Have you ever worked in academia? The humanities are a day care and delayed adulthood for those who would be better suited doing anything else with their time aside from one or two students in every classroom of ~40. For context, I left to work in the private sector with people who give a damn.
Shit, I was really hoping to leave the corporate life for academia; people who give a damn...
Academia in Physics was pretty hardcore from what I see of my friends working in it.
Compared to what? Taking one three-credit course at Bunker Hill Community College is $558, taking four three-credit courses is $2,232 ($3,925 with health insurance) [0]. At City College of San Francisco (one I picked for to have a west coast option) is $138 for one typical course and $552 for four (that's just tuition but other fees are extremely low). If you're taking courses at a private college part-time, sure the…
> taking four three-credit courses is $2,232
For reference, that's how much my mother was paid to be an adjunct professor at a local community college to teach 10-20 students a 3 credit course for a semester.
Compared to what? Taking one three-credit course at Bunker Hill Community College is $558, taking four three-credit courses is $2,232 ($3,925 with health insurance) [0]. At City College of San Francisco (one I picked for to have a west coast option) is $138 for one typical course and $552 for four (that's just tuition but other fees are extremely low). If you're taking courses at a private college part-time, sure the…
> taking four three-credit courses is $2,232 For reference, that's how much my mother was paid to be an adjunct professor at a local community college to teach 10-20 students a 3 credit course for a semester. Something seems wrong with the pricing
Yes, adjunct faculty pay is often low for what they’re expected to do at almost all schools.
A lot of tuition paid is not for the instuctor but for infrastructure and administrative costs inherent to running a school. Some of the money paid for your mother’s course probably went toward paying non-adjunct faculty; it’s not like schools charge different rates based on the instructor or what they’re paid.
I agree. I think the US system is terrible. We should not stop providing public education merely because someone achieves the age of 18 or 12th grade. But I don't see how it can be fixed politically.
In a functioning education system (which the US system arguably isn't), 12 years of schooling is more than sufficient to produce a well rounded person capable of being a productive and engaging member of civil society. It is not clear to me what the societal benefit is beyond that. I can agree that college is becoming a band-aid to make up for the serious problems found in earlier years. To the point that, in recogni…
Do you think that this special value of 12 years will be the proper amount of public education forever? It seems to me that as robots and software take more of the lower valued jobs, we will need to expect more education for a citizen to be able to contribute. Institutions will have to adapt.
In a functioning education system (which the US system arguably isn't), 12 years of schooling is more than sufficient to produce a well rounded person capable of being a productive and engaging member of civil society. It is not clear to me what the societal benefit is beyond that. I can agree that college is becoming a band-aid to make up for the serious problems found in earlier years. To the point that, in recogni…
Do you think that this special value of 12 years will be the proper amount of public education forever? It seems to me that as robots and software take more of the lower valued jobs, we will need to expect more education for a citizen to be able to contribute. Institutions will have to adapt.
12 years of schooling is more than sufficient. That does not mean that 12 is the magic number exactly. But yes, I believe that Robots and software actually make the world simpler. When we were an agrarian society, farmers had to know how to do basically everything imaginable to be able to be productive. It took a lifetime of training, starting as soon as you were old enough to walk, in order to learn the ropes and take in the deep knowledge passed from generation to generation. Industrialization simplified contributions so that one only had to specialize, negating the need to be there from birth. The information revolution simplified things further still. Now we have teenagers who are starting highly successful software businesses after spending a few months in front of a computer. The next revolution, whatever it may be, will only make contributions even more accessible, just as each time before.
Do you think that this special value of 12 years will be the proper amount of public education forever? It seems to me that as robots and software take more of the lower valued jobs, we will need to expect more education for a citizen to be able to contribute. Institutions will have to adapt.
12 years of schooling is more than sufficient. That does not mean that 12 is the magic number exactly. But yes, I believe that Robots and software actually make the world simpler. When we were an agrarian society, farmers had to know how to do basically everything imaginable to be able to be productive. It took a lifetime of training, starting as soon as you were old enough to walk, in order to learn the ropes and ta…
I like that optimism. I can also imagine a future where anybody can contribute. But I know plenty of people right now who are wondering if they should get a master's degree instead of stopping at a bachelor's degree in order to get a job that can pay off their education debt.
There's a presumption, I think, in this scheme that if loans for art majors are less available or attractive, the cost of an art degree will decrease. In which case you'd reach some equilibrium where the loans are not very good, but the cost is not very high, and people would still get art degrees.
Wouldn't sunk costs for a university make it difficult to charge based on major? All the fixed infrastructure and overhead would be the same. So you would end up with high cost for loans, plus significant costs for delivery; I think most colleges and universities would cut back on art majors etc.
With the rate tuition has risen (e.g. it rose 30% every year I was in college) it seems clear it's decoupled from the fixed costs & overhead.
If education rather than credentialing was the overwhelming driver, a priority should be providing education to people without credentialing built-in, in a form factor that's a lot more flexible than a classic four-year degree. Ideally, it should be easy for people to educate themselves on their own pace, even as they are doing other things at the same time (like working). I somehow expect a system focused just on ed…
I mean, in the U.K., if you’re interested in learning at your own pace, every university has at least some form of part-time course, local FE colleges do part time courses regularly, and there’s the Open University if you want to work towards a degree part-time. This is an American problem, not one to do with the concept of being able to prove you’ve completed an education.