Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 410 posts

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

#211

Post by gonehome »

neonological wrote: post #187
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…

>Why does a classics degree cost the same as a CS degree when the market value of a classics degree is basically zero? This is good. If degrees were priced based off of supply and demand economics then only rich people would be able to afford a CS degree. Currently the bar for getting a degree is partly economics and partly intelligence. You can't get rid of economics completely but at the very least they keep prices…

I think it's not good - not because a CS degree needs to be more expensive, but because the liberal arts degrees are over priced.

A poetry degree should not cost nearly what it does.

CS education tied to ISAs makes education more accessible, not less.

The current system harms the poor.

As it is degrees are already tied to supply and demand economics, the supply is just constrained by admissions (often this is true of specific departments too).

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

#212

Post by tmpz22 »

filoleg wrote: post #148
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…

>UW offers three-year degrees. Not just in Canadian universities, I believe it is pretty common and the parent commenter is just not aware. I went to Georgia Tech, a public school in Atlanta. While the "planned" curriculum is supposed to fit in 4 years, the median is actually around 4.5-5 years. But there are some people who manage to graduate in 3.5 or 3 years (I know 2 of those personally). In most schools in the U…

The University of Oregon charges based on credit hours so more or less its an identical price for any degree (sans scholarship). I've always been under the impression this this is the norm. I'm glad your school offered reduced rates for some degree paths but I think it is an outlier.

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

#213

Post by UncleMeat »

barrenko wrote: post #18
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?

Library works pretty well for that, and has for hundreds of years. *big caveat for hard sciences of course

I'm not sure I agree. I don't have a lot of experience with other humanities, but history is a verb rather than a noun. You learn history by doing history rather than reading it. I do think that universities are often too conservative about getting students into the archive quickly but a bunch of institutions are rapidly equipping students with archival and analysis skills and sending them to do history. This is very difficult to obtain from a raw library.

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

#214

Post by Noos »

kop316 wrote: post #54
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?

I have found Community Colleges to be the perfect place for this actually. Community College classes are MUCH cheaper, and are even more so if you don't take the class for credit (where I went, tuition was $20 for a 1 credit class for non-degree seekers. No that was not a typo, it was Twenty USD for the entire class). Community College professors don't do research, so they are usually focused much more on teaching cl…

They generally aren't that high quality in terms of classes, and the humanities they offer are "transfer credits" when they aren't practical skills. I mean that there's little chance to go to a community college that has a strong English section, or gives any more than the basics of history or psychology.

CCs are mostly there either for cheap transfer credits, or technical programs for local industry; things like cad/cam, aviation tech, etc.

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

#215

Post by chrisseaton »

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).

> Here is another one: Why do I need to complete a bachelors degree in order to join a CS master program?

Some masters programs let you join with no bachelors. I have a masters and PhD in CS but no bachelors in anything. It wasn't any kind of special programme and I'm not any kind of gifted student either (my grades were quite low.)

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

#216

Post by NikolaNovak »

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 believe there are really two positive things that can come out of going to college

While I agree with you and approached my university education with a practical attitude, a lot of people will see universities as providing "Experience": fun, entertainment, open-mindedness, socializing, parties, networks, etc.

Whether any of these practical or experiential goals are most optimally met, in terms of time/life/money/effort expanded, through modern University in 2021, is another worthwhile and heated discussion entirely :)

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

#217

Post by VLM »

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…

Its also a regulation issue.

Medical doctors carefully regulate the number of new doctors to keep wages high. Its difficult to get into med school but when you graduate you'll likely get a medical doctor job.

Public school teachers do not regulate the number of new public school teachers at all, and as such the state U system in my state produces roughly twice as many ed degree holders as there are jobs. Assuming hiring system is perfect (which it is not, LOL) the bottom half of ed grads in my state have to find non educational work. Four years of "show up on time and do what you're told" makes them good waitresses and bartenders in my experience, but on a civilizational basis it seems an incredibly waste of money and talent.

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

#218

Post by Noos »

solosoyokaze wrote: post #48
minikites wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So then why do we have formal education at all?

To create workers for the industrial revolution.

no, we have formal education because not everyone is an autodidact and may need actual help in evaluating and learning skills.

Many skills are not like computer programming. You're not learning physical therapy from coursera, or even something like human resources; some things you need others for to mentor, correct, guide, or provide facilities for.

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

#219

Post by agar »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #183
minitoar wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Requiring a 4 year degree for a job even if the major isn’t relevant doesn’t seem wrong to me. Maybe data entry is taking it too far? Maybe the data was really sensitive and complicated.

If the knowledge is not required for the job, what is the degree for? Is it a concealed/outsourced IQ test? Is it a concealed illegal minimum age requirement? Isit collective insanity? I dare you to provide an explanation that is not illegal and/or deranged.

Flipping this around, put yourself in this situation: you have five open positions, and expect 300 applicants. You have approximately 1 hour per day to interview, and need to fill the positions in 10-15 business days.

You would like to find people with the following characteristics: They can follow complex instructions with minimal oversight, they finish what they start, they have good social skills to work with colleagues and occasional outside parties, they are fully literate (i.e., spell well, read quickly, understand context), and can be trained and managed.

You're handed 300 resumes. How do you select the top 10-15 that are most likely to satisfy the requirements?

What would be your initial filtering criteria?

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

#220

Post by NovemberWhiskey »

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…

You have the wrong idea because of the headline prices of elite schools. Yes, the prices are high.

On the other hand, no-one who is admitted to (say) Harvard is going to be prevented from going by an inability to pay. These top schools are rich enough to fund need-based scholarships.

(source: wife is a professor at an Ivy League school)

Post reply on HN