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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

#301

Post by filoleg »

tmpz22 wrote: post #212
filoleg wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Unfortunately, they didn't reduce the rates. It was the same tuition price per semester, regardless of credit hours (as long as you still stay full-time, because the price for part-time is half). Which meant that people who graduated in quicker time spent less money. The cost was also the same for all undergrad degrees.

But it wasn't much of a concern at GT, because of the statewide Hope/Zell Miller scholarship covering the tuition based on the credit hours (and not on the actual semesters, you just have to have GPA high enough to qualify, which wasn't that high at all). So if you wanted to speedrun it and risk your GPA, you could do that. But if you wanted to take it slower, that scholarship allowed you to do so, because they paid regardless of how many years you took to graduate, as long as you were full time (with some nuances around part-time that aren't worth getting into right now), had high enough GPA, and you werent over the total cap of credit hours needed to graduate from your program.

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

#302

Post by ClumsyPilot »

labcomputer wrote: post #275
keiferski wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

1. Before the post-WWII GI bill, which sent an enormous surge of young men to college in the 1950's, the percentage of Americans with a college degree was measured in single digits (Bachelor degrees then were as common as Ph.D.s today). And, yet, we still somehow managed to have a functioning democracy[1]. 2. People evaluate degrees based on financial outcome simply because there is no other way to justify spending a…

"1950's, the percentage of Americans with a college degree was measured in single digits (Bachelor degrees then were as common as Ph.D.s today). And, yet, we still somehow managed to have a functioning democracy"

You could argue the world in 1950s was totally different, and today that education is necessary.

Alternatively you could take a view that the world was comparable enough to draw conclusions. But then, 1878 was 'equidistant' to 1950's, as 1950's is to today. That's the year US had witch trials. Lynching was still happening, and continued untill 1960's. Now I am willing to bet that folks here do not want to descend into barbarism, and that education has a huge role to play here.

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

#303

Post by selimthegrim »

aarongray wrote: post #257
mcguire wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" Do the best universities have best teaching technique, or are they best because they pick brightest students and they contribute nothing special? " They tend to attract the best teachers. And by "teachers" I do mean the best researchers in the given field. Which in turn attracts the brightest students.

The best researchers are rarely the best teachers

They won’t be stumped by a question from a smart undergrad. The best teachers might fail to make it a teachable moment.

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

#304

Post by musicale »

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.

> life destroyingly expensive

nailed it

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

#305

Post by agar »

Jtsummers wrote: post #239
agar wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> A 4-year degree is a useless indicator when it's irrelevant to the workload.

But it's not. It gives a good indication that the applicant has many, if not all, of the characteristics I listed.

And for many non-specialist jobs (data entry, call center, executive assistants, etc.) there is no relevant training program or certification. Few people grow up hoping to work at a call center or do data entry, so they're not going to go to school for that.

Again, a 4-year degree does not guarantee success, but it tells an employer far more than they were "willing to spend $40-80K for a piece of paper." Many people want to go to school to learn about something they love, then they get out and need a job.

I think it's fair for a hiring person to seek out degree holders as a desirable criteria.

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

#306

Post by flavius29663 »

shiftpgdn wrote: post #143
flavius29663 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't say it's just for credentials. Having passionate and smart colleagues and professors does wonder for your own passion and determination. It's the same reason companies have much more innovation in offices compared to remote working. The other thing is the networking, I have plenty of former colleagues that own their gig, and plenty others that are CEOs, CTO, COOs

I went to a crappy state school after community college and met exactly 0 passionate professors along the way. It was an astoundingly miserable experience. None of my classmates have gone on to do anything of note.

which is exactly why a good school is better than a bad one: the courses and materials might be the same, but the experience can be totally different. IMO for most of us it's not worth getting into debt to pay any college, unless the college is in top X, or if you need the certification for your profession. Paying 60k a year for a mediocre college is one of the worst decisions you can make. You can achieve just the same amount of knowledge in less time on your own.

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

#307

Post by musicale »

gonehome wrote: post #298
musicale wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why does a classics degree cost the same as a CS degree when the market value of a classics degree is basically zero If that is true it probably says more about the short-sightedness of the job market rather than the practical benefits of a program in Classics. A Classics education – like CS in fact – actually has wide applicability over a range of disciplines. There is a reason we call things "Humanities" after al…

> “Classics graduates are also likely to have superior reading and writing skills compared to a typical CS graduate.” “Typical” might be doing a lot of work there. I wouldn’t buy it in the general case.

Classics programs generally require more evaluated prose writing, as well as text reading and analysis, so it is reasonable to assume that they would yield benefits in actual writing skill.

However, it would be interesting to have some data to compare, for example GRE writing scores of Classics vs. CS graduates.

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

#308

Post by gonehome »

dragonwriter wrote: post #299
chiefalchemist wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The student loan system created artificial demand. Demand increases price. Students get larger loans because it's easy. Demand continues. Prices rise more, and so on. Price will rise as much as the market can bear. Banks make out well. Higher edu makes out well. Politicians make out well. Students and often their parents lose. That said, students and parents have alternatives - e.g., two years of community college an…

> That said, students and parents have alternatives - e.g., two years of community college and then transfer for two more years where a degree would have more prestige Non-public prestige schools aren't particularly favorable to transfers generally or CC transfers particularly, finding a community college with programs in a given field that would support transfer to a prestige school is difficult, and CCs aren't real…

Agreed - "students refuse to do so" as the parent comment mentioned because they recognize the risk, both with the things you suggest and the ding to the prestige they're trying to buy in the first place.

While I agree with the parent's general sentiment I also think it's not addressing the initial intent. The reason for the federally backed loans was to give people access to loans that the banks would otherwise deny. The intent is good, but the knock-on effects and perverse incentives that get created are quite bad.

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

#309

Post by austincheney »

mywittyname wrote: post #291
austincheney wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> or you get useful skills that enable you to go down a particular career path (e.g. CS degree) I so completely disagree. College/university is for education. If you want skills go to a trade school and save a truck load of money. As an example lawyers and doctors don’t gain skills in law/medical school. They are required to slosh through forced internships for that. CompSci graduates can’t tell the difference becaus…

> It takes substantially more to become a truck driver than it does to be a software developer. More what? Licenses? License != skills. A CDL isn't exactly difficult to get. Being healthy and having the ability to see is probably the most difficult aspect. The technical sections contain information that you have to learn or be taught, but it's very high level and most people can learn the material in about a hour or…

> More what? Licenses? License != skills.

Right, but what are the minimum requirements to become a software developer? A single 30 minute interview? There aren't any administrative or legal requirements. There is no minimum educational requirement.

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

#310

Post by gonehome »

musicale wrote: post #307
gonehome wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “Classics graduates are also likely to have superior reading and writing skills compared to a typical CS graduate.” “Typical” might be doing a lot of work there. I wouldn’t buy it in the general case.

Classics programs generally require more evaluated prose writing, as well as text reading and analysis, so it is reasonable to assume that they would yield benefits in actual writing skill. However, it would be interesting to have some data to compare, for example GRE writing scores of Classics vs. CS graduates.

I don't mean to come across as overly harsh or partisan against liberal arts majors. I think the content is often interesting. I just think it should be taken along side a technical major too.

I do have a bias against overly flowery language that obscures meaning, and tend to find that more often comes from the less technical side of the academic spectrum: http://www.paulgraham.com/talk.html

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