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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

#41

Post by DC1350 »

jawzz wrote: post #31
DC-3 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did it ever occur to you at all that people might value education for its own sake and not for potential financial yield alone?

Every reply to you is repeating the same thing and they’re all wrong. Woe on the next great sociologist, philosopher, or artist who gets discouraged from study because “just do CS so you can make money” or “just go to the library it’s literally the same thing as four years of training under experts in the field and discussion with other smart young people.”

Almost everyone goes to college to get a job. People who can afford to take risks like trying to become a philosopher don’t come from backgrounds where price is even a consideration. No middle class person dumb enough to believe trying to be a sociologist is a good idea will be smart enough to actually make that happen.

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

#42

Post by minikites »

raiyu wrote: post #15
DC-3 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did it ever occur to you at all that people might value education for its own sake and not for potential financial yield alone?

If that’s the case you can get it for nearly for free by just buying the books and reading them rather than paying $25,000 a year for that same privilege.

So then why do we have formal education at all?

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

#43

Post by solosoyokaze »

Smart hiring managers in this industry know that college doesn't matter and that one good Github project > any degree. I've not once taken someone's schooling into consideration while interviewing and I've hired dozens of people.

I'm not saying don't go to school if that's what you want to do, but you can easily get a much better return on your investment if you "buy" some time to work on OSS. That being said, it's a lot harder to do if you have no money since you can't get a government loan to cover your expenses. UBI would be very helpful here.

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

#44

Post by jimbokun »

DC-3 wrote: post #11
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…

Did it ever occur to you at all that people might value education for its own sake and not for potential financial yield alone?

Those people exist, but they are a small fraction of the population.

The number of people going to college to increase their future potential earnings is a far, far larger group.

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

#45

Post by nradov »

endisneigh wrote: post #37

per usual I believe the issue here is that the government has been subsidizing schools which have created strange distortions. if Harvard were strictly private and received no government subsidies, funding or advantage a few things would happen: 1) poor people probably wouldn't be able to attend 2) it would be substantially more expensive 3) the acceptance rate would be much higher ideally this would result in school…

Harvard is probably a bad example because their endowment is so large that they could afford to give substantial scholarships to poor students even without government subsidies. The issue is more with the 3rd-tier private schools.

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

#46

Post by ryandrake »

awillen wrote: post #30
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…

Yeah, the four year thing is a great point. I got a psychology degree, which definitely could've been done in three (I know this because I switched sophomore year). I have friends in hard sciences whose mental health probably would've been waaaaaay better if they spent 5-6 years on their degree.

It might be different now, but I remember my computer engineering degree could have probably been done in 3 years, if not for 1. the artificial dependency/prerequisite tree requiring you to take certain courses in a certain order and 2. all the required filler courses you needed to take in order to meet the university's arbitrary definition of well-roundedness. I just want to learn how to write compliers and how a MOSFET works, but you want me to take university-level theater? I could learn theater on my own if I wanted to.

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

#48

Post by solosoyokaze »

minikites wrote: post #42
raiyu wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that’s the case you can get it for nearly for free by just buying the books and reading them rather than paying $25,000 a year for that same privilege.

So then why do we have formal education at all?

To create workers for the industrial revolution.

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

#49

Post by gonehome »

stolenmerch wrote: post #36

Relevant: https://www.profgalloway.com/uss-university Scott Galloway made a prediction last summer of what colleges and universities will thrive, survive, struggle, or face challenges given the current situation. Basically, the higher ed market will consolidate around more elite schools.

I wouldn’t give Galloway’s predictions much thought - he’s wrong almost all the time.

https://twitter.com/profgalloway/status/1180197139101696013

If he had to make bets on his predictions he’d be bankrupt.

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

#50

Post by offtop5 »

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'll disagree with this. A very rough fact of life is not everyone will be able to go to a top school. For example the language requirement most top schools have excludes many people who didn't grow up with a second language, and lack the extra money to afford language tutoring.( Or a stable home life in highschool as most college language classes work much better if you took it in high school).

I literally couldn't pass French in community college and ended up going to a lesser school because of it. It's just not something I can do, at least in an academic environment.

That's said my life is much better for having attended college. However there's absolutely a max amount of money you should spend on this. Anything more than $40,000 for the full four years is too much. So if you do two years at community college, that's roughly $2,000 a year, 4000. Which leaves a budget of $36,000 for your last two years of college, of course this is just tuition.

That's very much doable, and even if you have to borrow the whole 40 it's not that bad. The real problems start when people spend $100,000 or so attending lowly ranked schools, AKA these for-profit institutions.

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