College has been oversold • Hacker News Board

Re: College has been oversold

#221

Post by westicle » Thu, Nov 03, 2011, 12:02 AM UTC

ceol wrote: post #180

jshen wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's supply and demand. The output from college isn't matching the needs of those hiring. There aren't enough qualified programmers, math types, etc. This isn't true for many other majors, yet our colleges output far more of these other majors.

I think that's because those majors appeal to more people. It makes sense that the most sought-after jobs are the ones that appeal to the least amount of people. My completely uneducated opinion is that middle and high school should do what colleges are supposed to: prepare students for the real world with useful skills. Teach them how to teach themselves. Then, when they go to college, they can focus on a subject th…

I think you mean that the most sought-after employees work in jobs that appeal to the least amount of people.

Surely if the job doesn't appeal to many people, it is an oxymoron to say it is the most sought-after job.

Re: College has been oversold

#222

Post by beatpanda » Thu, Nov 03, 2011, 12:06 AM UTC

I have and am earning some of those "useless" liberal arts degrees – an Associate's in Social Science and a Bachelors of Science in Journalism.

However, unlike most of the computer science, business, and engineering majors on my campus, my degree has put me in a position to manage an organization of dozens of people where we ship a product four to six days a week, one that is consumed and heavily scrutinized by thousands of people.

I've also written, deployed, and improved software as part of my education that actually gets used at scale in the real world, not as a side project but as a requirement of my degree.

As a result of that, I'm going to leave college with more real-world experience than most of my peers.

Every college degree is what you make of it. Doing problem sets doesn't automatically enable you to really do anything, and studying in the humanities or liberal arts doesn't prevent you from doing something worthwhile, either. The main difference between people who have a valuable college experience and those who don't is whether the individual took advantage of the resources they had to make it valuable.

Also, this doesn't really need to be said, but without the liberal arts, engineering is useless. You can build bridges all day long, but someone still has to sell the thing to politicians and taxpayers and make the thing attractive enough to convince people to pay the toll.

Re: College has been oversold

#223

Post by tryitnow » Thu, Nov 03, 2011, 12:31 AM UTC

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…

You bring up some good points. However, to call it a "good investment" requires comparing it to alternatives.

Two decades ago, not many alternatives existed (libraries? buying books? maybe private tutors?). A decade ago, the online world started opening up a ton of information, but it was basically a wild west of unstructured information.

Now fast forward to the present. Information is beginning to have a bit more structure. More importantly online learning is becoming more social. As this trend progresses my best guess is that the comparative value of college will decline. Not because students in college are learning any less. Indeed thinks to technology they're probably learning more efficiently than ever. But, a lot of that learning can take place online and outside of formal academia at much, much lower costs.

So, yes, college has been a nice investment, but I see the returns declining rapidly on that investment. Sort of like how investing in newspaper stock might have been a good play for most of the 20th century. The last decade, not so much so.

Re: College has been oversold

#224

Post by bane » Thu, Nov 03, 2011, 12:32 AM UTC

forensic wrote: post #192

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…

I found my computer science education to be pretty lightweight and not tremendously useful or beneficial to me. I found my english, psychology, history and philosophy educations, which I took dead seriously as you did, to be tremendously useful. They didn't force me to learn, and the classes were relatively easy if you just wanted to pass, and I saw plenty of classmates learn nothing but still pass or get high marks.…

I absolutely agree. The courses I've consistently gotten those most out of over the years were not my engineering courses, but my non-engineering. I use history, literature, music, art, speech etc. pretty much every day.

My engineering courses got me my job, my "soft" courses made me good at it.

Re: College has been oversold

#225

Post by llimllib » Thu, Nov 03, 2011, 12:43 AM UTC

nekojima wrote: post #183

llimllib wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Stupid lack of internet /sarcasm tags :/

Re: College has been oversold

#226

Post by mgkimsal » Thu, Nov 03, 2011, 12:45 AM UTC

bane wrote: post #224

forensic wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found my computer science education to be pretty lightweight and not tremendously useful or beneficial to me. I found my english, psychology, history and philosophy educations, which I took dead seriously as you did, to be tremendously useful. They didn't force me to learn, and the classes were relatively easy if you just wanted to pass, and I saw plenty of classmates learn nothing but still pass or get high marks.…

I absolutely agree. The courses I've consistently gotten those most out of over the years were not my engineering courses, but my non-engineering. I use history, literature, music, art, speech etc. pretty much every day. My engineering courses got me my job, my "soft" courses made me good at it.

Excellent point, and my experience is similar. My degree is in philosophy. Already knew programming before high school, and my hobby computer work kept those skills up to date while I was focusing on other stuff - "unrelated" stuff like music, art, foreign languages, English, literature, history - these are things that made it easy for me to relate to people who weren't programmers (for example, everyone else in a company outside IT).

While the cynic in me might say you just need to keep up with American Idol and an occasional Fox news broadcast to be able to chitchat with most Americans... I'm not feeling that cynical tonight ;) I'm certainly no expert on any of those subjects I studied in college, but I'm also not afraid of them either.

For me, philosophy was a way of developing my critical thinking and logic skills (which I already had from programming at an early age) outside of computers and seeing how to apply them constructively to a wide range of topics/issues (religion, law/politics, ethic, etc). Taking even more computer science and progamming courses in university would have bored me to death (well, it started to when I tried it).

Re: College has been oversold

#227

Post by colomon » Thu, Nov 03, 2011, 12:53 AM UTC

geebee wrote: post #202

I agree that the humanities can be very valuable for all kinds of reasons, and people with this academic background certainly can be successful in the job market. There are plenty of examples. But you know all those articles fretting about how recent college grads are struggling these days? They almost all have a quote from some student who says "I went to college, I studied hard, I did everything I was supposed to d…

I don't know. I've asked my wife about why she got her degree in English, and she claims no one ever explained to her that wasn't a degree that was likely to lead to a lucrative job. Whereas I was well familiar with the "fries with that" joke, and never seriously considered majoring in music (despite my love of it) precisely because I felt it wouldn't be a wise financial decision. Difference in upbringing, I guess.

Re: College has been oversold

#228

Post by harryh » Thu, Nov 03, 2011, 3:00 AM UTC

dustyscreams wrote: post #154

harryh wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's no reason why an English or Philosophy degree needs to cost $15k a year. Sure there is. It's called Baumol's Cost Disease. Now of course some of those engineers & scientists are working on things like khan academy and other methods of attacking that problem. The downside is that the demand for English or Philosophy majors will only further erode (what do you do with a philosophy degree when there are fewer…

If student loans were dischargeable in bankruptcy lenders would think much harder about the wisdeom of lending $40k/year for liberal arts degrees. Colleges would have to reconsider what they charge for such degrees and students would have an important market signal when choosing a course of study.

I agree completely. The special treatment of student loans w.r.t. bankruptcy is bizarre and leads to all sorts of bad consequences.

Re: College has been oversold

#229

Post by overgryphon » Thu, Nov 03, 2011, 3:05 AM UTC

neutronicus wrote: post #203

RoastBeats wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have to agree with Neutronicus here. The prevailing example would be the "But I'll never get into med school/law school if you don't raise my B+ to an A-" argument which I hear at least three times a semester. This gives us two solutions. First, is to convince naive kids that it's OK to be something other than a lawyer or doctor. Seriously, any students reading this comment, pay attention: There are plenty of other w…

The problem is that assessment is a very valuable function of universities. Industry relies on them as a filter. I don't actually believe that industry values the training universities provide as much as it values the assessment it doesn't have to do because of universities. The universities are thus in sort of a bind. They do an enormous amount of assessment, but the people who benefit the most from accurate assessm…

Industry doesn't rely on GPA as a filter. They rely on interviews, past projects and work experience. Anything above a 3.0 (which is pretty low) and no need to worry.

The problem is with law school, medical school, and so forth. That is where GPA is seen as the ultimate-judge-of-worth rather than a mildly-interesting-but-completely-insignificant-number like it should be.

Re: College has been oversold

#230

Post by fecklessyouth » Thu, Nov 03, 2011, 3:06 AM UTC

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.…

"Trust me, if he has an inquisitive mind, he'll explore all the weird and strange subjects on his own time. With the internet, he can even be challenged by greater minds. The best argument for college is the social environment, which can't be replicated outside of it. Not education. The kids get that. That's why they don't go to class."

No. When it comes to non-technical degrees, it's the classroom environment. It's the academic and intellectual environment. Which the internet isn't close to replicating. Someday it might come close, but certainly not in the near future. If you think the internet is approaching a college education in value, you haven't experienced a proper college education.