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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

#511

Post by whoisburbansky »

netizen-936824 wrote: post #431
beloch wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

They kind of are when you consider that the opportunity cost of one might be the other?

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

#512

Post by Sparyjerry »

dougmwne wrote: post #292
paulpauper wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you been to a shopping mall or McDonalds, even in expensive areas like the Bay Area? Poor , low-income families with the latest gadgets, nice clothes. The money is coming from somewhere. Also, tons of subsidized programs like education, housing, and healthcare. Sure, they are not wealthy in the sense of making a lot of money, but enjoy a good standard of living nevertheless.

It's called debt and most households are swimming in it. Looking at what people wear or if they use an iPhone is a really poor proxy for their financial health. https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/average-credit-card-debt-hou...

Debt is just a result of poor education. People literally not realizing what is happening with credit card debt is 100% an education problem. I've had girlfriends who build up credit card debt like they were going for a high score until I tell them what it's doing and how much they could save. They literally don't understand that buying something they want because its on sale at a 20% discount on the credit card is not a discount when you end up paying 20% on that money every single year going forward. They just saved $20 on some purse and because they carry a big running balance on their card, it will be 5 years until they even get close to paying down that purchase. That $100 purchase that was discount to $80 actually costs them around $200 in 5 years, when actually it will be much longer than that for them than 5 years to pay off with the balances they have. I've seen people who make $40/hour being a waiter or waitress after tips at a nice restaurant but they just purely live beyond their means. They often just eat out, every single day for lunch and dinner, not realizing if they look at their charges that they just spent $2K on food this month, and $400 was given straight to Uber just for convenience. Then you also have the people that are just going through hard times and want to survive using debt but I've found again, an education problem, not as simple as simple not understanding interest, but a problem none the less. No budgeting, no planning, no sacrifices. The amount of people that could move each other out of poverty by simply getting a roommate is insane. On another note, there's a hotel nearby, it's not the best but it is the cheapest and the homeless will spend $60/night together to stay there as a group of 4 people, only about $15/day per person more than they make panhandling in a day. They are almost there with their thinking in sharing but again have made a critical mistake. $60 a night is also equal to about $1,800 per month - the same cost it would have been to get maybe a 1 or 2 bedroom apartment. Sure they would have to actually trust the people they live with, but on literally $15 per day, they could have permanent shelter. Of course drugs and everything else complicates that, but in our society it really isn't that bad to simply get food and shelter, but people always live beyond their means and make poor decisions due to poor education.

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

#513

Post by neilv »

> Tech jobs (I assume other jobs will follow) are increasingly willing to hire with no degree if an applicant can do well in an interview/on a test.

IME, software/computer jobs used to be more a meritocracy. The current hiring shibboleths for class happened later, popularized by early Google.

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

#514

Post by AnnikaL »

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.

The SAT no longer penalizes guessing (i.e. incorrect answers).[0]

[0] - https://satsuite.collegeboard.org/sat/whats-on-the-test/stru...

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

#515

Post by iamleppert »

wolverine876 wrote: post #273
rayiner wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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'm sure you have some knowledge that I could learn from, but it requires both of us and most of that is inflammatory and hyperbole. Let's both try curiosity and bringing valuable knowledge to the table? > 18 year olds in Bangladesh are a lot more “adult” Imagine an 18 year old in the US. They could go to college and learn more about the world, themselves, etc., or get a menial job, an apartment, and become more adul…

I never went to college, instead I got a job and worked like you say at age 18. I then worked my way into software engineering. Compared to my siblings (and virtually everyone else in my family, who took more traditional routes), I’m far more independent and have a stable career with no college debt.

I’ve heard of others talk up the college experience, but I fail to see what’s so special about it. What exactly did I miss in my development? How exactly am I different (besides having a 4-6 year head-start in the working world)?

Parties and friends are also made outside of campus, in the adult world. Working a job at a young age and having to be responsible for yourself builds life skills early. Some of which, my college-educated friends are still having trouble building well into their 30’s. I know some that are terrified of “growing up”: they keep earning degrees or still in their 2nd masters program, accumulating debt that is clearly unsustainable. Many are in fields that inside the sheltered and honestly, kind of bizarre world of academia look nothing like what actually happens in the real world, and they are in for a very rude awakening when that house of cards comes tumbling down.

Every time I meet someone who went to college, if you’re in the same job as them without having a degree, the default response is “but I got the experience”. Part of me thinks this is some kind of rationalization so they don’t have to accept the fact that they might have just been swindled and could have just as easily did what I did and get the same outcome.

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

#516

Post by sarchertech »

WalterBright wrote: post #326
BlargMcLarg wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not (just) college. Even if you do make it past college, hitting what older generations would consider typical markers of adulthood (having your own place, a good job, a stable relationship, a family, etc.) are all delayed and/or more difficult to achieve. Meanwhile many jobs are trying to sell themselves not through a TC that would let one hit these markers, but through football tables, pizza parties, drinks an…

When I was a teen, teenagers had after school jobs. McDonald's, stores, etc., were populated with teen workers at minimum wage. Today those jobs are held by adults, expecting to be able to raise a family on it. Teenagers rarely have jobs, their first job waits until after they graduate from college.

Based on my experience, the primary reason high school kids had jobs was to buy a car.

For various reasons (safety regulation, emissions requirements, minimum wage not keeping up with inflation, insurance outpacing inflation, cash for clunkers etc…) it’s now almost impossible to afford a car working a few hours at McDonald’s.

There’s also far more fast food restaurants per capita than there used to be, and food service/retail make up a larger part of the economy in general.

To top it off, the age of the average American has increased almost 10 years since 1960, so there are just fewer kids to do the jobs.

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

#517

Post by bradleyjg »

sdenton4 wrote: post #500
bradleyjg wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

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.

If this is the primary factor we should expect student debt load for private school graduates to have grown much more slowly than for public school graduates, right?

It may be that the increasing admin staff has taken advantage of this situation more ruthlessly than good communist professor admins would have,

Why are we giving non profit tax benefits to profit maximizers?

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

#518

Post by Forgeties79 »

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…

It is so refreshing to see this take. I was on a path to be a history Ph.D candidate - I wanted to teach, and archive diving is basically my own personal drug. The problem is it’s “publish or perish,” as we all know. My higher priority, i.e. teaching, was essentially an obstacle. You know how I know that? My own advisor and other department members told me not to get my doctorate (after writing a 60 page thesis mind you, which I’m still a tad bitter about given how this turns out haha).

They said no program wants to hear how I want to teach and that absolutely no one will hire me, then I won’t get published, and I’ll end up (if I’m lucky!) teaching at an expensive boarding school in a place I don’t get to choose.

I’m not saying I would’ve gotten into even a decent program. Hell I may have been a mediocre at best teacher. But it never felt right to me that teaching at colleges isn’t a viable career path. It was so odd to learn that my dream was simply not allowed, especially when it seemed so reasonable.

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

#520

Post by judge2020 »

wolverine876 wrote: post #230
zozbot234 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...are just more academically inclined than others... It's not "races", it's culture. We should just remove this whole idea of "race" from our understanding of social phenomena, all it can do is mislead. There are African, Black subcultures like the Igbo and Ashanti that achieve to the highest levels academically (including in the West!) and Asian subcultures that don't place any focus on education, and struggle as…

> It's not "races", it's culture. This is not much better, and is often used (without implicating the parent commenter) by racists as codeword cover. Again, I'm not implicating you, but consider for what reasons they use it. Think about it: What do you know about these 'cultures'? Have you lived in one? How do you even define the word - is there a definition outside pop politics? Is it a static thing? Over time or sp…

Nobody is making any assumptions or predeterminations about cultures, the point is that we need to recognize that it's not the color of your skin or your heritage that determines your placement, it's the environment you grow up in. Coincidentally, this does match up with your 'parental wealth' claim, since any pair of upper-middle-class parents is more likely able to afford to live in an area with schools rated at least 6 by GreatSchools, thus giving their child(ren) a better opportunity at education.

> We are discriminating openly against poor kids. And you only have to see the condition of schools in poor communities to make that immediately clear.

The way I see it, the only thing directly hindering any integration of lower-class and higher-class kids in schools is what I said above - housing prices and general zoning laws that make it nearly impossible to build low-cost housing in existing high-class areas. Any time there is a housing project (read: reasonably priced apartments), "NIMBY" happens and nobody wants the new complex to be built since it'll directly lower the home values of the existing houses in the area; in general, the administration running the local city/county government has to follow their constituents' wishes, so this likely isn't going to change until some higher government passes a law softening the power of zoning laws. This combined with how schools are heavily funded by their county's property taxes creates a barrier where the poorer schools don't get the funding they need to level the playing field and poorer parents can't move to put their kid in better education, thus keeping it hard for the child and their future generations to climb out of poverty.

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