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What's Wrong With the American University System
ideonexus writes "The Atlantic has an excellent interview with Andrew Hacker — co-author with Claudia Dreifus of a book titled Higher Education? — covering everything that's wrong with the American university system. The discussion ranges from entrenched tenured professors more concerned with publishing and parking spaces than quality teaching; to 22-year-old students with unrealistic expectations that some company will put them in a management position after graduating with six-figures of debt; to football teams siphoning money away from academic programs so that student tuitions must increase to compensate. It really lays out the farce of university culture and reminds me of everything I absolutely despised about my college life. Dreifus is active in the comments section of the article as well, lending to a fantastic discussion on the subject."
it is likely the best university system in the world.
[citation needed]
What is wrong with the university system is because we've screwed up our high school system to pretty much let -everyone- graduate, a diploma now means nothing. Because of this, people who usually should go to a trade school, or just have on-site training from high school is now attending university to stand out in the job market. So because of this, universities are forced to hire sub par teachers to meet the demand and because no one wants to attend a university with a 60% flunk-out rate, universities lower standards. Of course this is just a cat and mouse game, eventually employers are going to require things beyond a bachelors degree for entry-level jobs, etc.
Fix our high school system by actually -failing- kids who can't do the work. None of this "can I please have extra credit despite me doing nothing but talking in class?" crap that keeps high-profile athletes who are dumber than rocks with "passing" grades.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
It's often the case that the football teams generate a lot of revenue, but that revenue goes to the athletics programs and not back to the university at large.
Please don't read my sig.
The summary started out good but:
"They blame a system that favors research over teaching and vocational training over liberal arts".
"The second reason to go to college is get a good liberal arts education."
I'm not saying get rid of liberal arts. They're great. I loved taking them when I got my BSME. I'm probably going to sneak into a few when I go back for my masters. But there is no reason every decent sized school needs to be graduating even 20 theater majors a year. Hurray, you spent 4 years and $50k to learn to do theater. Now what? Most highschools require you to have a teaching degree too. So now you're limited to off broadway and the such. Something tells me that there isn't a huge demand (at least not enough to match supply).
The most successful liberal arts major you'll ever meet was most likely one of your liberal arts professors.
We NEED to be focusing more on vocational training. The world needs ditch diggers. The world also needs mechanics, electricians, welders. We need to quit making high schools force someone who would be an excellent mechanic into going to college 'just because'. Too many parents push their kids into college thinking either "I'm successful, they have to go to be successful too." or "I want my kid to go to college because I didn't to get rich".
Personally I've liked what I read about other countries where they sort of guide you into a track early in high school. I'm sure it's not perfect and they get the track wrong, but it's a ton better than graduating 10,000 students a year from a decent sized education, 50% of which have a degree that is more or less 100% useless. WTF does an "Art Appreciation" major do?
I wish I could go back to my high school and give a swift cock punch to my guidance counselor that told me I couldn't take welding because I was college bound. There is so much stuff I'd love to make. Thankfully my dad taught me wood working and home repair and I learned to solder in an internship.
Most first world nations have tons of internationals. Up here in Canada at least half my program is international. It's not "America is awesome" it's "My country is not awesome."
Completely agree, despite not wanting to... I did my grad work at Texas A&M (Big 12) and despite how much they continually pay their football coaches and the near deification of the players, the program brought money and prestige to the university. I'd blame 6 and 7 figure incomes of useless administrators more than sports for the astronomical rise in tuition.
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" - Salvor Hardin
Most any college team I know of (SEC ones in my experience) MAKE the universities money by the barrel full.
Well, you have to beware of creative accounting and bad investments/contracts.
Basically it can sometimes become a 'school pride' issue, because the sports teams 'make' the college money they press for additional benefits - more pay for the coach, more money for recruiting efforts, new stadium, etc...
Of course, all this is justified as 'payoff in X years', the problem is that you never reach X...
On the creative accounting side you end up with sports expenses not being counted as part of the sports programs, things like ticket sales being counted as income even as they count stadium expenses as 'infrastructure' like actual classrooms.
I don't read AC A human right
I'm a member of a college athletics committee, and I can tell you with all confidence that while is the common perception of college and university football programs, it simply isn't true. Even in Division I institutions football teams are, as a rule, largely funded by state dollars, student fees, and creative tax exemptions rather than by ticket sales, television contracts, etc. And this has been shown in study after study -- it's even a line that the NCAA toes.
You can check NCAA financial disclosures to verify this at http://www2.indystar.com/NCAA_financial_reports/ thanks to a study completed by Mark Alesia in 2006, but a quick Google should point you to a bunch of other studies that give this position the lie. If you'd rather not click through and see the reports yourself, this is a nice summary statement:
"First off, he [Alesia] found that athletic departments at taxpayer-funded universities nationwide receive more than $1 billion in student fees and general school funds and services, and that without such outside funding, fewer than 10 percent of athletic departments would have been able to support themselves with ticket sales, television contracts and other revenue-generating sports sources. In fact, most would have lost more than $5 million."
While this is a statement about athletics programs in general rather than football programs specifically, the NCAA financial reports make it clear that even among popular sports like basketball and football, the overwhelming majority of programs are perennial money losers.
You never know who will get one.
"In all fairness, most football programs MAKE money for the University."
Not for the university, no. Football funds generally go to the athletic department, which still runs at an overall loss to the university. This is according to the NCAA.
Those funds are typically used to support the rest of a university's athletic department budget. According to the National Collegiate Athletic Association, most departments operate at a yearly multimillion-dollar deficit. [PBS Nightly Business Report: The Business of College Football, Part 1]
http://www.pbs.org/nbr/site/onair/transcripts/071112c/
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
http://www.4icu.org/top200/
http://www.usnews.com/articles/education/worlds-best-universities/2010/02/25/worlds-best-universities-top-400
You'll notice that the United States is disproportionately represented. (Effective troll though...)
Lol, could you say that again please? I love how you pronounce "moot."
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
>>>I'm in Canada and I pay $900/semester + book costs
False. You are right you are paying $900/semester now, but then you will get a job and you will pay the remaining $80,000 or so in the form of weekly taxation. So in the end, you're paying the same amount as I did in the States...... just spread out over the next 60 years.
It's just the same as I got "free" K-12 education, but now I have to pay ~$6000 a year in school taxes. I am paying-off the education I received several decades ago. It was never free - just a deferred charge. Like buying a sofa at a store with deferred payment. It's free now; but I pay next year.
BTW: Were you really so naive as to not realize this? (Education is not free; it's simply paid later)
If so maybe your education was not that great after all.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Liberal Arts at the core is about thinking.
No, Liberal Arts is about thinking the way pre-scientific people did it.
Read CP Snow's "Two Cultures", which laments the divide between the sciences and the liberal arts, and justly so.
So long as the liberal arts fail to adapt to the scientific world-view, including accepting the importance of mathematical reasoning alongside poetry etc, they have ceased to be what they once were, which is the living voice of Western culture. Instead they are just a cozy backwater for the scientifically illiterate.
The sciences, at the same time, become a cozy backwater for the poetically illiterate.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
If someone truly believes in the principal that one person's production should be forcibly taken and given to someone that an arbitrary authority has decided needs it more then that person should lead by example.
You're arguing from a faulty premise: that of the myth of one person's production.
Anything a person who dwells in civilization produces is the result of a partnership between that person and the society in which they live, without which their production (to some small or large degree) would be either impossible or less. Therefore, logically, the fruits of that production also logically belong in part to that person and in part to society.
It's not about redistributing what's yours; it's about your partner in a venture getting their cut.
most employment...
...has been shipped to China.
Thanks for playing, USA.
Your decline won't end in a nice environmentally sustainable hippydom either. Alchys and neglect are your future. Detroit, writ large.
Happy Friday.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
Football (and athletics in general) are not causing tuition to skyrocket. As much as I wish it were so, the numbers just don't add up. For example, tuition has also skyrocketed at schools (like mine) that don't even have football teams.
I think the cause is even simpler. The problem is, no one wants to talk about it because there is no easy, feel-good solution.
Thesis: The raise in tuition rates over the last 40 years or so is largely due to the easy availability of *cheap student loans.*
I don't think this should be particularly controversial: It is a logical outcome completely consistent with classical supply/demand economics.
Let's say the government prints money and starts giving it away. Everyone is richer, right? Wrong, of course -- that money is now worth less, so prices all go up. That's inflation. This is the same scenario, except that the money can only be used for one specific purpose: education. It should logically follow that the price of that education will simply go up correspondingly.
I'm not going to propose any solutions, because I don't want to start some stupid partisan flamewar. I just want to suggest that the widely perceived *solution* to high education costs is actually the *driver* of those costs.
- AJ
EDIT: Just found this:
"The simple economics of student loan crises"
http://dmarron.com/2009/09/15/the-simple-economics-of-student-loan-crises/
Here's the example of the number one thing wrong with the US higher education system: misunderstanding of the purpose of the "higher education system".
Universities are supposed to be places where people get a well-rounded education in a wide array of topics. That's why the undergraduate degrees tend to have liberal arts and science and social studies components to them. The result is supposed to be people who can look at the world and have some understanding of where we are and where we are going.
If you want a technical degree, go to a community college or trade school. You should not be looking to the Universities to provide well-trained mechanics.
The fact that tenure was listed as a fault is another sign of that same misunderstanding. Universities are also intended to further the arts through research. Tenure is a means of allowing faculty to relax a bit from having to deal with the daily grind and let them explore areas that aren't necessarily the most productive now -- but may become so. "Ok, you've shown you can produce papers and teach, now be inventive."
It's no different than Google's "free friday", or whatever company it was that gave employees work-time to do personal projects.
http://www.disciplined-minds.com/ "The hidden root of much career dissatisfaction, argues Schmidt, is the professional's lack of control over the political component of his or her creative work. Many professionals set out to make a contribution to society and add meaning to their lives. Yet our system of professional education and employment abusively inculcates an acceptance of politically subordinate roles in which professionals typically do not make a significant difference, undermining the creative potential of individuals, organizations and even democracy."
See my other post in this thread, too:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1738326&cid=33090340
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.