Teaching college is no longer a middle-class job, and everyone should care • Hacker News Board

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

#191

Post by eshvk » Sat, Jun 21, 2014, 11:49 AM UTC

gaius wrote: post #165

TheMagicHorsey wrote: post #161

American education is such a mess. First, it feels like the majority of American college students graduate from college after spending four years on material that makes them no more appealing to employers. Second, there seems to be a thick layer of insulation between market signals and students, so that students can't even figure out what they should be learning, even if they were motivated to do so. Third, colleges…

I don't think American employers care much where your degree is from ... at least for engineers ... so long as you have the right to work in America ... which a citizen would have. Sure they do. Try getting a job at Google without a degree from MIT/Stanford. The name is more important than even graduating, even "Harvard dropout" has a certain cachet.

> Try getting a job at Google without a degree from MIT/Stanford.

I know a lot of people working at Google who don't even have degrees. There are over 5,000 Engineers in Google's American HQ. Thinking that everyone of them works there purely because of the brand name of whatever college they went to seems to be a rather self-limiting belief.

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

#192

Post by barry-cotter » Sat, Jun 21, 2014, 11:56 AM UTC

neolefty wrote: post #145

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…

Question: Is a typical adjunct professor qualified to teach in a public school? And related, would they want to if they could? I teach overseas, and I would never qualify to teach in an American school -- I have a college degree, and some teaching experience (from when I was in college), but no teaching credential.

〉Is a typical adjunct professor qualified to teach in a public school? And related, would they want to if they could?

No more than you are. If they don't have an M.Ed. or B.Ed. they're unqualified. Assuming you have those you may also need to do a certain number of teaching hours post qualification to get a teaching licence/QTS.

The typical adjunct almost certainly doesn't want to teach public school. Even in the crappiest community college discipline issues are minimal compared to teaching in high school or middle school and you have way more autonomy than a public school teacher.

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

#193

Post by aianus » Sat, Jun 21, 2014, 12:04 PM UTC

SoftwareMaven wrote: post #156

Aqueous wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. I worked for a university briefly as a staff member. Our university sung far and wide about how it just raised $400 million for its endowment in its most recent fundraising campaign, and yet, it couldn't afford to pay me more than a $25,000 salary in the IT department. How on earth is this possible? It's probably in all the unseen costs they pay out in contracts to subcontractors. But another clue might be this:…

Once upon a time, administration was 20% of college budgets. It's now 50% (guess who does budgeting?). You need look no further than that to find your answer.

They also have to spend a lot of money on computer labs, stadiums and gyms and such to boost the reputation and attractiveness of the school. It's much easier to judge how beautiful and modern a school is during a quick visit than it is to judge teaching quality.

Furthermore, 18-year-olds with guaranteed loans don't look at the price tags for those gimmicks rationally. When you're a kid with $300 in the bank the difference between a $50,000 loan and a $80,000 loan is so abstract it might as well not exist.

Combine those two factors and you get runaway spending and debt with little emphasis on teaching quality.

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

#194

Post by barry-cotter » Sat, Jun 21, 2014, 12:09 PM UTC

Double_Cast wrote: post #135

jckt wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Wealth does not pass three generations. - Chinese proverb (Disclaimer: I'm one of them darned kids too.) I've only become aware of recently [1][2], but I've started to get the feeling that this "fun phenomenon" is something endemic to Generation Y. [1] http://waitbutwhy.com/2013/09/why-generation-y-yuppies-are-u... [2] http://ejmas.com/pt/2012pt/ptart_tong_teacher24-1210.html tl;dr = Generation 1 builds wealth from…

> Wealth does not pass three generations. - Chinese proverb

Not true. Gregory Clark has an awesome book on this, The Son Also Rises. Social status has a heritability of 0.7ish in every society he measured it in. That's almost as high as the upper bound estimate for IQ. To give an idea of how powerful heritability of social status/roles is consider this: Norman surnames are over represented among the battlefield casualties of WW1 and 2 for the UK. Nearly a thousand years later a prospensity for organised violence lives on. And despite the Cultural Revolution and 30 years of Communism, the same surnames that were over represented among the Mandarins of Qing China are over represented among the upper echelons of today's Communist Party.

〉tl;dr = Generation 1 builds wealth from scratch, Gen 2 is inspired by the raw dedication of the first, but Gen 3 never meets Gen 1 and feels entitled and lazy and squanders everything.

Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, chatter before company; gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers. -- Socrates

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

#195

Post by Sammi » Sat, Jun 21, 2014, 12:30 PM UTC

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…

Ironically, what you're describing would be considered libertarianism by most people outside of the US.

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

#196

Post by alexeisadeski3 » Sat, Jun 21, 2014, 12:49 PM UTC

colanderman wrote: post #188

alexeisadeski3 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pollution: Expand private property rights (air, ocean, etc).

Here's how this goes: 1. Person X buys land because they need to live. 2. X asks real estate broker, "Don't I need air rights too?" Broker says "nah, the air's clean around here". (It is.) 3. Industry Y decides to move into town. Buys up all the unsold air rights from the broker (maybe with a little kickback). (Industry Y sells widgets, of which everyone needs an endless supply.) 4. Industry Y does what industries do…

1. Air rights needn't be tied to land. A proportional share could be automatically inherited by each citizen upon birth.

2. Existing water rights in the US have as much to do with free markets as they did in the USSR.

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

#197

Post by webhat » Sat, Jun 21, 2014, 12:57 PM UTC

neolefty wrote: post #145

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…

Question: Is a typical adjunct professor qualified to teach in a public school? And related, would they want to if they could? I teach overseas, and I would never qualify to teach in an American school -- I have a college degree, and some teaching experience (from when I was in college), but no teaching credential.

You can teach at an American school, depending on the current teacher demand. The US, as have many other countries, have in the past been easy on people with degrees and allowed them to teach while they were in the process of getting their M.Ed. or B.Ed.

With a masters you could teach in an American university, I believe the minimum requirement is a masters degree.

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

#198

Post by hibikir » Sat, Jun 21, 2014, 12:58 PM UTC

I think this is a natural result of having so many kids that have no idea of what to do in life.

Take a snapshot of the labor force of a country. Then try to figure out how many of those professions a high school kid understands. Do they know what those people find rewarding about their job? What they don't? Do they have any idea of how an entire career might look like? They don't. So when you ask one of those kids what they'll want to do when they stop formal education, they'll go back to the few things that they are taught are desirable, and the few other occupations that are close to them. One of which, for every single kid, is to teach, since they've been surrounded by them all their lives.

Keeping studying after getting a Bachelor's is also a very tempting option for kids that are afraid of change. Think of something very different from college, or get a master's? Go look for a job, or get a Ph.D? Inertia makes some people go for advanced degrees, even though they don't really understand the road they are getting into.

I know plenty of people who finished a Ph.D, started doing post docs, then realized that now their options had narrowed significantly, that the tenure track was not going to happen any time soon, so their options were to become adjuncts, study even more to consider teaching at a high school, or accept that 5-10 years worth of education was completely wasted. This leads to a major glut of qualified people, which then get paid very little.

I believe we should spend a whole lot of effort teaching kids what odds they are actually facing when they make their career choices. I still meet interns that are doing post graduate education at the same time that don't realize how terrible the odds really are, and that's with them working in a company that is one of the few industry outlets out there for people that went into Ph.Ds and then saw how scary the teaching market was, so it's not like they cannot hear plenty of stories.

Bad information just leads to bad resource allocation for all of us. We should help with that.

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

#199

Post by carlob » Sat, Jun 21, 2014, 1:05 PM UTC

Aqueous wrote: post #134

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…

Yes. I worked for a university briefly as a staff member. Our university sung far and wide about how it just raised $400 million for its endowment in its most recent fundraising campaign, and yet, it couldn't afford to pay me more than a $25,000 salary in the IT department. How on earth is this possible? It's probably in all the unseen costs they pay out in contracts to subcontractors. But another clue might be this:…

This thing you point out about construction is what has always struck me as an European. The first American university I visited was Princeton and you'd expect it to look very good and have wonderful facilities (and it did). On the other hand I visited small local university like Curry and Bentley, which have absolutely no academic clout and I really don't should have such nice campuses, when the quality of courses is pretty low.

Your comment really is illuminating to me: news outlets, and possibly parents doing touring when college shopping only really care about the surface.

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

#200

Post by inthewoods » Sat, Jun 21, 2014, 1:29 PM UTC

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…

"and an informed public are the answer; not avoiding government altogether."

One small edit - an informed AND ENGAGED public.

We now have a perfect cycle in the US. - Government isn't working, so people believe government can't work. - Government can't work in the future because very few participate.

Wash, rinse, repeat - and remove funding for education while you're going along to make sure people are not getting informed or engaged.