10 ms·

I realize I'm likely going to be a dissenting opinion here… but I'm not sure this is a good investment. Unless you're going to enter a field that requires the

by akulbe 8y ago

I realize I'm likely going to be a dissenting opinion here… but I'm not sure this is a good investment. Unless you're going to enter a field that requires the pedigree that starts with college (i.e. medicine, law, engineering), it's arguable that college isn't even worth the tuition you pay for it. Like another commenter says, they have no incentive to do anything that will reduce costs. The quality of the education seems to be on the decline too. It feels like colleges are turning into breeding grounds for social justice warriors more than they're turning out folks who are prepared to enter the workforce. It feels like the onus should be on the colleges to make costs more reasonable, rather than getting another handout from a rich benefactor (which will not last long).

schimmy_changa 8y ago
That may be true (but is arguable) if you see college as nothing but a vocational school, training you to be the best worker which society could ask for. A truly liberal (in the John Stuart Mill / Enlightenment sense of the word) education gives you the tools you need to engage with the world. How can you ever change society if you are only able to see the world in what makes money, and are never given the time and resources to think beyond what is today towards what could be? It is true that some people can learn some of these things on their own, but having 4 years to think surrounded by an environment where everyone else is focused on that same goal can really make a difference. If a pragmatic man like Bloomberg believes in the value of a liberal education (again the old sense of the word), you can bet it's not total hooey. (although see my other comment for what I believe is behind at least the timing of this announcement)
- wernercd 8y ago
  > A truly liberal (in the John Stuart Mill / Enlightenment sense of the word) education gives you the tools you need to engage with the world. But the current education system doesn't give you either. You don't get tools to be useful - IE STEM related, engineering, math, etc. You also don't get the tools to "engage" with the world. Blocking traffic, needing safe places and being triggered by anything you disagree with isn't "engaging" the world.
  - zanny 8y ago
    At that you absolutely don't need a special expensive institution to teach you how to behave. A century ago it might have made sense - formal conduct was rigid and failure to adhere could displace you out of aristocracy. You needed to know your proper dinner routines and manners perfectly. You needed to know the retinue of history and contemporary science topics popular in the era to not be left looking ignorant of a conversation. Of course that later circumstance was only applicable in an era when major scientific advancements were slow and costly to disseminate. Thats why it required the infrastructure of a university to supply it. I feel like that might not be quite as much of a barrier today, and nobody is expected to stay current on all news - there is simply too much, too fast, even of the purely scholarly variety. While I don't think your average 18 year old is of "mature" character or often fit to participate in normative adult culture it also isn't a danger to them to have to learn how in the moment. The worst that happens is they lose a job or two and rebound - it isn't a lifelong disgrace in an insular society anymore.
  - nickthemagicman 8y ago
    Your view of college seems to be very media influenced. Just like 99.9% of Arabic people aren't terrorists, 99.9% of college students aren't 'safe space triggered social justice warriors'. Maybe you should grab a statistics class at a nearby college. ;). The media has really painted college students in a bad light. There's such a wide variety of students and personalities. It's a great place to share ideas and form networks.
    - addicted 8y ago
      As the spouse of someone who suffers from depression and suicidal thinking the outrage against “trigger warnings” really pisses me off. Trigger warnings are just that. Warnings. We watched A Star is Born, and having my spouse go back on almost a years worth of progress and treatment when a single “trigger warning” could have avoided that is beyond enraging. And what’s most hypocritical is the people who are complaining about trigger warnings are people who are complaining that a little paragraph of text describing certain known triggers may be contained in the text or movie before. So people who suffer from a variety of potentially harmful diseases such as depression and PTSD are pussies because they need a trigger warning to help them avoid media that may be harmful to them, but you’re a strong reasonable and logical person to protest the inclusion of a minor warning that you are under no obligation to read and can easily skip.
- akulbe 8y ago
  I agree that the Liberal Arts are crucial, but this sentiment seems to be gone in favor of a more vocational approach. While it still exists, good LA programs are rare, and largely dismissed by society as not worth it. See all the parents and friends asking... "How are you possibly going to make a living with a Liberal Arts degree?!" I wonder what American society would look like if this were flipped on its head? Make liberal arts the central piece of a college education, and leave vocational training largely to employers. I'm not sure if it's realistic to think that'd ever happen, but I wonder what it would look like if it did?
bytematic 8y ago
re: quality declining Source? I don't see this at all. re: sjws This is just a vocal minority demonized by certain political groups to stir up anger. Sad to see it's convincing people.
- whymauri 8y ago
  The moment someone unironically uses "social justice warrior" either to refer to themselves or an opposing group I can't take them seriously.
  - bko 8y ago
    Why?
    - nickthemagicman 8y ago
      It's a red flag that they're highly susceptible to social and news media propaganda and are bad at statistics.
- manigandham 8y ago
  Considering academia is vastly one-sided politically, influences the minds of entire graduating generations, and there has been fallout in major companies and even laws passed, the issues around "social justice" are in fact real and much bigger than you may think.
  - Zungaron 8y ago
    Maybe academia would be less politically one-sided if the other side hadn't built their brand on ignoring science in all its forms.
    - manigandham 8y ago
      That's an inflammatory statement that offers nothing productive. There's no political party against science, and there's just as much non-scientific dogmatic content from both ends of the spectrum.
tfehring 8y ago
>Unless you're going to enter a field that requires the pedigree that starts with college (i.e. medicine, law, engineering), it's arguable that college isn't even worth the tuition you pay for it. I'm not sure why it makes sense to exclude those fields. Bloomberg's investment will help students from low- and middle-income backgrounds enter those fields, just as it will help others earn degrees that provide lower earnings potential. Speaking of earnings potential, even those with degrees in arts, liberal arts, and the humanities - who only make up 13.4% of college graduates, by the way - have median earnings of $51k/year [0], compared to less than $35k/year for high school graduates [1]. An extra $16k/year in earnings - nearly a 50% increase - over a lifetime can justify a lot of upfront tuition and opportunity cost. The only degrees that are arguably a bad financial investment for the individual are those in education [0], and teachers are important enough to society that I don't think it would be beneficial to discourage students from attaining those degrees. College degrees more generally also have positive spillover effects - see e.g. [2] and [3]. [0] https://cew.georgetown.edu/cew-reports/valueofcollegemajors/#full-report https://cew.georgetown.edu/cew-reports/valueofcollegemajors/... [1] https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2015/more-education-still-means-more-pay-in-2014.htm https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2015/more-education-still-means... [2] (PDF) https://eml.berkeley.edu//~moretti/socret.pdf https://eml.berkeley.edu//~moretti/socret.pdf [3] (PDF) https://www.amacad.org/multimedia/pdfs/publications/researchpapersmonographs/CFUE_Economic-Impact/CFUE_Economic-Impact.pdf https://www.amacad.org/multimedia/pdfs/publications/research...
hbosch 8y ago
A large function of a college degree is simply getting past the Baby Boomer gatekeepers that own your future job.
freditup 8y ago
Quality declining is an interesting point that's hard to quantify. I went to a very well-viewed public school, and a large potion of my classes were quite unimpressive. (Think poor teaching; questions/answers to exams basically provided to you the night before the exam by the TA, exams graded on a ludicrous curve such that you don't really have to master anything, etc.) Friends of mine who have stayed around the university swear that things have only gotten worse since our time, with the rise of more and more online classes and less and less true understanding expected. I can't provide hard data on whether quality of education is declining, but I can say that large parts of my education were somewhat suspect.
thosakwe 8y ago
> It feels like colleges are turning into breeding grounds for social justice warriors more than they're turning out folks who are prepared to enter the workforce. They’re not mutually exclusive. You can be a skilled worker, who also advocates for social justice... I don’t even see how one would obstruct the other. I’m also wondering how this means that “the quality of education seems to be on the decline.”
- bzbarsky 8y ago
  There's a difference between advocating for social justice and being a "social justice warrior", as the term is generally understood today (the meaning has shifted a good bit in the last 20 years). As far as I can tell, at this point when people hear "social justice warrior", they hear: (1) the person's interaction with the world is all about status signaling, not achieving actual justice and (2) the "warrior" part is taken seriously, in the sense of perceiving anyone not perfectly aligned with you as an enemy to be destroyed, by any means necessary. It's obviously still possible to be a skilled worker with a mindset leaning in that direction; I've met some. But it can make someone very hard to work with, for sure. Obviously the pure form of "social justice warrior" as described above is a caricature that one encounters rarely in practice. Most people grow out of point (2) once they get old enough, for example.
freyir 8y ago
> It feels like colleges are turning into breeding grounds for social justice warriors Is this really the case? All colleges probably have a vocal minority of activists, and some colleges have more than others. But I'd guess the vast majority of students are still there to learn and have fun? > It feels like the onus should be on the colleges to make costs more reasonable, rather than getting another handout from a rich benefactor (which will not last long). Agreed, this won't do anything to solve the underlying problem. Lately, it seems like throwing money at a problem is all we prepared to do (see also the Proposition 10 homeless tax).

by akulbe 8y ago

schimmy_changa 8y ago

That may be true (but is arguable) if you see college as nothing but a vocational school, training you to be the best worker which society could ask for. A truly liberal (in the John Stuart Mill / Enlightenment sense of the word) education gives you the tools you need to engage with the world. How can you ever change society if you are only able to see the world in what makes money, and are never given the time and resources to think beyond what is today towards what could be? It is true that some people can learn some of these things on their own, but having 4 years to think surrounded by an environment where everyone else is focused on that same goal can really make a difference. If a pragmatic man like Bloomberg believes in the value of a liberal education (again the old sense of the word), you can bet it's not total hooey. (although see my other comment for what I believe is behind at least the timing of this announcement)

wernercd 8y ago
> A truly liberal (in the John Stuart Mill / Enlightenment sense of the word) education gives you the tools you need to engage with the world. But the current education system doesn't give you either. You don't get tools to be useful - IE STEM related, engineering, math, etc. You also don't get the tools to "engage" with the world. Blocking traffic, needing safe places and being triggered by anything you disagree with isn't "engaging" the world.
- zanny 8y ago
  At that you absolutely don't need a special expensive institution to teach you how to behave. A century ago it might have made sense - formal conduct was rigid and failure to adhere could displace you out of aristocracy. You needed to know your proper dinner routines and manners perfectly. You needed to know the retinue of history and contemporary science topics popular in the era to not be left looking ignorant of a conversation. Of course that later circumstance was only applicable in an era when major scientific advancements were slow and costly to disseminate. Thats why it required the infrastructure of a university to supply it. I feel like that might not be quite as much of a barrier today, and nobody is expected to stay current on all news - there is simply too much, too fast, even of the purely scholarly variety. While I don't think your average 18 year old is of "mature" character or often fit to participate in normative adult culture it also isn't a danger to them to have to learn how in the moment. The worst that happens is they lose a job or two and rebound - it isn't a lifelong disgrace in an insular society anymore.
- nickthemagicman 8y ago
  Your view of college seems to be very media influenced. Just like 99.9% of Arabic people aren't terrorists, 99.9% of college students aren't 'safe space triggered social justice warriors'. Maybe you should grab a statistics class at a nearby college. ;). The media has really painted college students in a bad light. There's such a wide variety of students and personalities. It's a great place to share ideas and form networks.
  - addicted 8y ago
    As the spouse of someone who suffers from depression and suicidal thinking the outrage against “trigger warnings” really pisses me off. Trigger warnings are just that. Warnings. We watched A Star is Born, and having my spouse go back on almost a years worth of progress and treatment when a single “trigger warning” could have avoided that is beyond enraging. And what’s most hypocritical is the people who are complaining about trigger warnings are people who are complaining that a little paragraph of text describing certain known triggers may be contained in the text or movie before. So people who suffer from a variety of potentially harmful diseases such as depression and PTSD are pussies because they need a trigger warning to help them avoid media that may be harmful to them, but you’re a strong reasonable and logical person to protest the inclusion of a minor warning that you are under no obligation to read and can easily skip.
akulbe 8y ago
I agree that the Liberal Arts are crucial, but this sentiment seems to be gone in favor of a more vocational approach. While it still exists, good LA programs are rare, and largely dismissed by society as not worth it. See all the parents and friends asking... "How are you possibly going to make a living with a Liberal Arts degree?!" I wonder what American society would look like if this were flipped on its head? Make liberal arts the central piece of a college education, and leave vocational training largely to employers. I'm not sure if it's realistic to think that'd ever happen, but I wonder what it would look like if it did?

bytematic 8y ago

re: quality declining Source? I don't see this at all. re: sjws This is just a vocal minority demonized by certain political groups to stir up anger. Sad to see it's convincing people.

whymauri 8y ago
The moment someone unironically uses "social justice warrior" either to refer to themselves or an opposing group I can't take them seriously.
- bko 8y ago
  Why?
  - nickthemagicman 8y ago
    It's a red flag that they're highly susceptible to social and news media propaganda and are bad at statistics.
manigandham 8y ago
Considering academia is vastly one-sided politically, influences the minds of entire graduating generations, and there has been fallout in major companies and even laws passed, the issues around "social justice" are in fact real and much bigger than you may think.
- Zungaron 8y ago
  Maybe academia would be less politically one-sided if the other side hadn't built their brand on ignoring science in all its forms.
  - manigandham 8y ago
    That's an inflammatory statement that offers nothing productive. There's no political party against science, and there's just as much non-scientific dogmatic content from both ends of the spectrum.

tfehring 8y ago

>Unless you're going to enter a field that requires the pedigree that starts with college (i.e. medicine, law, engineering), it's arguable that college isn't even worth the tuition you pay for it. I'm not sure why it makes sense to exclude those fields. Bloomberg's investment will help students from low- and middle-income backgrounds enter those fields, just as it will help others earn degrees that provide lower earnings potential. Speaking of earnings potential, even those with degrees in arts, liberal arts, and the humanities - who only make up 13.4% of college graduates, by the way - have median earnings of $51k/year [0], compared to less than $35k/year for high school graduates [1]. An extra $16k/year in earnings - nearly a 50% increase - over a lifetime can justify a lot of upfront tuition and opportunity cost. The only degrees that are arguably a bad financial investment for the individual are those in education [0], and teachers are important enough to society that I don't think it would be beneficial to discourage students from attaining those degrees. College degrees more generally also have positive spillover effects - see e.g. [2] and [3]. [0] https://cew.georgetown.edu/cew-reports/valueofcollegemajors/#full-report https://cew.georgetown.edu/cew-reports/valueofcollegemajors/... [1] https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2015/more-education-still-means-more-pay-in-2014.htm https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2015/more-education-still-means... [2] (PDF) https://eml.berkeley.edu//~moretti/socret.pdf https://eml.berkeley.edu//~moretti/socret.pdf [3] (PDF) https://www.amacad.org/multimedia/pdfs/publications/researchpapersmonographs/CFUE_Economic-Impact/CFUE_Economic-Impact.pdf https://www.amacad.org/multimedia/pdfs/publications/research...

hbosch 8y ago

A large function of a college degree is simply getting past the Baby Boomer gatekeepers that own your future job.

freditup 8y ago

Quality declining is an interesting point that's hard to quantify. I went to a very well-viewed public school, and a large potion of my classes were quite unimpressive. (Think poor teaching; questions/answers to exams basically provided to you the night before the exam by the TA, exams graded on a ludicrous curve such that you don't really have to master anything, etc.) Friends of mine who have stayed around the university swear that things have only gotten worse since our time, with the rise of more and more online classes and less and less true understanding expected. I can't provide hard data on whether quality of education is declining, but I can say that large parts of my education were somewhat suspect.

thosakwe 8y ago

> It feels like colleges are turning into breeding grounds for social justice warriors more than they're turning out folks who are prepared to enter the workforce. They’re not mutually exclusive. You can be a skilled worker, who also advocates for social justice... I don’t even see how one would obstruct the other. I’m also wondering how this means that “the quality of education seems to be on the decline.”

bzbarsky 8y ago
There's a difference between advocating for social justice and being a "social justice warrior", as the term is generally understood today (the meaning has shifted a good bit in the last 20 years). As far as I can tell, at this point when people hear "social justice warrior", they hear: (1) the person's interaction with the world is all about status signaling, not achieving actual justice and (2) the "warrior" part is taken seriously, in the sense of perceiving anyone not perfectly aligned with you as an enemy to be destroyed, by any means necessary. It's obviously still possible to be a skilled worker with a mindset leaning in that direction; I've met some. But it can make someone very hard to work with, for sure. Obviously the pure form of "social justice warrior" as described above is a caricature that one encounters rarely in practice. Most people grow out of point (2) once they get old enough, for example.

freyir 8y ago

> It feels like colleges are turning into breeding grounds for social justice warriors Is this really the case? All colleges probably have a vocal minority of activists, and some colleges have more than others. But I'd guess the vast majority of students are still there to learn and have fun? > It feels like the onus should be on the colleges to make costs more reasonable, rather than getting another handout from a rich benefactor (which will not last long). Agreed, this won't do anything to solve the underlying problem. Lately, it seems like throwing money at a problem is all we prepared to do (see also the Proposition 10 homeless tax).