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> In many fields competition for tenure is brutal Why so? There are so many people who would like to study but can't get into an university. There (as you say)

> In many fields competition for tenure is brutal Why so? There are so many people who would like to study but can't get into an university. There (as you say) are so many professors who would like to teach but also get into brutal competition. Why not just build more universities? Also why not start a private education company that probably wouldn't be eligible to issue government-accredited degrees (who but medical doctors and lawyers needs them anyway?) yet would provide university-level education quality and compete the free-market way?

moftz 8y ago
Not many companies are going to hire an engineer from a non-accredited university. Sometimes it is specifically called out in the job posting. Accreditation is there for a reason, otherwise you end up with a bunch of people with degrees from diploma mills and ITT-like organizations applying for jobs they have no business being in.
- qwerty456127 8y ago
  Perhaps but a particular private company can establish reputation that would ensure whoever graduates from it actually has acquired the knowledge and skills listed. In fact I even believe that teaching and skill/knowledge-certifying companies should be separated entirely. A person should be able to acquire knowledge whatever way they find comfortable (e.g. choose a company that would teach them or study entirely on themselves if they are sufficiently resourceful) then go to a reputable institution that would test them and issue a diploma.
  - moftz 8y ago
    Who is going to want to attend a school with zero reputation
    - qwerty456127 8y ago
      When its job is to teach rather than to issue a diploma which other parties would recognize, attending a couple of lectures would be enough for me to see how well do they teach if it's worth my money. There should also be money-back warranty for those unsatisfied with the quality of teaching. At some point, if I were satisfied, I would also recommend it to people I know and such a recommendation would be enough for me to give it a try if I were them. Measuring such a subject by thyself may seem like a fallacy as many people obviously don't think like I do but I believe there are many (a number sufficient to sustain a business) who do think the same way in such a big country.
- 0xffff2 8y ago
  Government jobs in particular often require degree (not university) accreditation for real engineering degrees. They generally don't require the same for CS though, so there are plenty of tech jobs that don't need accreditation at all. I'm a government contractor working as a software engineer with a non-accredited CS degree from a UC school. If I had a degree in engineering, it would absolutely need to be accredited (and my university's engineering degrees are).
  - mattkrause 8y ago
    Some government jobs do want the accreditation--you need it to become a patent agent, for example--though others don't. I think it might be related to whether it's officially an "engineering" or "science" job. It's a little aggravating though, since many good programs (e.g., Stanford) don't bother with the ABET stuff for computer science.
- why_only_15 8y ago
  I mean many companies don't care if you have a degree at all, let alone where that degree comes from.
aesthesia 8y ago
The barriers (at least in the US) to university study are seldom admission. There already exist many accredited institutions that admit essentially all applicants with a high school degree or equivalent. The things that stop people who would like to get a college degree are more often money and time. Incidentally, these are the same things keeping would-be professors from tenured positions. Someone has to pay the professors, after all.
- StudentStuff 8y ago
  I think OP was getting at "valued" degrees, eg: A degree from a name brand institution, where a good chunk of employers will recognize the name of said university. Degrees from non-name brand institutions (eg: all the community colleges/2nd tier colleges like Western Washington University) are for checking off the requirement of having a degree. Its a serious put down, but the name brands thrive on being "selective" yet bribe-able. There is quite a bit more value to be had at the latter group of institutions, tuition is ~$500 a class or ~$1500 a quarter at community colleges and of a similar caliber in quality, much more reasonable than the $1500+ charged per 5 credits at name brand colleges.
_nothing 8y ago
In the US it is very easy to get into a university. It is not so easy to get into a good university. > Why not just build more universities? Because enrollment and the numbers of students who can pay are dwindling [1]. > Also why not start a private education company that probably wouldn't be eligible to issue government-accredited degrees (who but medical doctors and lawyers needs them anyway?) The main reason anyone in the US goes to college these days is to get a degree, not to receive education related to any specific job. They want to get a degree because most employers still require a degree either for consideration or for promotion. The employers require this because they see it (fairly or unfairly) as an easy way to weed out those who would be unqualified. Any employer that would accept a non-accredited degree from a private education company that could easily just be selling certificates (which already happens anyway) probably wouldn't even care if you had a degree in the first place. > yet would provide university-level education quality and compete the free-market way I just don't see there being a significant market of people willing to pay full tuition for a non-accredited institution, to the extent that it could afford to hire good professors away from existing universities and be a better option for them than pursuing tenured positions elsewhere. Compounded with the unlikelihood that students would be able to get reasonable loans to attend a school that could very well be a scam, this seems completely untenable. Students get into enough debt as it is going to accredited institutions with government loans. 1. https://www.wsj.com/articles/americas-disappearing-private-colleges-11550794707 https://www.wsj.com/articles/americas-disappearing-private-c...
- jacobolus 8y ago
  > In the US it is very easy to get into a university. It is not so easy to get into a good university. Because the academic job market is so tight, many of the professors at obscure poorly ranked universities are amazing teachers who do solid (but perhaps not famous or well promoted) research. You should probably replace “good” in your sentence with “prestigious” or the like.
  - qwerty456127 8y ago
    > many of the professors at obscure unrecognized universities are amazing teachers who do solid (but perhaps not famous or well promoted) research. If I were choosing who is going to teach me I wouldn't really care about what research do they do, I would care about how good they are at teaching.
jfoutz 8y ago
> Why not just build more universities? Because universities are fortresses designed to protect the weirdos who can't survive in the real world. We're passing through this awesome enlightenment phase where there's room for everyone. But you can't just throw one up on a thursday afternoon. Universities need a kind of social contract. (i realize the one true scotsman weakness here, but i think the point holds) Universities are where you stick the rich kid that's not strong enough to run the family business. Sometimes, you don't even have to be rich. The thing that's neat is sometimes an idea pops out of a university that's pretty good. Newtonian physics and evolution spring to mind. i'm obviously nuts. i would encourage you to read [1]. I'm not exactly making an appeal to authority, it's more of a here's a much better, less cynical interpretation of what i'm trying to say. [1] https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~vl/notes/dijkstra.html https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~vl/notes/dijkstra.html
InvisibleCities 8y ago
Universities in the US are no longer institutions of higher learning; they are hedge funds with affiliated football and basketball teams. Because of this, universities have decided to drastically cut costs by replacing tenure-track positions with adjuncts. About 58% of faculty at American universities are non-tenure track, and that number is likely to increase over the coming decade as tenured professors retire [1]. [1] https://www.aaup.org/report/status-non-tenure-track-faculty https://www.aaup.org/report/status-non-tenure-track-faculty

moftz 8y ago

Not many companies are going to hire an engineer from a non-accredited university. Sometimes it is specifically called out in the job posting. Accreditation is there for a reason, otherwise you end up with a bunch of people with degrees from diploma mills and ITT-like organizations applying for jobs they have no business being in.

qwerty456127 8y ago
Perhaps but a particular private company can establish reputation that would ensure whoever graduates from it actually has acquired the knowledge and skills listed. In fact I even believe that teaching and skill/knowledge-certifying companies should be separated entirely. A person should be able to acquire knowledge whatever way they find comfortable (e.g. choose a company that would teach them or study entirely on themselves if they are sufficiently resourceful) then go to a reputable institution that would test them and issue a diploma.
- moftz 8y ago
  Who is going to want to attend a school with zero reputation
  - qwerty456127 8y ago
    When its job is to teach rather than to issue a diploma which other parties would recognize, attending a couple of lectures would be enough for me to see how well do they teach if it's worth my money. There should also be money-back warranty for those unsatisfied with the quality of teaching. At some point, if I were satisfied, I would also recommend it to people I know and such a recommendation would be enough for me to give it a try if I were them. Measuring such a subject by thyself may seem like a fallacy as many people obviously don't think like I do but I believe there are many (a number sufficient to sustain a business) who do think the same way in such a big country.
0xffff2 8y ago
Government jobs in particular often require degree (not university) accreditation for real engineering degrees. They generally don't require the same for CS though, so there are plenty of tech jobs that don't need accreditation at all. I'm a government contractor working as a software engineer with a non-accredited CS degree from a UC school. If I had a degree in engineering, it would absolutely need to be accredited (and my university's engineering degrees are).
- mattkrause 8y ago
  Some government jobs do want the accreditation--you need it to become a patent agent, for example--though others don't. I think it might be related to whether it's officially an "engineering" or "science" job. It's a little aggravating though, since many good programs (e.g., Stanford) don't bother with the ABET stuff for computer science.
why_only_15 8y ago
I mean many companies don't care if you have a degree at all, let alone where that degree comes from.

aesthesia 8y ago

The barriers (at least in the US) to university study are seldom admission. There already exist many accredited institutions that admit essentially all applicants with a high school degree or equivalent. The things that stop people who would like to get a college degree are more often money and time. Incidentally, these are the same things keeping would-be professors from tenured positions. Someone has to pay the professors, after all.

StudentStuff 8y ago
I think OP was getting at "valued" degrees, eg: A degree from a name brand institution, where a good chunk of employers will recognize the name of said university. Degrees from non-name brand institutions (eg: all the community colleges/2nd tier colleges like Western Washington University) are for checking off the requirement of having a degree. Its a serious put down, but the name brands thrive on being "selective" yet bribe-able. There is quite a bit more value to be had at the latter group of institutions, tuition is ~$500 a class or ~$1500 a quarter at community colleges and of a similar caliber in quality, much more reasonable than the $1500+ charged per 5 credits at name brand colleges.

_nothing 8y ago

In the US it is very easy to get into a university. It is not so easy to get into a good university. > Why not just build more universities? Because enrollment and the numbers of students who can pay are dwindling [1]. > Also why not start a private education company that probably wouldn't be eligible to issue government-accredited degrees (who but medical doctors and lawyers needs them anyway?) The main reason anyone in the US goes to college these days is to get a degree, not to receive education related to any specific job. They want to get a degree because most employers still require a degree either for consideration or for promotion. The employers require this because they see it (fairly or unfairly) as an easy way to weed out those who would be unqualified. Any employer that would accept a non-accredited degree from a private education company that could easily just be selling certificates (which already happens anyway) probably wouldn't even care if you had a degree in the first place. > yet would provide university-level education quality and compete the free-market way I just don't see there being a significant market of people willing to pay full tuition for a non-accredited institution, to the extent that it could afford to hire good professors away from existing universities and be a better option for them than pursuing tenured positions elsewhere. Compounded with the unlikelihood that students would be able to get reasonable loans to attend a school that could very well be a scam, this seems completely untenable. Students get into enough debt as it is going to accredited institutions with government loans. 1. https://www.wsj.com/articles/americas-disappearing-private-colleges-11550794707 https://www.wsj.com/articles/americas-disappearing-private-c...

jacobolus 8y ago
> In the US it is very easy to get into a university. It is not so easy to get into a good university. Because the academic job market is so tight, many of the professors at obscure poorly ranked universities are amazing teachers who do solid (but perhaps not famous or well promoted) research. You should probably replace “good” in your sentence with “prestigious” or the like.
- qwerty456127 8y ago
  > many of the professors at obscure unrecognized universities are amazing teachers who do solid (but perhaps not famous or well promoted) research. If I were choosing who is going to teach me I wouldn't really care about what research do they do, I would care about how good they are at teaching.

jfoutz 8y ago

> Why not just build more universities? Because universities are fortresses designed to protect the weirdos who can't survive in the real world. We're passing through this awesome enlightenment phase where there's room for everyone. But you can't just throw one up on a thursday afternoon. Universities need a kind of social contract. (i realize the one true scotsman weakness here, but i think the point holds) Universities are where you stick the rich kid that's not strong enough to run the family business. Sometimes, you don't even have to be rich. The thing that's neat is sometimes an idea pops out of a university that's pretty good. Newtonian physics and evolution spring to mind. i'm obviously nuts. i would encourage you to read [1]. I'm not exactly making an appeal to authority, it's more of a here's a much better, less cynical interpretation of what i'm trying to say. [1] https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~vl/notes/dijkstra.html https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~vl/notes/dijkstra.html

InvisibleCities 8y ago

Universities in the US are no longer institutions of higher learning; they are hedge funds with affiliated football and basketball teams. Because of this, universities have decided to drastically cut costs by replacing tenure-track positions with adjuncts. About 58% of faculty at American universities are non-tenure track, and that number is likely to increase over the coming decade as tenured professors retire [1]. [1] https://www.aaup.org/report/status-non-tenure-track-faculty https://www.aaup.org/report/status-non-tenure-track-faculty