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The Coming Meltdown In College Education & Why The Economy Won’t Get Better Soon

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Re: The Coming Meltdown In College Education & Why The Economy Won’t Get Better Soon

#81

Post by lintroller »

reader5000 wrote: post #67

I think the more interesting aspect is how long are we going to keep the choke hold on graduates who are currently drowning in debt and will be for a while. Is it a net win that the Dept of Education gets paid while a substantial chunk of would-be middle class Americans can't purchase cars / houses / children and are generally disincentivized to produce by their $1300/mo debt service? Will we start to see a parade of…

> Will we start to see a parade of law suits from former students against their universities?

I'm unsure of what legal recourse these students would have. I do not have a legal background, but signing off on a loan seems like a pretty cut and dry matter.

Re: The Coming Meltdown In College Education & Why The Economy Won’t Get Better Soon

#82

Post by codeonfire »

impendia wrote: post #16

I am in my first year as a mathematics professor at the University of South Carolina. Having moved here from Stanford, I've noticed several things. (1) Many students are woefully underprepared. In my calculus classes I have found that a great many of the students have not mastered high school algebra. And these are the students who pass our placement exam, and aren't obliged to take one of our many algebra and precal…

Are you surprised by this? This is just how it works anywhere. At many schools the graduation rate is below 60% and the average math course GPA university wide is probably around 2.5. Math and Physics are the most difficult subjects at any university. Half or more of a calc I class is going to drop out or change to a non STEM major. The important thing is to not let the inevitable ruin their interest in education (if there is any).

Re: The Coming Meltdown In College Education & Why The Economy Won’t Get Better Soon

#83

Post by LockeWatts »

learc83 wrote: post #41
impendia wrote: post #16

I am in my first year as a mathematics professor at the University of South Carolina. Having moved here from Stanford, I've noticed several things. (1) Many students are woefully underprepared. In my calculus classes I have found that a great many of the students have not mastered high school algebra. And these are the students who pass our placement exam, and aren't obliged to take one of our many algebra and precal…

>I have found that a great many of the students have not mastered high school algebra. That's been my experience tutoring all of my younger siblings. I think that we'd be better served if all 4 years of high school were spent mastering basic algebra (with exceptions of course). A mastery of basic algebra will better prepare you for college than a cursory understanding of trig and calculus.

This assumes a few things.

1) Teaching something repetitively means the students will learn more the second time. 2) Basic algebra is all that's needed as a general background in math for all majors. 3) Everyone in high school is there to prep for college.

Those are three massive assumptions. Your viewpoint is rather narrow minded when you consider all the possibilities.

Re: The Coming Meltdown In College Education & Why The Economy Won’t Get Better Soon

#84

Post by bricestacey »

learc83 wrote: post #66
Retric wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination If he can afford to pay twice as much and did so then the school was wise to raise it's sticker price. They can then take the 'surplus' that he paid and use it to reduce the price of a more desirable students who are less able to pay.

>reduce the price of a more desirable students who are less able to pay. A very small percentage of the total financial aid comes directly from the school, so this is not what is happening. The vast majority of financial aid is from the state and federal government which is not financed by tuition. They are using the extra money by and large to fund additional administration expenses, a new football team and other pr…

Georgia State is a few thousand per year for state students. Who cares if it doubled?

Edit: Southern state schools should be the model. They're 1/4 or cheaper the cost of private schools and often a better education.

Re: The Coming Meltdown In College Education & Why The Economy Won’t Get Better Soon

#85

Post by brc »

pyre wrote: post #10
bryogenic wrote: post #3

While this article talks about how bad things are I think an interesting solution was written up here [pdf] http://www.fixuc.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/FixUC-Propos... The idea being you go to school for free and the University only makes money from a percentage of your future pay, thereby ensuring that it's students are actually prepared for the work force. More here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesmarshallcro…

Then you would just have universities competing to crank out CEOs/MBAs in the hopes that they 'hit it big' a lot.

It also creates a positive feedback loop problem - the ones that get a few hits in turn can get more money to attract the ones with the most potential. It also will get regional problems - those that produce graduates bound mostly for the NYC market will do better than those where the graduates go for Midwestern jobs.

I don't have a problem with rewards going to those who produce the best graduates - clearly this effect is already in play at the big name institutions.

I think that you need a certain amount of 'wildcard' where someone from a lesser known college can go on to be a big thinker or earner. I think otherwise you risk something with a positive feedback loop getting stuck in groupthink or turning itself into a formula which resists change and innovation.

Re: The Coming Meltdown In College Education & Why The Economy Won’t Get Better Soon

#86

Post by ChristianMarks »

reader5000 wrote: post #67

I think the more interesting aspect is how long are we going to keep the choke hold on graduates who are currently drowning in debt and will be for a while. Is it a net win that the Dept of Education gets paid while a substantial chunk of would-be middle class Americans can't purchase cars / houses / children and are generally disincentivized to produce by their $1300/mo debt service? Will we start to see a parade of…

The 1 Trillion in debt will be used to fund lobbying for additional state and federal budget cuts; outsourcing and off-shoring more jobs; lowering taxes for wealthy corporations; adding to the 1600 companies in 18 states that get to keep some or all of the state withholding taxes their employees pay; raising the cost of medical care and health insurance; and funding think tanks to persuade people to believe that universal health insurance is evil, so that private insurance companies will continue to flourish at the expense of entrepreneurs and to ensure that labor and capital remains immobile.

Re: The Coming Meltdown In College Education & Why The Economy Won’t Get Better Soon

#87

Post by unimpressive »

rbn wrote: post #37
Swizec wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem I have with this is that university should NOT prepare you for the work force . Universities are awesome! We ruined them when we started thinking of higher education as preparation (or even requirement) for the workforce. University should prepare you to be a thinker, a scientist and just generally an educated person. As soon as it becomes vocational the whole point is lost. We don't need to "fix higher e…

Yes I agree. There are 2 big problems with education. 1) The society requires you to have a degree. A self taught programmer will likley get paid less than a college educated programmer. Even though the self taught one is more skilled. 2) College students blindly trust that the college education will get them jobs. What many don't know is that the the stuff they are getting taught is obsolete already. Many Occupy Wal…

>Who said going to college will get you a job?

Pretty much every teacher they had through k-12. That's who.

And the worst part is that because of the number of applicants you get degree-inflation where you have to spend more and more of your life in school to get a job that pays significantly above minimum wage.

Fuck it, I'll be poor.

Maybe my tune will change when I can afford college.

Re: The Coming Meltdown In College Education & Why The Economy Won’t Get Better Soon

#88

Post by kamaal »

ender7 wrote: post #60
grannyg00se wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's all your resume says, then you're probably right. But there should be something on there that indicates that you can do the job otherwise you wasted your time applying. The point is that education says nothing about being able to do the job in many cases. If you are applying for an engineering position and you have MIT on your resume, that is certainly going to imply that you very likely have what it takes.…

Unfortunately, "went to MIT" is both easily recognizable and easily verified. "Built a fusion reactor in my basement" is neither of those things. Similarly, "check out my GitHub" has many of the same problems. I'm sorry, but most employers don't have time to look you up on GitHub to crawl through all your commits. That will happen if you get past the first cut, but it won't do anything beforehand. Sure, you can put "…

>>They simply don't have the time to do research on each one. As with anything, you have to find some way to stand out, but in a way that doesn't require them to visit your basement.

In that case they shouldn't look too surprised if they end up hiring wrong people. Or they end up hiring a person with a lot of paper degrees but can't move a coin on the table.

Because you ultimately get what your truly ask for. You asked for degrees, you got it. Why is this so surprising?

Ask for innovation, creativity, hard work and productivity and you will get it. If you want to hire such people, you may to have to visit their basement or look at their github logs. If you can't do that you shouldn't complain you can't hire such people.

People often ask why do great hackers, nerds and other geeks don't gel so well large heavy bureaucratic corporates. Its because the rewards vs performance incentives are all badly messed up. More often than not somebody who has a degree from X college, with Y GPA gets the money.

We recently hired a guy straight out of college, extremely good marks on paper. He seems to know every other data structure and algorithm in the book. But doesn't last more than couple of hours. On the other hand, I've known people from ordinary background with medium exposure, able to last through tough deadlines and crisis situations with enthusiasm. The latter people make far more better hires than the previous ones.

Your degrees are of no use if you can't perform. That fact doesn't change.

Re: The Coming Meltdown In College Education & Why The Economy Won’t Get Better Soon

#89

Post by ajtaylor »

gliese1337 wrote: post #6

Many people, me included, frequently complain about all of the politics required to get the least bit of funding for anything from my university. Then I read something like this and that kind of trouble suddenly seems much better than the alternative. According to NCES[1], the average total cost per year of attendance at a 4-year private institution in 2009-2010 was $32,475. The cost for BYU was $4,290[2]. There's to…

When I was attending BYU back in the mid 90's, my tuition bill was about $1200 a year (I'm LDS & it could have been per semester - I can't recall). Regardless of whether I paid per semester or year, that's an incredible lack of inflation 20 years later!

Re: The Coming Meltdown In College Education & Why The Economy Won’t Get Better Soon

#90

Post by pmb »

ntkachov wrote: post #13
Swizec wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem I have with this is that university should NOT prepare you for the work force . Universities are awesome! We ruined them when we started thinking of higher education as preparation (or even requirement) for the workforce. University should prepare you to be a thinker, a scientist and just generally an educated person. As soon as it becomes vocational the whole point is lost. We don't need to "fix higher e…

Great. They fail at that too. There have been a few studies that show that after 2 years of college, the difference in reading, writing, math, and critical thinking are negligible. So if you're not good for the industry, you're terrible at what you're made for, what good are you?

Those studies treated business students, STEM students, and liberal arts students as one cohort.

STEM and Liberal arts students do make significant gains. Business majors actually show a LOSS.

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