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Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ about education

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Re: Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ about education

#361

Post by geebee »

jcranmer wrote: post #135
geebee wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for your story. I had a similar moment after college myself. I graduated into the recession of the early 90s, in San Diego, which had been hit very hard by defense cutbacks. Almost everyone I knew worked service jobs, and even those were hard to get at times. The only people getting decent jobs - by which, I mean jobs that build careers, I'm not talking about pay - were engineers and a few finance/accounting r…

> My suspicion is that there is a huge difference between graduating as a humanities major in a recession vs boom. Drop the "humanities major"--it's true even for STEM majors as well. There's a pretty consistent career track from college to junior to senior positions, and if you fall off that track, it is quite hard to get back in again. There are very few majors for which demand is high enough to let you get back on…

It's no joke in STEM either, I'll give you that. I should have said it's hard for humanities majors relative to STEM, because I definitely wouldn't try to claim it isn't a big difference for everyone, graduating in a recession vs a boom.

I read an article a while back about how it doesn't matter where you go to college provided you major in STEM. Here's a link, along with a counter point:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/do-elite-colleges-lead-to-highe...

https://money.com/college-matters-stem-majors/

I wasn't super caught up in the debate, mainly because I think that as an absolute statement, the claim that it doesn't matter at all is nearly impossible to defend. It's really a relative argument. Read that way, though, I do find it compelling.

Another couple of problems here is that 1) there's always a bit of hand waving around "STEM", with a temptation to turn it into a no true scotsman argument. I defined STEM for this purpose as majors that require you to take specialized upper division coursework with a prerequisite 2 year undergraduate calculus through linear algebra and differential equations sequence. Even that's loose though, and may include some finance or highly quantitative Econ majors (I suspect they do just fine, though).

The other is that I think this may hide some differences between elite STEM majors in the nature of the work done. There's a big difference between "senior data scientist at uber cool prestige media company with tons of autonomy" and "senior CRUD bug fixer."

Re: Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ about education

#362

Post by rstupek »

downrightmike wrote: post #142
renewiltord wrote: post #65

Universities have to do all this proxying for a good education because they are unable to demonstrate the primary value: making you valuable to society. If they did, they could simply publish "Median income distribution for graduating students by degree achieved". They currently sell a common lie: that there is a roundedness or completeness to education. This is common wisdom and false.

The only degree that doesn't force a "well rounded" education is aerospace engineering. They start on their major course work right away. How many of those guys are out of work? "Well rounded course work" is just a money sink and wastes two years. Most of the major course work that matter you don't get to until junior and senior years. All you really need are those last two. First two are a waste.

that's why a strategy I've heard that helps to reduce cost of higher education is to take as many of the courses that you can at a community college where those credits can transfer over to the university of your choice.

Re: Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ about education

#363

Post by ashtonkem »

eternauta3k wrote: post #345
ashtonkem wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

College, and the push to send everyone to it, makes much more sense when you view College as both an economic proposition, and a part of social class. The economic aspect has been well covered here, but the social class has not. Social classes are a set of shared values, habits, and beliefs that help cluster people together into a sense of shared social membership. It is completely distinct from economic class, with…

Reminds me of this other reference [1] to college being finishing school for the upper classes [1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/01/30/staying-classy/

The first link in that blog, siderea[0] is exactly where I first learned about social class. Definitely worth a read.

[0] https://siderea.livejournal.com/1260265.html?format=light

Re: Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ about education

#364

Post by cwperkins »

I understand that colleges charge the same tuition for online students and in person students, but what's preventing the schools from lowering the cost of online, part-time degrees as a way to increase enrollment? They may have hosting costs, or costs associated with platforms like Coursera, but there's no cost for facilities which should make them able to cut the tuition. The cost of healthcare and education is far too high in the US. IMO Universal means Affordable, Accessible and Abundant (In addition hopefully high quality as well). Education and Healthcare should meet all of those points.

Re: Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ about education

#365

Post by irishcoffee »

jerf wrote: post #348
teh_infallible wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who majored in English, I assert that the emphasis on STEM and shift away from the humanities is causing serious problems in our society. Specifically, having a population lacking in critical reading skills makes everyone more susceptible to propaganda, and less able to critique and assess flawed arguments in writing. If you want to know why, for example, our political “debates” are shallow circuses of mis…

I think one of the major reasons you see this is that if you're going to go to college and come out with debt that takes you 20 years to repay, crippling you financially while you do [1], any reasonably smart person is going to ensure that they come out with skills that will justify that. If you want people to feel like they have the resources to spend on humanities, it needs to be cheap enough to justify it. And the…

The meat of the below quote: you dropped a hundred and fifty grand on a fuckin’ education you coulda got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the Public Library.

Quoting the whole thing:

""" CLARK: There's no problem. I was just hoping you could give me some insight into the evolution of the market economy in the southern colonies. My contention is that prior to the Revolutionary War, the economic modalities—especially in the southern colonies—could most aptly be characterized as agrarian pre-capital—

WILL: [interrupting] Of course that's your contention. You're a first year grad student. You just got finished reading some Marxian historian, Pete Garrison probably, you’re gonna be convinced of that until next month when you get to James Lemon, then you’re gonna be talking about how the economies of Virginia and Pennsylvania were entrepreneurial and capitalist way back in 1740. That's gonna last until next year, you’re gonna be in here regurgitating Gordon Wood, talkin’ about, you know, the Pre-revolutionary utopia and the capital-forming effects of military mobilization.

CLARK: [taken aback] Well as a matter of fact I won't, because Wood drastically underestimates the impact of —

WILL: "Wood drastically underestimates the impact of social distinctions predicated upon wealth, especially inherited wealth..." You got that from Vickers, Work in Essex County, Page 98, right? Yeah I read that too. Were you gonna plagiarize the whole thing for us—you have any thoughts of—of your own on this matter? Or do—is that your thing, you come into a bar, you read some obscure passage and then you pretend, you pawn it off as your own—your own idea just to impress some girls, embarrass my friend?

[Clark is stunned]

WILL: See the sad thing about a guy like you is in about 50 years you’re gonna start doing some thinking on your own and you’re gonna come up with the fact that there are two certainties in life. One, don't do that. And two, you dropped a hundred and fifty grand on a fuckin’ education you coulda got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the Public Library. """

https://genius.com/Good-will-hunting-good-will-hunting-bar-s...

Re: Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ about education

#366

Post by 12elephant »

kanwisher wrote: post #208
amiga_500 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, financialisation black hole. Cratering living standards, partially hidden by printing ever bigger numbers next to people's house prices and ignoring that they have no retirement savings. Many of the "industries" beloved by this site are showing they are only viable on top of a backbone of "real" jobs like industry and manufacturing. No N95 mask manufacturers, but we can write how sad we are about this on faceboo…

3M one of the biggest n95 manufactures in the world, originated and still has factories in America

N95 is the US standard, so it makes sense the US makes more of these than other countries.

Compare production capacity of N95s in the US with FFP2/3 in the EU, or KN95 in China. Then we'll really see how US production capacity stacks up.

To be clear, I have no idea how these production capacities stack up. But if we want to evaluate medical mask production, this is the comparison that needs to be made.

Re: Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ about education

#367

Post by bachmeier »

vsareto wrote: post #280
bachmeier wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the average college graduate, college is still a pretty good investment. I could write lots of comments about people without a college degree that live crappy lives and have trouble finding good paying jobs, and people with college degrees that live well and make a lot of money. My prediction is that we'll see changes in the US system. The problem you're pointing out is the risk. Universities are the ones that IM…

No college is going to advocate for taking future income from students over government backed loans or a traditional loan. The former translates to less immediate income. Colleges had little reason to raise tuition since 2000 except for money, I don't see them suddenly moving to forward-thinking strategies.

Actually, some schools do have versions in place already (I believe Purdue's engineering is one example).

My opinion - not my area of research - is that the days of hiking tuition like they did year after year are over. Note that there's no reason this won't bring in money immediately. Students would essentially be doing an IPO and giving shares to the university. Those shares would have value to someone, and they could serve as collateral for a loan. And beyond that, there's no reason it has to be all or nothing. You could pay half tuition now and sign over a percentage of future earnings.

There's no way colleges want to do this. It's unclear to me how long they continue to operate under the current system. They're going to have to innovate.

Re: Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ about education

#368

Post by code4tee »

The higher education bubble has been building for a long time. It follows a similar trend to the housing bubble: high prices fueled by loans that are too easy to get and too hard to repay.

The current situation is likely going to force a hard reset for the industry. Administrative bloat and other expenses will need to be addressed as colleges get back to basics and focus on delivering education under a more sustainable economic model.

A 10% decline in enrollment (much higher is realistic for many colleges) would devastate the finances of most institutions. These will be an interesting next few years.

Re: Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ about education

#370

Post by sauwan »

Justsignedup wrote: post #224

The fairly recent law that you cannot bankruptcy out of a college load caused all this. - Lenders are willing to lend to anyone knowing they will HAVE to pay. - Colleges over-inflated costs, way beyond inflation - It balanced out to this shit. In the past, colleges had to be careful, and so did lenders, because lots of people just didn't go to college due to cost. So they had to sell their worth.

Right, it's a weird situation, where lenders don't want someone going into bankruptcy right out of college when they have nothing to lose. But preventing loans from being discharged in bankruptchy has created the perverse dynamic where it's made the cost of college very inelastic and almost predatory.
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