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> But this new test, known as "do no harm," raises some thorny questions about the purpose of college. Like: Is it just about making more money? If this is a f
by janalsncm 3mo ago
> But this new test, known as "do no harm," raises some thorny questions about the purpose of college. Like: Is it just about making more money?
If this is a fair question to ask students, then it is a fair question to ask the schools as well. They are the ones charging enormous amounts of money to students for this.
This doesn’t prevent people from learning to paint or play the clarinet. It prevents students from taking out enormous loans for it.
- frognumber 3mo agoI think the corollary is about taxpayer accountability. It's easy to make the argument: "If we invest $1M in education, we will have $10M in additional future economic output, $4M in future taxes, and $20M less in law enforcement / criminal prosecution / jail fees. It improves global competitiveness." That's a no-brainer. Education is a very high ROI investment for a country. Like infrastructure spending or industrial policy, it's about cold, hard economics. One step more complex -- but equally high ROI -- is towards having a functioning democracy. That's economics, but a bit more squishy. Investing in the arts, humanities, and music is a good thing as well. However, that's a very different bucket of money. I wouldn't lump it in with the former two.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- eastbound 3mo ago> It's easy to make the argument: And it is false. Those are truthisms, except at one point, college can destroy people’s lives. College can teach people wrong things. College can misdirect people from being about to contribute to the economy and redirect them towards the political goals of the teachers, especially when those don’t derive revenue from their contribution to the economy. College can also misdirect people who would have been happier and more useful with immediate work. There goes my demonstration: College can be harmful to society, it’s subjective to judge when the threshold was crossed. For my opinion, it was crossed in 2013 through politicization.
- collinmcnulty 3mo agoYou don’t think investing in arts, humanities, and music contributes to a functioning democracy?
- fragmede 3mo agoLast time someone got rejected from art school, there was a bit of a fascism that happened, so investing in arts totally contributes to functioning democracy!
- strken 3mo agoI believe the argument was that they do contribute to a functioning democracy, as opposed to investment in training nurses and carpenters, who are being trained for economic reasons. The argument was that the two goals are so different that they should be funded differently.
- red_admiral 3mo agoIn what way do nurses and carpenters not contribute to a functioning democracy?
- hahahaa 3mo agoThe things thay directly help democracy are well considered viewpoints, humanities research, journalism, law etc. Stuff that influences decision makers including voters hopefully roughly for a greater good although we all may disagree exactly what that means. Nurses and carpenters help society and functioning civilization.
- AnthonyMouse 3mo agoFor that to work, what you need is for the nurses and carpenters to be well versed in basic economics and how pundits lie with statistics etc. for when they go to the polls, rather than to have an oversupply of English majors who go on to have careers as a Walmart greeter or become structurally unemployed. In other words, we need more people with a minor in the humanities and fewer people with a major in it.
- TheAceOfHearts 3mo agoA lot of people severely underestimate the value and impact of the arts because they don't produce immediately visible results. But artistic works are often a massive source of inspiration and they help people through dark times.
- aaron695 3mo ago[dead]
- bluGill 3mo agoSure, but how much art do we need for that? One (or a few) sculpture can satisfy the needs of a large community. There are many more than that.
- miyoji 3mo ago> Sure, but how much art do we need for that? A lot more than we have now. > One (or a few) sculpture can satisfy the needs of a large community. I cannot disagree more. You may as well say that no one should tell stories anymore because we already have the Iliad and Hamlet. You may as well say that Vincent van Gogh was wasting his time picking up a paintbrush because we already had so many great Renaissance paintings. Art isn't a commodity where you spend 15 minutes a day Admiring Art and it gives you the aesthetic equivalent of your daily protein intake.
- janalsncm 3mo ago> But artistic works are often a massive source of inspiration and they help people through dark times I completely agree with you, but 1) you can make art without taking out enormous loans and 2) if you want to pay cash or take out a private loan to attend these schools you still can 3) learning about art does not make you an artist, it makes you a museum curator. The last one is probably the most important. An expensive degree does not make your painting more beautiful, or your notes more in-tune, or your bakery more delicious. It is a credential.
- phantomathkg 3mo agoHere we have an example of someone who see college/university as a vocational training center for worker, instead of seeing it as higher education that inspire civilized thinker.
- frognumber 3mo ago... or someone who has a hard time seeing how most actual arts, music, and humanities college degrees have that impact. Examples of things with high-impact towards civics: - Philosophy, especially political philosophy. Aristotle, Confucius, Marx, Smith, ... - History, political science, economics, journalism - Theory of law, studied academically. Lawyers, for the most part, have the opposite effect. - Anthropology + international relations Examples of things which currently don't: - Most major in art, film, visual studies, literature, African/women's/LGBTQ/Asian/... studies, language majors, linguistics, ... This is a statement about the practice of such majors. For example: * Art/film/... ought to contribute, historically has contributed, and in much of Europe, actually still does. In most of the US, it leads to either unemployment or work in advertising, and doesn't teach the right things. * Looking at the experiences of different minorities ought to contribute. In practice, most of these majors are dysfunctional self-admiration cults, with people citing each other's work, due to misaligned incentive structures in academic hiring. * It's no coincidence that the most important work in philosophy, in the past century, was not done by philosophy majors. * A Chinese / French / Russian / ... major will place you about one tier down from a Chinese / French / Russian / ... immigrant in terms of... just about everything. In either case, many of these things do still have value, but it's not the same funding bucket.
- tadfisher 3mo agoIf I want a philosophy degree then it's my God-given right to pay $240,000 plus interest for it. Maybe it shouldn't be subsidized, though.
- andai 3mo agoWell, the way things are going, maybe it should be way more subsidized... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48818544 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48818544 https://archive.ph/94e7p https://archive.ph/94e7p
- imtringued 3mo agoI personally think it is a perversion of the idea of philosophy to think that you can buy a better philosophy education by paying a higher tuition.
- cudgy 3mo agoPerhaps it is a perversion of logic to think that someone who has not been trained yet as a philosopher would think like a philosopher.
- confidantlake 3mo agoWho trained the first philosopher?
- defrost 3mo agoSorites was the first of a heap more.
- chihuahua 3mo agoRight. And also, when you have paid $240k for that degree, don't write endless screeds complaining that the degree was a "scam" and that it's someone else's fault that you're not earning much with that degree. Even in the 00s and 10s, there used to be people complaining bitterly that they have a lot of student loans after getting a degree in puppetry (seriously.) And the same people would have lit themselves on fire in a public square if they had been denied student loans for getting a puppetry degree. I feel that you can't have it both ways: guaranteed student loans for any degree, no matter how impractical, and also complaining that some degrees funded with student loans don't lead to a lucrative career. Choose one or the other.
- imtringued 3mo agoYeah it is absolutely despicable to tell students that they shouldn't make a profit off their education, while the colleges are allowed to inflate tuition fees and profit as much off the student's education as possible. If you look at the music teacher example you see the end result of these perverse incentives turning into a pyramid scheme. Being a music teacher at the college is one of the few profitable ways to pay off your student debt while staying in your preferred career so of course she doesn't want to give that up, she's still in debt. If college isn't about money, that turns college into a consumer good, but if college is a consumer good, why should the government let people borrow money for their consumption? By that logic the government should lend money to young people so they can go on expensive vacations and enjoy their youth.
- bradleybuda 3mo agoIs United Airlines “just about making more money”? Yes. Has it done so by offering people a valuable product and generating massive consumer surplus? Also yes.
- Vaslo 3mo agoIf it’s your own money, college can be whatever you want. When it’s someone else’s, they get to be involved in making a decision as to what college is for.
- kelnos 3mo agoCollectively, yes, but not individually. The problem is that the electorate tends to not understand the concept of second-order effects. For example, a college graduate in the arts might, directly or indirectly, generate more economic activity than someone without a college degree, regardless of the difference in income level of people in those two buckets.
- Muromec 3mo agoThen the electorate does not deserve that generated activity and it will happen somewhere else
- pocksuppet 3mo agoThat's an odd way to say "a country that elects stupid people deserves to collapse". It's true, but it's an odd way to say it, and also quite pessimistic.
- Muromec 3mo agoDo countries actually collapse or it's another bit of christian end of the world lore? It doesn't have to be that dramatic to be noticed and course corrected. No, it won't be course corrected based on the hypothetical (even if it's highly likely hypothetical) before the feedback function slaps somebody in the face.
- pocksuppet 3mo agoCountries collapse very often. The land, cities, and people remain, and organize into new countries. Democracy was meant to pre-empt this with a regular controlled collapse and handover, like a controlled forest burn, but a democracy itself can also collapse.
- lesuorac 3mo ago> This doesn’t prevent people from learning to paint or play the clarinet. It prevents students from taking out enormous loans for it. The problem is going to that there's going to be a large shock to the system. As pointed out in the article, a lot of teachers make $55k. So basically no education degree should be awarded because the average worker is better than a teacher. Eventually the supply of teachers will dry up so much that salaries will go up. But how many years do you think until that happens? And then add 4 to when the supply catches up. Although I would bet what happens is that states no longer require a degree.
- m3047 3mo agoSchools can develop training and scholarship programs. Maybe we'll find out a degree in Egyptology isn't necessary to teach basic reading and writing? Although walking like an Egyptian sure is fun. /s Many educators are unionized. These days (it comes and goes, I wish it had been waxing when I was that age) the electricians' and HVAC techs' unions offer apprenticeships to pretty much all comers, not just the niece or nephew of a member.