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College has been oversold

marginalrevolution.com

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Re: College has been oversold

#71

Post by pflats »

_delirium wrote: post #29
pflats wrote: post #6

This is a consequence of the concerted effort by educators to increase post-secondary enrollment in the United States. Presumably, the students likely to enroll in a math or science program were (by and large) already heading to college 25 years ago. As a metric for high schools, students enrolling in and graduating from a 4-year college is one of the most important numbers in the all-important school ranking. Studen…

I'm not sure it's all on the educators' side. It's also been pushed strongly by parents, because for the last few decades having a degree versus not having a degree has been the single best predictor of getting a white-collar job. Doesn't even matter what the degree is in; a 4-year degree qualifies you to get past the "need degree" HR screen in all sorts of generic office jobs, and the pay gap between "generic libera…

Completely agreed. I'm not sure which is the chicken and which is the egg, though: the push for more college-educated students, or the degree screen for jobs.

Re: College has been oversold

#72

Post by [deleted] »

kabdib wrote: post #65
Eeko wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Do companies really work that way? I think trying to max-out your competitiveness and money-making skills by hiring the right guys would make more sense than hiring via secluded grapevine.

The one time I saw it work ("Oh, you went to Columbia, too!"), the manager who made the "hire" decision fired the employee about six months later. From one point, a curve, right? :-) I can't imagine this working out well on the average, though.

[deleted]

Re: College has been oversold

#73

Post by typicalrunt »

mattmanser wrote: post #21
forkandwait wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making everyone get through 2 semesters of calculus and a real probability class would help both their well roundedness and employee-ability. The lack of numeracy and scientific background among otherwise well educated people is shameful.

That's a problem with high school, not university.

Agreed. However, there's enough stories in the US and Canada to show that high schools are under-performing. There are lots of opportunities for reforming high school, but let's not jump to teaching kids Calculus II when they have trouble spelling "Calculus" in the first place.

Re: College has been oversold

#74

Post by anamax »

timjahn wrote: post #7
tdfx wrote: post #5

The scariest part is that all the people I know who have no confidence in their intelligence ("Oh, I could never major in THAT, I'd have to take Calculus! I hate math!") avoid the science majors and are majoring in education. I think that being a teacher should require a 7-8 year graduate education track similar to a doctor or lawyer, not a quick 4-year liberal arts degree that most people shoot for so that they only…

"so that they only work 9 months a year" Which, of course, they don't.

> Which, of course, they don't.

That's right - many of them have summer jobs.

Re: College has been oversold

#75

Post by Eeko »

nobody31 wrote: post #55
wisty wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elitism only works while it has some kind of advantage. If going to an elite college gives you a better chance of reaching the top, then hirers will come from elite colleges. If getting a CS degree gives you a better chance of reaching the top, then hirers will have CS degess.

Successful go to elite college, successful only hire from elite college, therefore to be successful you go to elite college. Of course this system eventually breaksdown. But for Eton school it's worked since 1440, for Oxford since 1096, Cambridge since 1284 - but eventually it will break down.

> But for Eton school it's worked since 1440, for Oxford since > 1096, Cambridge since 1284 - but eventually it will break down.

Universities pretty much had the monopoly for highly specialized knowledge until very recently. The companies, public and students waking up to the fact that knowing your rhetoric & poetry ain't so valuable any more IS the system breaking down. Right now.

You'll rather hire from HN than from Oxford.

Re: College has been oversold

#76

Post by pflats »

hemancuso wrote: post #13
pflats wrote: post #6

This is a consequence of the concerted effort by educators to increase post-secondary enrollment in the United States. Presumably, the students likely to enroll in a math or science program were (by and large) already heading to college 25 years ago. As a metric for high schools, students enrolling in and graduating from a 4-year college is one of the most important numbers in the all-important school ranking. Studen…

Let me get this straight - you're arguing that increased college enrollment over the past 25 years is some sort of conspiracy perpetrated by secondary school administrators to better their own rankings?

Not at all. The increased college enrollment over the past 25 years is a nationwide push from the highest levels of government, academia, and business to get more students to enroll. Over the years, though, this goal has become somewhat divorced from its intentions.

I teach math (and used to teach CS before budget cuts) at a high school level. I've advised my mathematically weak, sometimes special needs students to do exactly what I mentioned in the first post.

Re: College has been oversold

#77

Post by dconway »

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.…

Ugh. What a depressing way to think about college. But you're right. My English degree isn't doing jack for me. In my free time during college, I actually studied theology, computer science, and martial arts. They are what should be written on my diploma, and what I'd rather show to potential employers (well, not the theology part so much).

Re: College has been oversold

#78

Post by JamesPeterson »

Here in Australia, liberal arts majors are subsidized less than STEM majors. We also have a largely subsidized public university system in general - we have just one private university (but many private colleges).

As an example of what this means, the University of Queensland located down the road from me is often ranked in the top 50 worldwide.

Science courses at UQ are about half the cost of liberal arts majors.

I can study there and place tuition on what's essentially an interest-free (plus inflation) government loan that I only have to begin paying back (at 4-8% of my gross salary, depending on earnings) when/if my salary goes above ~$47,000.

Re: College has been oversold

#79

Post by anamax »

joe8756438 wrote: post #50

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 contributi…

> First, Wages are an extremely inadequate measure for the contribution art makes to society.

While wages may not be the right measure, the amount of money that people are willing to pay seems somewhat useful.

Most "art" is crap and society would be better off if most "artists" were grocery baggers instead. (No, I'm not harshing on grocery baggers - I'm just picking a job that "artists" look down on.)

Yes, that might affect their self-esteem, but maybe they'll learn the dignity of honest work.

Re: College has been oversold

#80

Post by Hyena »

I have a degree in art history and have been applying to graduate school in computer science. I have had ample opportunity to reflect systematically on my choices in undergrad and what I've done since graduating. While early drafts of personal statements have made claims like "mistake", those drafts never make the cut.

No one ever oversold college to me. Liberal arts education went precisely as my professors described, with precisely the economic and social benefits they predicted. No professor, no advisor, no student, no parent, no media outlet ever stated that a liberal arts degree was the path to financial success. At worst, the media has depicted having a college degree as more important than what that degree is in, which remains true. The utility of the paper itself remains quite high.

If we have a STEM graduation problem, I place the blame squarely where it belongs: on STEM departments. I watched as engineering majors routinely failed out, destroyed by calculus-based physics in the first year or thermodynamics in the second. Half our ranks in art history were culled from that group; the successful engineers usually had prior background. That learning curve is often too steep given our secondary education system. The courses demand an amount of time inconsistent with the experience of the average student; coming from the right hand of the SAT distribution, they often did not need to put much work into high school. If we want to increase graduation into STEM fields, we need to redesign our education system taking this objective and the preparation of our students into account.

It is a failure if the best we can do for $100,000 is turn mediocre hackers into programmers, obsessive tinkerers into engineers.

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