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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

#861

Post by Jtype »

praestigiare wrote: post #828

This is one decent and uncontroversial point: that the system of student loans is not working well, followed by a lot of very bad arguments. Take this, for example; “Monocultures suck. It's hard to know how many of the stories about ridiculous stuff happening on campuses to believe, but even if a small fraction of them are true, these are clearly no longer places hyperfocused on learning.” It starts with negative pri…

Mono-cultures do suck. They lead to groupthink, where nuance, alternative viewpoints/actions, and growth are shunned. Groupthink leads to stagnation, which has been shown time and time again. groupthink is what convinced Putin that he could easily waltz into Ukraine, and "liberate" them from the "Nazis" running the country. There was no dissenting viewpoint allowed by Putin, only groupthink.

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

#862

Post by FlyingAvatar »

wolverine876 wrote: post #298
FlyingAvatar wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> College prepares people to be adults in every way… People repeat that but what is it based on? Most of the adult population have not gone to college but somehow manage to become functioning adults.

> Most of the adult population have not gone to college but somehow manage to become functioning adults. We can't do better? Functioning is our only standard? We could go back to the Middle Ages, or be hunter-gatherers, where for 95% of homo sapien history probably most adults were 'functioning'.

You made a very dubious claim that college provides some magic that makes people who go to it betters "adults".

You don't define what adult means. You don't say or imply what ways college would help you become a better one.

For what I would define as "adult", which is understanding the realities of life outside the shelter of their family infrastructure, I would argue most colleges don't really further a student's self-reliance in that way.

If anything, they create another, different reality bubble which is again popped when they are dropped into to the actual real world, often with a mountain of debt. This is the point at which, in my opinion, where someone learns to become an adult.

Does learning new information and skills help one become a better functioning adults? Of course. But college doesn't have a monopoly on being the way to acquire information and skills.

As the price of education in the US continues to increase (for no good reason, other than people can get loans to pay it), college will increasingly fail the cost/benefit analysis for a lot occupations.

As an aside, your attitude seems to imply that you think people who have not gone to college are lesser in some way. I would apply some critical analysis to that.

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

#863

Post by gruez »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #727
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…

>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. Just for what it's worth, Australia has a taxpayer-funded student loan scheme (HECS) and the obscene fees you see in the US simply aren't a problem here. A full 4-year Electrical Engineering…

>Just for what it's worth, Australia has a taxpayer-funded student loan scheme (HECS) and the obscene fees you see in the US simply aren't a problem here. A full 4-year Electrical Engineering degree from Monash cost me about A$30k back in 2012. It looks like now they're around $40k. Even for an arts grad, this is something one could comfortably pay off in 2-3 years.

What do you mean that "the obscene fees you see in the US simply aren't a problem here"? $40k across 4 years is $10k/year. The average in-state tuition in the US is $10,338k. Those are pretty close to each other.

https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/paying-for-co...

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

#864

Post by tbran »

eterevsky wrote: post #770
shafyy wrote: post #680

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sam Altman and his buddies are incredibly out of touch with the real world. In a related tweet, he said [0]: > A version of college replacement I'm super interested in: Find the smartest and most driven 18 year olds in the world, and give them 'tenure'--say a decade+ of salary, resources to work on whatever they want, and a smart peer group--in exchange for small % of future earnings. Completely agree with your state…

> I would question if Altman is good at anything He leads OpenAI > Find the smartest and most driven 18 year olds in the world, and give them 'tenure'--say a decade+ of salary, resources to work on whatever they want, and a smart peer group--in exchange for small % of future earnings. Why do you think this is a bad idea?

How about the smartest and most driven 25 year olds?

Or 30 year olds?

Or 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 year olds?

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

#865

Post by erosenbe0 »

Loughla wrote: post #847
erosenbe0 wrote: post #677

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 r…

I mean private universities too. They take loan money and are also exempt from massive amounts of property and sales taxes. Administrators are getting wealthy financed through public debt at all levels.

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

#866

Post by weatherlite »

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…

> But not only that, children of all social classes go to the same schools

That's quite a fantasy - many people in Europe who can, enlist their kids in private schools because they don't want them to go to integrated schools. Why? Because in cities like Amsterdam integrated schools usually have a big amount of children of immigrants who are poorer and harder to teach. So the teachers who go there are also oftentimes not the best (since the best teachers go to private schools). I'm not saying everyone does this, but it's getting quite common for those who can afford it.

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

#867

Post by ummwhat »

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…

College is just one of the three pervasive pillars thoroughly entrenched by systems of law, culture, and physically built infrastructure. The other two are cars and suburban home ownership. They all have sustainability problems. Car commutes lead to neighborhoods that aren't dense enough to support the economy needed to sustain them and they're a de facto 30k ticket just to participate in society. Suburban homes are somehow supposed to be both an investment and affordable to everyone. We all know that no matter how many times there's a housing bubble, people never learn. The cultural propaganda aspect is huge. "What's good for GM is good for America." "The American dream." The GI Bill started the trend of government subsidized college, and now there's all manner of grants. If you buy into the suburban home Ponzi, you are literally subsidized thought the mortgage interest deduction. Roads take more than gas taxes cover, yet rail is only acceptable if it's profitable.

It's all fever dream of Utopia that made sense to post war boomers with good intentions but now the execution spirals out of control. Maybe a car or a degree or a suburban home is right for some people, but as a one size fits all solution that is indoctrinated since birth and in some cases part of peoples identity, it becomes absurd.

College will continue because we will remain irrational about these 3 things much longer than you can remain solvent.

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

#868

Post by chrisBob »

scheme271 wrote: post #653
biztos wrote: post #595

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once you have tenure, what’s stopping you from just getting off the grant treadmill? A friend of mine got on it after tenure (art school) because he could finance cool projects of his own design that way. But even in a research university isn’t tenure supposed to protect you from being pushed around by the administration?

Salary mainly. You may keep the job if you're tenured but without the grants, you may not get much in the way of salary. Also, your grad students, postdocs, and resources (lab equipment, computing time, etc) are being paid through grant money so without it you don't have a lab group. Finally, without funding, your department and/or the university can make life exceedingly difficult. Extra teaching, more admin tasks,…

It is common for the university to pay a partial salary (9-months) and then the faculty can pay themselves another 3 months from grants if they have the funding. At University of Michigan the 9-month salary is spread out over 12 months, but you get a nice summer bonus if you have grant money.

The publicly listed listed salaries are the 9-month salaries, so faculty pay isn't quite as bad as it looks at first glance. If you have funding, most grants also REQUIRE the professor to take salary money from it, otherwise they assume you aren't actually putting in any effort on that funded project.

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

#869

Post by _y3h9 »

TameAntelope wrote: post #698
Izkata wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A given college can only accept a certain number of students each term. Giving a slot to a less-qualified student necessitates dropping a more-qualified student, making it zero-sum. I'm not talking about Harvard specifically (I don't even know what case you're talking about), this is just the normal state of colleges in the US.

They’re not less qualified, that’s the whole problem. There is no stack rank of qualified candidates for a collegiate cohort, because it is not a precise or accurate process. There are more students who apply to Harvard each year with perfect SAT scores and who are valedictorians than there are openings in a given Harvard cohort.

Then why not choose randomly from them? If an Asian student and a black student both get perfect, identical results from huge amounts of hard work and intelligence, why should the Asian student be discriminated against? What have they done wrong, other than be part of a larger group that tends to put more effort in? Why should they be punished for other groups not putting in the same amount of effort theirs does? How is decreasing their probability of success based on race factors they cannot control anything but blatant and disgusting racism?

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

#870

Post by phist_mcgee »

gruez wrote: post #863
AussieWog93 wrote: post #727

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. Just for what it's worth, Australia has a taxpayer-funded student loan scheme (HECS) and the obscene fees you see in the US simply aren't a problem here. A full 4-year Electrical Engineering…

>Just for what it's worth, Australia has a taxpayer-funded student loan scheme (HECS) and the obscene fees you see in the US simply aren't a problem here. A full 4-year Electrical Engineering degree from Monash cost me about A$30k back in 2012. It looks like now they're around $40k. Even for an arts grad, this is something one could comfortably pay off in 2-3 years. What do you mean that "the obscene fees you see in…

10k AUD is 7.4k USD, combined with the fact that Australian HECS loans are repaid only when income passes a certain threshold ~54k AUD per year, at a rate of 2% of your gross annual income. This scales to a maximum of 10% of your income around 90k AUD until the loan is paid. The loan also has no interest, besides adjustments for inflation.
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