College for Grownups
nytimes.com
College for Grownups
1–10 of 74 posts
Re: College for Grownups
#2"First to market" applies as much to education as to business. The payoffs for finishing education sooner rather than later are enormous.
A student may benefit from being more mature if they delay college or graduation. But it's unlikely that benefit exceeds the compounding value of finishing the same amount of school two years earlier.
In other words, I strongly disagree with the premise that teenagers should delay college, for the same reason we strongly discourage people to delay saving for retirement.
Investment compounds. So it's confounding he accuses people of making a poor "major investment decision" while advocating a delay in investment. The answer whether to delay or start school unprepared is a math-intensive one, and is likely different for every student. But if you believe the majority of 18 year olds are prepared to continue school immediately for another four years, it seems reasonable to advise them to go to college immediately.
Does maturity compound? I don't know. Education definitely does.
> ...Greek systems that appeal to many affluent families but also incubate cultures of dangerous play... Rethinking the expectation that applicants to selective colleges be fresh out of high school would go far in reducing risk for young people while better protecting everyone’s college investment.
Reducing what risk? Of sexual assault and alcoholism?
I don't know if being young has anything to do with being a violently misogynist psychopath. Maybe being a victim of one does.
But the rest of the world tracks teenagers into either conscription or education at 18 too. There's less of a fraternity culture at Tsinghua for sure. I don't know if there's less sexual assault or substance abuse. Even if there were, we'd sooner indict fraternities than people being young, wouldn't we?
Re: College for Grownups
#3Yes, remote, asynchronous learning is just the ticket for people who won't live close to campus and fight over seats for classes held at inconvenient hours.
While some fraternities are unruly, I don't see how it affects people who just go to class, study in the library, and live off campus. Is it common that older students get stuck living in frats or dorms? Or older students just can't resist the draw to party?
Re: College for Grownups
#4"First to market" applies as much to education as to business. The payoffs for finishing education sooner rather than later are enormous. A student may benefit from being more mature if they delay college or graduation. But it's unlikely that benefit exceeds the compounding value of finishing the same amount of school two years earlier. In other words, I strongly disagree with the premise that teenagers should delay…
But it's unlikely that benefit exceeds the compounding value of finishing the same amount of school two years earlier.
Best I can tell, all that compounding value gets you one thing: more money in retirement. Therein lies my objection; letting your retirement dictate your first 65 years of life seems like folly.
Re: College for Grownups
#5"First to market" applies as much to education as to business. The payoffs for finishing education sooner rather than later are enormous. A student may benefit from being more mature if they delay college or graduation. But it's unlikely that benefit exceeds the compounding value of finishing the same amount of school two years earlier. In other words, I strongly disagree with the premise that teenagers should delay…
But it's unlikely that benefit exceeds the compounding value of finishing the same amount of school two years earlier. Best I can tell, all that compounding value gets you one thing: more money in retirement. Therein lies my objection; letting your retirement dictate your first 65 years of life seems like folly.
I'm going to retire when I'm dead.
Re: College for Grownups
#6I dislike the condescending attitude of the author towards the young adults (referred to in the article as "children") attending college. The author claims that leaving home to live at college poses a "serious psychological risk". Are we talking about 18-year-olds or 5-year-olds? Are we afraid that these more-or-less fully fledged citizens, whom we allow to drive, smoke, enlist, vote, marry, and have children, are going to end up crying for their mommies and daddies because they left home too early? Ridiculous.
Where these "psychological risks" exist, it's probably more a symptom of failing to ween teenagers from parental dependence and teach personal responsibility than it is a symptom of college life.
To quote a younger friend of mine, who started college this year after bumming around Europe for a while: "After spending a few months 'in the wild', living in this relatively very supervised college environment seems absolutely mundane."
Re: College for Grownups
#7College was originally for people who acted like grownups -- at 18 years old -- because those who went 100(+) years ago were expected to take it seriously.
Unfortunately, as time has gone on, at least in the US, colleges are spending more and more money on 'club-med'ing their dorms and such, giving the wrong impression of why you are on a campus to begin with -- and colleges are somewhat complicit in not caring nowadays about your success either, just in taking money from as many students as they can fill the place up with each year.
Re: College for Grownups
#8"First to market" applies as much to education as to business. The payoffs for finishing education sooner rather than later are enormous. A student may benefit from being more mature if they delay college or graduation. But it's unlikely that benefit exceeds the compounding value of finishing the same amount of school two years earlier. In other words, I strongly disagree with the premise that teenagers should delay…
The fundamental flaw in your comment is the assumption that education is an investment that compounds in value. That's not the case for a large percentage of the young people who go to college today. Many will exit with weak earnings prospects and crippling debt that will compound.
Re: College for Grownups
#9College was originally for people who acted like grownups -- at 18 years old -- because those who went 100(+) years ago were expected to take it seriously. Unfortunately, as time has gone on, at least in the US, colleges are spending more and more money on 'club-med'ing their dorms and such, giving the wrong impression of why you are on a campus to begin with -- and colleges are somewhat complicit in not caring nowad…
> College was originally for people who acted like grownups -- at 18 years old -- because those who went 100(+) years ago were expected to take it seriously
Not as much as you might think. You can find stories going all the way back to medieval times of university students getting drunk and tearing up the local town. It's just part of the deal -- a major requirement for study is leisure, and if you give young people large amounts of self-directed leisure time some of them are going to use it to behave immaturely.
Re: College for Grownups
#10"First to market" applies as much to education as to business. The payoffs for finishing education sooner rather than later are enormous. A student may benefit from being more mature if they delay college or graduation. But it's unlikely that benefit exceeds the compounding value of finishing the same amount of school two years earlier. In other words, I strongly disagree with the premise that teenagers should delay…
Does maturity compound? I don't know. Education definitely does.
College loans compound if you can't pay them. The state university I attended has a 6-year graduation rate of 65%. The graduation rate is the same for students who took out loans. So, probably about a fifth of students end up in debt with no degree. I personally wish I had waited a year or two before starting college because I think I would have performed better.