Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ about education • Hacker News Board

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

#471

Post by thorwasdfasdf » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 8:18 PM UTC

nimbius wrote: post #64

Disclosure: i never went to college, I went to a trade school. Colleges really only started scaring the heck out of me when I started enjoying my career. After spending a day wrenching in a garage, we'd hit miller time and head down to the Soapbox Bar and Grill. Over the span of a month or two ordering buckets and shooting pool I learned our bartender Javon had a masters in biology and his fiancee Cortisha who bussed…

the reason those people can't get jobs isn't because they're not smart. It's because there simply aren't enough jobs that require that, and waaaayyy too many people running around with that education and those degrees.

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

#472

Post by xur17 » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 8:23 PM UTC

dnautics wrote: post #445

gwd wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will force "the system" to come up with some other way to pay for tuition. What do you think about Income Share Agreements? https://www.thesimpledollar.com/loans/student/income-share-a...

Ironically, income share agreements are increasingly being challenged on the grounds that they violate the 14th amendment (being rather close to the indentured servitude model). I think the (optics) problem is that it's a "more obvious voluntary fractional slavery program". So it's easy to criticize. Of course, because it's a less obvious voluntary fractional slavery program, non-dischargeable loans are simultaneousl…

I could be okay with income share agreements if they had a (short) time and percentage cap. Otherwise I feel like we'll have the same problem, students will sign agreements that they don't understand, and then end up paying for it for a large part of their life.

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

#473

Post by Reedx » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 8:24 PM UTC

jedberg wrote: post #239

0xffff2 wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that bad? Humanities departments are already shrinking without any changes because there's just no demand. It doesn't seem entirely unreasonable to me that if you are determined to get a degree in philosophy, which has virtually no job prospects outside of teaching the next generation of philosophy students, you have to go do that at one of a handful of schools that carve out a niche for themselves with a philosop…

> Is that bad? It depends on your point of view. Should college be a trade school or should it stick to it's roots of broadening one's horizons? I found my philosophy classes quite enlightening. They were required for my degree in CogSci. If my school didn't have a philosophy major, it wouldn't have a philosophy department, and I would never have had those classes. Also, there are some majors that lead to professiona…

Philosophy is great, but it's not something you need to go into debt for. Did you learn anything in those classes that you couldn't have learned on your own via books and free lectures on YouTube, etc?

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

#474

Post by nsnick » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 8:24 PM UTC

PascLeRasc wrote: post #470

nsnick wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is absolutely true which is why I went back and got a masters from CMU.

How'd you like it/would you recommend it? I've heard really good things about that program specifically, other than it can be hard to graduate from it.

It is as hard as you want to make it. You have near absolute freedom in the classes you choose to take. I would say it was definitely a worthwhile experience.

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

#475

Post by wutbrodo » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 8:24 PM UTC

code4tee wrote: post #372

wutbrodo wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work in AV development, and the number of refugees from the hard sciences is astonishing. I guess I don't blame them, but it's weird to have a physics PhD report to you and be able to use only a fraction of the skills she spent a decade and hundreds of thousands of dollars gaining. This isn't quite a complaint: adopting math and physics PhDs (first as a mentor and now as a TLM) that are seemingly unproductive has b…

Most STEM PhDs (and especially in the hard sciences) are funded from mostly government sources. It’s seen as the country making an investment in top talent. Nobody (who is any good) in the USA pays money for a STEM PhD. You get paid to do these degrees, albeit not a lot but a lot better than paying yourself!

Right I know, but I was making the assumption that they had a related undergrad, and more importantly, accounting for opportunity cost. Five years of working time for someone smart and quantitative enough to do a physics PhD is easily over six figures.

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

#476

Post by wespiser_2018 » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 8:25 PM UTC

makes sense: colleges are are entering another recession, and there is already a forecasted drop in enrollment of the wealthiest students, who should have been born during the last recession, that will hit in 2026 and could be as bad as a 15% to 20% drop in enrollment.

All in all, this might not be too bad, if you look at the growth in college expenses over the last few decades, the rise in tuition isn't going to instruction, it's going to administration, and hopefully this downturn will lead to the emergence of mass market cheap credential that are feasible solutions for everyone.

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

#477

Post by novok » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 8:25 PM UTC

jedberg wrote: post #179

gwd wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He had some massive college bills too and i didnt understand how those worked, but you cant get rid of them like you can a car loan. This is the thing that is really the most shameful and outrageous thing about the US system. Our entire K-12 educational system and our culture is set up to paint a college degree as a ticket to "the good life". Then an 18-year-old, potentially with parents who aren't great at math bu…

> All of us should be regularly lobbying our lawmakers to make student loans dischargeable by bankruptcy, just like any other loan. The reason they aren't dischargeable is because what bank in their right mind would give a loan to an 18 year old with no collateral? They only guarantee they get that it will be paid back is the fact that it can't be discharged. Student loans would dry up overnight if they could be disc…

America had dischargeable student loans before the early 2000s, and the education banking system did not implode from that. I think the student loan system would be fine with bankruptcy of student loans too after much gashing of teeth.

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

#478

Post by ashtonkem » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 8:26 PM UTC

wespiser_2018 wrote: post #476

makes sense: colleges are are entering another recession, and there is already a forecasted drop in enrollment of the wealthiest students, who should have been born during the last recession, that will hit in 2026 and could be as bad as a 15% to 20% drop in enrollment. All in all, this might not be too bad, if you look at the growth in college expenses over the last few decades, the rise in tuition isn't going to ins…

Good to know it might be cheap to get a second degree in a few years.

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

#479

Post by SketchySeaBeast » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 8:26 PM UTC

irishcoffee wrote: post #365

jerf wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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—especia…

And in another movie Tony Stark built an arc reactor in a cave with a box of scraps.

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

#480

Post by wespiser_2018 » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 8:27 PM UTC

decompiled_dev wrote: post #205

jedberg wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All of us should be regularly lobbying our lawmakers to make student loans dischargeable by bankruptcy, just like any other loan. The reason they aren't dischargeable is because what bank in their right mind would give a loan to an 18 year old with no collateral? They only guarantee they get that it will be paid back is the fact that it can't be discharged. Student loans would dry up overnight if they could be disc…

The school admitting the student should co-sign the loan. If the school is confident in the value of their program they should assume the risk.

This is the basic idea behind an Income Share Agreement, or ISA, where the student pays for the education out of their future. Don't make money == school doesn't get paid! This would be a nice solution to the current educational mess we are in.