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Apart from stratification of students into tracks, America could also learn not to crush its students with debt. A mandatory cap of tuition for universities re

Apart from stratification of students into tracks, America could also learn not to crush its students with debt. A mandatory cap of tuition for universities receiving federal-debt funded students would be a reasonable way to harness the beast of tuition price inflation created by zealous federal financing of debt and questionable promises of benefits of "college", which seem to have very little to do with training and everything to do with signaling. Colleges could then decide whether to accept students with federal debt by lowering tuition (and removing bloat) or not. Interested to hear ideas of pitfalls with this approach, and if they are worse than the situation of non-bankruptcy eligible mountains debt now.

matt4077 9y ago
I think stratification, or 'tracking; as it's called in the US I believe is one of the biggest failures of the German system. From my experience in the US, high schools are about 4-5x the size of German schools. That allows for flexible curricular within one school, where you can get into the advanced Calculus class but take it easier with foreign languages, and, most important do sports etc, with everyone. It really doesn't seem useful to sort people along a linear scale at 10 years of age, especially considering that empirically, the single most important factor for that decision is the parents' ambition. The US' biggest flaw is quality differences between schools. I can't get my head around the idea that school finances heavily depend on the immediate neighbourhood they're serving. That's both morally bankrupt and severely shortsighted. The larger schools also double or triple the average commute, costing US students an hour per day, strengthening reliance on cars and making social life harder than it needs to be.
- phreeza 9y ago
  I totally agree that stratification at age 10 is pretty terrible, but stratification in universities seems like a very different story. At college age, people are much more capable of making their own decisions, and their actual capabilities and weaknesses have also become clearer and more stable. And it's not like going to a Fachhochschule is going to set someone up for a hard life as being assigned to a Hauptschule pretty much does.
  - igk 9y ago
    Fachhochschule gets a bad rep from snobs, but having worked with graduates, they often beat university grads in application fields. It's just a different focus
    - phreeza 9y ago
      I agree. The point I was trying to make was that the choices between strata at the post-high school level are all quite good, unlike the choices that are presented at age 10.
    - Semaphor 9y ago
      Having started out at a University and switched to a Fachhochschule (Bachelor CS for both) I can say that there weren't more practical things at the FH, but everything was simply way easier. Math was simpler (mostly because it was usually applied as opposed to proofs, so I guess math was indeed more practical) and the CS courses were way below what the university offered. So I'd say it's certainly understandable when people look down on FH (because it can easily be the case that it's subpar)
  - kharms 9y ago
    >I totally agree that stratification at age 10 is pretty terrible, but stratification in universities seems like a very different story. What would it add that the choice of university and major doesn't? The math kids at MIT aren't so different from each other.
    - phreeza 9y ago
      I guess you could achieve the same effect with different majors, but in our system for example you can study majors that carry the same name, eg mechanical engineering, with a more theoretical or applied focus depending on which type of university you go to.
  - sotojuan 9y ago
    It's not rare for college students to spend their first or even second year of college with an undecided major while they find what they're interested in. It happened to me (and I still managed to graduate on time). In fact, that's what a lot of people like about college and it's why you see college described as a "place to experiment". > their actual capabilities and weaknesses have also become clearer and more stable Also not so sure about this. I've met MANY people who went in 99% sure of college major A but after a few classes and an internship they found out they suck at it/hate it.
- opportune 9y ago
  Oftentimes it's a funding issue, but not always. Even in large metropolitan cities where each student pretty much receives the same amount of funding, there are still massive differences in the quality of education. Unfortunately the issue goes much deeper than funding and involves issues like the wealth of the surrounding neighborhood, the culture of the students and their parents in that neighborhood, etc. Even if two schools in the same city get about $10k/year for each student, if one school has a median family income of $100k and the other a median family income of $15k, there is going to be an absolutely massive difference in educational outcomes.
  - ghaff 9y ago
    In fact it's pretty common for urban schools to spend significantly more than tony suburbs and have far worse outcomes. Student achievement depends a lot on home life and spending more on schools may help some but doesn't fundamentally change that fact.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - sotojuan 9y ago
    Something I noticed when I lived in non-assimilated[1] working class neighborhoods is that education just isn't that important. A lot of my neighbors graduated high school and started working for the family ASAP either in some sort of family business or a service job. Families stick together for generations so there's always someone to take care of the house and kids. For most people I talked to, the idea of sending their son or daughter to college (even a local one) was a risk and rarely considered. If all they want is their kid to graduate high school, they're not going to have the same approach to education as the $100k family with the opposite thought (they HAVE to go to college). [1] I made up this phrase to mean immigrant families who have been in the US for a few generations but have not assimilated to American middle class culture.
Shivetya 9y ago
Well besides limiting what universities could charge for specific courses we should also expect that some students would not qualify for aid unless they can demonstrate they can finish the program. there would still be private means to obtain the money to get the degree. we need to accept that higher education is not for all. I have said before, I don't believe any college should receive government funding until it adheres to a price per course hour as determined by the government. Government enforces such price control over medical costs reimbursed by government aid, through limits of what companies can charge the government for products and services; as in not more than offered to best customer; and so on.
autokad 9y ago
caps leads to shortages (no place to attend).
- thescriptkiddie 9y ago
  Then build more universities?
- closeparen 9y ago
  This is probably a good thing. Too many students waste time and money performing the surface-level ritual of college without any of the substance that the surface-level ritual is meant to support. Spending four years in a cloister of like-minded folks, free from banal concerns like work and meal prep, is a framework built for a specific purpose. Going to class, reading books, writing papers, working problem sets, taking exams, etc. are concrete, observable, trivially emulated behaviors meant to support and facilitate that purpose, not the purpose itself: absorbing, grappling with, and applying ideas. An enormous segment of existing seats in undergrad - entire institutions - are built around cargo-culting actual higher education through trivial busywork, graded to low standards. These seats are the worst offenders in the student debt problem: students are allowed to waste years of their lives, and all the money they can borrow, on performing a ritual that everyone else knows is hollow. We need to be aggressively closing party schools, not adding more of them. Another enormous segment of seats in freshman classes (at institutions with relaxed admissions but reasonable grading, like most state flagships) goes to people who will not graduate within six years. In some states, this is over half the college-bound population. These are a similar waste of time and money, and their occupants will not even have a fancy piece of paper to show for the time they spent filling these seats. We don't need more slots in state colleges, we need close to a 50% reduction. There are few people with the mental horsepower for the intellectual work that college is really about. Fewer still with the desire and determination to put in the work on a sustained basis. This population already fits comfortably into existing elite schools and the better departments of existing average schools. It's crucial to find every single one of these kids and get them to an institution where they will be challenged and thrive, regardless of their socioeconomic circumstances. It's crucial to make sure their rightful slots are not taken up by the mediocre children of the well-connected, though the upper middle class will have earned a disproportionate share through cultural practices and beliefs. But trying to get more people from outside this population perform the ritual college is a fool's errand. Expanding the population of students who can legitimately attack higher education by increasing the rigor and effectiveness of K12 is, on the other hand, a great idea.

matt4077 9y ago

I think stratification, or 'tracking; as it's called in the US I believe is one of the biggest failures of the German system. From my experience in the US, high schools are about 4-5x the size of German schools. That allows for flexible curricular within one school, where you can get into the advanced Calculus class but take it easier with foreign languages, and, most important do sports etc, with everyone. It really doesn't seem useful to sort people along a linear scale at 10 years of age, especially considering that empirically, the single most important factor for that decision is the parents' ambition. The US' biggest flaw is quality differences between schools. I can't get my head around the idea that school finances heavily depend on the immediate neighbourhood they're serving. That's both morally bankrupt and severely shortsighted. The larger schools also double or triple the average commute, costing US students an hour per day, strengthening reliance on cars and making social life harder than it needs to be.

phreeza 9y ago
I totally agree that stratification at age 10 is pretty terrible, but stratification in universities seems like a very different story. At college age, people are much more capable of making their own decisions, and their actual capabilities and weaknesses have also become clearer and more stable. And it's not like going to a Fachhochschule is going to set someone up for a hard life as being assigned to a Hauptschule pretty much does.
- igk 9y ago
  Fachhochschule gets a bad rep from snobs, but having worked with graduates, they often beat university grads in application fields. It's just a different focus
  - phreeza 9y ago
    I agree. The point I was trying to make was that the choices between strata at the post-high school level are all quite good, unlike the choices that are presented at age 10.
  - Semaphor 9y ago
    Having started out at a University and switched to a Fachhochschule (Bachelor CS for both) I can say that there weren't more practical things at the FH, but everything was simply way easier. Math was simpler (mostly because it was usually applied as opposed to proofs, so I guess math was indeed more practical) and the CS courses were way below what the university offered. So I'd say it's certainly understandable when people look down on FH (because it can easily be the case that it's subpar)
- kharms 9y ago
  >I totally agree that stratification at age 10 is pretty terrible, but stratification in universities seems like a very different story. What would it add that the choice of university and major doesn't? The math kids at MIT aren't so different from each other.
  - phreeza 9y ago
    I guess you could achieve the same effect with different majors, but in our system for example you can study majors that carry the same name, eg mechanical engineering, with a more theoretical or applied focus depending on which type of university you go to.
- sotojuan 9y ago
  It's not rare for college students to spend their first or even second year of college with an undecided major while they find what they're interested in. It happened to me (and I still managed to graduate on time). In fact, that's what a lot of people like about college and it's why you see college described as a "place to experiment". > their actual capabilities and weaknesses have also become clearer and more stable Also not so sure about this. I've met MANY people who went in 99% sure of college major A but after a few classes and an internship they found out they suck at it/hate it.
opportune 9y ago
Oftentimes it's a funding issue, but not always. Even in large metropolitan cities where each student pretty much receives the same amount of funding, there are still massive differences in the quality of education. Unfortunately the issue goes much deeper than funding and involves issues like the wealth of the surrounding neighborhood, the culture of the students and their parents in that neighborhood, etc. Even if two schools in the same city get about $10k/year for each student, if one school has a median family income of $100k and the other a median family income of $15k, there is going to be an absolutely massive difference in educational outcomes.
- ghaff 9y ago
  In fact it's pretty common for urban schools to spend significantly more than tony suburbs and have far worse outcomes. Student achievement depends a lot on home life and spending more on schools may help some but doesn't fundamentally change that fact.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- sotojuan 9y ago
  Something I noticed when I lived in non-assimilated[1] working class neighborhoods is that education just isn't that important. A lot of my neighbors graduated high school and started working for the family ASAP either in some sort of family business or a service job. Families stick together for generations so there's always someone to take care of the house and kids. For most people I talked to, the idea of sending their son or daughter to college (even a local one) was a risk and rarely considered. If all they want is their kid to graduate high school, they're not going to have the same approach to education as the $100k family with the opposite thought (they HAVE to go to college). [1] I made up this phrase to mean immigrant families who have been in the US for a few generations but have not assimilated to American middle class culture.

Shivetya 9y ago

Well besides limiting what universities could charge for specific courses we should also expect that some students would not qualify for aid unless they can demonstrate they can finish the program. there would still be private means to obtain the money to get the degree. we need to accept that higher education is not for all. I have said before, I don't believe any college should receive government funding until it adheres to a price per course hour as determined by the government. Government enforces such price control over medical costs reimbursed by government aid, through limits of what companies can charge the government for products and services; as in not more than offered to best customer; and so on.

autokad 9y ago

caps leads to shortages (no place to attend).

thescriptkiddie 9y ago
Then build more universities?
closeparen 9y ago
This is probably a good thing. Too many students waste time and money performing the surface-level ritual of college without any of the substance that the surface-level ritual is meant to support. Spending four years in a cloister of like-minded folks, free from banal concerns like work and meal prep, is a framework built for a specific purpose. Going to class, reading books, writing papers, working problem sets, taking exams, etc. are concrete, observable, trivially emulated behaviors meant to support and facilitate that purpose, not the purpose itself: absorbing, grappling with, and applying ideas. An enormous segment of existing seats in undergrad - entire institutions - are built around cargo-culting actual higher education through trivial busywork, graded to low standards. These seats are the worst offenders in the student debt problem: students are allowed to waste years of their lives, and all the money they can borrow, on performing a ritual that everyone else knows is hollow. We need to be aggressively closing party schools, not adding more of them. Another enormous segment of seats in freshman classes (at institutions with relaxed admissions but reasonable grading, like most state flagships) goes to people who will not graduate within six years. In some states, this is over half the college-bound population. These are a similar waste of time and money, and their occupants will not even have a fancy piece of paper to show for the time they spent filling these seats. We don't need more slots in state colleges, we need close to a 50% reduction. There are few people with the mental horsepower for the intellectual work that college is really about. Fewer still with the desire and determination to put in the work on a sustained basis. This population already fits comfortably into existing elite schools and the better departments of existing average schools. It's crucial to find every single one of these kids and get them to an institution where they will be challenged and thrive, regardless of their socioeconomic circumstances. It's crucial to make sure their rightful slots are not taken up by the mediocre children of the well-connected, though the upper middle class will have earned a disproportionate share through cultural practices and beliefs. But trying to get more people from outside this population perform the ritual college is a fool's errand. Expanding the population of students who can legitimately attack higher education by increasing the rigor and effectiveness of K12 is, on the other hand, a great idea.