I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears • Hacker News Board

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

#491

Post by cercatrova » Mon, Mar 21, 2022, 2:39 AM UTC

I highly doubt it will collapse any time soon. People underestimate the level of inertia that exists in institutions even after it's clear they should collapse, even though I'm not certain of colleges having gotten to this point, as they serve many roles that are not simply about learning, such as:

- job training (like it or not, college grads are seen more favorably than non-grads, even in software engineering)

- socialization for young adults (I know many people who went to college in large part to make friends, and learning as a reason for going was treated as a smaller reason)

- research, etc

Colleges will remain here and for the foreseeable future, they are still very useful to many people. Altman is now at Open AI but I'm sure being YC's president for a while, Sam understands that YC has a vested interest in disrupting colleges, through investments like Lambda School (sorry, Bloom Tech).

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

#492

Post by ModernMech » Mon, Mar 21, 2022, 2:39 AM UTC

bradleyjg wrote: post #450

noobermin wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 un…

What’s the ratio of tenured professors to total staff from, say, 1970 to today? Colleges were captured by professional administrators. That’s what’s changed, and the results are entirely predictable. See, also, hospitals.

This is sort of true but also at the same time I rely on a lot of staff to make my job a lot easier. Yes we could cut down on those administrators but it would mean that professors have to do more, taking away from research agendas. Universities have been optimized to make doing researcher easier and I appreciate that. I'd have to pay a lot more attention to my students' personal lives if we didn't have a dean of student affairs and the whole apparatus that is involved with that. There's a whole office of advising that does a better job than I ever could, and I am freed up to focus on other things that I'm good at.

As another example, we have a bunch of internal grants. It's basically free money that you can apply for to do whatever you want with it, to the tune of 10s of thousands. We need to pay administrators to handle that whole process. It's a lot of money to handle and it's not a cheap process to administer these grants. We could cut them and it would shrink the budget, but it would also stop the flow of early-stage ideas from forming that later turn into huge grants. If I have an idea that might cost like $10k, I can whip up a proposal and get funding for that lickity split, without having to go to the NSF or some other external agency. Then when the idea is more mature I can go and get external funding. If you cut the administrators just looking at a budget, you're really cutting research without realizing it.

I mean, running a University is basically like running a city. You have all the same concerns: infrastructure, food, security, a citizenry, political struggles, etc. You need a government (administrators) to do that kind of work that keeps this huge system running. Yes bureaucracies are expensive and inefficient, and sure there are of course things that could be cut, but by and large the University I work at gets the job done. Day in and day out for 10s of thousands of students. That machine doesn't just happen, it's administrators keeping it running.

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

#493

Post by synergy20 » Mon, Mar 21, 2022, 2:40 AM UTC

thebigman433 wrote: post #429

synergy20 wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

college is delaying young people to become mature, we're producing giant babies these days, thanks to endless parenting, online gaming, social screen time, now probably even metaverse, you name it. on the STEM subject, teens good at math are never teacher's favorites, instead they're called nerds and some are even isolated from the rest, it's quite the opposite in Asia, or even in Europe. That's the root cause we nee…

> middle school kids are more keen about their gender or identities, or how awful US was in the past, or their hair color Do you genuinely believe this stuff that youre typing? I know that conservative medias say this and use it as a boogeyman to get themselves into power, but do you truly believe it? Ive worked with elementary, middle, and high school kids for the last 5 years, in an area that conservatives constant…

yes I believe it genuinely, as these are my three k-12 kids told me what's going on at school, and I got involved with school quite often, I can see those myself to some extent too. the middle school one actually told me she thinks at least 1/3 of her classmates are hard to tell their genders these days, and to greet a classmate the first sentence now should be: how should I address you? otherwise her classmates actually got offended if you got it wrong on the gender side.

my high school kids told me they are aware of those sensitive gender subjects at middle school and they feel it's more frequent these days.

Google will show you some data points, e.g. Gen Z (from 1995+) has close to 20% claiming to be LGBT+. Things changed a lot.

I'm neither a liberal or conservative, I consider myself independent.

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

#494

Post by beambot » Mon, Mar 21, 2022, 2:41 AM UTC

mattkrause wrote: post #423

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…

The grants are even crazier than that. Most of the actual work is done by trainees who are a) learning how to do for the first time and b) may never actually do it again because they're going to move onto something else. The profs are, at best, managing them and even that's often a bit iffy. Everybody's obviously got to learn somewhere, but universities and research funders are oddly weird about experience and expert…

The professor job is an absurd ask:

- Enterprise sales rep with a $500k-$1M annual quota (aka grants).

- R&D manager of a team comprised almost entirely of junior employees

- Lecturer and administration for teaching.

- Administrator & volunteer within the department, chair roles for key academic conferences, and editor on major journals -- all to check the "service" box for tenure.

- Because they aren't a proper CEO, they don't even have the ability to push back on obscene G&A costs (ie 50%+ of grant contracts going to university overhead!).

It's a labor of love (esp in STEM!), and I feel bad that many are caught in this morass.

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

#495

Post by cercatrova » Mon, Mar 21, 2022, 2:42 AM UTC

patientplatypus wrote: post #375

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…

I disagree. Schools were founded on the principle that the best and brightest minds will teach the new generation (this goes all the way back to Athens). If you separate the researchers into a "research university" and the other students into "trade schools" eventually you'll just make the class divide all that much worse because the lower tier schools will attract only those teachers who are more interested in pedag…

Your comment was marked dead which I just vouched for, it's disheartening when people will flag posts they disagree with.

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

#496

Post by google234123 » Mon, Mar 21, 2022, 2:42 AM UTC

jeffbee wrote: post #342

crackercrews wrote: post #52

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's past racial bias is still echoing through the nation. There were still test questions based on Very White Things like cotillions and yachting as recently as 40 years ago. The repercussions of those things could be that some person barely missed getting admitted to a university, took a lifetime earnings hit, lived in a poorer town with worse schools, and now their kids who may be very smart and talented also…

I wish that those institutions and people on your side of the issue would be more honest about what they are doing. If Harvard would just come out and admit to the Supreme Court that they discriminate based on race, it would made the case much easier and much easier politically to shut it down.

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

#497

Post by judge2020 » Mon, Mar 21, 2022, 2:42 AM UTC

crackercrews wrote: post #126

sometimeshuman wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an ancedote, I was told by my low income peer group that you get 600 points just for filling out your name on the SAT and that 800 points could get you into a great school like MIT. So I assumed it was a pass/fail exam in a sense and left early during the verbal part because I found it condescending and boring. Before the exam, I couldn't understand why the higher income kids were paying for SAT training classes.…

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

Massachusetts Institute of Technology/Typical SAT scores

Reading and Writing 730-780, Math 780-800

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

#498

Post by davemp » Mon, Mar 21, 2022, 2:42 AM UTC

bcrosby95 wrote: post #221

com2kid wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People doing low voltage cat6 wiring make bank. Friend of mine got quoted 10k to run wires in his single family house, and that was w/o any walls up. Plumbers doing fancy installs, not plunging toilets, over $100/hr. Huge demand, not nearly enough workers. Some of the trades pay very, very, well. Heck live in nannies working 8 hour shifts don't have to pay for housing and they pull in 60k-80k. I know a woman running…

Home improvement is a crazy market. A lot of people seem to quote based upon what they think you can afford, which is easy to figure out since they usually do it while standing in your house.

Home improvement is pretty cancerous right now. I get quotes with ~$5k in labor for work that would take me a week to do in the worst case. That’s literally double my rate without considering that working for yourself is tax free.

It baffles me that our markets are so inefficient that it’s 125% more effective for me to take time off my ‘highly skilled’ engineering job to do ‘low skilled’ renovation/repair work myself.

I can only imagine all of the inefficiency comes from teams of salesmen/project managers/owners who suck all of value out.

But still how do they get away with such bad deals? Are people so pigeonholed that they can’t imagine doing the work themselves? Is getting bonded/licensed/whatever other paperwork is required to compete with these sleazy companies that difficult? I’m sure a lot of people wouldn’t mind learning how to install drain systems for $125/hr minus overhead.

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

#499

Post by nostrebored » Mon, Mar 21, 2022, 2:43 AM UTC

jerojero wrote: post #454

ufmace wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, I think that this factor: > If the upper class want someplace to send their kids to read poetry and binge drink for 4 years Is the heart of the problem. For a long time, this was basically the core function of universities - to make people part of the elite. We told ourselves that it was actually about the things being taught rather than social connections. Maybe to a certain extent it even was. But then, opera…

Do you think access to education is a human right? I find your last paragraph a bit troubling, I agree that becoming a part of the elite does not really have a significance with regards to your own worth. But the USA is not a country that revolves around the middle class, its a country that revolves around the elites. In America not being part of the elite is a failure because the political and economical system is m…

European elite go to American schools. Just like the elite from all around the world.

The premise is faulty from the onset. Most ‘top’ European schools are mediocre outside of liberal arts degrees.

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

#500

Post by sdenton4 » Mon, Mar 21, 2022, 2:44 AM UTC

bradleyjg wrote: post #450

noobermin wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 un…

What’s the ratio of tenured professors to total staff from, say, 1970 to today? Colleges were captured by professional administrators. That’s what’s changed, and the results are entirely predictable. See, also, hospitals.

Ratio of tenured staff only tells /part/ of the story. The problem with this ratio is that there's a massive oversupply of people to do the work (new-minted phds) compared to the number of available prof positions. ie, Supply >> Demand, which has made it trivial to convert what would have been tenured jobs a couple generations ago into rotating assistant prof positions. It may be that the increasing admin staff has taken advantage of this situation more ruthlessly than good communist professor admins would have, but "Supply >> Demand" and a consequent race to the bottom in the labor market is the major factor in this part of the 'why academia sucks' story.

Meanwhile, states have pulled back or failed to increase university funding, and the universities fill the gap with greater tuition. Here's the story+graph for the University of California system: https://accountability.universityofcalifornia.edu/2015/chapt... This is the GP's point, and completely spot on.

It is also true that there are more MBA's in the admin buildings and that they suck, and are likely paid more than they should be. But while I think it /is/ a factor, it's likely not the biggest bottleneck.