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College has been oversold

marginalrevolution.com

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Re: College has been oversold

#181

Post by sausax82 »

cageface wrote: post #89
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…

A degree in Philosophy or English, let's say, is a luxury that would be incomprehensible to many in the developing world. If I were to suggest to the Vietnamese I know here, for example, that they spend their tuition on something that doesn't directly correlate with a roof over their head or food on their table they'd worry about my mental health. Thanks to globalization that luxury is going to start to seem just as…

Same here in India, any academic degree which is not Engineering/Hard Science/Medical is frowned upon.

Re: College has been oversold

#182

Post by zerohp »

esrauch wrote: post #168
re_todd wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why more people don't recommend community/junior colleges. You can cut the price of education almost in half if you start out 2 years at a JC.

A couple of my friends went to a JC and went on to go to what I will define as "schools with recognizable names but not ivy league"-caliber 4 year schools and ended up getting less than half of their classes accepted as transferred largely due to technicalities. They effectively had to go through 4 years of college anyway, they could have saved just as much by enrolling immediately and taking JC courses over the summ…

This is where research pays off. Community college advisers, at least at my school, are very bad. In Illinois all of the schools have a complete transfer database online at uselect.org.

Re: College has been oversold

#183

Post by nekojima »

llimllib wrote: post #87
nekojima wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd suggest that 9 times out of 8 many STEMs have contextual biases that fail to account for general knowledge that otherwise would strengthen their argumentative position.

> 9 times out of 8 many STEMs So, 112% of the time 60% of STEMS ? What a strange way of phrasing it.

An attempt at statistical sarcasm/humour.

Re: College has been oversold

#184

Post by zerohp »

jholman wrote: post #175
re_todd wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why more people don't recommend community/junior colleges. You can cut the price of education almost in half if you start out 2 years at a JC.

I agree and disagree. I spent a few years at a college before going to a university, and the (average) quality of teaching was actually higher at the college, for half the tuition. So insofar as post-secondary is about the stuff you learn in class, college is awesome. And I used to recommend it highly to any high-school-student who would listen. However, there are some other benefits that are in short supply at colle…

I'm going to a community college now (at 34) and it seems like the quality of teaching is very good but the grading is too generous. If I had lower ambitions, I could see myself getting by on an hour a week of study for each class while still earning good grades.

I am worried about the opportunity cost, in terms of networking with people, but I had no choice but to start in a community college due to poor high school grades. After 30 hours I can transfer, but I will probably stay since I can maintain my full time software developer job while in the community college. I don't think I'll be able to do that when I transfer to the university.

Re: College has been oversold

#185

Post by redthrowaway »

pingswept wrote: post #158
redthrowaway wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that the case of Jobs is a perfect illustration of the grandparent's point: he dropped out of Reed College because he couldn't justify the expense to himself. He audited the calligraphy class, and slept on floors and couches. So he didn't go $100k into debt to take those classes with the expectation it would land him a good job; he sat in on them because he was interested in them but recognized they were a bad…

Sure, Jobs audited the calligraphy class, but he was able to do so because there was a liberal arts college running the class. The point is that the calligraphy class had substantial value later on, at least in the mind of Steve Jobs.

I'm not arguing against the existence of liberal arts colleges; I did a philosophy degree before going into computer science and I'm happy I did. I'm saying that Jobs' experiences and influences aren't really a counter-argument to the idea that people getting liberal arts and humanities degrees likely aren't doing so as a considered investment in their future earning potential.

Re: College has been oversold

#186

Post by BadassFractal »

bretthoerner wrote: post #62
nobody31 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

> 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. If you're making $50k you're being screwed. Also, a small percent of people (business students, poetry majors) ever go down the VP track. As a CS major I'm much, much better off in pay, quality of life, career stability than my friends who got business degrees. Never min…

Agreed. If you graduated in CS from a top 5 school you can easily make 90k in Seattle straight out of school, likely even more in the Bay Area.

Re: College has been oversold

#187

Post by gavinlynch »

sp332 wrote: post #107
maratd wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 can't agree with this. Spending a couple hours at a time discussing Heidegger with an engaged teacher is not an experience you can get outside of a college. And it helped me ask questions I am not smart enough to have asked on my own. The best argument for college is the social environment, which can't be replicated outside of it. Not education. I don't think that's true in serious liberal arts colleges. They're al…

Disagree.

Reading books where others smarter than ourselves ask these questions can also unfold new paradigms and impart the same intellectual growth.

Re: College has been oversold

#188

Post by nekojima »

Fliko wrote: post #149
nekojima wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't know what school you went to, but the engineering school I went to put more of a focus on problem solving using relevant technology and as a result I know how to do very intense research, strategy building, and analysis from the constant nights of trying to build something after the teacher says "Here are x, y, and z components, now build this on Tuesday." I would go as far to argue that the problem solving s…

I went to the top CS uni in my country and its well-regarded internationally. Though CS and Engineering are two separate faculties and I dare say the problem solving skills taught in engineering courses were usually better.

I'd agree that skill development is far more important than degree and, along with attitude and perceived potential, its what I look for when recruiting new employees.

I've studied degrees in three countries on three continents (and taught at uni in two additional countries) and have found teaching style can destroy otherwise great potential in students. Usually the style reflects the country's perception of itself and will be tough to change. A great example is China and the hammering down of any student who sticks their head up too high to question the prof. I love being questioned and quizzed, but took weeks to get students to do this in China and was then told off by the head of faculty and the political censor. Even though they knew I'd do this when I started teaching and supposedly it was why I was hired.

Re: College has been oversold

#189

Post by sp332 »

gavinlynch wrote: post #187
sp332 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't agree with this. Spending a couple hours at a time discussing Heidegger with an engaged teacher is not an experience you can get outside of a college. And it helped me ask questions I am not smart enough to have asked on my own. The best argument for college is the social environment, which can't be replicated outside of it. Not education. I don't think that's true in serious liberal arts colleges. They're al…

Disagree. Reading books where others smarter than ourselves ask these questions can also unfold new paradigms and impart the same intellectual growth.

I'm sure that having a conversation with about a dozen other students and a teacher was more effective than just reading the book would have been. Especially since the teacher was able to fill in some cultural and translation gaps in the book we were reading, and could make connections to other philosophies that we didn't even know about but Heidegger took for granted.

Re: College has been oversold

#190

Post by estevez »

cq wrote: post #60

That graph in the OP is dishonest. Here's the actual data that wasn't cherry picked (and taken directly from the same data source as the OP, using the excel file provided by the US government and charted in excel): http://i.imgur.com/YTFMo.png Here are the tables from the report, if you'd like to do your own analysis: http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/2010menu_tables.asp

If we look at the table[1] upon which the article bases its figure we see that the proportion of liberal arts degrees has been steadily around 38% since the 1970s. In addition, the same table reveals that business has held the plurality at around 20% for the entirety of that same period. Visual arts has gone from 4% to 6% in that same period.

[1]: http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d10/tables/dt10_282.asp

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