5 ms·

Colleges ignore growing skepticism of higher ed at their peril

17 points by mpweiher 3y ago

Minor49er 3y ago
The book "Fail U: The False Promise of Higher Education" by Charles Sykes shows why the price of college has exploded while offering no increase in the quality of education for decades
fzeroracer 3y ago
The actual problems of college (the price/accessibility) is separate from the attacks the right wing have made against it which consist of trying to make it conform to their own ideological slant. One needs to just look at Florida to see how well that strategy is doing and what they actually want to do to the schooling system.
- benf76 3y ago
  What’s wrong with Florida? The state is growing population and tax base - the two main metrics used to measure state success. People are coming here because they like the schools. What is your take?
  - ohthatsnotright 3y ago
    What about the schools? They seem to be under-performing according to this summary. https://www.tampabay.com/opinion/2023/01/05/floridas-education-system-is-vastly-underperforming-column/ https://www.tampabay.com/opinion/2023/01/05/floridas-educati...
    - P_I_Staker 3y ago
      Underperforming for who? This is a tragedy and injustice, but it might not matter much to the people moving there. You would hope people would feel guilty living under such conditions, and therefore not consider them as "desirable", but personal experience and observation would say otherwise.
RugnirViking 3y ago
Unless we want to try to compete on labour price/working conditions, we are going to have to globally compete on having educated workers designing cutting edge solutions. It's in everyone's interest for lots of people to be educated. People are skeptical, I think, because many degree programs have opened up for which there is little use for their output, and little employment opportunities afterwards. Not only that, but many existing and useful programs have pivoted away from useful work and building on other knowledge, and have begun futilely re-creating the same experiments with minute differences without really trying to identify anything worthwhile. It's hard and probably wrong to say that people that run these things should hold themselves and their students to higher standards, but clearly somewhere somehow there is a culture mismatch between what people hope to find when they enter vs what they actually get.
- brnaftr361 3y ago
  Well let's not conflate the education system with education. The former is supposed to facilitate the latter, but it does not necessarily function as such. And when it does, it doesn't necessarily mean that it is doing it well. Colleges and universities are more gatekeepers than they are the arbiters of knowledge. From my own experience basically all the learning (in my case) is done independently, at best the system sets up an incentive complex: study for the exam or you will fail. What these exams measure is not clear. What the classes are intended to teach, and how they are structured to accomplish that is nebulous. What the student will retain is likewise unclear. What this then says, to me, anyways, is that I am paying thousands of dollars a year to have someone read slides from the textbook publisher to me, and have arbitrary tests proctored so I can get a piece of paper that certifies to a prospective employer that... I have the piece of paper. 'Cause you just know the Gen Chem I and II classes I took my freshman year have been entirely vacated from memory. And a great deal of the information we're given is contextually irrelevant in so many cases, and it amounts to huge sums of wasted time and energy, not to mention stress only for it to be forgotten. And it lacks the modularity that the market should really be demanding, and thus the market had ought to be serving.
  - fzeroracer 3y ago
cyanydeez 3y ago
Wealth inequality changes the economics of everything. As long as they can get a proportional increase per student, there's no fundamental reason to care. Obviously, there's no moral or ethical consideration. But most people need to be reminded that as long as there _are_ consumers capable of paying, the absolute number of consumers isn't a evidentiary variable (ie, if a single consumer will pay all the costs, the product will be profitable)

17 points by mpweiher 3y ago

The book "Fail U: The False Promise of Higher Education" by Charles Sykes shows why the price of college has exploded while offering no increase in the quality of education for decades

fzeroracer 3y ago

The actual problems of college (the price/accessibility) is separate from the attacks the right wing have made against it which consist of trying to make it conform to their own ideological slant. One needs to just look at Florida to see how well that strategy is doing and what they actually want to do to the schooling system.

benf76 3y ago
What’s wrong with Florida? The state is growing population and tax base - the two main metrics used to measure state success. People are coming here because they like the schools. What is your take?
- ohthatsnotright 3y ago
  What about the schools? They seem to be under-performing according to this summary. https://www.tampabay.com/opinion/2023/01/05/floridas-education-system-is-vastly-underperforming-column/ https://www.tampabay.com/opinion/2023/01/05/floridas-educati...
  - P_I_Staker 3y ago
    Underperforming for who? This is a tragedy and injustice, but it might not matter much to the people moving there. You would hope people would feel guilty living under such conditions, and therefore not consider them as "desirable", but personal experience and observation would say otherwise.

RugnirViking 3y ago

Unless we want to try to compete on labour price/working conditions, we are going to have to globally compete on having educated workers designing cutting edge solutions. It's in everyone's interest for lots of people to be educated. People are skeptical, I think, because many degree programs have opened up for which there is little use for their output, and little employment opportunities afterwards. Not only that, but many existing and useful programs have pivoted away from useful work and building on other knowledge, and have begun futilely re-creating the same experiments with minute differences without really trying to identify anything worthwhile. It's hard and probably wrong to say that people that run these things should hold themselves and their students to higher standards, but clearly somewhere somehow there is a culture mismatch between what people hope to find when they enter vs what they actually get.

brnaftr361 3y ago
Well let's not conflate the education system with education. The former is supposed to facilitate the latter, but it does not necessarily function as such. And when it does, it doesn't necessarily mean that it is doing it well. Colleges and universities are more gatekeepers than they are the arbiters of knowledge. From my own experience basically all the learning (in my case) is done independently, at best the system sets up an incentive complex: study for the exam or you will fail. What these exams measure is not clear. What the classes are intended to teach, and how they are structured to accomplish that is nebulous. What the student will retain is likewise unclear. What this then says, to me, anyways, is that I am paying thousands of dollars a year to have someone read slides from the textbook publisher to me, and have arbitrary tests proctored so I can get a piece of paper that certifies to a prospective employer that... I have the piece of paper. 'Cause you just know the Gen Chem I and II classes I took my freshman year have been entirely vacated from memory. And a great deal of the information we're given is contextually irrelevant in so many cases, and it amounts to huge sums of wasted time and energy, not to mention stress only for it to be forgotten. And it lacks the modularity that the market should really be demanding, and thus the market had ought to be serving.
- fzeroracer 3y ago

cyanydeez 3y ago

Wealth inequality changes the economics of everything. As long as they can get a proportional increase per student, there's no fundamental reason to care. Obviously, there's no moral or ethical consideration. But most people need to be reminded that as long as there _are_ consumers capable of paying, the absolute number of consumers isn't a evidentiary variable (ie, if a single consumer will pay all the costs, the product will be profitable)