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Will Higher Education Be the Next Bubble to Burst?

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Re: Will Higher Education Be the Next Bubble to Burst?

#51

Post by Emore »

tokenadult wrote: post #48
parbo wrote: post #38

Yet another reason to make higher education universal and free. Just like where I live, Sweden.

Just how universal is higher education in Sweden? Can all people who desire to attend the best university in Sweden enroll if they wish, or are there entrance requirements for that university?

Anyone can attend any university (with the exception of a couple of private ones, mainly within marketing and design). This includes medicine, law and business. The only requirements are high school grades and/or a public "university entrance"-exam.

Re: Will Higher Education Be the Next Bubble to Burst?

#52

Post by tokenadult »

Emore wrote: post #51
tokenadult wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just how universal is higher education in Sweden? Can all people who desire to attend the best university in Sweden enroll if they wish, or are there entrance requirements for that university?

Anyone can attend any university (with the exception of a couple of private ones, mainly within marketing and design). This includes medicine, law and business. The only requirements are high school grades and/or a public "university entrance"-exam.

What is the base acceptance rate for persons who take the university entrance examination?

Re: Will Higher Education Be the Next Bubble to Burst?

#53

Post by Emore »

tokenadult wrote: post #52
Emore wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone can attend any university (with the exception of a couple of private ones, mainly within marketing and design). This includes medicine, law and business. The only requirements are high school grades and/or a public "university entrance"-exam.

What is the base acceptance rate for persons who take the university entrance examination?

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "base acceptance rate". But the universities usually accept around 50% based on high school grades, 25% based on the entrance exam and a further 25% on mixed backgrounds (professional experience, prior university credits etc). The numbers themselves differ between universities.

If you meant something else, I'm happy to explain that too :)

Re: Will Higher Education Be the Next Bubble to Burst?

#54

Post by tokenadult »

Emore wrote: post #53
tokenadult wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the base acceptance rate for persons who take the university entrance examination?

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "base acceptance rate". But the universities usually accept around 50% based on high school grades, 25% based on the entrance exam and a further 25% on mixed backgrounds (professional experience, prior university credits etc). The numbers themselves differ between universities. If you meant something else, I'm happy to explain that too :)

Does the entire relevant age group in Sweden apply to university, or do only some students who complete secondary schooling apply for further schooling? The base acceptance rate for any one university is the number of students who are admitted divided by the number who applied. (In the United States, that number is just above 7 percent at some of the most highly desired universities, which receive almost 30,000 applications but admit only just more than 2,000 students.) Some universities in the United States have a base acceptance rate above 90 percent, so on that basis I suppose one could claim that university schooling is "universal" (that is, universally available) here too. More than 500 schools of higher education in the United States have explicit policies of open admission, meaning that they will admit ALL applicants without any requirements beforehand (except possibly completion of high school or residence in the state where the college is located).

What exactly does it mean for higher schooling to be both universal and free?

Re: Will Higher Education Be the Next Bubble to Burst?

#55

Post by yummyfajitas »

pj wrote: post #25
timothychung wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is disappointing that these service based industries come to a point when making money is becoming so important especially when they are commodities. I hope that some institutions will reduce their price for a greater purpose especially for poor people.

I agree that they are over priced, but they aren't commodities. Commodity products are indistinguishable, but there are definitely different qualities of healthcare and higher education.

Most of the evidence suggests that healthcare is a commodity product.

http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/02/what-is-medical-qualit...

Re: Will Higher Education Be the Next Bubble to Burst?

#56

Post by asciilifeform »

netsp wrote: post #12
baguasquirrel wrote: post #2

This has been discussed before in many other sources. The cause of the bubble is probably the way tuition and financial aid are used by many colleges. Perhaps the most in-depth analysis was by The Atlantic. http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200511/financial-aid-leveragi... If this hypothesis is correct, then it has interesting implications for how a pop in the education bubble might play out. Since a fair portion of col…

I'm still hoping for some sort of disruption that will change the game. The line of thinking is along these lines: The core of what elite colleges (or any colleges) is not really valuable. A university course is mostly a syllabus, a textbook, lectures, tutorials, papers & exams. All are based on knowledge that is freely available. You do not need a Professor who spends most of his time on research that doesn't benefi…

> I'm still hoping for some sort of disruption that will change the game.

The chance of success is basically zero, but you could lobby for the overturn of the Griggs v. Duke Power Co. decision, the famous lawsuit which resulted in U.S. employers being officially prohibited from using IQ tests in hiring:

http://supreme.justia.com/us/401/424/case.html

This is what gave colleges their monopoly as gatekeepers of the intellectual labor market.

Re: Will Higher Education Be the Next Bubble to Burst?

#57

Post by Emore »

tokenadult wrote: post #54
Emore wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "base acceptance rate". But the universities usually accept around 50% based on high school grades, 25% based on the entrance exam and a further 25% on mixed backgrounds (professional experience, prior university credits etc). The numbers themselves differ between universities. If you meant something else, I'm happy to explain that too :)

Does the entire relevant age group in Sweden apply to university, or do only some students who complete secondary schooling apply for further schooling? The base acceptance rate for any one university is the number of students who are admitted divided by the number who applied. (In the United States, that number is just above 7 percent at some of the most highly desired universities, which receive almost 30,000 appli…

Ah, thank you for the explanation. I digged around a little, and the base acceptance rate of all university applications was 54% för 2008. This is an aggregated number. For Sweden's most prestigeous med school (Karolinska Institutet) the number is 3,6%, so it does vary a lot depending on the education.

There are very few programmes that don't have any requirements. However, if one doesn't have any good high school grade, the "university entrance"-exam is a way in, or else professional experience. Hence, there are (again, depending on the education) a wider range of ages represented. However, 28% of all applicants are 19 years old. No one in my class is older than 25.

About universal and free, I'd say the system here is close to very good. According to me "universal" apply more to the possibility of actually studying, than the numbers of students accepted. And "free" is simply no tuition fees, which Sweden does not have. This is also the main difference, with the US having (large) fees.

Re: Will Higher Education Be the Next Bubble to Burst?

#58

Post by tokenadult »

Emore wrote: post #57
tokenadult wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does the entire relevant age group in Sweden apply to university, or do only some students who complete secondary schooling apply for further schooling? The base acceptance rate for any one university is the number of students who are admitted divided by the number who applied. (In the United States, that number is just above 7 percent at some of the most highly desired universities, which receive almost 30,000 appli…

Ah, thank you for the explanation. I digged around a little, and the base acceptance rate of all university applications was 54% för 2008. This is an aggregated number. For Sweden's most prestigeous med school (Karolinska Institutet) the number is 3,6%, so it does vary a lot depending on the education. There are very few programmes that don't have any requirements. However, if one doesn't have any good high school gr…

The submitted article mentioned colleges with large list prices for tuition and other expenses, but didn't mention

a) the majority of United States students attend universities that are much less expensive in their official price,

and

b) a majority of students attending expensive universities get "financial aid" (discounts from the list price).

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