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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

#201

Post by dalke »

raverbashing wrote: post #189
tikhonj wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't Google also notorious for being biased towards the "top" schools, caring about GPAs and turning away a ton of smart people? That's what I've heard, but I've no first-hand experience. So many smart people apply to Google that they could (at least historically--maybe it's different now) get away with a hiring process optimized for false negatives over false positives. This is only fair, but also probably makes th…

Well, funny I know about people with no college education being interviewed at google You can blame google for having a broken interview process but it appears 99% of their assessment comes from the interview and it really doesn't matter if your major is in pet grooming or math Edit 'cause I can't answer: Not "friend of a friend" account, but directly from the concerned person '"99% of their assessment comes from the…

What you said doesn't necessarily negate tikhonj's statement.

You said they were interviewed. You didn't say if they were hired. If they weren't hired then was it partially due to a bias against people without a college degree?

You also said "know of", which means this is a friend-of-a-friend account, with bearing on the usefulness of that information for this question.

Better would be a pointer to http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2011/04/07/so-you-want-to-... where someone who was on a Google hiring committee "acknowledges that the 3.7-or-higher-GPA myth is widespread, but she discounts it." and says "Academia is merely one way to distinguish yourself, and there are plenty of others. So if your GPA, or your school, doesn't stand out, look for additional avenues. Besides, you'll need to excel in multiple areas to get your resume selected."

I read this as saying that good grades from a good college help, because it's one of the ways to show that you excel in an area. This also implies that excelling in college is one possible indicator on success in working at Google.

That's very different than saying that "99% of their assessment comes from the interview." Indeed, it's the very opposite since the interview is not where you show that you can |excel in multiple areas."

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

#202

Post by yummyfajitas »

ntkachov wrote: post #24
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…

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.

Fun fact: at at least one college, the psych department has too many students. They knew they would get into trouble with the dean if they started failing them, and there was no mechanism to impose a cap.

So they added a calculus requirement to cut the numbers.

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

#203

Post by pyre »

thisrod wrote: post #35
pyre wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Hold that thought: http://www.ycombinator.com/ I'm a traditional university type. If pg can drag the Zuckerberg set out my physics department, that's fine by me.

My point was that the idea of cranking out CEOs/MBAs would replace the idea of doing traditional academics/science/arts.

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

#204

Post by glesica »

potatolicious wrote: post #171
eli_gottlieb wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I find disturbing here is the complete, total, hegemonic shift to thinking of education as job-training.

When education costs so much that one needs to take out a loan that then takes decades to repay, it must necessarily be job-training. It's practically impossible to justify otherwise. IMO it's impossible to expect the education system to be more holistic and less training-oriented unless the costs drop to the point where it's realistic to pursue it knowing there is not necessarily a monetary reward at the end.

I see your point, but I think you've made a couple assumptions that aren't necessarily accurate.

First, higher education needn't be solely one or the other. There have also been some important points brought up elsewhere in the comments about the "sticker price" versus what students actually pay.

Additionally, this is a complex issue, especially in the US where the perception of the value of a degree can vary wildly depending on the institution in question. One part of the original article that struck me as true is that high school students should be better coached during the process of choosing a college or university and then choosing a major or concentration.

The idea behind general human capital, though, is that it actually increases the ability of the student to thrive in a dynamic economy. The returns on an education with a significant "holistic" component are, at least in theory, higher than those on an education that is weighted toward job training.

For example, while it is certainly true that borrowing $100,000 to study pottery at a large university is probably not a good idea, there are enough colleges and universities in the US that if a student really wants to study pottery, he can do so for much less (for example, at a community college, where tuition costs are still quite reasonable).

But really, pottery (to continue the example, though this is applicable to many fields frequently cited as "useless") is closer to specific human capital. This actually helps explain why the students commonly featured in articles about these issues can't get jobs. They have been given "job training" for jobs that don't pay well or hardly even exist.

If their programs of study had been more "holistic" then perhaps they would be in better shape today (of course it should go without saying that there are counter-examples out there, I'm just talking about trends and averages here).

So in some sense, it seems that part of the problem is that we already focus too much on "job training", especially for low-return jobs. Of course a degree in finance (business schools do a great deal of job training) is far more lucrative, but the principle is the same.

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

#205

Post by bricestacey »

learc83 wrote: post #143
bricestacey wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It cost me a little less than 4.5k a year in tuition and fees in 2007, now its up to around 9k. Additionally tuition used to max out at 12 hours now it maxes out at 15. It's still a great value compared to a lot of schools, but if the prices keep going up at anything near that rate it won't be for long. Also I don't think its 1/4 of a private school. Total cost of attendance is around 20k, total cost of attendance at…

Including room and board in the equation is generally misleading when discussing the cost of education (even if a required cost for first-year freshmen). It's a requirement for living regardless of whether you're in college.

Discounting room/board, GSU is $9k and Harvard $44k.

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

#206

Post by rs3123 »

"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." - a counterpoint: I teach in the business school at an accredited public land-grant university in the US northeast and interface with several HR managers / campus recruiters from major companies nearby, including a fortune-5 and three fortune-50 cos. Almost all companies have minimum GPA cutoffs to even interview a student. Higher GPA increases a student's chances of getting hired. Recruiters frequently ask professors to recommend the best students in their class. That "piece of paper" mentioning the student's grade is fairly important, as are people-skills and attitude. Doing well in class signals a candidate's work ethic.

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

#207

Post by thrownaway2424 »

sankara wrote: post #182
torstesu wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess the reason why companies with a high application volume (like Google) tend to be biased towards "top" school and using your GPA as a selection criteria, is that it is so much easier to "cut the pile in half" and still have a decent number of good candidates, only the average talent might be higher. It reduces the overhead in the HR department. That means a lot of smart people never get the opportunity to try…

What you say makes sense for the screening rounds - resume shortlisting and a phone screen. These are centered around rejecting candidates. But face to face interviews are supposed to be the other way. As far as I know, Google asks for the GPA mostly towards the end. That doesn't save them any time. It shows they care about academics. On a general note, is there any company that tries to extract patterns out of their…

Google does not ask for your GPA in interviews.

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

#208

Post by rdtsc »

jmathai wrote: post #162
earl wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In theory, I agree. In practice, college is a very useful signal. And it's not just the coursework from the college major. College demonstrates a variety of soft skills: time management, the ability to plan and meet deadlines, the ability to work on what's necessary when it's necessary, a willingness to suck it up and do some unglamorous but necessary drudge work, etc. I've worked with a variety of people that haven'…

4 years and $50-100k of debt is in no way an efficient way to surface those signals. I agree that some things like research can't be done online. But I don't think those will remain at the university either. Graduate/research degrees must represent such a small % of a university's revenue that when the majority goes away they simply won't be able to survive. Just ask the RIAA if they can survive by selling mp3s when…

You are both right in some respect.

First of all college teaches knowledge that you would need relevant to your major. Then college is a signal that you can learn stuff that is required (but not necessarily that you would like to learn). For example sometimes you might just not know what you need to know. Like math. I am glad I was forced to take calculus because I find it useful in my programming job, years later. Taking that made it easy to take understand and analyze algorithms. I am also glad I was forced to take English and Critical Thinking. I stuck with it for 4 years. That also tells something about me to a potential employer (maybe the wrong thing, maybe it shows I can be a submissive grunt that will willingly follow orders, or maybe it shows I can get stuff done to a future startup partner...)

So, taking costs aside, I think there is some value in college.

Now bringing the costs back into it, I agree with you, that all this should probably somehow be obtained for less than $100k. There is a terrible inefficiency some place if it actually costs that much. There is terrible waste some place. I remember my University was building large stadiums, and huge gyms with lazy rivers and other crap in them, while some colleges couldn't afford paper to print exams on and was using single spaced double-sided, small fonts.

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

#209

Post by learc83 »

bricestacey wrote: post #205
learc83 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It cost me a little less than 4.5k a year in tuition and fees in 2007, now its up to around 9k. Additionally tuition used to max out at 12 hours now it maxes out at 15. It's still a great value compared to a lot of schools, but if the prices keep going up at anything near that rate it won't be for long. Also I don't think its 1/4 of a private school. Total cost of attendance is around 20k, total cost of attendance at…

Including room and board in the equation is generally misleading when discussing the cost of education (even if a required cost for first-year freshmen). It's a requirement for living regardless of whether you're in college. Discounting room/board, GSU is $9k and Harvard $44k.

>It's a requirement for living regardless of whether you're in college.

No it's not. Most college students are young enough that they have the option of living with parents. If you're 19 and live with your parents your cost of living is close to 0, but you can't do that if you're forced to live on campus (even if just Freshmen year for most schools).

Additionally going to college full time is has opportunity costs. If you don't go to college you can work full time to pay your living expenses. If you go to college you can't (for most students).

Therefore attending college is forcing most people to look towards loans to support themselves. Loans for total cost of attendance at GSU are only a little less than half of loans for total cost of attendance at Harvard.

Here are the options for a student who got into GSU and Harvard. (actually sounds funny but I may have been able to get into Harvard, I did get into several other top tier schools, but I had no desire to live in boston. I went to GSU b/c they paid me so much money in scholarships that I was making a good deal of extra money)

1. Skip college work and pay expenses--no loan debt

2. Go to GSU take out loans --80K in loan debt

3. Go to Harvard take out loans -- 200k in loan debt

4. Go to GSU live on campus 1 year then with parents 3 years 50k in loan debt.

*Number 4 only works if you are with in driving distance to a good state school, and it's not an option if you're looking for the "college experience".

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

#210

Post by TheFuture »

ntkachov wrote: post #17

The other end of the problem is that kid's aren't even trying to flip their degree. Most kids consider college and experience not an investment. You're kid is the worst investor on the planet. Because instead of majoring in Bioengineering they are majoring in psychology. And If they are majoring in psychology they aren't out to get the best damn research positions over the summer and publish papers, they are out work…

> Most kids consider college and experience not an investment

Fantastic point.

Not only should the students/parents be asking themselves about what return they expect on $100k, the people loaning the money should be too. And because the feds are the ones guaranteeing the money, they don't care about the return, they just care about politicizing it to their advantage.

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