Students foot the bill for flagship state universities • Hacker News Board

Re: Students foot the bill for flagship state universities

#61

Post by haldujai » Tue, Aug 15, 2023, 7:56 AM UTC

s1artibartfast wrote: post #49

drewda wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most universities have a wait list a mile long, so they're not going to run out of students. Have a look at the stats at https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d22/tables/dt22_305.40.a... Add up the percentages and you'll see that only 7% of American undergrad institutions accept fewer than 50% of their applications. That means half of colleges and universities take at least half of everyone who applies. Not much of a…

Thanks for the interesting data. I was thinking mostly of the most competitive universities, which tend to be the ones with highest tuition. Few people are concerned the high cost of community colleges and related student debt. It would be fascinating to see a scatter plot of college tuition vs acceptance rate.

The most competitive institutions are typically the ones offering the best financial aid packages.

https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/why-harvard/affordabi...

https://financialaid.stanford.edu/undergrad/how/index.html

Re: Students foot the bill for flagship state universities

#62

Post by lsmeducation » Tue, Aug 15, 2023, 8:27 AM UTC

haldujai wrote: post #59

lsmeducation wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much is the cost of your undergraduate major on average nationwide? Do you believe it is accurately priced in comparison to a STEM major? It’s a pricing issue. If we don’t agree it’s a pricing issue, then let’s pay everyone the same salary regardless of profession. There’s ideological value in everything, but we’re talking business here. The colleges CHARGE you something. They don’t gift you anything out of virtu…

I don't know the national average of my major. I paid something around 35-40k/year in tuition for an english literature degree. My MD and MS (CS) were more expensive but also done later. All undergraduate degrees in the US have a pricing issue. I don't believe anyone should be paying 30-60k/year for one. > There’s ideological value in everything, but we’re talking business here. No, we're talking about university edu…

No, we're talking about university education which should not be a business.

Money and loans are involved, people pay, and people get paid. If we go even further on the money part, many consider it an investment.

Anyways. Perhaps we should make the core liberal arts courses free of charge, and then create a pricing model for professional courses where the pricing model is more realistic about what is being offered, for what price, where the question truly becomes “is this worth it?”. That way we can finally separate the holiness of a core education away from specialized professional paths.

Re: Students foot the bill for flagship state universities

#63

Post by fallingknife » Tue, Aug 15, 2023, 8:32 AM UTC

haldujai wrote: post #57

fallingknife wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the benefit to me of someone else having a humanities degree? I see the benefit to me of someone else being trained as an engineer, so I am happy to support that with my taxes. What is it that humanities majors learn that can't be learned for free, or maybe a few buck on Amazon? I took those classes and I'm not seeing it. They were taught on such a low level compared to STEM classes that it was a joke.

Whether or not one personally finds benefit from things like fine art, media, journalism or literature it's clear that our society places value on this through both private enterprise and public institutions. > What is it that humanities majors learn that can't be learned for free, or maybe a few buck on Amazon? This statement is more easily applied to some STEM fields. Why pay for a CS degree when you can learn ever…

Also true. I got into SWE from a 3 month boot camp. When I said "engineering" I was thinking more like types of engineering that involve interfacing with physical reality and require hands on work. Also you'll never hear me complain about government support for training in the trades.

> fine art, media, journalism or literature

And for these you also don't even need a degree, so why pay for them out of my taxes? Universities are a money grab.

Re: Students foot the bill for flagship state universities

#64

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Aug 15, 2023, 8:36 AM UTC

fallingknife wrote: post #56

the_only_law wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Until companies ditch the stupid degree requirement for jobs that obviously do not require a degree, everybody is going to suffer. It’ll never happen. They need low effort filters.

SAT scores would work fine for this

[deleted]

Re: Students foot the bill for flagship state universities

#65

Post by sohex » Tue, Aug 15, 2023, 9:04 AM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #24

sohex wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is total spending per student really sufficient as a means of tracking whether enough is being spent though? I'd imagine that the costs per student have risen a greater rate since the 70s than spending has. Between things like needing to pay for computers and IT infrastructure, accommodation programs for those with special needs, and so on it seems to me that it's actually remarkable in someways that test scores have…

Computers are not necessary for K-12 education. They're more likely a hindrance.

Whether or not they're effective educational tools the fact is that they are used as such in most school districts (in the US) these days so far as I'm aware.

Personally I agree for the most part, in general classroom instruction doesn't need them. That being said they're certainly indispensable for things like research in school libraries, running simulations for science classes, creating digital, and obviously teaching any kind of programming, so they definitely have their place. Having a dedicated computer per student is a huge benefit for less well off communities too. More than a few students won't have one of their own or even a family computer at home and having the school provide that for assignments is absolutely a boon so far as I'm concerned.

Re: Students foot the bill for flagship state universities

#66

Post by cafard » Tue, Aug 15, 2023, 9:43 AM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #27

dv_dt wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would also help to require administrative salaries to be below a certain percentage in order to qualify to accept federal loan money. (I would think 8% or lower).

More regulation to micromanage things is never going to work. For example, what if you've got an opportunity to hire Feynman, but he expects 9%? Maybe you'll skirt the 8% requirement by giving him a company car to use. Nobody is smart enough to write a regulation that can't be gamed.

Gaming rules is a fine tradition.

But who is the Feynman of college administration? I can think of about five famous university presidents, and I'm not sure the innovations of any were that positive: Eliot and Conant at Harvard: Gilman at Johns Hopkins; Hutchins at Chicago; Kerr at California. In a purely economic view, the publicity garnered by a couple of them was a gain for their schools, I guess.

Re: Students foot the bill for flagship state universities

#67

Post by sokoloff » Tue, Aug 15, 2023, 10:26 AM UTC

lsmeducation wrote: post #25

johnny99k wrote: post #2

When you have students taking out Federal loans, the University getting paid with virtually no risk, and they don't if the student can get a job or pay off the loan, they have no incentive to curb spending. The federal government need to force these universities to take the risk and loan out money directly.

I always had a very simple way to do student debt forgiveness: 1) Have universities foot the bill, not the tax payer (shocking, I know). A literal refund. 2) Institute an audit every 5 years on their price to success rate on a per major basis. Have them refund north of 50% of the tuition if overpriced. Cool, now run your little game. This is literally a consumer protection issue and this industry has hid far too long…

What does “work” mean in this case? If a student goes to university and gets a degree in medieval French literature and then serves coffee for life as a job, the university did its job iff the student demonstrated a level of mastery of medieval French literature.

The inadvertent economics education that came later was not the university’s doing and they take no credit nor blame for it.

Re: Students foot the bill for flagship state universities

#68

Post by rayiner » Tue, Aug 15, 2023, 12:23 PM UTC

rahimnathwani wrote: post #44

rayiner wrote: post #9

It’s worth understanding the trade offs countries like France make to offer near free university education: https://voices.uchicago.edu/euchicago/the-problem-with-frenc...

I couldn't take that article seriously after reading this paragraph: The French state spends 6,700 euros per public student per year, but up to thirteen thousand euros can be spent per student enrolled in Grandes Écoles, despite their only accounting for five percent of total students. Thus, though they only teach five percent of French students, these Grandes Écoles receive 30 percent of the government’s education b…

What do you think is wrong with that paragraph? It’s just saying that limited funding is disproportionally directed to the Grande Ecoles, leaving the other schools with much less funding.

6,700 euros is not a lot of money. It’s about $7,300. U.S. public universities and colleges spend on average over $28,000/year.

Re: Students foot the bill for flagship state universities

#69

Post by rahimnathwani » Tue, Aug 15, 2023, 1:52 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #68

rahimnathwani wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I couldn't take that article seriously after reading this paragraph: The French state spends 6,700 euros per public student per year, but up to thirteen thousand euros can be spent per student enrolled in Grandes Écoles, despite their only accounting for five percent of total students. Thus, though they only teach five percent of French students, these Grandes Écoles receive 30 percent of the government’s education b…

What do you think is wrong with that paragraph? It’s just saying that limited funding is disproportionally directed to the Grande Ecoles, leaving the other schools with much less funding. 6,700 euros is not a lot of money. It’s about $7,300. U.S. public universities and colleges spend on average over $28,000/year.

    What do you think is wrong with that paragraph?

The conclusion (the sentence starting 'thus') does not follow from the premises.

If we accept the premises as true then, depending on whether the 6700 is the overall average or the average not including grande ecole students, the % should be either 9% or 10%. No sensible calculation from those figures yields 30%.

    It’s just saying that limited funding is disproportionally directed to the Grande Ecoles, leaving the other schools with much less funding.

By my calculation from the provided figures, equalizing the per capita funding for all students would increase the funding of other schools by just 4.7% to 5.2%.

Re: Students foot the bill for flagship state universities

#70

Post by echelon » Tue, Aug 15, 2023, 2:14 PM UTC

fallingknife wrote: post #55

haldujai wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Basically, just STEM, nursing, radiology, etc. So "Basically, STEM or STEM-adjacent"? (depending how consider nursing) > The expected value of the degree To society or the individual? Calculated how? > If you want an art school history major, you need a real loan. So only rich people are allowed to be educated in the humanities unless you're willing to get what will be a very expensive and likely cost-prohibitive p…

What is the benefit to me of someone else having a humanities degree? I see the benefit to me of someone else being trained as an engineer, so I am happy to support that with my taxes. What is it that humanities majors learn that can't be learned for free, or maybe a few buck on Amazon? I took those classes and I'm not seeing it. They were taught on such a low level compared to STEM classes that it was a joke.

> What is the benefit to me of someone else having a humanities degree?

You don't even have to think hard about it. The market prices it accordingly.

Market wages.