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

#101

Post by sitkack » Sat, Jun 21, 2014, 12:20 AM UTC

jmckib wrote: post #76

Jtsummers wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My primary issue with school vouchers is the poor state of private schools, at least here in GA (outside of the major cities like Atlanta and Savannah). The Catholic schools are decent to good, but often are only K-8. There are few private secular schools. The rest of the private schools are very conservative "Christian Academy" types whose education leaves their students complete morons in some fields (math, science…

I bet that if we switched to vouchers then you'd see a lot of new private schools catering to a wider audience. It also might be reasonable to exclude private schools with religious instruction from the voucher program.

You are not a betting man.

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

#102

Post by jdreaver » Sat, Jun 21, 2014, 12:22 AM UTC

rdtsc wrote: post #59

jdreaver wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such little regulation? Harsh capitalism? Our education system is propped up chiefly because of government. Most of the US goes to public schools, controlled by the government. Most university students go to public schools. Students get ridiculous loans they can't default on, courtesy of the government. Harsh capitalism would be harsh on the universities who cling to a dying lecture/exam model that hasn't evolved for…

> Our education system is propped up chiefly because of government. Obviously not propped enough if this professor died in poverty and students need 6 figure loans to graduate. > Most of the US goes to public schools, controlled by the government. As opposed to what? Controlled by Coca-Cola? Starbucks? -- "Do you have a degree?" -- "I sure do, I graduated with MS in coffee arts (MsCA) from Starbucks University, Phoen…

> Obviously not propped enough if this professor died in poverty and students need 6 figure loans to graduate.

I argue that it is precisely because of government intervention that these things happen.

> As opposed to what? Controlled by Coca-Cola? Starbucks? -- "Do you have a degree?" -- "I sure do, I graduated with MS in coffee arts (MsCA) from Starbucks University, Phoenix". Or just got a "PhD in applied lobbying from Lockheed".

Are you implying that without government, we as a society would be unable to educate people?

> The problem is not to just stop giving loans, but let people go to universities without needing loans.

That will make universities even more inefficient. Do you know what will ensure "make sure it doesn't spend money on admin assistants, triple layers of bureaucracy, new gyms with lazy rivers and other crap that is not needed?" The fear of failure that universities don't experience now. The fear that if you don't do your job, students will not willingly give you money. "Harsh capitalism" solves that problem.

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

#103

Post by sitkack » Sat, Jun 21, 2014, 12:22 AM UTC

dustcoin wrote: post #90

esrauch wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it actually better for students that they can't default on their loans? I usually hear it the opposite way, that even after bankruptcy proceedings you still have your student loan debt following you around.

Students do default on student loans, even though they cannot be discharged in bankruptcy. 14.7% of students who started repayment in 2010 defaulted within 3 years. (Source: http://www2.ed.gov/offices/OSFAP/defaultmanagement/cdr.html ) If the government did not guarantee and subsidize the loans, interest rates would be higher and/or banks would be more careful which students they lent to.

Which is fine, because as it stands the feedback loop is broken.

Look at what you can spend yourself into at the University of Phoenix.

Many are not much better.

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

#104

Post by dnautics » Sat, Jun 21, 2014, 12:22 AM UTC

rdtsc wrote: post #81

dnautics wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>As opposed to what? Controlled by Coca-Cola? Starbucks? -- "Do you have a degree?" -- "I sure do, I graduated with MS in coffee arts (MsCA) from Starbucks University, Phoenix". Or just got a "PhD in applied lobbying from Lockheed". False dichotomy. There are plenty of things that fit in between "rapacious megacorporations" and "government cronies". Like, for example, unsubsidized nonprofit educational institutes. Yo…

> You know, like you might have found in the 19th - first half of the 20th century. 19th century? So it is easier to imagine going back to 19th century than a system with an accessible public university system without student loans.

No, 'going back to the 19th century (-first half of the 20th century)' is equivalent to imagining a higher education system without student loans. Don't see what the big deal is.

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

#105

Post by sitkack » Sat, Jun 21, 2014, 12:23 AM UTC

justizin wrote: post #73

dnautics wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

non-dischargeability was probably a 'good intention' gone horribly wrong. Because on the plus side, the student's APRs are lower because the lender can be guaranteed to own a portion of the student's labor for the specified term unless they die. And because the higher educational institutes really ought to be entitled to continue extracting their students' value.

the problem is that higher education is the only product aside from used cars in the US which can be sold without an implied warranty of merchantability.

Cobalt Phd.

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

#106

Post by avn2109 » Sat, Jun 21, 2014, 12:23 AM UTC

nkurz wrote: post #44

jjoonathan wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took a look at CMU's financials and it definitely looks like the money is going towards salaries. They don't offer a breakdown between the different kinds of salaries, naturally. Does anyone know of a representative dataset (by "representative" I mean "not the UC system, not an ivy with >$10b endowment, etc") that would include this information? https://www.cmu.edu/finance/reporting-and-incoming-funds/fin...

Here are numbers for Duke and Barnard. I have no idea if they are representative, but they have respectively 10% and 5% of their total budget going to administration. The Barnard link has quite a depth of information. Duke: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/02/14/277015271/duke-60-... Barnard: https://barnard.edu/sites/default/files/inline/2012_data_boo...

Barnard is a special case for the following reasons:

0) It is one of Columbia University's affiliated undergraduate schools, so facilities/athletics/administration/some budgets are tightly coupled to the mothership, which has approximately more money than god and subsidizes many things

1) It is in NYC, so the cost structure is not representative of the rest of America

2)) It is a Women's college, which probably changes some stuff (though I don't know what)

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

#107

Post by dnautics » Sat, Jun 21, 2014, 12:23 AM UTC

justizin wrote: post #73

dnautics wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

non-dischargeability was probably a 'good intention' gone horribly wrong. Because on the plus side, the student's APRs are lower because the lender can be guaranteed to own a portion of the student's labor for the specified term unless they die. And because the higher educational institutes really ought to be entitled to continue extracting their students' value.

the problem is that higher education is the only product aside from used cars in the US which can be sold without an implied warranty of merchantability.

how would you suggest structuring this warranty?

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

#108

Post by ams6110 » Sat, Jun 21, 2014, 12:23 AM UTC

jpulec wrote: post #91

bilbo0s wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to point out what may not be so obvious... a lot of the administrative and non instructional staff are not what many of us would consider to be "management". For instance, at the University of Wisconsin, there is an VERY large, extremely expensive bureaucracy called DoIT. It stands for "Division of Information Technology". Basically... it is the department for all of the IT people at the University. It is enormo…

I worked at DoIT before graduating and moving out to the Bay Area. And your characterization regarding its bureaucracy and efficiency are pretty spot on.

I worked at another Big Ten IT division. The amount of productive work per salary dollar would shock anyone in the start-up or corporate sector. Staff would roll in from 9:00 to 10:00AM, surf the web or fool around with some toys for a couple of hours, take a 90 minute lunch, go to a few meetings, and be out the door at 4:30 or 5:00PM. A lot of these people making 6 figures or close to it in a town where that is a VERY good salary. On top of that, 6 weeks of PTO and pretty generous benefits.

Every few years there would be a reorganization to create a bunch of new job titles and new useless layers of bureaucracy, since that's the only way to give people more than a cost-of-living raise.

You could fire half of them, hold the other half accountable to a reasonable level of productivity, and notice no difference. There might be a net gain.

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

#109

Post by walesmd » Sat, Jun 21, 2014, 12:33 AM UTC

dccoolgai wrote: post #43

DennisP wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meanwhile, Coursera has 677 courses available for free, many of them excellent. You don't get the diploma, but if the diploma is backed by lower-quality classes and grade inflation, that's going to matter less and less.

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

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

#110

Post by Steuard » Sat, Jun 21, 2014, 12:41 AM UTC

rdtsc wrote: post #66

pattisapu wrote: post #16

Good point on how the pay problem for adjunct faculty is intertwined with the "everyone gets a trophy" problem for students: > “I knew the instructor was an adjunct, and that she taught at several places to cobble together a living. I told the students that she was an adjunct, and that the class was easy because she was afraid of losing her job.” Adjuncts are often evaluated solely based on student evaluations. As Re…

Saw that happen. Adjunct instructors went out of their way to be friendly, and non-confrontational. They would let stuff slide, exam do-overs, class meetings held at coffee shops etc etc. Tenured professor not giving a damn about teaching, or being at least socially cordial. Some are just complete assholes. Even saw the the behavior change when a professor got tenure. It was a pretty sharp switch to "don't give a fuc…

Interestingly, I saw more than one fantastic teacher get denied tenure in my graduate department (a top research university), and there was always a rumor floating around that it was because they spent effort on teaching that could have instead gone to research. (One of them had written a textbook, and was told pretty explicitly that doing so had been a major mistake.) I've never heard of anyone getting denied tenure there or in any similar program for mediocre teaching evaluations.

Meanwhile, at the private liberal arts college where I teach, most of my senior colleagues are just as committed to good teaching as my junior colleagues are. (The younger folks may be more innovative, but by and large they don't care more.) I've never seen someone's teaching go downhill when they get tenure; if anything, the research pressure eases up a bit at that point and they feel free to focus a bit more on the classroom.

So maybe what you've observed about tenure is accurate in some places, but it's at odds with the places I've been.