7 ms·

Am I wrong to say that K-8 education faces a similar sort of problem, except that college students likely live with other college students, whereas kids are far

Am I wrong to say that K-8 education faces a similar sort of problem, except that college students likely live with other college students, whereas kids are far more likely to live with family with older folk? Why should colleges be expected to be safer than K-8? Why must they resort to impromptu web solutions? Also, if there's a consensus on risk and response, shouldn't that be coordinated at a central level instead of institutions each making their own calls?

vkou 6y ago
Because K-8 provides childcare, without which a society where all the adults in a household are working quickly starts unraveling. Whereas you can close all colleges for a year, with a much smaller impact.
- jonahbenton 6y ago
  If you close all colleges for a year, without substantial liquidity support that is not going to be forthcoming, many (25%) will never reopen.
  - gowld 6y ago
    There are too many private colleges so that seems fine.
  - vkou 6y ago
    Which will create opportunities for leaner, slimmer, more efficient startup colleges to take their place. I'm not talking about coding boot camps, I'm talking about institutions that are more similar to trade schools... Or European universities. All that you need to educate people is a large hall, an instructor, and a whiteboard.
    - jonahbenton 6y ago
      With respect, while I am sympathetic to the creative destructive dogma of capitalism, I see reality considerably differently. I don't mean to be banal but the business of colleges is not "education". A large hall, an instructor, and a whiteboard is not competitive from the perspective of the customer base, nor is it attractive from the perspective of those who would populate the whiteboard with whatever. What parents and students pay for is essentially a moderately supervised, branded, summer sleepaway camp experience (full year) filled with nice sounding time-occupying activities and vague, often unfulfilled, and also unaccountable promises that at the end of the camp experience someone will be willing to pay to utilize the time of the student, rather than the student/parents paying to have their time occupied. There are various ways to creatively package the elements of that experience into a product, but in the "lean" formulations- like Lambda School- there is no real estate, no large hall. Real estate is expensive. I think what we actually would see- are already seeing- in the closure of the bespoke, idiosyncratic small private colleges likely to die is the chain restaurant version of the bespoke, idiosyncratic small family restaurants that have largely gone by the wayside in American culture. They will have a consistent brand, will cost maybe a little less, will pay their mostly expendable teaching staff considerably less, with no tenure (though performance bonuses and maybe equity grants for the stars, the way any sensibly managed business operates these days), with a manufactured curriculum delivered consistently across the "franchises" and with lots of entertainment and parent-appealing safety/oversight options, lots of addons for extra fees (semester abroad, anyone?), and some structure around the time-occupying activities that may- no guarantees- lead to eventual employment. Welcome to Olive Garden, can I take your classroom order please? Mediocre consistency at scale is how America works. Cheers.
      - WalterBright 6y ago
        Sorry you picked the wrong college to attend, but I can personally vouch for them not all being like that.
        jonahbenton 6y ago
        I didn't articulate that well- it wasn't a comment on my experience or on college experience generally. I do think the operational dynamics of colleges have changed, and the parent comment about the essence of education being someone at a whiteboard in a room- I just don't think that's sufficiently true anymore. It's not what people pay for. But more to the point- The Olive Garden analogy is what (I think) will happen. That prognostication is in line generally with the business trajectory that the US solves for. All businesses are ultimately scaled and financialized. So- as small private colleges will be the first to fail, their brands and their nostalgia will be picked up by the educational equivalent of restaurant chain operations. Chain operations will produce a product people will pay for- lots of people in the US go to chain restaurants- but the end result is going to be considerably different than what used to be called the college experience. There is no legal or financial machinery in the US to defend the small. And that's too bad. Cheers.
    - dodobirdlord 6y ago
      The quality of the American university system is foundational to why America is such a powerful and influential country. Suggesting any significant disruption to the university system that currently exists sounds like killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. Everyone ranks universities different, but the broad strokes shake out the same every time. The US university system is of unparalleled quality. Perhaps the American university system could be made better, but have you noticed that literally every other country on earth does way worse? https://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/rankings https://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/ra...
      - goatinaboat 6y ago
        have you noticed that literally every other country on earth does way worse? According to a website called “US news”. The US definitely has a few colleges in the top 20 say but so do a few other countries.
        deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - red_admiral 6y ago
        Not going to downvote, but I am going to disagree. For starters, most rankings have Oxford and Cambridge in the UK quite high up, and they run on a different model. Next up, "liberal arts" today is not the same thing as it was a generation ago, and it's debatable whether it's still doing that much except credentialism (Bryan Caplan certainly thinks it isn't). This is not, by the way, a dog-whistle at social justice: I think that college SJ is a symptom of a deeper structural problem with the current university system. The 25% who are going to fail (if the poster two levels above is right) are probably also not the Ivy League. In the UK at least, there are lots of places lower down the league tables who in my opinion could contribute a lot more to the nation if they were good trade schools rather than bad universities. Less sure about the US situation, but I think it was the case until not that long ago that there were ways to power and influence that didn't go through a university - including many examples of past presidents.
- wool_gather 6y ago
  I agree that it's probably a smaller impact, but on the other hand the result is a bunch of teenagers and young adults with way too much time on their hands and no clear prospects for the future. It seems like it could turn into motivation for either a very good or very bad outcome.
  - IG_Semmelweiss 6y ago
    This is the best comment on this thread I think too many forget the risk of having ~1/4th of your youth population sitting around with no money, no goals and no life. Its a powder keg and you dont know the likelyhood of ignition or in which direction sharpnel will go.
    - vkou 6y ago
      There's no shortage of socially useful work to do, that does not take a bachelor's degree. There just seems to be an unwillingness for government to pay anyone to do it.
      - pdonis 6y ago
        If you think it's socially useful work, why don't you pay some kids to do it?
    - pasquinelli 6y ago
      They sit around all summer and i can't say i've ever seen any shrapnel coming off them.
      - ipython 6y ago
        That’s a specious argument. Most parents (mine included) put massive pressure on working age kids to get summer jobs to fill those hours. The incentive for the kid is of course spending money too. I would imagine with massive closures and unemployment that supply of summer jobs is close to zero now. I suppose in our kids generation there is a mitigating circumstance- the wide availability of legal teenage heroin aka video games. Today’s “bread and circus” of inexpensive, endless content and games will keep us placated indefinitely as far as I can tell.
save_ferris 6y ago
Because universities are billion-dollar funds with schools attached to them. They’ve generally expanded in direct proportion to the exorbitant student debt that kids sign up for, and now that entire system is going to be tested in incredibly difficult ways. Most K-12 students in the US live at home, which is a much safer option generally than on campus, as most undergrads do.
- otoburb 6y ago
  >>Because universities are billion-dollar funds with schools attached to them. The market value of US endowments in 2016 was $542B, of which 120 of the richest accounted for a whopping $401B or 74% of the total endowment value in the US.[1] The 26% remainder ($51B) was split between 2832 4-yr degree-granting colleges[2] for an average endowment (excluding the top 120 richest) of ~$19M/college. Only 4% of 4-yr degree-granting colleges have endowments >$750M. [1] https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=73 https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=73 [2] https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=84 https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=84
jonahbenton 6y ago
Yes, same problem in k-8. Slightly less risk in the student cohort, equivalent or higher risk in the staff and surrounding cohort. Speaking as someone building one of those impromptu web solutions- it is a bad situation all around. For many colleges if they do not reopen in the fall they never will again, due to finances. And many are seeing demand from their students to reopen. So it is a matter of survival to do it- in that case it has to be done as safely and with as much consideration for harm reduction as possible. But there is little time and many people are working 24/7 just to get to "impromptu." In terms of "centralized", the virus is a highly local problem. It spreads and has to be dealt with locally. Nuances unique to each locality dictate the mitigation measures. Hope that helps. Cheers.
ptero 6y ago
At least in many (most) schools in the US K-8 education is pretty worthless. As a parent I would be just fine with my kids skipping a grade (uhm, zoom-ing through one, that is). College though is a real education, and I want it to be face to face. I (and them) accept the risk, based on what is known today. My 2c.
- jimbob45 6y ago
  I was only tolerable as a 9th grader because of the ladder of chaos that was middle school. While I may not have learned much in the way of academics, I grew immeasurably socially.
- jjcon 6y ago
  I think it’s easy to forget how hard learning is after you have already mastered something. You’d be surprised all the things you learn k-8. If you ask a current PhD student how hard things are and then wait 10 years and ask how hard their PhD was you will get totally different answers.
  - MiroF 6y ago
    > You’d be surprised all the things you learn k-8. Very much depends on the school district. In many urban school districts, it's better than being in the house, but its hardly enriching.
  - irishcoffee 6y ago
    You learn how to read and you learn basic math. That’s really it from a useful educational standpoint. Happy to debate it.
    - nradov 6y ago
      My children have learned far more than reading and basic math in their K-8 schools. This is an obvious fact and not open for debate. Distance learning is not an acceptable replacement. It's time to immediately reopen all primary schools. Education is essential and worth the risk.
Jerry2 6y ago
I have a 6 and an 8 year old. We won't be sending them to school in September. My wife has a comorbidity and if she were to catch Coronavirus, she'd have hard time surviving it. We plan on homeschooling our kids going forward. Most of the parents I spoke to plan to do the same.
- adrianN 6y ago
  You're lucky that you can afford to do so. Poor people have a lot less time to homeschool their children.
  - watwut 6y ago
    I am not poor and excerience with quarantine made me incredibly happy about having school normally. Both because of myself and because of kids.

vkou 6y ago

Because K-8 provides childcare, without which a society where all the adults in a household are working quickly starts unraveling. Whereas you can close all colleges for a year, with a much smaller impact.

jonahbenton 6y ago
If you close all colleges for a year, without substantial liquidity support that is not going to be forthcoming, many (25%) will never reopen.
- gowld 6y ago
  There are too many private colleges so that seems fine.
- vkou 6y ago
  Which will create opportunities for leaner, slimmer, more efficient startup colleges to take their place. I'm not talking about coding boot camps, I'm talking about institutions that are more similar to trade schools... Or European universities. All that you need to educate people is a large hall, an instructor, and a whiteboard.
  - jonahbenton 6y ago
    With respect, while I am sympathetic to the creative destructive dogma of capitalism, I see reality considerably differently. I don't mean to be banal but the business of colleges is not "education". A large hall, an instructor, and a whiteboard is not competitive from the perspective of the customer base, nor is it attractive from the perspective of those who would populate the whiteboard with whatever. What parents and students pay for is essentially a moderately supervised, branded, summer sleepaway camp experience (full year) filled with nice sounding time-occupying activities and vague, often unfulfilled, and also unaccountable promises that at the end of the camp experience someone will be willing to pay to utilize the time of the student, rather than the student/parents paying to have their time occupied. There are various ways to creatively package the elements of that experience into a product, but in the "lean" formulations- like Lambda School- there is no real estate, no large hall. Real estate is expensive. I think what we actually would see- are already seeing- in the closure of the bespoke, idiosyncratic small private colleges likely to die is the chain restaurant version of the bespoke, idiosyncratic small family restaurants that have largely gone by the wayside in American culture. They will have a consistent brand, will cost maybe a little less, will pay their mostly expendable teaching staff considerably less, with no tenure (though performance bonuses and maybe equity grants for the stars, the way any sensibly managed business operates these days), with a manufactured curriculum delivered consistently across the "franchises" and with lots of entertainment and parent-appealing safety/oversight options, lots of addons for extra fees (semester abroad, anyone?), and some structure around the time-occupying activities that may- no guarantees- lead to eventual employment. Welcome to Olive Garden, can I take your classroom order please? Mediocre consistency at scale is how America works. Cheers.
    - WalterBright 6y ago
      Sorry you picked the wrong college to attend, but I can personally vouch for them not all being like that.
      - jonahbenton 6y ago
        I didn't articulate that well- it wasn't a comment on my experience or on college experience generally. I do think the operational dynamics of colleges have changed, and the parent comment about the essence of education being someone at a whiteboard in a room- I just don't think that's sufficiently true anymore. It's not what people pay for. But more to the point- The Olive Garden analogy is what (I think) will happen. That prognostication is in line generally with the business trajectory that the US solves for. All businesses are ultimately scaled and financialized. So- as small private colleges will be the first to fail, their brands and their nostalgia will be picked up by the educational equivalent of restaurant chain operations. Chain operations will produce a product people will pay for- lots of people in the US go to chain restaurants- but the end result is going to be considerably different than what used to be called the college experience. There is no legal or financial machinery in the US to defend the small. And that's too bad. Cheers.
  - dodobirdlord 6y ago
    The quality of the American university system is foundational to why America is such a powerful and influential country. Suggesting any significant disruption to the university system that currently exists sounds like killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. Everyone ranks universities different, but the broad strokes shake out the same every time. The US university system is of unparalleled quality. Perhaps the American university system could be made better, but have you noticed that literally every other country on earth does way worse? https://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/rankings https://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/ra...
    - goatinaboat 6y ago
      have you noticed that literally every other country on earth does way worse? According to a website called “US news”. The US definitely has a few colleges in the top 20 say but so do a few other countries.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
    - red_admiral 6y ago
      Not going to downvote, but I am going to disagree. For starters, most rankings have Oxford and Cambridge in the UK quite high up, and they run on a different model. Next up, "liberal arts" today is not the same thing as it was a generation ago, and it's debatable whether it's still doing that much except credentialism (Bryan Caplan certainly thinks it isn't). This is not, by the way, a dog-whistle at social justice: I think that college SJ is a symptom of a deeper structural problem with the current university system. The 25% who are going to fail (if the poster two levels above is right) are probably also not the Ivy League. In the UK at least, there are lots of places lower down the league tables who in my opinion could contribute a lot more to the nation if they were good trade schools rather than bad universities. Less sure about the US situation, but I think it was the case until not that long ago that there were ways to power and influence that didn't go through a university - including many examples of past presidents.
wool_gather 6y ago
I agree that it's probably a smaller impact, but on the other hand the result is a bunch of teenagers and young adults with way too much time on their hands and no clear prospects for the future. It seems like it could turn into motivation for either a very good or very bad outcome.
- IG_Semmelweiss 6y ago
  This is the best comment on this thread I think too many forget the risk of having ~1/4th of your youth population sitting around with no money, no goals and no life. Its a powder keg and you dont know the likelyhood of ignition or in which direction sharpnel will go.
  - vkou 6y ago
    There's no shortage of socially useful work to do, that does not take a bachelor's degree. There just seems to be an unwillingness for government to pay anyone to do it.
    - pdonis 6y ago
      If you think it's socially useful work, why don't you pay some kids to do it?
  - pasquinelli 6y ago
    They sit around all summer and i can't say i've ever seen any shrapnel coming off them.
    - ipython 6y ago
      That’s a specious argument. Most parents (mine included) put massive pressure on working age kids to get summer jobs to fill those hours. The incentive for the kid is of course spending money too. I would imagine with massive closures and unemployment that supply of summer jobs is close to zero now. I suppose in our kids generation there is a mitigating circumstance- the wide availability of legal teenage heroin aka video games. Today’s “bread and circus” of inexpensive, endless content and games will keep us placated indefinitely as far as I can tell.

save_ferris 6y ago

Because universities are billion-dollar funds with schools attached to them. They’ve generally expanded in direct proportion to the exorbitant student debt that kids sign up for, and now that entire system is going to be tested in incredibly difficult ways. Most K-12 students in the US live at home, which is a much safer option generally than on campus, as most undergrads do.

otoburb 6y ago
>>Because universities are billion-dollar funds with schools attached to them. The market value of US endowments in 2016 was $542B, of which 120 of the richest accounted for a whopping $401B or 74% of the total endowment value in the US.[1] The 26% remainder ($51B) was split between 2832 4-yr degree-granting colleges[2] for an average endowment (excluding the top 120 richest) of ~$19M/college. Only 4% of 4-yr degree-granting colleges have endowments >$750M. [1] https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=73 https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=73 [2] https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=84 https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=84

jonahbenton 6y ago

Yes, same problem in k-8. Slightly less risk in the student cohort, equivalent or higher risk in the staff and surrounding cohort. Speaking as someone building one of those impromptu web solutions- it is a bad situation all around. For many colleges if they do not reopen in the fall they never will again, due to finances. And many are seeing demand from their students to reopen. So it is a matter of survival to do it- in that case it has to be done as safely and with as much consideration for harm reduction as possible. But there is little time and many people are working 24/7 just to get to "impromptu." In terms of "centralized", the virus is a highly local problem. It spreads and has to be dealt with locally. Nuances unique to each locality dictate the mitigation measures. Hope that helps. Cheers.

ptero 6y ago

At least in many (most) schools in the US K-8 education is pretty worthless. As a parent I would be just fine with my kids skipping a grade (uhm, zoom-ing through one, that is). College though is a real education, and I want it to be face to face. I (and them) accept the risk, based on what is known today. My 2c.

jimbob45 6y ago
I was only tolerable as a 9th grader because of the ladder of chaos that was middle school. While I may not have learned much in the way of academics, I grew immeasurably socially.
jjcon 6y ago
I think it’s easy to forget how hard learning is after you have already mastered something. You’d be surprised all the things you learn k-8. If you ask a current PhD student how hard things are and then wait 10 years and ask how hard their PhD was you will get totally different answers.
- MiroF 6y ago
  > You’d be surprised all the things you learn k-8. Very much depends on the school district. In many urban school districts, it's better than being in the house, but its hardly enriching.
- irishcoffee 6y ago
  You learn how to read and you learn basic math. That’s really it from a useful educational standpoint. Happy to debate it.
  - nradov 6y ago
    My children have learned far more than reading and basic math in their K-8 schools. This is an obvious fact and not open for debate. Distance learning is not an acceptable replacement. It's time to immediately reopen all primary schools. Education is essential and worth the risk.

Jerry2 6y ago

I have a 6 and an 8 year old. We won't be sending them to school in September. My wife has a comorbidity and if she were to catch Coronavirus, she'd have hard time surviving it. We plan on homeschooling our kids going forward. Most of the parents I spoke to plan to do the same.

adrianN 6y ago
You're lucky that you can afford to do so. Poor people have a lot less time to homeschool their children.
- watwut 6y ago
  I am not poor and excerience with quarantine made me incredibly happy about having school normally. Both because of myself and because of kids.