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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

#931

Post by ModernMech »

Fomite wrote: post #800
ModernMech wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Teaching? Never heard of it. This view is starting to become outdated. Plenty of schools now have a role known as "Teaching Professor" that focuses on teaching, with no research expectation. They have all the same qualifications as any faculty hired for the role, like a Ph.D. in the field. At UPenn at least they can even get tenure.

Indeed I have a position without a teaching obligation (though I do teach a bit because I want to), and it's vanishingly rare to find one of those in my field outside of a medical school.

They've just added this position to our school called "Research Faculty". They are soft money supported and have no teaching load. Often they will be attached to some research institute.

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

#932

Post by kkjjkgjjgg »

shafyy wrote: post #826
kkjjkgjjgg wrote: post #822

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So your claim is that Altman used to be capable of making money, but is not anymore? Why? He doesn't come across as crazy and out of touch to me.

He does not seem out of touch to you? He recently announced WorldCoin [0]: > To address it, we built a new device called the Orb. It solves the problem through biometrics: the Orb captures an image of a person’s eyes, which is converted into a short numeric code, making it possible to check whether the person has signed up already. If not, they receive their free share of Worldcoin. He thinks that launching a global…

If you think about crypto for a bit, it is not such a far fetched idea. It tackles the issue of a fair initial distribution.

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

#933

Post by Fomite »

ModernMech wrote: post #931
Fomite wrote: post #800

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed I have a position without a teaching obligation (though I do teach a bit because I want to), and it's vanishingly rare to find one of those in my field outside of a medical school.

They've just added this position to our school called "Research Faculty". They are soft money supported and have no teaching load. Often they will be attached to some research institute.

Soft money supported versions are fairly common - mine's got a substantial hard money component, which is what makes it rare and honestly a little bit wonderful.

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

#934

Post by chongli »

socksset wrote: post #821
chongli wrote: post #712

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing that happened, which you astutely pointed out, is not related to universities at all. What happened has been called cost disease but is perhaps better known as inflation. The trouble with talking about inflation is that the most commonly-reported figures are based on a consumer basket of goods which have seen skyrocketing leaps in productivity which has kept their prices down, relative to everything else. T…

You can't make an inflation argument when it comes to State school tuition cost. That is absurd. State school tuition cost have crushed the general level of inflation increases because it is easy money for the state and there is no state that does not love extra money to spend.

The tuition cost problem is not unique to state schools, nor even US schools for that matter. Canada has the same problems, especially when you look at international student tuition (since domestic student tuition is kept artificially low by law).

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

#935

Post by bryanrasmussen »

kkjjkgjjgg wrote: post #930
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #910

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>So your claim is that Altman used to be capable of making money, but is not anymore? No, the parent comment to yours was that Altman was out of touch. Your reply was that he makes money, which caused me to infer that you thought he could not be out of touch because of a general belief that people who are out of touch cannot be making money. My reply gave an example of someone that was definitely out of touch but sti…

OK but presumably Howard Hughes built his empire while he was not yet crazy and incapable, so it is not a good example for what you wanted to say.

you said: >Didn't he also make a lot of money already? So at least also good at making money.

The second sentence is in the present tense. Implying that Altman is currently good at making money and thus not out of touch.

I said

>When Howard Hughes was at his most batshit crazy and generally out of touch with anything resembling humanity his businesses kept being profitable, perhaps once you have a lot of money it is difficult to really screw it up.

I shall now laboriously break this down in case you have not followed my reasoning.

when I say >his businesses kept being profitable

This implies that they were profitable before he was

>at his most batshit crazy and generally out of touch with anything resembling humanity

Thus my example is of someone who was once not out of touch and made money, but then when they became out of touch they kept making money because their businesses had reached such a size and reach that they were able to make money for him without him being 'in touch'.

I did not say one could be out of touch and go from nothing to money, I said that there was an example of someone who was once 'in touch' but became out of touch and yet they continued to make money.

The criticism of Altman here that I'm reading is that he 'is' out of touch, not that he has always been out of touch. It is in fact a common criticism of very rich people that they lose contact to daily life and the critical understanding of that life that allowed them to become rich in the first place.

Thus your response that he is good at making money is meant to show that he cannot be so out of touch after all (at least this is what I supposed your intention to be and it would seem to be born out by this conversation)

This is why my example of Hughes is a good example of what I wanted to say, which is that just because someone IS good at making money they can still BE out of touch, and not anything else.

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

#936

Post by webmaven »

tester756 wrote: post #110
webmaven wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cards?

>have a card up your sleeve >to have an advantage that other people do not know about: (without that last part)

Thanks for explaining. I was thinking along the lines of "report card", as in that document that lists your school grades for a period of time such as a semester.

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

#937

Post by webmaven »

jtbayly wrote: post #144
tester756 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>have a card up your sleeve >to have an advantage that other people do not know about: (without that last part)

Typically I’ve heard the construction “dealt a better hand”

Same.

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

#938

Post by etempleton »

While higher education in the United States is certainly in crisis, I do not agree with the premise that it is anywhere near collapse.

Higher education is under increased financial pressure in the United States due to population decline; falling per pupil federal funding; and stagnated wages for the middle class.

In response colleges are increasing their endowment to secure their financial future and so that they may offer a larger average discount rate. Google any college or look at college niche and you will see an average net price paid significantly lower than the listed tuition price. This is a new development from a decade ago where most students paid full sticker price to go to college.

Now, I do agree that higher education is trying to do too much these days, but for that to change expectations would need to change.

College shopping is like car shopping. People say they want a simple practical car with good gas mileage at an affordable price, but then when it comes time to buy they are willing to pay a bit more for the nicer stereo, leather seats, CarPlay, etc, etc. Nowhere is this seen more than in the precipitous decline in community college enrollment compared to four year colleges.

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

#939

Post by Kon-Peki »

quartesixte wrote: post #700
wyldfire wrote: post #567

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Major league sports should create and manage their own feeder leagues to develop players, no reason to cram that into a university. Collegiate athletics emerged as lucrative entertainment, over decades. It's not as if they established sports teams originally in order to make money or to become training ground for pro teams. And good luck getting them to forfeit this willingly. A minor league could show up to compet…

And if anything, the colleges were the original sports leagues. The Ivy League was a sports league. Football was a sport done by daring-do young men at Yale and Harvard. The professionalization of sports is a short history. And college sports becoming the huge media sensation it is today also a recent phenomenon. Also, Baseball being the outlier to Football/Basketball when it comes to collegiate leagues probably come…

The minor league farm system in baseball was pioneered by Branch Rickey when he was with the Cardinals, and further expanded when he moved to the Dodgers. Everyone else hated it, and MLB tried to stop him multiple times. But eventually the Yankees adopted it too and then there was no stopping it.

Could a single team in other sports go against all the rest in modern times? I highly doubt it.

PS - Rickey was passionate about collegiate sports and the role they played on campuses.

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

#940

Post by bradleyjg »

chongli wrote: post #712
noobermin wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me explain a line of reasoning that would refute the explanation you provide for the ballooning debt. Universities have not generally changed the way they do things, universities have always been the four things OP listed since forever, even when you likely got your degree (assuming you did, or at the very least most of hacker news did), they were those four things too! Therefore, there is no inherent thing to un…

The thing that happened, which you astutely pointed out, is not related to universities at all. What happened has been called cost disease but is perhaps better known as inflation. The trouble with talking about inflation is that the most commonly-reported figures are based on a consumer basket of goods which have seen skyrocketing leaps in productivity which has kept their prices down, relative to everything else. T…

Cost disease isn’t a sufficient answer given

1) the staff to student ratio is going up

2) average pay for instructional staff is falling on an inflation adjusted basis

Also, unlike a haircut or knee surgery there’s no reason to believe that education should be difficult to automate if it were actually education that was being sold.

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