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College has been oversold

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Re: College has been oversold

#231

Post by overgryphon »

harryh wrote: post #125
keiferski wrote: post #3

A liberal arts education is just as worth it today as it was 300 years ago. The current problem is that the cost of a liberal arts degree has spiraled out of control. There's no reason why an English or Philosophy degree needs to cost $15k a year. Making everyone an engineer or scientist isn't the answer.

> 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…

As someone about to graduate, the first year after college salary of CS students right now is incredibly intimidating. My work isn't worth that much.

Re: College has been oversold

#232

Post by fecklessyouth »

I really dislike posts like this that attempt to pigeonhole every college experience into "college." There are such a huge gamut of academic experiences, but whenever "college" is is addressed, its usually boiled down to "humanities majors at large, expensive 4 year colleges."

This, of course, is one of many options. The kind of institution you attend is just as important as whether you're a STEM or Humanities major. Size, core curriculum, intellectual environment, difficulty, class style, and all the other factors that separate colleges are huge factors on what you get out of college.

What should you get out of college? Often, a posited counter-experience is four years in the business world. Which would be useful in the short term, but when are you going to radically improve your reading and writing? You're never going to get the chance to devote yourself, 100%, to reading, writing, and learning.

Of course, the reason liberal arts gets a bad rap is majors have lost sight of reading and writing, and have turned into a pseudo-technical fields in larger institutions. A proper liberal arts degree gives you the same skills regardless of what you major, which is why liberal arts students like myself at liberal arts colleges scoff at this categorization by major...I don't care about majors.

Conclusion: Liberal arts degrees are worth the money...if they're done properly.

Re: College has been oversold

#233

Post by blahedo »

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…

> Most people have never heard of Washington University in St. Louis unless you work in Medicine.

Or are old enough to remember the heyday of ftp.wustl.edu. :)

Re: College has been oversold

#234

Post by anamax »

joe8756438 wrote: post #99
anamax wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Making art is not honest work?

> Making art is not honest work?

Making crap art isn't.

Re: College has been oversold

#235

Post by anamax »

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.

> If student loans were dischargeable in bankruptcy lenders would think much harder about the wisdeom of lending $40k/year for liberal arts degrees.

Not if the lender is the US govt, as it is today.

Not if the loans are guaranteed by the US govt, as it was before.

Re: College has been oversold

#236

Post by rphlx »

phil wrote: post #207
firebones wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the quote that goes with it: "We’ve always tried to be at the intersection of technology and liberal arts, to be able to get the best of both, to make extremely advanced products from a technology point of view, but also have them be intuitive, easy to use, fun to use, so that they really fit the users – the users don’t have to come to them, they come to the user.” --Steve Jobs

If only everyone guided their work by those principles. The world of consumer technology would be a much better place.

Not really. Variety is a good thing and nerdy, advanced users often prefer nerdy, advanced products. I would hate to live in a world with just the iPhone and no Android.

Re: College has been oversold

#238

Post by Hyena »

losvedir wrote: post #219
Hyena wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Why would anyone ever be dropped from a program? If they want to withdraw, they can. What this system does is it flattens the learning curve by drawing it out some but using its still substantial late trajectory to grant master's degrees without a loss of quality.

Re: College has been oversold

#239

Post by lukatmyshu »

gaustin wrote: post #69
bretthoerner wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> If you're making $50k you're being screwed. I'm being screwed then. I have a CS degree and a business Masters degree. I'm a "senior" developer and make $55k. The primary employer in my area is the Montana State government. Programmer pay here tops out at about $60k/year. Low-end programmer salaries are about $35-$40k. In the private sector you'd be lucky to get $70k/year. My wife and I are thinking about moving, bu…

Have you read the who is hiring thread? More and more companies are okay with remote workers. Anecdotally I hired a guy recently who is remote. I don't want to comment on his salary ... but i wouldn't be typing this if it were less.

Re: College has been oversold

#240

Post by Igor_Bratnikov »

I think the problem goes even further than the article advertised. As someone that has been un/fortunate to go through top eng school and then law school there is a bigger issue at play for even really smart people. A lot of very smart people get sold on the dream of a cushy law job after 3 years of what really is a 1/2 decent educational process. Though many in better times would get decent jobs most would grow complacent instead of hungry and settle for a mediocre job. And this is talented people that if hungry could be achieving much. Schools in general are a sales sham, schools that offer a potential of high rewards are that much more of a sham since most of the sales efforts are already done for them
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