Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable • Hacker News Board

Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#181

Post by dudeinjapan » Mon, Nov 07, 2022, 2:54 AM UTC

testfoobar wrote: post #174

dudeinjapan wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In education, "supply" itself is not the issue; there are more than enough spots at state, etc. universities. Its supply of prestigious universities, which is controlled by a cartel. Similar to diamonds, which are neither precious nor rare, yet prices are outrageous because they are controlled by a cartel. If/when I become President of the United States, I will hold back all education dollars on cartel-controlled edu…

This is funny and true. The competition and prices all originate from elite institutions. I wonder if it legal to completely clone a curriculum? Like could you clone an MIT EECS education? Down to the coursework? Or alternatively - force elite schools to license and manage franchisees? I'd vote for you.

Alright! Every vote counts!

> is it legal to completely clone a curriculum?

Gray area. I'm no lawyer but AFAIK professor's syllabus/tests/etc. (being written documents) are subject to automatic copyright, I imagine the university is the holder of the copyright given that the prof is an employee. That being said, how many profs clone their syllabus/coursework directly from textbooks? The content of most online universities (Khan Academy, Coursera, etc.) is already superior to Ivy League based on first-hand experience of both.

The bigger problem IMHO is that very little of the overall $$$ and energy at Ivy League is actually spent on course content. For many profs, esp. in STEM, teaching undergrad courses is a "chore" / distraction from their research work. I think there is opportunity to make a "lean-and-mean" physical university (perhaps online hybrid) with minimal admin overhead, which a degree could be on-par with MIT in terms of prestige. Is anyone doing this?

Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#182

Post by curious_cat_163 » Mon, Nov 07, 2022, 2:54 AM UTC

ip26 wrote: post #131

missedthecue wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Schools compete not on price but on other factors. That's why they want to build massively expensive campuses and elaborate facilities, because that is what students base their decisions on. If schools competed on price, everyone would be going to state colleges c̶o̶m̶m̶u̶n̶i̶t̶y̶ ̶c̶o̶l̶l̶e̶g̶e̶. I'm not sure how you compel schools to compete on price, because the consumers don't care about price. They'd rather get…

Remembering when I was applying to colleges, it was understood that inexpensive state colleges were probably 'sufficiently good', and cost effective, but it was impossible to grade that statement. Would it be good enough for your goals in life? How can a sixteen year old know? So, people picked the 'best' school they could get into. Not just for the 'experience', but to make sure they got the best education they coul…

This is very insightful.

After having gone through it all, do you think if it matters how many doors open for a person based on the college they went? I suppose if someone went to a highly ranked school, it might matter.

But being able to get into a highly ranked school is probably because of what the person had (money, life experiences) or what they did (crushed some standardized test).

So, in the end, does it actually matter?

Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#183

Post by thaumasiotes » Mon, Nov 07, 2022, 2:57 AM UTC

dudeinjapan wrote: post #130

testfoobar wrote: post #110

In the US, both college education and healthcare have become enormous taxpayer wealth extraction schemes. Everyone has a "right" to education and healthcare, therefore we should subsidize it with taxpayer money. That is as far as the politics go. We have stupidly funded the demand side of the equation to where both education and healthcare are incredibly bloated behemoths capable of absorbing all the money thrown at…

In education, "supply" itself is not the issue; there are more than enough spots at state, etc. universities. Its supply of prestigious universities, which is controlled by a cartel. Similar to diamonds, which are neither precious nor rare, yet prices are outrageous because they are controlled by a cartel. If/when I become President of the United States, I will hold back all education dollars on cartel-controlled edu…

> Similar to diamonds, which are neither precious nor rare

Well, there are many functions (mostly to do with abrading things) where diamonds are useful for the purpose and a substitute is much, much less so. If you're distinguishing "precious" from "rare", this would seem to be proof that they are precious.

Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#184

Post by mattkrause » Mon, Nov 07, 2022, 2:57 AM UTC

School-Cotton wrote: post #19

notacoward wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It should only take 2 years to earn a bachelor’s Only if you assume that the purpose of a bachelor's is to provide job training in one specific profession. Not so much if you believe in the value of a well-rounded education, for people who are likely to change careers multiple times, maybe also be civic leaders, etc. I'm not saying you're wrong, but the debate between these two visions has been going on for centuri…

Somehow practically every country besides the US manages to give people a general education in secondary school, and reserves universities for deep study of one subject. Consequently, their bachelors degrees usually take less time. Do you think university graduates in France, for example, are less “well-rounded” than those in the US?

A little bit?

It's hard to totally dissociate this from second-language issues, but I've noticed that international science grad students sometimes struggle to organize their writing, often in ways that go beyond grammar/vocab. I didn't realize this at the time, but writing essays on (e.g.,) feminism in The Canterbury Tales are really just exercises in putting together a cogent argument. Those skills transfer over to project proposals and design docs too.

In a similar vein, European PhDs are also laser-focused on one topic so that they can be finished in 3-4 years. I think there's a pretty widespread sense that many need to spend a little longer as a postdoc to "round" out vs. Americans with slower PhDs.

Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#185

Post by thaumasiotes » Mon, Nov 07, 2022, 2:58 AM UTC

testfoobar wrote: post #174

dudeinjapan wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In education, "supply" itself is not the issue; there are more than enough spots at state, etc. universities. Its supply of prestigious universities, which is controlled by a cartel. Similar to diamonds, which are neither precious nor rare, yet prices are outrageous because they are controlled by a cartel. If/when I become President of the United States, I will hold back all education dollars on cartel-controlled edu…

This is funny and true. The competition and prices all originate from elite institutions. I wonder if it legal to completely clone a curriculum? Like could you clone an MIT EECS education? Down to the coursework? Or alternatively - force elite schools to license and manage franchisees? I'd vote for you.

> I wonder if it legal to completely clone a curriculum? Like could you clone an MIT EECS education?

MIT will do that for you themselves. https://ocw.mit.edu/

Schools don't compete on curriculum. Nobody pays for it. Nobody cares about it.

And in one particular case, I think the "conventional wisdom" has it right - the lectures don't really matter. You can record a lecture and then play it for any number of people, very cheaply. I recently watched a Chinese drama in which a minor plot element was a character (in the 80s) getting a degree from "the TV university", lectures available to the television-viewing public. (Having your own TV was out of the question, so she and her "classmates" would make long commutes to places that had a TV showing the lectures. This educational format has been very affordable for a very long time.)

That format is not as good as actually having a lecturer, or a TA, who you can ask questions of. If you lose track of a recorded lecture, it will not help you find the thread. All a recorded lecture can ever do is repeat itself. A lecturer versus a lecture is the difference between moving forward and getting stuck.

Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#186

Post by JamesBarney » Mon, Nov 07, 2022, 3:00 AM UTC

testfoobar wrote: post #110

In the US, both college education and healthcare have become enormous taxpayer wealth extraction schemes. Everyone has a "right" to education and healthcare, therefore we should subsidize it with taxpayer money. That is as far as the politics go. We have stupidly funded the demand side of the equation to where both education and healthcare are incredibly bloated behemoths capable of absorbing all the money thrown at…

I agree with a lot of what you're saying but the evidence that Obamacare ballooned healthcare expenses isn't there.

Obamacare also has a huge positive impact besides just access to healthcare. For instance I couldn't have started a startup without it, and it's much easier to hire contract workers because of it.

Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#187

Post by NotACop182 » Mon, Nov 07, 2022, 3:00 AM UTC

dudeinjapan wrote: post #130

testfoobar wrote: post #110

In the US, both college education and healthcare have become enormous taxpayer wealth extraction schemes. Everyone has a "right" to education and healthcare, therefore we should subsidize it with taxpayer money. That is as far as the politics go. We have stupidly funded the demand side of the equation to where both education and healthcare are incredibly bloated behemoths capable of absorbing all the money thrown at…

In education, "supply" itself is not the issue; there are more than enough spots at state, etc. universities. Its supply of prestigious universities, which is controlled by a cartel. Similar to diamonds, which are neither precious nor rare, yet prices are outrageous because they are controlled by a cartel. If/when I become President of the United States, I will hold back all education dollars on cartel-controlled edu…

You got my vote! Now what about the college book pricing issues. One semester I paid for my books cost more than the classes I took. It was that bad. Even worse was that the book companies ensure you need the access code to the online portal in order to do anything. This ensures the used book market is nonexistent

Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#188

Post by boppo1 » Mon, Nov 07, 2022, 3:00 AM UTC

EricE wrote: post #162

They can only get away with this crap due to government subsidized student loans. Remove the artificial inflation of cheap government money and this crap would self-correct overnight. Even better - make colleges guarantee loans. If people can't get a job after 2 years of graduation make the schools start making the loan payments until they do get a job. BS degrees would dry up overnight too.

I couldn't agree more with your second point. But we'd need some sort of safety net for the humanities or else basically all but a few hollywood-feeding schools would drop them. Right now they're bloated and giving worthless credentials to kids for intersectional harry potter phd theses, but it would be good to keep the cores of the departments alive (if there's anything left).

Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#189

Post by irowe » Mon, Nov 07, 2022, 3:01 AM UTC

School-Cotton wrote: post #159

missedthecue wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, perhaps it would have been better to say state school.

Where does the local state university cost $7k/yr?

Yeah that does seem a little low. US News and World report has average in-state tuition at $10,423/yr [1]

[1]: https://www.usnews.com/object/image/00000183-138c-db49-a3a3-...

Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#190

Post by boppo1 » Mon, Nov 07, 2022, 3:01 AM UTC

impossiblefork wrote: post #165

EMIRELADERO wrote: post #132

Here's an idea: Public, government-owned (but not operated) colleges. Fueled by taxpayers and completely free for students. Students who wish to pursue higher education shouldn't even have to think about finances for that education, aside from maybe the travel and food expenses (although now with remote work/learning that also is going down)

I think many Americans imagine the above to be infeasible and that university is somehow inherently expensive. However, university can be very cheap. Here in Sweden university education, which is here funded in the way proposed above (i.e. the government pays for it all, for those students who get in) costs the state less than high school education costs the state (72 000 SEK/a for university, 124 300 SEK/a for high…

College football isn't a cultural pillar in Sweden.