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What we're seeing is how the profit motive is anathema to higher education. Colleges view their reputation as their brand that can simply cash in on for even mo

by jmyeet 2y ago

What we're seeing is how the profit motive is anathema to higher education. Colleges view their reputation as their brand that can simply cash in on for even more profits. Some colleges are basically hedge funds masquerading as colleges at this point. What we need is a high-quality, no or low cost state university system (like California and other places used to have) as a balancing force to keep skyrocketing tuition costs in check. I'd even go so far as to say that state college systems should not an athletics department at all [1]. Or let that aspect be completely privately funded. Now there's a lot to criticize with the military but the one aspect I'd like to emulate is the idea that you qualify to do a job, you choose to do that job, you get trained to do that job and then you do the job. We don't need to turn higher education into job factories to do that. As for these courses, almost all of them in every area is a scam. Any course teaching you to make money (eg in stocks or crypto) is a scam because if someone was capable of making money, they'd do that. They wouldn't tell you how. The course is their income. This is a little different but still, Caltech is selling their name to profit off of third-party courses. [1]: https://www.collegevine.com/faq/112712/do-most-college-athletic-departments-lose-money https://www.collegevine.com/faq/112712/do-most-college-athle...

SpicyLemonZest 2y ago
> What we need is a high-quality, no or low cost state university system (like California and other places used to have) as a balancing force to keep skyrocketing tuition costs in check. Doesn’t California show exactly why this doesn’t work? California has, today, a large system of well-supported state universities where tuition is under $10,000 per year. But the best students don’t want to attend them. Since most people understand high-quality to mean things like “will I be surrounded by some of the smartest people in the country” or “will employers looking for the smartest people seek me out”, they often don’t get perceived as high-quality no matter how good their instruction may be.
- alephnerd 2y ago
  > But the best students don’t want to attend them Admissions at UC Berkeley, UCLA, and UCSD is near Stanford level for in-demand programs like EECS and Business, and plenty of us Ivy and Ivy-adjacents didn't get into a UC or didn't get Regents (thus potentially making an Ivy Adjacent cheaper). My sibling is much younger, and in their time (late 2010s/early 2020s), admission stats to CS or Business even in "middling" (imo criminally underrated) UCs like UCR or UCSC became comparable to UCB barely a decade ago.
  - SpicyLemonZest 2y ago
    I'd reemphasize my point. When the discussion turns to public colleges in California, people often think exclusively of the UCs, which are genuinely prestigious and (non-coincidentally) expensive. The CSU system is larger, much cheaper, and thus entirely invisible to most who identify as Ivy-adjacent.
    - alephnerd 2y ago
      > The CSU system is larger, much cheaper, and thus entirely invisible to most who identify as Ivy-adjacent. For top Californian students targeting Eng/CS these programs are very visible. The good CSU programs (Eng/Business @ SJSU, SDSU, and CalPoly SLO) tend to overprotect their yield rate. Personally, I and a significant proportion of my HS friend group would have preferred attending CalPoly SLO (it's a fun campus, great hiking, great beach, great academics, great job placements), but we all got rejected because our scores (SAT/GPA) were way higher than the median, yet we ended up at Ivy Tier programs (EECS@MIT/Berkeley/Stanford/etc). Same thing happened to my sibling as well. This has been an issue for almost 2 decades now because high demand programs in Californian public universities (STEM, Business) haven't increased the amount of faculty or seats per department yet the number of students trying to apply to these programs has skyrocketed
    - OldGuyInTheClub 2y ago
      Prop 13 (Property tax revolt) wreaked havoc on the UC, Cal State, and Community College systems. Tuition started to creep up at Berkeley shortly after I started a couple of years after the vote but it was absolutely nothing like it is today. Also, the competition to get in to UC schools is crazy. No way in hell I could get in were I to apply today with my high school grades, test scores, and extracurriculars.
      - alephnerd 2y ago
        Prop 13 wasn't the issue for us younger applicants (graduated HS in the last 20 years) - it's the austerity measures that were in place across California from 2009-2013. That prevented UCs and CSUs from being able to dynamically expand STEM and Business faculty headcount. That said, even Ivy League programs have fallen into the same trap - CS@Harvard is bursting at the seams and imo, the course quality is middling compared to UCs, UT, UIUC, UW, MIT, CMU, GT, etc, and recruiting isn't that different between a top public CS program and Ivies (the only difference is VC Analyst recruiting, but that's a horrible career that expires in 2-3 years. Only MBAs or experienced EMs/PMs/Founders or a handful of IB Analysts break into partner track [associate and above] roles).
alephnerd 2y ago
I'm a big fan of what Georgia Tech, UT Austin, UIUC, and CU Boulder did with their online masters programs - the courses are the same as on campus (and I've verified this with alums and/or having taking courses at these universities as an undergrad), and they give the hard skills needed to truly become a decent SWE.

by jmyeet 2y ago

SpicyLemonZest 2y ago

> What we need is a high-quality, no or low cost state university system (like California and other places used to have) as a balancing force to keep skyrocketing tuition costs in check. Doesn’t California show exactly why this doesn’t work? California has, today, a large system of well-supported state universities where tuition is under $10,000 per year. But the best students don’t want to attend them. Since most people understand high-quality to mean things like “will I be surrounded by some of the smartest people in the country” or “will employers looking for the smartest people seek me out”, they often don’t get perceived as high-quality no matter how good their instruction may be.

alephnerd 2y ago
> But the best students don’t want to attend them Admissions at UC Berkeley, UCLA, and UCSD is near Stanford level for in-demand programs like EECS and Business, and plenty of us Ivy and Ivy-adjacents didn't get into a UC or didn't get Regents (thus potentially making an Ivy Adjacent cheaper). My sibling is much younger, and in their time (late 2010s/early 2020s), admission stats to CS or Business even in "middling" (imo criminally underrated) UCs like UCR or UCSC became comparable to UCB barely a decade ago.
- SpicyLemonZest 2y ago
  I'd reemphasize my point. When the discussion turns to public colleges in California, people often think exclusively of the UCs, which are genuinely prestigious and (non-coincidentally) expensive. The CSU system is larger, much cheaper, and thus entirely invisible to most who identify as Ivy-adjacent.
  - alephnerd 2y ago
    > The CSU system is larger, much cheaper, and thus entirely invisible to most who identify as Ivy-adjacent. For top Californian students targeting Eng/CS these programs are very visible. The good CSU programs (Eng/Business @ SJSU, SDSU, and CalPoly SLO) tend to overprotect their yield rate. Personally, I and a significant proportion of my HS friend group would have preferred attending CalPoly SLO (it's a fun campus, great hiking, great beach, great academics, great job placements), but we all got rejected because our scores (SAT/GPA) were way higher than the median, yet we ended up at Ivy Tier programs (EECS@MIT/Berkeley/Stanford/etc). Same thing happened to my sibling as well. This has been an issue for almost 2 decades now because high demand programs in Californian public universities (STEM, Business) haven't increased the amount of faculty or seats per department yet the number of students trying to apply to these programs has skyrocketed
  - OldGuyInTheClub 2y ago
    Prop 13 (Property tax revolt) wreaked havoc on the UC, Cal State, and Community College systems. Tuition started to creep up at Berkeley shortly after I started a couple of years after the vote but it was absolutely nothing like it is today. Also, the competition to get in to UC schools is crazy. No way in hell I could get in were I to apply today with my high school grades, test scores, and extracurriculars.
    - alephnerd 2y ago
      Prop 13 wasn't the issue for us younger applicants (graduated HS in the last 20 years) - it's the austerity measures that were in place across California from 2009-2013. That prevented UCs and CSUs from being able to dynamically expand STEM and Business faculty headcount. That said, even Ivy League programs have fallen into the same trap - CS@Harvard is bursting at the seams and imo, the course quality is middling compared to UCs, UT, UIUC, UW, MIT, CMU, GT, etc, and recruiting isn't that different between a top public CS program and Ivies (the only difference is VC Analyst recruiting, but that's a horrible career that expires in 2-3 years. Only MBAs or experienced EMs/PMs/Founders or a handful of IB Analysts break into partner track [associate and above] roles).

alephnerd 2y ago

I'm a big fan of what Georgia Tech, UT Austin, UIUC, and CU Boulder did with their online masters programs - the courses are the same as on campus (and I've verified this with alums and/or having taking courses at these universities as an undergrad), and they give the hard skills needed to truly become a decent SWE.