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I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

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Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#431

Post by netizen-936824 »

beloch wrote: post #424
imgabe wrote: post #312

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…

One thing I was told as a grad student that I've never forgotten is, "Nobody has ever won a Nobel prize for having happy students". At the time, I was struggling to keep up with the marking demands of a new (i.e. This was the first year it was taught) course I was TA'ing. I had around a hundred students and each one was generating 10-20 pages of handwritten lab reports per week. Student writing varied from human type…

I don't think Nobel prizes and happy students are mutually exclusive

Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#432

Post by crackercrews »

nostrademons wrote: post #288
crackercrews wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You get 200 points per section automatically. [1] And to get into MIT you'd need at least 1,000 points, no matter your race. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAT

800 points on one section will get you into MIT, as that's a perfect score. 1000 on combined seems very unlikely to get you into SAT; the 25th percentile is 1500. https://www.prepscholar.com/sat/s/colleges/MIT-SAT-scores-GP...

I was replying to a comment indicating that URMs can get in with extremely low scores. My point is that they can get in with somewhat lower scores. But they still have to clear a much higher threshold than 800 combined.

Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#433

Post by noobermin »

bradleyjg wrote: post #406
noobermin wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Schools have been doing these things for years and yet half of HN have their degrees and have a start-up or two that have a direct line from connections developed at the unis they got their degrees in. Come on, universities doing morethanonething isn't what changed which caused student debt to explode. I'm not saying these are not problems but there literally is no through-line, it doesn't make sense as an explanatio…

Student debt has exploded because notwithstanding their outrageous tax advantages colleges are demonstrably profit maximizing firms. They induce unlimited demand for ever more credentials though a process of continual devaluation and then charge as much as the market will possibly bear through extremely sophisticated price discrimination. Politicians answer to this crisis of rapaciousness is to suggest that the publi…

Let me explain a line of reasoning that would refute the explanation you provide for the ballooning debt. Universities have not generally changed the way they do things, universities have always been the four things OP listed since forever, even when you likely got your degree (assuming you did, or at the very least most of hacker news did), they were those four things too! Therefore, there is no inherent thing to universities that explains the ballooning debt. Instead, something must have happened between the 90s and now that correlates with the rise of debt. Thus, look for an explanation by looking at the history of policy rather than relying on rationalizations.

To that end, a quick google search yields an article that gives a good set of reasons a think-tank that studied the problem found as a set of causes. This is the first result of googling "what caused the student debt crisis":

https://www.businessinsider.com/why-is-the-student-debt-cris...

Now those four items ARE things that have changed between now and then. Generally, the decline state funding of schools means unis now fund themselves by relying on tuition that students do not feel as a cost (at least immediately) because the federal government can give out loans like candy.

Again people, please please please don't just conjure up ideas in your head and think you understand the causes in the world that explain how everything works. You would not apply this line of thinking to your own job you are paid for, people have studied these things and generally it is understood why the debt crisis exists, it isn't a mystery!

Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#434

Post by crackercrews »

xadhominemx wrote: post #264
edflsafoiewq wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does it have such a weird score range?

You get negative points for answering incorrectly, to disincentivize blind guessing.

I believe it doesn't disincentivize blind guessing. It just counteracts it. If you can eliminate one answer you should guess. Even if you can't eliminate an answer you break even.

Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#435

Post by Retric »

anonuser123456 wrote: post #417
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are schools that don't allow grad students to teach.

That’s a shame, because sometimes graduate students are better teachers than research faculty.

You can also go to a school where professors are employed for their ability to teach.

Choosing to go to a research institution seems like such an obviously poor choice it’s strange people get suckered into it. But it’s clear education is a low priority for both students and collages.

Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#436

Post by walkhour »

Bromeo wrote: post #277
walkhour wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Germany has three “tiers” of secondary education, of which only finishing the highest will qualify you for university admission. The rationale is that not everybody benefits from learning latin or higher mathematics, when instead a focus on more trade-related skills might benefit you much more in your further career. For late-bloomers, which might suffer under this system, it is still possible to progress from Haupts…

> For late-bloomers, which might suffer under this system, it is still possible to progress from Hauptschule to Realschule and finally Gymnasium and university

Do you know how many people in Hauptschule make it to university?

> Also, the average attendance for Hauptschule is I must acknowledge I thought it was 25%, it must've changed in recent years.

> Wouldn’t you agree that at least 10% ...

Thank you for the question. I buy the thesis of the Case against education by which university is a waste of time for most people, nevertheless it's hard for me to stigmatize a percentage of the population by not allowing them to waste their time there as well with their former ten year old smarter classmates.

Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#437

Post by tcmart14 »

gruez wrote: post #93
mind-blight wrote: post #58

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…

>STEM jobs are the main viable path for economic stability and freedom. >We really need farm workers, and most of them live in poverty. I love having more engineers, scientists, and doctors, but we desperately need non-STEM work to be a viable option This is basically a non-problem because of the supply/demand mechanics of the labor market. If farm workers' job gets sufficiently bad from a value proposition perspecti…

Doesn't supply and demand not apply here though? There are tons of subsidies and small farmers who are propped up more by government assistance than they are the market though?

Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#438

Post by jhbadger »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #412
readingnews wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have worked at three universities. This is pretty insanely accurate. You left out one item though. The main role US institutions are trying to fill right now is: hire new faculty, have faculty pull in 5+ Million dollar grants in order to get tenure. After tenure, pull in multi-million dollar grants each year. Teaching? Never heard of it. OH! That thing the actual customers are paying us for... yes, have graduate st…

There are schools that don't allow grad students to teach.

Primarily at what is known as PUIs (primarily undergraduate institutions), colleges and universities that either don't have grad students or have such a tiny graduate program that relying on them for teaching roles is unfeasible. In theory this is better for the students because the professors just care about teaching, but the down side is such institutions do little to no research and so the professors may be decades out of touch with current developments in their fields.

Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#439

Post by hackernewds »

wolverine876 wrote: post #182
acidbaseextract wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Polymatter recently had a great video on the way the college ranking system is a hustle for foreign student money, and just how heavily it distorts colleges incentives: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQWlnTyOSig

Who or what is Polymatter? Why do you trust them? It would be useful if people said why they trust whatever they are linking to. Random stuff on the Internet isn't worth the time.

Here is another idea of the same theme through a more reputable source (you be the judge)

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/17/us/columbia-university-ra...

Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#440

Post by phdelightful »

User23 wrote: post #419
imgabe wrote: post #312

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…

> If you have a physicist who's at the leading edge of research in their field, you want them doing that research, not teaching 18 year old's Newton's laws of motion. Wrong.

Since you don’t offer much to work with, I assume you mean:

“I disgree. People at the cutting edge should be educating others both to help them make their ideas accessible and connect them with the future of their discipline.”

I encourage you to add more than a single word to the conversation.

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