8 ms·

The issue isn't that college is pointless, it's that tuition is too high and wages too low. You should support politicians with a plan to counter this trend. E

The issue isn't that college is pointless, it's that tuition is too high and wages too low. You should support politicians with a plan to counter this trend. Education is important. Raising the overall level of education in this country should be a much larger goal that it seems to be.

ericb 8y ago
> Raising the overall level of education in this country should be a much larger goal that it seems to be. On one level, I totally agree. At the same time, well-meaning attempts to make college loans available to everyone for everything seem to have massively bloated the cost of education to a crippling degree. I think the key is in the how of the approach.
- bluGill 8y ago
  That is the problem with politics: the unintended effects are always an issue. Of course everything else has this issue as well. The only difference is most of us start small, and if it works we expand. You can't do that easily for national programs.
  - stochastic_monk 8y ago
    Not in America, at least. Many European countries have government-paid, top-tier public education for free to the students.
    - bluGill 8y ago
      Yes, but they have their own unintended consequences. As an outsider I have no idea what, but I've been around long enough to know they exist. They might or might not be worth it.
  - facing_worlds 8y ago
    What makes you think its unintended? Someone profits from all the student loans issued.
  - salvar 8y ago
    > You can't do that easily for national programs. Is this American exceptionalism? Many nations do this, with great results.
  - ataturk 8y ago
    Wall Street greed did this! The financiers got their hooks into higher education. I'm friends with a person who is the head of financial aid at a major Mid-Atlantic university. She saw it all go down during the Bill Clinton years. It was all sold as helping people but all they did was help themselves. A lot of university administrators are guilty, too. There were likely kickbacks and other illegal schemes taking place.
- vlan0 8y ago
  >well-meaning attempts to make college loans available to everyone for everything seem to have massively bloated the cost of education to a crippling degree. I'm not so sure about this as a cause. If you look at the costs for colleges that have increased over time, you can start to see where a lot of this money is going. Spending on new and maintaining aging technology is increased. And now you have entire departments like Title IX that never existed in prior school models. And with expansion, additional management overhead now exists. There is seemly at least a Director of <insert title here> for everything.
  - ericb 8y ago
    > There is seemly at least a Director of <insert title here> for everything. I would argue some of the things you list as causes of increasing tuition are the effects of tuition surpluses from additional income from a trillion in student loans.
    - vlan0 8y ago
      I would agree. I've been in higher ed for the last 10 years and can tell you there are a lot of compounding factors that gotten us in this mess of high costs.
imglorp 8y ago
Agree - I think we should consider a well educated base of voters, workers, and neighbors as critical infrastucture along with roads and internet. I think some decisions lately have highlighted an open hostility towards science, education, and by implication, democracy. This needs to be reversed.
- jacquesm 8y ago
  Well educated voters are the enemy of political parties that thrive on soundbites and fear.
  - thucydidesofusa 8y ago
    If a political party isn't appealing to fear, it will be replaced by one that does.
- eanzenberg 8y ago
  I do too, a core belief is that educated people are critical to success on a national and world level. However, colleges have an aggressive liberal slant which for me took a decade to even out to center.
  - gowld 8y ago
    Europeans observe that USA at large has an aggressive conservative slant. I understand it's changed recently, but colleges (and lower schools) traditionally had a very conservative curriculum in general education / liberal arts core of Economics, Literature, and History.
- thucydidesofusa 8y ago
  >I think we should consider a well educated base of voters, workers, and neighbors as critical infrastucture (sic) along with roads and internet. A lot of people are disinclined towards education and education isn't so important that people should be coerced into submitting to it. In fact, educating people against their will usually impairs the learning experience for motivated people in the classroom. The people who interrupt the teacher and misbehave usually do so because they don't want to be there. Beyond that, a lot of public schools are failing to do their jobs or prioritizing knowledge poorly. A school district near me has rapidly declining test scores but touts a social justice curriculum. I certainly don't want to forbid anyone from learning critiques of colonialism, but I think that's "dessert" and should really only be taught after students have a strong knowledge base in more practical knowledge. >I think some decisions lately have highlighted an open hostility towards science, education, and by implication, democracy. This needs to be reversed. To the degree this is true, I primarily blame those who politicize science and education. Look at the "march for science" - the well meaning folks at my local march were too happy to use climate change predictions to demand others make massive concessions. In this, we see the difficulty in using empiricism as a means to support agendas - the climate change models aren't performing well, and even if the predictions were accurate, there should be some discussion about the cost and benefits. America does better than most nations under climate change predictions and the countries that will be the worst impacted as those who play the biggest roles in it: the oil rich middle eastern and African states sure enjoy selling oil but beg for help to deal with the consequences of their customers using the oil they sell. To some degree, the people who don't care about the consequences of climate change aren't hostile to science and they don't want to debate the issue at the level of science which is probably the right way to handle it because the discussion isn't really about the climate, the core issue is the degree to which we should sacrifice for people we don't care about. Lastly, it sometimes seems like the more schooling one receives, the more hostile they are to science. High school graduates might not like things like racial differences in IQ, but it's my experience that individuals with graduate-level education are more hostile to the same thing. I would hope that the additional schooling would make these people more open to accepting things based on the strength of evidence but that's not the case. It's not clear how we reverse that hostility but the answer doesn't seem to be "more school".
darepublic 8y ago
Judging from recent news about no white day etc college can be a place to go and become deluded and converted to socialism. So maybe worse than pointless
- droidist2 8y ago
  White Day? You mean March 14th?
  - Reedx 8y ago
    I think he's referring to the "Day of Absence" where white people were not supposed to be on campus. A white progressive professor dared go to work that day and they tried to destroy him for it. It's also a big problem that free speech is increasingly under attack at universities. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/01/opinion/when-the-left-turns-on-its-own.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/01/opinion/when-the-left-tur...
    - s73v3r_ 8y ago
      Free speech is not at all under attack at universities. What's happening is that shitty people are no longer able to say shitty things without being called out on it. That's what they're upset about.
      - Reedx 8y ago
        Read about what happened with Bret Weinstein (the aforementioned professor). Consider why so many comedians (e.g., Jerry Seinfeld) are no longer performing at colleges. They say it's become unbearable. That's a big clue that free speech is not welcome. Look at how guest lecturers and ideas are getting shut down. University used to be the bastion of free speech and ideas, but that is increasingly under threat. Just watch what happened at this lecture at Queen's University to see an example how bad it's getting: https://youtu.be/MwdYpMS8s28?t=9m44s https://youtu.be/MwdYpMS8s28?t=9m44s Distinguished professors trying to have a well reasoned and peaceful discussion with students. And that wasn't just disrupted, the doors were barricaded and people were pounding on the windows (breaking at least one) throughout the remainder of the event. Outside it was even yelled "Lock em in and burn it down". Seriously, watch the whole thing (followed by footage of what happened outside) and I think you'll be taken aback. These are not cases of shitty things being called out, it goes way beyond that.
ManFromUranus 8y ago
All the solutions that would actually solve these problems are politically unpalatable, all the politicians that would / could provide these solutions would be run out of town. Also Educated != smart. You can have plenty of educated people but still have bad outcomes in society. If only smart people could vote then that would go a long way to fixing society, but again, a solution like that is immediately off the table. So there are ways and means to fix any and every problem, the problem is nobody will use the tools or they are not even smart enough to know that the wrench is for turning bolts in the first place (the don't even realize the solution in staring them in the face in other words.)
eanzenberg 8y ago
Is it though? As a value prop for the average student it is immensely positive expected return. Even more-so for prestigious schools.
e_tm_ 8y ago
I agree that 'education' is critically important. But it is important to clarify: education in what is important. I think there is massive difficulty in forming any sort of consensus approach to define a proper baseline of 'education' that works for everyone. Our school systems are frankly not designed for it, and it seems a utopian ideal that they may be 'corrected' to do so. Considering the diversity of motivators and systems/tactics used for schooling across cities/counties/states and the content that is covered/ignored, is it realistic to attempt to measure a 'baseline of education'? To me it comes down to structuring a better formal definition of 'education' at a societal level. Economic utility is the obvious motivator in today's society, which pumps up many fields of 'education', but hinders the perceived importance of other fields. Some forms or fields of education that are not covered in our modern schooling systems may actually improve the education baseline, and vice versa with some content currently covered.
- always_good 8y ago
  I generally disagree with your clarification. University was mostly a core of classes that everybody needed to take, free electives that let me take whichever classes I wanted, and then degree courses which were a subset of my classes. We over-fixate on the major in these discussions because we look at the crazy American education prices and then think in $/major. But otherwise I'd say university does a decent job of making people credentialize in generally important concepts. And this process helps you in life, like being able to think and speak intelligently on any topic. I think it's the gross expense of uni that causes us to push people into majors like STEM that can be directly transmuted into dollars. But I don't think that's best for society. And it's an unhealthy approach to education. For example, if I could redo university, I would've majored in philosophy. It's just obnoxious that I had to make that decision somewhere within age 17-20.
  - e_tm_ 8y ago
    I see where you are coming from. Perhaps my original wording didn't do justice to my thought process. I agree with your take about STEM majors being pushed due to both ROI potential and/or market demand for skills. I also agree that this is an unhealthy approach to education. However, I don't see this changing. I see it as the fundamental motivator of education for many people. Likely, the people to which I am referring are not readers of this site, who are of the highest skills in their respective fields (most likely technical). I am interested in your opinion that "university does a decent job of making people credentialize in generally important concepts" but then following with your personal interest (later realized) in an education based on (and in) philosophy. I think this actually reinforces my point, because the motivator is the credential, or some creditable skillset. This is the economic utility motivator I was referring to, rather than a more abstract education in philosophy or other arts. The skills gained from these more abstract educations are not as highly valued by their economic potential, however they could actually be more beneficial to both the person and society as a whole.
cookiecaper 8y ago
Formal university settings are not the only way "education" can be conferred/obtained. Would a person who only knew apprenticeships trust someone who sat through 4 years of theoretical lectures, book learning, and "sample projects", when their expectation is that trained apprentices have worked side-by-side with masters in "the real world" for many years, doing real work that real people depended on?
fareesh 8y ago
The government is not a force for good in the world. Data shows that in the vast majority of cases, government is an enemy of public good, by virtue of the people in government. I don't think regulation is the answer to this problem./
pastor_bob 8y ago
A degree in Communications or a host of other soft majors is basically worthless. Arguable that 4 years would be better spent elsewhere, not to mention the money that goes into faculty salaries. A liberal arts degree can be worth it, but only if it is actually a program with effort in it.
- s73v3r_ 8y ago
  This kind of "Stem elitism" that comes up in these threads is really gross.
  - pastor_bob 8y ago
    Not stem specific. I think this is a decent list of acceptable majors/concentrations (outside a trade specific school perhaps): https://college.harvard.edu/academics/fields-study/concentrations https://college.harvard.edu/academics/fields-study/concentra...
    - greedo 8y ago
      That list has a ton of "soft" majors!
stvswn 8y ago
I'm not so sure about the idea that education is important for its own sake, the way you framed it -- that somehow if we make everyone go to more schooling we'll have a better citizenry. They may learn the wrong things, they may learn nothing, they may learn useless things. What's relevant is comparing the 4 years they spend not earning experience and money to what they could have been doing, and what they would have been learning there, and how they would have been improving themselves in that case. Are you saying that the median student is a better citizen if he spends 4 years doing mediocre work at a mediocre school vs. 4 years learning a trade? That we'll all be "better off" if the plumbers learn literary criticism before they learn plumbing?
Andre_Wanglin 8y ago
>Raising the overall level of education in this country should be a much larger goal that it seems to be. I envision a day where everyone enjoys the "right" to a PhD. We will be very smart then, won't we?

ericb 8y ago

> Raising the overall level of education in this country should be a much larger goal that it seems to be. On one level, I totally agree. At the same time, well-meaning attempts to make college loans available to everyone for everything seem to have massively bloated the cost of education to a crippling degree. I think the key is in the how of the approach.

bluGill 8y ago
That is the problem with politics: the unintended effects are always an issue. Of course everything else has this issue as well. The only difference is most of us start small, and if it works we expand. You can't do that easily for national programs.
- stochastic_monk 8y ago
  Not in America, at least. Many European countries have government-paid, top-tier public education for free to the students.
  - bluGill 8y ago
    Yes, but they have their own unintended consequences. As an outsider I have no idea what, but I've been around long enough to know they exist. They might or might not be worth it.
- facing_worlds 8y ago
  What makes you think its unintended? Someone profits from all the student loans issued.
- salvar 8y ago
  > You can't do that easily for national programs. Is this American exceptionalism? Many nations do this, with great results.
- ataturk 8y ago
  Wall Street greed did this! The financiers got their hooks into higher education. I'm friends with a person who is the head of financial aid at a major Mid-Atlantic university. She saw it all go down during the Bill Clinton years. It was all sold as helping people but all they did was help themselves. A lot of university administrators are guilty, too. There were likely kickbacks and other illegal schemes taking place.
vlan0 8y ago
>well-meaning attempts to make college loans available to everyone for everything seem to have massively bloated the cost of education to a crippling degree. I'm not so sure about this as a cause. If you look at the costs for colleges that have increased over time, you can start to see where a lot of this money is going. Spending on new and maintaining aging technology is increased. And now you have entire departments like Title IX that never existed in prior school models. And with expansion, additional management overhead now exists. There is seemly at least a Director of <insert title here> for everything.
- ericb 8y ago
  > There is seemly at least a Director of <insert title here> for everything. I would argue some of the things you list as causes of increasing tuition are the effects of tuition surpluses from additional income from a trillion in student loans.
  - vlan0 8y ago
    I would agree. I've been in higher ed for the last 10 years and can tell you there are a lot of compounding factors that gotten us in this mess of high costs.

imglorp 8y ago

Agree - I think we should consider a well educated base of voters, workers, and neighbors as critical infrastucture along with roads and internet. I think some decisions lately have highlighted an open hostility towards science, education, and by implication, democracy. This needs to be reversed.

jacquesm 8y ago
Well educated voters are the enemy of political parties that thrive on soundbites and fear.
- thucydidesofusa 8y ago
  If a political party isn't appealing to fear, it will be replaced by one that does.
eanzenberg 8y ago
I do too, a core belief is that educated people are critical to success on a national and world level. However, colleges have an aggressive liberal slant which for me took a decade to even out to center.
- gowld 8y ago
  Europeans observe that USA at large has an aggressive conservative slant. I understand it's changed recently, but colleges (and lower schools) traditionally had a very conservative curriculum in general education / liberal arts core of Economics, Literature, and History.
thucydidesofusa 8y ago
>I think we should consider a well educated base of voters, workers, and neighbors as critical infrastucture (sic) along with roads and internet. A lot of people are disinclined towards education and education isn't so important that people should be coerced into submitting to it. In fact, educating people against their will usually impairs the learning experience for motivated people in the classroom. The people who interrupt the teacher and misbehave usually do so because they don't want to be there. Beyond that, a lot of public schools are failing to do their jobs or prioritizing knowledge poorly. A school district near me has rapidly declining test scores but touts a social justice curriculum. I certainly don't want to forbid anyone from learning critiques of colonialism, but I think that's "dessert" and should really only be taught after students have a strong knowledge base in more practical knowledge. >I think some decisions lately have highlighted an open hostility towards science, education, and by implication, democracy. This needs to be reversed. To the degree this is true, I primarily blame those who politicize science and education. Look at the "march for science" - the well meaning folks at my local march were too happy to use climate change predictions to demand others make massive concessions. In this, we see the difficulty in using empiricism as a means to support agendas - the climate change models aren't performing well, and even if the predictions were accurate, there should be some discussion about the cost and benefits. America does better than most nations under climate change predictions and the countries that will be the worst impacted as those who play the biggest roles in it: the oil rich middle eastern and African states sure enjoy selling oil but beg for help to deal with the consequences of their customers using the oil they sell. To some degree, the people who don't care about the consequences of climate change aren't hostile to science and they don't want to debate the issue at the level of science which is probably the right way to handle it because the discussion isn't really about the climate, the core issue is the degree to which we should sacrifice for people we don't care about. Lastly, it sometimes seems like the more schooling one receives, the more hostile they are to science. High school graduates might not like things like racial differences in IQ, but it's my experience that individuals with graduate-level education are more hostile to the same thing. I would hope that the additional schooling would make these people more open to accepting things based on the strength of evidence but that's not the case. It's not clear how we reverse that hostility but the answer doesn't seem to be "more school".

darepublic 8y ago

Judging from recent news about no white day etc college can be a place to go and become deluded and converted to socialism. So maybe worse than pointless

droidist2 8y ago
White Day? You mean March 14th?
- Reedx 8y ago
  I think he's referring to the "Day of Absence" where white people were not supposed to be on campus. A white progressive professor dared go to work that day and they tried to destroy him for it. It's also a big problem that free speech is increasingly under attack at universities. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/01/opinion/when-the-left-turns-on-its-own.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/01/opinion/when-the-left-tur...
  - s73v3r_ 8y ago
    Free speech is not at all under attack at universities. What's happening is that shitty people are no longer able to say shitty things without being called out on it. That's what they're upset about.
    - Reedx 8y ago
      Read about what happened with Bret Weinstein (the aforementioned professor). Consider why so many comedians (e.g., Jerry Seinfeld) are no longer performing at colleges. They say it's become unbearable. That's a big clue that free speech is not welcome. Look at how guest lecturers and ideas are getting shut down. University used to be the bastion of free speech and ideas, but that is increasingly under threat. Just watch what happened at this lecture at Queen's University to see an example how bad it's getting: https://youtu.be/MwdYpMS8s28?t=9m44s https://youtu.be/MwdYpMS8s28?t=9m44s Distinguished professors trying to have a well reasoned and peaceful discussion with students. And that wasn't just disrupted, the doors were barricaded and people were pounding on the windows (breaking at least one) throughout the remainder of the event. Outside it was even yelled "Lock em in and burn it down". Seriously, watch the whole thing (followed by footage of what happened outside) and I think you'll be taken aback. These are not cases of shitty things being called out, it goes way beyond that.

ManFromUranus 8y ago

All the solutions that would actually solve these problems are politically unpalatable, all the politicians that would / could provide these solutions would be run out of town. Also Educated != smart. You can have plenty of educated people but still have bad outcomes in society. If only smart people could vote then that would go a long way to fixing society, but again, a solution like that is immediately off the table. So there are ways and means to fix any and every problem, the problem is nobody will use the tools or they are not even smart enough to know that the wrench is for turning bolts in the first place (the don't even realize the solution in staring them in the face in other words.)

eanzenberg 8y ago

Is it though? As a value prop for the average student it is immensely positive expected return. Even more-so for prestigious schools.

e_tm_ 8y ago

I agree that 'education' is critically important. But it is important to clarify: education in what is important. I think there is massive difficulty in forming any sort of consensus approach to define a proper baseline of 'education' that works for everyone. Our school systems are frankly not designed for it, and it seems a utopian ideal that they may be 'corrected' to do so. Considering the diversity of motivators and systems/tactics used for schooling across cities/counties/states and the content that is covered/ignored, is it realistic to attempt to measure a 'baseline of education'? To me it comes down to structuring a better formal definition of 'education' at a societal level. Economic utility is the obvious motivator in today's society, which pumps up many fields of 'education', but hinders the perceived importance of other fields. Some forms or fields of education that are not covered in our modern schooling systems may actually improve the education baseline, and vice versa with some content currently covered.

always_good 8y ago
I generally disagree with your clarification. University was mostly a core of classes that everybody needed to take, free electives that let me take whichever classes I wanted, and then degree courses which were a subset of my classes. We over-fixate on the major in these discussions because we look at the crazy American education prices and then think in $/major. But otherwise I'd say university does a decent job of making people credentialize in generally important concepts. And this process helps you in life, like being able to think and speak intelligently on any topic. I think it's the gross expense of uni that causes us to push people into majors like STEM that can be directly transmuted into dollars. But I don't think that's best for society. And it's an unhealthy approach to education. For example, if I could redo university, I would've majored in philosophy. It's just obnoxious that I had to make that decision somewhere within age 17-20.
- e_tm_ 8y ago
  I see where you are coming from. Perhaps my original wording didn't do justice to my thought process. I agree with your take about STEM majors being pushed due to both ROI potential and/or market demand for skills. I also agree that this is an unhealthy approach to education. However, I don't see this changing. I see it as the fundamental motivator of education for many people. Likely, the people to which I am referring are not readers of this site, who are of the highest skills in their respective fields (most likely technical). I am interested in your opinion that "university does a decent job of making people credentialize in generally important concepts" but then following with your personal interest (later realized) in an education based on (and in) philosophy. I think this actually reinforces my point, because the motivator is the credential, or some creditable skillset. This is the economic utility motivator I was referring to, rather than a more abstract education in philosophy or other arts. The skills gained from these more abstract educations are not as highly valued by their economic potential, however they could actually be more beneficial to both the person and society as a whole.

cookiecaper 8y ago

Formal university settings are not the only way "education" can be conferred/obtained. Would a person who only knew apprenticeships trust someone who sat through 4 years of theoretical lectures, book learning, and "sample projects", when their expectation is that trained apprentices have worked side-by-side with masters in "the real world" for many years, doing real work that real people depended on?

fareesh 8y ago

The government is not a force for good in the world. Data shows that in the vast majority of cases, government is an enemy of public good, by virtue of the people in government. I don't think regulation is the answer to this problem./

pastor_bob 8y ago

A degree in Communications or a host of other soft majors is basically worthless. Arguable that 4 years would be better spent elsewhere, not to mention the money that goes into faculty salaries. A liberal arts degree can be worth it, but only if it is actually a program with effort in it.

s73v3r_ 8y ago
This kind of "Stem elitism" that comes up in these threads is really gross.
- pastor_bob 8y ago
  Not stem specific. I think this is a decent list of acceptable majors/concentrations (outside a trade specific school perhaps): https://college.harvard.edu/academics/fields-study/concentrations https://college.harvard.edu/academics/fields-study/concentra...
  - greedo 8y ago
    That list has a ton of "soft" majors!

stvswn 8y ago

I'm not so sure about the idea that education is important for its own sake, the way you framed it -- that somehow if we make everyone go to more schooling we'll have a better citizenry. They may learn the wrong things, they may learn nothing, they may learn useless things. What's relevant is comparing the 4 years they spend not earning experience and money to what they could have been doing, and what they would have been learning there, and how they would have been improving themselves in that case. Are you saying that the median student is a better citizen if he spends 4 years doing mediocre work at a mediocre school vs. 4 years learning a trade? That we'll all be "better off" if the plumbers learn literary criticism before they learn plumbing?

Andre_Wanglin 8y ago

>Raising the overall level of education in this country should be a much larger goal that it seems to be. I envision a day where everyone enjoys the "right" to a PhD. We will be very smart then, won't we?