26 ms·

Interest surges in top colleges, while struggling ones scrape for applicants

127 points by smaslennikov 6y ago

lumost 6y ago
Colleges should have more price stratification than they do. At present the price difference between MIT and Umass Amherst out of state is only 41%. Both will leave a student heavily in debt to the tune of 150-300k, the difference likely doesn't materially matter to the student as they are looking at is as a ticket to a better life.
- sct202 6y ago
  The top colleges have very complicated pricing schemes and are basically free to middle and lower income students, for example a student to MIT only pays if their family earns more than $90k a year which is above the median household income of $68k.
  - a-posteriori 6y ago
    When I was there, less than 8% of the students were paying full tuition (of which a good chunk were international students). At a certain point, the colleges start to look like perfectly price discriminating monopolists: rather than charging the highest price to each customer, they set a maximum price ceiling and then subsidize the gap to the customer's marginal ability to pay.
    - fossuser 6y ago
      The price is so high that even if you’re not paying full price, it’s often still extremely expensive.
    - borski 6y ago
      iirc, it was even lower when I went. And this is probably the most common mistake I see made about MIT, etc.; the lack of acknowledgment that the financial aid within top schools runs deep, which simply isn’t as true for smaller or less popular schools. Going to a “top tier” school can, depending on your financial situation, actually cost you roughly what a state school would. You can argue there are too many hoops to jump through, or anything else, but that’s a different argument.
      - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
        > the lack of acknowledgment that the financial aid within top schools runs deep, I think you're confusing depth and breadth. It's like the Harbor Freight coupon. Everyone gets 20% off with a few exclusions. But the people paying less than 80% (to continue the Harbor Freight metaphor) are few and far between.
        borski 6y ago
        No, I understand precisely what you're trying to say. Based on my (admittedly anecdotal) experience applying to colleges and working (however briefly) in Financial Aid at MIT, it was not a 20% blanket by any stretch; each case was treated individually and there was an explicit focus on ensuring students were not saddled with insane amounts of debt. There were exceptions, particularly for wealthy folks and people who were 'on the line' income-wise, but the majority got significant financial aid. Just to give you an idea, from MIT's stats[1]: * Average need-based MIT scholarship: $47,593 * Students awarded a need-based MIT scholarship: 59% * Students attending tuition-free: 31% * Class of 2019 graduates with no student loan debt: 76% * Average student loan debt for those who borrowed: $23,226 The trope that the expensive schools are the cause of the massive student loan debt problem is just that; a trope. When only 24% of the class graduates with any debt at all, I'm not convinced MIT (and similar) are the problem. This is largely due to MIT and similar schools having massive endowments from which they can draw for Financial Aid; there are cheaper schools, certainly, but they have coffers that are less deep (referring to private schools), meaning students end up having to take more debt. [1] https://web.mit.edu/facts/tuition.html https://web.mit.edu/facts/tuition.html
        grepthisab 6y ago
        You kind of buried the lede in your last paragraph: This is largely due to MIT and similar schools having massive endowments from which they can draw for Financial Aid; there are cheaper schools, certainly, but they have coffers that are less deep (referring to private schools), meaning students end up having to take more debt. It is reality that expensive schools cause the massive student loan debt problem, but expensiveness isn't totally buried in sticker price but total cost of attendance. Schools like HYSM don't saddle attendees with as much debt despite their high sticker price perhaps because of endowments.
  - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
    You need to look at this from the perspective of someone who has little to no familial safety net and cannot rely on family resources to help them out when things get tough. Boston area schools being "basically free on paper" to middle income families is a reflection of the fact that a student from a ~100k income family has better options for getting ahead in the world than attending these institutions at any cost but these institutions would lose legitimacy without "economic diversity" tokens so they have to reduce the price. Going to Harvard (or similar) if you're not from the kind of people who go to Harvard is a high risk, high reward gamble with years of your life. These schools have to reduce the potential downside in order to get the quality of candidates they want to get from the demographics they want to get them from (i.e. they want to be able to pick the very best people from the "can't afford to attend" demographic). Also it's good PR. If you're the son of a plumber and your options are going to MIT for CS, or UMaine's "we match your local in-state tuition" deal paired with their crappy CS program the Maine one actually looks attractive because you're going to be surrounded by people a heck of a lot more like you (on a life experiences level), you're not gonna be bottom of your class and you won't be running the Boston rat race when it comes to housing, a part time job, commuting, and all the other "life" stuff". If you're the kind of high-achieving individual who goes to Harvard from a middle class background you're all but guaranteed to live more comfortably than your parents and retire comfortably regardless of the choice you make. Rolling a degree from a lesser state school into a stable job at BigCo isn't something you're worried about. The networking value add from Harvard or MIT isn't as much of a value add because you have no frame of reference for it and won't be making the kinds of life choices where it can be most helpful anyway (remember, no safety net, you're gonna be the one that builds it). So if you're gonna "win" no matter what you choose why add the additional risk of Harvard, MIT or some other program you could wash out of?
  - andrewmcwatters 6y ago
    I always think about how absurd these pricing models are. Ah yes, if you're living lavishly at $90k per annum you, too, earn the privilege of paying for your education. I suppose at some point someone has to pay. But you're not rich at $90k. And I just don't see many of those households earning between $90-250k a year wanting to pay for such a privilege. From my perspective, you've got to be either very rich, or very poor going into those schools, because there's no reasonable room for those in-between unless you're taking out significant life-changing debt to do so. And after it's all said and done, you're overwhelmingly statistically unlikely to be making so much that the debt didn't even matter.
    - albntomat0 6y ago
      As I understand it, financial aid isn't all or nothing.
- leetcrew 6y ago
  > Both will leave a student heavily in debt to the tune of 150-300k unless you have a very weird financial situation, no US student is going into anything like that much debt to go to either of those two schools. it looks like you got those numbers by just taking the tuition and multiplying it by four. both schools offer substantial aid packages for eligible families. the average yearly tuition contribution for MIT is something like $17k, not far off from in-state tuition at most public universities.
  - colinmhayes 6y ago
    Plenty of middle class families making low to mid 100k but not contributing to their children's tuition bill because they live in HCOL area. But yes, low income students don't pay.
    - borski 6y ago
      “Plenty,” sure. But not a majority or anything. The median family income in the US is something like 68kb
      - colinmhayes 6y ago
        What about the median income of people who attended college?
        borski 6y ago
        "For 25- to 34-year-olds who worked full time, year round in 2018, higher educational attainment was associated with higher median earnings. This pattern was consistent from 2000 through 2018. For example, in 2018 the median earnings of those with a master’s or higher degree ($65,000) were 19 percent higher than the earnings of those with a bachelor’s degree ($54,700), and the median earnings of those with a bachelor’s degree were 57 percent higher than the earnings of high school completers ($34,900)."[1] None of those median salaries put you in the 'wealthy' category. [1] https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/pdf/coe_cba.pdf https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/pdf/coe_cba.pdf
- akhilcacharya 6y ago
  How much worse off is someone going to UMass by your calculation?
  - jawzz 6y ago
    Not the OP, but as I’d say that subjectively speaking, you’re better off going to MIT, but only if you have the passion and drive to succeed at a place like that (which you probably do if you got into MIT). But for Boston College, Boston University, or Northeastern? You’re probably going to end up paying more than MIT and get an education that’s indistinguishable from UMass, quite possibly worse in some respects. What people have been saying in this thread is not incorrect (though should be nuanced): the ivy leagues are worth it for the caliber of the student body and reputation; otherwise, go to a (Tier 1) public school. Unless, of course, you don’t want to and can easily afford otherwise.
    - akhilcacharya 6y ago
      Maybe I should be more clear - I didn't go to a Tier1 public school, didn't get into an elite school, how screwed am I?
      - borski 6y ago
        You're fine. There are a ton of reasons MIT and UMass Amherst would help, but they are not for everybody, and I saw plenty of folks struggle at MIT and gain nothing out of it (even not graduating). What matters a lot more than the name of the institution on your degree is experience; getting that experience may be a bit tougher at a small school (you don't have FAANGs or huge biotech firms recruiting there), but it is certainly not impossible. Three of the last four engineers I hired had no formal CS degree (but they had gone to bootcamps).
    - thehappypm 6y ago
      BC, BU, and Northeastern are all excellent schools. Boston is a weird place.. any of those three schools would be a top tier private school in just about any other city in the country, but in Boston they're seen as second tier just because of the ludicrously good schools in Massachusetts. They're all in the top 50 according to US News.
- pkaye 6y ago
  The average student loan debt is around $33k. Median debt is around $17k. https://www.valuepenguin.com/average-student-loan-debt https://www.valuepenguin.com/average-student-loan-debt
- thehappypm 6y ago
  UMass Amherst is a great school, and state schools kind of see out-of-staters as cash cows. What's worse is third-tier private schools charging MORE than MIT.
fossuser 6y ago
Makes sense to me - if you’re mostly buying prestige that gets concentrated in the top institutions. If you’re trying to buy education the others are overpriced.
- colechristensen 6y ago
  This is what is frustrating about higher education, the wide gulf between chasing after a credential and chasing after an education.
  - fossuser 6y ago
    I think a lot of this could be solved by Lambda School style ISAs. If the school isn’t actually good at education then it fails. True alignment of incentives.
    - colechristensen 6y ago
      This is fine for trade schools which can reasonably measure success by short term income of new graduates, but this is a terrible metric for higher learning in general.
      - fossuser 6y ago
        It's certainly an imperfect metric, but I'm skeptical of the claims that there's a better measure for 'higher learning'. Often when people say this, I've found they're really just using it as a proxy for status or prestige rather than education or critical thinking. I agree with it in the abstract, but disagree with its use in practice.
        colechristensen 6y ago
        Who says you have to measure it at all? A valuation based on immediate financial value turns universities into trade schools (which to be fair, more people need / are really looking for). And also it would turn universities in to not-very-good trade schools. Why would they train school teachers or social workers when they make so little money? Metrics change what they observe, unless you are extremely careful, usually for the worse.
awillen 6y ago
I think this is generally a good thing. I believe there are really two positive things that can come out of going to college - either you get a name-brand degree that opens doors and gets your resume looked at, or you get useful skills that enable you to go down a particular career path (e.g. CS degree). Obviously in some cases it'll be both. The reality is it's really tough to make any case that a humanities degree from a lower or even mid-tier college is a worthwhile investment of money and time. Now obviously there are scholarships and students who come from wealth for whom this is less of an issue, but to pay tens of thousands of dollars a year for a degree in classics from third tier U is just an objectively bad choice for most people. Hopefully this is the market working - people are learning how to value educational degrees based on what they'll actually yield financially and making decisions accordingly. Those schools that are providing substantial negative value to their students ought to go under, and the students who would attend them and end up in huge debt with minimal job prospects will make a better investment, like working for four years, going to a trade school, etc.
- DC-3 6y ago
  Did it ever occur to you at all that people might value education for its own sake and not for potential financial yield alone?
  - dgfitz 6y ago
    “You wasted $150,000 on an education you coulda got for $1.50 in late fees at the public library.” - Good Will Hunting
    - keiferski 6y ago
      You know the theme of the movie is actually arguing against that quote, right? The conversation on the bench is the climax of the film; Robin Williams lectures Matt Damon about the limitations of book learning.
      - thehappypm 6y ago
swiley 6y ago
Maybe if they charged reasonable prices they'd have more applicants. The university I went to let you go for free if you kept a 4.0 GPA and had high SAT scores.
- showerst 6y ago
  Then you've created an extreme incentive for grade inflation, since professors know an A- could lead to a promising student getting kicked out over finances.
  - jseliger 6y ago
    Incentives for grade inflation are already pretty extreme: https://jakeseliger.com/2015/01/13/what-incentivizes-professors-to-grade-honestly-nothing/ https://jakeseliger.com/2015/01/13/what-incentivizes-profess...
- MeinBlutIstBlau 6y ago
  I hate GPA incentives because a lot of classes are subject to interpretation over whether you comprehend the material. Physics and math you can't lie. Programming has enumerable variations to a correct answer. General education classes are 100% up to how the instructor feels about your assignment that day.
seibelj 6y ago
> Even before the pandemic, Dr. Baldridge said, “the rich were getting richer and the poor were getting more and more challenged, in terms of institutions.” Framing this as “rich” vs. “poor” is ridiculous. These “poor” institutions were charging 6 figure sums for a piece of paper. There is nothing beneficial to society by having a lot of unwanted institutions who charge insane amounts that no one wants to go to voluntarily anymore. High Ed needed a shakeout and I’m happy it’s finally happening.
akeck 6y ago
Meanwhile, total enrollment (US) has been falling steadily since at least 2012: https://www.npr.org/2020/12/17/925831720/losing-a-generation-fall-college-enrollment-plummets-for-first-year-students https://www.npr.org/2020/12/17/925831720/losing-a-generation...
barrenko 6y ago
Wherever you get more value out of the final certificate than the education involved, you are participating in systemic fraud and a bubble that will eventually pop.
BitwiseFool 6y ago
I sense that the fundamental purpose for going to College has changed from "getting an education" to "building your brand" as an individual. I don't work in Human Resources, but as a software developer I do spend a lot of time around my company's recruiters and I'm involved in the hiring process. A candidate's alma mater has an outsized impact on the likelihood they will advance to the next step of the hiring process. Most people people don't realize just how much name recognition matters when sifting through resumes. We get hundreds of applications and it's a fact that candidates from well known schools are selected to advance more often than candidates from obscure schools. School prestige and name recognition acts as a proxy assessment of the candidate. HR just doesn't look into how good the Computer Science program is at "Keene State College". But they do know that if someone went to Princeston or Stanford they must be pretty smart. To be clear, a degree from an obscure university does not disqualify someone, but it does put them at a disadvantage when the applicant pool is large.
- ryandrake 6y ago
  > Most people people don't realize just how much name recognition matters when sifting through resumes. I think most people do realize it, which is why we're seeing what's being written about in the article. People realize if you merely want to be educated, you can do that for cheap or free anywhere, but nobody in HR screening resumes cares if you're educated. They care that you have name-brand pedigree. I remember fighting for a candidate who I thought was super smart and could get things done, but he was from a mid-tier State school and not from Stanford and that was the end of it. It's very classist and ugly. If I graduated today from the school I graduated from in the mid-90s, I wouldn't have a job either. As we all know, this is not just happening in education: All of society is bifurcating into a few winners, and a lot of losers, and a shrinking number in the middle. Everything is has become a slug-fest where the many compete with each other in a high-stakes game for the few viable good opportunities, leaving the rest in ruin.
  - Kinrany 6y ago
    Sims + Battle Royale, this is great
  - 6y ago
twoslide 6y ago
This probably just reflects greater uncertainty in the application process due to lack of standardized test scores. In other years, have a better sense of where they stand and can strategize appropriately (i.e. a few aspirational applications and a few safety schools). This year things are much less clear. It may not be a long term trend, or may not accelerate a long term trend.
stolenmerch 6y ago
Relevant: https://www.profgalloway.com/uss-university https://www.profgalloway.com/uss-university Scott Galloway made a prediction last summer of what colleges and universities will thrive, survive, struggle, or face challenges given the current situation. Basically, the higher ed market will consolidate around more elite schools.
- fossuser 6y ago
  I wouldn’t give Galloway’s predictions much thought - he’s wrong almost all the time. https://twitter.com/profgalloway/status/1180197139101696013 https://twitter.com/profgalloway/status/1180197139101696013 If he had to make bets on his predictions he’d be bankrupt.
endisneigh 6y ago
per usual I believe the issue here is that the government has been subsidizing schools which have created strange distortions. if Harvard were strictly private and received no government subsidies, funding or advantage a few things would happen: 1) poor people probably wouldn't be able to attend 2) it would be substantially more expensive 3) the acceptance rate would be much higher ideally this would result in schools like UMass Amherst (which ironically is the best public university in Massachusetts - weird considering other states have better state flagships, but that's another issue) being able to compete far more effectively. why would a smart poor kid ever go to UMass when you could go to Harvard for free? it has never made sense that you get better financial return from say, MIT, even though it costs the same as RandomPrivateU.
- nradov 6y ago
  Harvard is probably a bad example because their endowment is so large that they could afford to give substantial scholarships to poor students even without government subsidies. The issue is more with the 3rd-tier private schools.
- jimbokun 6y ago
  Harvard could easily fund all of their education expenses from their endowment, with zero incoming tuition dollars.
solosoyokaze 6y ago
Smart hiring managers in this industry know that college doesn't matter and that one good Github project > any degree. I've not once taken someone's schooling into consideration while interviewing and I've hired dozens of people. I'm not saying don't go to school if that's what you want to do, but you can easily get a much better return on your investment if you "buy" some time to work on OSS. That being said, it's a lot harder to do if you have no money since you can't get a government loan to cover your expenses. UBI would be very helpful here.
- DC1350 6y ago
  Lots of students who go to lower tier schools don't even know that their 'elite' peers are working on things like projects, OSS, or interview prep. I personally had never heard of a hackathon until after I started uni, but lots of my classmates had already been to dozens in high school. The real issue with going to a bad college is students have no idea what they're supposed to do to get a job. Those students are dead last in a game they don't even know they're playing. It happens organically at a good school.
  - solosoyokaze 6y ago
    In my experience most elite school CS students don't actually work on OSS. I see a lot of school projects posted to Github. That's why I like to look at it, because it's hard to fake. You're right that it's harder for people who don't have the resources to buy computers and spend time learning/hacking. I've hired several really good devs who only had an HS degree but also had an OSS project, but a lot of people just won't have the resources to make that happen.
deleted 6y ago
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Taylor_OD 6y ago
There are a lot of people in this thread talking about how important a big name college is. As a counterpoint... If you are not trying to work for a FANG company within your first ~3 years of graduating I don't think a big name college with a great CS program matters at all. A Carnegie Mellon degree may help you get more interviews and therefore land your first job if you are struggling otherwise but its likely the person with the Kent State CS degree and the Illinois Urbana Champaign CE degree are not applying for the same jobs right out of school. After the first few years education becomes less important and actual skills become far more important. Again this is more true at non FANG/SV/Start up type companies. Which is where most engineers will work for the majority of their career.
DC1350 6y ago
A huge generational change is that young people can just google "best X" for every life decision instead of caring about what they're exposed to organically. What job to do, city to live in, how to dress, etc. They can also find a community and detailed guides for achieving pretty much anything they want, so the special in-group knowledge isn't a barrier anymore. Anyone familiar with the whole tech interview prep culture should be able to understand that similar cultures exist for everything from academia to online dating. The downside is that the upper tier of everything is a lot more competitive so it's harder to win without gaming the system.
- ip26 6y ago
  This comment has a critical undertone but I think it's pretty much right. Thinking back, when I was 17 and applying for college, deciding what schools you should apply to was a really murky process. Most people pretty much depended on reputation & word-of-mouth, and nobody even talked about schools outside the state. On top of that, a 17 year old has had little time to accrue knowledge of various schools. Whereas today you can find an endless trove of information from your bedroom to feed your decision.
  - jaykru 6y ago
    the information available and advertised to most 17-year-olds (back when I was browsing: US News, College Confidential) isn't much of an improvement. In my case the former relies on a bunch of bunk data and weird metrics for evaluation, while the latter mostly revolved around very coarse word-of-mouth reputation.
    - grepthisab 6y ago
      I have a hard time believing this. Information was murky and information asymmetry was a big reason lots of people seemed to just apply to a flagship state u rather than look at more far flung or prestigious options, though the state u is prestigious in it's own right. There's certainly more noise now, but there's also a lot more signal (maybe the ratio is the same though). I suspect there's really fantastic info out there that's way more than I had applying to colleges way back when in 2010. I'd be interested in doing an experiment to act like I'm in high school and want all the info on college applications and to see where I end up.
neonate 6y ago
https://archive.is/kMl8f https://archive.is/kMl8f
Animats 6y ago
Well, of course. Going to college during the epidemic is not cost effective. Many colleges are trying to charge full on-campus prices while delivering "distance learning". Better to wait a year and get the full experience.
- MeinBlutIstBlau 6y ago
  I prefer distanced learning. It's probably my school but the majority of the comp sci students are slackers and drag the people who do this stuff down. As shown by the fact that it's harder for these lazy students to mooch of the actual hard working ones. Really hard to pretend being someone's friend with an email versus sitting next to the smart kid.
  - 908B64B197 6y ago
    Which school? Honestly, it sounds like you should transfer to an institution that's a better fit for you.
peter303 6y ago
The article doesn't mention the demographic bomb in the US. 2019 births were 3.7 million. boomers were 4 million a year; would need to be 7 million to be proportional to the population then. 2020 and 2021m births are projected to be as low as 3 million due to pandemic nears. In addition to low births, student immigration has been severely restricted in recent years by federal policy. With both factors, the applicant pool is smaller.
- 2sk21 6y ago
  This is absolute correct. Many state universities added campuses very actively back in the 1950s and 60s to accommodate the boomers who all wanted college degrees.
boatsie 6y ago
It would be interesting if colleges offered a reduced or free tuition in exchange for future earnings. That might incentivize colleges to only offer certain degrees, help with job placements, keep the quality of learning high, etc.
- rightbyte 6y ago
  Sounds like a loan?
  - SamuelAdams 6y ago
    Or alimony, depending on how you look at it.
  - albntomat0 6y ago
    The key difference between the parent commenter's proposal and a loan, is that the proposal ties the amount paid back to the income of the graduate. The thinking is that conditions would be structured to better ensure the college degree provides suitable income (only for certain majors, only if the college provides certain data about grads, etc).
verst 6y ago
I still don't understand why college degrees are necessary for the majority of jobs in the US other than a surplus of college educated folks. This is particularly problematic given the high cost of education. The entire post secondary education system in Germany is focused on specialization in a given field of study (at universities) or vocational training. The advantage here is that there is no financial penalty for choosing the wrong path, only missed opportunity cost due to time spent. I completed my secondary school in Germany at a typical Gymnasium (the highest tier of the three major secondary school types). Note that my parents did not attend college and aren't wealthy. Around 8th grade my school curriculum exceeded their knowledge. I attended a private liberal arts college in the US as an international student where I relied on (private) scholarships and (private) loans [international students cannot get subsidized loans -- generally interest rates are high and interest accumulates even while enrolled in school]. The only reason why I chose to attend university was because I wanted to gain an advanced understanding of mathematics and I aspired to one day become a college professor (this has since changed of course). Despite my school being very highly ranked and my hard work producing good academic results it simply did not have the brand reputation to unlock opportunities such as even being invited to phone screens. I had to take a roundabout way to get into my career and instead work my way up from less desirable positions. This focus on brand for academic institution is also something you do not generally find in Germany where the criteria is typically the binary question of whether or not you have a particular degree in a particular subject area (though again the vast majority of jobs do not require a degree). Too often I observed the candidate with a Bachelor's at ~3.0 GPA from say Stanford being preferred over the candidate with a ~4.0 from a lesser known but equally rigorous institution. Of course this focus on brand continued beyond college. I quickly learned that a less desirable / impactful role at a top company opens more doors than top positions at unknown companies. Call me pessimistic, but I do not advise people to attend college in the US unless they can attend schools with a very strong brand and extensive alumni network in their desired professional field. Looking back at my education my secondary education in Germany was more formative and critical than my college education in the US. While I did have the opportunity to take advanced coursework in college here in the US it did not prepare me for generic jobs not specific to my field of study (and barely even is an asset in my profession). I believe we need to improve high school education in this country and reverse the trend of requiring a college education for the majority of jobs.
sputknick 6y ago
What could we do with college campuses assuming some proportion of them go out of business in the coming years/decades? It would make for an immediate walkable city with all the infrastructure already built out.
mrtweetyhack 6y ago
Hmm, I wonder why nobody wants to go to a shit college.
kbos87 6y ago
As someone who never did well with standardized tests, it’s frustrating to see evidence like this of how heavily they are still weighed in the college admissions process, even though it isn’t surprising. If I were applying to universities today and had otherwise good credentials but difficulties performing on standardized tests like the SATs, I wouldn’t feel an ounce of remorse for trying to cheat in a rigged system.
- albntomat0 6y ago
  What are your thoughts on standardized tests as the most standard (not sure what a better word is here) comparison between applicants? I recognize that a lot has been written about the SAT/etc being biased, but high school grades and "experiences" are worse (how does one compare what a "B" in Calculus or club president actually means, in all high schools across the US??).
  - kbos87 6y ago
    I agree with you that comparing applicants objectively is a tough nut to crack. I don’t know the right answer but I would imagine looking at as diverse a set of inputs as possible is a good starting point; I could also see universities coming up with some means of weighing inputs differently to not let any one input (like standardized test scores) be an arbitrary disqualifier. But until that’s the case, I don’t think individuals should feel guilt for not letting a flawed system run them over, even if that means needing to “cheat”.
    - albntomat0 6y ago
      I definitely agree with individuals taking actions within the system to optimize their chances is fine (e.g. targeting colleges that don't require standardized testing if the applicant doesn't do well on those tests, but not things like the fake sports recruiting that was in the news a year or so ago). I may be biased as I did well on standardized tests. I have family members that volunteer to do admissions interviews as alumni of a very major name university. They both mention how gamified some applicants are taking the process, with some high school students' parents essentially buying them research opportunities and other experiences to talk about on their applications. While standardized testing is influenced by family wealth and resources, I'm convinced standardized tests (SAT/ACT/AP/etc) are the least influenced part of college admissions, and thus should remain in some form.
musicale 6y ago
Given the incredible scarcity of academic jobs and huge surplus of Ph.D. graduates, I'd be surprised if even relatively unknown schools in the middle of nowhere couldn't attract hundreds of highly qualified applicants. Landing a faculty job at any university - public or private - is an extraordinary achievement.
gnicholas 6y ago
This isn't terribly surprising given the degree of substitutability between very inexpensive community colleges (or state schools like CSUs here in California) and mid/lower-tier privates. Pre-pandemic, going to college away from home offered a fun environment with many amenities. During the pandemic, these fun aspects are greatly limited (and parents might not let kids go anyway, due to health risks). When you take away so much of the fun stuff that goes along with college, it doesn't make as much sense to pay $50k/yr in tuition when the experience isn't that much different than your local state school (which costs $10k). Top colleges, on the other hand, still offer differentiation in terms of degree prestige. Add onto that the promise of not taking standardized tests into account (as the article notes Cornell and other schools are doing this), and it's not surprising that applications are up.
- musicale 6y ago
  Community colleges are the best deal in education (though they usually don't offer four-year degrees.) And given the academic job market, basically any state university should be able to pick and choose among hundreds of highly qualified faculty candidates.
dvdhnt 6y ago
Not very surprising, is it? Right or wrong, "top" colleges are considered better equipped to get you close to the wealth and power needed to live comfortably. This isn't much different from travelers going west and buying claims in search of gold. Almost the entire collegiate system in the US is fundamentally broken. It is siloed and just as much pay-to-play as the rest of this country. The soaring costs, low returns, and behemoth mis-allocation of resources towards college football are examples of this.
xenihn 6y ago
Does anyone else feel that standardized tests are the most egalitarian and meritocratic metric in the admissions process? Removing them and claiming that it makes things fairer doesn't seem true to me. The other three metrics (essay, grades, letters of recommendation) can be gamed/cheated. I'm sure standardized testing cheating happens, but it's so much more difficult, even for someone with connections. Your grades are positively affected if your family can afford tutors for you, or if your parents are educated enough to tutor you themselves. You can have inflated grades that aren't reflective of your actual competency or knowledge. The inverse of this is also true. Bad grades don't provide any obvious information or signal on their own. Poorer students may be assigned to schools that don't have AP classes, so they don't even have the possibility of grade inflation. You can have people help you write your admissions essay. Hell, you can have other people write it for you altogether. All of the wealth factors that influence GPA also influence your essay, if you actually write it completely by yourself. Letters of recommendation seem to be the most exclusionary and biased of all. I actually think it's ridiculous that they're still allowed. There is no way to verify that they are true. They're grounded in connections and elitism. How is the average applicant even supposed to compete with letters from a politician, alumni, famous businessperson, or some other type of celebrity? A wealthy student's family can also pay for these in multiple ways, if, for some reason, the connections didn't already exist. Meanwhile, the argument for tests being biased is that wealthier kids are able to prepare for them more than kids with less resources. But all of the other metrics tie to wealth as well, and every argument against standardized tests also applies to GPA. I'd even say GPA is influenced by wealth more than tests. You can pirate expensive prep materials. You can PROBABLY find a volunteer tutor if you live in or near a college. But even taking the argument that wealthier children are at an advantage at full value, that advantage is still less than what is provided by the other 3 metrics. I'm taking this a bit personally since I had an incredibly bad GPA in junior high and high school. I hated doing homework, and I hated sitting in lectures. I failed multiple classes because homework and attendance counted for so much of the total grade, that even 100%ing every quiz and test would still give me less than 60% in the class. The only thing that proved that I wasn't mentally retarded was my performance in course tests and standardized tests. College went ok. I'm now doing better career-wise and financially than anyone I went to school with, including all of the IB kids who went to top-tier schools (with one exception, there's ONE other person on my level, because they went into finance and they're now an iBanker). I would have been completely screwed without standardized tests as a metric.
fiftyfifty 6y ago
Higher Education is about to go through a brutal consolidation process, people have been predicting it for years. Even before Covid-19, small liberal arts schools were starting to close down. Demand for higher education is going to drop over the next decade because the number of graduating high schoolers in the US is about to drop and has already been dropping simply because the birth rate 20 years ago was lower. There are certainly other factors accelerating this trend such as fewer high school graduates going to college these days due to the increasing cost of tuition. In the end there will be a lot of schools fighting over a decreasing number of applicants and the top schools will be the ones likely to come out the winners. https://www.npr.org/2019/12/16/787909495/fewer-students-are-going-to-college-heres-why-that-matters https://www.npr.org/2019/12/16/787909495/fewer-students-are-...

127 points by smaslennikov 6y ago

Colleges should have more price stratification than they do. At present the price difference between MIT and Umass Amherst out of state is only 41%. Both will leave a student heavily in debt to the tune of 150-300k, the difference likely doesn't materially matter to the student as they are looking at is as a ticket to a better life.

sct202 6y ago
The top colleges have very complicated pricing schemes and are basically free to middle and lower income students, for example a student to MIT only pays if their family earns more than $90k a year which is above the median household income of $68k.
- a-posteriori 6y ago
  When I was there, less than 8% of the students were paying full tuition (of which a good chunk were international students). At a certain point, the colleges start to look like perfectly price discriminating monopolists: rather than charging the highest price to each customer, they set a maximum price ceiling and then subsidize the gap to the customer's marginal ability to pay.
  - fossuser 6y ago
    The price is so high that even if you’re not paying full price, it’s often still extremely expensive.
  - borski 6y ago
    iirc, it was even lower when I went. And this is probably the most common mistake I see made about MIT, etc.; the lack of acknowledgment that the financial aid within top schools runs deep, which simply isn’t as true for smaller or less popular schools. Going to a “top tier” school can, depending on your financial situation, actually cost you roughly what a state school would. You can argue there are too many hoops to jump through, or anything else, but that’s a different argument.
    - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
      > the lack of acknowledgment that the financial aid within top schools runs deep, I think you're confusing depth and breadth. It's like the Harbor Freight coupon. Everyone gets 20% off with a few exclusions. But the people paying less than 80% (to continue the Harbor Freight metaphor) are few and far between.
      - borski 6y ago
        No, I understand precisely what you're trying to say. Based on my (admittedly anecdotal) experience applying to colleges and working (however briefly) in Financial Aid at MIT, it was not a 20% blanket by any stretch; each case was treated individually and there was an explicit focus on ensuring students were not saddled with insane amounts of debt. There were exceptions, particularly for wealthy folks and people who were 'on the line' income-wise, but the majority got significant financial aid. Just to give you an idea, from MIT's stats[1]: * Average need-based MIT scholarship: $47,593 * Students awarded a need-based MIT scholarship: 59% * Students attending tuition-free: 31% * Class of 2019 graduates with no student loan debt: 76% * Average student loan debt for those who borrowed: $23,226 The trope that the expensive schools are the cause of the massive student loan debt problem is just that; a trope. When only 24% of the class graduates with any debt at all, I'm not convinced MIT (and similar) are the problem. This is largely due to MIT and similar schools having massive endowments from which they can draw for Financial Aid; there are cheaper schools, certainly, but they have coffers that are less deep (referring to private schools), meaning students end up having to take more debt. [1] https://web.mit.edu/facts/tuition.html https://web.mit.edu/facts/tuition.html
        grepthisab 6y ago
        You kind of buried the lede in your last paragraph: This is largely due to MIT and similar schools having massive endowments from which they can draw for Financial Aid; there are cheaper schools, certainly, but they have coffers that are less deep (referring to private schools), meaning students end up having to take more debt. It is reality that expensive schools cause the massive student loan debt problem, but expensiveness isn't totally buried in sticker price but total cost of attendance. Schools like HYSM don't saddle attendees with as much debt despite their high sticker price perhaps because of endowments.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  You need to look at this from the perspective of someone who has little to no familial safety net and cannot rely on family resources to help them out when things get tough. Boston area schools being "basically free on paper" to middle income families is a reflection of the fact that a student from a ~100k income family has better options for getting ahead in the world than attending these institutions at any cost but these institutions would lose legitimacy without "economic diversity" tokens so they have to reduce the price. Going to Harvard (or similar) if you're not from the kind of people who go to Harvard is a high risk, high reward gamble with years of your life. These schools have to reduce the potential downside in order to get the quality of candidates they want to get from the demographics they want to get them from (i.e. they want to be able to pick the very best people from the "can't afford to attend" demographic). Also it's good PR. If you're the son of a plumber and your options are going to MIT for CS, or UMaine's "we match your local in-state tuition" deal paired with their crappy CS program the Maine one actually looks attractive because you're going to be surrounded by people a heck of a lot more like you (on a life experiences level), you're not gonna be bottom of your class and you won't be running the Boston rat race when it comes to housing, a part time job, commuting, and all the other "life" stuff". If you're the kind of high-achieving individual who goes to Harvard from a middle class background you're all but guaranteed to live more comfortably than your parents and retire comfortably regardless of the choice you make. Rolling a degree from a lesser state school into a stable job at BigCo isn't something you're worried about. The networking value add from Harvard or MIT isn't as much of a value add because you have no frame of reference for it and won't be making the kinds of life choices where it can be most helpful anyway (remember, no safety net, you're gonna be the one that builds it). So if you're gonna "win" no matter what you choose why add the additional risk of Harvard, MIT or some other program you could wash out of?
- andrewmcwatters 6y ago
  I always think about how absurd these pricing models are. Ah yes, if you're living lavishly at $90k per annum you, too, earn the privilege of paying for your education. I suppose at some point someone has to pay. But you're not rich at $90k. And I just don't see many of those households earning between $90-250k a year wanting to pay for such a privilege. From my perspective, you've got to be either very rich, or very poor going into those schools, because there's no reasonable room for those in-between unless you're taking out significant life-changing debt to do so. And after it's all said and done, you're overwhelmingly statistically unlikely to be making so much that the debt didn't even matter.
  - albntomat0 6y ago
    As I understand it, financial aid isn't all or nothing.
leetcrew 6y ago
> Both will leave a student heavily in debt to the tune of 150-300k unless you have a very weird financial situation, no US student is going into anything like that much debt to go to either of those two schools. it looks like you got those numbers by just taking the tuition and multiplying it by four. both schools offer substantial aid packages for eligible families. the average yearly tuition contribution for MIT is something like $17k, not far off from in-state tuition at most public universities.
- colinmhayes 6y ago
  Plenty of middle class families making low to mid 100k but not contributing to their children's tuition bill because they live in HCOL area. But yes, low income students don't pay.
  - borski 6y ago
    “Plenty,” sure. But not a majority or anything. The median family income in the US is something like 68kb
    - colinmhayes 6y ago
      What about the median income of people who attended college?
      - borski 6y ago
        "For 25- to 34-year-olds who worked full time, year round in 2018, higher educational attainment was associated with higher median earnings. This pattern was consistent from 2000 through 2018. For example, in 2018 the median earnings of those with a master’s or higher degree ($65,000) were 19 percent higher than the earnings of those with a bachelor’s degree ($54,700), and the median earnings of those with a bachelor’s degree were 57 percent higher than the earnings of high school completers ($34,900)."[1] None of those median salaries put you in the 'wealthy' category. [1] https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/pdf/coe_cba.pdf https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/pdf/coe_cba.pdf
akhilcacharya 6y ago
How much worse off is someone going to UMass by your calculation?
- jawzz 6y ago
  Not the OP, but as I’d say that subjectively speaking, you’re better off going to MIT, but only if you have the passion and drive to succeed at a place like that (which you probably do if you got into MIT). But for Boston College, Boston University, or Northeastern? You’re probably going to end up paying more than MIT and get an education that’s indistinguishable from UMass, quite possibly worse in some respects. What people have been saying in this thread is not incorrect (though should be nuanced): the ivy leagues are worth it for the caliber of the student body and reputation; otherwise, go to a (Tier 1) public school. Unless, of course, you don’t want to and can easily afford otherwise.
  - akhilcacharya 6y ago
    Maybe I should be more clear - I didn't go to a Tier1 public school, didn't get into an elite school, how screwed am I?
    - borski 6y ago
      You're fine. There are a ton of reasons MIT and UMass Amherst would help, but they are not for everybody, and I saw plenty of folks struggle at MIT and gain nothing out of it (even not graduating). What matters a lot more than the name of the institution on your degree is experience; getting that experience may be a bit tougher at a small school (you don't have FAANGs or huge biotech firms recruiting there), but it is certainly not impossible. Three of the last four engineers I hired had no formal CS degree (but they had gone to bootcamps).
  - thehappypm 6y ago
    BC, BU, and Northeastern are all excellent schools. Boston is a weird place.. any of those three schools would be a top tier private school in just about any other city in the country, but in Boston they're seen as second tier just because of the ludicrously good schools in Massachusetts. They're all in the top 50 according to US News.
pkaye 6y ago
The average student loan debt is around $33k. Median debt is around $17k. https://www.valuepenguin.com/average-student-loan-debt https://www.valuepenguin.com/average-student-loan-debt
thehappypm 6y ago
UMass Amherst is a great school, and state schools kind of see out-of-staters as cash cows. What's worse is third-tier private schools charging MORE than MIT.

fossuser 6y ago

Makes sense to me - if you’re mostly buying prestige that gets concentrated in the top institutions. If you’re trying to buy education the others are overpriced.

colechristensen 6y ago
This is what is frustrating about higher education, the wide gulf between chasing after a credential and chasing after an education.
- fossuser 6y ago
  I think a lot of this could be solved by Lambda School style ISAs. If the school isn’t actually good at education then it fails. True alignment of incentives.
  - colechristensen 6y ago
    This is fine for trade schools which can reasonably measure success by short term income of new graduates, but this is a terrible metric for higher learning in general.
    - fossuser 6y ago
      It's certainly an imperfect metric, but I'm skeptical of the claims that there's a better measure for 'higher learning'. Often when people say this, I've found they're really just using it as a proxy for status or prestige rather than education or critical thinking. I agree with it in the abstract, but disagree with its use in practice.
      - colechristensen 6y ago
        Who says you have to measure it at all? A valuation based on immediate financial value turns universities into trade schools (which to be fair, more people need / are really looking for). And also it would turn universities in to not-very-good trade schools. Why would they train school teachers or social workers when they make so little money? Metrics change what they observe, unless you are extremely careful, usually for the worse.

awillen 6y ago

I think this is generally a good thing. I believe there are really two positive things that can come out of going to college - either you get a name-brand degree that opens doors and gets your resume looked at, or you get useful skills that enable you to go down a particular career path (e.g. CS degree). Obviously in some cases it'll be both. The reality is it's really tough to make any case that a humanities degree from a lower or even mid-tier college is a worthwhile investment of money and time. Now obviously there are scholarships and students who come from wealth for whom this is less of an issue, but to pay tens of thousands of dollars a year for a degree in classics from third tier U is just an objectively bad choice for most people. Hopefully this is the market working - people are learning how to value educational degrees based on what they'll actually yield financially and making decisions accordingly. Those schools that are providing substantial negative value to their students ought to go under, and the students who would attend them and end up in huge debt with minimal job prospects will make a better investment, like working for four years, going to a trade school, etc.

DC-3 6y ago
Did it ever occur to you at all that people might value education for its own sake and not for potential financial yield alone?
- dgfitz 6y ago
  “You wasted $150,000 on an education you coulda got for $1.50 in late fees at the public library.” - Good Will Hunting
  - keiferski 6y ago
    You know the theme of the movie is actually arguing against that quote, right? The conversation on the bench is the climax of the film; Robin Williams lectures Matt Damon about the limitations of book learning.
    - thehappypm 6y ago

swiley 6y ago

Maybe if they charged reasonable prices they'd have more applicants. The university I went to let you go for free if you kept a 4.0 GPA and had high SAT scores.

showerst 6y ago
Then you've created an extreme incentive for grade inflation, since professors know an A- could lead to a promising student getting kicked out over finances.
- jseliger 6y ago
  Incentives for grade inflation are already pretty extreme: https://jakeseliger.com/2015/01/13/what-incentivizes-professors-to-grade-honestly-nothing/ https://jakeseliger.com/2015/01/13/what-incentivizes-profess...
MeinBlutIstBlau 6y ago
I hate GPA incentives because a lot of classes are subject to interpretation over whether you comprehend the material. Physics and math you can't lie. Programming has enumerable variations to a correct answer. General education classes are 100% up to how the instructor feels about your assignment that day.

seibelj 6y ago

> Even before the pandemic, Dr. Baldridge said, “the rich were getting richer and the poor were getting more and more challenged, in terms of institutions.” Framing this as “rich” vs. “poor” is ridiculous. These “poor” institutions were charging 6 figure sums for a piece of paper. There is nothing beneficial to society by having a lot of unwanted institutions who charge insane amounts that no one wants to go to voluntarily anymore. High Ed needed a shakeout and I’m happy it’s finally happening.

akeck 6y ago

Meanwhile, total enrollment (US) has been falling steadily since at least 2012: https://www.npr.org/2020/12/17/925831720/losing-a-generation-fall-college-enrollment-plummets-for-first-year-students https://www.npr.org/2020/12/17/925831720/losing-a-generation...

barrenko 6y ago

Wherever you get more value out of the final certificate than the education involved, you are participating in systemic fraud and a bubble that will eventually pop.

BitwiseFool 6y ago

I sense that the fundamental purpose for going to College has changed from "getting an education" to "building your brand" as an individual. I don't work in Human Resources, but as a software developer I do spend a lot of time around my company's recruiters and I'm involved in the hiring process. A candidate's alma mater has an outsized impact on the likelihood they will advance to the next step of the hiring process. Most people people don't realize just how much name recognition matters when sifting through resumes. We get hundreds of applications and it's a fact that candidates from well known schools are selected to advance more often than candidates from obscure schools. School prestige and name recognition acts as a proxy assessment of the candidate. HR just doesn't look into how good the Computer Science program is at "Keene State College". But they do know that if someone went to Princeston or Stanford they must be pretty smart. To be clear, a degree from an obscure university does not disqualify someone, but it does put them at a disadvantage when the applicant pool is large.

ryandrake 6y ago
> Most people people don't realize just how much name recognition matters when sifting through resumes. I think most people do realize it, which is why we're seeing what's being written about in the article. People realize if you merely want to be educated, you can do that for cheap or free anywhere, but nobody in HR screening resumes cares if you're educated. They care that you have name-brand pedigree. I remember fighting for a candidate who I thought was super smart and could get things done, but he was from a mid-tier State school and not from Stanford and that was the end of it. It's very classist and ugly. If I graduated today from the school I graduated from in the mid-90s, I wouldn't have a job either. As we all know, this is not just happening in education: All of society is bifurcating into a few winners, and a lot of losers, and a shrinking number in the middle. Everything is has become a slug-fest where the many compete with each other in a high-stakes game for the few viable good opportunities, leaving the rest in ruin.
- Kinrany 6y ago
  Sims + Battle Royale, this is great
- 6y ago

twoslide 6y ago

This probably just reflects greater uncertainty in the application process due to lack of standardized test scores. In other years, have a better sense of where they stand and can strategize appropriately (i.e. a few aspirational applications and a few safety schools). This year things are much less clear. It may not be a long term trend, or may not accelerate a long term trend.

stolenmerch 6y ago

Relevant: https://www.profgalloway.com/uss-university https://www.profgalloway.com/uss-university Scott Galloway made a prediction last summer of what colleges and universities will thrive, survive, struggle, or face challenges given the current situation. Basically, the higher ed market will consolidate around more elite schools.

fossuser 6y ago
I wouldn’t give Galloway’s predictions much thought - he’s wrong almost all the time. https://twitter.com/profgalloway/status/1180197139101696013 https://twitter.com/profgalloway/status/1180197139101696013 If he had to make bets on his predictions he’d be bankrupt.

endisneigh 6y ago

per usual I believe the issue here is that the government has been subsidizing schools which have created strange distortions. if Harvard were strictly private and received no government subsidies, funding or advantage a few things would happen: 1) poor people probably wouldn't be able to attend 2) it would be substantially more expensive 3) the acceptance rate would be much higher ideally this would result in schools like UMass Amherst (which ironically is the best public university in Massachusetts - weird considering other states have better state flagships, but that's another issue) being able to compete far more effectively. why would a smart poor kid ever go to UMass when you could go to Harvard for free? it has never made sense that you get better financial return from say, MIT, even though it costs the same as RandomPrivateU.

nradov 6y ago
Harvard is probably a bad example because their endowment is so large that they could afford to give substantial scholarships to poor students even without government subsidies. The issue is more with the 3rd-tier private schools.
jimbokun 6y ago
Harvard could easily fund all of their education expenses from their endowment, with zero incoming tuition dollars.

solosoyokaze 6y ago

Smart hiring managers in this industry know that college doesn't matter and that one good Github project > any degree. I've not once taken someone's schooling into consideration while interviewing and I've hired dozens of people. I'm not saying don't go to school if that's what you want to do, but you can easily get a much better return on your investment if you "buy" some time to work on OSS. That being said, it's a lot harder to do if you have no money since you can't get a government loan to cover your expenses. UBI would be very helpful here.

DC1350 6y ago
Lots of students who go to lower tier schools don't even know that their 'elite' peers are working on things like projects, OSS, or interview prep. I personally had never heard of a hackathon until after I started uni, but lots of my classmates had already been to dozens in high school. The real issue with going to a bad college is students have no idea what they're supposed to do to get a job. Those students are dead last in a game they don't even know they're playing. It happens organically at a good school.
- solosoyokaze 6y ago
  In my experience most elite school CS students don't actually work on OSS. I see a lot of school projects posted to Github. That's why I like to look at it, because it's hard to fake. You're right that it's harder for people who don't have the resources to buy computers and spend time learning/hacking. I've hired several really good devs who only had an HS degree but also had an OSS project, but a lot of people just won't have the resources to make that happen.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

Taylor_OD 6y ago

There are a lot of people in this thread talking about how important a big name college is. As a counterpoint... If you are not trying to work for a FANG company within your first ~3 years of graduating I don't think a big name college with a great CS program matters at all. A Carnegie Mellon degree may help you get more interviews and therefore land your first job if you are struggling otherwise but its likely the person with the Kent State CS degree and the Illinois Urbana Champaign CE degree are not applying for the same jobs right out of school. After the first few years education becomes less important and actual skills become far more important. Again this is more true at non FANG/SV/Start up type companies. Which is where most engineers will work for the majority of their career.

DC1350 6y ago

A huge generational change is that young people can just google "best X" for every life decision instead of caring about what they're exposed to organically. What job to do, city to live in, how to dress, etc. They can also find a community and detailed guides for achieving pretty much anything they want, so the special in-group knowledge isn't a barrier anymore. Anyone familiar with the whole tech interview prep culture should be able to understand that similar cultures exist for everything from academia to online dating. The downside is that the upper tier of everything is a lot more competitive so it's harder to win without gaming the system.

ip26 6y ago
This comment has a critical undertone but I think it's pretty much right. Thinking back, when I was 17 and applying for college, deciding what schools you should apply to was a really murky process. Most people pretty much depended on reputation & word-of-mouth, and nobody even talked about schools outside the state. On top of that, a 17 year old has had little time to accrue knowledge of various schools. Whereas today you can find an endless trove of information from your bedroom to feed your decision.
- jaykru 6y ago
  the information available and advertised to most 17-year-olds (back when I was browsing: US News, College Confidential) isn't much of an improvement. In my case the former relies on a bunch of bunk data and weird metrics for evaluation, while the latter mostly revolved around very coarse word-of-mouth reputation.
  - grepthisab 6y ago
    I have a hard time believing this. Information was murky and information asymmetry was a big reason lots of people seemed to just apply to a flagship state u rather than look at more far flung or prestigious options, though the state u is prestigious in it's own right. There's certainly more noise now, but there's also a lot more signal (maybe the ratio is the same though). I suspect there's really fantastic info out there that's way more than I had applying to colleges way back when in 2010. I'd be interested in doing an experiment to act like I'm in high school and want all the info on college applications and to see where I end up.

neonate 6y ago

https://archive.is/kMl8f https://archive.is/kMl8f

Animats 6y ago

Well, of course. Going to college during the epidemic is not cost effective. Many colleges are trying to charge full on-campus prices while delivering "distance learning". Better to wait a year and get the full experience.

MeinBlutIstBlau 6y ago
I prefer distanced learning. It's probably my school but the majority of the comp sci students are slackers and drag the people who do this stuff down. As shown by the fact that it's harder for these lazy students to mooch of the actual hard working ones. Really hard to pretend being someone's friend with an email versus sitting next to the smart kid.
- 908B64B197 6y ago
  Which school? Honestly, it sounds like you should transfer to an institution that's a better fit for you.

peter303 6y ago

The article doesn't mention the demographic bomb in the US. 2019 births were 3.7 million. boomers were 4 million a year; would need to be 7 million to be proportional to the population then. 2020 and 2021m births are projected to be as low as 3 million due to pandemic nears. In addition to low births, student immigration has been severely restricted in recent years by federal policy. With both factors, the applicant pool is smaller.

2sk21 6y ago
This is absolute correct. Many state universities added campuses very actively back in the 1950s and 60s to accommodate the boomers who all wanted college degrees.

boatsie 6y ago

It would be interesting if colleges offered a reduced or free tuition in exchange for future earnings. That might incentivize colleges to only offer certain degrees, help with job placements, keep the quality of learning high, etc.

rightbyte 6y ago
Sounds like a loan?
- SamuelAdams 6y ago
  Or alimony, depending on how you look at it.
- albntomat0 6y ago
  The key difference between the parent commenter's proposal and a loan, is that the proposal ties the amount paid back to the income of the graduate. The thinking is that conditions would be structured to better ensure the college degree provides suitable income (only for certain majors, only if the college provides certain data about grads, etc).

verst 6y ago

I still don't understand why college degrees are necessary for the majority of jobs in the US other than a surplus of college educated folks. This is particularly problematic given the high cost of education. The entire post secondary education system in Germany is focused on specialization in a given field of study (at universities) or vocational training. The advantage here is that there is no financial penalty for choosing the wrong path, only missed opportunity cost due to time spent. I completed my secondary school in Germany at a typical Gymnasium (the highest tier of the three major secondary school types). Note that my parents did not attend college and aren't wealthy. Around 8th grade my school curriculum exceeded their knowledge. I attended a private liberal arts college in the US as an international student where I relied on (private) scholarships and (private) loans [international students cannot get subsidized loans -- generally interest rates are high and interest accumulates even while enrolled in school]. The only reason why I chose to attend university was because I wanted to gain an advanced understanding of mathematics and I aspired to one day become a college professor (this has since changed of course). Despite my school being very highly ranked and my hard work producing good academic results it simply did not have the brand reputation to unlock opportunities such as even being invited to phone screens. I had to take a roundabout way to get into my career and instead work my way up from less desirable positions. This focus on brand for academic institution is also something you do not generally find in Germany where the criteria is typically the binary question of whether or not you have a particular degree in a particular subject area (though again the vast majority of jobs do not require a degree). Too often I observed the candidate with a Bachelor's at ~3.0 GPA from say Stanford being preferred over the candidate with a ~4.0 from a lesser known but equally rigorous institution. Of course this focus on brand continued beyond college. I quickly learned that a less desirable / impactful role at a top company opens more doors than top positions at unknown companies. Call me pessimistic, but I do not advise people to attend college in the US unless they can attend schools with a very strong brand and extensive alumni network in their desired professional field. Looking back at my education my secondary education in Germany was more formative and critical than my college education in the US. While I did have the opportunity to take advanced coursework in college here in the US it did not prepare me for generic jobs not specific to my field of study (and barely even is an asset in my profession). I believe we need to improve high school education in this country and reverse the trend of requiring a college education for the majority of jobs.

sputknick 6y ago

What could we do with college campuses assuming some proportion of them go out of business in the coming years/decades? It would make for an immediate walkable city with all the infrastructure already built out.

mrtweetyhack 6y ago

Hmm, I wonder why nobody wants to go to a shit college.

kbos87 6y ago

As someone who never did well with standardized tests, it’s frustrating to see evidence like this of how heavily they are still weighed in the college admissions process, even though it isn’t surprising. If I were applying to universities today and had otherwise good credentials but difficulties performing on standardized tests like the SATs, I wouldn’t feel an ounce of remorse for trying to cheat in a rigged system.

albntomat0 6y ago
What are your thoughts on standardized tests as the most standard (not sure what a better word is here) comparison between applicants? I recognize that a lot has been written about the SAT/etc being biased, but high school grades and "experiences" are worse (how does one compare what a "B" in Calculus or club president actually means, in all high schools across the US??).
- kbos87 6y ago
  I agree with you that comparing applicants objectively is a tough nut to crack. I don’t know the right answer but I would imagine looking at as diverse a set of inputs as possible is a good starting point; I could also see universities coming up with some means of weighing inputs differently to not let any one input (like standardized test scores) be an arbitrary disqualifier. But until that’s the case, I don’t think individuals should feel guilt for not letting a flawed system run them over, even if that means needing to “cheat”.
  - albntomat0 6y ago
    I definitely agree with individuals taking actions within the system to optimize their chances is fine (e.g. targeting colleges that don't require standardized testing if the applicant doesn't do well on those tests, but not things like the fake sports recruiting that was in the news a year or so ago). I may be biased as I did well on standardized tests. I have family members that volunteer to do admissions interviews as alumni of a very major name university. They both mention how gamified some applicants are taking the process, with some high school students' parents essentially buying them research opportunities and other experiences to talk about on their applications. While standardized testing is influenced by family wealth and resources, I'm convinced standardized tests (SAT/ACT/AP/etc) are the least influenced part of college admissions, and thus should remain in some form.

musicale 6y ago

Given the incredible scarcity of academic jobs and huge surplus of Ph.D. graduates, I'd be surprised if even relatively unknown schools in the middle of nowhere couldn't attract hundreds of highly qualified applicants. Landing a faculty job at any university - public or private - is an extraordinary achievement.

gnicholas 6y ago

This isn't terribly surprising given the degree of substitutability between very inexpensive community colleges (or state schools like CSUs here in California) and mid/lower-tier privates. Pre-pandemic, going to college away from home offered a fun environment with many amenities. During the pandemic, these fun aspects are greatly limited (and parents might not let kids go anyway, due to health risks). When you take away so much of the fun stuff that goes along with college, it doesn't make as much sense to pay $50k/yr in tuition when the experience isn't that much different than your local state school (which costs $10k). Top colleges, on the other hand, still offer differentiation in terms of degree prestige. Add onto that the promise of not taking standardized tests into account (as the article notes Cornell and other schools are doing this), and it's not surprising that applications are up.

musicale 6y ago
Community colleges are the best deal in education (though they usually don't offer four-year degrees.) And given the academic job market, basically any state university should be able to pick and choose among hundreds of highly qualified faculty candidates.

dvdhnt 6y ago

Not very surprising, is it? Right or wrong, "top" colleges are considered better equipped to get you close to the wealth and power needed to live comfortably. This isn't much different from travelers going west and buying claims in search of gold. Almost the entire collegiate system in the US is fundamentally broken. It is siloed and just as much pay-to-play as the rest of this country. The soaring costs, low returns, and behemoth mis-allocation of resources towards college football are examples of this.

xenihn 6y ago

Does anyone else feel that standardized tests are the most egalitarian and meritocratic metric in the admissions process? Removing them and claiming that it makes things fairer doesn't seem true to me. The other three metrics (essay, grades, letters of recommendation) can be gamed/cheated. I'm sure standardized testing cheating happens, but it's so much more difficult, even for someone with connections. Your grades are positively affected if your family can afford tutors for you, or if your parents are educated enough to tutor you themselves. You can have inflated grades that aren't reflective of your actual competency or knowledge. The inverse of this is also true. Bad grades don't provide any obvious information or signal on their own. Poorer students may be assigned to schools that don't have AP classes, so they don't even have the possibility of grade inflation. You can have people help you write your admissions essay. Hell, you can have other people write it for you altogether. All of the wealth factors that influence GPA also influence your essay, if you actually write it completely by yourself. Letters of recommendation seem to be the most exclusionary and biased of all. I actually think it's ridiculous that they're still allowed. There is no way to verify that they are true. They're grounded in connections and elitism. How is the average applicant even supposed to compete with letters from a politician, alumni, famous businessperson, or some other type of celebrity? A wealthy student's family can also pay for these in multiple ways, if, for some reason, the connections didn't already exist. Meanwhile, the argument for tests being biased is that wealthier kids are able to prepare for them more than kids with less resources. But all of the other metrics tie to wealth as well, and every argument against standardized tests also applies to GPA. I'd even say GPA is influenced by wealth more than tests. You can pirate expensive prep materials. You can PROBABLY find a volunteer tutor if you live in or near a college. But even taking the argument that wealthier children are at an advantage at full value, that advantage is still less than what is provided by the other 3 metrics. I'm taking this a bit personally since I had an incredibly bad GPA in junior high and high school. I hated doing homework, and I hated sitting in lectures. I failed multiple classes because homework and attendance counted for so much of the total grade, that even 100%ing every quiz and test would still give me less than 60% in the class. The only thing that proved that I wasn't mentally retarded was my performance in course tests and standardized tests. College went ok. I'm now doing better career-wise and financially than anyone I went to school with, including all of the IB kids who went to top-tier schools (with one exception, there's ONE other person on my level, because they went into finance and they're now an iBanker). I would have been completely screwed without standardized tests as a metric.

fiftyfifty 6y ago

Higher Education is about to go through a brutal consolidation process, people have been predicting it for years. Even before Covid-19, small liberal arts schools were starting to close down. Demand for higher education is going to drop over the next decade because the number of graduating high schoolers in the US is about to drop and has already been dropping simply because the birth rate 20 years ago was lower. There are certainly other factors accelerating this trend such as fewer high school graduates going to college these days due to the increasing cost of tuition. In the end there will be a lot of schools fighting over a decreasing number of applicants and the top schools will be the ones likely to come out the winners. https://www.npr.org/2019/12/16/787909495/fewer-students-are-going-to-college-heres-why-that-matters https://www.npr.org/2019/12/16/787909495/fewer-students-are-...