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> Essentially, a good liberal arts education transforms your world-view of those subjects the same way a good engineering education does. I think most people a

> Essentially, a good liberal arts education transforms your world-view of those subjects the same way a good engineering education does. I think most people agree with that, they just disagree that it's worth paying $50/hour to get. Go into any high end coffee place and you'll find someone you can have a good discussion with about liberal arts-related topics. I was talking about Jeffersonian vs. Hamiltonian democracy with a member of the U.S. Foreign Service at a coffee place a couple months ago. Talked for two hours - cost was $5 for an iced tea. Sure beats paying $150 for a three hour lecture and getting assigned some busywork essay at the end of it.

roc 16y ago
Isn't that like arguing that you can pick up programming knowledge on internet discussion boards cheaper than a degree program? In theory, sure, you can. In your spare time you might run into someone who really knows his shit and enlightens you. But, just as with the coffee shop, more times than not you run into people whose facade of knowledge would shatter the first time you ask a question. Trick being, if you barely understand the topic yourself, you'll only stumble onto a question that exposes their ignorance by chance. You're as likely to be led completely astray and have your time wasted as not. Further, the chance that a given discussion board or coffee shop will contain someone interested and educated in the particular concepts you care to discuss when you care to discuss them gets pretty damn small beyond trivial depth. The reasonable component in the price of higher education is about the quality of the interpretation and dialogue between yourself, the professor and the other students. In short, you're paying to have some assurance that the discussion and/or lecture will be of a higher quality than you would find elsewhere and some assurance the discussion will occur and be relevant at a given time.
- lionhearted 16y ago
  > Isn't that like arguing that you can pick up programming knowledge on internet discussion boards cheaper than a degree program? Nah, it's more arguing that you'd be better off learning by contributing to Open Source - then you'd get lessons and contacts for free instead of paying a lot of money to get. > The reasonable component in the price of higher education is about the quality of the interpretation and dialogue between yourself, the professor and the other students. $150 per class is a lot man, you can't just brush that aside. You can live on $150 for a whole week if you're frugal and live with roommates. And that's just one class. A day with four classes = $600 you're now in debt. That's a month of rent and cooked food if you're willing to slum it. Work on OSS, freelance, connect with people from the community - I say a month's worth of "living time" is worth a hell of a lot more than four classes.
  - encoderer 16y ago
    Agreed. Hard to argue that price inflation in education hasn't reduced its value. Not its worth -- that's remained or even increased. But its value.
    - cynicalkane 16y ago
      I don't understand the distinction you're making. Did you mean "marginal value" instead of "value"?
      - encoderer 16y ago
        No, Value.
        cynicalkane 16y ago
        What? In normal English, value and worth are nearly the same thing. In economic English, value is worth, usually spoken of relative to other worthwhile things, but not relative to price. So I don't understand you at all.
      - jazzdev 16y ago
        I interpreted that to mean value = worth - price So as the price goes up, the value you get goes down.
    - Tamerlin 16y ago
      So, define "value" in the context of an education.
- pjscott 16y ago
  There are other options. For example you can get a huge number of humanities lectures from good universities online. Try out "iTunes U" sometime if you haven't seen it already; it's got top-quality lectures, but not the discussion. (This discussion component should be cheaper to provide than the whole package. There's probably a startup opportunity here. I don't know where you can get such discussion now, though.) Anyway, it's a large part of what you'd get in college, free. All you have to do is make a commitment to watch some lectures and study supplementary material if you don't understand something. It's a hell of a bargain.

roc 16y ago

Isn't that like arguing that you can pick up programming knowledge on internet discussion boards cheaper than a degree program? In theory, sure, you can. In your spare time you might run into someone who really knows his shit and enlightens you. But, just as with the coffee shop, more times than not you run into people whose facade of knowledge would shatter the first time you ask a question. Trick being, if you barely understand the topic yourself, you'll only stumble onto a question that exposes their ignorance by chance. You're as likely to be led completely astray and have your time wasted as not. Further, the chance that a given discussion board or coffee shop will contain someone interested and educated in the particular concepts you care to discuss when you care to discuss them gets pretty damn small beyond trivial depth. The reasonable component in the price of higher education is about the quality of the interpretation and dialogue between yourself, the professor and the other students. In short, you're paying to have some assurance that the discussion and/or lecture will be of a higher quality than you would find elsewhere and some assurance the discussion will occur and be relevant at a given time.

lionhearted 16y ago
> Isn't that like arguing that you can pick up programming knowledge on internet discussion boards cheaper than a degree program? Nah, it's more arguing that you'd be better off learning by contributing to Open Source - then you'd get lessons and contacts for free instead of paying a lot of money to get. > The reasonable component in the price of higher education is about the quality of the interpretation and dialogue between yourself, the professor and the other students. $150 per class is a lot man, you can't just brush that aside. You can live on $150 for a whole week if you're frugal and live with roommates. And that's just one class. A day with four classes = $600 you're now in debt. That's a month of rent and cooked food if you're willing to slum it. Work on OSS, freelance, connect with people from the community - I say a month's worth of "living time" is worth a hell of a lot more than four classes.
- encoderer 16y ago
  Agreed. Hard to argue that price inflation in education hasn't reduced its value. Not its worth -- that's remained or even increased. But its value.
  - cynicalkane 16y ago
    I don't understand the distinction you're making. Did you mean "marginal value" instead of "value"?
    - encoderer 16y ago
      No, Value.
      - cynicalkane 16y ago
        What? In normal English, value and worth are nearly the same thing. In economic English, value is worth, usually spoken of relative to other worthwhile things, but not relative to price. So I don't understand you at all.
    - jazzdev 16y ago
      I interpreted that to mean value = worth - price So as the price goes up, the value you get goes down.
  - Tamerlin 16y ago
    So, define "value" in the context of an education.
pjscott 16y ago
There are other options. For example you can get a huge number of humanities lectures from good universities online. Try out "iTunes U" sometime if you haven't seen it already; it's got top-quality lectures, but not the discussion. (This discussion component should be cheaper to provide than the whole package. There's probably a startup opportunity here. I don't know where you can get such discussion now, though.) Anyway, it's a large part of what you'd get in college, free. All you have to do is make a commitment to watch some lectures and study supplementary material if you don't understand something. It's a hell of a bargain.