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Colleges where everyone works and there's no tuition

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Re: Colleges where everyone works and there's no tuition

#61

Post by bonoboTP »

js8 wrote: post #58
supernova87a wrote: post #27

Sorry to depart from the feel-good narrative, but this kind of student labor is token or symbolic at best. The kinds of jobs that students can perform are not nearly the kind of jobs that a college with a physical plant to maintain, professors to pay, finances to administer, etc. can make a meaningful dent in. (By and large), students are not going to be doing electrical work, maintenance, financial accounting, admin…

I actually entirely disagree with the premise that students should work. I think it's wrong, aside from a perhaps holiday job. They should study, that's it. If they are not busy enough to study, then they don't study hard enough. That's why, I think, in some European countries, instead of giving debt to students, we give them a stipend. The society should be able to support students enough to study, so they wouldn't…

True, being a student should be considered a full-time job. I'm from Europe and we get stipends that depend on grades (and financial situation), and studying is at least somewhat considered a duty and responsibility towards society then, instead of the American attitude where students are service consumers, customers who must be pandered to. You can see where that attitude has led on American campuses.

Re: Colleges where everyone works and there's no tuition

#62

Post by TMWNN »

qznc wrote: post #31
supernova87a wrote: post #27

Sorry to depart from the feel-good narrative, but this kind of student labor is token or symbolic at best. The kinds of jobs that students can perform are not nearly the kind of jobs that a college with a physical plant to maintain, professors to pay, finances to administer, etc. can make a meaningful dent in. (By and large), students are not going to be doing electrical work, maintenance, financial accounting, admin…

It reminds me of https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_education_system This system is only used in German-speaking countries but it works there. The basic is that students are employed by a company and work there half the time. In return the company pays for the studies in the other half.

>This system is only used in German-speaking countries but it works there.

Dyson Institute (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_Institute_of_Engineering...>) is something similar in England. All students are paid employees of Dyson while working toward their engineering degree.

Re: Colleges where everyone works and there's no tuition

#63

Post by kuschku »

jeffwiederkehr wrote: post #19
surfmike wrote: post #8

U. of Waterloo has an innovative model of alternating 4-month coops and then 4 months of school. By the time students graduate they've made some money and have a good amount of work experience. I really this was a model accessible to more people.

I'm a huge fan of waterloo's model as well for students but I think it's really hard to replicate without the prestige of a University like Waterloo.

Half of the universities in Germany offer something like that, known as Duales Studium. It works quite well, though I personally haven’t taken part in it.

Re: Colleges where everyone works and there's no tuition

#64

Post by elihu »

supernova87a wrote: post #27

Sorry to depart from the feel-good narrative, but this kind of student labor is token or symbolic at best. The kinds of jobs that students can perform are not nearly the kind of jobs that a college with a physical plant to maintain, professors to pay, finances to administer, etc. can make a meaningful dent in. (By and large), students are not going to be doing electrical work, maintenance, financial accounting, admin…

I think it could possibly work in a financially neutral way if the school contracted the students (as either skilled or unskilled labor) out to local businesses. There'd be a lot of ethical considerations around how to establish a relationship between the students, the school, and the businesses where everyone is getting a good deal and the students are protected from being exploited (however one defines the term).

I have a roommate who went to a sort of coding school where they take in random people who score well on a general aptitude test and they agree to work for the company a couple of years as IT contractors in exchange for free training. (If memory serves, the first few weeks of training is unpaid, but the later part of their training they do get paid.) After training, the students get paid less than market wages, but the expectation is that they'll leave and get a much better job elsewhere and it's better to get paid less that market wages as an IT person than a lot of other low-skill jobs people might find themselves doing instead. Kind of a weird system, but it seemed to work out well for him.

I went a different route post-college, which was to become a grad student. Our department financed mostly through federal grants to do basic research in computer science. For certain fields this can work pretty well, as long as the grant funding is stable. (In our case it wasn't. But for a while I got paid to be a student, which was a nice reversal of the usual trend.)

Re: Colleges where everyone works and there's no tuition

#65

Post by IG_Semmelweiss »

A number of people have commented on how this model of work-study is unrealistic because it relies on endowments for it to work.

I think the argument can be flipped. The problem is that of incentives and the wrong culture dont allow the debt-free, work-study program to be more widespread, by leveraging endowments.

Take for example a place like harvard.

Consider that the objective of a harvard portfolio manager is to grow its prestige and carry incentive payout, by increasing its AUM and reinvesting returns. The primary incentive of the fund manager is not to generate income for student use.

You then have the same problems on the administration side. Their chief objective is not to lower overhead for students, but to increase admin count, payroll, nonstudent "research". Arguably this culture permeates down to alumni giving which is why oftentimes gifts are restricted. Alumni do not want gifts to fund admin largesse. Administrations with clear mission statements ('debt free students') would have far more leverage in fundraising towards that goal.

So to complain that using endowment for tuition is "cheating" is missing the point: endownment is a critical to bridge the gap between student labor value and total tuition.

Instead, we should look at universities with higher endowments with deep suspicion. Is it a culture of misaligned incentives that is resulting in a huge debt burden to students ?

Why are too many US universities failing to provide a debt-free path to kids; when the work-centric universities in this article prove that debt-free graduation is an attainable goal?

Re: Colleges where everyone works and there's no tuition

#66

Post by col_rad »

qznc wrote: post #31
supernova87a wrote: post #27

Sorry to depart from the feel-good narrative, but this kind of student labor is token or symbolic at best. The kinds of jobs that students can perform are not nearly the kind of jobs that a college with a physical plant to maintain, professors to pay, finances to administer, etc. can make a meaningful dent in. (By and large), students are not going to be doing electrical work, maintenance, financial accounting, admin…

It reminds me of https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_education_system This system is only used in German-speaking countries but it works there. The basic is that students are employed by a company and work there half the time. In return the company pays for the studies in the other half.

I did my Bachelor this way. I’d say you learn much more compared to University. And a great way to gain some real work experience. I did a proper University Master afterwards but the experience from the dual system helped me a great deal with my first job in the industry.

Re: Colleges where everyone works and there's no tuition

#67

Post by vt85 »

himinlomax wrote: post #45
supernova87a wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're just confused over who's paying for it. Someone is, I can guarantee you that. And it's not student labor. I'm not differing on the point that free tuition might be a good thing. The (unspoken) point of this story was to suggest that student labor might be enough to make a college solvent.

> You're just confused over who's paying for it. He's not.

He is.

Re: Colleges where everyone works and there's no tuition

#68

Post by mahdi7d1 »

lawschwimmer wrote: post #46
mahdi7d1 wrote: post #33

A college where everybody eats free dinner and lunch (We pay 1/10 of the actual cost of the food), pays no tuition, can take student loans with really low interest rates (the amount they loan is not much and it's not same as student loan in Western countries where you take loans to pay for tuition fees rather here students take loan to buy stuff they need like laptops and such.) is supposed to result in prolific peop…

I respectfully disagree, as a person who probably grew less than 100 miles from you. While it is not the worst place in the world to grow up by economic standards, and may as a matter of fact be not a bad place at all, the "free college" comes with the cost of literally no job guarantee after you graduate. Most importantly, even leaving the country isn't a garden of roses, on account of the fact that most countries s…

It's not pseudo-education if you are in the top universities. True still even after graduating from top universities you are not granted to find a job but as I said It's not a country of free academic opportunities but this opportunities are a way to get out of the country itself. I'm not selling it rather implying that a lot of people here (including myself) don't give a damn about academics and just study to get out of here. Also there isn't any free academic opportunities here. People who get accepted to these top universities usually tend to spend a lot of money and effort studying in high school so they can have a great performance on the entrance exam. It's not like anyone who decides can get a free degree.

Another point is that I currently don't have any anonymity. There is only one "mahdi7d1" on the internet as far as I know. And my username everywhere is the same. All my friends and anyone who knows me knows of my username and remembers it (Their curiosity of what 7d1 stand for makes them remember it!) So even a normal person might be able to trace down my activities on the internet and find my real Identity.

Also I haven't said anything to be afraid of lack of freedom of speech here. Moreover there is much more freedom of speech here than people both inside and outside realize and I would like to try to see how much there is!

Re: Colleges where everyone works and there's no tuition

#69

Post by pastacacioepepe »

laGrenouille wrote: post #56
godelski wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's best to think of them not as saving accounts but financial instruments. I mean I get that (not that a bank isn't a financial instrument...) but to what ends? The example I gave is should be clear, because of the large wealth of money that is. $54bn is no laughing matter. Stanford has $30bn. These are sums that completely pay for the operating costs of the universities and students. On interest. If the point is…

Using Harvard as an example, they had an operating expenses of $5.0 billion in 2021 [1]. In order to cover that, they would need to be having a consistent rate of return around 9% on their ($54 billion) endowment. That a fairly good estimate of the rate of return for the stock market over the past 25 years, so not unreasonable. Though, this ignores that most of the endowment consists of restricted funds that can only…

I admit I don't know about university endowments, so the question is: what are those $40+ billion dollars sitting there for every year? Does a university really need a balance that may be larger than some nation's GDP?

Re: Colleges where everyone works and there's no tuition

#70

Post by chrisseaton »

pastacacioepepe wrote: post #69
laGrenouille wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using Harvard as an example, they had an operating expenses of $5.0 billion in 2021 [1]. In order to cover that, they would need to be having a consistent rate of return around 9% on their ($54 billion) endowment. That a fairly good estimate of the rate of return for the stock market over the past 25 years, so not unreasonable. Though, this ignores that most of the endowment consists of restricted funds that can only…

I admit I don't know about university endowments, so the question is: what are those $40+ billion dollars sitting there for every year? Does a university really need a balance that may be larger than some nation's GDP?

> what are those $40+ billion dollars sitting there for every year?

It’s not sitting there - it’s invested and working. Investment returns pay for operating expenses.

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