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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

#161

Post by RestlessMind »

keiferski wrote: post #138
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…

> Yet somehow the common response to “college is expensive” is “get rid of it” instead of “make it less expensive.”

I don't know what country you are talking about but at least in the US, we have community colleges which are very cheap and can "educate people in the skills necessary for being good citizens". It is only the worthless degrees from private / for-profit colleges which are a problem.

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

#162

Post by devwastaken »

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…

It's not just humanities degrees that are the problem. The problem is the market is not actually in "high demand" like higher education advertises. Graduating CS students across the U.S. are turned down by employers constantly and end up working in a job that doesn't require their degree nor does it use any skills from it. I have multiple friends in this exact situation.

We need to remove federal student loans for college to finally fail and be taken over by real market demand education.

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

#163

Post by Balgair »

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…

Eidolon is a now defunct online magazine specifically about the classics. The last thing they did was publish a 'fail' essay. In it the head editor, who holds a PhD from Princeton in the Classics, goes through all the challenges, mis-steps, and lessons they all learned. 'Fail' essays in tech are a dime a dozen. But in the classics, they tend to be rare. As such, Eidolon's essay is a goldmine.

Two things stuck out to me the most:

1) This passage was particularly worrying: "I’m not going to downplay the extent of the problems we’re facing. In addition to the concerns facing Classics specifically and the humanities more widely, there are also enormous and terrifying problems facing higher education in general. Even before the massive disruption of the Covid-19 pandemic, these problems already looked insurmountable: on one side the student debt crisis, which has financially crippled an entire generation, and on the other side the increasing precarity of the academic workforce has made teaching Classics (and every other discipline in academia, really) a terrible professional prospect. This is not to mention academia’s endemic problems with classism and sexual harassment."

2) The author/head editor was Donna Zuckerberg. If that name sounds a bit familiar, it's because it is. She is the sister of Mark Zuckerberg, one of the richest people in history. That her assessment of Eidolon's efforts is so dour and bleak, despite her astronomical privilege, should register that there is indeed 'something wrong in Denmark' (the humanities).

The rest of the essay goes into much more depth about what exactly is wrong. But the essence is simple: The Humanities, and the Classics specifically, are Dead.

"Abandon every hope, who enter here."

https://eidolon.pub/my-classics-will-be-intersectional-or-14...

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

#164

Post by ido »

dbspin wrote: post #146
cldellow wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what it's worth, the things you call out don't seem to be the case in the Canadian public university that I attended, the University of Waterloo. > why are all degrees four years? UW offers three-year degrees. A four-year degree typically gets you an Honours Bachelor degree, whereas a three-year degree is a General Bachelor. On a resume it'd still be written as "B.A.", and the reviewer would have to know to inqui…

Wow. As a European I had no idea that Canadian education was so expensive. Was under the mistaken impression that it was largely free, like health care. Obviously much cheaper than the US - which is life destroyingly expensive. But the figures you cite are still pricey enough to exclude enormous numbers of people from higher education.

For comparison in Germany and Austria public universities are mostly free or close to it (a few €100s per year in misc fees).

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

#165

Post by fallingknife »

keiferski wrote: post #138
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…

Why can't the skills necessary for being good citizens be taught in HS like they were back when going to college was rare?

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

#166

Post by mitchdoogle »

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…

I think people need to stop thinking about higher education in terms of financial yield. Or at least make it a much smaller piece of the metric.

If that's the only metric you base your opinions of education on, then ask yourself this - why learn anything in your life that isn't directly related to your occupation?

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

#167

Post by thehappypm »

jawzz wrote: post #60
akhilcacharya wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much worse off is someone going to UMass by your calculation?

Not the OP, but as I’d say that subjectively speaking, you’re better off going to MIT, but only if you have the passion and drive to succeed at a place like that (which you probably do if you got into MIT). But for Boston College, Boston University, or Northeastern? You’re probably going to end up paying more than MIT and get an education that’s indistinguishable from UMass, quite possibly worse in some respects. Wha…

BC, BU, and Northeastern are all excellent schools. Boston is a weird place.. any of those three schools would be a top tier private school in just about any other city in the country, but in Boston they're seen as second tier just because of the ludicrously good schools in Massachusetts. They're all in the top 50 according to US News.

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

#168

Post by keiferski »

fallingknife wrote: post #165
keiferski wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Why can't the skills necessary for being good citizens be taught in HS like they were back when going to college was rare?

Because the world has grown more complex and more education is required. It isn’t 1955 anymore.

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

#169

Post by peter303 »

The article doesn't mention the demographic bomb in the US. 2019 births were 3.7 million. boomers were 4 million a year; would need to be 7 million to be proportional to the population then. 2020 and 2021m births are projected to be as low as 3 million due to pandemic nears.

In addition to low births, student immigration has been severely restricted in recent years by federal policy.

With both factors, the applicant pool is smaller.

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

#170

Post by fallingknife »

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?

Because if you want education for its own sake, Google university will get you there much faster and cheaper. Universities are to get that diploma.
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