Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Misuses of the University

publicbooks.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 157 posts

Re: The Misuses of the University

#71

Post by bpt3 »

Windchaser wrote: post #67
bpt3 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Professors at schools like this do not view these places as about teaching students. Academics, to include performing research in their field and publishing the results, yes, and the students get in the way of that.

Yes. If you want a really high quality education, you don't go to a big research school. You go to a small school, like a liberal arts school, where the teachers are both highly trained and really passionate about teaching. I went to a small liberal arts school for an undergrad degree in STEM, and to a R1 research university for graduate work. The absolute best classes at the big-name research university were about a…

Did you go to an elite (or close to it) liberal arts school? I have gone to only R1 schools myself, but my exposure to liberal arts schools would indicate they are a mixed bag, especially in the sciences (not disagreeing with you or saying that R1 schools aren't also a mixed bag in some/many senses).

Most undergraduates don't realize it, but the purpose of going to an R1 is access to an alumni network and (for the small percentage that are interested) access to people performing cutting edge research in a discipline and their physical resources.

I suspect that honesty in their marketing materials would not increase applications though.

Re: The Misuses of the University

#72

Post by momoschili »

bpt3 wrote: post #58
delichon wrote: post #13

> He remembers when that building came up, back in 2001, replacing a grove of elm, beech, and oak trees on campus. The old arts center hadn’t been cheap: $17 million was real money at the turn of the millennium. They tore down a building less than twenty five years old to build a fancier one with fewer actual teaching spaces. There are many "temporary" Quonset huts around here twice that age. This institution is the…

As the article states, the funds came from an external donor. It's not how I would choose to use $250M+ of my money, but it appears to have nothing at all to do with federal funding (nor would it even if the building was financed by the school, but especially not in this case).

The federal funds pay for it through the indirect costs funding its maintenance most likely... I suspect that represents a significant portion of the total cost of the building.

Re: The Misuses of the University

#73

Post by econ »

A wise man once told me that a company or organization has enough professors or high level academics they must also run the show. They won't like it but they have to. You shouldn't have a layer above and pretend they know better. They will inflate the importance of stuff they can understand and ignore everything important.

Re: The Misuses of the University

#74

Post by hunterpayne »

bpt3 wrote: post #60
irishcoffee wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

s/gets/accepts Nobody is waterboarding the money down their throat. They can say no. The actual question is: why don't they?

Why would they not accept money to do something they are interested in doing? What is the downside to the school of a nicer student union or a public policy/international relations campus in the nation's capital?

Because that's not what the GP was talking about. For example, say there is some controversial economic policy passed by one of the parties. Then a researcher goes out to research if the policy is working or not. But when they do the research, they find out that the policy doesn't work and has bad side effects too. However, the majority of the university votes and supports the party that passed the policy.

So the researcher intentionally changes some of the ways the data is collected and poof, it looks like the policy works. Extra funding comes your way but now you have committed academic fraud. Not that anything will happen to you for this, but still, you know you did it. That's what the GP is talking about and it happens quite a bit in the humanities and economics. Its why private economists and public economists almost seem like different species.

Re: The Misuses of the University

#75

Post by nine_k »

141205 wrote: post #63
DesaiAshu wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having personally run a college P&L, this dodges the bigger sunk costs of higher education: 1. Old and expensive to maintain land 2. High cost of living for all staff (weighted heaviest towards faculty) 3. Ancillaries that are revenue negative, _very_ expensive, and inconsequential to the purpose of the education (eg. the lacrosse team and the Polo Club) It's nice to point fingers at the people who are taking very he…

Am I misunderstanding your post?: you're implying that HYPSM increase their matriculation by ten times? These "elite" colleges,—one of which I've attended for graduate school,—have serious issues already with becoming degree mills; degrees have depreciated enormously in value over the last several decades: consider the collapse in being able to find a tenure track research position, even from one of these colleges. I…

As I understood the grandparent post, the idea is that a highest-level university should 10× its student throughput, and 9 other, lower-level universities would be made redundant by that.

This would make sense if all what an elite university did were providing elite-level education. Of course exclusive schools provide other benefits, often more valuable for the target audience than the education proper: a highly filtered student body, networking and bonding with the right, upwardly mobile people (either mega-talented, or just smart kids of rich and influential parents), a luxury-grade diploma that few can afford. Maybe you could theoretically 10× Stanford or MIT, but likely not Yale.

Re: The Misuses of the University

#76

Post by ThinkingGuy »

Tangurena2 wrote: post #24
noelwelsh wrote: post #14

When I was at university, my institution was investing $millions in building various new building. A grumbled to my supervisor, who explained to me that this was important to attracting new students. It's an unfortunate truth that decisions to attend a given university are often made based on an image in the student's (or their parents) head about what a university should look like, rather than things like academics.

I blame the "contest" started by the magazine US News and World Report , which started their college rating. This led to university execs aiming to raise their rating at the expense of education. Higher rankings meant higher bonuses for top employees - especially the president of the university. This race for ratings is why the cost of a university education has skyrocketed far faster than inflation.

The podcast "Revisionist History" by Malcom Gladwell did a great episode on the US News and World Report college ranking list, and the (often perverse) incentives it's created.

https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/revisionist-history/lord-of-...

Re: The Misuses of the University

#77

Post by kcexn »

141205 wrote: post #63
DesaiAshu wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having personally run a college P&L, this dodges the bigger sunk costs of higher education: 1. Old and expensive to maintain land 2. High cost of living for all staff (weighted heaviest towards faculty) 3. Ancillaries that are revenue negative, _very_ expensive, and inconsequential to the purpose of the education (eg. the lacrosse team and the Polo Club) It's nice to point fingers at the people who are taking very he…

Am I misunderstanding your post?: you're implying that HYPSM increase their matriculation by ten times? These "elite" colleges,—one of which I've attended for graduate school,—have serious issues already with becoming degree mills; degrees have depreciated enormously in value over the last several decades: consider the collapse in being able to find a tenure track research position, even from one of these colleges. I…

I don't think they're suggesting we reduce the amount of faculty. They're suggesting that you ask all the faculty to share less space, increasing the efficiency of the real estate holdings. Also by reducing the number of schools, you reduce the amount of expensive ancillaries.

Re: The Misuses of the University

#78

Post by mlsu »

141205 wrote: post #63
DesaiAshu wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having personally run a college P&L, this dodges the bigger sunk costs of higher education: 1. Old and expensive to maintain land 2. High cost of living for all staff (weighted heaviest towards faculty) 3. Ancillaries that are revenue negative, _very_ expensive, and inconsequential to the purpose of the education (eg. the lacrosse team and the Polo Club) It's nice to point fingers at the people who are taking very he…

Am I misunderstanding your post?: you're implying that HYPSM increase their matriculation by ten times? These "elite" colleges,—one of which I've attended for graduate school,—have serious issues already with becoming degree mills; degrees have depreciated enormously in value over the last several decades: consider the collapse in being able to find a tenure track research position, even from one of these colleges. I…

I mean, is the goal of an elite college to educate? Or is the benefit to sift through the population and pluck out its masters?

I don't really care that UC has a lower "reputation" than Harvard or Stanford. The fact is, the UC system has produced more fundamental research and more actual value for the population and the world at large than Harvard or Stanford. Even if a UC degree is not quite the "golden ticket" that an Stanford degree is.

Concentrating individuals into a smaller and smaller elite benefits them and only them. The U.S. has done this with capital allocation in its economy and it has and will continue to be a century long arc bending toward utter disaster.

What do we actually care about here? Education?

Re: The Misuses of the University

#79

Post by analog31 »

godelski wrote: post #65
djoldman wrote: post #27

Johns Hopkins University is not a university. Many other "Universities" are not universities either. "Johns Hopkins Labs" would be a more accurate name as less than 10% of revenue is tuition related. I'm not sure why folks including professors continue to view these places as primarily about teaching students or academics. These $100-$250 million building projects are pretty inconsequential when research grants and c…

The "deal" often being made with academia is "we'll give you a place to do research, and even fund your research, but you have to teach the next generation." This isn't a bad deal, and is the reason many scientists give up MUCH larger paychecks that they'd get from the private sector to be a professor. These people would rather do research than have a more directed engineering (or engineering research) role that the…

>>> The "deal" often being made with academia is "we'll give you a place to do research, and even fund your research, but you have to teach the next generation." This isn't a bad deal, and is the reason many scientists give up MUCH larger paychecks that they'd get from the private sector to be a professor. These people would rather do research than have a more directed engineering (or engineering research) role that the private sector would give them.

Teaching graduate students. Most undergraduate teaching is done by "adjuncts" who do not do research.

Salaries are a mixed bag. Scientists who want to continue doing research in the private sector also give up much larger paychecks. Many work in facilities that are barely nicer than sweatshops.

Disclosure: Adjunct for one semester, 30 years ago.

Re: The Misuses of the University

#80

Post by DesaiAshu »

141205 wrote: post #63
DesaiAshu wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having personally run a college P&L, this dodges the bigger sunk costs of higher education: 1. Old and expensive to maintain land 2. High cost of living for all staff (weighted heaviest towards faculty) 3. Ancillaries that are revenue negative, _very_ expensive, and inconsequential to the purpose of the education (eg. the lacrosse team and the Polo Club) It's nice to point fingers at the people who are taking very he…

Am I misunderstanding your post?: you're implying that HYPSM increase their matriculation by ten times? These "elite" colleges,—one of which I've attended for graduate school,—have serious issues already with becoming degree mills; degrees have depreciated enormously in value over the last several decades: consider the collapse in being able to find a tenure track research position, even from one of these colleges. I…

Stanford has a $40 billion endowment for 8k undergrads. UCLA has a $10 billion endowment for 34k undergrads. Naturally, the class sizes will be much larger. The UC system does not put 100% of students at UC Berkeley and UCLA, they distribute it across several campuses and distance education and maintain a leveling system that helps promising research talent be in the room with experienced researchers

Despite rising costs, a college degree is still a positive lifetime investment for students (not to mention the positive externalities educated populations have on society at large). The bulk of US college students attend colleges who do not have the resources to build high-quality, industry relevant curriculum, train teachers to teach with modern pedagogy, and efficiently manage dorms, student affairs, and other administrative infrastructure

HYPSM choosing to share land, curriculum, expertise, and administrative infrastructure through network'd partnerships would lead to massive economies of scale and a broad reduction of educational costs. Another way to think about this - is one city of 1 million people more efficient to run per capita than 10 cities of 100k people? The answer is a resounding yes due to urban scaling. Colleges are effectively mini-cities

"I think that you fundamentally misunderstand the markers that make an in-person education higher quality" -> I founded an in-person college with regional accreditation that had a lot more 1:1 and small group teacher time than HYPSM and an average starting salary on par with CS grads from these schools. Our alumni have gone on to become YC founders and can be found at most top tech companies and startups

It is a choice to value exclusivity for exclusivity's sake (eg. withholding JSTOR data from students of colleges who can't afford those costs). The best institutions (eg. YC, Apple) care a lot more about what you can build than what school you got into at age 17

Post reply on HN