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The biggest moral hazard is in colleges. The boards of colleges justified higher expense structures in the name of trying to win a zero sum rankings game. The

The biggest moral hazard is in colleges. The boards of colleges justified higher expense structures in the name of trying to win a zero sum rankings game. The best case for them is a lot of people wondering why they are paying $30k a year to watch online lectures while inflation wipes out the debt. The worst case for schools is a total restructure due to lower revenue and donations due to students unwilling to overpay to sit at home and alumni not having the funds. The future is no college degree at all.

AnimalMuppet 6y ago
I think the future is a series of online courses that have objective pass-fail, and somebody with recognized authority to issue degrees in X if you pass X's set of courses. And it's cheap - maybe $100 per class. And there's different classes competing to be in the set for X, and there's competing outfits with the authority to issue degrees.
- throwawayjava 6y ago
  Everything that you just listed is basically how our current system works. Accredited institutions can issue degrees if you pass their courses. There are various "grades" that bucket people, but as far as getting the degree goes, you just need to pass. Grading is at least ostensibly objective. Admissions to accredited institutions is selective, and colleges compete with one another for students. The only two differences are price per class and "objective grading". The former amounts to "what if we had our current system, except everything were cheaper". Which, I guess I have to admit, would indeed be nice. It'd be nice if healthcare and cars and real estate were cheaper as well. Not sure how to actually do it, though. And for the latter, we've done that in K12 (standardized tests). Almost everyone seems to agree it's a terrible system.
  - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
    OK, let me try again. I'm the accrediting institution. For my degree in physics, you have to pass this online class on electrodynamics from MIT, because it's the best one there is. And you have to pass this other online class from Caltech on special relativity, because it's the best there is on that. And so on. The "accrediting institution" doesn't need to own any of the course content. It can take the best of the online courses that are available. And the online stuff that's available tends to be the best of the available lecturers. That's why it could be less expensive. You don't have to have classrooms. You don't have to pay the lecturers' salaries (though you do have to pay license fees on the video). You have to have a very small amount of administration, and you have to write and administer tests that show whether the student actually knows the material. Western Governors University already runs on something like this model, except that I believe that they use their own content instead of the best available online content, and they only have a limited set of majors. And, I didn't say "standardized tests". The tests would probably belong to the accrediting institution. But there need to be tests, so that they can tell that you actually learned something, instead of just sitting through the videos watching something else on your phone.
    - throwawayjava 6y ago
      Okay. So, everyone needs to be able to pass MIT's electrodynamics course if they get a degree that requires and electrodynamics course. And without intensive one-on-one and in person tutoring. I'll risk sounding like an asshole or making an ass of myself and just straight up ask: Have you ever taught before? Somewhere other than a top ten CS or ivy league university? What you're proposing sounds way more expensive than the status quo.
jdm2212 6y ago
> The biggest moral hazard is in colleges. The boards of colleges justified higher expense structures in the name of trying to win a zero sum rankings game. That's not what "moral hazard" means.
- wtvanhest 6y ago
  For clarity: “In economics, moral hazard occurs when an individual has an incentive to increase their exposure to risk because they do not bear the full costs of that risk” In this case, the risk is the increased cost structure in order to get the benefit of accolades from winning the zero sum rankings game. If it were their money instead of the universities’ money, they likely wouldn’t have increased the cost structure

AnimalMuppet 6y ago

I think the future is a series of online courses that have objective pass-fail, and somebody with recognized authority to issue degrees in X if you pass X's set of courses. And it's cheap - maybe $100 per class. And there's different classes competing to be in the set for X, and there's competing outfits with the authority to issue degrees.

throwawayjava 6y ago
Everything that you just listed is basically how our current system works. Accredited institutions can issue degrees if you pass their courses. There are various "grades" that bucket people, but as far as getting the degree goes, you just need to pass. Grading is at least ostensibly objective. Admissions to accredited institutions is selective, and colleges compete with one another for students. The only two differences are price per class and "objective grading". The former amounts to "what if we had our current system, except everything were cheaper". Which, I guess I have to admit, would indeed be nice. It'd be nice if healthcare and cars and real estate were cheaper as well. Not sure how to actually do it, though. And for the latter, we've done that in K12 (standardized tests). Almost everyone seems to agree it's a terrible system.
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  OK, let me try again. I'm the accrediting institution. For my degree in physics, you have to pass this online class on electrodynamics from MIT, because it's the best one there is. And you have to pass this other online class from Caltech on special relativity, because it's the best there is on that. And so on. The "accrediting institution" doesn't need to own any of the course content. It can take the best of the online courses that are available. And the online stuff that's available tends to be the best of the available lecturers. That's why it could be less expensive. You don't have to have classrooms. You don't have to pay the lecturers' salaries (though you do have to pay license fees on the video). You have to have a very small amount of administration, and you have to write and administer tests that show whether the student actually knows the material. Western Governors University already runs on something like this model, except that I believe that they use their own content instead of the best available online content, and they only have a limited set of majors. And, I didn't say "standardized tests". The tests would probably belong to the accrediting institution. But there need to be tests, so that they can tell that you actually learned something, instead of just sitting through the videos watching something else on your phone.
  - throwawayjava 6y ago
    Okay. So, everyone needs to be able to pass MIT's electrodynamics course if they get a degree that requires and electrodynamics course. And without intensive one-on-one and in person tutoring. I'll risk sounding like an asshole or making an ass of myself and just straight up ask: Have you ever taught before? Somewhere other than a top ten CS or ivy league university? What you're proposing sounds way more expensive than the status quo.

jdm2212 6y ago

> The biggest moral hazard is in colleges. The boards of colleges justified higher expense structures in the name of trying to win a zero sum rankings game. That's not what "moral hazard" means.

wtvanhest 6y ago
For clarity: “In economics, moral hazard occurs when an individual has an incentive to increase their exposure to risk because they do not bear the full costs of that risk” In this case, the risk is the increased cost structure in order to get the benefit of accolades from winning the zero sum rankings game. If it were their money instead of the universities’ money, they likely wouldn’t have increased the cost structure