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College was originally for people who acted like grownups -- at 18 years old -- because those who went 100(+) years ago were expected to take it seriously. Unf

College was originally for people who acted like grownups -- at 18 years old -- because those who went 100(+) years ago were expected to take it seriously. Unfortunately, as time has gone on, at least in the US, colleges are spending more and more money on 'club-med'ing their dorms and such, giving the wrong impression of why you are on a campus to begin with -- and colleges are somewhat complicit in not caring nowadays about your success either, just in taking money from as many students as they can fill the place up with each year.

smacktoward 12y ago
> College was originally for people who acted like grownups -- at 18 years old -- because those who went 100(+) years ago were expected to take it seriously Not as much as you might think. You can find stories going all the way back to medieval times of university students getting drunk and tearing up the local town. It's just part of the deal -- a major requirement for study is leisure, and if you give young people large amounts of self-directed leisure time some of them are going to use it to behave immaturely.
rdtsc 12y ago
> 'club-med'ing their dorms and such, No kidding. My university in the early 2000's started jacking up tuition every year by crazy amounts. And at the same time started building boutique cafes, little gazebos, parks, a new sports center with a large inside heated pool and a lazy river snaking its away around its perimeter. All at the same time as some colleges didn't have enough money for to print tests to professors would print them double sides, with a smaller font. And then they had the nerve to call me asking for money after I graduated. After talking to me once, I made sure they won't call me again. And they haven't.
- pc86 12y ago
  So you were a jerk to a volunteer or student calling you to ask for a donation. Kudos. In all seriousness, I think most college administrators take their job seriously, and on the whole are not going to raise tuition $10k/year so they can add a gazebo or a river to campus. I think it's just an unintended consequence of not being forced to react to market stimulus. In a free market, a college that raised its tuition had better be able to provide more value and/or subsist on fewer students. Unfortunately with the easy availability of loans and grants, all a higher tuition means is more cash in the college's coffers and a more expensive promissory note for a 17-year-old who doesn't understand it.
  - Domenic_S 12y ago
    What are you talking about? That free market is why colleges "Club-Med" their facilities. It's what the high schoolers (and importantly, their parents) see when they're touring the school, deciding who to sign a decade of future earnings to.
    - humanrebar 12y ago
      Who owns the student loans of Americans? It's not the free market.
      - juliangregorian 12y ago
        It's not the idealized free market that libertarians jack off to, but it is definitely a market.
  - rdtsc 12y ago
    > So you were a jerk to a volunteer or student calling you to ask for a donation. Kudos. Thanks for Kudos, I am quite proud of saving time and hasle in the future. But why did you asume I was a jerk?
john_b 12y ago
This is a predictable response to the nature of the product (education), the nature of the market (mostly clueless teenagers), and the uncertainty within that market of the eventual value of the product (chances of getting a job, how much it will pay, what-am-I-going-to-do-with-my-life, etc). Colleges know that the target market of teenagers cannot come to a reasonable and calculated evaluation of the market value of the degree they are selling, so they bundle the product with anything and everything that makes prospective students and their parents feel more comfortable. Most Americans want their children to go to college, and most American teenagers have a vague understanding that it's something they should do, but there are too many unknowns for the target demographic to have any confidence in their investment, so those universities which succeed in alleviating the most fears and doubts have a competitive advantage. This dynamic is a historical anomaly. Education has historically been trade-based, and later, a luxury of the rich who could afford to study less practical (but still important) matters. The former had a very predictable ROI that could be evaluated reasonably, and the market for the latter type of education wasn't typically concerned too much with the financial ROI of their investment, but with other types of value derived from it. This is the fundamental problem of industrialized education, both state-controlled and private. A complete return to a trade-based system of education is impractical for many reasons, though it may help greatly in some smaller schools and regions, typically those with a dominant and stable large employer or two. On the other hand, most universities would collapse if education once again became the luxury of the elite. MOOCs are not the answer either, at least not until the certifications they provide are widely accepted as predictable indicators of a good employee (and presently they are not). They may be a very attractive option for "continuing education" types of learning that the article references, however.

smacktoward 12y ago

> College was originally for people who acted like grownups -- at 18 years old -- because those who went 100(+) years ago were expected to take it seriously Not as much as you might think. You can find stories going all the way back to medieval times of university students getting drunk and tearing up the local town. It's just part of the deal -- a major requirement for study is leisure, and if you give young people large amounts of self-directed leisure time some of them are going to use it to behave immaturely.

rdtsc 12y ago

> 'club-med'ing their dorms and such, No kidding. My university in the early 2000's started jacking up tuition every year by crazy amounts. And at the same time started building boutique cafes, little gazebos, parks, a new sports center with a large inside heated pool and a lazy river snaking its away around its perimeter. All at the same time as some colleges didn't have enough money for to print tests to professors would print them double sides, with a smaller font. And then they had the nerve to call me asking for money after I graduated. After talking to me once, I made sure they won't call me again. And they haven't.

pc86 12y ago
So you were a jerk to a volunteer or student calling you to ask for a donation. Kudos. In all seriousness, I think most college administrators take their job seriously, and on the whole are not going to raise tuition $10k/year so they can add a gazebo or a river to campus. I think it's just an unintended consequence of not being forced to react to market stimulus. In a free market, a college that raised its tuition had better be able to provide more value and/or subsist on fewer students. Unfortunately with the easy availability of loans and grants, all a higher tuition means is more cash in the college's coffers and a more expensive promissory note for a 17-year-old who doesn't understand it.
- Domenic_S 12y ago
  What are you talking about? That free market is why colleges "Club-Med" their facilities. It's what the high schoolers (and importantly, their parents) see when they're touring the school, deciding who to sign a decade of future earnings to.
  - humanrebar 12y ago
    Who owns the student loans of Americans? It's not the free market.
    - juliangregorian 12y ago
      It's not the idealized free market that libertarians jack off to, but it is definitely a market.
- rdtsc 12y ago
  > So you were a jerk to a volunteer or student calling you to ask for a donation. Kudos. Thanks for Kudos, I am quite proud of saving time and hasle in the future. But why did you asume I was a jerk?

john_b 12y ago

This is a predictable response to the nature of the product (education), the nature of the market (mostly clueless teenagers), and the uncertainty within that market of the eventual value of the product (chances of getting a job, how much it will pay, what-am-I-going-to-do-with-my-life, etc). Colleges know that the target market of teenagers cannot come to a reasonable and calculated evaluation of the market value of the degree they are selling, so they bundle the product with anything and everything that makes prospective students and their parents feel more comfortable. Most Americans want their children to go to college, and most American teenagers have a vague understanding that it's something they should do, but there are too many unknowns for the target demographic to have any confidence in their investment, so those universities which succeed in alleviating the most fears and doubts have a competitive advantage. This dynamic is a historical anomaly. Education has historically been trade-based, and later, a luxury of the rich who could afford to study less practical (but still important) matters. The former had a very predictable ROI that could be evaluated reasonably, and the market for the latter type of education wasn't typically concerned too much with the financial ROI of their investment, but with other types of value derived from it. This is the fundamental problem of industrialized education, both state-controlled and private. A complete return to a trade-based system of education is impractical for many reasons, though it may help greatly in some smaller schools and regions, typically those with a dominant and stable large employer or two. On the other hand, most universities would collapse if education once again became the luxury of the elite. MOOCs are not the answer either, at least not until the certifications they provide are widely accepted as predictable indicators of a good employee (and presently they are not). They may be a very attractive option for "continuing education" types of learning that the article references, however.