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Will Higher Education Be the Next Bubble to Burst?
21–30 of 64 posts
Re: Will Higher Education Be the Next Bubble to Burst?
#22In order to keep "the education bubble" growing, the article speaks highly of reducing teaching costs by 40% (by relying less on actual PhD professors who know what they are talking about) and instead giving "students ... a choice of learning styles and ways to get help online from ... fellow students". Oh, and paying university presidents huge incentives for using such "cost cutting" measures.
Yeah, right. Take their $50K+ in annual tuition, then plug students into an e-learning social network where they "TEACH THEMSELVES" through "INNOVATIVE LEARNING STYLES".
If these moves are genuinely embraced, it will indeed create a bubble that will grow until these poor disillusioned students realize they are just sheep following other sheep wandering around, going nowhere, ... when they should instead have been following a shepherd who knew where he/she was going.
Why would we want to create a bubble anyway? By definition, it is only a bubble if it will eventually burst.
Re: Will Higher Education Be the Next Bubble to Burst?
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
I just finished my undergrad degree a month ago, and I think I have some insight into this. By far the most valuable thing I take away from university is not the classes, but rather the experience. As a student you get a lot of leeway to screw up and learn - even interning at large, private corporations. This has helped me in my life (and my career) more immensely than anything else I've ever learned at school (most…
I suspect that the strongest thing holding all those aspects together is convention. I think the institution is very entrenched in the US. maybe the place for innovation is outside. In Israel (where I am from), a lot of people do go to war together. So they're sorted for friends. Actually, most don't physically fight, but they still make friends. There is an additional (recent) institution of backpacking/travelling t…
I don't think we need to take universities away, just the unnecessary competition-induced crap that makes them so expensive. The "college experience" we all hear about can be done on a way smaller budget. And like you mention, universities probably aren't the best at it anyways.
Re: Will Higher Education Be the Next Bubble to Burst?
#24The cost for higher education that steadily climbs faster than the inflation rate will need to stop when it equals to its time-discounted marginal benefits. (Given its many alternatives--both for learning and socializing--the marginal benefits of higher education do not seem to increase nearly as fast.)
If the cost goes higher than that, the bubble will indeed burst--sooner or later.
Re: Will Higher Education Be the Next Bubble to Burst?
#25That or healthcare.
It is disappointing that these service based industries come to a point when making money is becoming so important especially when they are commodities. I hope that some institutions will reduce their price for a greater purpose especially for poor people.
I agree that they are over priced, but they aren't commodities. Commodity products are indistinguishable, but there are definitely different qualities of healthcare and higher education.
Re: Will Higher Education Be the Next Bubble to Burst?
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cost has nothing to do with value. Products that cost more than they are valued tend not to be produced (or rather, there are no buyers), but that doesn't imply that everything is worth more than it costs.
"Cost has nothing to do with value." Unless you value cost. The value of a degree comes from the story we tell ourselves, and paying $160,000 is part of that story. Most people wouldn't want to go to college if it was free; just look what people were saying when Seth announced his alternative MBA, or look at library participation among 20-somethings for that matter.
I don't know that library participation is so much relevant in the days of instant-access to the ammount of information that is available to us on the internet.
Re: Will Higher Education Be the Next Bubble to Burst?
#27A product sold for 1/3 of cost is overvalued?
Perhaps the problem is that they're spending too much on the education. BLASPHEMY! You may be thinking, education is PARAMOUNT to any civilization! We musn't cut spending on education! Does anyone here live in the Phoenix, AZ area? If so, take a tour of ASU's recent campus renovations. The new dorms look like luxury-condos. The buildings around campus match. ASU has gotten into the habit of buying up the most expensi…
"BLASPHEMY! You may be thinking, education is PARAMOUNT to any civilization! We musn't cut spending on education!"
This logic is running rampant right now and is a major player not in the economic collapse, but our inability to convince our governments to deal with economic collapse. When the answer to "Are we spending enough on education?" is simply hard-coded to "No", you get very stupid budget behaviors.
In point of fact, there must be a point where we are spending enough on education, enough on police, enough on health care, enough on welfare, enough on anything. There must even come a point where we are spending enough on educating the disadvantaged, enough on health care for the elderly, enough on programs for poor children. Because the alternative is, frankly, absurd... yet that is where we've gotten to, politically.
Re: Will Higher Education Be the Next Bubble to Burst?
#28A product sold for 1/3 of cost is overvalued?
Perhaps the problem is that they're spending too much on the education. BLASPHEMY! You may be thinking, education is PARAMOUNT to any civilization! We musn't cut spending on education! Does anyone here live in the Phoenix, AZ area? If so, take a tour of ASU's recent campus renovations. The new dorms look like luxury-condos. The buildings around campus match. ASU has gotten into the habit of buying up the most expensi…
Actually I live in Chandler, went to ASU as a graduate. I like what ASU is doing to urbanize Tempe and even Phoenix downtown. It is growing too big probably but it does drive lots of technology. The engineering 'brickyard' at ASU right there in a highly trafficked part of town is a good message to send to people. The ASU Research Park for instance has many high-tech companies there and it is also a park for people to come to and play. This is similar to what Intel does around their locations in Chandler, AZ.
Anyways, as long as it doesn't harm the educational experience then it may actually help the area as a whole. I feel I got what I needed out of my education but that is really up to the student in the end.
Also, on the sports teams, most of the time this funds a large part of the school so in the end it is a necessary evil. Much like how defense brings the most innovative technologies, even this here internet.
I agree that schools need to focus on quality education experiences and get better professors. I think that the internet and universities that open up to that can share the best professors with the world.
We will see an enormous change in this regard in our lifetime, the University as we know it will be much different. It has taken some time, but the internet and cost reducing measures to information and education are shaking harder at the pillars of these college institutions.
Re: Will Higher Education Be the Next Bubble to Burst?
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm still hoping for some sort of disruption that will change the game. The line of thinking is along these lines: The core of what elite colleges (or any colleges) is not really valuable. A university course is mostly a syllabus, a textbook, lectures, tutorials, papers & exams. All are based on knowledge that is freely available. You do not need a Professor who spends most of his time on research that doesn't benefi…
Depends on what you're studying. Subjects like medicine, dentistry and chemistry need extensive lab facilities and highly skilled, often personal tuition. That's going to cost a lot no matter where it's done. On a broader level you also need to consider the value of networking opportunities. Is the course content of a Harvard MBA really that much better than elsewhere? Of course not. It's the contacts you make while…
Possibly, but this needn't affect those studying history.
I listen to this economist podcast here & there. Recently, they were talking about how strange it is that they need any kind of qualifications to do the thing that they get paid for. They tell undergrads that the demand curve slopes down & the supply curve slopes the other way. That knowledge is freely available and easily accessible. Yet their students bid up the price of the best academics to tell them this.
A better professor's demand curve slopes the same as a crappier one's. You may be right that this does not apply to dentistry.
Re: Will Higher Education Be the Next Bubble to Burst?
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the real solution is to stop overvaluing university degrees. Most of the folks coming out of universities don't have any particularly valuable job skills. (I'm thinking of majors in business, or liberal-arts fields, or for that matter most people with a BA/BS in the sciences.) Will that happen? Not unless getting university grads gets hard.
There needs to be a real separation between vocational schools and comprehensive universities. I get the feeling that as a society we have a thing against vocational training - even though some of the most celebrated jobs really belong there instead of at a traditional college (e.g. engineering, accounting, etc). The problem here is that people are going to university expecting this to lead nicely into a job - it doe…
I don't think we do really. Just against the name and against the professions that use vocational schools intensively.
The medicine path is very similar to the electrician path. Medical school is vocational school. We have nothing against those.