5 ms·

The idiots do not realise they're paying for a chance to learn, not for a product to be delivered to them no matter what.

by sklogic 11y ago

lmm 11y ago
How would they? No-one's ever told them.
- sklogic 11y ago
  If the school system was not that crippled they should have already known it in depth.
- hyperliner 11y ago
  Certainly they have not been told by their parents.
valdiorn 11y ago
They are not idiots. If you pay half your annual income, you SHOULD expect to get some damn good service for your money. Schools should be free, but seeing how they're not, I see nothing wrong with students demanding their money's worth, and some slack if they fall behind on classwork. People should read Freakonomics.
- sklogic 11y ago
  > They are not idiots. They are indeed. > If you pay half your annual income, you SHOULD expect to get some damn good service for your money. No. This is a blatant consumerism. It does not matter even a tiny bit how much do you pay - 1/2 of your income, 100x your income, whatever. > Schools should be free, Of course, in an ideal world. But we have to deal with what we have and to make sure it's not destroyed beyond any hope. Do you expect "some damn good service" when you buy a lottery ticket or when you bet all your money on a horse? Will you harass the jokey for not winning that round? Tuition fees are paid for an access to an infrastructure. That's it. Not for a degree, not for the better grades, not for a "humane" treatment. Just for a chance to learn and nothing else.
  - valdiorn 11y ago
    > > They are not idiots. > They are indeed. This is blatant ignorance.
  - relkor 11y ago
    If we are paying for access to the infrastructure, then why are students boxed into many separate cells staffed by a human "teacher". If you admit the teacher unit is worthless, then why are they there? According to your business plan the tuition does not go to pay the teachers, so then where did these teachers (who have no role what so ever in your view of education) get funding. I want to know. If we were just paying for access to infrastructure, then why are we not packed into large warehouses filled with desks and library books, overseen by a single armed guard on an overhead walkway? That would more efficient, and we all know us evil capitalists love efficiency. Just because you pay money for something does not mean you can invoke the specter of consumerism and then proceed to shame it. You need water, no doubt about it. Is it evil when you pay for clean water?
    - sklogic 11y ago
      Teachers time is a part of this infrastructure. They're paying for it, they're getting their share. How to use that time is 100% their responsibility.
  - geofft 11y ago
    No, I refuse to buy lottery tickets. What we are really seeing here is market forces that make the current university structure -- with its emphasis on research over quality of teaching -- a terrible product, just like a lottery ticket is a terrible product. Smart consumers don't spend £9,000 a year on lottery tickets. At the moment, the universal desire for a degree from an accredited college is propping up these institutions. But that's going to go away someday. And in the Information Age, I have plenty of "access to an infrastructure" outside of the university walls. There is not a single thing I learned academically from my pricey MIT degree that I could not have learned by reading textbooks and websites on my own. (And most of the time I did learn that way, better than from lectures.) But I wouldn't have been able to put "MIT graduate" on my resume and I wouldn't have gotten the connections out of it. So that's why I went.
- pmontra 11y ago
  Maybe they misunderstand the service they're buying. It could be seen as this: the admission to exams that eventually may give them a degree and the assistance of a professional, within some limits, with some rights and some duties. On the other side the career of many professors depends more on the papers they produce than the students they help. The interests of professors and students are in conflict so a clash of this kind is inevitable.
relkor 11y ago
I would be happy to sell you a chance to eat, or a chance for medial care, or a chance for housing. Education is as necessary as a public utility. To charge any price for a chance to learn while billing as a product (actually knowing things about the world) is a pure example of fraud.
- sklogic 11y ago
  > or a chance for medial care This is exactly how it works. It's called a "postcode lottery" here. > Education is as necessary as a public utility Of course it must be free. But when it's not, you're not paying for a product, you're only paying for a chance to learn. > actually knowing things about the world It's 100% a students responsibility to learn. Schools can only provide with an access to an infrastructure (and this is what tuition fees are for) and a little, non-intrusive guidance. Nobody can force the students to learn anything. Nobody can forcefully stuff the knowledge into them. It just does not work this way, and it does not matter how much you do not like it. It's a direct consequence of the human nature. And most definitely, a degree is not a "product". It's a luxury to be earned, not something "guaranteed".
- distances 11y ago
  Food can be guaranteed. Functionality of medical care doesn't often depend on the actions of the patient. Learning can only happen with active studying. Nobody can push the knowledge into your brain. All you are offered is the chance to learn, and no guarantees of graduating if you turn out to be incompetent at it.
  - balabaster 11y ago
    > Functionality of medical care doesn't often depend on the actions of the patient. Actually, the functionality of medical care does depend on the actions of the patient to do what the medical system instructs them to do. When a person doesn't follow doctor's orders, there is a high possibility that the person in need of medical care doesn't actually get the results they expect. > All you are offered is the chance to learn, and no guarantees of graduating if you turn out to be incompetent at it. While I agree with your sentiment and the principle of what you're suggesting, most universities aren't packaging it like this. When you see the ads and you read their propaganda... er, I mean their pretty glossy brochures, they are selling it as exactly that: "Come to XU, get a degree in Y, our graduates have a 100% career placement success." "Get a degree in X, the best value in the country, no other University offers our graduation statistics." They might as well be a play by play from the consumer manipulation handbook. So I can't blame students for playing it both ways. I don't think students are stupid at all, I'm sure many of them know that they're not actually buying the degree, but they're all too well versed in how the media is being used to manipulate things to their own ends, and the student playing dumb to that manipulation and using it to their own ends is a classic example of using the University's own tactics against them.
Thriptic 11y ago
A lot of (and I would actually argue most) people are solely there to get a piece of paper which lets them have access to a decent job, and they're paying enormous amounts of money (and many times taking on dangerous levels of debt) to get that piece of paper. For all intents and purposes, they ARE paying for a product, and that's how they view it. College has become a barrier to entry to the job market, and when a system is set up where someone's performance on (sometimes quite arbitrary) classes impacts their ability to get a job, those people aren't going to behave like model students, they're going to optimize for a high grade. I'm frankly quite surprised that this academician author can't understand this.
- sklogic 11y ago
  > are solely there to get a piece of paper And why should anybody care at all about this disgusting and lowly category? They wanted to game the system, they got what they deserved. > and many times taking on dangerous levels of debt Student loans are quite a peculiar form of a debt. They can be largely ignored quite for a while (or ignored at all). > College has become a barrier to entry to the job market, In most of the areas this is not true. In the other areas this is great, let's keep it this way as long as possible. I do not want to be butchered by a doctor who bypassed an assessment on their "performance on (sometimes quite arbitrary) classes" by simply paying more. If anything, this performance assessment must become more and more rigorous and tough. We need a grade deflation, not a grade inflation. EDIT: since the article is UK-specific, I am talking about the UK only. Student loans here would not cripple anyone financially.
  - mathieuh 11y ago
    > And why should anybody care at all about this disgusting and lowly category? They wanted to game the system, they got what they deserved. Because (at least for me (and everyone I've spoken to)) university is completely useless. I haven't learnt anything in uni I hadn't already taught myself. I am 100% paying for the letters after my name.
    - sklogic 11y ago

The idiots do not realise they're paying for a chance to learn, not for a product to be delivered to them no matter what.

by sklogic 11y ago

The idiots do not realise they're paying for a chance to learn, not for a product to be delivered to them no matter what.

lmm 11y ago

How would they? No-one's ever told them.

sklogic 11y ago
If the school system was not that crippled they should have already known it in depth.
hyperliner 11y ago
Certainly they have not been told by their parents.

valdiorn 11y ago

They are not idiots. If you pay half your annual income, you SHOULD expect to get some damn good service for your money. Schools should be free, but seeing how they're not, I see nothing wrong with students demanding their money's worth, and some slack if they fall behind on classwork. People should read Freakonomics.

sklogic 11y ago
> They are not idiots. They are indeed. > If you pay half your annual income, you SHOULD expect to get some damn good service for your money. No. This is a blatant consumerism. It does not matter even a tiny bit how much do you pay - 1/2 of your income, 100x your income, whatever. > Schools should be free, Of course, in an ideal world. But we have to deal with what we have and to make sure it's not destroyed beyond any hope. Do you expect "some damn good service" when you buy a lottery ticket or when you bet all your money on a horse? Will you harass the jokey for not winning that round? Tuition fees are paid for an access to an infrastructure. That's it. Not for a degree, not for the better grades, not for a "humane" treatment. Just for a chance to learn and nothing else.
- valdiorn 11y ago
  > > They are not idiots. > They are indeed. This is blatant ignorance.
- relkor 11y ago
  If we are paying for access to the infrastructure, then why are students boxed into many separate cells staffed by a human "teacher". If you admit the teacher unit is worthless, then why are they there? According to your business plan the tuition does not go to pay the teachers, so then where did these teachers (who have no role what so ever in your view of education) get funding. I want to know. If we were just paying for access to infrastructure, then why are we not packed into large warehouses filled with desks and library books, overseen by a single armed guard on an overhead walkway? That would more efficient, and we all know us evil capitalists love efficiency. Just because you pay money for something does not mean you can invoke the specter of consumerism and then proceed to shame it. You need water, no doubt about it. Is it evil when you pay for clean water?
  - sklogic 11y ago
    Teachers time is a part of this infrastructure. They're paying for it, they're getting their share. How to use that time is 100% their responsibility.
- geofft 11y ago
  No, I refuse to buy lottery tickets. What we are really seeing here is market forces that make the current university structure -- with its emphasis on research over quality of teaching -- a terrible product, just like a lottery ticket is a terrible product. Smart consumers don't spend £9,000 a year on lottery tickets. At the moment, the universal desire for a degree from an accredited college is propping up these institutions. But that's going to go away someday. And in the Information Age, I have plenty of "access to an infrastructure" outside of the university walls. There is not a single thing I learned academically from my pricey MIT degree that I could not have learned by reading textbooks and websites on my own. (And most of the time I did learn that way, better than from lectures.) But I wouldn't have been able to put "MIT graduate" on my resume and I wouldn't have gotten the connections out of it. So that's why I went.
pmontra 11y ago
Maybe they misunderstand the service they're buying. It could be seen as this: the admission to exams that eventually may give them a degree and the assistance of a professional, within some limits, with some rights and some duties. On the other side the career of many professors depends more on the papers they produce than the students they help. The interests of professors and students are in conflict so a clash of this kind is inevitable.

relkor 11y ago

I would be happy to sell you a chance to eat, or a chance for medial care, or a chance for housing. Education is as necessary as a public utility. To charge any price for a chance to learn while billing as a product (actually knowing things about the world) is a pure example of fraud.

sklogic 11y ago
> or a chance for medial care This is exactly how it works. It's called a "postcode lottery" here. > Education is as necessary as a public utility Of course it must be free. But when it's not, you're not paying for a product, you're only paying for a chance to learn. > actually knowing things about the world It's 100% a students responsibility to learn. Schools can only provide with an access to an infrastructure (and this is what tuition fees are for) and a little, non-intrusive guidance. Nobody can force the students to learn anything. Nobody can forcefully stuff the knowledge into them. It just does not work this way, and it does not matter how much you do not like it. It's a direct consequence of the human nature. And most definitely, a degree is not a "product". It's a luxury to be earned, not something "guaranteed".
distances 11y ago
Food can be guaranteed. Functionality of medical care doesn't often depend on the actions of the patient. Learning can only happen with active studying. Nobody can push the knowledge into your brain. All you are offered is the chance to learn, and no guarantees of graduating if you turn out to be incompetent at it.
- balabaster 11y ago
  > Functionality of medical care doesn't often depend on the actions of the patient. Actually, the functionality of medical care does depend on the actions of the patient to do what the medical system instructs them to do. When a person doesn't follow doctor's orders, there is a high possibility that the person in need of medical care doesn't actually get the results they expect. > All you are offered is the chance to learn, and no guarantees of graduating if you turn out to be incompetent at it. While I agree with your sentiment and the principle of what you're suggesting, most universities aren't packaging it like this. When you see the ads and you read their propaganda... er, I mean their pretty glossy brochures, they are selling it as exactly that: "Come to XU, get a degree in Y, our graduates have a 100% career placement success." "Get a degree in X, the best value in the country, no other University offers our graduation statistics." They might as well be a play by play from the consumer manipulation handbook. So I can't blame students for playing it both ways. I don't think students are stupid at all, I'm sure many of them know that they're not actually buying the degree, but they're all too well versed in how the media is being used to manipulate things to their own ends, and the student playing dumb to that manipulation and using it to their own ends is a classic example of using the University's own tactics against them.

Thriptic 11y ago

A lot of (and I would actually argue most) people are solely there to get a piece of paper which lets them have access to a decent job, and they're paying enormous amounts of money (and many times taking on dangerous levels of debt) to get that piece of paper. For all intents and purposes, they ARE paying for a product, and that's how they view it. College has become a barrier to entry to the job market, and when a system is set up where someone's performance on (sometimes quite arbitrary) classes impacts their ability to get a job, those people aren't going to behave like model students, they're going to optimize for a high grade. I'm frankly quite surprised that this academician author can't understand this.

sklogic 11y ago
> are solely there to get a piece of paper And why should anybody care at all about this disgusting and lowly category? They wanted to game the system, they got what they deserved. > and many times taking on dangerous levels of debt Student loans are quite a peculiar form of a debt. They can be largely ignored quite for a while (or ignored at all). > College has become a barrier to entry to the job market, In most of the areas this is not true. In the other areas this is great, let's keep it this way as long as possible. I do not want to be butchered by a doctor who bypassed an assessment on their "performance on (sometimes quite arbitrary) classes" by simply paying more. If anything, this performance assessment must become more and more rigorous and tough. We need a grade deflation, not a grade inflation. EDIT: since the article is UK-specific, I am talking about the UK only. Student loans here would not cripple anyone financially.
- mathieuh 11y ago
  > And why should anybody care at all about this disgusting and lowly category? They wanted to game the system, they got what they deserved. Because (at least for me (and everyone I've spoken to)) university is completely useless. I haven't learnt anything in uni I hadn't already taught myself. I am 100% paying for the letters after my name.
  - sklogic 11y ago