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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

#241

Post by ch00 »

crazygringo wrote: post #230

I would love to see some kind of "university achievement test" that you could take at the end of college, or at the end of simply studying on your own. A test that would actually evaluate real critical reasoning and analysis of the sort that you're "supposed to" develop at university. (Of course, writing such a test well would be extremely difficult, and it would probably have to have a different version tailored for…

Good idea, but I think some sort of achievement test at the high school level would be even more effective at revealing the quality of preparation students have received for college.

Fortunately we already have tests like this and not surprisingly, they show that students are terribly underprepared for an undergraduate education in nearly every subject.

Clearly an undergraduate education received today is not commensurate with the costs to the student, especially when the student hasn't be rigorously prepared for a collegiate education in high school. But the problem is so much more than the price of tuition.

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

#242

Post by yashchandra »

undergrad degree: 4 years is a waste of time. make it 2. rest should be spent doing practical work (not coffee making interns). initial 2 years: focus on communication skills, analytical skills and just simply how to carry yourself in the world. Learn how to manage money, time and your lazy ass. grad degree: Unless you want to be a researcher or you just like being in school, this is useless PHD degree: Enough said.

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

#243

Post by base698 »

_delirium wrote: post #42
Swizec wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This probably depends a lot on the course one is taking. I have a feeling (from observing the people around me) engineers are a lot better at critical thinking and logical reasoning after a couple years of college than they were coming out of high school. From my observation it takes about ~4 years for the really observable differences to settle in ... it might also just be maturity. Difficult to say :)

It's definitely my experience that it's hard to find people with high levels of mathematical knowledge who don't have a 4-year, technical-field bachelor's degree. It's of course possible this is merely a correlation, but I would at least hypothetize that the students who've finished a four-year degree in an area like mathematics, computer science, electrical engineering, or physics, have more mathematical sophisticat…

So far for me 100% of candidates claiming self taught can barely code a for loop, much less explain at a high level how a compiler works or the difference between a heap and the heap. In most cases they don't even know the foundations of the language in which they are most efficient.

Most people I know are also self-taught and read a lot of the theory. If they are self-taught, what in God's name are they using to teach themselves?

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

#244

Post by jamesrcole »

pilom wrote: post #240
jamesrcole wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a limited number of scholarships to go around, and for those who can't get one, the cost will matter.

I think what krschultz is saying is that if you have the skills to be successful without a college degree, you also are likely to have the skills to get a scholarship to a decent school. They are a somewhat similar skillset and going to college allows you to check the checkbox on an application.

I understand that, but they did also say "Fuck people who bitch about how expensive college is."

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

#245

Post by gaius »

talmand wrote: post #128
eli_gottlieb wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about you explain, nicely please, why taking something called Advanced Rails Technologies is a bad thing? Because "Rails Technologies" have changed drastically in the past 5 years and do so again in the next 5 years. "Modern Web Programming" would have been a good course. "Advanced Rails Technologies" is so ridiculously over-specific and over-current that I simply can't see how it has any value for the future.

So you do not see the benefit in learning what is considered advanced technologies today because it'll change in the future? Why bother learning anything in this field at all? Or is it just the name they chose? Because it seems really rude of you to insult an entire group of people simply because they wish to take a course of which you do not like the name. I'm totally lost on your attitude about this.

See comments above about general vs specific human capital.

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

#246

Post by Symmetry »

lordlicorice wrote: post #175
jmathai wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

At research universities most of the budget comes from research, and most of the work in research gets done by grad students. Undergrad programs are an afterthought.

That's only true for STEM fields, though. Outside of STEM, department's budget is actually correlated with teaching undergrads, so they tend to do a better job of it. Which is why so many undergrads end up switching majors away from STEM in college.

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

#247

Post by Domenic_S »

WalterBright wrote: post #127
vladd wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Today the same institutions provide education and certify skills. If nothing else, it's an obvious conflict of interests that's tolerated only because historically there was no other practical way around it. The war for talent and the online classes will soon disrupt that - you'll be able to give interviews/tests in a 2-day examination and get a paper saying what you really know (like SAT is for pupils). And when tha…

> 4-year outdated programs A good STEM program teaches you how to think, and that never gets outdated. Colleges offer a smorgasbord of courses to take. If you select courses for the easiest route to a degree, you won't be that employable. If you select courses that will give you the best foundation for your chosen career, that'll do much better. For example, although I got a degree in engineering, I made sure I also…

> A good STEM program teaches you how to think, and that never gets outdated.

Honest question: does one not learn to think before college? Where are the parents? What happened in high school?

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

#248

Post by overgryphon »

yashchandra wrote: post #237
wtvanhest wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are tons of undergrad programs that are less than $10k per year. Big state schools which will give you all the social experiences you need and some of the learning. No HR department can interview people without a degree when there are so many people with degrees. A degree doesn't get you in the door, but is a minimum standard for just about any job. It is too bad school is too expensive, but it doesn't matter.

"It is too bad school is too expensive, but it doesn't matter." It does matter. The schools that are worth anything are too expensive (exceptions are there of course) while the cheap ones (read cheap schools.

University of Texas at Austin, University of Washington, and the Georgia Institute of Technology all have tuition of less than 10k and are ranked by US news as having CS programs better than Harvard. Several others have tuition less than 15k.

Cheap schools are not good for nothing, and price does not equal quality.

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

#249

Post by overgryphon »

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…

The median amount of debt is somewhere around 12k. 50-100k of debt is not at all required for an undergraduate degree. Anyone who chose that route had other options.

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

#250

Post by overgryphon »

dredmorbius wrote: post #169
ender7 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I'm not arguing that a degree is a good indicator of performance. You have to put yourself in the shoes of the person in charge of hiring. If you advertise a well-paid tech position, you will probably get thousands of applications. You can't read them all in elaborate detail. You can't visit everyone's Github. You just don't have time. So how do you cull? Just randomly select 10% and go with that? What if you h…

This is where having a solid referral network and a good technical pre-screening process help. The screen would be a quiz, puzzle, or other technical challenge which can root out the obviously unqualified (and possibly net you some viral buzz), while being easy for an HR drone to administer. They don't need to verify the code, just that it produces the correct result. Mind that "correct result" should be sufficiently…

The only people who are going to bother solving your puzzles are the ones who are desperate for a job- not the people you want. Qualified candidates have lots of opportunities at places that respect their time, and don't pretend an easily googleable problem is an indication of performance.
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