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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

#551

Post by scaramanga »

throwawaycities wrote: post #451

I think the writing on the wall is clear regarding student loans. The entire notion of taxpayer funded student loans is a scam on both taxpayers and students. It’s a system that allows the colleges/universities to charge any tuition they want and guarantees there will be an artificial demand. For about a decade at least 1M student loan holders default per year. Long before the defaults reached that high, everyone inv…

So you're saying that higher education is (yet another) public good that fails when turned in to a for-profit enterprise?

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

#552

Post by randcraw »

a257 wrote: post #505
throwawaycities wrote: post #451

I think the writing on the wall is clear regarding student loans. The entire notion of taxpayer funded student loans is a scam on both taxpayers and students. It’s a system that allows the colleges/universities to charge any tuition they want and guarantees there will be an artificial demand. For about a decade at least 1M student loan holders default per year. Long before the defaults reached that high, everyone inv…

If government funded student loans are eliminated and as a result the demand goes down, will the price of education decrease by the same amount? If the demand is relatively inelastic, wouldn't it be the case that it wouldn't lower the price as much as expected? In other words, how elastic is the demand for education? How much of the current costs are resulting from taxpayer funded student loans?

If we would support and better standardize the offerings of community colleges (as some proposed recently), we could drive down the cost of a bachelor's degree by close to 50%, even if the current rates of tuition for the last two years went unchanged.

Of course, there are numerous ways to reduce the tuition cost of the last two years too. I'd love to see the same standards established by community and junior colleges be extended to advanced courses as well as making those courses available online. The final degree could be granted by a the authority who governs the standards, like Britain's Open University. But there should be many alternative ways to do this well, to provide a technical education, a artistic or literate one, or simply help folks retrain as their careers evolve.

We just need to quit making excuses and stop this merry-go-round to nowheresville NOW, before any more damage is done by the anticompetitive kleptocracy AKA the US university system.

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

#553

Post by hinkley »

CodeBrad wrote: post #441
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…

Pretty similar to my experience TA'ing at a researched focused school. My first semester teaching a lab I was told "No one is remembered for being a good TA" and encouraged to do the absolute bare minimum to get paid so that I could focus on research.

Some people are remembered for being a bad one, though.

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

#554

Post by throwawaycities »

rkalla wrote: post #501
throwawaycities wrote: post #451

I think the writing on the wall is clear regarding student loans. The entire notion of taxpayer funded student loans is a scam on both taxpayers and students. It’s a system that allows the colleges/universities to charge any tuition they want and guarantees there will be an artificial demand. For about a decade at least 1M student loan holders default per year. Long before the defaults reached that high, everyone inv…

With the inflation we've seen in the last 24 months do you think the tuition will still come back to earth or just stay put for a decade or more?

Ideally inflation shouldn’t effect education as much as regular goods. For example if I have an apple and you want to buy my apple, at minimum I want to recover my costs because I will be left without an apple. However, if I have knowledge, I can share my knowledge with you freely and now we both have knowledge, I won’t lose my knowledge like the apple.

If we don’t abandon the the system of guaranteed government (i.e. taxpayer) student loans, you can be sure their costs will continue to go up just like they went up when their was no inflation, and those costs will just be passed along to students and paid for with debt.

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

#555

Post by kuraudo »

wolverine876 wrote: post #171
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. 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…

As the linked Twitter thread implies, I don't even look at degrees when I do my hiring. I hear that, in the security industry, it's even worse where people with degreed are discriminated against for being filled with worthless and downright wrong bits of knowledge. Based on the latest round of entry level interviews I've had held in software land with recent college graduates, I'm inclined to agree.

College as STEM job training is absurd and clearly a failure. As you say, it's about much more than job training, but I would argue it doesn't even do that. Hell, it makes applicants worse somehow.

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

#556

Post by scaramanga »

pempem wrote: post #394
shagie wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The quote I believe corresponds to "the expected civic responsibilities that an individual has in that society." There are many ways to prepare an individual for that responsibility. In western nations, that is often done more through a formal educational program than through the community and family. This also isn't a "you must have X amount of civic responsibility" as different societies are looking for adults to h…

We talk and I've commented on posts about 'misinformation' 'propaganda' the role of social media and pernicious tentacles of marketing. The amount of surveillance, terrible software promoted as amazing (remember the articles about Shotspotter? or LIDAR? or facial recognition by airlines?) We're already doing a pretty terrible job educating people and it shows. How much worse does it get when its outsourced to the 'co…

Yes. I fear that this is exactly what is missed by people who expect University to operate as a transaction where middle class people invest money in order to obtain membership in to an elite cast, which is a system where the state is treating these investments as a private enterprise which needs public-sector subsidy, and the university is put in to a system of economic incentives where it becomes an institution for producing people who corporations need, and in turn, the indebted student is lumbered with economic constraints which channel them into being who a corporation needs.

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

#557

Post by jhbadger »

throwoutway wrote: post #528
jhbadger wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 decade…

Not doing research doesn’t mean they are decades out of touch. What gives you that conclusion?

If you are doing research you have to be up to date or you don't get things published. I'm sure there are some professors who don't do research who make it a point of personal pride or something to keep themselves updated, but there's zero pressure to do so.

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

#558

Post by brewdad »

xyzzyz wrote: post #214
wolverine876 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Do you think Americans were less adult in, say, 1930s, when only small fraction of them went to college?

Well, we did have to take away the alcohol for a while. ;)

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

#559

Post by hinkley »

readingnews wrote: post #368
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 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…

I recall the foundation I worked for was getting charged rent by the University like they were doing us a favor instead of giving us one of the worst buildings on that side of campus - after they knocked down the actual worst buildings to build a library. Then took a cut of all grants and a very large chunk of patent and IP royalties.

I don't think the fact that they were making money on either was what surprised me or anyone else, but that they were making money on all of them at the same time.

Apparently that building is still standing, 20 years later, though I don't know who is using it now.

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

#560

Post by kuraudo »

wpietri wrote: post #6

This is kind of a weird mix of points. Ignoring his political axe-grinding, I think the value of a college degree is increasingly in question for many fields because the price has risen wildly for decades without a corresponding increase in market value. (Except perhaps for elite-institution degrees, which are more about the brand and the network than what people actually learn.) I think we haven't seen at least a pa…

I'm increasingly loathe to hire a new college grad for enterprise software positions due to four years of terrible instruction that we have to deplorable. What are they even learning in modern day institutions?

Meanwhile, I have zero qualms about hiring high school grads with a github who can talk about the base language intelligently, let alone frameworks like spring.

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