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Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

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321–330 of 372 posts

Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#321
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha! As a matter of fact I’m re-reading it at the moment. But as a former reliability engineer, i bristle as Persig’s claim that quality can’t be defined.

Reliability engineers and quality control are among the principal reasons why university administrations are so bloated ...

Can you elaborate?

I think I’ve met two reliability engineers ever and they were both professors so I’m not sure I follow your point.

Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#322
post #203
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

quality generally has a broader meaning than conformance to product requirement specifications ;)

:-) eh, it always came across to me as a repackaging of the already-existing concept of non-dualism. But i fail to see it’s pragmatic application here. Prestige implies hierarchy, and hierarchy implies ranked measurement. But we can’t define what we’re measuring in terms of quality research or teaching. Apparently, like porn, we’re suppose to just know it when we see it. Like a lot of Pirsigs dialog, it feels a littl…

you don't have to reject cartesian dualism to doubt that you can reduce the quality of artworks or research to 'metrics' or 'ranked measurement'. you just have to not be a complete idiot. hierarchy definitely does not imply ranked measurement

Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#323
post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Median earned income 10 years after enrolling at an Ivy is about 2x the all schools average. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/09/14/this-...

Yeah a median of $110k isn't that amazing. Could just be because they're mostly in the NE. Also against "all schools" isn't really comparing good state schools which I'd like to see.

I assure you, 110k is amazing anywhere outside of SV SWE's (and a few other high-skill/high-pay professions.)

The US median income is still around $70k. An extra 40k - $3 grand a month - goes far.

Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#324

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…

Not to nitpick a tangent, but community colleges, at least where I live, are only 2 year institutions, and don't provide full BS/BA degrees, just Associate degrees, which don't really open the same doors as the Bachelor degrees. I really wish we had 4 year institutions managed like our community colleges, though. I remember my 2 years there much more fondly than I do my time spent at a "real" university.

> I remember my 2 years there much more fondly than I do my time spent at a "real" university.

Genuinely curious, what was it you liked about CC?

Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#325
post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> neither precious nor rare The fact that most people can name the most famous schools seems to imply they are rare. They are perceived as having better outcomes than regular state schools. Do they or dont they? If their grads do get better jobs and end up more successful - then they are genuinely better? People from state Universities end up sitting next to Ivys etc there is no difference - this is what I believe. W…

Median earned income 10 years after enrolling at an Ivy is about 2x the all schools average. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/09/14/this-...

Schools attended almost exclusively by people with strong connections getting good jobs out of the gate seems like a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#326

This is true for every reasonable sized company out there. A lot of unskilled lazy people want to have a salary being in-between those who actually produce value.

Even decades ago when the financial costs were not nearly as unaffordable, the bloat was still quite unbearable for those who wanted to avoid un-necessary obstacles to educational & research progress.

Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#327
post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

College football isn't a cultural pillar in Sweden.

Yes, but it's not like you can't just drop it. Quite few people play it anyway.

>it's not like you can't just drop it

In the US? No we absolutely can't. College football is practically a religion. Its cultural importance cannot be overstated.

I don't care about it at all and never have but oh biy do other people ever. People's lives revolve around it.

Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#328
post #310
post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

The same humanities who championed that it’s in our Iranian culture to beat our people to death for having “improper” hijab? The sooner these leeches get defunded the better.

No, not those humanities. I mean the ones teaching philosophy, art, music, history, etc.

Re: Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable

#329
post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but it's not like you can't just drop it. Quite few people play it anyway.

>it's not like you can't just drop it In the US? No we absolutely can't. College football is practically a religion. Its cultural importance cannot be overstated. I don't care about it at all and never have but oh biy do other people ever. People's lives revolve around it.

But surely the goal of university is letting people get a university level education-- become mathematicians, physicians, engineers, teachers etcetera, serving the need of society for diverse types of semi-experts.

Furthermore, surely there is no need for additional facilities; and surely they don't need to be fancy.

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