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Will America’s universities go the way of its car companies?

economist.com

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Re: Will America’s universities go the way of its car companies?

#91

Post by bh42 »

nanairo wrote: post #25

I must admit that I am always a bit prejudicial when I hear an business person (or a business magazine like this) talking about universities. They seem to view Universities as a business proposal: "How much do we invest? How much do we get out of it?", which it shouldn't be. Take this quote: "If colleges were businesses, they would be ripe for hostile takeovers, complete with serious cost-cutting and painful reorgani…

Instead Universities should also help the student become full rounded

Full roundedness is a financial luxury, of concern only to those who are financial at least relatively well off.

If universities are serious about the love of knowledge, learning for learning's sake, and all that jazz, then they should offer 100% free degrees.

If you have your own place to live, and can do the work, you should be able to get a degree full of well roundedness for absolutely no money.

Re: Will America’s universities go the way of its car companies?

#92

Post by potatolicious »

kscaldef wrote: post #88
potatolicious wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "How do we persuade people not to go to college?" I think that's the wrong way to look at it. The argument is always practical vs. impractical degrees - but that's not all of it. The problem is twofold, IMHO: - Impractical degrees are disproportionately expensive compared to their earning power. You learn a lot of stuff, go deeply into debt, and wind up not being able to pay it off. In short: impractical degrees ar…

But, are you sure that the "impractical" degree programs are actually doing any better? Perhaps at top private schools one can get a good liberal arts education, but my observation going to a public school was that the science and engineering students generally seemed more well-rounded and more broadly educated compared to the vast hoards coasting along in psych, soc, and polysci; who were mostly interested in the pa…

I've had many friends in many colleges, some of whom went into the sciences, and others into arts... beyond a limited demographic there were few people who were solely there to party. It's a tired stereotype perpetuated by shitty movies.

My experience has been that arts students tend to be more aware of, well, life in general - politics, the arts, social issues, etc, whereas engineering students were more or less of the "oh, I've heard OF it..."

There are two beneficiaries to post-secondary education: the student, and society (particularly, democracy) at large. The problem here is that the way things are structured, the degree programs that will most benefit a free, democratic society will make you broke, forcing people to choose one that will most benefit themselves only.

We risk creating an entire generation of mindless, uncultured automatons hyper-obsessed with material wealth, wading knee-deep through a pool of educated but broke people.

It wasn't always this way - there was a time when getting an engineering degree also meant a breadth of education in indirectly related subject areas. Where engineers took music, sociology, and fine arts... I've noticed a rapid decline in breadth in engineering programs, though, and IMHO this is a silent problem that has yet to rear its ugly head in the papers.

Re: Will America’s universities go the way of its car companies?

#93

Post by [deleted] »

dragoon wrote: post #11
carbocation wrote: post #7

In contrast to what this surprisingly uninformed piece claims, the top universities do compete on price. In fact, they offer incredibly good financial aid packages to people not even remotely poor (families earning over 100k still get discounts). Thus, very few end up paying the sticker price. There actually is downward pressure on price, but this is because it's coming from the top schools, not from any disruptive f…

In fact, they offer incredibly good financial aid packages to people not even remotely poor (families earning over 100k still get discounts). Thus, very few end up paying the sticker price. I wouldn't say it's "incredibly good financial aid", especially in light of the nightmarishly high tuitions universities now charge and the fact that an inordinately high percentage of people have to take on nondischargeable debt.…

[deleted]

Re: Will America’s universities go the way of its car companies?

#94

Post by carbocation »

dragoon wrote: post #80
lg wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can tell you from experience: people making upper-middle income don't get much aid from the ivies. If you're poor, it's free, and if you're rich, who cares, but if your family's income is in the low six figures, you're looking at big loans.

I know that. I was saying that in reference to his claim that 55% of Yale students receive financial aid, which is a bit of a red herring, because the vast majority of Americans qualify for some (but often not much) aid.

Why does the fact that most Americans qualify for some aid make the Yale's 55%-on-financial-aid stat a red herring?

(I suspect that, in what I write below below, I must not be responding to your actual point, but can you clarify what your point is?)

It's not like Yale is giving lip service to aid - it's giving $92,000,000 annually. This means that, on average, each Yale student gets $17,700 per year.

But since we know that 55% receive financial aid, it means that among those who do receive aid, the average package is $31,000 per year.

55% of Yale students get almost their entire tuition paid for by the university. This is not counting outside scholarships, etc. This isn't just "some" aid - this is a huge amount of aid on an annual per-individual basis.

Re: Will America’s universities go the way of its car companies?

#95

Post by nagrom »

potatolicious wrote: post #92
kscaldef wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But, are you sure that the "impractical" degree programs are actually doing any better? Perhaps at top private schools one can get a good liberal arts education, but my observation going to a public school was that the science and engineering students generally seemed more well-rounded and more broadly educated compared to the vast hoards coasting along in psych, soc, and polysci; who were mostly interested in the pa…

I've had many friends in many colleges, some of whom went into the sciences, and others into arts... beyond a limited demographic there were few people who were solely there to party. It's a tired stereotype perpetuated by shitty movies. My experience has been that arts students tend to be more aware of, well, life in general - politics, the arts, social issues, etc, whereas engineering students were more or less of…

In my experience, STEM students are interested in solving problems. They are simply uninterested in learning bout problems which they cannot solve. Many of the `life in general' subjects you speak about are problems that cannot be solved...only moved in one way or another.

If they had solutions, if they appealed to an analytical mind then you would have interested STEM students. Maybe there should be a course taught by top politicians, spin doctors and media moguls: `Hacking Public Consciousness'. I almost guarantee that this would attract the students you talk about.

Re: Will America’s universities go the way of its car companies?

#96

Post by JabavuAdams »

timwiseman wrote: post #59
JabavuAdams wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to think that these are independent issues. I.e. if we just throw more money at basic literacy, road-maintenance, and policing, then society will be better. If we throw money at art and cultural education, then we're losing out on money for the above. The fact is that a lot of social problems stem from cultural problems. You can keep throwing money and teachers at those kids down the street, but it won't get…

Yummyfajitas said it quite nicely, but permit me to say it on my own behalf. I am not at all saying do not spend my tax dollars on things that don't directly benefit me. I said that we should not spend it on things like art and literature until after we have taken care of things like basic education, infrastructure, law enforcement, and yes even universal healthcare and gaurunteed access to sufficient food. I am a gr…

Ok, I read too much into your comment, so I apologize for the "selfish" remark.

I've composed a few half-responses, but I'm wrestling with what I'm trying to articulate.

I think what it comes down to is that the issues you cite will never be fully fixed. Second, but more importantly, the amount of money required to support cultural projects is tiny compared to, say, infrastructure upgrades.

So, I object to the idea that we can't do any of that (with tax dollars) until these other things are done. In reality, if we adopt that attitude, it'll be too easy for fear-mongers to kill any cultural project.

There is the thorny issue of the government using tax dollars to fund art work that I hate, or that offends me, but one of the cultural goods I value is a tolerance of that. I.e. I don't like that, but I'm glad to live in a society that could produce it, alongside the stuff I do like.

Re: Will America’s universities go the way of its car companies?

#97

Post by wisty »

ewams wrote: post #49
showerst wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I upvoted you, but on the flip side, we currently have a large number of students who are coming out of college with low real-world value degrees and huge amounts of debt. It's probably unsustainable to have 175,000 psych and history majors[1] graduating every year with 10-20,000 dollars in debt[2]. (Not to speak of all the business/marketing majors) I'm not saying that colleges should turn into work-training program…

How is this the fault of the institute? If people are pursuing what they want, and the institute is providing it, then they are succeeding in sharing knowledge. Isn't this the mission statement of most colleges and universities? There are reasons schools like ITT and University of Phoenix exist; and a whole different reason for schools like MIT, RIT, Standford, etc. to exist. People need to realize that there is no n…

The issue isn't that 175k students love history. The issue is that 175k students have been told "This degree will teach you how to think, not what to think", and that they will learn how to free their minds while contributing to the cultural dialog of the nation. It's a great hook, but it's not always true.

Reality - arts degrees don't teach you how to think. They teach you how to argue more forcefully - give three reasons and a summary, not just one reason. Also, pretend to have considered the other side of the case before you dismiss it.

Reality - this cultural dialog is a bunch of guys with no idea of business or economics arguing about what is, essentially, business and economics.

Re: Will America’s universities go the way of its car companies?

#98

Post by kscaldef »

potatolicious wrote: post #92
kscaldef wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But, are you sure that the "impractical" degree programs are actually doing any better? Perhaps at top private schools one can get a good liberal arts education, but my observation going to a public school was that the science and engineering students generally seemed more well-rounded and more broadly educated compared to the vast hoards coasting along in psych, soc, and polysci; who were mostly interested in the pa…

I've had many friends in many colleges, some of whom went into the sciences, and others into arts... beyond a limited demographic there were few people who were solely there to party. It's a tired stereotype perpetuated by shitty movies. My experience has been that arts students tend to be more aware of, well, life in general - politics, the arts, social issues, etc, whereas engineering students were more or less of…

It's a tired stereotype perpetuated by shitty movies.

What, and your statement that scientist and engineers don't care about anything else wasn't?

Look, this is all anecdotal, but the CS/science/math/engineering students I knew in school were generally voracious readers, well informed about current events, politically opinionated in a highly educated way, appreciative of the arts, and involved in extra-curricular activities. They were frequently well-traveled, multi-lingual, and musicians. They were reasonably well represented in student government.

Maybe the schools you went to were different, but this is my experience.

Re: Will America’s universities go the way of its car companies?

#99

Post by stan_rogers »

patinador wrote: post #87
stan_rogers wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the point where people from my neck of the woods (Ontario, and, frankly, most of Canada) suffer severe cognitive dissonance. We have two very different post-secondary tracks, and around these parts a "college" in colloquial parlance is a diploma-granting institute aimed at providing students with marketable skills (technicians, technologists, accountants, nurses who have no aspirations to teach nursing later)…

Clear goals. Different goals require distinct methods to achieve them. College and University. Perhaps we need more ways to teach and educate people. Ideally one desire thinkers than can translate things into action, but while this is a goal, why don't we try to find the way to give every student the best way to build a good education?

That's more-or-less the point of the two tracks. To put in in a frame that will be familiar to most of the readers here, the study of computability (computer science) is a fascinating theoretical pursuit that has some practical application in the real world, but that theoretical base is often glossed over in the rush to produce "qualified" programmers. Here, at least, the coder stream is in one track (with a sound theoretical base), while the mathematical and electrical engineering streams are in the other. There's nothing preventing a computer scientist from learning to code, nor is there anything keeping a diploma-toting programmer from pursuing mathematics further, it's just far less likely that a kid going into a computer science program is going to expect to emerge from the program as a code monkey or that one entering a programming stream will be wondering when the damned algebra is going to end.

Re: Will America’s universities go the way of its car companies?

#100

Post by CamperBob »

timwiseman wrote: post #59
JabavuAdams wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to think that these are independent issues. I.e. if we just throw more money at basic literacy, road-maintenance, and policing, then society will be better. If we throw money at art and cultural education, then we're losing out on money for the above. The fact is that a lot of social problems stem from cultural problems. You can keep throwing money and teachers at those kids down the street, but it won't get…

Yummyfajitas said it quite nicely, but permit me to say it on my own behalf. I am not at all saying do not spend my tax dollars on things that don't directly benefit me. I said that we should not spend it on things like art and literature until after we have taken care of things like basic education, infrastructure, law enforcement, and yes even universal healthcare and gaurunteed access to sufficient food. I am a gr…

Many of the problems you name have little or nothing to do with lack of funding. You can't fix poverty by throwing money at it. At least, nobody has ever managed to do it.
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