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College has been oversold

marginalrevolution.com

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Re: College has been oversold

#41

Post by nobody31 »

maratd wrote: post #38
joshklein wrote: post #27

I have a similar conclusion but slightly different reasoning. And I want to defend liberal arts majors a bit, since I'm one of them. To me, the problem is that most people don't view college as an investment in their future, but rather as a temporary place to delay choices. Certainly, it is positioned as an investment by educators, and it is probably true for science & engineering degrees, but do students approach it…

> Really, it's a cultural problem. No, it's an economic one. > I have a liberal arts degree from an "elite private university". Ok. Let's make the assumption that you're at least moderately intelligent and would be able to get a job for 40K from the bat. 40K * 4 = 160K College tuition is 40K itself at an "elite private university". Then you add living expenses, books, food, etc. and you have another 25K. That's 65K.…

>Half a mil to learn about Poetry Writing. Sorry, but that's just silly.

Half a mil so that when you apply for a job at $MEGA-CORP or in government the hirer says "Oh you went to %SCHOOL%, same as me" welcome to our management fast-track program, followed by promotion and VP-dom.

As opposed to "Oh you got a CS degree", well programmers get to sit in this cubicle and get paid $50k until we outsource the whole thing to India.

Re: College has been oversold

#42

Post by impendia »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #36
impendia wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny you suggest a track similar to law/med school. In those progressions graduates can expect to make well into the six figures. If we doubled teachers' pay, lightened their workload, and most importantly did not require teachers to answer so stringently to administrators (and voters and homebuyers) who mainly care about test scores, I would agree this is a good idea. I have a friend who's a teacher, who works hard…

How light a workload do teachers need? As it stands now, full time teachers [1] work only 38.5 hours/week (on average). http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2008/03/art4full.pdf I'm not sure how increasing pay, further reducing work hours, and completely eliminating accountability will do anything other than buy teacher's loyalties in an election year. Incidentally, there is also little evidence that postgraduate degrees in e…

I certainly don't propose completely eliminating accountability. I think we need to seriously rethink how and to whom teachers are accountable, and how they are evaluated.

Re: College has been oversold

#43

Post by nekojima »

maratd wrote: post #38
joshklein wrote: post #27

I have a similar conclusion but slightly different reasoning. And I want to defend liberal arts majors a bit, since I'm one of them. To me, the problem is that most people don't view college as an investment in their future, but rather as a temporary place to delay choices. Certainly, it is positioned as an investment by educators, and it is probably true for science & engineering degrees, but do students approach it…

> Really, it's a cultural problem. No, it's an economic one. > I have a liberal arts degree from an "elite private university". Ok. Let's make the assumption that you're at least moderately intelligent and would be able to get a job for 40K from the bat. 40K * 4 = 160K College tuition is 40K itself at an "elite private university". Then you add living expenses, books, food, etc. and you have another 25K. That's 65K.…

> I would much rather my kid spend his time working in a small business and learning about entrepreneurship hands-on...

As much as I'd want this for my kids, not all kids have the passion for entrepreneurship, or innovation, necessary to be successful. Liberal Arts degrees can help by allowing young adults find an interesting and for them beneficial and hopefully rewarding career, that they might not otherwise find if their best option is working as a cashier at a dollar store.

The cost though for Arts degrees, and I have sat on the board of governors for a well-known and high reputation university, is ridiculous and largely driven by politics & tradition, more than economic value.

But I don't want to pay for my children to party & socialize for four years at that cost!!

Re: College has been oversold

#44

Post by JimboOmega »

Over this same time period, far more women have been going to college than ever before. I wonder what the numbers would look like with women removed (for the sake of a fair comparison)? I wish it was the case that the hard sciences had just as many women as men, but it is not. At my school, engineering was mostly men, while the liberal arts college was mostly women. I'd think most of the growth in enrollment from women (which is most of the growth, I'd think) is going to the "non-science" fields.

Re: College has been oversold

#45

Post by rlovelett »

RoastBeats wrote: post #22

As a college-level instructor (with a PhD in those -- gasp -- liberal arts), might I suggest two things? First, the critical thinking I learned reading poetry better prepared me for business management, web development, and entrepreneurship than any of my Chemistry courses (I was also a Chemistry minor in Undergrad). I'd be happy to go into the details, but this doesn't seem like the forum for that explanation. And s…

I understand your premise and don't have any rebuttal to it that would include facts and/or figures. But one thought did pop into my mind when reading your comment.

I wonder if your feeling is a prevailing thought/sentiment among liberal arts professors. And if it is then why don't you and your ilk just give out more B's and C's? So what if they cry? If you think they deserve the B or C then that is the grade.

But what do I know I only have a degree in Electrical Engineering.

Re: College has been oversold

#46

Post by nekojima »

RoastBeats wrote: post #22

As a college-level instructor (with a PhD in those -- gasp -- liberal arts), might I suggest two things? First, the critical thinking I learned reading poetry better prepared me for business management, web development, and entrepreneurship than any of my Chemistry courses (I was also a Chemistry minor in Undergrad). I'd be happy to go into the details, but this doesn't seem like the forum for that explanation. And s…

I found that while my CS studies were useful in setting up new software/internet ventures, it has been the research skills I learned from studying history & economics and the strategy & analysis from business management, that has made a world of difference in my success or failure as an entrepreneur & business owner.

Re: College has been oversold

#47

Post by viscanti »

gerggerg wrote: post #19

lets not forget that all this increased enrollment increases the price of education and puts a strain on resources for all of us. Not only were there slightly less comp sci graduates but they grossly overpaid for their education compared to graduates in 1985. One of the biggest bummers about that chart is the increase in debt it represents.

False. Several complex factors are at play here, but supply/demand effects are not the root cause. This Forbes article does a good job of explaining things. http://www.forbes.com/2010/08/01/rising-cost-education-opini...

TLDR; it turns out that comparing educational costs relative to the inflation rate is inaccurate. Efficiency gains in almost every other domain have artificially lowered the overall inflation rate. Artisinal fields like education haven't had a 10x efficiency increase (we don't teach students any faster than we did in the past), so their rates have increased at the true rate of inflation (or what the inflation rate would be if no efficiency gains happened in other domains).

Re: College has been oversold

#48

Post by dhume »

_delirium wrote: post #32
quanticle wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am willing to posit that a lack of statistical knowledge does more harm to critical thinking than a lack of rhetorical knowledge.

I'm a stats-heavy computer scientist, but I'd argue the opposite, that the ability to construct and evaluate a rigorous argument is the first thing lacking: one that plausibly analyzes the domain, recounts opposing arguments reasonably fairly, constructs counterarguments that are responsive to the opponents' arguments, and uses logical argumentation along with empirical evidence in a way that actually supports its po…

I'm a stats-heavy computer scientist, but I'd argue the opposite: the ability to construct and evaluate a rigorous argument is the first thing lacking: one that plausibly analyzes the domain, recounts opposing arguments reasonably fairly, constructs counterarguments that are actually responsive to the opponents' arguments, and uses logical argumentation along with empirical evidence in a way that correctly supports its points.

This seems closer to "statistics versus logos" than "statistics versus rhetoric."

Re: College has been oversold

#49

Post by brudgers »

>"in 2009 we graduated just 2,480 students with bachelor’s degrees in microbiology — about the same number as 25 years ago. Who will solve the problem of antibiotic resistance?"

I suspect that the professional earning potential within microbiology of a person with a bachelor's degree is probably lower than their earning potential within the food service industry - and the odds of a person with only a bachelor's degree being put in a position which allows substantial research into a major problem are very slim, indeed.

Re: College has been oversold

#50

Post by joe8756438 »

I am very skeptical of the criteria for which the author evaluates a successful career.

You cannot evaluate the success of an artist in the same way as an engineer. First, Wages are an extremely inadequate measure for the contribution art makes to society.

And looking at "innovations that drive economic growth" as a measure of the collective success of college graduates takes a seriously narrow view of the contributions necessary to foster a healthy economy.

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