Your State University Doesn't Want You

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Your State University Doesn't Want You

Posted by Soulskill on Friday September 23, 2011 @02:13AM from the unless-you're-good-at-the-football dept.

theodp writes "According to a new survey of college admissions directors by Inside Higher Ed, the admissions strategy judged most important is the recruitment of more out-of-state and international students, who can pay significantly more at public institutions. Ten percent of those surveyed also reported admitting full-pay students with lower grades and test scores than other admitted applicants, and a majority of schools either use or plan to use controversial commission-paid agents to recruit foreign students (commission-based recruitment is barred in the U.S.). 'This isn't about globalization or increased educational diversity,' asserts USC's Jerome A. Lucido. 'They need the money.' So, should employees of a public university where the President's annual compensation exceeds $1 million receive a full state-funded pension for educating 16,000+ out-of-state students?"

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I don't think my state university wants ANYONE by elrous0 · 2011-09-23 02:16 · Score: 5, Informative

Considering how much tuition has increased at my local state schools over the last decade or so, I'm not sure they want *anyone*. I really feel sorry for kids today. It wasn't that long ago that I went to college. And tuition has almost tripled at my old school since then (while incomes have barely budged). If I had to do it over again today, there is no way I would have been able to afford it without crippling student loan debt. Sadly this rise has happened in a time when it has become almost essential to get a college degree if you want any kind of decent job.
There was an excellent article on this a couple of years ago in the NY Times.

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1. Re:I don't think my state university wants ANYONE by claus.wilke · 2011-09-23 02:31 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  It is important to mention that throughout the US, tuition has gone up at least partially in a response to declining state funding. If states are not willing to fund their state schools, then the state schools have little option other than operating just like the private schools.
2. Re:I don't think my state university wants ANYONE by memnock · 2011-09-23 02:33 · Score: 2
  
  Bumper sticker:
  "If you think college is expensive, try ignorance."
  I agree that the cost has risen quite steeply. But I think a free-market person would argue that if the degree betters your chance of a higher income, then that shouldn't deter you. Of course, those people are probably done with the little debt they had when college was cheaper and are already rich. They don't realize what that debt is like, as you pointed out, crippling in some cases.
  OTOH, the kids could try to be more reasonable about what is really necessary to get them through school. Don't need a new car or a lot of new clothes. My uni's library lends laptops and IPads (for only a few hours, but they are available). And I've always worked while in school. Not full-time, but close to that many hours for some stretches.
  Further, I don't know if a college degree is really necessary for a lot of "decent jobs". I know this being a tech site, folks are thinking more from the perspective of high tech industries requiring a lot technical training, but there are other jobs that pay well enough without a lot of school. UPS driver, plumber, firefighter. Having said that, the future of our economy seems to be heading in one of two directions jobs-wise: really technical, well-paying jobs that do require a good deal of school of which there don't seem to be a lot of, or a lot of menial, service jobs that don't pay as well. There'll still be plumbers and firefighters, but I picture big plumbing conglomerates that hire plumbers as contractors who will get crap pay compared to what they used to get when they were independent/proprietors.
  
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3. Re:I don't think my state university wants ANYONE by hedwards · 2011-09-23 02:59 · Score: 2
  
  That's a large part of it, another large part of it is that the folks running the schools are under a delusion that scholarships will cover the costs. Which isn't true. Most folks are saddled with large loans and those that aren't are typically progeny of rich parents.
  Also, the estimates for what parents can afford to pay to cover the cost, is a large part of the problem. There's no law that requires parents to pay, and yet it gets factored into financial aid calculations. Sometimes it means that people who shouldn't be getting it do and other times it results in people that should be getting it aren't. And in cases like me, because the parents didn't feel like doing the paperwork for the FAFSA it means that they'll get nothing beyond the ones on the IRS forms.
  Ultimately, even if it were true, that wouldn't be an excuse to inflate costs or be less vigilant about making students pay for things that aren't reasonably related to their education.
4. Re:I don't think my state university wants ANYONE by LordNacho · 2011-09-23 03:00 · Score: 2
  
  Further, I don't know if a college degree is really necessary for a lot of "decent jobs". I know this being a tech site, folks are thinking more from the perspective of high tech industries requiring a lot technical training, but there are other jobs that pay well enough without a lot of school. UPS driver, plumber, firefighter. Having said that, the future of our economy seems to be heading in one of two directions jobs-wise: really technical, well-paying jobs that do require a good deal of school of which there don't seem to be a lot of, or a lot of menial, service jobs that don't pay as well. There'll still be plumbers and firefighters, but I picture big plumbing conglomerates that hire plumbers as contractors who will get crap pay compared to what they used to get when they were independent/proprietors.
  See, this is the thing I've realized after leaving college. Most of the people you meet doing various jobs DO NOT need to have slogged through Shakespeare, the Napoleonic Wars, Partial Differential Equations, etc...
  They only point in having a degree for a great many jobs is to prove that you can learn stuff. Now that everyone has a degree, you look like an idiot if you don't have one. So you have to spend a few years getting one, just to prove that you're OK. The system is completely crazy.
  To compare, here in Switzerland, I met up with my banker yesterday. Perfectly competent guy, more or less the same as any banker you'd meed in the Anglo-Saxon world. But guess what? He started in the bank on an apprenticeship when he was 16. He already had the basic skills (language, writing, basic math) that he needed to become a specialist in a desk job. So instead of high school and college, he's been gathering experience in his profession. That makes much more sense to me than forcing kids to unrelated stuff just to prove how smart they are.
  Perhaps it's primary/secondary education that need to be better? Just create kids with the basic skills of writing and math, and let the ones who really want to be academics do that. The others, let them start working. At that age you even have a chance at starting over somewhere else a couple of times if you don't like it. And you'll be making your own money, not much debt.
5. Re:I don't think my state university wants ANYONE by demonlapin · 2011-09-23 03:55 · Score: 2
  
  You can't give people IQ tests (or similar) in the US to sort the ones who can hack it from those who can't. You can only give very narrowly-tailored exams regarding the subject of the job itself, which isn't much use when you're hiring apprentice bankers and want to know who will be a good branch manager in a few years. This is a result of Griggs v. Duke Power, which like many other civil rights decisions is a very noble attempt to rectify racism that ended up having enormous undesirable consequences for the country as a whole. The vast majority of jobs don't need a college education; they just need an intelligent person. But since they can't test for general intelligence, companies rely on colleges to do the sorting.
Alright! by AngryDeuce · 2011-09-23 02:16 · Score: 4, Insightful

Capitalism, Fuck Yeah!
1. Re:Alright! by houstonbofh · 2011-09-23 02:27 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Capitalism, Fuck Yeah!
  This comment for the most customer unfocused industry in the country? The whole point was that the gaming the government funding, which is not capitalism. More pure capitalism would actually fix a lot of the problems state schools are having. Of course it would create a lot more... (University of Phoenix anyone?)
Easy money by what2123 · 2011-09-23 02:18 · Score: 2

Pennsylvania has got to be a forerunner in all of this. The state run/subsidized colleges seem to have a heavy preference to those with a fatter check. Then again, why shouldn't they be? Those same kids are also eligible for more grants and by adding minorities and foreign students to their undergraduate portfolio the college can get additional state and federal funding. At the same time the "higher" tuition those kids pay for a heavily paid for by some group other than the actual student.
1. Re:Easy money by PingSpike · 2011-09-23 02:28 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Well, the answer to "Why shouldn't they be?" is because they are supported by the state they reside in under the premise they will support the local populace first. Essentially they are getting the benefits of being a state school while shirking the inherent responsibilities that come with that.
2. Re:Easy money by DrgnDancer · 2011-09-23 02:50 · Score: 2
  
  The problem being that less and less of the state funding is coming in. Hence the need to recruit higher (monetary) value students. Pulling random numbers out of my butt, lets pretend that it costs a given uni 40 million dollars a year to operate. Ten years ago, that university got 20 million a year from the state. With half it's funding coming from the state, only 20 million had to come from tuition, grants, or endowments. Now the state is only giving them 5 million. That means to maintain they must raise 35 million from outside sources now instead of twenty. They can't increase tuition on in-state students, and they can only increase enrollment so much (not to mention that enrollment increases costs too). The only real solution is to find students that they *can* charge more.
  In reality no states have cut funding *that* dramatically of course; but still the loss of say 35 or 40% of your state funding, as a state school, hurts. You have to make up the money somewhere. This is a "somewhere".
  
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Conflating facts by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-23 02:19 · Score: 5, Insightful

It's a purposeful distortion to ask if rank-and-file *employees* should get a pension after a lifetime of service, simply because one single administrator (uni pres) has a huge paycheck. That's like asking if the front desk secretary should be allowed to have a cigarette break because the Goldman Sachs CEO is already out playing golf.
As a university professor: by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-23 02:21 · Score: 5, Interesting

Our funding in Wisconsin was slashed by our governor. Our pay has been slashed for the last 4 years. Enrollment is down, which means money for supplies is trickling down to zero. So when we go to China (a new program instituted this year) to import foreign students, we're doing it to stay solvent.
Who should be mad? I would say the taxpayers of the state, but they get what they pay for. Even though they have paid into the system their whole lives, they would rather save a few bucks in taxes each year than have access to cheap, amazing education in their state.
1. Re:As a university professor: by houstonbofh · 2011-09-23 02:30 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Education is a future benefit. Food is a current benefit. Some people are having to make that kind of choice now.
2. Re:As a university professor: by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-23 02:56 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  If you don't have enough money for food, you aren't going to pay taxes. You qualify for full tax exemption (my full time working mother-in-law is in this exact situation). So no, no one has to make that choice right now.
3. Re:As a university professor: by Feyshtey · 2011-09-23 03:17 · Score: 2
  
  Actually, most of them DONT get what they pay for, and that's the point. Everyone across the country pays taxes on the universities while few actually get to attend. And if they do attend they have to spend so much to do so that they or their families are hit with 10's of 1000's of dollars of debt they will likely be repaying for the next 30 years.
  
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4. Re:As a university professor: by Sponge+Bath · 2011-09-23 04:10 · Score: 2
  
  This is what food stamps and Pell grants are for.
  If a person may makes enough to afford food or college, but not both, they would not qualify for food stamps. Starving is not a choice. Food stamps are also under attack from republicans, such as Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), the chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee (RSC) who is pushing cuts to the program.
  As for Pell Grants, they help but don't pay for all expenses. They are also under attack from republicans, such as house budget chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) who is pushing cuts to the program.
Comment removed by account_deleted · 2011-09-23 02:23 · Score: 3, Insightful

Comment removed based on user account deletion
Re:Capitalism - make your own by Antisyzygy · 2011-09-23 02:24 · Score: 4, Insightful

Yep. This is Capitalism, where workers are forced to accept the same wages for over a decade while costs for everything continue to rise.

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Someone has to pay for all those managers... by G-Man · 2011-09-23 02:25 · Score: 5, Interesting

"What happened, for instance, to swell the bureaucracy at the UC over the past two decades? There now are nearly as many senior managers (8,144) as tenured and tenure-track faculty (8,521). As recently as 1993, the ratio between these groups was much different - 2,429 to 6,846.
Put another way, 18 years ago the student-to-upper management ratio was 62-to-1. Now it's all the way down to 2-to-1. The ratio of students to regular faculty, meanwhile, has risen from 22-to-1 in 1993 to 26-to-1."
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/585302/201109191844/By-The-Way-We-Teach-A-Little-Too.htm
1. Re:Someone has to pay for all those managers... by ProfBooty · 2011-09-23 02:38 · Score: 2
  
  Same thing has occured in my own local public school system. They have a ratio of .78 administrators per teacher and a staff of 18 lobbyists!
  More recently they wanted to spend 135 million on a new administraton building to consolidate mulitple office spaces while students are being taught in 20 year old trailers. All this in the second wealthist county in the nation.
  
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Costs of education? by Gr8Apes · 2011-09-23 02:26 · Score: 5, Interesting

The cost of education really has sky-rocketed. Perhaps a study or two needs to be done on the real cost of education, because to hear tell, the educators aren't getting big raises, and this even occurs at schools with no need for capital expansion. So where is all this additional money going?
Perhaps state funded schools should need to justify every increase in their tuition, and certainly business projects, such as stadiums and sports teams, should be excised out of the report (ie, they need to be self-funding)

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1. Re:Costs of education? by afidel · 2011-09-23 02:34 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Largely for state schools it's coming from reduced income from the states general budget. Somewhere along the line we bought into both "everyone needs a college degree" and "government shouldn't do anything" and so we have an entire generation that is going to be saddled by mountains of debt just to be able to get a job. It's kind of the company store all over but at a macro level instead of just in small towns.
  
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2. Re:Costs of education? by nedlohs · 2011-09-23 02:44 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  It's amazing, you make it easy for people to get money to pay for some specific thing and the price of that thing skyrockets for no apparent reason.
  It's not like this has happened with other things, say handing out home loans like candy causing house prices to shoot up.
  And the additional money goes to the administators, after all they are the ones who are clearly doing all the work to increase the institution's revenue. And of course to those stadiums you mentioned, since that helps the administrators perform better at the dick measuring conferences.
3. Re:Costs of education? by sandytaru · 2011-09-23 02:50 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  My state university has all these beautiful new buildings that are half empty because they can't afford the faculty to put into them.
  
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4. Re:Costs of education? by claus.wilke · 2011-09-23 02:57 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  That's because it's easy to raise private funds for buildings, but it's much harder to raise private funds for faculty salary.
5. Re:Costs of education? by Sponge+Bath · 2011-09-23 03:00 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  You are dead on right. In Texas, the legislature has been eating away at state support for higher education after eliminating caps on state university tuition. The legislature said with a straight face that this would not increase tuition, but it doubled over the last decade. The Texas GOP views higher education as "liberal brainwashing", so I expect the GOP controlled government to continue down this path.
6. Re:Costs of education? by Skarecrow77 · 2011-09-23 03:07 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  You don't need a college degree to get a job, although we as a society have done a very good job of convincing young people otherwise. I make a very decent salary for a 30-something with only partial-college education. what I have that makes me worthwhile to employers is half a decade of professional experience, and nearly two decades of non-professional experience, in my field of choice, as well as experience dealing with the type of people (Both clients and colleagues) that I am likely to interact with. It is only something that I found out in retrospect though. I don't know that I could blindly walk in to "Screw it, I'm not going to college, I'll be fine" without so much experience seeing that it actually is fine.
  You can still get ahead in the world on the strength of experience, you just have to start lower and prove yourself more often. I'm probably about 5 years behind where I could have been if I'd graduated with a degree in IT (which, to be fair, they didn't even offer when I was in college), but I'm also running without the debt as well. I'm not sure which is a greater hindrance on you long term. I'd be interested to see a study on how today's student debt affects people long term. The last one I read on the subject said that once accounting for debt levels, delayed entry into the workforce, etc, a college education was only worth something like an extra $100,000 to $400,000 over the course of a lifetime, depending on the profession (obviously something like doctor is right out). I don't remember how old those figures were though. If tuition keeps going up much faster than inflation and salaries, it's going to cross over the other way at some point.
  So, if you want to get into the business world without a college degree, it can be done.. but what it really requires is a plan. you have to know where you're starting out, and where you plan to go from there... which almost no 18 year old has. I didn't. Hell that's half the reason a lot of people go to college in the first place, to learn who the hell they are and what they want to do with their life. College is a much easier choice, and if I did it all again I probably would still choose to go, and maybe even to graduate this time, but not because you outright -need- to... just because it's easier.
7. Re:Costs of education? by nedlohs · 2011-09-23 03:09 · Score: 2
  
  Obviously, but that clearly isn't the sole cause of increases in education costs which were occurring during the boom years and also at private institutions.
8. Re:Costs of education? by Rolgar · 2011-09-23 03:27 · Score: 2
  
  To some degree, it was an extension of the housing bubble. Because loan rates were low, the schools could sell you on the fact that your future salary would offset your higher costs of attending. Federally subsidized loans allowed schools to increase tuition to pull a higher percentage of that loan money from the government, and now that it's drying up, education will probably go through the same shake down that housing has been going through.
  I wonder if this is the case in Kansas as far as acceptance. We have automatic acceptance of Kansas graduated students to state schools (Kansas, Kansas State, Pittsburg State, Emporia State, Wichita State, Fort Hays State) assuming you meet one of three trivially easy standards, 1)ACT score of 21, 2) graduate in the top third of your high school class, or 3) GPA of 2.0 taken from 4 years of English, 3 of science, 3 of math, and 1 each in government, history and either world geography or history.
  I absolutely agree about the not needing a degree, especially if you are trained in a trade, and your primary goal is getting a job. My brother-in-law makes more than I do as a lineman for the rural coop. He spent far less time and money getting up to speed as an electrician, and was earning pretty good money by the time he was 20.
  Another good route to go is military, get in a good training program, and the government will train you in whatever you want to learn. You probably earn less while you're getting it, but its a guaranteed job, you'll have your training, and I assume if you decide to hit college later, you've got the G.I. bill.
9. Re:Costs of education? by ironjaw33 · 2011-09-23 03:40 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  Obviously, but that clearly isn't the sole cause of increases in education costs which were occurring during the boom years and also at private institutions.
  +1. Ten years ago, my first year in a state funded university cost about $10k. State support was at about 20% of the school's operating budget. Today, it costs around $25k with state support at about 13%. So a drop in 7 percentage points in state funding equals a tuition increase of 2.5? Not only that, but the school has also increased total enrollment as well as the proportion of out of state and international students, which pay more than if you live in state.
10. Re:Costs of education? by bluefoxlucid · 2011-09-23 03:47 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  It often IS Liberal Brainwashing. I had a professor that would stop teaching to non-sequitur into other shit. Statistics, wine consumption per country, what does this show ... shows correlation between consumption of wine and reduced heart disease. WRONG BITCH: ALCOHOL, 'CAUSE I SAID SO. We argued he was wrong...
  Yeah, bad teacher. Bad teacher continues, starts talking about marriage ... and goes into a tirade about gay marriage, and how it's wrong, starts talking about sex with animals. One day he started on how family planning was important and abortion should be legal, something about statistics at first but then just a big opinion filabuster. About 80% of his gibberish was liberal party line typical shit.
  I've had plenty of college teachers that taught subjects--MATH, particularly--and didn't wander out of their territory. I also had teachers that asserted conservative politics were best--with proof (political science teacher), and actually pretty decent because he was arguing a decent political theory that wasn't available in the US (it wasn't US Democrat or US Republican, or tied to any issues like Global Warming or Abortion or whatnot; mostly fiscal stuff). I've also had teachers that liked to filabuster about their particular partyline politics. I've also had teachers that slant their material to include partyline stuff, or like to lead irrelevant conversation that way and then jump back into class topics (often the moment they're challenged).
  Overwhelmingly, though, the ones that are bleeding their shit into our education are liberals. Some of these people are damn smart; others are simply "educated" to the point that the topic they have major degrees in is all dogma (i.e. people explaining computers to me are WRONG, and I've made complete embarrassments of them when they challenged me in class on how computers actually worked, to the point that they went out to do independent research and came back shamed and, I hope, enlightened). It takes all kinds; bright people are both GOP and DNC, dumb assholes are both GOP and DNC. The flavor of their inane raving changes, but it's still inane raving.
  And the truth is... that particular job segment attracts liberals. Education is particularly idealistic anyway, and the ideals slant a certain way. You touch so many peoples' lives that it's hard to justify anything, you start thinking everyone is working so hard, the world is just unfair if anyone fails, and you can't let them fail ... then you become a liberal, and start talking about how poor people should get paid by very rich people just because rich people don't need all that money, and what nonsense.
  Obviously, extremely biased administration can build a school where the professors are overwhelmingly GOP sluts; same problem, different flavor. It does happen.
  
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11. Re:Costs of education? by DavidTC · 2011-09-23 04:12 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Erm, while it seems like 'research-only professors wasting money' would be a good thing to pin the issue on, in actual fact, those sort of positions have been massively reduced over the past few decades.
  You can argue they're a waste of money, but they're clearly not the cause of the current problem.
  And it's worth pointing out that they usually aren't a waste on money, as they tend to operate off grants (Which the college does not pay) and the only expense they have is their own paycheck and lab space, and in return they tend to get all sorts of expensive equipment like centrifuges and refrigerators and lasers and whatnot...that the university gets to keep.
  He's a guy making the equivalent of ten student's tuition. If he can bring in ten students via his name, and get them another five students-cost worth of equipment, he's earned his keep. The college doesn't actually pay for the research he's doing.
  
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12. Re:Costs of education? by Moryath · 2011-09-23 04:16 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  I saw plenty of professors who wore their politics on their sleeves.
  The difference was (in general), a liberal professor is willing to accept that you have a different viewpoint. They are willing to DEBATE you on it and give you equal time. They are willing to concede that you have good points and acknowledge them, they are willing to moderate their own positions and take your points on board when you bring up something they hadn't previously considered or that is argued well. I turned in several papers that argued completely contrary to the views I knew the professor held, and STILL got high grades because I argued my points well.
  The "conservative" professors, meanwhile, were generally hidebound dogmatic fools who were only interested in "showing up" their colleagues, indoctrinating minds into seig-heil follower mentality, and if you didn't just spew back the hate and bile they passed out in classroom, you wouldn't get a passing grade. I watched three of these assholes tear into some of my classmates after they "found out" that the classmates were officers in the university Gay-Straight Student Alliance.
  So... in all due respect, FUCK them. I've seen the true colors of the "Republicans." No thank you.
13. Re:Costs of education? by englishknnigits · 2011-09-23 04:23 · Score: 2
  
  Well...if you went to college you would know there is some truth to it. It isn't just "liberal brainwashing" but it isn't a trivial part. Every (as in 100%) of my english, history, political science, and philosophy teachers were die hard left wing liberals. My philosophy teachers were all good at explaining positions, playing devils advocate, and not preaching which is exactly how it should be. English, history, and political science teachers frequently soap boxed and tried to hammer their views into people. There is a difference between exposing people to new viewpoints and forcing people to listen to their rants and agree with them for an A.
14. Re:Costs of education? by dgatwood · 2011-09-23 04:48 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  It's not that education draws more liberals so much that education turns off conservatives—not in principle, but in practice. As far as I can tell, the conservative movement in the U.S. (in the bastardized incarnation that is the Republican party) largely consists of two groups of people: people who are fiscally conservative, and people who are socially conservative.
  Socially conservative people have two choices: attend a socially conservative school (mostly religious schools) or attend a public school.
  If they attend a public school, they tend to become less socially conservative. The very nature of a melting pot institution of higher learning inherently increases tolerance because it exposes you to a wide range of cultures and perspectives. Being in an environment where you encounter people who are different from you makes it harder to dehumanize people who disagree with you. This has nothing to do with the teachers or the institution, and everything to do with the fact that it is a microcosm of the world rather than a homogeneous group.
  If they attend a homogeneous private school, their conservative ideologies may be reinforced (depending on the university), in which case they will continue to see public education as a hotbed of liberalism, and if they decide to become teachers, they will generally choose to teach at similarly homogeneous schools.
  Thus, socially conservative people tend to either learn tolerance or segregate themselves, which is why you rarely see social conservatives teaching in public higher education.
  The other big group in the Republican party are the fiscally conservative. These people presumably have at least a passing understanding of economics (at least enough to know that you don't spend every penny you have coming in), which means that they won't put up with a job that pays them peanuts, working long hours to teach a bunch of kids who don't really want to be there. And the "new conservatives"—the folks who are fiscally conservative because they became rich and now want to keep that money rather than supporting the social programs that helped them get there—have an attitude that doesn't exactly match up with a desire to help others by teaching. You won't see any of those sorts of people in higher education, private or otherwise.
  So it's really no surprise that there are few conservatives (of either type) in public education. Want more conservatives in public education? Tell your conservative bureaucrats to triple higher ed salaries so that they can compete with private enterprise and private homogeneous schools. Until you do that, conservative views cannot possibly balance out the liberal voices in higher ed, precisely because the liberals—those who care more about others than their own well being— are the only ones who will take the job... that and people who aren't smart enough to get a job doing something else... and some people who are both....
  
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15. Re:Costs of education? by bluefoxlucid · 2011-09-23 05:07 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  This is exactly the kind of thing I don't want to deal with in a class on differential equations. Teach me math and shut up about the other professors' socialist tendencies and the evil red scare. Also stop babbling about evil capitalism and how we need socialized healthcare.
  
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16. Re:Costs of education? by DreadPiratePizz · 2011-09-23 05:08 · Score: 2
  
  Most state athletic programs make the institution money. Football in particular is such a moneymaker, it can subsidize other less prominent sports.
17. Re:Costs of education? by kidcharles · 2011-09-23 05:12 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Well, buildings can be named after benefactors whereas the faculty members inconveniently have already been named by their parents.
  
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  Ceci n'est pas une sig.
18. Re:Costs of education? by bluefoxlucid · 2011-09-23 05:57 · Score: 2
  
  Capital gains tax is an annoyance. Too high and you can't make money for retirement (this is why we have IRA and 401(k) where you don't pay it), too low and the higher income earners are paying less in capital gains than in income. Scale it like income tax and you start screwing up investment firms and playing hell with business. There are definite arguments against any sort of capital gains tax at all (it makes it a lot harder to do any kind of investing, which makes personal finances even worse), but again you have to deal with private citizens with 2 billion dollars to invest (at 7% gain?).
  
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19. Re:Costs of education? by Rumtis · 2011-09-23 06:18 · Score: 2
  
  You're a freekin' idiot! You know that?
  
  Naw... just kidding. Unfortunately, though, this is the kind of reply you too often get.
  
  I'm actually in very much the same boat that you are (although I'd probably lean just a bit right to the center instead of left).
  
  One thing that works for me is that, when a political conversation comes up, I ask, "Are you will to listen politics as well as talk politics?" You would be surprised how often that either stops the conversation from happening (which is good, since it would be like talking to a bag of half-bricks if I did) or makes the other person pause sometimes, allowing you to actually have a conversation.
20. Re:Costs of education? by Windows+Breaker+G4 · 2011-09-23 06:24 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  In "Liberal" CA, state funding has dropped from 90%ish to less than 50% in less than 20 years (at least here at cal poly). So it's not just texas.
  
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  brickspeed.net for your old Volvo performance addiction
21. Re:Costs of education? by ironjaw33 · 2011-09-23 06:38 · Score: 2
  
  Most state athletic programs make the institution money. Football in particular is such a moneymaker, it can subsidize other less prominent sports.
  This isn't true. There are only about 12 or 13 football programs (D1, BCS) that make enough money to fund other athletic programs or put money back into their school's general fund. The majority of college sports funding comes from alumni-funded endowments with the remainder made up by athletic tuition fees.
22. Re:Costs of education? by Convector · 2011-09-23 07:32 · Score: 2
  
  Not necessarily. Many academic departments have professorships named after various benefactors. For example, the C. C. Garvin Professor of Geochemistry, the William E. Hassinger, Jr. Senior Faculty Fellow in Physics, and the J. Q. Pompous Blowhard, Jr., III Professor of Pontification. (I only made up one of these.)
23. Re:Costs of education? by dwpro · 2011-09-23 09:22 · Score: 2
  
  Your ignorant rant annoys me. The fact that the state is almost 40% Hispanic doesn't play well with your caricature of the uneducated inbred racist Texan voter, and does little to bring any useful discussion of ideas to the table. What is needed is a government composed of individuals that can be trusted, as it's the well placed fear of government screw ups that feeds this anti-government sentiment.
  
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  Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon. -- Susan Ertz
24. Re:Costs of education? by dgatwood · 2011-09-25 15:13 · Score: 2
  
  88% of college professors support increasing environmental protection even at the expense of jobs, and 65% support guaranteed jobs for all Americans. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8427-2005Mar28.html) So the norm for professors is pretty damn far left-wing. Nobody blinks at any of the ultra-left wing shenanigans that professors get up to unless they get caught red-handed engaged in outright academic misconduct, like Ward Churchill.
  
  Depending on how the questions were phrased, it's likely that none of those things are far left.
  Far left is not believing that everyone should have a fundamental right to basic medical care, food, shelter, and other necessities, nor believing that there should be enough jobs out there that anyone who wants a job can find one. Far left is believing that everyone should have the right to a high paying job, even without doing the work, without learning the things you need to learn to get such a job, and that it should be illegal to discriminate based on lack of education, intellect, or responsibility. Far left is supporting systems that make it difficult or impossible to fire someone even with cause. Far left is claiming that you should have to put up with the laziest, most incompetent workers in the world simply because someone decided to define being a pothead as a disability or medical condition.... Yeah. Those people are far left.
  Far left isn't just believing that it's okay for environmental protection to cost jobs. Far right is believing that it is unacceptable. Anyone anywhere remotely close to the middle understands that any regulation on business inevitably costs jobs, and what matters is to strike the right balance between the extra cost of doing business and the damage those businesses do to the environment. Far right gets you an environment like that of China in just a few years. Far left, by contrast, is believing that saving some obscure species that will probably go extinct anyway despite our efforts is worth a moratorium on construction in a third of the state for five years.
  And so on. The fact that you think these middle-of-the-road positions are actually far left is a rather striking demonstration of just how far to the right our country has slid, as it is an indication that you have never been exposed to anyone whose ideas are truly leftist. Hint: they're usually going on about the virtues of socialism, raging about how evil Monsanto and GM crops are, staging topless protest rallies to save the spotted newt, etc.
  
  Out of curiosity, where did you go to college?
  Undergrad at a branch campus of the University of TN, grad at UC Santa Cruz. There's a huge difference between the two. Still, outside of the social sciences, most of the folks even at UCSC were fairly close to the center, with only a handful of the folks I've met being far enough to the left that I would classify them as loons. (I was in grad school, though, so I was mostly exposed to the engineering side of the house, plus many of the music faculty.)
  That said, California is also a lot more liberal as a state than the rest of the country on average. Treating a UC school as being characteristic of institutions of higher learning across the U.S. is like assuming Beavis and Butt-head are archetypical high school students....
  Also, the social sciences tend to be dominated by people pretty far to the left, but then again, that's pretty much why people go into a field in social sciences. After all, other than social work, there's not much else you can do with a degree in those fields besides teaching. Much like the Peace Corps, the entire field is kind of self selecting for liberals and ultra-liberals. :-)
  
  --
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How does it work over there? by LordNacho · 2011-09-23 02:27 · Score: 2

You'd have thought the lower tuition fees for in-state kids was due to a public purse of some sort, so that the institution doesn't get less for their own kids. It's crazy to set up an incentive to get out-of-state kids for a state school.
Re:Quit Blaming Capitalism by LordNacho · 2011-09-23 02:36 · Score: 2

Aren't the most reputable institutions in America generally NOT state institutions?
Also, whether or not to fund a university is something the politicians do. People have voted to have less education. Isn't that fair enough?
Re:Capitalism - make your own by Antisyzygy · 2011-09-23 02:39 · Score: 5, Interesting

You can't just start a business without capital. Right-wingers always assume people have the ability to gather savings when they are under-paid and/or under-employed, then start businesses in fields with such large capital requirements that it would be impossible. Just try to start a cellular provider, or internet provider, or restaurant, etc. You pretty much have to find a rich person to finance you, and that is also not as easy as Right-wingers always assume it is. Simply put, the middle class has been eroded and pressured so badly there are not many capable of doing this. If you look at the number of "entrepreneurs" attempting to start businesses over the last 30 years it has been a steady decline mostly due to people not being able to survive let alone save anything on the wages they make. We live in a capitalist society with less-and-less markets capable of being exploited due to massive corporations, off-shoring, and the money supply being concentrated into only a few hands. Then, if you want a good job, you need a good education and thus are slapped with crippling debt for the rest of your life. How can you start a business when all your savings go to paying off interest?

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That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
Re:Not in New Hampshire by claus.wilke · 2011-09-23 02:43 · Score: 3

It's like this everywhere in the US. The UC system receives so little money from the state that some parts of UC have considered leaving the state system alltogether:
http://www.mbamission.com/blog/2011/09/22/mba-news-ucla-anderson-wants-to-go-private/
Re:Capitalism - make your own by Antisyzygy · 2011-09-23 02:48 · Score: 2

Wealth destruction due to greed, which is the basic tenant of capitalism. Why pay your employees twice as much in the US when you can get someone in China to do it and make more money for yourself? We hemorrhage our money out all over the world so there is no surprise the Fed's have to print more of it for domestic use. You can model it with a differential equation. Essentially, if you have some resource that is continually depreciating (i.e. a dollar due to printing, inflation, whatever) and you spend more of it than you take in, there is less value overall even though you may have the same number of resources in circulation in your own nation. After WWII, we weren't the ones that had our industrial centers bombed to rubble, so we supplied the world with products since we had the capacity. Money flowed mostly INTO the US. Lo-and-behold we had 50 years of prosperity until China stepped up and replaced us as the major manufacturer for the world. Politicians don't seem to want to do anything about that.

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That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
Most IT workers should go to tech / trade / appren by Joe_Dragon · 2011-09-23 02:50 · Score: 2

Most IT workers should go to tech / trade schools and apprenticeships.
And not forcing them to go 4 year (that trun out to be longer then 4 due to the high number of needed credits in the past you needed less)
Also how does high level theory vs doing more hands on work help you be a better help desk or desktop guy? What is use is all that high level math? Some math is ok but some it of it is better for high level design that is way past what most IT workers do.
Now for coding I can see lot's of math and theory (to a point) but going to far on theory is bad for coders.
Networking, support, and admin needs to be on it's own track from the coding side of work. And even on the Networking, support, and admin side that can also be broken out a few of there own tracks aka big scale network setups vs admin + a smaller network setup.
The filler classes are nice to a point but it has gone a little to far as the number of credits needed has gone up over the years. Now a better system is to cut them down and or make some IT classes just out side your main focus count as filler for the needed credits part.
Ideal way is to have a 2 year mixed class room / apprenticeship system and no internship B.S. It should be a real payed (at least mini wage) apprenticeship like how electricians and plumbers systems are setup.
Now keep the 4 year for the high level stuff (with a way to join midway if you did the 2 year mixed class room / apprenticeship in the past)
Meritocracy in America by Sir_Eptishous · 2011-09-23 02:54 · Score: 2

Interesting atricle from The Economist, from 2004, about social/financial mobility in America. http://www.economist.com/node/3518560

--
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
Re:Quit Blaming Capitalism by betterunixthanunix · 2011-09-23 02:56 · Score: 5, Informative

I am working at a "state school" right now, which receives a whopping 5% of its budget from the state. Do not be so quick to assume that "state school" means "paid for by the state government."

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Palm trees and 8
Re:There's coming a breaking point... by PRMan · 2011-09-23 02:59 · Score: 2

Lots of people won't go to college, because they can't afford it. Smart employers will realize that some of the best candidates don't have a degree. Universities will start to become irrelevant for many jobs. It's already this way in software development. We don't even look at education when hiring, just experience.

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Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
MOD Parent up, please Re:Conflating facts by jdgeorge · 2011-09-23 03:00 · Score: 5, Insightful

Parent is insightfully addressing the misleading question in the summary:

"should employees of a public university where the President's annual compensation exceeds $1 million receive a full state-funded pension for educating 16,000+ out-of-state students?"
This appears to be a deliberate attempt to undermine the idea of providing a pension system to state employees without providing any evidence that those employees haven't earned that pension.
This rhetorical attempt to represent the compensation of a university *president* as justification for reduce compensation for the majority of university employees is logically fallacious, and seems like an attack on those employees simply because they work for a state or a state education system..
I expect better. Yes, even from Slashdot.
BAN Int'l students without real financial aid by ub3r+n3u7r4l1st · 2011-09-23 03:01 · Score: 2, Interesting

Here in our university, in many departments, when they hire IT staff, they don't hire full time staff, instead they hire international grad students which is much cheaper ( about $1,600 a month , plus a tuition waiver, for 20 hours a week, and you get to call yourself a research assistant). These position especially attracts engineering, CS and business students from either India or China who otherwise cannot get a research/teaching assistantship from their home department because they sucks.
These people get in with fraudulent resumes that list MCSE, A+ certification etc. and good programming skills, and when they fix PCs of faculty members, all they know how to use is doublemyspeed.com and mycleanPC.com and call it a day. Then they get back to their workstation to play WoW or voice-chatting with their friends either in Hindi or Mandarin.
The office where I worked (in the university medical center) have unfortunately picked up one of these TFK's (Trust Fund Kid) from China, his work slows everyone down. Finally we have a golden opportunity to fire this asshole due to a budget cut caused by someone else's far more superior (originally an undergrad student worker) converting to full time.
Seriously, domestic undergrads works far more efficient and show more enthusiasm compare to these international grad who just want to get a degree and pick up a white chick + green card along the way,

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New Economic Perspectives
Re:Most IT workers should go to tech / trade / app by roothog · 2011-09-23 03:16 · Score: 2

Most IT workers should go to tech / trade schools and apprenticeships.
And not forcing them to go 4 year (that trun out to be longer then 4 due to the high number of needed credits in the past you needed less)
It's worse than that. They graduate after 4 or 5 years without the right skill set and can't get a job, so they then apply for a Masters program and get even more education that's not useful to their career plan.
Re:Capitalism - make your own by samjam · 2011-09-23 03:25 · Score: 2

Not really... the money spent abroad instead of locally only has ultimate value if it is spent back into the US. A Dollar has no other use in any other context.
Dollars spent abroad come back to pay for US exports and is thus good the the US economy and re-enters the local economy at that point.
One of the biggest recipients of dollars is China, who buy US bonds with them. Be glad they are not buying up all the US land with it!
You think they Chinese want to sit on piles of paper dollars? They spend them! In the only place they can!

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blog.sam.liddicott.com