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Interest surges in top colleges, while struggling ones scrape for applicants

nytimes.com

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Re: Interest surges in top colleges, while struggling ones scrape for applicants

#131

Post by x86_64Ubuntu »

DC-3 wrote: post #11
awillen wrote: post #7

I think this is generally a good thing. I believe there are really two positive things that can come out of going to college - either you get a name-brand degree that opens doors and gets your resume looked at, or you get useful skills that enable you to go down a particular career path (e.g. CS degree). Obviously in some cases it'll be both. The reality is it's really tough to make any case that a humanities degree…

Did it ever occur to you at all that people might value education for its own sake and not for potential financial yield alone?

With the costs required to obtain an education as they are, we are well beyond valuing education simply for the sake of valuing education. If it requires years and years to pay off, then we absolutely must look at it like an investment.

Re: Interest surges in top colleges, while struggling ones scrape for applicants

#132

Post by LargeWu »

birdyrooster wrote: post #118
gonehome wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is so much broken with modern universities and incentives around pricing - why are all degrees four years? Why does a classics degree cost the same as a CS degree when the market value of a classics degree is basically zero? I wrote a little about it in the context of Lambda School, but it mostly applies: https://zalberico.com/essay/2019/04/08/lambda-school.html “The current university system in the US is a mes…

Here is another one: Why do I need to complete a bachelors degree in order to join a CS master program? Why can't they test or interview folks into master's programs? Schools are precluding themselves from good candidates that didn't see the value in bachelor's degrees (often for the reasons found in this thread).

I suspect willingness to complete an undergraduate degree is a strong signal to masters' programs. The 4-year degree is itself part of the test for the master's program.

Re: Interest surges in top colleges, while struggling ones scrape for applicants

#133

Post by logicslave »

DC1350 wrote: post #83

A huge generational change is that young people can just google "best X" for every life decision instead of caring about what they're exposed to organically. What job to do, city to live in, how to dress, etc. They can also find a community and detailed guides for achieving pretty much anything they want, so the special in-group knowledge isn't a barrier anymore. Anyone familiar with the whole tech interview prep cul…

100% great comment. This even extends to consumer products

Re: Interest surges in top colleges, while struggling ones scrape for applicants

#134

Post by jaykru »

ip26 wrote: post #126
DC1350 wrote: post #83

A huge generational change is that young people can just google "best X" for every life decision instead of caring about what they're exposed to organically. What job to do, city to live in, how to dress, etc. They can also find a community and detailed guides for achieving pretty much anything they want, so the special in-group knowledge isn't a barrier anymore. Anyone familiar with the whole tech interview prep cul…

This comment has a critical undertone but I think it's pretty much right. Thinking back, when I was 17 and applying for college, deciding what schools you should apply to was a really murky process. Most people pretty much depended on reputation & word-of-mouth, and nobody even talked about schools outside the state. On top of that, a 17 year old has had little time to accrue knowledge of various schools. Whereas tod…

the information available and advertised to most 17-year-olds (back when I was browsing: US News, College Confidential) isn't much of an improvement. In my case the former relies on a bunch of bunk data and weird metrics for evaluation, while the latter mostly revolved around very coarse word-of-mouth reputation.

Re: Interest surges in top colleges, while struggling ones scrape for applicants

#135

Post by [deleted] »

awillen wrote: post #28
DC-3 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did it ever occur to you at all that people might value education for its own sake and not for potential financial yield alone?

As a couple of other commenters have said, lots of ways to get high-quality education freely/cheaply without going to a university. Beyond that, if schools put a big warning label on their recruiting materials that said "EVEN AFTER YOU SPEND $200K TO ATTEND YOU WILL LIKELY NOT BE ABLE TO FIND A HIGH PAYING JOB" then sure, that would be fine. But that's not what they do. They allude, if only vaguely, to the value of e…

[deleted]

Re: Interest surges in top colleges, while struggling ones scrape for applicants

#136

Post by lumost »

cbm-vic-20 wrote: post #124
lumost wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I left Umass Amherst with ~75k in debt in 2010. At the time the list price was 30k. If your family exceeds the cutoffs for financial aid, but for various reasons cannot provide for college expenses - you are going to go into a lot of debt. One of my friends from the time managed to take 120k for an english major that left them with a $12/hr job at graduation.

How does that happen? I come from a time where my private university tuition (before grants, financial aid, etc) was around $25k/yr, and I understand things are different today. I don't know all the ins-and-outs of today's student loan options, but say that 120k is taken at 5% spread across 20(!) years, the monthly payment on that kind of loan is around $800/mo. Did this person not have a clear idea of what recent co…

There's a big sunk cost falacy at play. English is one of the most common majors at Umass, and the university isn't exactly forthcoming about the job prospects for this major. This person was the first to go to college in their family - but their parents had become modestly successfuly in the trades meaning they made ~100k combined in the Boston area. 100k is enough to push you out of substantial financial aid, but is not enough for your parents to afford a significant portion of your college costs in a high CoL area. A 3 bedroom and 2 kids gets expensive.

If you realize 2 years in that you're down ~60k, and a 5 year program will cost an extra 40k then you aren't going to change majors.

Umass Amherst is only ~25% more expensive than Umass Dartmouth on paper ( or at least was when I was attending ).

For myself, I got a physics degree and flipped into software engineering - I went bust in my first 2 years out of school but I was able to put things together and paid off my debt comfortably. The debt did ensure I stopped pursuing grad school for physics as the math became impossible to justify.

Re: Interest surges in top colleges, while struggling ones scrape for applicants

#137

Post by Camillo »

awillen wrote: post #7

I think this is generally a good thing. I believe there are really two positive things that can come out of going to college - either you get a name-brand degree that opens doors and gets your resume looked at, or you get useful skills that enable you to go down a particular career path (e.g. CS degree). Obviously in some cases it'll be both. The reality is it's really tough to make any case that a humanities degree…

But many of the PhDs minted at first-tier colleges have no career prospects but to teach at second-tier ones, and so forth. You need lots of students down the chain to keep them employed; it's basically a Ponzi scheme.

So you've got problems on two sides: lots of people getting into debt for no reason on one end, and lots of disaffected pseudo-elites on the other. A recipe for destabilization.

Re: Interest surges in top colleges, while struggling ones scrape for applicants

#138

Post by keiferski »

awillen wrote: post #7

I think this is generally a good thing. I believe there are really two positive things that can come out of going to college - either you get a name-brand degree that opens doors and gets your resume looked at, or you get useful skills that enable you to go down a particular career path (e.g. CS degree). Obviously in some cases it'll be both. The reality is it's really tough to make any case that a humanities degree…

Seems to me like further polarization. Only those that can afford the elite colleges (or be “smart” enough to get in) will be educated, while the rest will skip any personal development and just go right into the market.

Educating people in the skills necessary for being good citizens doesn’t cost that much. Most of the books required are free. Yet somehow the common response to “college is expensive” is “get rid of it” instead of “make it less expensive.”

Re: Interest surges in top colleges, while struggling ones scrape for applicants

#139

Post by MeinBlutIstBlau »

Animats wrote: post #109

Well, of course. Going to college during the epidemic is not cost effective. Many colleges are trying to charge full on-campus prices while delivering "distance learning". Better to wait a year and get the full experience.

I prefer distanced learning. It's probably my school but the majority of the comp sci students are slackers and drag the people who do this stuff down. As shown by the fact that it's harder for these lazy students to mooch of the actual hard working ones. Really hard to pretend being someone's friend with an email versus sitting next to the smart kid.

Re: Interest surges in top colleges, while struggling ones scrape for applicants

#140

Post by gonehome »

908B64B197 wrote: post #120
gonehome wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is exactly what I'd predict in a world where "Interest Surges in Top Colleges, While Struggling Ones Scrape for Applicants". When the thing being sold is prestige, lower tier colleges don't actually have the product that's in demand. So they can charge basically nothing since they're selling nothing of value. That's not viable as a business (unless they lie to students who don't know better and pretend that the…

> I think Lambda School style ISAs are the way for all but the top tier colleges. It means they have to actually be good at education. Actually, the top schools would benefit from these the most. With close to 100% employment rates and better median salaries than anyone else. > Imagine the opportunity of actually being good at education and doing ISAs. It would mean your institution could do what Universities largely…

Lambda School style ISAs cap the return at 30k.

The top schools don't need ISAs because they're selling prestige they can charge a lot more for. Since they're so highly selective they can admit only students who will succeed anyway.

Maybe over time that prestige will change, but I don't see that as near-term. I think it'd be better if they did ISAs, I just don't think they'll want to (or their ISAs will be worse for students than Lambda School's).

Right now top schools can charge up front and it doesn't really matter what they provide.

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