6 ms·

The point of education isn't to actually learn though. It's to receive the credential. This is much larger than a cultural problem with the students of today.

by mlsu 1y ago

The point of education isn't to actually learn though. It's to receive the credential. This is much larger than a cultural problem with the students of today. They believe, rightfully and accurately, that the university degree is yet another part of the machine that they will become a cog in. What should be alarming to everyone is that these students will graduate without having learned anything and then go into the workplace where they will continue to not use their atrophied critical thinking skills, to simply do yet more, as a cog in the machine.

bumby 1y ago
This attitude is part of a more general cultural shift. Back in the 1960s, the majority of students said the primary motivation for going to college was to develop a philosophy of life, and a minority said the main goal was to be very financially successful. Somewhere around the 1980s this started to shift and the proportions are now inverted. * according to the UCLA CIRP freshman survey
- mschuster91 1y ago
  > Somewhere around the 1980s this started to shift and the proportions are now inverted. Yeah, that's when the great "push for education" came, as well as neoliberalism which preached continuous hustling and individuality. And in the 90s, the ADA and other anti discrimination laws hit, and requiring a college degree was and still is a very useful pre-screening filter for HR to continue discrimination.
  - shawn-butler 1y ago
    It's also as I recall when tuition and student costs started to spike in the US which is probably more directly related than some "philosophical" change in the zeitgeist[0]. When students and parents start racking up debt like this, you become very interested in the fastest way to pay it back. For me the impact of the university administrators as they chased higher endowments for more buildings with naming rights and expanded their own bureaucracies with direct hires that did not directly contribute to the faculty mission did more to alter the university experience than anything else. [0]: https://educationdata.org/average-cost-of-college-by-year https://educationdata.org/average-cost-of-college-by-year
- MengerSponge 1y ago
  We (America) made university educations super expensive. Causality is complicated, but it probably started as an effort to destroy the anti-war movement in the 70's.
  - sgustard 1y ago
    "Most financial experts attribute he sudden increases that started in the 1970s with an influx of federal funding designed to make college more affordable." https://educationdata.org/average-cost-of-college-by-year https://educationdata.org/average-cost-of-college-by-year
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - MengerSponge 1y ago
      Expensive things can be affordable. A house is expensive, but with stable employment and a bank loan you can afford it. When we're talking about college costs, public schools are really the only institutions that matter. The Ivies (or even Ivy+) are a rounding error compared to the big midwestern land-grant universities and the UC and Cal State systems. States have substantially reduced their per-student support for universities: https://www.ppic.org/publication/higher-education-funding-in-california/ https://www.ppic.org/publication/higher-education-funding-in... This coincides with federal funding programs, but student loans are famously not dischargeable, which makes them more instruments of social control than conventional financial vehicles.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- tcmart14 1y ago
  I would also say some of the attitude shift is also contradictory. The amount of people I interact with who have a lot of bad things to say about the education who tell me universities should focus on education in a general meanwhile also say that schools to should focus on student getting jobs. Probably one that has been heard before, something along the lines of, "why don't high schools teach plumbers courses." I mean they can. While also, "colleges are too focused on checking the boxes so students can get jobs."
  - hnfong 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - andai 1y ago
      Our CS department head was overheard saying, "Our job is to create researchers." I found this quite striking, since something like 10% of undergrads go into research. Most people really are there to help them get a job. So the program is designed not to meet the needs of 90% of its "customers".
      - bumby 1y ago
        There’s an argument that treating students as “customers” has led to all kinds of bad outcomes. One example is it creates an incentive to invest in all kinds of fancy infrastructure (fancy halls/dorms and even lazy rivers) because that is how they attract more “customers” but this ultimately becomes a huge driver of educational costs. The same can be said for watered down courses etc.
        tcmart14 1y ago
        I would also add, look at the astonishing success (sarcasm), of for-profit colleges. They would have to be considered the extreme of treating students as customers and I don't really know any serious employer who accepts a degree from for-profit colleges. Unless the college is so new the employees hadn't heard of it before and don't know much about it.
- PKop 1y ago
  And there were fewer students going to university and so you had a higher proportion of people doing it for the love of learning. It was easier to get a job without a degree. It's not just a cultural shift, it's a change of supply and demand.
- lazide 1y ago
  Notably, the late 70’s and early 80’s is when large scale social changes started to happen due to high inflation and major problems in the US economy. Also a lot of social unrest, and a pretty unhinged president (Tricky Dick).
  - mike_hearn 1y ago
    The same issues are seen in other countries. It's not specific to US presidents or policy. The insistence on maximizing university attendance was a widespread idea coming out of the left, e.g. in Britain it was heavily pushed by Tony Blair. The Blair government also raised tuition fees considerably. The stated rationale at the time was that degree holders earn more, so if everyone gets a degree, everyone will earn more. I am doubtful that was the true rationale but it's how the policy was sold to people.
    - Ekaros 1y ago
      Also I think massaging unemployment numbers for a while is reasonable goal. After all those in education are not counted as unemployed.
    - johnnyanmac 1y ago
      The mentality isn't, but the costs are US unique. You can afford to "explore" a bit of your youth if you're not going into 6 figures of debt.
- kipchak 1y ago
  Arguably the cause of the cultural shift is economic. Wages began stagnating in the early 1970s, which caused increased demand for diplomas as a way to increase wages. This is most striking in the number of students seeking law degrees, which shoots off at around the same time.
- bluecheese452 1y ago
  Yeah because in the 60s you could support a wife and 4 kids, buy a house and 2 cars, without a high school diploma, all before turning 25. There was no reason to go to college unless you were interested in learning. These days you need a college degree just to afford a 1 bedroom apartment by the time you are 40.
andrehacker 1y ago
Well, the credentials defintely help to GET the first job. As a cog in the machine though you are most often valued for skills more than for credentials, at least in the U.S.
kharak 1y ago
An anecdote to add to this: Me and most of my peers in college had the choice between two courses. Course A was interesting, yet vastly more challenging and therefore time consuming, with the additional downside of lower grade expectation. Course B was boring, a gentle breeze in comparison, yet with an almost guaranteed perfect grade. Imagine which course most students choose? Even if a student wants to take on the more interesting course, incentives matter, and the incentive is: better grades qualify for better compensated positions and prestigious degrees. Only students who didn't care about this or were confident enough in their ability did choose Course A. In the end, barely a handful of students out of hundreds went with A.

by mlsu 1y ago

bumby 1y ago

This attitude is part of a more general cultural shift. Back in the 1960s, the majority of students said the primary motivation for going to college was to develop a philosophy of life, and a minority said the main goal was to be very financially successful. Somewhere around the 1980s this started to shift and the proportions are now inverted. * according to the UCLA CIRP freshman survey

mschuster91 1y ago
> Somewhere around the 1980s this started to shift and the proportions are now inverted. Yeah, that's when the great "push for education" came, as well as neoliberalism which preached continuous hustling and individuality. And in the 90s, the ADA and other anti discrimination laws hit, and requiring a college degree was and still is a very useful pre-screening filter for HR to continue discrimination.
- shawn-butler 1y ago
  It's also as I recall when tuition and student costs started to spike in the US which is probably more directly related than some "philosophical" change in the zeitgeist[0]. When students and parents start racking up debt like this, you become very interested in the fastest way to pay it back. For me the impact of the university administrators as they chased higher endowments for more buildings with naming rights and expanded their own bureaucracies with direct hires that did not directly contribute to the faculty mission did more to alter the university experience than anything else. [0]: https://educationdata.org/average-cost-of-college-by-year https://educationdata.org/average-cost-of-college-by-year
MengerSponge 1y ago
We (America) made university educations super expensive. Causality is complicated, but it probably started as an effort to destroy the anti-war movement in the 70's.
- sgustard 1y ago
  "Most financial experts attribute he sudden increases that started in the 1970s with an influx of federal funding designed to make college more affordable." https://educationdata.org/average-cost-of-college-by-year https://educationdata.org/average-cost-of-college-by-year
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - MengerSponge 1y ago
    Expensive things can be affordable. A house is expensive, but with stable employment and a bank loan you can afford it. When we're talking about college costs, public schools are really the only institutions that matter. The Ivies (or even Ivy+) are a rounding error compared to the big midwestern land-grant universities and the UC and Cal State systems. States have substantially reduced their per-student support for universities: https://www.ppic.org/publication/higher-education-funding-in-california/ https://www.ppic.org/publication/higher-education-funding-in... This coincides with federal funding programs, but student loans are famously not dischargeable, which makes them more instruments of social control than conventional financial vehicles.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
tcmart14 1y ago
I would also say some of the attitude shift is also contradictory. The amount of people I interact with who have a lot of bad things to say about the education who tell me universities should focus on education in a general meanwhile also say that schools to should focus on student getting jobs. Probably one that has been heard before, something along the lines of, "why don't high schools teach plumbers courses." I mean they can. While also, "colleges are too focused on checking the boxes so students can get jobs."
- hnfong 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - andai 1y ago
    Our CS department head was overheard saying, "Our job is to create researchers." I found this quite striking, since something like 10% of undergrads go into research. Most people really are there to help them get a job. So the program is designed not to meet the needs of 90% of its "customers".
    - bumby 1y ago
      There’s an argument that treating students as “customers” has led to all kinds of bad outcomes. One example is it creates an incentive to invest in all kinds of fancy infrastructure (fancy halls/dorms and even lazy rivers) because that is how they attract more “customers” but this ultimately becomes a huge driver of educational costs. The same can be said for watered down courses etc.
      - tcmart14 1y ago
        I would also add, look at the astonishing success (sarcasm), of for-profit colleges. They would have to be considered the extreme of treating students as customers and I don't really know any serious employer who accepts a degree from for-profit colleges. Unless the college is so new the employees hadn't heard of it before and don't know much about it.
PKop 1y ago
And there were fewer students going to university and so you had a higher proportion of people doing it for the love of learning. It was easier to get a job without a degree. It's not just a cultural shift, it's a change of supply and demand.
lazide 1y ago
Notably, the late 70’s and early 80’s is when large scale social changes started to happen due to high inflation and major problems in the US economy. Also a lot of social unrest, and a pretty unhinged president (Tricky Dick).
- mike_hearn 1y ago
  The same issues are seen in other countries. It's not specific to US presidents or policy. The insistence on maximizing university attendance was a widespread idea coming out of the left, e.g. in Britain it was heavily pushed by Tony Blair. The Blair government also raised tuition fees considerably. The stated rationale at the time was that degree holders earn more, so if everyone gets a degree, everyone will earn more. I am doubtful that was the true rationale but it's how the policy was sold to people.
  - Ekaros 1y ago
    Also I think massaging unemployment numbers for a while is reasonable goal. After all those in education are not counted as unemployed.
  - johnnyanmac 1y ago
    The mentality isn't, but the costs are US unique. You can afford to "explore" a bit of your youth if you're not going into 6 figures of debt.
kipchak 1y ago
Arguably the cause of the cultural shift is economic. Wages began stagnating in the early 1970s, which caused increased demand for diplomas as a way to increase wages. This is most striking in the number of students seeking law degrees, which shoots off at around the same time.
bluecheese452 1y ago
Yeah because in the 60s you could support a wife and 4 kids, buy a house and 2 cars, without a high school diploma, all before turning 25. There was no reason to go to college unless you were interested in learning. These days you need a college degree just to afford a 1 bedroom apartment by the time you are 40.

andrehacker 1y ago

Well, the credentials defintely help to GET the first job. As a cog in the machine though you are most often valued for skills more than for credentials, at least in the U.S.

kharak 1y ago

An anecdote to add to this: Me and most of my peers in college had the choice between two courses. Course A was interesting, yet vastly more challenging and therefore time consuming, with the additional downside of lower grade expectation. Course B was boring, a gentle breeze in comparison, yet with an almost guaranteed perfect grade. Imagine which course most students choose? Even if a student wants to take on the more interesting course, incentives matter, and the incentive is: better grades qualify for better compensated positions and prestigious degrees. Only students who didn't care about this or were confident enough in their ability did choose Course A. In the end, barely a handful of students out of hundreds went with A.