Interest surges in top colleges, while struggling ones scrape for applicants • Hacker News Board

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

#171

Post by keiferski » Tue, Feb 23, 2021, 7:44 PM UTC

RestlessMind wrote: post #161

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…

> 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.

I have taken classes at communities colleges. I’m sure many are good institutions, but my experience was that absolutely no one there cared about learning. It is very clearly treated as “second class.”

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

#172

Post by fallingknife » Tue, Feb 23, 2021, 7:46 PM UTC

mrweasel wrote: post #56

minitoar wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think most people going to 3rd-tier college to study humanities are doing it out of some abstract love of education. They’re doing it because every adult or counselor in their life told them they have to go to some college no matter what.

The article is about colleges in the US, so I have no reason to doubt you. It’s just a ready bleak observation for someone who is raised to pursue a career that would make me happy, and be lucky enough to live in a country that allows me to do that. More and more the Internet makes me feel that the US somehow lost the cold war and it’s now a dystopian nightmare.

99% of the people writing about how the US is a dystopian nightmare haven't lived in any other country.

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

#173

Post by gonehome » Tue, Feb 23, 2021, 7:47 PM UTC

yw3410 wrote: post #156

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…

I'm not sure I agree with your article. I can think of at least one way to structure an ISA such that incentives aren't aligned. Since it's relatively risk-free, the ISA could essentially just optimize for number of students rather than quality. This already happens in things like recruiting where incentives supposedly align; so I don't think it would be a stretch to apply it to ISA agreements. It's like the illustra…

I think LS is piloting a program that pays students per month while they attend.

Your point about them just scaling up to maximize potential return is a good one - a bad potential outcome I hadn't thought of.

Hopefully reputation would provide some counter to that.

I think they'd also want to increase the percentage of successful students, I'm not sure scaling up blindly would be the most likely way to get a return.

LS style ISAs also have a few parts that make them importantly different.

- They cap return to 30k.

- They only apply if you get hired in a software role making more than 50k a year.

- They're time limited to 10 yrs (even if you don't hit 30k).

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

#174

Post by cldellow » Tue, Feb 23, 2021, 7:48 PM UTC

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.

I suspect the engineering tuition is set as a function of supply and demand - the University of Waterloo has a fairly competitive engineering program. For example, engineering at Laurentian University, another public university in the same province, is only $10,000/year.

Still, that's a large burden. There are government programs that provide a mix of non-repayable grants and deferred payment loans to people who qualify based on family income. I don't have too much personal experience with them, but I think the intent (and, for the most part, effect) is that economic ability shouldn't be a barrier for attendance.

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

#175

Post by RGamma » Tue, Feb 23, 2021, 7:50 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #39

BitwiseFool wrote: post #25

I sense that the fundamental purpose for going to College has changed from "getting an education" to "building your brand" as an individual. I don't work in Human Resources, but as a software developer I do spend a lot of time around my company's recruiters and I'm involved in the hiring process. A candidate's alma mater has an outsized impact on the likelihood they will advance to the next step of the hiring process…

> Most people people don't realize just how much name recognition matters when sifting through resumes. I think most people do realize it, which is why we're seeing what's being written about in the article. People realize if you merely want to be educated, you can do that for cheap or free anywhere, but nobody in HR screening resumes cares if you're educated. They care that you have name-brand pedigree. I remember f…

The longer I watch this unfold the more become convinced that the US is a giant social experiment to see what happens when you apply profit-maximization to literally everything.

Minimize cost, maximize revenue, the difference goes to the pimps: a race with no ending and an evergrowing number of losers.

Wonder when this'll fall apart (if ever). I guess it's a good thing the majority of people worldwide are not exposed to this and therefore potentially get the benefit to observe and learn from it. Take care.

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

#176

Post by ClumsyPilot » Tue, Feb 23, 2021, 7:51 PM UTC

econnors wrote: post #151

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…

> Only those that can afford the elite colleges (or be “smart” enough to get in) will be educated This is how it is today. The only difference is people are paying $40k+ x 4years to "be educated" but they're not actually learning valuable skills. > Yet somehow the common response to “college is expensive” is “get rid of it” instead of “make it less expensive.” We've already tried making it less expensive. Students ca…

"We've already tried making it less expensive. Students can get low interest rate loans"

What? Giving out easy loans doesn't make something cheaper, it makes something more expensive up to causing a bubble that will crash the rest of economy, like we did with housing in 2008.

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

#177

Post by yTh0 » Tue, Feb 23, 2021, 7:52 PM UTC

Balgair wrote: post #163

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…

I can’t tell if things like this are real issues or “but think of the horse and buggy driver!” problems.

We were teaching kids to read, ethics, morals, long before we had PhDs.

Obsession with normalizing agency to abide fiscal concerns is the real issue here.

Let wealth collapse by refusing to buy into the idea we owe deference to those that hold wealth.

Teach the classics. Write open source.

None of it has to be done for a dollar, or outsized prestige.

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

#178

Post by bawolff » Tue, Feb 23, 2021, 7:52 PM UTC

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.

Waterloo is probably one of the more expensive canadian schools.

Not saying others are cheap, but just looking at waterloo is probably not represtative.

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

#179

Post by jackcosgrove » Tue, Feb 23, 2021, 7:53 PM UTC

gonehome wrote: post #17

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…

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…

> This means professors are not typically rewarded for being (or even expected to be) excellent teachers.

This reminds me of a joke that circulated among students when I was in college. The joke was that being voted the department's best instructor by the students was an excellent way to be denied tenure.

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

#180

Post by mitchdoogle » Tue, Feb 23, 2021, 7:53 PM UTC

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.

US education is hardly "life-destroyingly expensive". It's more than the rest of the world, but it is definitely manageable to pay for it yourself with student loans. If you have financial aid (billions of dollars in aid is out there for good students in financial need). More cost-conscious folks can save thousands more by splitting an undergraduate degree between a low-cost 2-year college (community college, junior college) and then transfer in to a 4-year school to complete a degree.

College costs around the world:https://www.businessinsider.com/how-much-college-costs-aroun...