5 ms·

Increasingly I see the idea of thinking of college in any other terms as a deliberate meme designed to make people pay extremely high prices and put them in a d

by jerf 5y ago

Increasingly I see the idea of thinking of college in any other terms as a deliberate meme designed to make people pay extremely high prices and put them in a debt trap, and that the sources of that meme like it that way. Before college can be creating well-rounded citizenry or provide "excellent life experiences" or any of the other things people want of it, it must first provide a good ROI. This is a necessary foundation. If it is not doing that, then all the other fancy things are merely digging the debt trap in deeper because you're paying for all these things while failing to obtain a method of paying them back. As a culture, in decades past we were used to college generally being so cheap that providing a good ROI wasn't that big a deal. It's much easier to get a good ROI out of something cheap. So we focused on the higher layers and were able to neglect the fact that the higher layers were always built on a foundation of the fact that college in general was a good ROI. Consequently we have come to misinterpret those higher level things as the purpose of college. But it is necessary that these aspirational benefits be setting on a good foundation of good ROI to not be abusive to the customer. It is not and must not be considered some sort of betrayal to be worried about ROI for college. It must simply be seen as an understanding of the fact that as the costs have changed, the way we must analyze college has also changed. It was always true, it's just now it has manifested in a larger way.

burnafter184 5y ago
Do you actually have anything to back that up? I'm not being antagonistic, but the impression I've gotten is that education was largely done for the sake of itself, like if you read Les Miserables the collegiate cast was largely poor - with the exception being those of high birth. Which I mean, take that for how you will, it is a fictional work. But then in Ancient China we see stuff like the Imperial Exam, which does sort of direct the education->wealth, but you still see the pattern of high birth being the ultimate determinant of success in most cases. Which to me says there is a paternal drive to have your kids educated, but for the sake of education itself, since ostensibly the family unit is already well established. But I'm actually really interested in reading a historical perspective of education, so if you've got some sources I'd appreciate your sharing them.
- jerf 5y ago
  My point is philosophical, not historical. To put it another way, education for the sake of education is higher on the Maslow Hierarchy than being able to make a decent ROI on college. Self-actualization is great and all, but when you're telling people to pursue it at the expense of whether or not they're going to eat something it's not noble and honorable, it's tone-deaf at best and can be downright evil when huge propaganda machines are deployed to convince people to do it, because the people selling self-actualization benefit. Debt skews the understanding by moving the time that the payments come due around but they're still due. It doesn't change the fundamental calculation. "the collegiate cast was largely poor" But were they going into massive, life-changing debt? Poor people going to a generally cheap (by modern standards!) college is no big deal. But now we're sending poor people to expensive college, so they can self-actualize at the expense of a good chunk of the rest of their life. This isn't noble.
- thebean11 5y ago
  Did college in those places / time periods put you into debt? But anyway, what's the point of looking that far back and cross-content, why don't we compare it to American universities just a few decades ago?
  - barry-cotter 5y ago
    > Did college in those places / time periods put you into debt? It was common for family lineages fo hundreds of people to support promising students to do the Imperial examinations and they didn't do it out of the goodness of their hearts. Equally people don't pay for their sons to study law for their intelectual development. Only the relatively wealthy could afford to send a son to college. Just being able to afford them not working for 3-5 years marks them as wealthy even if they fely poor in comparison with others of their social class.
gshubert17 5y ago
> Before college can be creating well-rounded citizenry or provide "excellent life experiences" or any of the other things people want of it, it must first provide a good ROI. This is a necessary foundation. I'd like to say _at the same time_, college can provide a good ROI and good citizens, life experiences, etc. But besides college, what are some other choices, programs, whatever that could provide some of college's added features? Public service (in the U.S., military, Americorps, Peace Corps)? What's available in other countries?
- bakuninsbart 5y ago
  If there is one part of the german system I'd recommend other countries to (partially) emulate, it is the apprenticeship model. Germany has multiple ways a person can finish school; from Hauptschulabschluss (limited apprenticeships), over Realschulabschluss (apprenticeships), and Fachabitur (apprenticeships + applied studies in a field you specialised in) to Abitur (everything). The thing is that finishing an apprenticeship enables you to do an applied Bacelor in the field. After a Bachelors, you can continue on in academia if you like. And you can go back to school at 30 to finish your (Fach-)Abitur, if you failed it before. The state will even pay you to attend. There's very clear paths to jobs, but also a lot of ways to change your direction. Going back to apprenticeships, they are plentiful and often well-payed. For example, most of the Sys-admins I know did an apprenticeship, which consists of 3 years of school while working half-time at a company. This combination of school and work is the best of both worlds for experience, and it enables young people to get a career path without too much though.
bakuninsbart 5y ago
> Before college can be creating well-rounded citizenry or provide "excellent life experiences" or any of the other things people want of it, it must first provide a good ROI. This is a necessary foundation. If it is not doing that, then all the other fancy things are merely digging the debt trap in deeper because you're paying for all these things while failing to obtain a method of paying them back. I don't disagree, the thing is that well-rounded citizenry is a necessary prerequisite for a democratic society. That means, as a society we need to make the ROI for an individual worth it by paying for it as a society or offer meaningful alternatives. This is one of the things that capitalism is terrible at, and thus it must be supplemented through public spending.
compiler-guy 5y ago
College wouldn’t need to provide a good roi if it were much mess expensive. Just like, strictly speaking, going to a movie doesn’t provide a good roi. It’s one thing to take four years of your life deepening your thinking ability and stretching your mind without a good roi if you come out the other end without crushing debt and prospects for employment that can sustain you, even if those prospects have nothing to do with your college experience. This is what college was like until the last four decades or so. It’s entirely another to come out the other side in crippling debt and no prospects for any kind of sustaining job.
- karamanolev 5y ago
  If it provides the same value, but costs less, then by definition, the ROI is better. OTOH, if it puts you in crippling debt, but you have no prospects of a job to support that - the ROI becomes bad or even negative. So doesn't it capture all of that already? In some sense, twice the cost for twice the benefit might be worth it to those who can afford it, because the time-wise investment (4 years or so of your life) remain constant.
  - compiler-guy 5y ago
    No, it doesn't capture all of that already. A "better" ROI doesn't necessarily mean a positive ROI. Getting negative 10% return on a $1,000 investment doesn't matter as much as getting a negative 10% return on a $100,000 investment.
    - westurner 5y ago
      Magnitude certainly is relevant to vector comparisons; but, if we define ROI as nominal rate of return, gross returns are not relevant to a comparison by that metric. Return on Investment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_on_investment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_on_investment From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_(mathematics_and_physics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_(mathematics_and_physic... : > A Euclidean vector is thus an equivalence class of directed segments with the same magnitude (e.g., the length of the line segment (A, B)) and same direction (e.g., the direction from A to B).[3] In physics, Euclidean vectors are used to represent physical quantities that have both magnitude and direction, but are not located at a specific place, in contrast to scalars, which have no direction.[4] For example, velocity, forces and acceleration are represented by vectors Quantitatively and Qualitatively quantify the direct and external benefits of {college, other alternatives} with criteria in additional to real monetary ROI? From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_economics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_economics > Welfare economics also provides the theoretical foundations for particular instruments of public economics, including cost–benefit analysis,
mlac 5y ago
ROI heavily depends on the student. A college can be expensive and provide everything required for a good ROI (name brand, education opportunities, networking, internships) but still result in a low ROI if the student just expects to be handed a 6 figure job upon graduation while coasting and partying for 4 years. It starts with who is let in the doors, and to some extent, it’s garbage in garbage out. Putting ROI solely on the institution is not right. Maybe you can say it should be the institution’s job to only bring in motivated students, but there are only so many of those to go around.

by jerf 5y ago

burnafter184 5y ago

Do you actually have anything to back that up? I'm not being antagonistic, but the impression I've gotten is that education was largely done for the sake of itself, like if you read Les Miserables the collegiate cast was largely poor - with the exception being those of high birth. Which I mean, take that for how you will, it is a fictional work. But then in Ancient China we see stuff like the Imperial Exam, which does sort of direct the education->wealth, but you still see the pattern of high birth being the ultimate determinant of success in most cases. Which to me says there is a paternal drive to have your kids educated, but for the sake of education itself, since ostensibly the family unit is already well established. But I'm actually really interested in reading a historical perspective of education, so if you've got some sources I'd appreciate your sharing them.

jerf 5y ago
My point is philosophical, not historical. To put it another way, education for the sake of education is higher on the Maslow Hierarchy than being able to make a decent ROI on college. Self-actualization is great and all, but when you're telling people to pursue it at the expense of whether or not they're going to eat something it's not noble and honorable, it's tone-deaf at best and can be downright evil when huge propaganda machines are deployed to convince people to do it, because the people selling self-actualization benefit. Debt skews the understanding by moving the time that the payments come due around but they're still due. It doesn't change the fundamental calculation. "the collegiate cast was largely poor" But were they going into massive, life-changing debt? Poor people going to a generally cheap (by modern standards!) college is no big deal. But now we're sending poor people to expensive college, so they can self-actualize at the expense of a good chunk of the rest of their life. This isn't noble.
thebean11 5y ago
Did college in those places / time periods put you into debt? But anyway, what's the point of looking that far back and cross-content, why don't we compare it to American universities just a few decades ago?
- barry-cotter 5y ago
  > Did college in those places / time periods put you into debt? It was common for family lineages fo hundreds of people to support promising students to do the Imperial examinations and they didn't do it out of the goodness of their hearts. Equally people don't pay for their sons to study law for their intelectual development. Only the relatively wealthy could afford to send a son to college. Just being able to afford them not working for 3-5 years marks them as wealthy even if they fely poor in comparison with others of their social class.

gshubert17 5y ago

> Before college can be creating well-rounded citizenry or provide "excellent life experiences" or any of the other things people want of it, it must first provide a good ROI. This is a necessary foundation. I'd like to say _at the same time_, college can provide a good ROI and good citizens, life experiences, etc. But besides college, what are some other choices, programs, whatever that could provide some of college's added features? Public service (in the U.S., military, Americorps, Peace Corps)? What's available in other countries?

bakuninsbart 5y ago
If there is one part of the german system I'd recommend other countries to (partially) emulate, it is the apprenticeship model. Germany has multiple ways a person can finish school; from Hauptschulabschluss (limited apprenticeships), over Realschulabschluss (apprenticeships), and Fachabitur (apprenticeships + applied studies in a field you specialised in) to Abitur (everything). The thing is that finishing an apprenticeship enables you to do an applied Bacelor in the field. After a Bachelors, you can continue on in academia if you like. And you can go back to school at 30 to finish your (Fach-)Abitur, if you failed it before. The state will even pay you to attend. There's very clear paths to jobs, but also a lot of ways to change your direction. Going back to apprenticeships, they are plentiful and often well-payed. For example, most of the Sys-admins I know did an apprenticeship, which consists of 3 years of school while working half-time at a company. This combination of school and work is the best of both worlds for experience, and it enables young people to get a career path without too much though.

bakuninsbart 5y ago

> Before college can be creating well-rounded citizenry or provide "excellent life experiences" or any of the other things people want of it, it must first provide a good ROI. This is a necessary foundation. If it is not doing that, then all the other fancy things are merely digging the debt trap in deeper because you're paying for all these things while failing to obtain a method of paying them back. I don't disagree, the thing is that well-rounded citizenry is a necessary prerequisite for a democratic society. That means, as a society we need to make the ROI for an individual worth it by paying for it as a society or offer meaningful alternatives. This is one of the things that capitalism is terrible at, and thus it must be supplemented through public spending.

compiler-guy 5y ago

College wouldn’t need to provide a good roi if it were much mess expensive. Just like, strictly speaking, going to a movie doesn’t provide a good roi. It’s one thing to take four years of your life deepening your thinking ability and stretching your mind without a good roi if you come out the other end without crushing debt and prospects for employment that can sustain you, even if those prospects have nothing to do with your college experience. This is what college was like until the last four decades or so. It’s entirely another to come out the other side in crippling debt and no prospects for any kind of sustaining job.

karamanolev 5y ago
If it provides the same value, but costs less, then by definition, the ROI is better. OTOH, if it puts you in crippling debt, but you have no prospects of a job to support that - the ROI becomes bad or even negative. So doesn't it capture all of that already? In some sense, twice the cost for twice the benefit might be worth it to those who can afford it, because the time-wise investment (4 years or so of your life) remain constant.
- compiler-guy 5y ago
  No, it doesn't capture all of that already. A "better" ROI doesn't necessarily mean a positive ROI. Getting negative 10% return on a $1,000 investment doesn't matter as much as getting a negative 10% return on a $100,000 investment.
  - westurner 5y ago
    Magnitude certainly is relevant to vector comparisons; but, if we define ROI as nominal rate of return, gross returns are not relevant to a comparison by that metric. Return on Investment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_on_investment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_on_investment From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_(mathematics_and_physics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_(mathematics_and_physic... : > A Euclidean vector is thus an equivalence class of directed segments with the same magnitude (e.g., the length of the line segment (A, B)) and same direction (e.g., the direction from A to B).[3] In physics, Euclidean vectors are used to represent physical quantities that have both magnitude and direction, but are not located at a specific place, in contrast to scalars, which have no direction.[4] For example, velocity, forces and acceleration are represented by vectors Quantitatively and Qualitatively quantify the direct and external benefits of {college, other alternatives} with criteria in additional to real monetary ROI? From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_economics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_economics > Welfare economics also provides the theoretical foundations for particular instruments of public economics, including cost–benefit analysis,

mlac 5y ago

ROI heavily depends on the student. A college can be expensive and provide everything required for a good ROI (name brand, education opportunities, networking, internships) but still result in a low ROI if the student just expects to be handed a 6 figure job upon graduation while coasting and partying for 4 years. It starts with who is let in the doors, and to some extent, it’s garbage in garbage out. Putting ROI solely on the institution is not right. Maybe you can say it should be the institution’s job to only bring in motivated students, but there are only so many of those to go around.