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The Coming Meltdown In College Education & Why The Economy Won’t Get Better Soon

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Re: The Coming Meltdown In College Education & Why The Economy Won’t Get Better Soon

#171

Post by potatolicious »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #109
glesica wrote: post #40

This is just absurd. Non-accredited, branded schools will provide better education for less money? Really? I assume he's referring to the growing for-profit college industry. Yet for-profit colleges are actually the biggest culprits driving up the student debt. Students at for-profit colleges run up more debt, are more likely to drop out, and are more likely to end up under-employed than those at traditional universi…

What I find disturbing here is the complete, total, hegemonic shift to thinking of education as job-training.

When education costs so much that one needs to take out a loan that then takes decades to repay, it must necessarily be job-training. It's practically impossible to justify otherwise.

IMO it's impossible to expect the education system to be more holistic and less training-oriented unless the costs drop to the point where it's realistic to pursue it knowing there is not necessarily a monetary reward at the end.

Re: The Coming Meltdown In College Education & Why The Economy Won’t Get Better Soon

#172

Post by kitsune_ »

dasil003 wrote: post #168
kitsune_ wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, many math professors have the didactic abilities of a monkey. I remember a professor and made no sense whatsoever. You felt that he was bored teaching Analysis and decided that he'd do everything but. At one point he was talking about his theoretical work on the Riemann-Zeta function, on another point he talked about his childhood memories. He did this every lecture, hopping back and forth to what he was…

I've had an absent-minded professor or two, but that's far worse than anything I experienced in 4 years of college. High school on the other hand is another story. They hired a chemistry "teacher" off the street who turned out to be drunk every day in class (mind you, this is first period, 7:15am!), it took several weeks to figure it out because her personal hygiene was so bad you couldn't get close enough to smell t…

We had another prof (statistics / stochastics) who had no official course material and recommended ten books worth 1'500 bucks. We quickly realized that you could either write down 12 pages per hour until your arms were sore. Or that you could forgo taking notes and try to understand his lecture. But not both. After a couple of weeks we tried to split duties. After a month we started to photograph the blackboards. Then we wrote a small OCR program for fun and ended up with some form of script for the course.

Anyways, our efforts were pointless because the professor decided that he'd include advanced topics in the exam. Topics which were not included in his course and outside what his defined boundaries for the exam. I think most if not everyone of the class failed to get a passing grade. His laconic remarks were about how at such an "elite" college, you need to learn stuff beyond what is required of you.

I don't know, the first two years at college just left a sour taste in my mouth.

Re: The Coming Meltdown In College Education & Why The Economy Won’t Get Better Soon

#173

Post by torstesu »

tikhonj wrote: post #142
vladd wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google seems to be able to figure out smart folks in 5-6 hours with pretty high accuracy.

Isn't Google also notorious for being biased towards the "top" schools, caring about GPAs and turning away a ton of smart people? That's what I've heard, but I've no first-hand experience. So many smart people apply to Google that they could (at least historically--maybe it's different now) get away with a hiring process optimized for false negatives over false positives. This is only fair, but also probably makes th…

I guess the reason why companies with a high application volume (like Google) tend to be biased towards "top" school and using your GPA as a selection criteria, is that it is so much easier to "cut the pile in half" and still have a decent number of good candidates, only the average talent might be higher. It reduces the overhead in the HR department.

That means a lot of smart people never get the opportunity to try out for the interview. In my opinion, you have to market yourself better and differently if you want to increase the odds of getting to the interview, where you get a chance to prove yourself beyond what is on paper.

Re: The Coming Meltdown In College Education & Why The Economy Won’t Get Better Soon

#174

Post by juiceandjuice »

mkramlich wrote: post #104
jellicle wrote: post #43

Mark Cuban writes: "As an employer I want the best prepared and qualified employees. I could care less if the source of their education was accredited by a bunch of old men and women who think they know what is best for the world. I want people who can do the job. I want the best and brightest. Not a piece of paper." So, I suppose I could be wrong, but I would be willing to bet a great deal of money that Mark Cuban d…

Fuck college. It's not the only way to learn, to meet people, or to show your expertise, capabilities and accomplishments anymore. We have this thing called the Internet now. Write a book. Put a PDF online. Record a video of yourself giving an intelligent speech or showing some useful talent. Put it on YouTube. Write software. Put on GitHub. Answer technical questions well on StackExchange (or whatever for your parti…

College isn't just for web programmers.

Re: The Coming Meltdown In College Education & Why The Economy Won’t Get Better Soon

#175

Post by lordlicorice »

jmathai wrote: post #162
earl wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In theory, I agree. In practice, college is a very useful signal. And it's not just the coursework from the college major. College demonstrates a variety of soft skills: time management, the ability to plan and meet deadlines, the ability to work on what's necessary when it's necessary, a willingness to suck it up and do some unglamorous but necessary drudge work, etc. I've worked with a variety of people that haven'…

4 years and $50-100k of debt is in no way an efficient way to surface those signals. I agree that some things like research can't be done online. But I don't think those will remain at the university either. Graduate/research degrees must represent such a small % of a university's revenue that when the majority goes away they simply won't be able to survive. Just ask the RIAA if they can survive by selling mp3s when…

At research universities most of the budget comes from research, and most of the work in research gets done by grad students. Undergrad programs are an afterthought.

Re: The Coming Meltdown In College Education & Why The Economy Won’t Get Better Soon

#176

Post by zissou »

The real problem with college education in the US is that the majority of the students don't start to plan their career until after college is over. Far too many believe the value is in the piece of paper, so that's all they care about, which turns out to be a terrible allocation of your resources.

Obtaining a job is a signalling game. Having a degree is one signal you can provide to employers, but there are also many other equilibria. In other words, there are many ways to signal a good match to an employer.

A person's "college years" need to not only be treated as a time to figure out what you want to do with your life, but perhaps more importantly, what you DON'T want to do with your life. The notion of leaving high school then going to college and finishing in 4 years as being the "right way to do it" lacks some key pieces of relevancy. Figuring out what you don't want to do doesn't just teach you what you don't want to do, but it also teaches you wisdom; wisdom that can only be gained by real world experience.

Re: The Coming Meltdown In College Education & Why The Economy Won’t Get Better Soon

#177

Post by stalcottsmith »

impendia wrote: post #16

I am in my first year as a mathematics professor at the University of South Carolina. Having moved here from Stanford, I've noticed several things. (1) Many students are woefully underprepared. In my calculus classes I have found that a great many of the students have not mastered high school algebra. And these are the students who pass our placement exam, and aren't obliged to take one of our many algebra and precal…

Do not underestimate your importance and the impact you can have for the category 3) students.

My first year Calculus professor 20 years ago had very similar feelings and frustrations, but through his passion he connected with some of us. Lots of great students don't apply to the best schools and for whatever reason end up stuck somewhere close to home. He eventually encouraged me to take his Modern Algebra class and that opened my mind to a whole world of Mathematical beauty.

Enjoy the opportunity to touch young minds as long as you can.

Re: The Coming Meltdown In College Education & Why The Economy Won’t Get Better Soon

#178

Post by gaius »

tsotha wrote: post #155
ender7 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, "went to MIT" is both easily recognizable and easily verified. "Built a fusion reactor in my basement" is neither of those things. Similarly, "check out my GitHub" has many of the same problems. I'm sorry, but most employers don't have time to look you up on GitHub to crawl through all your commits. That will happen if you get past the first cut, but it won't do anything beforehand. Sure, you can put "…

>Unfortunately, "went to MIT" is both easily recognizable and easily verified. Most people miss the point on why this is important. MIT doesn't teach its undergrads anything they couldn't learn at the local state school for a fraction of the price. But you have to be really smart to get in to MIT. That's what employers care about - not what you did when you were there, but that you got in. The root of the problem is…

MIT doesn't teach its undergrads anything they couldn't learn at the local state school

I think it's more subtle than that. If you start with people who are very good at learning (which is all you can know about them at college entry time) then you can teach them more in 4 years than you can the "average" person. So the MIT guys probably really do learn more. The question is of course the extent to which that translates to on-the-job performance, as good learner doesn't imply good doer.

Re: The Coming Meltdown In College Education & Why The Economy Won’t Get Better Soon

#179

Post by neutronicus »

juiceandjuice wrote: post #174
mkramlich wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fuck college. It's not the only way to learn, to meet people, or to show your expertise, capabilities and accomplishments anymore. We have this thing called the Internet now. Write a book. Put a PDF online. Record a video of yourself giving an intelligent speech or showing some useful talent. Put it on YouTube. Write software. Put on GitHub. Answer technical questions well on StackExchange (or whatever for your parti…

College isn't just for web programmers.

Seriously. You'd think no one has to learn to use equipment that costs several tens of thousands of dollars and whose sale is rigorously controlled by the US government.

/nuclear engineer

Re: The Coming Meltdown In College Education & Why The Economy Won’t Get Better Soon

#180

Post by SagelyGuru »

Having taught at a university for many years, I came to realise that I can predict students' final results really well just by setting them a simple exercise in the very first lecture, before they learned anything. In other words, the results are dependent entirely on their ability. The employers should be able to set similar tests themselves.

Furthermore, it might make more sense to both employers and employees to hire bright 16-18 year olds and give them an in-house apprenticeship. Even if they are paid initially less than graduates (do the accounting on that, versus servicing huge loans after four years of no earnings).

What I am trying to say is that a typical recruitment target, a bright graduate, was just as smart at 18 and you could have got him first, cheaper and happier, then. After those four years with you, if you are any good at inspiring and advising, he should also be a lot more use to you than straight out of college.

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