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I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

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Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#211

Post by zozbot234 »

twofornone wrote: post #164
zozbot234 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...are just more academically inclined than others... It's not "races", it's culture. We should just remove this whole idea of "race" from our understanding of social phenomena, all it can do is mislead. There are African, Black subcultures like the Igbo and Ashanti that achieve to the highest levels academically (including in the West!) and Asian subcultures that don't place any focus on education, and struggle as…

Quoted post unavailable.

> the only seemingly rational explanation for inequity is discrimination

Wait, this is not what I said and is not how serious social science is done. In many ways, public K-12 education is equally abysmal for everyone. It may not overtly discriminate, but it lets people fall through the cracks in a way that amplifies the causal influence of pure luck (i.e. randomness, noise in outcomes) and external factors such as different cultural attitudes and generational history (such as whether your grandparents and great-grandparents happened to be educated or at least literate), that account for much of the observed correlation with race.

Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#212

Post by ZephyrBlu »

wolverine876 wrote: post #171
mind-blight wrote: post #58

I'm concerned that the majority of "should we fix college or should we circumvent college" conversations don't bring up one of the scariest parts of our current economy: STEM jobs are the main viable path for economic stability and freedom. All of the conversations I've seen implicitly assume that this is good, and that the solution to farmer workers (or other low paid workers) escaping poverty is to train them as so…

> STEM jobs are the main viable path for economic stability and freedom. People repeat that but what is it based on? Most of the population, including most people who have economic stability and freedom, have not had STEM jobs and very likely will not have STEM jobs. More importantly, college is about much more than job training. College prepares people to be adults in every way, not to be a resource for corporations…

> More importantly, college is about much more than job training. College prepares people to be adults in every way, not to be a resource for corporations

The "preparing to be an adult" value decayed exponentially for me. The first year staying in halls with my peers was extremely valuable. The rest of the years were not so valuable.

Also, this value was 95% social. There was very little that uni itself taught me about being an adult.

Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#213

Post by epicureanideal »

mike00632 wrote: post #203
wolverine876 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> STEM jobs are the main viable path for economic stability and freedom. People repeat that but what is it based on? Most of the population, including most people who have economic stability and freedom, have not had STEM jobs and very likely will not have STEM jobs. More importantly, college is about much more than job training. College prepares people to be adults in every way, not to be a resource for corporations…

It's based on the entry level salary for California tech workers being six figures whereas the wage for farm workers is an exception to laws such that they can be paid below minimum wage.

> farm workers is an exception to laws such that they can be paid below minimum wage.

I’m all for setting the minimum wage for farm workers at $25/hr. Within 2-3 years every manual farm worker will be replaced by a machine, and we’ll all be better off for it.

Well, not the manual workers, temporarily. But then we’ll have to deal with the problem of unemployment honestly rather than leaving make-work jobs around.

Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#214

Post by xyzzyz »

wolverine876 wrote: post #171
mind-blight wrote: post #58

I'm concerned that the majority of "should we fix college or should we circumvent college" conversations don't bring up one of the scariest parts of our current economy: STEM jobs are the main viable path for economic stability and freedom. All of the conversations I've seen implicitly assume that this is good, and that the solution to farmer workers (or other low paid workers) escaping poverty is to train them as so…

> STEM jobs are the main viable path for economic stability and freedom. People repeat that but what is it based on? Most of the population, including most people who have economic stability and freedom, have not had STEM jobs and very likely will not have STEM jobs. More importantly, college is about much more than job training. College prepares people to be adults in every way, not to be a resource for corporations…

Do you think Americans were less adult in, say, 1930s, when only small fraction of them went to college?

Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#215

Post by WWLink »

dudeman13 wrote: post #173
titzer wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If farm workers' job gets sufficiently bad from a value proposition perspective, then people will leave the occupation They are. Farmer suicides over the past 10 years have skyrocketed. Farmers are committing suicide at twice the rate of combat veterans. [1] I'm afraid I can't take your comment seriously as a dispassionate economic analysis since it lacks even basic empathy for people caught in this ongoing trainwr…

I don't think you can win this one. The free market might as well be a religion for some people. Nothing (not even historical facts) is enough evidence for it to not be the answers to all economic issues. Also, there are lots of US tech people here - with overly inflated salaries compared to approximately everyone else. And everyone knows those winning the game have a tendency to lose empathy and think the game is fa…

> "Also, there are lots of US tech people here - with overly inflated salaries compared to approximately everyone else. "

And even then, you're usually required to live within reasonable driving distance of the office. You don't make enough to buy a place. At least half your salary post-tax probably goes to rent. So yeah, you've got a few bucks in the bank probably, but it's not like you're saving up to buy your third Porsche or something lol.

Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#216

Post by antattack »

nimithryn wrote: post #152

Some of these points are correct. College does seem to be providing less value in the US, etc. Maybe some third-tier universities could be in trouble if there's a decline in college attendance. But, "collapsing"? Universities are one of the most long-lived types of institutions known to humankind. Oxford was founded in 1096. I suspect they will be around quite a lot longer.

Just as capitalism fails to account for economic externalities, it also fails to account for education helping people make good choices for themselves and the country, including voting. There's often unaccounted value, in a democratic society, for people to be educated.

Also, just because someone is doing a menial work it does not mean that they should not have a access to higher education. Especially since there's not enough of higher valued jobs for everyone and to assure worker mobility.

Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#217

Post by epicureanideal »

sokoloff wrote: post #183
com2kid wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America is a country that loves the free market country, yet no one seems to be talking about supply and demand to fix college prices. Double the number of large quality state universities. Re-index public university tuition to what they were in 2000 + inflation. Mandate that funding comes with X number increase in tenured professors. Re-instate public funding for state universities to what it was in 2000 + inflation…

Room and board is already more expensive than the in-state tuition on an average basis. You could further reduce tuition and fees, but it costs a lot to be housed and fed (and to forgo earning a full-time income for 4 years). Could you realistically get room and board down below $8K/year with more spartan dormitories and meal plans? Maybe, but not by much I don't think. https://educationdata.org/average-cost-of-colle…

> Room and board is already more expensive than the in-state tuition on an average basis.

As Bronn of the Blackwater said, “it’s all [housing policy] in the end”.

Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#218

Post by kube-system »

jopsen wrote: post #205
kube-system wrote: post #172

“US college educations” consist mostly of schools that aren’t highly selective schools that discriminate against Asians. Most students aren’t going to private schools of any kind, let alone highly selective ones.

You just saying that most students don't go to an icy league school, right? :)

Mostly, but there are other selective schools. Add all of those together and it’s still a tiny percentage of what is going on in higher education. Most kids go to state schools.

Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#219

Post by sammalloy »

charrondev wrote: post #190
wolverine876 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> STEM jobs are the main viable path for economic stability and freedom. People repeat that but what is it based on? Most of the population, including most people who have economic stability and freedom, have not had STEM jobs and very likely will not have STEM jobs. More importantly, college is about much more than job training. College prepares people to be adults in every way, not to be a resource for corporations…

> College prepares people to be adults in every way, not to be a resource for corporations. As If you have to go to college to become an adult. A lot of college programs seem like their purpose is for some very wealthy and sheltered children to become “cultured”, but that is completely unrelated to the skills needed to be a functioning adult or to take significant responsibilities in your life.

Without a well-informed populace, democracy cannot function. Contrary to what you have argued, becoming cultured (in other words, understanding the philosophy, ethics, history, and fundamental assumptions about how and why society functions) are essential skills for taking responsibility, and the lack of these skills is behind virtually every major deficiency in society.

College and university were never supposed to be about job training. They were supposed to teach one how to learn so you could become a lifelong learner and continue your own education in any field you chose to pursue and to use those skills to benefit the society at large so that everyone can benefit from an increasing understanding of the world.

Instead, what we have now, is an increasing focus on becoming a corporate employee, who devotes their life to marketing and selling products that society doesn’t need and are in fact increasingly destroying society and harming individual rights and lessening opportunity with each iteration. A higher education is increasingly designed for specialized corporate tasks that do not improve society and fail to solve the most pressing problems at hand.

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