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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

#841

Post by Damogran6 »

At a couple times in my kid’s development, I noticed: 1. My Alma mater went from an, I’m sure, perfectly adequate Stadium 8 blocks off-campus to a Many-tens-of-millions-of-dollars on-campus stadium. I’m sure to ‘attract more meat for the meatgrinder and compete with the other colleges’ 2. The fresh doe-eyed representatives at College night at school rattled off numbers that amounted to $250-$300k per student, but that there were ‘ways to defer a little of that…maybe’ 3. I have twins. I had 30 years to pay off my mortgage, which was half the outlay of two college educations. And I could live there. And it appreciates in value while I do so.

I felt like it wasn’t my responsibility to prop up the bad financial decisions of complete strangers, nor encumber the family to more than half a million dollars in debt for 4 years so that they could see a fancy stadium on-campus.

And yet there’s still that nagging voice in my head that’s asking me if I’m gambling my kid’s future on a state college and a trade-school at 1/4th the cost.

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

#842

Post by lordnacho »

gruez wrote: post #222
lordnacho wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Massive online learning/examination system, fewer places in university, reserved for people who actually are going to be professors. Everyone else sits at home and just learns the stuff and does the exams while driving an uber. It will take a lot less time to just jump the math hoops than to do four years of half holidays, eg my total university time was actually 96 weeks but spread over 4 years. So a couple of years…

>Everyone else sits at home and just learns the stuff and does the exams while driving an uber. It will take a lot less time to just jump the math hoops than to do four years of half holidays, eg my total university time was actually 96 weeks but spread over 4 years. So a couple of years of doing that and people can see you can learn stuff. All that does is test whether you know the content, which you said yourself "…

It just needs to be done cheaper, in a way that doesn't waste so much time. Why make people do 4 years of slogging through umpteen courses when you can just do a few, and let that be your evidence they can do it?

In the end there's just no way a course in some science can substitute for a job in business, so if you're going to use a course as your hurdle, why not just do a short one?

You could also just say we'll have fewer students. That way businesses will have to choose between high school grads. But as it is now, very few people will want to be that guy who doesn't have a degree.

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

#843

Post by giantg2 »

wjossey wrote: post #568
Forgeties79 wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Dropped out of a comp sci PhD program after a year for this exact same reason. Will go get my masters some day so I can teach in retirement, but was saddened teaching in higher ed couldn’t be the end game.

I had an advisor in undergrad that tried to convince me to teach. Im glad I didn't listen to him. I hate my current job, but I'm certain I would have hated that more.

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

#844

Post by slibhb »

shafyy wrote: post #825
newsclues wrote: post #787

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“ Because it's a very libertarian and capitalistic view of how life” Why that bad? Is a very socialist or communist view on life better? Seems like a bias rather than factually supported.

I think it's clear that libertarianism and extreme capitalism is not the best way to organize a society. And no, the alternative to that is not communism. Countries who have a good social net and where the state plays some role in ensuring social welfare fare better than countries who don't. And no, GDP is not a good metric of how people in a country are doing as a whole.

Organizing a society strictly according to any ideology is a bad idea.

"Libertarianism and extreme capitalism" are great for people who are intelligent and driven. There's nothing wrong with the idea of trying to identify people like that and giving them money and leaving them alone. Actually there's something progressive about it: instead of forcing people to climb a corporate/academic hierarchy before they can make decisions, you're letting them do what they like in their intellectual prime.

That doesn't mean we should apply this way of thinking to everyone. Most people are of average intelligence and drive. Some people need assistance.

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

#845

Post by derbOac »

Fomite wrote: post #794
beambot wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

As has been previously noted, HN seems to be convinced 50% overhead means that 50% of the grant is taken to cover overhead. This is inaccurate. That would be 100% overhead, which is vanishingly rare (I've only encountered one institution above that rate, and they have to maintain research ships). 50% overhead means that the indirect costs of a grant are 50% of the direct costs, i.e. 1/3rd of the total grant. Notably,…

I think the problem though is that whatever those indirects are, they exceed the actual costs, and those direct costs are covering important things. So the indirects are being used as profit at what is supposed to be a nonprofit.

That might be fine except then it leads to massive distortion in incentives, so faculty are being driven to bring in money rather than do research per se.

It's kinda like the classic stereotype of a drug company not putting any RD money into something where they can't control the profit, despite efficacy, only now you're talking about this happening at a nonprofit that's supposed to be committed to research for its own sake.

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

#846

Post by Loughla »

CityOfThrowaway wrote: post #571
scaramanga wrote: post #551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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…

>It's a good for-profit enterprise

I am going to absolutely need any amount of citations for this. For-profit institutions are notoriously sub-par, shady dealers.

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

#847

Post by Loughla »

erosenbe0 wrote: post #677
scaramanga wrote: post #551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Correct, we can't realistically untether higher education from public dollars, so the public should get to exercise more oversight. Whether it is the loans or the reduced property taxes, the public is always footing part of the bill.

>so the public should get to exercise more oversight.

Every public institution has open board meetings, with board members who are either publicly elected, or appointed by an elected official. They also have constant and consistent reporting to the state and federal government about budget, student achievement, and various institutional and student based outcomes. I think maybe it's less that there needs to be more reporting, and maybe just put what we already have in a more accessible format?

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

#848

Post by Damogran6 »

ufmace wrote: post #407
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…

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…

And when you turn out all those MBAs who didn’t know what ELSE to take in College, they go looking for, well, MBA things. Which is why everything is now rented, Medicine is so expensive, Money that used to go to children after death is now sucked up by end-of-life care (and permanently cruising around the world is actually cheaper than that end of life care), and your money goes less far buying less mac n cheeze per box… all those MBA’s squeezing every untapped market.

/tinfoilhat mode off.

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

#849

Post by mathattack »

There is a lot of talk about decoupling universities, and their coming collapse. Let me take the contrary opinion, and defend why they will stay. (This is not a defense of their efficacy, only their economics)

Private non-profit universities are essentially run by their tenures faculty. At prestigious universities the focus is primarily research. Everything they do should be in the eyes of this stakeholder group.

The “undergraduate experience” exists as a profit center to fund the tenured faculty. Sports teams and fancy dorms (and binge drinking) are more important (and easier to quantify) to the buyers of education than educational quality so that’s where the investment goes. Buyers will choose “facilities and brand” over education enough to keep the schools looking elite. As long as admissions grades and test scores are high enough, the rest doesn’t matter. (The kids will succeed in life anyway)

At “for profit” universities just replace the tenured faculty with shareholders. Same model just no pretense of research.

For 2nd and 3rd tier universities it’s similar but with much less money to go around. (Less endowment and tuition)

Layer onto this that the government is guaranteeing the bill and you have no incentive for the folks in charge to change their behavior.

As a society we can say we are tired of being on the hook, but until that happens there is a lot of inertia to overcome. That’s why we didn’t see a mass collapse of universities in any of the last 4 recessions.

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

#850

Post by Avicebron »

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…

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