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I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

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Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#381

Post by hnthrowaway0315 »

civilized wrote: post #283
wolverine876 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the SAT is increasingly considered "racist" because it reveals racial disparities in learning Could you provide an example of that claim? Usually the SAT is considered discriminatory because the way the testing is done favors wealthy, well-educated people, and gives negative results for equally talented people who lack those advantages. Colleges have found that the SAT is excluding a large part of the talent pool.…

As the other comment points out, the obsession with the flaws of the SAT completely ignores the fact that every single other method of evaluation is even worse, both at identifying promising students and at equity. If you take it away, colleges will happily admit loads of "well-rounded" students with tons of expensive extracurriculars. They will be racially as balanced as possible, but their family incomes will all b…

Exactly. It is still the least evil, one of the reasons Chinese are still keeping their infamous GaoKao. Removing it will create a huge political hitback.

Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#382

Post by moduspol »

antattack wrote: post #299
wolverine876 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> STEM jobs are the main viable path for economic stability and freedom. People repeat that but what is it based on? Most of the population, including most people who have economic stability and freedom, have not had STEM jobs and very likely will not have STEM jobs. More importantly, college is about much more than job training. College prepares people to be adults in every way, not to be a resource for corporations…

We can stand on the shoulders of giants...or go back to feudalism. Also, just because someone is doing a menial work it does not mean that they should not have a access to higher education. Especially since there's not enough of higher valued jobs for everyone. Educated worker has higher job mobility and is able to respond quickly to shifting business needs.

> Educated worker has higher job mobility and is able to respond quickly to shifting business needs.

Well, a worker with a college degree has higher job mobility. The worker being educated may be orthogonal. And I'm not sure if becoming educated increases one's ability to respond quickly to shifting business needs.

And it's also part of the problem, as I see it. Decades ago, one could switch industries or fields much more easily because of the lack of expectation of a specific college degree. Today one is much more "locked out" of other fields if they don't have that degree, and people feel trapped because they see no path to a higher paying career without taking on a ton of loans and risk to go to college (for the first time or for another degree).

I think we need to be honest with ourselves and acknowledge a lot (but not all) of higher education is arbitrary gatekeeping, and it's long past time to rein in the "arbitrary" part.

Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#383

Post by nickysielicki »

barry-cotter wrote: post #197
nickysielicki wrote: post #56

> Cancelling student debt is good if it's tied to fixing the problem going forward, which means not offering it, or having the colleges be the guarantor, or ISAs, or something. What do you tell the upper middle class families that didn't buy a bigger house or pad their investment accounts so that they could help put 3 of their kids through schools? My parents spent at least $200k on undergrad education between me and…

> Did they make the wrong decision? Yes. The average US college graduate has under $40K in debt. If you're able to get into a networking school for the upper class like Cornell you're able to get a full ride at a state university. UVA and UW-Madison means at most one of three children went to college in state, on in state tuition. It's perfectly fine to choose the university to go to based on prestige but paying for…

> > Did they make the wrong decision?

> Yes

You’re not actually answering the question I posed. My question was, assuming XYZ amount of dollars are going to be spent on education, did they make the right or the wrong decision by making sacrifices to pay for their kids instead of letting/forcing their kids to take out loans?

The question you answered was, “should a lot of money be spent on education in the first place?”. And sure, I’d agree, we all should have gone to community college for 2 years and then the state flagship, that would have been the most cost effective, bang-for-buck solution. I was the in-state kid, and also the youngest, and that’s not a coincidence; I saw what it cost my dad.

My point is that if there’s a suspension of contract law, regardless of whether you’ve spent a lot or a little on education, you’re punishing those who budgeted for it and rewarding those that didn’t. Whether it’s a lot of money or a little money, you’re fucking over the honest people.

Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#384

Post by MegaButts »

WalterBright wrote: post #323
synergy20 wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

college is delaying young people to become mature, we're producing giant babies these days, thanks to endless parenting, online gaming, social screen time, now probably even metaverse, you name it. on the STEM subject, teens good at math are never teacher's favorites, instead they're called nerds and some are even isolated from the rest, it's quite the opposite in Asia, or even in Europe. That's the root cause we nee…

I asked my high school math teacher to write me a recommendation letter for college. He politely refused, saying he could not in good conscience recommend me. I am grateful for him for letting me know, so I could ask another teacher. More than once he'd announced in class that he was grading the class on a curve, but me separately. Suffice to say we didn't get along.

> More than once he'd announced in class that he was grading the class on a curve, but me separately.

What was his public reason for doing so?

Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#385

Post by smileysteve »

wolverine876 wrote: post #171
mind-blight wrote: post #58

I'm concerned that the majority of "should we fix college or should we circumvent college" conversations don't bring up one of the scariest parts of our current economy: STEM jobs are the main viable path for economic stability and freedom. All of the conversations I've seen implicitly assume that this is good, and that the solution to farmer workers (or other low paid workers) escaping poverty is to train them as so…

> STEM jobs are the main viable path for economic stability and freedom. People repeat that but what is it based on? Most of the population, including most people who have economic stability and freedom, have not had STEM jobs and very likely will not have STEM jobs. More importantly, college is about much more than job training. College prepares people to be adults in every way, not to be a resource for corporations…

> College prepares people to be adults in every way

This can't be good because it suggests that 30%+ of the adult population aren't prepared to be adults.

Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#386

Post by spideymans »

wolverine876 wrote: post #171
mind-blight wrote: post #58

I'm concerned that the majority of "should we fix college or should we circumvent college" conversations don't bring up one of the scariest parts of our current economy: STEM jobs are the main viable path for economic stability and freedom. All of the conversations I've seen implicitly assume that this is good, and that the solution to farmer workers (or other low paid workers) escaping poverty is to train them as so…

> STEM jobs are the main viable path for economic stability and freedom. People repeat that but what is it based on? Most of the population, including most people who have economic stability and freedom, have not had STEM jobs and very likely will not have STEM jobs. More importantly, college is about much more than job training. College prepares people to be adults in every way, not to be a resource for corporations…

>Most of the population, including most people who have economic stability and freedom, have not had STEM jobs and very likely will not have STEM jobs.

For now. Let's look at young people though. They're indicative of the future.

Outside of finance and STEM, it's really hard to see a clear and reliable path to prosperity for a 20-something year old. Perhaps some trades as well.

What's even worse is that the paths to prosperity seems to get narrower and narrower by the year.

Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#387

Post by ceeplusplus »

kube-system wrote: post #180
ceeplusplus wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is very little that an undergraduate degree in gender studies, media studies, history, etc. provides, even if these subjects can be considered useful in general. On the surface you are learning about the humanities but in practice the classes have such low standards that you learn neither the writing and argumentation skills needed to excel in academia nor the deep understanding of past works that is the reward…

Liberal arts schools will provide you with a liberal arts education in the topic you choose. Liberal arts schools are not and never have been vocational training institutions. They are academic in nature.

I'm saying liberal arts schools fail to provide you with a liberal arts education. You do not learn how to write better nor do you dive deep into the works that you study nor do you learn how to think. Instead, you learn surface level facts about random things without any pressure to go deeper and actually understand what you're studying. Very rarely will you actually analyze a primary source in depth and you definitely won't analyze multiple in depth.

I went to a school that had top ranked humanities departments across the board. There is zero desire for rigor in any humanities courses or departments. It's a way for people to show up to class and get a degree without effort so they can party all day.

Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#388

Post by Imnimo »

nickysielicki wrote: post #56

> Cancelling student debt is good if it's tied to fixing the problem going forward, which means not offering it, or having the colleges be the guarantor, or ISAs, or something. What do you tell the upper middle class families that didn't buy a bigger house or pad their investment accounts so that they could help put 3 of their kids through schools? My parents spent at least $200k on undergrad education between me and…

>When America becomes a place where you're punished for having invested in your children, it becomes a place where you will no longer want to live.

I'm sure they'll be itching to move to a new country where their children can spend another $200k on their grandchildren.

Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#389

Post by onethought »

epicureanideal wrote: post #213
mike00632 wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's based on the entry level salary for California tech workers being six figures whereas the wage for farm workers is an exception to laws such that they can be paid below minimum wage.

> farm workers is an exception to laws such that they can be paid below minimum wage. I’m all for setting the minimum wage for farm workers at $25/hr. Within 2-3 years every manual farm worker will be replaced by a machine, and we’ll all be better off for it. Well, not the manual workers, temporarily. But then we’ll have to deal with the problem of unemployment honestly rather than leaving make-work jobs around.

Minimum wage in Australia is ~$25/hour... and has been for > 10 years... still no new machines.

Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#390

Post by chinchilla2020 »

wolverine876 wrote: post #177
crackercrews wrote: post #52

Definitely agree that removing the SAT appears to be related to the upcoming supreme court case about affirmative action. COVID was a good reason to delay it for a couple years. But schools are pushing it out further. That makes no sense. It seems the SAT is increasingly considered "racist" because it reveals racial disparities in learning. What's next? Get rid of the driver's license test because it turns that white…

> the SAT is increasingly considered "racist" because it reveals racial disparities in learning Could you provide an example of that claim? Usually the SAT is considered discriminatory because the way the testing is done favors wealthy, well-educated people, and gives negative results for equally talented people who lack those advantages. Colleges have found that the SAT is excluding a large part of the talent pool.…

SAT is one of the strongest correlations of academic success and future income. Where did you hear that it isn't?

I worked in edtech analytics for a while where SAT among other factors were correlated with student success. SAT scores correlate with graduation rates, college GPA, job placement. Most elite universities also tend to receive applicants with higher SAT scores (A no brainer)

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