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The solution to a broken higher-education system is not to encourage people to avoid it entirely. It's to fix the problem and make higher education affordable i

The solution to a broken higher-education system is not to encourage people to avoid it entirely. It's to fix the problem and make higher education affordable in the US in the same way it's affordable overseas. It's great to say "don't go to college" but the reality is that most employers NEED people with college educations. It's unlikely that any amount of mentoring it going to create the technical employees that our businesses are desperate for right now. Yes, a lot of kids are wasting their college education and not ending up with marketable skills. A big reason for that is our loan system that makes it easy to get a tuition loan for a field you'll probably never make a living in, because the party making the loan doesn't have to worry about a default. If the effective cost of an engineering degree was half that of a degree with fewer job opportunities, because there was real risk of default and that was priced into the interest rate, we'd see a much better hiring market for new college grads than we do right now. Loaning someone $100K so they can get a photography degree at NYU and make $40K a year (as per a recent NYT article) suggests that the market is not functioning properly, and it's obvious why.

joshkaufman 15y ago
To do what you suggest would require a massive restructuring of the entire US university system, and the governmental systems that continuously feed it easy money. There's a reason why college costs go up as federal educational dollars increase. Colleges don't care what you major in, as long as the dollars flow. Colleges have absolutely no incentive to provide educational experiences that are useful in the working world, since the money is already in the bank account. They have every incentive to maximize enrollments [1] and keep students enrolled as long as possible, while reducing costs via cheap graduate student labor. Colleges also have every incentive to massage outcomes statistics to keep federal dollars flowing. When a student defaults on a loan, the college doesn't bear the brunt of the impact - it's the responsibility of the government, and therefore, the taxpayer. "Fixing" the college system, as you suggest, would require eliminating many administrators and/or substantially reducing their salaries, structuring departments based on market demand vs. academic interest (no more liberal arts), and largely eliminating federal subsidies for academic research, student loans, and grants. You can bet that every single individual involved in credentialing as it presently exists will fight those changes to their dying breath. Since being "strong on education" gets politicians elected, this faction will find it easy to maintain political support. Personally, I think this sentiment sums up the alternative approach: "You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete." - Buckminster Fuller Employers don't NEED people with college educations. They need employees with economically valuable skills. They're not the same thing. [1] http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_19/b4177064219731.htm http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_19/b41770642...
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- fecklessyouth 15y ago
  >structuring departments based on market demand vs. academic interest (no more liberal arts) This sort of view is rampant on HN, and I can kind of see why. The core mental skills engendered by a truly study in the liberal arts, users here pick up on their own. The more technical skills were either self-taught or learned in a technical educational program. And finally, many of you probably knew from a somewhat early age, at least college, that you wanted to do the sort of technical fields often discussed here. I don't think it's a false assumption to say that many users, probably like yourself, are "smarter," by some core measurement of reasoning and reading and writing, than the general populace. It's easy to see why you should brush away something like the liberal arts--it didn't do anything for you! Yet this ridiculous shortsightedness reminds me of recurring clarion calls about the end of religion. "Any second now, it will no longer become necessary. It's been central to (spirituality and life/education) for, literally, thousands of years, but THIS is the year we stop needing it." Even if we eliminate the huge debt that (Western) intellectualism owes to the liberal arts of classical era, reasons abound for continuing the tradition beyond mere duty. Before I continue, let me clarify what I mean by liberal arts. A degree in anything from a large public university is probably not a true liberal arts education. The liberal arts, to me, implies small classrooms, the Socratic method, great/classic literature, heavy reading assignments and papers, emphasis on reasoning and essay writing as opposed to memorization and test-taking, and faculty that take an active approach to students' lives, engaging them after hours. That sort of education, to me, is worth what I'm (currently) paying for it. I admit, the financial aid/tuition is in dire need of restructuring. The athletic departments and non-faculty employees are, more often than not, unneeded at their current levels. It is absolute folly to throw out the system that has worked nearly as long as civilization itself because the "market" demands different skills. I am all for changing departments to fit market skills, but we must remember: Departments can only change so fast, and sometimes the best way to learn those skills it simply by trying them, and not by learning about old models of them. I frequent this place enough to know that CS degrees are not necessarily the best way to make your living in programming. Though I offer no personal anecdote, one sentiment I come across is, they're simply outdated, and move too slow. YET, a department shifted to fit "market demands" might simply expand the CS department, despite the department's inability to quickly adjust to market demands. We must realize that there is a limit to how "new" an education can be. I trust the market to certain tasks, but not to determining what is most useful to study. That, in itself, presents an argument for the liberal arts. Technical skills change. Homer does not. Four years spent studying a now-dead skills are wasted years. Four years spent reading the Odyssey in Greek will almost certainly not grant any useful skills, but it will sharpen the mind far greater than any program shifted to meet "market demands." My greatest personal support for the liberal arts comes from long hours spent studying a single endeavor. I would think this is a universal feeling: time spent pouring over a subject or work or project should be rewarding. The more time I spent last semester delving into the Aeneid, the more rewarding and revealing it became. I have never felt this way about any subject, and certainly not ones adjusted to meet "market demands." I'll be damned if I devote four years to something unimportant. We can wax eloquent about useful skills, or we can draw a sharp contrast between needing to learn specific skills for a job, and needing to learn to learn, to "think outside the box," however cliche that may sound, to analyze arguments, and trends, and people, and events, to question, not authority, but everything, to develop a love of mental exploration and challenges, and to take "technical skills" with a grain of salt. Surely the college system needs overhaul. But it needs more of the true liberal arts, like what I described, not less of it. HN needs to take a step back, remember that programming is not reflective of every industry, not academic department, and finally... realize what the power would be in a mentorship with the figures the OP mentions. Surely the power would be in more than the networking, but what that person could learn. Not the mere marketable, technical skills you speak of, but the experiences that challenge them, and force them to think on their feet, and examine their beliefs, and learn, (FAST). These are the same core skills taught in a true liberal arts environment, and could be achieved by a mere alteration of the thread's title: "We need an AirBnB for tutorship."
InclinedPlane 15y ago
I don't think the problem of higher education is affordability, there are more bachelor/master/phd graduates than ever. The problem is the content, and the methodology. A great deal of college comes down to little more than: read a book, do some exercises, and then tests to verify you learned what was in the book. But much of that is at the wrong level, too much breadth, not enough actual mastery of the fundamentals. The result is CS graduates who struggle on anything other than non-trivial programming projects, or chemistry graduates who don't understand that the bulk of the weight of a piece of wood comes from CO2. Sadly, most of the "value" of college today is due to the failure of high schools. If you require a basic level of literacy, numeracy, computer literacy, etc. you have to set your level at college graduates, since a HS diploma no longer guarantees such skills.

joshkaufman 15y ago

To do what you suggest would require a massive restructuring of the entire US university system, and the governmental systems that continuously feed it easy money. There's a reason why college costs go up as federal educational dollars increase. Colleges don't care what you major in, as long as the dollars flow. Colleges have absolutely no incentive to provide educational experiences that are useful in the working world, since the money is already in the bank account. They have every incentive to maximize enrollments [1] and keep students enrolled as long as possible, while reducing costs via cheap graduate student labor. Colleges also have every incentive to massage outcomes statistics to keep federal dollars flowing. When a student defaults on a loan, the college doesn't bear the brunt of the impact - it's the responsibility of the government, and therefore, the taxpayer. "Fixing" the college system, as you suggest, would require eliminating many administrators and/or substantially reducing their salaries, structuring departments based on market demand vs. academic interest (no more liberal arts), and largely eliminating federal subsidies for academic research, student loans, and grants. You can bet that every single individual involved in credentialing as it presently exists will fight those changes to their dying breath. Since being "strong on education" gets politicians elected, this faction will find it easy to maintain political support. Personally, I think this sentiment sums up the alternative approach: "You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete." - Buckminster Fuller Employers don't NEED people with college educations. They need employees with economically valuable skills. They're not the same thing. [1] http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_19/b4177064219731.htm http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_19/b41770642...

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
fecklessyouth 15y ago
>structuring departments based on market demand vs. academic interest (no more liberal arts) This sort of view is rampant on HN, and I can kind of see why. The core mental skills engendered by a truly study in the liberal arts, users here pick up on their own. The more technical skills were either self-taught or learned in a technical educational program. And finally, many of you probably knew from a somewhat early age, at least college, that you wanted to do the sort of technical fields often discussed here. I don't think it's a false assumption to say that many users, probably like yourself, are "smarter," by some core measurement of reasoning and reading and writing, than the general populace. It's easy to see why you should brush away something like the liberal arts--it didn't do anything for you! Yet this ridiculous shortsightedness reminds me of recurring clarion calls about the end of religion. "Any second now, it will no longer become necessary. It's been central to (spirituality and life/education) for, literally, thousands of years, but THIS is the year we stop needing it." Even if we eliminate the huge debt that (Western) intellectualism owes to the liberal arts of classical era, reasons abound for continuing the tradition beyond mere duty. Before I continue, let me clarify what I mean by liberal arts. A degree in anything from a large public university is probably not a true liberal arts education. The liberal arts, to me, implies small classrooms, the Socratic method, great/classic literature, heavy reading assignments and papers, emphasis on reasoning and essay writing as opposed to memorization and test-taking, and faculty that take an active approach to students' lives, engaging them after hours. That sort of education, to me, is worth what I'm (currently) paying for it. I admit, the financial aid/tuition is in dire need of restructuring. The athletic departments and non-faculty employees are, more often than not, unneeded at their current levels. It is absolute folly to throw out the system that has worked nearly as long as civilization itself because the "market" demands different skills. I am all for changing departments to fit market skills, but we must remember: Departments can only change so fast, and sometimes the best way to learn those skills it simply by trying them, and not by learning about old models of them. I frequent this place enough to know that CS degrees are not necessarily the best way to make your living in programming. Though I offer no personal anecdote, one sentiment I come across is, they're simply outdated, and move too slow. YET, a department shifted to fit "market demands" might simply expand the CS department, despite the department's inability to quickly adjust to market demands. We must realize that there is a limit to how "new" an education can be. I trust the market to certain tasks, but not to determining what is most useful to study. That, in itself, presents an argument for the liberal arts. Technical skills change. Homer does not. Four years spent studying a now-dead skills are wasted years. Four years spent reading the Odyssey in Greek will almost certainly not grant any useful skills, but it will sharpen the mind far greater than any program shifted to meet "market demands." My greatest personal support for the liberal arts comes from long hours spent studying a single endeavor. I would think this is a universal feeling: time spent pouring over a subject or work or project should be rewarding. The more time I spent last semester delving into the Aeneid, the more rewarding and revealing it became. I have never felt this way about any subject, and certainly not ones adjusted to meet "market demands." I'll be damned if I devote four years to something unimportant. We can wax eloquent about useful skills, or we can draw a sharp contrast between needing to learn specific skills for a job, and needing to learn to learn, to "think outside the box," however cliche that may sound, to analyze arguments, and trends, and people, and events, to question, not authority, but everything, to develop a love of mental exploration and challenges, and to take "technical skills" with a grain of salt. Surely the college system needs overhaul. But it needs more of the true liberal arts, like what I described, not less of it. HN needs to take a step back, remember that programming is not reflective of every industry, not academic department, and finally... realize what the power would be in a mentorship with the figures the OP mentions. Surely the power would be in more than the networking, but what that person could learn. Not the mere marketable, technical skills you speak of, but the experiences that challenge them, and force them to think on their feet, and examine their beliefs, and learn, (FAST). These are the same core skills taught in a true liberal arts environment, and could be achieved by a mere alteration of the thread's title: "We need an AirBnB for tutorship."

InclinedPlane 15y ago

I don't think the problem of higher education is affordability, there are more bachelor/master/phd graduates than ever. The problem is the content, and the methodology. A great deal of college comes down to little more than: read a book, do some exercises, and then tests to verify you learned what was in the book. But much of that is at the wrong level, too much breadth, not enough actual mastery of the fundamentals. The result is CS graduates who struggle on anything other than non-trivial programming projects, or chemistry graduates who don't understand that the bulk of the weight of a piece of wood comes from CO2. Sadly, most of the "value" of college today is due to the failure of high schools. If you require a basic level of literacy, numeracy, computer literacy, etc. you have to set your level at college graduates, since a HS diploma no longer guarantees such skills.