4 ms·

You don't believe the state has a legitimate interest in making sure that schools actually teach what they claim to?

by chc 13y ago

mindcrime 13y ago
You don't believe the state has a legitimate interest in making sure that schools actually teach what they claim to? No. Caveat emptor. The State should only get involved in the case of outright fraud - you pay your money, and they don't actually run the class, or the class is taught by a 6th grader or something. Outside of that, we should just let the market operate. Firms that don't deliver on their promises won't be around long.
- seanhandley 13y ago
  Absolutely. Bright people are who I would hire. And bright people don't need state regulation. Caveat emptor.
- chc 13y ago
  > No. Caveat emptor. The State should only get involved in the case of outright fraud - you pay your money, and they don't actually run the class, or the class is taught by a 6th grader or something. This sounds frighteningly arbitrary. So if I pay for a class that will teach me to be a programmer and I get a class that has no realistic hope of accomplishing that, it's caveat emptor, while if I'm in exactly the same situation but the teacher is a sixth grader, caveat emptor doesn't apply? How do we determine when a case of ripping people off is excused by caveat emptor?
  - Crito 13y ago
    I think the problem is with the claims these programs are making, not the expectations the students have. If I decide to go to a traditional non-profit university to study, say, paleontology, and I actually expect to get a job digging up dinosaur bones, that is my own problem. The state shouldn't step in and start slapping the University's hand unless the University was falsely advertising high placement rates after graduation. Slapping down educational institutions for the unrealistic employment expectations of their students will end poorly. The best that we should do is make sure the schools aren't lying to anybody.
    - chc 13y ago
      I think it has to go further than that. For example, if a school makes no claims of employability, but they do claim that a class will teach a skill and then (as in mindcrime's example) it turns out that the professor is ten years old and spends the whole class time playing League of Legends, surely that's fraud too.
      - Crito 13y ago
        I would expect that would be bog-standard fraud (I suspect that most of the actionable concerns are). I mean like, if a paintball arena claims to let you play paintball, then after you pay them they hand you some water pistols and tell you to have fun, that is surely fraud. I doubt we'd need to have any sort of special regulation to tackle that sort of issue.
      - mindcrime 13y ago
        Sure, fraud is fraud, and that's the idea behind "rule of law". If someone defrauds you, you have a claim against them to be compensated accordingly. But that's orthogonal to the idea of having The State decide, a priori, who is and who isn't allowed to do business.
- jfarmer 13y ago
  You realize this is precisely the mandate of BPPE, the agency in question, right? They're a consumer fraud agency, part of the California Department of Consumer Affairs, and their rules include such nefarious things as... "The institution shall employ administrative personnel who have the expertise to ensure the achievement of the institution's mission and objectives and the operation of the educational programs." "An institution shall not promise or guarantee employment, or otherwise overstate the availability of jobs upon graduation." You can read them for yourself: http://www.bppe.ca.gov/enforcement/institution_minreq.shtml http://www.bppe.ca.gov/enforcement/institution_minreq.shtml
  - gojomo 13y ago
    But also, it's an agency that's existed only since 2010. Looking through your link, I see 16000 words of new paperwork, inflexible mandates, silly gotchas that could trip up a small organization, and redundancies. (False claims and advertising are already illegal.)
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
  - gojomo 13y ago
    I had a long reply to your deleted comment. In its absence I'll note that another cost of the BPPE's discretionary regulatory power here is a chilling of speech by knowledgeable operators, who now can't risk angering the regulators or sharing information that could increase later compliance burdens.

You don't believe the state has a legitimate interest in making sure that schools actually teach what they claim to?

by chc 13y ago

You don't believe the state has a legitimate interest in making sure that schools actually teach what they claim to?

You don't believe the state has a legitimate interest in making sure that schools actually teach what they claim to? No. Caveat emptor. The State should only get involved in the case of outright fraud - you pay your money, and they don't actually run the class, or the class is taught by a 6th grader or something. Outside of that, we should just let the market operate. Firms that don't deliver on their promises won't be around long.

seanhandley 13y ago
Absolutely. Bright people are who I would hire. And bright people don't need state regulation. Caveat emptor.
chc 13y ago
> No. Caveat emptor. The State should only get involved in the case of outright fraud - you pay your money, and they don't actually run the class, or the class is taught by a 6th grader or something. This sounds frighteningly arbitrary. So if I pay for a class that will teach me to be a programmer and I get a class that has no realistic hope of accomplishing that, it's caveat emptor, while if I'm in exactly the same situation but the teacher is a sixth grader, caveat emptor doesn't apply? How do we determine when a case of ripping people off is excused by caveat emptor?
- Crito 13y ago
  I think the problem is with the claims these programs are making, not the expectations the students have. If I decide to go to a traditional non-profit university to study, say, paleontology, and I actually expect to get a job digging up dinosaur bones, that is my own problem. The state shouldn't step in and start slapping the University's hand unless the University was falsely advertising high placement rates after graduation. Slapping down educational institutions for the unrealistic employment expectations of their students will end poorly. The best that we should do is make sure the schools aren't lying to anybody.
  - chc 13y ago
    I think it has to go further than that. For example, if a school makes no claims of employability, but they do claim that a class will teach a skill and then (as in mindcrime's example) it turns out that the professor is ten years old and spends the whole class time playing League of Legends, surely that's fraud too.
    - Crito 13y ago
      I would expect that would be bog-standard fraud (I suspect that most of the actionable concerns are). I mean like, if a paintball arena claims to let you play paintball, then after you pay them they hand you some water pistols and tell you to have fun, that is surely fraud. I doubt we'd need to have any sort of special regulation to tackle that sort of issue.
    - mindcrime 13y ago
      Sure, fraud is fraud, and that's the idea behind "rule of law". If someone defrauds you, you have a claim against them to be compensated accordingly. But that's orthogonal to the idea of having The State decide, a priori, who is and who isn't allowed to do business.
jfarmer 13y ago
You realize this is precisely the mandate of BPPE, the agency in question, right? They're a consumer fraud agency, part of the California Department of Consumer Affairs, and their rules include such nefarious things as... "The institution shall employ administrative personnel who have the expertise to ensure the achievement of the institution's mission and objectives and the operation of the educational programs." "An institution shall not promise or guarantee employment, or otherwise overstate the availability of jobs upon graduation." You can read them for yourself: http://www.bppe.ca.gov/enforcement/institution_minreq.shtml http://www.bppe.ca.gov/enforcement/institution_minreq.shtml
- gojomo 13y ago
  But also, it's an agency that's existed only since 2010. Looking through your link, I see 16000 words of new paperwork, inflexible mandates, silly gotchas that could trip up a small organization, and redundancies. (False claims and advertising are already illegal.)
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- gojomo 13y ago
  I had a long reply to your deleted comment. In its absence I'll note that another cost of the BPPE's discretionary regulatory power here is a chilling of speech by knowledgeable operators, who now can't risk angering the regulators or sharing information that could increase later compliance burdens.