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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

#351

Post by credit_guy »

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…

> Do the best universities have best teaching technique, or are they best because they pick brightest students and they contribute nothing special?

In the end it doesn't make a difference. Employers want to hire good candidates. Hiring is hard and the outcomes asymmetric: very good candidates can give at most 10x performance and for a company with 100+ employees that barely registers, while very bad candidates can create absolutely stunning destruction. So hiring good candidates is a high stakes game. There's lots of noise, any way to get signal out of this noise is valuable. Employers pay big fees to recruiting agencies to get good hires. A reputable university, like Harvard or MIT is like an ideal recruiting agency (and no fees): not only it finds the best candidates for you, it also trains them for 4 years. The 4 years of training function as a further filter as well. In the end, someone graduating for such a college will be quite a sure bet for employers, and so they'll have much, much better prospects in the job market. So they are willing to pay for this. Are they born smart and Harvard does not teach them anything new? Who cares? They'll get much better job offers than if they graduate from Tulane, and that translates in more money in their pockets.

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

#352

Post by chongli »

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?

They include your parents’ income in your means test, unless you’ve been out of high school for >7 years.

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

#353

Post by tsoukase »

violiner wrote: post #160
gonehome wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Because it has a large numbers of applicants. It's offer and demand." I suspect that's because these students are really buying prestige and a classics degree is the easiest option. > Something I've noticed and take this with a grain of salt as this is a sample=1 observation is that the better researchers (more publications, better funded labs) were generally also better teachers. This isn't a huge surprise to me…

> a classics degree is the easiest option You have clearly never studied Ancient Greek.

He has the false self-confidence with a language he has not get in contact with yet. A frequent bias of a programmer.

In a sense, studying Ancient Greek in depth is impossible as many ideas are lost in the modern cultural decline.

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

#354

Post by fiftyfifty »

Higher Education is about to go through a brutal consolidation process, people have been predicting it for years. Even before Covid-19, small liberal arts schools were starting to close down. Demand for higher education is going to drop over the next decade because the number of graduating high schoolers in the US is about to drop and has already been dropping simply because the birth rate 20 years ago was lower. There are certainly other factors accelerating this trend such as fewer high school graduates going to college these days due to the increasing cost of tuition. In the end there will be a lot of schools fighting over a decreasing number of applicants and the top schools will be the ones likely to come out the winners.

https://www.npr.org/2019/12/16/787909495/fewer-students-are-...

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

#355

Post by rsj_hn »

ido wrote: post #164
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.

For comparison in Germany and Austria public universities are mostly free or close to it (a few €100s per year in misc fees).

On the other hand, the majority of US college kids would not be able to get into university in Germany nor Austria.

You are comparing apples and oranges. In the US, the best students get scholarship and aid and don't need to pay either (or at least have the option of free education unless they insist on going to a school that does not offer them scholarship). The poorest students don't need to pay. The middle pays for both.

In the German system only the best students are admitted period -- there is no university available for 2/3 of the population. And it only lasts 3 years. You would also be shocked to learn that the US government spends more per capita subsidizing tertiary education than the German government. Except that we also allow non-subsidized students the option of attending at their own cost, so at least they have more options than in the German system, where University education is simply unavailable to them.

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

#356

Post by piperswe »

foolinaround wrote: post #240
chrisseaton wrote: post #215

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? 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?

Looks like University of Bristol. In the UK, it's common for universities to offer undergraduate masters programs, which are basically the regular 3-year bachelors program with another year tacked on for the masters education as far as I can tell.

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

#357

Post by JamesBarney »

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…

> but the most valuable skill one can acquire in college is how to communicate, particularly how to write well

If writing well is to do it simply, concisely, and interestingly, then I don't think anyone tried to teach me any useful skills related to writing after eighth grade. I learned more reading "On Writing Well" in a bookstore waiting for my dad to buy a book in my 30s than I learned between 9th grade and the end of my B.S.

I don't remember anyone teaching any classes on how to learn. Would be incredibly surprised if the classics had changed that much since I went to school. There are skills that are useful to learning how to learn like how to use Anki, interweaving, visualization, chunking, etc.. but all of that information comes out of psychology research so I'd be surprised if it was taught in any of the classics.

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

#358

Post by Auracle »

jdeibele wrote: post #349
chrisseaton wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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".…

When I went to college you could bypass this by getting married, and I considered it with a high school classmate. We weren’t dating and weren’t even really friends - she just happened to bring it up in class once and I told her I’d had the same thought.

I ended up going for pretty close to free after scholarships anyways, though she did joke about consummating the marriage so I guess I missed out on that.

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

#359

Post by ido »

rsj_hn wrote: post #355
ido wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For comparison in Germany and Austria public universities are mostly free or close to it (a few €100s per year in misc fees).

On the other hand, the majority of US college kids would not be able to get into university in Germany nor Austria. You are comparing apples and oranges. In the US, the best students get scholarship and aid and don't need to pay either (or at least have the option of free education unless they insist on going to a school that does not offer them scholarship). The poorest students don't need to pay. The middle pays fo…

Almost all German pupils that want to can study, the old haupt-, realschule and gymnasium system you refer to is a lot less meaningful these days than a few decades ago (e.g. lots of kids can go to a gesamtschule and still get into university even if they weren't admitted to a gymnasium).

Germany is actually a couple of places above the US in the education index (that measures years of schooling): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_Index

Additionally most vocational schools (Fachhochschule) are also free/cheap in Germany and Austria so even those pupils who can't get into university can still get affordable education.

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

#360

Post by souprock »

offtop5 wrote: post #99
908B64B197 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For example the language requirement most top schools have excludes many people who didn't grow up with a second language Isn't the requirement to have done a year or two of a second language in high school?

That's the admission requirement. You also have to take a language in college. In ether case this isn't easily doable for people who come from unstable homes.

No, there isn't one universal requirement. Some examples:

No language needed: Florida Institute of Technology, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University

Either 2 years in high school or 2 semesters in college, your choice: a STEM degree in a typical Florida state university

Some places require 4 years in high school.

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