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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

#341

Post by MaxBarraclough »

musicale wrote: post #292
gonehome wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is so much broken with modern universities and incentives around pricing - why are all degrees four years? Why does a classics degree cost the same as a CS degree when the market value of a classics degree is basically zero? I wrote a little about it in the context of Lambda School, but it mostly applies: https://zalberico.com/essay/2019/04/08/lambda-school.html “The current university system in the US is a mes…

> 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…

> Moreover, it's a lot easier to learn CS on your own or on the job. ;-)

HackerNews tradition requires that I point out the considerable difference between software developer skills and knowledge of computer science.

Coding experience doesn't give you what a degree in computer science gives you, neither is a degree in computer science a substitute for experience as a developer.

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

#342

Post by ct0 »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #25

I sense that the fundamental purpose for going to College has changed from "getting an education" to "building your brand" as an individual. I don't work in Human Resources, but as a software developer I do spend a lot of time around my company's recruiters and I'm involved in the hiring process. A candidate's alma mater has an outsized impact on the likelihood they will advance to the next step of the hiring process…

Companies absolutely are looking at how good the CS program is at Keene State College.

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

#343

Post by [deleted] »

Balgair wrote: post #163
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…

Eidolon is a now defunct online magazine specifically about the classics. The last thing they did was publish a 'fail' essay. In it the head editor, who holds a PhD from Princeton in the Classics, goes through all the challenges, mis-steps, and lessons they all learned. 'Fail' essays in tech are a dime a dozen. But in the classics, they tend to be rare. As such, Eidolon's essay is a goldmine. Two things stuck out to…

[deleted]

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

#344

Post by ghaff »

hardtke wrote: post #296
gonehome wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is so much broken with modern universities and incentives around pricing - why are all degrees four years? Why does a classics degree cost the same as a CS degree when the market value of a classics degree is basically zero? I wrote a little about it in the context of Lambda School, but it mostly applies: https://zalberico.com/essay/2019/04/08/lambda-school.html “The current university system in the US is a mes…

> Why does a classics degree cost the same as a CS degree when the market value of a classics degree is basically zero? Maybe I am deluding myself because my daughter has decided to get an expensive classics degree, but the most valuable skill one can acquire in college is how to communicate, particularly how to write well. The second most valuable skill is learning how to master complicated material. Each major teac…

Probably one of the more relevant things I did in school was working on the newspapers. I was an engineering major and am still in technology but basically in a totally different field and I'm as much a writer as anything else at this point.

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

#345

Post by chrisseaton »

chongli wrote: post #238
dbspin wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 engin…

> It is largely free if your means are limited.

What 18 year olds have any means at all? Surely everyone passes this means test?

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

#346

Post by taormina »

filoleg wrote: post #301
tmpz22 wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 cover…

You can call a 3.0 GPA "low" but it's also Dean's List at GT....

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

#347

Post by abcc8 »

screye wrote: post #311
gonehome wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is so much broken with modern universities and incentives around pricing - why are all degrees four years? Why does a classics degree cost the same as a CS degree when the market value of a classics degree is basically zero? I wrote a little about it in the context of Lambda School, but it mostly applies: https://zalberico.com/essay/2019/04/08/lambda-school.html “The current university system in the US is a mes…

> There is so much broken with modern universities and incentives around pricing - why are all degrees four years? Why does a classics degree cost the same as a CS degree when the market value of a classics degree is basically zero? Totally agree. Despite 100s of choices for universities in the US, they all appear to be cookie cutter copies of each other.

The 100s of choices in university are all accredited by the same few accreditation bodies. This is a partial cause of the cookie cutter nature of the degree programs.

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

#348

Post by WalterBright »

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…

I've been regularly bemused by people graduating with a degree in X, and then bitterly complaining that nobody told them that the pay for X was very low.

I wondered how can one go through 4 years of college majoring in X, and never once google: "starting salaries for major X".

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

#349

Post by jdeibele »

chrisseaton wrote: post #345
chongli wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 engin…

> It is largely free if your means are limited. What 18 year olds have any means at all? Surely everyone passes this means test?

Can't say for Canada but in the US the colleges look to the parents unless the student is over a certain age (most commonly 26).

There's the FAFSA[1] required by almost every college. Many private colleges also require the CSS Profile[2] which is far more detailed and intrusive. Many people agree that the colleges do this for maximizing their profit and/or providing an incentive to go where it's "less than sticker".

Some 18 year olds are not on good terms with their parents and can't get their parents to complete the processes. Not sure what happens then but you'd suspect nothing good.

[1] https://studentaid.gov/h/apply-for-aid/fafsa Free Application for Federal Student Aid

[2] https://cssprofile.collegeboard.org

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

#350

Post by croissants »

pisteoff wrote: post #267
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…

> people are learning how to value educational degrees based on what they'll actually yield financially and making decisions accordingly. So why bother learning about the basis of human thought and culture when instead we should be learning about how to make the next iPhone app that won't matter in 6 months. Anything to maximize those profits, right? People be damned, it's the bottom line that matters! Got it. Only a…

It seems like this elides the difference between the goals of humanities education and the actual practice and outcomes of humanities education. I honestly don't know if humanities education confers the ability to "read closely, think clearly and critically, and synthesize information" at a rate that's so much higher than STEM education that it makes sense to divert tens of thousands of dollars to a humanities major instead of a STEM one.

Just as some naive first cut at answering this, I looked up GRE scores by intended graduate major [1]. "Physical sciences" (including math) majors average a 151 Verbal and "Humanities and Arts" average a...156, which seems pretty close, and even closer if you squint to try and account for the fact that the physical sciences skews English-as-a-second-language more than the humanities?

Of course, the GRE isn't a perfect proxy for the ability to "read closely, think clearly and critically, and synthesize information", but...graduate schools seem ok with it?

[1] https://www.ets.org/s/gre/pdf/gre_guide_table4.pdf

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