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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

#641

Post by DerSaidin »

andrewjl wrote: post #281
com2kid wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America is a country that loves the free market country, yet no one seems to be talking about supply and demand to fix college prices. Double the number of large quality state universities. Re-index public university tuition to what they were in 2000 + inflation. Mandate that funding comes with X number increase in tenured professors. Re-instate public funding for state universities to what it was in 2000 + inflation…

> Double the number of large quality state universities. As far I can tell there aren't capacity issues to get accredited education at the undergrad level. The prices are driven by student loan availability and the need for investment in amenities for colleges to attract students. Increasing the number of universities might worsen the problem due to the latter needing to redouble investments to attract students.

> The prices are driven by student loan availability and the need for investment in amenities for colleges to attract students.

Does the US have colleges that choose to attract students with lower prices instead?

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

#642

Post by ghoshbishakh »

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…

Couldn't agree more. I want to teach in a university. But I won't be able to even if I join one as a faculty.

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

#643

Post by givemeethekeys »

bestcoder69 wrote: post #610
givemeethekeys wrote: post #562

For those who care about things like "social fabric", the unintended consequences of not being able to declare bankruptcy on a student loan are that there's a strong possibility that your future wife, if she's above average looking with a great education was a stripper / escort for a little while to help pay off that loan. This is what happens when we ban people from being able to declare bankruptcy.

Strong possibility? Like what odds are we talking here?

If you think that decriminalization takes place when a majority of the population is in favor of it, then New York is moving to decriminalize sex work. I'd say that the odds are good.

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

#644

Post by PeterisP »

jameshart wrote: post #18
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…

Question: do elite institution degrees confer any addition to market value commensurate with their cost, or do they simply select for people who already have high market value?

My impression is that elite institutions generally do not have a higher cost than the reasonable alternatives, so there's no need to justify if it's worth paying more for them as you're not paying more. Their credential value is strongly linked to their selection, but if they do select you, studies there can be more affordable than a "lesser" institution, especially because they are mostly funded not by your tuition fees but rather by the endowments of their alumni, so indirectly through your future income.

The highest cost seems to be for good-but-not-best institutions that have some specific niche/selling point for them but are not particularly selective and will accept almost anyone who will pay their price.

Like, if some school wants to build a reputation for having the best scientists or lawyers then they have to be somewhat selective with respect to performance and have very competitive admissions, but you also need to ensure that the particular young students with most potential can actually afford to study there; but if a school just wants to provide a good education in X and does not care who will enroll, they can just ramp up the fees until the applicants filter themselves out.

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

#645

Post by ryanyde »

Unfortunately Sam wholly misses the point of college: it's a social club / network. The issue is "for-profit" colleges and the common misconception that college is about skills / education, when it's really (again) an expensive country club.

Sadly, the further in your career you go, the more it becomes pertinent who you know, and how many people in your network succeeded and can pull strings for you.

It's not everything, but it's these breaks that often separate the smash successes and the grinders-for-life.

Getting drunk and party and studying for 4 years is a durable way to build bonds.

Hopefully most schools begin to focus on trades, and the Harvard / Princetons of the world just openly accept they're not for learning.

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

#646

Post by Ericson2314 »

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…

Also public land-grant universities have been a great success on the main (even if recent events dim that a bit). Direct publicly provided education unlike universe healthcare has been a thing in the US, including being completely free in certain times and places (CUNY, for example).

This is much better than subsidizing tuition without cross controls.

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

#647

Post by jeffbee »

WoodenChair wrote: post #605

Sam Altman makes a lot of grandiose predictions and statements. For example, in 2019 he said “Human radiologists are already much worse than computer radiologists. If I had to pick a human or an AI to read my scan, I’d pick the AI.” [0] However, most people with domain knowledge in this space still would not want their scan not to be read by a human. The AI radiology apps are generally narrowly focused and useful for…

You understate your case. This isn't like a famous cosmologist wandering out of his lane and commenting on higher ed. This guy doesn't have domain expertise in anything.

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

#648

Post by esperent »

bigmadshoe wrote: post #625
esperent wrote: post #615

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's plenty of examples of universities being run as not-for-profit and doing just fine. Pretty much all of Europe since the concept of a University has existed, for example. Sure, you can nitpick problems with European universities and they are not perfect. But nobody is going into debt slavery in Europe from getting a degree and nobody is talking about the collapse of European universities. So maybe the problem…

I don't know about the second paragraph. I went to the University of Edinburgh, and being Scottish, the government paid around $2.5k per year for me to attend. Around half of students in my course (CS) there were from outside of Europe, and were paying $50k per year to attend. Was the debt really avoided in my case, or was it just transferred to others?

It seems more likely that 50k is the actual cost and you're getting a 95% subsidy. Which seems reasonable - should a government be expected to subsidize international students? Not sure where I stand on that.

Besides which, I think EU countries do subsidize students from other EU countries so an Irish person can study in Sweden, for example, without paying high fees (need to confirm this).

Also, $50k is way higher than I expected. In my old university, NUIG in Ireland, it would be more like $15k/year for international students.

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

#649

Post by Plasmoid »

beambot wrote: post #494
mattkrause wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

> (ie 50%+ of grant contracts going to university overhead!).

This is why a lot of grants are made in-kind rather than in cash. Give the research $750K in equipment instead of $1M in cash where the university pockets $500k of it.

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

#650

Post by acchow »

WoodenChair wrote: post #605

Sam Altman makes a lot of grandiose predictions and statements. For example, in 2019 he said “Human radiologists are already much worse than computer radiologists. If I had to pick a human or an AI to read my scan, I’d pick the AI.” [0] However, most people with domain knowledge in this space still would not want their scan not to be read by a human. The AI radiology apps are generally narrowly focused and useful for…

I think that college will have to evolve to keep up. It can no longer be centered around exams and needs to shift towards practical work like projects to give a better educational experience than YouTube
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