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

#581

Post by snowwrestler » Mon, Mar 21, 2022, 4:07 AM UTC

adverbly wrote: post #428

snowwrestler wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your first three bullets are all the same thing. “How to think” and knowledge of culture are marketable skills, as is experience with cutting-edge research. I don’t know where you got the idea that learning about “art” is an essential job of college. I wish it were, but it’s not. And I agree that college sports are too big of their own business. Fundamentally you cannot “train” people for jobs that don’t exist yet. I…

> you cannot “train” people for jobs that don’t exist yet I've heard this phrase multiple times before... and yet, doctors have been studying bio, lawyers studying laws/cases, and engineers math - for hundreds of years. I don't want someone who did 4 years of philosophy and knows how to think deeply about things performing my heart surgery. The first three bullet points are not the same thing partly because one of th…

The vast majority of the education of doctors, lawyers, engineers, and other professionals is teaching them how to think. Hard skills are covered of course but it is well understood (and clearly presented) that they are perishable. This is why these professions tend to have a focus on, and in some cases requirement for, continuing education throughout the career.

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

#582

Post by brigandish » Mon, Mar 21, 2022, 4:07 AM UTC

sometimeshuman wrote: post #509

brigandish wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's responding to an anecdote - one that sounds absurd, by the way - so I would say that responding with an anecdote is fine, especially one that actually sounds realistic. Let's hear some anecdotes about being pushed hard in schools based in poor areas before dismissing it.

"sounds absurd, by the way".. that perhaps explains all the downvotes. One of the surprises about getting older is that stories from your youth sound more and more absurd with time. I didn't grow up with the Internet and the "MIT whiz kid" wasn't common in movies/shows until the mid 90's and ever after. What was a thing during my high school days were the relentless TV commercials for tech schools masquerading as adv…

It was hearsay, they didn’t need to lie about it to still be untrue and absurd.

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

#583

Post by lifeplusplus » Mon, Mar 21, 2022, 4:08 AM UTC

wolverine876 wrote: post #177

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 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.…

It seems SAT merely reflects current academic skills. If they developed to that point due to privilege, the test isn't responsible for highlighting it. If college goal is to give limited space to most skilled students then it's an effective method to do that.. isn't it?

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

#584

Post by wolverine876 » Mon, Mar 21, 2022, 4:09 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #246

wolverine876 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.…

> 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. The alternatives, such as essays, are even more highly correlated with wealth: https://cepa.stanford.edu/content/essay-content-strongly-rel... As to predicting outcomes, tha…

> No, colleges have found that the SAT produces racial demographics they don’t like.

Where does that come from, other than repetition?

> look at the LSAT

I'm not talking about the LSAT (and bar exam performance isn't a meaningful indicator of much - the great majority of aspiring lawyers pass their bar exams).

> Poor white kids have been excluded by the SAT for nearly a century and colleges never took action in response to that.

If that's true (and I don't know that it is, especially on the scale of what has happened to blacks), what does that does that have to do with racism against black kids?

It seems everyone's great effort is not to address racism, but to deny it, against incredible evidence. Look at this entire discussion. It's incredible the effort that goes into denying racism, rather than doing something about it. Reactionary politics has swept the US and HN.

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

#585

Post by lostcolony » Mon, Mar 21, 2022, 4:11 AM UTC

sarchertech wrote: post #544

iamleppert wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The “college experience” of living in a dorm for 4 years is probably overrated, but if you can afford it, there’s definitely a benefit to spending 4 years on directed learning. Both in subjects you’re interested and in being forced to learn subjects you would never touch on your own. I went back to school after a decade of web development, and learned a ton. I think I’m a much better developer than I would have been…

I graduated from college the first time; did both community college and university as a transfer. Still got the 'freshman experience' my first semester at uni, then lived on campus, except for my final semester where I commuted.

Yes, having dedicated time to focus on learning was great. But I was effective at that because I'd already learned to, well, learn, on my own, by homeschooling the latter half of high school (where I'd study, take CLEP tests).

College isn't for suckers, but the scholastic benefits of it can be gotten through other means (and should probably be done because a job you're interested in requires it, ideally in the confines of that job, like an apprenticeship in the trades). Many of the other purported benefits (social, etc) are BS.

The main benefit I can think of outside of that dedicated study time is being forced into more of a cultural milieu than I had experienced prior. I think that is important, but I also think that entirely depends on the school, just as it depends on the job, so I'm not sure that's entirely a college benefit so much as a "get into the city if you're living somewhere suburban or rural" benefit.

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

#586

Post by CityOfThrowaway » Mon, Mar 21, 2022, 4:14 AM UTC

lostcolony wrote: post #580

CityOfThrowaway wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The exact opposite actually. It's a good for-profit enterprise that fails when it's narrative twists it into a public good. The problem isn't that university doesn't work. The problem is that the federal government has propped it up with so much poorly underwritten debt that the prices have ballooned beyond value delivered. That would be fine if the audience taking the debt was rational. But the discourse around univ…

And to be clear - if it was a purely government funded thing there would be strong price controls around it (the same reason why doctors pushed back against the original compulsory medical insurance plans in the 30s, and why there's so much back and forth around medicare covering stuff or not, doctors accepting it or not, etc). But by underwriting debt this way we have an agency problem; the government isn't incentiv…

Yes, good nuanced addition. I agree!

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

#587

Post by wolverine876 » Mon, Mar 21, 2022, 4:14 AM UTC

chinchilla2020 wrote: post #390

wolverine876 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.…

SAT is one of the strongest correlations of academic success and future income. Where did you hear that it isn't? I worked in edtech analytics for a while where SAT among other factors were correlated with student success. SAT scores correlate with graduation rates, college GPA, job placement. Most elite universities also tend to receive applicants with higher SAT scores (A no brainer)

I read research that it wasn't, and I believe many colleges claimed that it wasn't. Since neither of us is citing anything, I will keep an eye out.

> Most elite universities also tend to receive applicants with higher SAT scores

Many don't use SAT scores anymore.

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

#588

Post by jessaustin » Mon, Mar 21, 2022, 4:15 AM UTC

davemp wrote: post #498

bcrosby95 wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's not possible to hire Americans to do this kind of work without getting screwed. If you don't want to get screwed, you have to start doing this work yourself. (Or maybe someone in your family could do it? Do you have a 19yo nephew?) Not everyone is capable of some of the manual or cognitive tasks involved, but not everyone you could hire would be, and most of the work is of the simple-yet-laborious variety.

In the 3-county rural area where I've spent most of my time recently, we have 3 Lowes, 2 Home Depots, a Menard's, multiple Orschelns and Tractor Supplies, and probably fifty smaller hardware stores and lumber yards. This is many thousands of commercial square feet basically devoted to home improvement, for an area with fewer than 140,000 residents. If it were possible to hire this sort of work without significant expense, the home supply market would be very different.

I'm not criticizing any carpenters or plumbers here. Their work is naturally seasonal and cyclical, and our society DGAF about people with that sort of work. If an electrician would wire your new bedroom for less than $3,000, he wouldn't be able to afford $1,000/month for medical insurance for his family, at least not every month of the year.

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

#589

Post by judge2020 » Mon, Mar 21, 2022, 4:15 AM UTC

wolverine876 wrote: post #549

judge2020 wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 le…

> it's not the color of your skin or your heritage that determines your placement Where could that come from? There is an enormous history of racism in the US, and plenty of it overtly, less overtly, etc. right now. You could see it in this thread, where someone literally said that race was the determining factor. You have to blind yourself not to see it over and over in our society. And yet it somehow doesn't affect…

I’m saying that, right now, those aren’t direct factors, although they are generally the factors that have put the current generation of African Americans in this situation of living in poverty/being apart of the lower class. My point is that no school is worse because 99% of the students are black, they’re worse because they don’t have any expensive houses paying dividends in the form of property taxes to match the luxuries afforded by richer communities.

> In my non-systematic and few observations, attempts at integration are resisted aggressively by white parents, especially now.

This is not contradictory to my point, I’m simply detailing the ‘how’ in their efforts to oppose integration. Nobody is going into school board meetings asking them to put up barriers to prevent black people from integrating, they’re making sure affordable housing projects are never approved.

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

#590

Post by Teknoman117 » Mon, Mar 21, 2022, 4:15 AM UTC

In reading further down that thread, I had a question about one of the tweets - why would a "zero discrimination" admission environment result in 65% of admitted college students being Asian-American?

Assuming a completely unbiased and equal opportunity environment from birth until college (which obviously is not the situation, this just a hypothetical), wouldn't college admissions more or less be equal to the demographics of the state or nation?

The 2020 census results have 6% of respondents identifying as Asian or Asian-American. Obviously wealth disparities such as access to education create over and under representation for groups, but a 10x over-representation being "proper" seems a bit high to throw out there without some citations...