121–130 of 588 posts
Why not move from a pre-paid to a post-paid system? The government stops writing blank cheques. The students enroll for free, signing a 30-year mortgage like contract, that would say pledge 1% of your post tax earnings to the school/university you went to. Universities will then have incentives to remove the programs that don't have as much of a use in the modern day and age, and add the ones that are needed. The gov…
Why not move from a pre-paid to a post-paid system? The government stops writing blank cheques. The students enroll for free, signing a 30-year mortgage like contract, that would say pledge 1% of your post tax earnings to the school/university you went to. Universities will then have incentives to remove the programs that don't have as much of a use in the modern day and age, and add the ones that are needed. The gov…
Wouldn't all colleges just become trade schools at that point?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It depends a lot on who you know and what department you're in. In 40 of 50 states the highest paid public employee is a sports coach... https://fanbuzz.com/national/highest-paid-state-employees/
At many universities athletics is a major revenue driver. There is a very real financial incentive to have high performing athletic programs.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here's a potentially simple way to perhaps shave as much as 25% or more from the cost of STEM degrees in the US: Eliminate all non-STEM coursework from degree requirements. This could easily shave not only tens of thousands of dollars from a STEM degree but it would also cut it down by a year (if not more). I would also vector students who lack the proper foundation in say, language skills or the sciences, to take co…
Isn't this an associate's/technical degree? To be a successful engineer/doctor/lawyer, you need some non-STEM coursework for communication, ethics, or just to expand your view. To last point, many state colleges in the US let you transfer credits from a community/regional college easily, so you can save ~50%
My greater point is that adding $50K in non-STEM coursework as a graduation requirement is wrong.
The other element of this conversation is that non-STEM departments have developed deep one-sided political bias over the last several decades. As a result they are engaged in activity almost indistinguishable from indoctrination. We are issuing government-backed loans for kids to be exposed to ever more extreme narratives with no option to opt out. And then we make them pay for those loans. This is wrong.
"The question then becomes a matter of how we fix this without diminishing access to a college education." This is the crux of it that everyone needs to get over. Universality, High Quality, Low Cost. Pick two. By letting the government meddle you have guaranteed no one can afford college and will be long in debt to a loan they cannot discharge in bankruptcy. I'd rather have cheap college then universal access for ev…
No, this is just boring, lazy libertarianism. What the government did was hand the private sector a blank cheque, which they duly deposited into their bank account, just like any sensible person would.
If the government actually got seriously involved, education could be run as a public service, and it could be all three of universal, high quality, and cheap, as it is in many countries outside the US.
"The question then becomes a matter of how we fix this without diminishing access to a college education." This is the crux of it that everyone needs to get over. Universality, High Quality, Low Cost. Pick two. By letting the government meddle you have guaranteed no one can afford college and will be long in debt to a loan they cannot discharge in bankruptcy. I'd rather have cheap college then universal access for ev…
Universities in Europe are generally high quality and low cost. It does have it's problems but it is not one or the other. You do not need a degree 30 years ago to do lots of jobs that now require one. Higher education for a lot of organizations is just an easy way to cut the application stack down
I know a lot of people will disagree because there are so many ways to compare colleges. But what I look for is the strength of the top faculty (not necessarily the teachers but who you might work with as you get more advanced), the facilities, the quality of the research that comes out of that University. The US really has an impressive number of schools that attract top faculty from around the world and produce world class research in many fields.
A lot of European colleges seem to give you a good education. But if you really wanted to be an expert in something, or just get the experience of working with top people, it is amazing how relatively strong US colleges are.
I know I am making a lot of generalizations, perhaps unfairly. So if you disagree or see it a different way please correct me. This is something I am really trying to learn about.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Universities in Europe are generally high quality and low cost. The cost is low for the student but it's pretty high for the taxpayers. Not US high but still, it's not free, there's lots of bloat in the system that thrives on volume of students not on quality so they try to push forward legislation and programs to increase the number of students, especially from abroad and build more faculties/universities with more…
> The cost is low for the student but it's pretty high for the taxpayers. That is a supposition that proves to be false. The same happens for health care. To have a centralized state sponsored education or health care system allows it to be more efficient that smaller for profit institutions that have incentives to increase cost to the students as their profit depends on that. Also, I would like to notice, that for E…
It is difficult to overstate how mistaken this article is. College has mostly gotten more expensive because state support for public universities has dramatically decreased, from over 80% in the 1970's to less than 20% now. Since the taxpayer no longer pays for public higher education, the student does. The logic of this made some sense at the time; very high tuition subsidies were a gift to the upper middle and uppe…
Because if it's the latter and not the former, the cause isn't declining support, it's increasing cost.
"The question then becomes a matter of how we fix this without diminishing access to a college education." This is the crux of it that everyone needs to get over. Universality, High Quality, Low Cost. Pick two. By letting the government meddle you have guaranteed no one can afford college and will be long in debt to a loan they cannot discharge in bankruptcy. I'd rather have cheap college then universal access for ev…
I don't understand why there isn't simply the option of making a lot more colleges. "High Quality, Low Cost, Pick 2" isn't how most markets work.
Essentially, the primary driver is states reducing funding to public institutions. (A reply to the linked comment shows how this transfers into private colleges costing more, but essentially consider that if UMass Boston ended up being more expensive than Harvard due to Massachusetts reducing tuition support, then Harvard would obviously be remiss if it didn't double its prices. This is not a knock on UMass Boston, an excellent institution that nonetheless does not carry the prestige factor of Harvard.).
So the problem is: 1) states are the only entities that can quickly (< a generation) create universities whose degrees broadly confer the benefits expected when purchasing a college degree, 2) states are cutting funding for higher ed. QED we are more likely to end up with fewer colleges in 10 years than even as many as we have now.