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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

#91

Post by cli »

javert wrote: post #59
zerohp wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm an older student attending my local community college, and I agree with you completely. I watch my classmates in Calculus and Physics courses struggle with algebra much more than the new material we are learning. High schools should focus on algebra and geometry for the majority of students.

From my perspective, you guys have it backwards. I was screwed in some of my college courses because I did not have enough calculus background, I only had algebra.

Why did you not take the introductory calculus courses then?

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

#92

Post by jey »

davyjones wrote: post #49
jellicle wrote: post #43

Mark Cuban writes: "As an employer I want the best prepared and qualified employees. I could care less if the source of their education was accredited by a bunch of old men and women who think they know what is best for the world. I want people who can do the job. I want the best and brightest. Not a piece of paper." So, I suppose I could be wrong, but I would be willing to bet a great deal of money that Mark Cuban d…

Correct. I have found blog posts where there are snippets about how they are "looking for bright and interesting minds and college degree does not matter" but when you look at their Jobs page, you have a BS Computer Science or equivalent requirement listed there.

It does say "BS Computer Science or equivalent" -- so they're asking for a certain level of education, which doesn't necessarily have to be in the form of a college degree.

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

#93

Post by [deleted] »

unimpressive wrote: post #87
rbn wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 What many don't know is that the the stuff they are getting taught is obsolete already.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.

[deleted]

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

#94

Post by quandrum »

jellicle wrote: post #31
MaxGabriel wrote: post #7

This was the first comment on Cuban's blog. Can anyone comment on it? I listened to the NPR Podcast, it is specific to private colleges; I am not sure how public colleges fit in. "The most recent Planet Money on NPR was about the cost of college. [1] They point out that the price that has been rising is the “sticker price.” However, the average price a student pays for college hasn’t risen (except to adjust for infla…

The comment is incorrect. Student loan growth far outpaces the number of new students: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/08/chart-of...

Your link doesn't support your claim. Worse, your link doesn't even consider the idea. All it says:

> Obviously the number of students didn't grow by 511%.

Why is it obvious? Show my a source.

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

#95

Post by impendia »

LockeWatts wrote: post #80
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. Why should they have? It doesn't take 'mastery' to pass a class, it takes proficiency. Expecting perfection in all previous classes from students is silly. >Many of the students aren't all that motivated, and resented me for asking a lot of them. Are you teaching Math majors? If not, of course they aren't motivated. Most of them wo…

> If not, of course they aren't motivated. Most of them won't be using calculus in their daily life, they don't see it as valuable.

But that's my point, and I'm attempting to bolster the original article's point. I have a room full of calculus students, many of whom don't terribly need or want to learn calculus.

Then why are they there? In many cases you can trace this back to some ambition for which calculus is a prerequisite for some reason or other. But in many cases, they are there because they feel they are "supposed" to be there, or else they feel that a college degree will get them a better job.

Hence the concerns about a bubble.

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

#96

Post by talmand »

davyjones wrote: post #49
jellicle wrote: post #43

Mark Cuban writes: "As an employer I want the best prepared and qualified employees. I could care less if the source of their education was accredited by a bunch of old men and women who think they know what is best for the world. I want people who can do the job. I want the best and brightest. Not a piece of paper." So, I suppose I could be wrong, but I would be willing to bet a great deal of money that Mark Cuban d…

Correct. I have found blog posts where there are snippets about how they are "looking for bright and interesting minds and college degree does not matter" but when you look at their Jobs page, you have a BS Computer Science or equivalent requirement listed there.

How many job postings for the tech field actually make sense? Most of them are written by people who have no idea what they speak of. Shoot, most recruiters have no idea either. If the job seems interesting submit anyway and just hope to get someone who understands what's written on your resume. Can't get the job if you don't try.

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

#98

Post by talmand »

DTrejo wrote: post #53
glesica wrote: post #40

This is just absurd. Non-accredited, branded schools will provide better education for less money? Really? I assume he's referring to the growing for-profit college industry. Yet for-profit colleges are actually the biggest culprits driving up the student debt. Students at for-profit colleges run up more debt, are more likely to drop out, and are more likely to end up under-employed than those at traditional universi…

He might mean things like http://www.khanacademy.org/ and http://devbootcamp.com/experience .

Not trying to complain since it looks like a good program, but why does Dev Bootcamp lump Jquery, Coffeescript, SASS, HAML, AJAX, and others under Advanced Rails Technologies? Shouldn't that be Advanced Web Technologies or are they just simplifying things for their Rails program?

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

#99

Post by hedgie »

_delirium wrote: post #62
ntkachov wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most students are crap at math. That's a fact. There is 0 encouragement to spend high school refining math skills. Also don't confuse motivation with laziness, priorities, or time management. To a psych major, calc might seem like one of those bullshit classes you have to take. To an EE Major it might just be more hours of work that could be spent sleeping.

There is a relevance problem, yeah. I personally was motivated to really learn calc in 1st year college, mainly by physics classes. I wasn't a physics major, but I found the freshman physics class really interesting. In particular I found it interesting that via this tool, calculus, you could actually re-derive the entirety of elementary physics (stuff like dist = v0 t + (a t^2)/2), and much more, via a procedure wit…

i hated math when i entered college despite having passed the AP calc exam in high school. i didn't see the point and couldn't understand why i was learning about functions. i had no idea how to even think about the subject beyond what i had been told to memorize.

the second semester of my sophomore year i decided that my interest in computers and desire to have a job lead to me changing my major from psychology to computer science. i signed up for calc II as my first college math class and felt exactly like you did, getting an A+ despite not having taken math for almost 2 years.

i hated high school math because it felt like pointless memorizing of stupid facts. i loved college math because it was about describing and reasoning about these conceptual objects and i didn't have to memorize a thing if i could just remember how to derive it. they explain how to think about these objects, and once i understand the framework behind the subject i enjoyed it much much more.

the fact they were reasoning, explaining/proving why the math worked, and presenting the logic behind their thinking was enough to make me love it. i went dual math/cs and eventually got a MS in pure math.

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

#100

Post by malandrew »

jellicle wrote: post #43

Mark Cuban writes: "As an employer I want the best prepared and qualified employees. I could care less if the source of their education was accredited by a bunch of old men and women who think they know what is best for the world. I want people who can do the job. I want the best and brightest. Not a piece of paper." So, I suppose I could be wrong, but I would be willing to bet a great deal of money that Mark Cuban d…

TBH, I have never really looked at the education section on a résumé when hiring unless the person is an existing graduate.

After a few years of work experience, all that really matters is the last 3-5 years.

You could pretty much omit everything before that, because just the last 3-5 years is usually enough to figure out the caliber of work a candidate may have been doing before that.

If all résumés only included the last 3-5 years of an employees life whether or not that includes their education, would it really be worth that much less as a factor using in the decision to interview or hire?

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