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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

#531

Post by mrjangles »

crackercrews wrote: post #456
skybrian wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rather than saying "the SAT is discriminatory," maybe ask which questions on the SAT's are discriminatory, and why? And how could you fix them? This will be more revealing of what the problem might be. I believe a lot of problems that the SAT's used to have were fixed over the years? It's somewhat of a moving target. And if you can't make any standardized test that's fair, why is that?

A prominent researcher noted that the following question was tested by the ETS but never made it onto the SAT: The actor's bearing on stage seemed ______; her movements were natural and her technique _____ A. unremitting...blasé B. fluid...tentative C. unstudied...contrived D. eclectic...uniform E. grandiose...controlled Apparently 8% more black students answered this question correctly than white students, and it wa…

That made no sense so I followed your link and found that C is uncontrived not contrived, which then makes perfect sense.

Every option has either 2 words that make no sense, or one word that makes no sense with "her movements were natural" and one that does. Only option C has two words which make sense with both. This question is just basic English comprehension and should be on every exam.

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

#532

Post by wyclif »

ModernMech wrote: post #452
readingnews wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have worked at three universities. This is pretty insanely accurate. You left out one item though. The main role US institutions are trying to fill right now is: hire new faculty, have faculty pull in 5+ Million dollar grants in order to get tenure. After tenure, pull in multi-million dollar grants each year. Teaching? Never heard of it. OH! That thing the actual customers are paying us for... yes, have graduate st…

> Teaching? Never heard of it. This view is starting to become outdated. Plenty of schools now have a role known as "Teaching Professor" that focuses on teaching, with no research expectation. They have all the same qualifications as any faculty hired for the role, like a Ph.D. in the field. At UPenn at least they can even get tenure.

How does that work now at UPenn?

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

#533

Post by vmception »

jay_kyburz wrote: post #465
vmception wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first should be trade schools Just so professors dont have to act oblivious as to why students are there, some still revert to “wdym, you should be here for the pursuit of learning” But there is merit to that, the schools reserved for the upper echelon of society (in terms of most coveted exclusive network and access) have been around for like 300 years, they can weather this several decade long meme of inclusion…

I also think we could subsidize a few years of on the job training. It can be difficult for trade schools to keep up with industry. A year of trade school for some very general health and safety / common sense / anything they missed in high school, then into the workplace to learn from people actually doing the job.

The apprenticeship model in Germany does both things you mentioned, and to a greater extent. Even for trades we would consider highly skilled labor like office jobs on an executive path.

It's pretty unique that the US has the resources for these advances that developed nations have and simply doesn't do them. Part of it is the insular nature of where policy inspiration comes from, it has to be seen as a homegrown original idea, which hampers consensus making because examples of it working elsewhere also aren't accepted.

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

#534

Post by pyuser583 »

imgabe wrote: post #312

Higher education in the US is trying to fulfill so many roles it's unsustainable. - teaching marketable skills so people can get jobs - teaching "how to think" and learning about art and culture - Performing cutting edge research - minor league sports teams The large state schools are trying to fulfill all these conflicting roles. We should probably break them out to separate entities. If you have a physicist who's a…

I went to a small college that actively avoided the “standard model.”

They focused on providing high equality undergraduate education.

No sports, research requirements, etc.

They found they could easily recruit junior faculty, but as the faculty got experience, they “cashed out” for a better position.

The “standard model” is hard to deviate from. Some schools do it, but it requires a large endowment, and there’s a gravitational pull towards sports teams and research grants.

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

#535

Post by zaptheimpaler »

synergy20 wrote: post #280
rayiner wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> College prepares people to be adults in every way, not to be a resource for corporations. Only 2% of Bangladeshis go to college. Are the rest not adults? Indeed, I’d say the opposite is true. Apart from job training, the main function of college in America seems to be extending adolescence and deferring dealing with the real world. 18 year olds in Bangladesh are a lot more “adult” than many college-educated 30-some…

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…

Or maybe, the entire west is increasingly a gerontocracy, with the 18-64 working age group being squeezed harder in every way to support a constantly growing number of retirees, who also as a group obstruct construction and make the traditional markers of adulthood harder to achieve. To a 70 year old, everyone below 40 must look like a baby.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/age-dependency-ratio-old?...

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

#536

Post by scaramanga »

This thread is like a parody of a wealthy tech-bro hot-take on any policy issue.

The purpose of the debt forgiveness is precisely to transfer wealth to people who need it. Whether the institutions can be profitable or not without further government funding is practically immaterial. If the institution is doing a social good, it probably cannot be self-funding. In which case, yes, we will bail it out again. And again. And essentially just make higher education something that the state uses it's tax revenue to provide for it's constituents because they've decided that that is what they want.

Of course, the rich will pay disproportionately for that. But then, they have benefited disproportionately from living in the society. The institutions that provide "social good" for this small minority are already funding proprieties for the state which panders to their every need and whim. So why shouldn't actually socially beneficial institutions like schools and universities also be funded?

Who could possibly be baffled by this? Nobody, except for multi-millionaire tech-bros.

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

#537

Post by gjs278 »

Forgeties79 wrote: post #518
beloch wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing I was told as a grad student that I've never forgotten is, "Nobody has ever won a Nobel prize for having happy students". At the time, I was struggling to keep up with the marking demands of a new (i.e. This was the first year it was taught) course I was TA'ing. I had around a hundred students and each one was generating 10-20 pages of handwritten lab reports per week. Student writing varied from human type…

It is so refreshing to see this take. I was on a path to be a history Ph.D candidate - I wanted to teach, and archive diving is basically my own personal drug. The problem is it’s “publish or perish,” as we all know. My higher priority, i.e. teaching, was essentially an obstacle. You know how I know that? My own advisor and other department members told me not to get my doctorate (after writing a 60 page thesis mind…

No post body was provided.

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

#538

Post by nobodyandproud »

gruez wrote: post #263
ajb wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not everything is like the laws of physics, which continue to work over many orders of magnitude. Supply and demand for employment works backwards at both the top and the bottom of the salary range. At the top, beyond a certain point supply decreases because people save enough to give up working. At the other end, reducing post can increase supply because people's need for income of inelastic below a certain point, s…

>Supply and demand for employment works backwards at both the top and the bottom of the salary range. At the top, beyond a certain point supply decreases because people save enough to give up working. Is this really applicable to this context? In other words, are farming jobs really going to get to a point where the pay is $10M a year, and people only take the job for a year and then never work another day? Consideri…

> Considering that being a farmer has basically no barrier to entry, I doubt it will get to that point.

Care to breakdown the costs?

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

#539

Post by lumost »

lanstin wrote: post #526
nostrebored wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

European elite go to American schools. Just like the elite from all around the world. The premise is faulty from the onset. Most ‘top’ European schools are mediocre outside of liberal arts degrees.

I spent one year as an undergrad reading maths at Oxford and the curriculum, teaching and students were all far superior to the same at Duke University (1988)

Oxford is a global institution, so is Cambridge. What portion of British college attendees attend those two universities? How do the universities in France, Spain, Italy, and Germany compare?

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

#540

Post by mrjangles »

Tretiotrr wrote: post #57

In Germany you study for free. There was a video (perhaps even from kurzgesagt) which describes how critical it is for our society to allow as many people as easy access to knowledge as possible and not only for obvious reasons but also to increase the chance for all of us that the hidden genius is finding a cure for cancer. You can even study for free in Germany as an non German. You know what happens? Those people…

>In Germany you study for free.

By "free" I think what you are trying to say is that in Germany working class people, the majority of whom don't go to college, pay for rich kids to go to college, rather than having those people pay for themselves.

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