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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

#751

Post by jltsiren »

ufmace wrote: post #640
jerojero wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't like the idea of "positive rights" at least as applied to human rights. I don't think it makes sense to consider something a "right" when it requires the active participation of others to provide. Education is good, but it should be as cheap and simple as possible. Putting it in universities that cost more than the per-capita GDP to attend is about as far from that as it gets. If we take that system and call…

> I don't like the idea of "positive rights" at least as applied to human rights. I don't think it makes sense to consider something a "right" when it requires the active participation of others to provide.

All rights require active participation of others to provide. Negative rights such as the right to live and the right to have property don't exist by default. They only become real if the society spends sufficient effort to prevent people from killing and stealing.

Human rights are aspirational. They are not rights people already have but rights people should have. They are the desired outcomes in an ideal society.

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

#752

Post by cbozeman »

lanstin wrote: post #526
nostrebored wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I spent one year as an undergrad reading maths at Oxford and the curriculum, teaching and students were all far superior to the same at Duke University (1988)

Comparing Oxford to Duke is like comparing a Tesla Model S Plaid to a Toyota Camry.

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

#753

Post by nvarsj »

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…

I think you're being too optimistic. Collapse of student loan debt most certainly won't bring down tuition. What will happen is the government/taxpayer will shoulder it and everyone's quality of life will decrease overall. The same thing happened with the mortgage crisis of 2009 and the massive government bailouts - and look, the housing market is a giant bubble again, and completely unaffordable if you're not already on the property ladder, and western governments will preserve it at all costs (like, letting inflation drive everyone's cost of living up so that the mortgage/house market doesn't fall through by being forced to raise interest rates substantially). The system doesn't operate logically or fairly anymore.

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

#754

Post by mellavora »

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…

What is troubling about that last paragraph?

First, by definition, not everyone can be elite. Hell, you can't even get more than 50% of the population to be better than average! -- its math.

And if "In America not being part of the elite is a failure because the political and economical system is made to benefit, empower and sustain elites." is true (which seems likely), then maybe that is what needs to change.

A good step would be as you suggest, to start to massively invest in education and childhood health.

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

#756

Post by MagnumOpus »

maccolgan wrote: post #665
esperent wrote: post #648

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

The subsidies are irrelevant, US college degrees can indeed cost around 50k, if European universities have the same cost (despite having lower GDP PPP per capita) that's a even larger problem, except the taxpayer is in trouble.

European universities don't have the same costs. Data points for Germany or Austria: The cost to educate a student per year:

- $7k or less per year for "book sciences" like philosophy, math, economics, business, law school

- $15k for "technical sciences" like MINT topics that need labs

- $20-30k for arts or music

- $30-$60k for medicine (on the lower end for veterinary, upper end for human medicine)

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

#757

Post by Jensson »

colonwqbang wrote: post #750
krageon wrote: post #743

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you assume folks who don't go to university are less affluent? If anything, that should be the offensive notion. > It does put a lot more responsibility on the prospective student to judge the quality of an education programme and the opportunities it affords. Children cannot make this estimation, which is why we partially subsidise it. It's already a ton of pressure to know wth you're going to be doing later,…

I don't have to assume anything, I can just look at the facts which show that people who attended higher education on average earn much more (in my country at least, if you know of a place where the opposite is true please share) You seem to be assuming that higher education is something obviously good, that everyone would want if they knew what was best for them. I don't think this is true. I think student loans (if…

> people who attended higher education on average earn much more

And thus they pay more taxes, in the extremely progressive taxation systems you have in Europe that should more than pay back the cost of tuition.

> I think student loans (if done right) can be a good thing. They can let anyone from any social setting afford a higher education.

They really don't, poor people will be more scared of taking on so much debt at a young age and thus more reluctant to apply. It is much better that nobody has to worry about debt from studies, otherwise you wont have an equal playing field. We all know rich kids do better, the closer we can make typical kids experience to a rich kid the better, and that includes not having to pay for college.

If you think that poor people pay too much taxes, just make the taxation more progressive. It has nothing to do with student debt. Rather, you could say that student debt shifts money from poor students to rich people (the top of the progressive tax scale), as most students will never reach the top of the tax scale and you could say that the money that pays for the tuition comes from the top of the tax scale (it could come from anywhere, it coming from the working class was just your imagination as well, if it got freed up it could be put anywhere...).

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

#758

Post by mod »

wolverine876 wrote: post #656
visarga wrote: post #630

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Math, medicine and law don't become any easier no matter how much you avoid testing. At some point they got to know the subjects.

That doesn't disagree with anything said?

Disagreement isn't the only purpose for commenting here on HN, despite how threads often appear.

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

#759

Post by Barrin92 »

jmeister wrote: post #612
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…

Ok? 1. That’s his job as an investor. Getting one big outlier prediction right makes up for a hundred wrong ones. 2. These predictions tend to provoke interesting debates(that’s probably Sama’s intent here).

>That’s his job as an investor

however unlike in his job as an investor when he makes stupid takes on twitter he isn't going to lose 100k each time. If he did he would probably vet his tweets a bit more.

The reason markets work and Twitter doesn't is because there's no negative consequences for posting without thinking.

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

#760

Post by smcl »

jppope wrote: post #679
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…

Super weird take IMO- I remember reading Feynman talk about how being able to teach was critical to being a great researcher. Similarly it seems that lots of faculty utilize the various experiences and perspectives of their graduate students to advance their own research. Teaching helps give them ideas so to speak.

You have misread the comment completely. The commenter isn't unhappy that they have to teach at all, in fact it appears that they are happy with that ("There is no shortage of people who want to do a good job teaching"). The issue is that they're forced to do far too much of it, and in this specific case grading hundreds of handwritten lab reports per week.
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