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College has been oversold

marginalrevolution.com

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Re: College has been oversold

#211

Post by tsotha »

Eeko wrote: post #52
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…

> 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 reason you hire from elite schools has nothing to do with the schools themselves. MIT and Harvard don't have substantially different curricula than anywhere else, and for undergrads it really doesn't matter if you have N Nobel Prize winners. But you want to hire someone who was smart enough to get in to MIT or Harvard.

In terms of hiring people because they went to the same school you went to... I've never seen it, though I wouldn't be surprised if that happens with Ivy Leaguers.

Re: College has been oversold

#212

Post by RandallBrown »

joshklein wrote: post #67
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.…

It sounds like we agree - my post was expressly derisive of the kid who sleeps through his poetry class. Regardless, it sounds like writing poetry suggests a romantic lark to you. To me, it was a lesson in how to convey powerfully complex ideas in concise, but meaningful, language. I didn't make a lot of money right out of school, but 3 years later I was making a boatload. Why? Because I can write the kind of email t…

The framework your professors used was probably meant to teach you fundamentals. Sure, you can teach yourself to glue code together that you found on the Internet and get pretty good at it. The trouble comes when you get to a problem that hasn't been solved already. That's when the fundamentals you learned will kick in and actually help you.

Re: College has been oversold

#213

Post by pnathan »

gaustin wrote: post #160
gyardley wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$50K in Missoula is probably $80K in San Francisco and $100K in NYC, and that's without taking discrepancies in federal, state, local, and sales taxes into account. A senior developer in SF or NYC is still coming out ahead - probably due to the sheer amount of competition for them - but not quite as much as you'd think at first glance.

The biggest difference to my mind, the one that bugs me most, is the opportunity cost. Sure, I have no commute, low mortgage for a big house, no sales tax and easy access to some of the most beautiful unspoiled wilderness in the entire world. The downside is that there are virtually no jobs/startups here that I find interesting. You either adjust your expectations when you live here, or you go somewhere else. I am so…

> But I figure I can always convert my salary to the local equivalent when asked what my current salary is.

Same. I make in your salary range, and I figure I will simply grab some COLA calculators when I go job hunting and adjust upwards to correct for the local difference

Re: College has been oversold

#214

Post by brc »

I don't have the answer, but I'm glad this topic is finally being discussed properly.

More people need to take the realistic view of spending time in college for what it will get them. The almost obligatory need for people to do any type of higher education devalues the worth of all degree qualifications.

Moreover, education is ripe for startup innovation. Is there really a need to x,000 community colleges when a lecturer from Harvard can be streamed online in HD in real time to thousands or millions of students?

Re: College has been oversold

#216

Post by argv_empty »

king_jester wrote: post #113
yummyfajitas wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Could you explain your source for the statistic you used on an avg. 38.5 hour work week for teachers? The only relevant information I found in the linked PDF was chart 2, which has the following footnote: NOTE: The calculations of hours worked are based on data collected about how survey respondents spent “yesterday.” Thus, average weekly work hours are an extrapolation based on the activity for 1 day. That footnote…

That footnote seems to imply that the avg. hours worked per week calculation may not be very accurate. The linked PDF also doesn't mention if the hours reported are the contracted hours for the teacher or the total hours spent working including work at home and outside of school hours.

The ATUS asks about work done for pay (or for free if it's for a family-owned business), not work you do beyond the hours you actually get paid for.

Re: College has been oversold

#217

Post by cageface »

joshklein wrote: post #142
cageface wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

A lot of things we do here would make them question our mental health. Say, pretending like you really need more than that $40,000 job the English major can get that lets him live in a small but safe apartment in a fine neighborhood (that has plumbing, electricity, and sanitation) in a non-center-of-the-world American city, and shop for all the groceries he needs in the market 10 minutes away. Anyway, for a community…

The 40k job was only available to you in the US thanks to our uniquely privileged position in the world in the second half of the 20th century. In a global labor market you're going to have to provide a lot more real value to earn such a generous salary.

Re: College has been oversold

#218

Post by TheFuture »

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…

There is a serious lack of maturity in American adults age 18-30. It's been creeping for a long time, and now we're seeing the results.

I strongly agree that college has just become a place to delay becoming an adult, and delay the real-world.

Re: College has been oversold

#219

Post by losvedir »

Hyena wrote: post #98
losvedir wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree with this: > That learning curve is often too steep given our secondary education system . . . we need to redesign our education system taking this objective and the preparation of our students into account. However, I vehemently disagree with this: > If we want to increase graduation into STEM fields . . . I place the blame squarely where it belongs: on STEM departments No, no, no, no, no! This wo…

You quote me inaccurately where you disagree, I actually said: >If we have a STEM graduation problem, I place the blame squarely where it belongs: on STEM departments. And then proceed to state that we need a redesign. The comment was already too long, so I left out any detail about what that would be. I have in mind a long-cycle plan that culminates in a master's in 5-6 years, using early semesters to bring people u…

I apologize for misquoting you. I think your solution sounds like a reasonable way for universities to allow students to recover from a poor high school education. As I type that, I realize that's important. My concern is it draws out the education period of someone's life even further.

I'm looking at this from the perspective that people should have a solid grasp of calculus and the other fundamentals you mention in high school. Currently many do not. One solution is to fix the problem at the university by giving students extra time to learn the fundamentals there. The other solution is to find a way for students to learn them back in high school.

What happens in your plan if someone still doesn't learn the fundamentals when they're given the extra semesters in your long-cycle plan? Are they dropped from the program? Are they given extra tutoring? Why can't these things happen earlier, and if so, isn't that similar to the system we have now?

Re: College has been oversold

#220

Post by zachrose »

sliverstorm wrote: post #191
joshklein wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of things we do here would make them question our mental health. Say, pretending like you really need more than that $40,000 job the English major can get that lets him live in a small but safe apartment in a fine neighborhood (that has plumbing, electricity, and sanitation) in a non-center-of-the-world American city, and shop for all the groceries he needs in the market 10 minutes away. Anyway, for a community…

But does the lack of an English major prevent you from securing a $40,000 job?

In absolute terms, no. But likewise, lack of a high school diploma doesn't prevent you from becoming a music star.
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