91–100 of 372 posts
College is too expensive, but it's not because people who work at universities are overpaid.
There should be a middle ground in reducing costs of overpaid bureaucratic bloat while also providing everyone on campus enough support, from undergrads to grad students to professors, etc.
The best solution here is just to start enforcing pip quotas lol.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you have the causality all backwards. Colleges with quality gain prestige, which makes people willing to borrow extra money to go there, which creates windfall profits administrators can use to increase their personal standing by hiring more headcount and do things like paint the dorms and buy fancier food. That doesn't mean people's priorities in college choice are primarily or even significantly determined…
I respectfully disagree. It is true—prestige grants price flexibility for the college. They can charge more equivalent to their relative standing. But what leads to that reputation? How do you measure quality of education?What makes Harvard better than any other college at educating students? How much better? What percentage? Okay now prove it. At least in a succinct explainable way. No, prestige is based on awarenes…
I think the article misses the root cause here. Drastically increased availability of loan-based financial aid means far more more money in the system, which means the prices go up. The article nails the cause of more administrators--the schools have more money to spend and need to spend it--but completely misses the reason schools are able to charge so much more these days.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you have the causality all backwards. Colleges with quality gain prestige, which makes people willing to borrow extra money to go there, which creates windfall profits administrators can use to increase their personal standing by hiring more headcount and do things like paint the dorms and buy fancier food. That doesn't mean people's priorities in college choice are primarily or even significantly determined…
> Colleges with quality gain prestige How do you define quality in this sense?
I think this relationship might be a bit backwards. Easy credit made it so demand for degrees outstripped capacity. Schools raised prices to meter demand. At these increased prices, schools felt compelled to invest in programs and administration. Also, as I understand it, the accreditation process is pretty broken in the country. Whatever the top programs are doing becomes the benchmark for everyone else to match. So…
Don’t employers have a contribution to this as well? There’s many positions that don’t really need college degrees yet list them as a requirement. I feel if people could get gainful employment without college, demand would fall.
a lot of cultural differences (and other historic path dependencies) led to using degrees and other signals for hiring instead of actual performance.
even by-definition woke (and I'm not using it pejoratively here) employers have trouble letting go of their mindless credentialism.
https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1539188973553299457 [audio version seems non-paywalled https://curio.io/publications/matthew-yglesias/matthew-ygles... see also https://www.slowboring.com/p/crt-school ]
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you have the causality all backwards. Colleges with quality gain prestige, which makes people willing to borrow extra money to go there, which creates windfall profits administrators can use to increase their personal standing by hiring more headcount and do things like paint the dorms and buy fancier food. That doesn't mean people's priorities in college choice are primarily or even significantly determined…
I respectfully disagree. It is true—prestige grants price flexibility for the college. They can charge more equivalent to their relative standing. But what leads to that reputation? How do you measure quality of education?What makes Harvard better than any other college at educating students? How much better? What percentage? Okay now prove it. At least in a succinct explainable way. No, prestige is based on awarenes…
Aren't most colleges turning away qualified students? If so, an enrollment spike is a decision by the college, not the result of increased demand.
Imo it is the bloated general education requirements, squeezing as much money from students as possible. It should only take 2 years to earn a bachelor’s. I believe if these classes were optional, they would not survive in the curriculum. University should not be in the business of propping up classes that no one wants, or professors who don’t have classes to teach.
> It should only take 2 years to earn a bachelor’s. In STEM? Certainly not. Calculus I/II/III(vector)/IV(linera algebra) Physics I/II Chem I/II That's two whole semesters just getting the basics . You've only got 8 courses left. In EE, that gets you: Circuits I/II, Digital I, Data Structures I, Computer Arch I, Signals & Systems, Electrostatics, Electrodynamics, You're out of courses, and you haven't even gotten outs…
First year is general math and science. Many people earn some of those credits in high school, so it's already effectively on an as-needed basis.
Second and third year are the core engineering curriculum. At that point, you have all the specific course prerequisites to start a master's program.
Fourth year is a capstone project. You could do that over a summer in the second calendar year. The electives are redundant if you're going to do a master's.
General education requirement is also redundant with high school, and is about a semester's worth of classes.
So depending on your first year preparation needs, it could be as little as two calendar years. Assuming the program requirements are reformed.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I respectfully disagree. It is true—prestige grants price flexibility for the college. They can charge more equivalent to their relative standing. But what leads to that reputation? How do you measure quality of education?What makes Harvard better than any other college at educating students? How much better? What percentage? Okay now prove it. At least in a succinct explainable way. No, prestige is based on awarenes…
"When a college builds a new fancy building they see an enrollment spike" Aren't most colleges turning away qualified students? If so, an enrollment spike is a decision by the college, not the result of increased demand.
Imo it is the bloated general education requirements, squeezing as much money from students as possible. It should only take 2 years to earn a bachelor’s. I believe if these classes were optional, they would not survive in the curriculum. University should not be in the business of propping up classes that no one wants, or professors who don’t have classes to teach.
> It should only take 2 years to earn a bachelor’s Only if you assume that the purpose of a bachelor's is to provide job training in one specific profession. Not so much if you believe in the value of a well-rounded education, for people who are likely to change careers multiple times, maybe also be civic leaders, etc. I'm not saying you're wrong, but the debate between these two visions has been going on for centuri…