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Teaching college is no longer a middle-class job, and everyone should care

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Re: Teaching college is no longer a middle-class job, and everyone should care

#171

Post by throwerawayer »

jjoonathan wrote: post #170
eli_gottlieb wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If I own the land, and I mean own and am responsible for - no taxpayer subsidized safety net if I go too badshit crazy with the nutrient depletion or chemical baths - then it is in my best interests not to ruin the property so that it remains valuable if and or when I want to sell it. No, it's in your interest to fool some sucker into buying it on false pretenses. Don't pretend to moralities you don't actually hold,…

To whoever downvoted this: I challenge you to explain why he's wrong.

I downvoted the comment, but not because of the viewpoint. I only downvote when I believe that a comment is detracting from the discussion.

eli_gottlieb said: "Don't pretend to moralities you don't actually hold, capitalist". eli was implying that zanny was immoral (or at least amoral), which is something that cannot be deduced from one or two comments; moreover, pointless ad hominem attacks do not advance the discussion.

I regularly downvote comments which espouse views that I agree or disagree with, when they resort to irrelevancies and personal attacks, as was the case here.

edit: quote from HN's comment guide

"What we especially discourage are comments that are empty and negative—comments that are mere name-calling.

Which brings us to the most important principle on HN: civility. Since long before the web, the anonymity of online conversation has lured people into being much ruder than they'd dare to be in person. So the principle here is: don't say anything you wouldn't say face to face. This doesn't mean you can't disagree. But disagree without calling the other person names. If you're right, your argument will be more convincing without them. "

Re: Teaching college is no longer a middle-class job, and everyone should care

#172

Post by Avshalom »

QuantumChaos wrote: post #153
Avshalom wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And we don't have to pay any teachers.

Why should paying teachers be considered good in itself? Are you familiar with the First and Second Welfare Theorem in economics?

One the one hand it shouldn't.

On their other hand it is bizarre to come into a thread about how teachers aren't getting paid despite school costs rising and present as an alternative paying teachers even less.

On the gripping hand I'm not entirely sure what you think the welfare theorems have to do with this but its worth remember that they do not and quite likely cannot actually describe reality.

Re: Teaching college is no longer a middle-class job, and everyone should care

#173

Post by KoalaOnesie »

The author is correct, "adjunct" perfectly describes the fact that teaching is an add-on at most universities. Those institutions exist to obtain grants for research and donations from alumni. Educating undergrads is an unfortunately coincidence from the perspective of most tuition-gathering organizations.

Re: Teaching college is no longer a middle-class job, and everyone should care

#174

Post by FLUX-YOU »

walesmd wrote: post #109
dccoolgai wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thatks where I see huge potential for disruption to higher ed; I think some trusted or recognized source will make a lot of money by offering credentialing... I saw something about 'nanodegrees' from Udacity (or one of those). When the situation reaches the tipping point where it's a signal of mental paucity that you decided to take on 200k of debt for something you could have gotten for a lot less, I wonder what wil…

Udacity Nano Degrees: https://www.udacity.com/nanodegrees

It's looking like the kind of pilot program we need to get more enterprising self-taught people into dev interviews: backed by big companies to instill faith in the smaller companies, teaching new/relevant skills, capstone project to show off and discuss in an interview.

It does cost though ($200/month), which can be significant out-of-pocket if you're in a low-paying job, and you may not need whatever service that $200 buys you. It's unclear what that goes to, but I'm assuming it's to the coaches.

Still better than American university prices

Re: Teaching college is no longer a middle-class job, and everyone should care

#175

Post by x0054 »

zanny wrote: post #162
majika wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you please explain how markets address overharvesting and pollution, and examples of that happening? If your point is that states can overharvest and pollute too, sure - of course they can. They probably will if they're corrupt. My point was that only states can stop it: see the legislation on whaling, fishing, poaching, emissions regulations and taxation, ... On misinformation, you made the (unrelated) point tha…

> overharvesting If I own the land, and I mean own and am responsible for - no taxpayer subsidized safety net if I go too badshit crazy with the nutrient depletion or chemical baths - then it is in my best interests not to ruin the property so that it remains valuable if and or when I want to sell it. Either I intend to sell the land, thus making it worthwhile not to destroy it, or I intend to continue using the land…

> If I own the land, and I mean own and am responsible for - no taxpayer subsidized safety net if I go too badshit crazy with the nutrient depletion or chemical baths - then it is in my best interests not to ruin the property so that it remains valuable if and or when I want to sell it.

Realistically, most people would want to extract as much from the land as they can in their lifetime. This means, while they may not necessarily destroy the land with in their own lifetime, they will bleed it dry by the end of their lifetime, leaving nothing to the future generations. This, of course, also presupposes that most people are rational, smart, and sane individuals. The truth is quite the opposite, and if you have doubts about the latter, just read YouTube comments of any video :)

Re: Teaching college is no longer a middle-class job, and everyone should care

#176

Post by mkattam »

majika wrote: post #150
nugget wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw examples like this over and over when I worked with Government, and it's ultimately what pushed me to embrace libertarianism. Government usually has great intentions, but those intentions are often overwhelmed by the perverse micro incentives of the human beings, driven by basic human nature, who run everything at the ground level.

Smaller governments (i.e. less power, shallower hierarchies), good voting systems, and an informed public are the answer; not avoiding government altogether. Libertarianism (i.e. absolute belief in the capitalist market and private property) doesn't work, because the markets don't reflect negative externalities like pollution, over-harvesting, misinformation, or antibiotics misuse. States need to exist to manipulate…

>Libertarianism (i.e. absolute belief in the capitalist market and private property).

I espouse libertarianism more under the following: freedom financially and freedom socially. So the former is generally a conservative ideal while the latter is usually a liberal ideal. A practical example is: I believe in small government (freedom from government financially) and I also believe same-sex marriage should be legal (freedom from government in sociall policy). This is my libertarianism.

Re: Teaching college is no longer a middle-class job, and everyone should care

#177

Post by ekimekim »

jckt wrote: post #111
soup10 wrote: post #4

So the cost of college is skyrocketing and teachers are getting paid less and less. Where is the money going??

I think another problem (though probably minor compared to the bloated bureaucracies everyone else is mentioning) is that the teaching quality doesn't matter as much to students these days. This is a UK source, but I think it reflects the view of most students in the West: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-14616788 I feel bad for saying something like "kids these days" (I'm one of them, admittedly) but "fun" seems…

I would say education quality dosn't matter because, in my experience, it's universally bad. Why should you care if your useless years spent buying an accreditation is 98% useless or 99% useless? You have to self-educate either way.

Re: Teaching college is no longer a middle-class job, and everyone should care

#178

Post by eli_gottlieb »

throwerawayer wrote: post #171
jjoonathan wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To whoever downvoted this: I challenge you to explain why he's wrong.

I downvoted the comment, but not because of the viewpoint. I only downvote when I believe that a comment is detracting from the discussion. eli_gottlieb said: "Don't pretend to moralities you don't actually hold, capitalist". eli was implying that zanny was immoral (or at least amoral), which is something that cannot be deduced from one or two comments; moreover, pointless ad hominem attacks do not advance the discus…

>eli_gottlieb said: "Don't pretend to moralities you don't actually hold, capitalist". eli was implying that zanny was immoral (or at least amoral), which is something that cannot be deduced from one or two comments; moreover, pointless ad hominem attacks do not advance the discussion.

Immoral by my definition, sure. But his espoused morality is "whatever the market will bear". All I'm demanding is that he doesn't pretend "whatever the market will bear", which is what he's explicitly proposing and endorsing, in any way matches what the rest of us think of as desirable.

If he wants to be an ideologue, he needs to come out and say it: "Yes, privatizing all the commons will result in sales that approach as close to fraud as the law allows, rather than actual environmental protection, but that's a good thing!"

Re: Teaching college is no longer a middle-class job, and everyone should care

#179

Post by zacinbusiness »

tammer wrote: post #17
soup10 wrote: post #4

So the cost of college is skyrocketing and teachers are getting paid less and less. Where is the money going??

It's very clear where it's going. The number of administrative staff at colleges and universities have skyrocketed in the past 30 years. Just like in the corporate world, corruption and the proliferation of unnecessary management have sucked revenue to the top. http://www.salon.com/2014/06/08/colleges_are_full_of_it_behi...

And don't forget sports teams. Almost all football programs, for instance, actually cost the university more money than they bring in. This includes revenue from sports memorabilia. Source: friend worked in athletics at my uni and they were extremely proud when they started breaking even.

Re: Teaching college is no longer a middle-class job, and everyone should care

#180

Post by alexeisadeski3 »

x0054 wrote: post #92

It is stunning that a public school teacher apparently makes almost 2x what a college teacher makes, at least in California. Mind you, I am not arguing that school teachers should make less, collage profs should make more. This is amazing though, were is the money going. Anecdotally, I think a lot of the money is spent on outside services through a corrupt bidding process. Back in 2008 I used to run a document scanni…

>>meanwhile some poor adjunkt professor is eating cat food!

The median income in Mexico is around $10k (PPP adjusted). I wonder how much cat food they eat?

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