351–360 of 1001 posts
Higher education in the US is trying to fulfill so many roles it's unsustainable. - teaching marketable skills so people can get jobs - teaching "how to think" and learning about art and culture - Performing cutting edge research - minor league sports teams The large state schools are trying to fulfill all these conflicting roles. We should probably break them out to separate entities. If you have a physicist who's a…
Some of these points are correct. College does seem to be providing less value in the US, etc. Maybe some third-tier universities could be in trouble if there's a decline in college attendance. But, "collapsing"? Universities are one of the most long-lived types of institutions known to humankind. Oxford was founded in 1096. I suspect they will be around quite a lot longer.
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> STEM jobs are the main viable path for economic stability and freedom. People repeat that but what is it based on? Most of the population, including most people who have economic stability and freedom, have not had STEM jobs and very likely will not have STEM jobs. More importantly, college is about much more than job training. College prepares people to be adults in every way, not to be a resource for corporations…
> College prepares people to be adults in every way, not to be a resource for corporations. Only 2% of Bangladeshis go to college. Are the rest not adults? Indeed, I’d say the opposite is true. Apart from job training, the main function of college in America seems to be extending adolescence and deferring dealing with the real world. 18 year olds in Bangladesh are a lot more “adult” than many college-educated 30-some…
I don't know if I'd go so far as to say that it is the other "main function" but ohhh boy does this need to be discussed more. I know a few people that seemingly couldn't break out of college. College gives a clear path forward for years, each time you're admitted into a program. Give that up and what do you have? For the people I know, the answer to that question is a minimum wage job outside of their field of study.
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It's based on the entry level salary for California tech workers being six figures whereas the wage for farm workers is an exception to laws such that they can be paid below minimum wage.
> farm workers is an exception to laws such that they can be paid below minimum wage. I’m all for setting the minimum wage for farm workers at $25/hr. Within 2-3 years every manual farm worker will be replaced by a machine, and we’ll all be better off for it. Well, not the manual workers, temporarily. But then we’ll have to deal with the problem of unemployment honestly rather than leaving make-work jobs around.
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What do you think about German kids being sent to different kinds of highschools at age 10. Most of the people attending Hauptschule don't attend university [0]. In some regions 60% of the children attend it. Aren't you concerned that the person who could discover the cure for cancer is in Hauptschule right now? Imagine a Germany in which the rest of your life isn't determined at age ten. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.o…
In Germany no way would have i have been allowed to go to college. As it was I went to a California State University. Student fees and books cost me about $12k total. Given that there isn't any reason US colleges can't be free other than Wall Street demanding a cut.
Why do you think that? Genuinely curious.
Definitely agree that removing the SAT appears to be related to the upcoming supreme court case about affirmative action. COVID was a good reason to delay it for a couple years. But schools are pushing it out further. That makes no sense. It seems the SAT is increasingly considered "racist" because it reveals racial disparities in learning. What's next? Get rid of the driver's license test because it turns that white…
> the SAT is increasingly considered "racist" because it reveals racial disparities in learning Could you provide an example of that claim? Usually the SAT is considered discriminatory because the way the testing is done favors wealthy, well-educated people, and gives negative results for equally talented people who lack those advantages. Colleges have found that the SAT is excluding a large part of the talent pool.…
I believe a lot of problems that the SAT's used to have were fixed over the years? It's somewhat of a moving target.
And if you can't make any standardized test that's fair, why is that?
Companies are using college diplomas as the new high school - even some help desk jobs prefer college students or recent graduates now. It seems like almost all companies require a college degree for even slightly senior positions - a high school graduate will be very limited in career progression. Degrees are now a necessary but not sufficient condition for most people.
As far as price, most U.S. states have an excellent public university system - you would have to be insane to pay private school prices for anything but a top 5 university.
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> If farm workers' job gets sufficiently bad from a value proposition perspective, then people will leave the occupation and employers would be forced to pay higher wages to attract workers. Serious question - have you ever been poor? Are you aware that sometimes people have to work at shitty jobs because they have no other options? And, if employers really would "be forced to pay higher wages" as you claim, why are…
>Serious question - have you ever been poor? Are you aware that sometimes people have to work at shitty jobs because they have no other options? OP was talking about the problem from a practical perspective (ie. "We really need farm workers", presumably worried about a future where there aren't enough farm workers and we starve or something), and I was addressing that in the same way. Your objection seems to be from…
If the owners were competent, the businesses might have grown to the point where the enterprise isn't so much an extension of the owner's personality. A small restaurant's style extrapolates strongly from the owner's quirks - whether they feel they make enough money, they're disorganised, they're under stress going without leave or getting hit by taxes at the worst times. I figure they're the ones most likely to hold wages down almost out of angst because they themselves feel hard done by. "Why should that teenager get $15/hr?! I have the risk of the lease. I started this business! I got $5/hr when I was a kid!" I'd bet this is a solid factor in local restaurants.
Once a business is large enough to have a tier or two under the owner, I suspect this buffer helps. I notice this separation a lot when working directly with an owner versus with their marketing person. The latter has to uphold their end of the relationship with me or they'll get fired. The owner meanwhile can miss deadlines and forget to write copy and so on, and usually their worst case is they keep flying by the seat of their pants. If their business fails, it's usually much later and harder to tie to specific issues along the way.
I'm concerned that the majority of "should we fix college or should we circumvent college" conversations don't bring up one of the scariest parts of our current economy: STEM jobs are the main viable path for economic stability and freedom. All of the conversations I've seen implicitly assume that this is good, and that the solution to farmer workers (or other low paid workers) escaping poverty is to train them as so…
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Subject of TFA is about the dwindling value of school and I agree with it. But I don't think it's wrong to push back on this aside about cancelling student debt. It's completely untenable and anyone proposing it is ignoring the massive opportunity cost that has been incurred by people that played by the rules, pursued useful degrees, and made the responsible decision to stretch their means to do so.
I paid for my entire education myself by working nights and weekends and taking side gigs in combination with loans and scholarships. It took me 6 years to complete a 4 year degree because of sheer exhaustion and I did NOT choose the best university I could have attended (that would have been an Ivy) because I didn't have the money to do so and I didn't feel comfortable saddling myself with giant loan debt. Two quest…
I think most universities are scams and FWIW I made a point to literally only apply to two schools: UW Madison (in-state) and Minnesota (in-state reciprocity agreement) because I knew I’d get in and I saw what it cost my parents for my siblings to go out of state. I did a semester at a community college, too.
1. Your opportunity cost is debatable. I took 15 years of market return on the lump sum of tuition/boarding/books cost as an example. It would be about the same for you, assuming you spent ~$75k on your education between rent and supplies and food and tuition.
2. I don’t think you lost out on anything meaningful unless it was MIT, Harvard, or Stanford that you would have gone to instead.