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I cannot afford to go back to engineering school

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Re: I cannot afford to go back to engineering school

#261

Post by bradleyjg »

hga wrote: post #97
Moto7451 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been my experience that when people say any they really mean the straightforward stuff like Federal and State grants and loans. Being Ineligible for Federal grants is one thing, but so long as you filled out a FAFSA you were still eligible for school grants, private grants, and private student loans with deferred interest payments. That's a huge incentive to complete a FAFSA. Even people who have used up their F…

Well, none was available as far as my financial aid office knew. ALL the school's financial aid was needs based, so there were no scholarship or school grant options. It was very expensive (and worth every penny) so "small" checks like $4K wouldn't have helped much. And my parents certainly wouldn't have filled out a FAFSA/College Board CSS PROFILE (I believe the latter was required; it is now). Only other option was…

Do you think the landscape is completely unchanged since the Carter administration?

While this history can certainly be interesting, you're anecdotes aren't all that helpful for people looking for options now such as the person who wrote the blog post.

Re: I cannot afford to go back to engineering school

#262

Post by baddox »

muzz wrote: post #75
baddox wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget parents with modest incomes but a lot of savings from planning their own retirement. That's the reason I didn't get any financial aid (other than some subsidized loans to cover part of my costs).

Retirement accounts don't affect financial aid, they are not even asked for on the FAFSA. Only if they had savings in a non-retirement account-- where they could use it for things other than retirement-- it would affect your financial aid.

The part that killed the FAFSA was a mutual fund that my parents committed to use only as a supplement to their retirement accounts. Based on the amount in the mutual fund (in combination with all the other factors), FAFSA estimated that my family could afford $40,000 a year on college, which was over half the household's yearly income and was patently ridiculous.

Re: I cannot afford to go back to engineering school

#263

Post by hga »

bradleyjg wrote: post #261
hga wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, none was available as far as my financial aid office knew. ALL the school's financial aid was needs based, so there were no scholarship or school grant options. It was very expensive (and worth every penny) so "small" checks like $4K wouldn't have helped much. And my parents certainly wouldn't have filled out a FAFSA/College Board CSS PROFILE (I believe the latter was required; it is now). Only other option was…

Do you think the landscape is completely unchanged since the Carter administration? While this history can certainly be interesting, you're anecdotes aren't all that helpful for people looking for options now such as the person who wrote the blog post.

I don't think it has changed significantly for the better with one exception:

By then, the cost of going to a top school was beyond what almost anyone could do to work through it (MIT used to be known as a place where working class parents could send their children to to become engineers, and they'd work on the side to put themselves through it; didn't Feynman do this in part?), and since academic inflation has been a lot greater than CPI inflation, it's only gotten worse. E.g. not too long after I started in the fall of 1979, as I understand it MIT's costs doubled in the space of a few years (no doubt due to Carter inflation plus MIT's horrible financial management which I detail here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6178931).

MIT still has the same needs based only financial aid system. Others have confirmed that if you don't need it as judged by FAFSA/College Board CSS PROFILE---which my parent would have refused to fill out anyway---you will get insufficient or no loans if your parents don't cooperate/co-sign.

The military eyesight situation has improved due to new procedures (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refractive_surgery ; the radial keratotomy available then was right out), although I don't know if my astigmatism would be a disqualifier now, or if it could be arranged or maybe afforded by me as my eyesight was back then.

Bottom line: if the military is not an option, the kids of uncooperative rich parents are still seriously screwed, and for the same reasons.

Re: I cannot afford to go back to engineering school

#264

Post by simplekoala »

graycat wrote: post #155

Point 1: Likely what you want to learn you can learn well without going back to school. Indeed, at a high end research university, it is in effect or explicitly assumed that you can teach yourself. If you are in software, then likely you are heavily self-taught. Well, being self-taught in nearly all parts of academic engineering is easier than in practical software if only because in nearly all of academic engineerin…

People like you make this world a better place Graycat! Respect!

Re: I cannot afford to go back to engineering school

#265

Post by fixxer »

tedmiston wrote: post #260
fixxer wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Had I known how much bullshit graduate school involved, I might have stuck it out in finance. Might.

Something specific? Overall, I was surprised to find out how political journal publications are. Before I started, I kinda naively assumed that the best ideas are pushed to the top "because science".

Oh man, don't get me started on pubs. I've actually had it pretty easy, but yes, a minefield. I could publish used toilet paper if it had the right names on it.

The big annoyance for me has been dealing with academics as managers (they're not very good, IMO; there are some phenomenal exceptions, but they tend to leave for industry).

Re: I cannot afford to go back to engineering school

#266

Post by Daniel_Newby »

hga wrote: post #253
fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The equal protection clause is of no use to nineteen year-olds whose assets measure in the hundreds of dollars. What's your suggestion to the student who is wronged by the Fin Aid office? Hire a lawyer and sue? Ridiculous. >Secondly, ... Thirdly, ... Fourthly, ... What are you even responding to? None of your retorts are responsive to hga's or any of the other parent comments.

Well, the 2nd is responsive even if the author doesn't know it. MIT is a genuinely expensive place: the last time I knew the numbers, it spent about half your tuition on you in your freshman year and quite a bit more on average for the 3 remaining years. STEM subjects are expensive, all have lab work, and one of the reasons MIT is MIT is that with the rare exception that proves the rule, all courses are taught by ten…

My comment was directed to the repeated claims that free riders mean the only viable way to pay for universities is to bill parents. I am apparently not able to make that clear after staying up to four in the morning.

Is MIT actually that expensive, inflation adjusted, compared to 1960?

Bureaucracy is not just about labelled bureaucrats, but about the well-meaning organizational structure that tends to spring up over time. Take an axe to the budget and the excess structure often disappears with no ill effect. (I'm looking at you, committee meetings and approval processes.)

Re: I cannot afford to go back to engineering school

#267

Post by hga »

Daniel_Newby wrote: post #266
hga wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the 2nd is responsive even if the author doesn't know it. MIT is a genuinely expensive place: the last time I knew the numbers, it spent about half your tuition on you in your freshman year and quite a bit more on average for the 3 remaining years. STEM subjects are expensive, all have lab work, and one of the reasons MIT is MIT is that with the rare exception that proves the rule, all courses are taught by ten…

My comment was directed to the repeated claims that free riders mean the only viable way to pay for universities is to bill parents. I am apparently not able to make that clear after staying up to four in the morning. Is MIT actually that expensive, inflation adjusted, compared to 1960? Bureaucracy is not just about labelled bureaucrats, but about the well-meaning organizational structure that tends to spring up over…

For academic year 2012-3, the MIT nominal cost is $57,010. Plugging that into the BLS inflation CPI inflation calculator at 2012, that's $7350 1960 dollars.

But that's somewhere around what the tuition was 2 decades later from memory and someone graduating in 1980, the same as my first academic year. Can't remember the rest, maybe $3,000, could be less if you went for less expensive housing (not sure if that was much of an option) and especially food.

Looks like MIT's inflation rate 1979-2012 was very roughly double the CPI; I'm comfortable saying it was around that, and it's congruent with the general reports I've seen on US higher education inflation.

Re: I cannot afford to go back to engineering school

#268

Post by vacri »

hef19898 wrote: post #237
vacri wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was even a golden period, '84 - '88, where it was entirely free to get a degree in Australia. Australia needs something like HECS to encourage skills. Even with the loss of those going overseas, to support a service-based economy, it's still necessary to maintain domestic skills. The US is less in need - it is where the brain-drain of the world goes - which may be why their government feels less of the pinch.

In germany most degrees are free, besides somtimes a 500,- € or so fee per semester. Excetions are MBAs and certain part-time studies. I'll start a Master of Business Administration and Engineering in Octobre that costs a neat 104,- Euro per year.

That's outstanding and to be encouraged, but I do think that HECS is an elegant solution - you're only eligible to pay back your studies when your salary rises above a mediocre level. Australians can also get a small stipend to live on during their undergraduate degree (I think Germany does this as well, but I'm not sure).

Re: I cannot afford to go back to engineering school

#269

Post by vacri »

gems wrote: post #172
graycat wrote: post #155

Point 1: Likely what you want to learn you can learn well without going back to school. Indeed, at a high end research university, it is in effect or explicitly assumed that you can teach yourself. If you are in software, then likely you are heavily self-taught. Well, being self-taught in nearly all parts of academic engineering is easier than in practical software if only because in nearly all of academic engineerin…

You spent a significant chunk of your post suggesting self study. For something like math, this is really really really unrealistic. Most pure math textbooks don't have simple problems you can just check in the back. They're multistep proofs that can be done in a number of different ways. Oh, and you encounter plenty of material where you can easily trick yourself into thinking that you really understand it when you…

I was on a forum where there was a guy who had self-studied maths and physics and was an 'ideas man'. The problem was that he just didn't have the standardised nomenclature to get his ideas across - and also meant that he couldn't understand the reasons why other mathematicians debunked him.

One outstanding example was his method for a 'free energy' spacecraft movement system, that hinged on an arm throwing -foo- into a receiver. The argument was that there is a difference between throwing something and merely releasing it at speed, and he didn't have the understanding of physics to realise there is no difference.

Another one of his ideas was a system for finding prime numbers, which he couldn't articulate well enough for people to figure out whether it was a valuable predictor or merely a sieve.

He was a regular at the forum and respected, and I've never seen so many people patiently explaining physics and maths at such clear lengths before... and he just couldn't grok it, because he didn't have the standard language to get his ideas across.

This anecdata doesn't contradict the GP though, who is talking about doing self-study in parallel with formal study.

Re: I cannot afford to go back to engineering school

#270

Post by jinfiesto »

gems wrote: post #210
jinfiesto wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seconded. Math is one of the most easily self teachable subjects. The field of study is objects of mind (unless you're a platonist.) Literally no materials required except pen/paper, a brain and maybe a straightedge and compass. The point of math is not to do endless worked exercises. It's to understand mathematical objects and prove interesting things about them. You can generate unlimited problems for yourself by i…

Basically nothing you said actually made a case against anything I said, or for the thesis that it is easy to self teach. Just stating this for the record.

Well. There are no barriers to entry. If you have any inkling of logical ability, you should be able to tell when a proof is right. All it requires is critical thinking. Presumably humans come with that out of the box.
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