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

nytimes.com

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

#231

Post by grepthisab »

jaykru wrote: post #134
ip26 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment has a critical undertone but I think it's pretty much right. Thinking back, when I was 17 and applying for college, deciding what schools you should apply to was a really murky process. Most people pretty much depended on reputation & word-of-mouth, and nobody even talked about schools outside the state. On top of that, a 17 year old has had little time to accrue knowledge of various schools. Whereas tod…

the information available and advertised to most 17-year-olds (back when I was browsing: US News, College Confidential) isn't much of an improvement. In my case the former relies on a bunch of bunk data and weird metrics for evaluation, while the latter mostly revolved around very coarse word-of-mouth reputation.

I have a hard time believing this. Information was murky and information asymmetry was a big reason lots of people seemed to just apply to a flagship state u rather than look at more far flung or prestigious options, though the state u is prestigious in it's own right. There's certainly more noise now, but there's also a lot more signal (maybe the ratio is the same though). I suspect there's really fantastic info out there that's way more than I had applying to colleges way back when in 2010.

I'd be interested in doing an experiment to act like I'm in high school and want all the info on college applications and to see where I end up.

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

#232

Post by jankyxenon »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #195
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…

"from a lower or even mid-tier college is a worthwhile investment " I always found this idea amazing, we just accept that univerities are not really there for education but instead a giant sorting machine to separate plebs from (rich/talented/dilligent/take your pick). They don't work like a normal market, there best company grows their production, and supplies millions with the best goods. Oxford/Harvard take their…

In many other countries, top academics and researchers are at large public universities.

Maybe it would be money well-spent for the public-sector to poach top academics from private intuitions.

It would lead to salary inflation, but might be the most cost effective way to sap prestige and inject into good public universities.

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

#233

Post by grepthisab »

borski wrote: post #79
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the lack of acknowledgment that the financial aid within top schools runs deep, I think you're confusing depth and breadth. It's like the Harbor Freight coupon. Everyone gets 20% off with a few exclusions. But the people paying less than 80% (to continue the Harbor Freight metaphor) are few and far between.

No, I understand precisely what you're trying to say. Based on my (admittedly anecdotal) experience applying to colleges and working (however briefly) in Financial Aid at MIT, it was not a 20% blanket by any stretch; each case was treated individually and there was an explicit focus on ensuring students were not saddled with insane amounts of debt. There were exceptions, particularly for wealthy folks and people who…

You kind of buried the lede in your last paragraph:

This is largely due to MIT and similar schools having massive endowments from which they can draw for Financial Aid; there are cheaper schools, certainly, but they have coffers that are less deep (referring to private schools), meaning students end up having to take more debt.

It is reality that expensive schools cause the massive student loan debt problem, but expensiveness isn't totally buried in sticker price but total cost of attendance. Schools like HYSM don't saddle attendees with as much debt despite their high sticker price perhaps because of endowments.

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

#235

Post by keiferski »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #195
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…

"from a lower or even mid-tier college is a worthwhile investment " I always found this idea amazing, we just accept that univerities are not really there for education but instead a giant sorting machine to separate plebs from (rich/talented/dilligent/take your pick). They don't work like a normal market, there best company grows their production, and supplies millions with the best goods. Oxford/Harvard take their…

The funny thing is how people constantly bemoan the state of politics, yet consistently argue for evaluating degrees entirely based on their financial outcome. As if an educated citizenry will just appear from the ether.

The connection between the two seems pretty obvious to me.

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

#237

Post by Jtsummers »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #185
minitoar wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe the value of differentiating potential employees is worth it overall.

Size of their feet differentiates them too. How is it actually usefull?

To expand on your point, it's the arbitrary and superfluous nature of this requirement.

If I were hiring pilots, to go with the physical quality example, I would discriminate on height. You can be too short to operate an aircraft, and you can be too tall or too big to fit in some aircraft (I knew a helicopter pilot who only flew helicopters because he couldn't, physically, fit in fighter aircraft which had been his dream job). But if I were running an airline, I wouldn't use this as a discriminator on all my employees, only the ones that it made sense for.

Degrees ought to be treated similarly in white collar jobs.

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

#238

Post by chongli »

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.

it was largely free

It is largely free if your means are limited. I’m in 4th year of mathematics at Waterloo right now and all but $170 of my $4300 tuition this term was paid for by government grants and bursaries.

Waterloo is actually even more expensive for international students. Some that I know are paying ~$3000 per half credit (5.0 credits per year is the norm) and that’s just in mathematics, not software engineering.

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

#239

Post by Jtsummers »

agar wrote: post #219
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 coll…

Past work experience, letters of reference, relevant training program/certification. This is assuming there is not a degree program that can be seen as preparatory for the position. A 4-year degree is a useless indicator when it's irrelevant to the workload. It tells you the person was willing to spend $40-80k (in much of the US) for a piece of paper that didn't prepare them for the job you're hiring them for.

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

#240

Post by foolinaround »

chrisseaton wrote: post #215
birdyrooster wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

oh i did not know that! Which college is this? US?
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