Stanford cancels plans to bring half of undergrads back to campus

#161

Post by 0xffff2 »

totalZero wrote: post #70
eric4smith wrote: post #12

I firmly think there is a sea change going on from standard “college” degrees to more practical training that will be a mix of apprenticeship and solid training like air/vac, electricians and online skills, since the vast majority of jobs don’t really need a college degree. This has actually begun already at the high school level. Once again I believe net/net the beer virus will be positive for America in the long ru…

I don't know why people use HVAC as a boilerplate example of working-class work. Jobs come from where the booms are. Unless there's an HVAC boom, why would you anticipate a surge in HVAC workers? Not a criticism/denial of your larger point, just an observation about that point specifically.

I've read the GP 3 times now and I can't find any mention of HVAC... Did it get edited or something?

Re: Stanford cancels plans to bring half of undergrads back to campus

#162

Post by 0xffff2 »

chongli wrote: post #105
bob33212 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The value offered by colleges is not just an education. It is 4 years of living away from home experiencing whatever floats your boat ( frats, independence, parties, sports, friends, etc... ). There is virtually no demand for online only classes above a 5k/year price point. There is a similar situation with private schools. Some of the demand comes from the fact that it is also a babysitting service, forced social gr…

It is 4 years of living away from home experiencing whatever floats your boat ( frats, independence, parties, sports, friends, etc... ) I’m in university right now. I just finished a term of online classes. I’ve definitely witnessed those benefits being enjoyed by other students but I haven’t had the time to enjoy them myself; my program is simply too difficult for that. The most I’ve enjoyed is going out for drinks…

>The ones joining frats, partying constantly, playing sports and all that must have trivial classes. Either that or they’re already so rich and privileged that they can afford to fail courses and keep going.

I disagree completely. Some people are just inhumanly capable of balancing everything. One of the smartest people I met while in school was in a sorority and partied hard. She was also extremely successful academically and is currently attending medical school.

I also had my share of fun, but I would never have been able to keep up with her. Fortunately my academic ambitions don't go much farther than my BS in comp. sci.

Just because you can't manage the balancing act doesn't mean no one else can.

Re: Stanford cancels plans to bring half of undergrads back to campus

#163

Post by waterhouse »

neltnerb wrote: post #84
totalZero wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any parent who thinks that way is a moron. Educated uselessness is to the detriment of the kid. If you want to be happy and healthy in America, you must have a way to make money. (Or your parents must give you so much money that you're set for life.)

Perhaps an unpopular opinion, but having gone to a similar university I suspect that the underwater basketweaving degree from Harvard will come with lucrative enough connections to make up for the lack of actual skills. Remember, success is way more than half luck. Going to Harvard makes your luck much better. That Harvard Rolodex will get you a job even if your degree barely certifies that you have a pulse.

But I don't think one enters Harvard committed to taking underwater basketweaving. At least as an undergrad, once you're there, I would assume that, like any college, you have a wide range of courses and majors to choose from, restricted only by needing to follow "X is a prerequisite for Y" structure and possibly being required to take some core classes. (The situation would be different for graduate degrees.) So if you're at Harvard and you decide to take underwater basketweaving, that's on you.

Hmm. I guess maybe there would be cases like "the school requires you to take at least N courses, and you don't want that much workload (or, more charitably, some of your courses are extremely demanding and you want to lighten the load on the rest), so you take some facile courses". Or cases like Feynman taking astronomy and philosophy to satisfy the humanities requirement. But I don't think there's any case where you'd need to major in underwater basketweaving... unless that is the easiest major and that's your criterion. I dunno, if they want an easy major, can it at least be something useful? Perhaps it's good in some sense if the genuinely useful majors are strictly separated from the easy ones? Hmm.

I think "Communications" seems to have that reputation, and a subject by that name does sound useful for being in a company (I have no idea what is actually taught in it). My brother-in-law said he majored in Communications because it had the lightest courseload, so he could work for Microsoft while attending school.

Re: Stanford cancels plans to bring half of undergrads back to campus

#164

Post by jeffbee »

0xffff2 wrote: post #158
jeffbee wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Computer software development has none of the characteristics of a profession, either. There's no licensure, no guild, no liability, and many people practice it without formal training. The software industry would benefit from moving in the direction of being either a "trade" without the manual labor, or toward being a real profession, but it currently occupies a weird middle ground.

>There's no licensure, no guild, no liability, Those are all things that are near-universally features of working a trade, so what exactly is the difference between a trade and a profession?

You got me there. I guess I think of specific trades that don't have those aspects. As far as I am aware, you don't need a state license to be a machinist. But yes, you do need those things to be an electrician etc.

So I guess software development is just basically like bagging groceries. Totally informal.

Re: Stanford cancels plans to bring half of undergrads back to campus

#165

Post by matwood »

LargeWu wrote: post #56
netcan wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somewhat different take. The student debt problem is not really related to the college format. The format existed in earlier decades, exists in other countries and exists in K-12 education without runaway costs and student debt. It's mostly a matter of policy. The US' method to expand third level education to most of the population was by government backed and/or subsidized loans, without price controls. This caused…

I disagree about the college format going completely online. There is so much about the college experience that is not directly related to earning a degree. It's a place where most people are exposed to new ideas, new types of people. It's a place where lasting friendships and relationships are formed. It's a place of growth that an online experience could never hope to replicate, and that's the REAL benefit of colle…

> I know people who went to college, but lived at home with their parents "to save money". In reality, they didn't need to save the minimal room and board fees of a state school; they were mostly just cowards. They are the people that haven't changed at all since high school. They're the people that are afraid of everything in the world outside their small circle.

I did exactly that. Lived at home, attended college, and also worked nearly full time to pay for school. I graduated with nearly no debt, and the the day after graduating college moved out with a good job.

Not sure how that makes someone a coward or afraid to go outside their small circle. Some of the people I went to HS with all went to the same big state school so they could actually stay in the their small circle. Once done, they moved back to where we grew up, are still in the same small circle, and have/had large college debt to go along with it.

I haven't seen anyone from HS in over 15 years, and have lived and traveled all over. I would be cautious to paint people making financially prudent decisions with such a broad brush.

Re: Stanford cancels plans to bring half of undergrads back to campus

#166

Post by tantalor »

fortran77 wrote: post #11
barbecue_sauce wrote: post #4

I was always under the impression that the word "frosh" was weird slang for freshmen, not a word considered just as proper for written communication.

They say "frosh" now because "freshmen" is gender-specific. Many schools do this.

University administrators have now begun the process of replacing the terms “freshman” and “upperclassman” with the gender-neutral terms “first year” and “upper-level students” in official campus publications... “It’s really for public, formal correspondence and formal publications … we’re not trying to tell people what language to use in their everyday casual conversations,” Chun said. “We’re not trying to be language police.”

https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2017/09/15/yale-formalizes-fr...

Re: Stanford cancels plans to bring half of undergrads back to campus

#167

Post by [deleted] »

celnardur wrote: post #99

I feel like I can offer a unique perspective on this because I go to Notre Dame and we are just finishing the first week of classes with everyone back on campus. It's gone alright so far. All the cases so far have been traced back to off campus bars or parties. However, I expect it to get worse soon as cases start spreading on campus. If you want to see how Notre Dame is doing with cases and testing we have a dashboa…

[deleted]

Re: Stanford cancels plans to bring half of undergrads back to campus

#168

Post by timr »

Townley wrote: post #151
chrisjarvis wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your son wants to be there in person and he is at no danger from the coronavirus... EDIT: *infinitesimal danger

You have no reason to believe that their son wants to be there in person. The son may share their parents' safety concerns And claiming that coronavirus poses "no danger" is simply untrue. You can claim that the danger is over-stated, but young adults can and do get COVID-19

"You can claim that the danger is over-stated, but young adults can and do get COVID-19"

Yes, they can, and do. And they are overwhelmingly likely to have nothing more than a mild illness. The danger has been drastically exaggerated.

In the US, fewer than 300 people under the age of 25 have died from Covid:

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm

Moreover, when you look at the data, nearly all of those deaths have significant co-morbidities.

Re: Stanford cancels plans to bring half of undergrads back to campus

#169

Post by fiftyfifty »

bob33212 wrote: post #81
chongli wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sucks because students are signing leases, moving crap, buying meal plans, etc, right now. This is the whole reason schools want students back. They’re desperate to recover some of this cash flow. They have huge budgets and vast numbers of administrative staff to pay. Without the revenue from residence leases and meal plans, they’re in real trouble.

The value offered by colleges is not just an education. It is 4 years of living away from home experiencing whatever floats your boat ( frats, independence, parties, sports, friends, etc... ). There is virtually no demand for online only classes above a 5k/year price point. There is a similar situation with private schools. Some of the demand comes from the fact that it is also a babysitting service, forced social gr…

I've come to the conclusion that this is what most parents and students are looking for...a [relatively] safe place to finish growing up. The degree is only part of the equation.

Re: Stanford cancels plans to bring half of undergrads back to campus

#170

Post by elliekelly »

jeffbee wrote: post #164
0xffff2 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There's no licensure, no guild, no liability, Those are all things that are near-universally features of working a trade, so what exactly is the difference between a trade and a profession?

You got me there. I guess I think of specific trades that don't have those aspects. As far as I am aware, you don't need a state license to be a machinist. But yes, you do need those things to be an electrician etc. So I guess software development is just basically like bagging groceries. Totally informal.

See now I don’t think I’d consider grocery bagging a trade because there isn’t really any skill involved. You could pick just about any person off the street and they’d be able to bag groceries.
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