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Federal Student Aid Requirements At For-Profit Colleges Overhauled
An anonymous reader writes "The U.S. Department of Education has released a proposal for new regulations that would hold colleges that receive federal student aid accountable for the employment success of their graduates. The overhaul is prompted by the fact that students from for-profit colleges account for nearly 50% of all loan defaults yet only account for about 13% of the total higher education population. '[O]f the for-profit gainful employment programs the Department could analyze and which could be affected by [the proposed regulations], the majority--72%--produced graduates who on average earned less than high school dropouts.'"
The majority of people attending these institutions are one stop away from being high school dropouts. I couldn't begin to count the number of companies who refuse to employee individuals from these "tech colleges". I interviewed one "tech college" professor who had no practical knowledge in the industry, no degree outside of a what was taught at the "tech college", and admitted he had limited knowledge on core infrastructure questions outside of the material provided by the "tech college". However he was a professor for the core infrastructure classes at the same "tech college" he graduated from. I promptly put that institution on my not even worth hiring helpdesk support list. If you want someone to really look at your resume go to a community college and be willing to put in the time to learn. Stay away from tech colleges as they are stain on a resume you could never get off.
~^\-/^|-|^\-/^~ May the force be with me!
Clearly you are in default, you have money.
mnewberg.com
Nuh-uh... B.S. - University of Phoenix
Where you have professors who have been in school for years and have next to no real experience.
also CS for help desk is just as bad as you can get people loaded with theory and codeing skills but lacking big time in the desktop / system admin side.
If they are going to do that, then the same standard should applies to our public school system. My federal tax dollars are federal tax dollars and that does not change regardless who gets my federal tax dollars.
My karma is not a Chameleon.
IT needs apprenticeship and maybe 1-2 year trade like schools 4+ years pure class room is to much and even 2 years pure class room is pushing it as well.
While this sounds like posturing that would never actually get passed, I really I hope I am wrong. I went to the University of Phoenix because I was working full time and night program CS degrees at real schools simply did not exist 5 years ago. I knew then that I would only pay for the degree if I was planning on getting a Masters degree at a real school right after. I even called two local schools to ensure they would admit graduate students with UoP undergrad degrees. (BTW, I am in my last semester of my Masters program now)
My UoP degree definitely helped with my career, but only because I was an experienced software developer long before I enrolled. It only helped because of ridiculous HR requirements for applicants with degrees only. The education was atrocious. My second semester database class consisted of just these four assignments: 1) Create a Database, 2) Create a Table, 3) Create Foreign Key Relationships, 4) Load Data into the Tables, 5) Create a Report. They even gave us the commands so all we needed to do was paste them into the console. This may be the most egregious example of the poor curriculum I can think of, but the rest of it was almost as bad.
My fellow students who didn't already know the material were struggling to understand it with no help in sight. I would help them on the forums and over emails, but I knew they would never get the necessary instruction to ever get hired in this field, let alone keep any job they weaseled their way into. It was really sad that they were spending potentially over $50k for a worthless degree. I never said anything to them because I did not want to risk being kicked out after spending so much money.
I hope the government really does start to do something. This problem was primarily caused by real universities that do not offer sufficient night programs for adult students, but it has progressed to the point where government intervention is necessary. These online schools really could provide decent educations if they were forced to. If their programs were decent they would fill a very large void in our country's education system, but in their current form they are nothing more than a parasite.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Continue to hold the student accountable. They're the ones that were too stupid to go to a college and get a degree for a job good enough to pay it off. And too stupid to figure out debt v/s income ratios. And maybe their parents if they were involved in the stupid decision to send their kids to college without a means to pay for it.
That's the problem with so many people today .. it's always someone else who is the problem.
But, to be fair, the government *IS* the problem. What accounts for free money with no responsibility has resulted in sky rocketing college costs. The tuition cost of Arizona State University, in a span of 7 years, has more than doubled. Yet inflation has been almost nil. Why does it rise?? Because they are still filling the classrooms with students and can. It's amazing how motivating it is to cut costs when you don't have an endless supply of people with the ability to pay whatever you charge.
And yet, there are people like my daughter who graduates this year at the age of 28 with a 4 year degree in biology, and heavy into genetic engineering. She is interning at the Mayo clinic and involved in cancer research and genetic engineering and will graduate with zero debt, except for a house payment. No car loan, no credit cards, no student loans. She got a job in high school, saved money, then got another job when she got out of high school that paid a lot better (yes .. they do exist.) Then she went to work part time, and later full time as she was able to increase her income. I only paid for one semester, and I think her grandmother paid for a couple more. To be fair, I offered to pay for one semester a year, but she wouldn't ask for it after the first one. She was determined to pay for it herself.
When she started going, tuition was only a couple grand a semester. And she lived at home. She got married a couple of years ago, and she and her husband (who also has no college debt and is due to graduate this year with his doctorate) were able to buy a house and pay less than most would for rent.
If the college experience means going tens of thousands into debt, maybe we are sending the wrong message. Just living at home could cut 50% off of student loans.
It is possible to go to college without getting loans. Maybe we should only let people smart enough to figure it out go to college.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
We all know they're a business, but the cult aspect is "I went to university, and even though I rarely use what I learned, I will only employ people who went through the same crap I did.". A cult. End of story.
There is no justifiable federal role in education. Education has traditionally been and should be locally managed.
We don't need more regulation surrounding student loans, we need less. In fact there shouldn't be any federal student loans at all.
TFA and TFS don't make it quite clear - would the SCHOOL lose eligibility, or a specific degree plan? If a student gets a degree in art history or women's studies that probably won't do much for their employment prospects, regardless of whether the school is good or not.
But they actually know and understand the curriculum. Besides which, professors at real universities aren't hired to teach, they're hired because of the research they've done. So yes, they have experience in research.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
A better system is needed for people who are working but want to learn new / more skills and want them to add up to something why not have some kind of badges systems?
also some skills are a poor fit in to the over all university system also the university system is loaded with all kinds of fluffy / filler classes as well. forced PE classes at a price that is more then a 2 YEAR HIGH COST fitness club membership??
I think they're going around the problem backwards. In my opinion, there is a very large % of the college student population who is driven to college due to
A) They found a great way to hang out with friends and continue 'high school'
B). Get out from under Mom and Dad's thumb
C). Family/peer pressure
who do not want to go to college for a higher degree. This segment of the population is of no use at college and basically wastes the time of our educators, their parents money, and federal aid money and come out with a degree that makes them stupider or more useless than when they went in.
College isn't for everyone. Society requires people at all levels, yes I need that burger flipper, the garbage man, the plumber, gardner, etc, multiple positions which are not aimed at college degrees. Our system is getting much more to having the expectation that EVERYONE gets a college degree when a good part of those pushed to college can't handle or don't want to take a useful college degree. (my apologies to English majors, but I do not think we need THAT many English majors in society as we're pumping out, some yes, as many as I see, no)
To be more efficient in federal college loans, we need to tighten up the standards on who actually gets the loans. Those who will gain value from a college education and bring value to society. Those who can't or don't want to do a 4 year college can be encouraged towards tech school (good ones). Yes, we need good electricians, plumbers, welders, etc. Those jobs don't require a college degrees and are extremely useful in both residential and industrial jobs (and expensive due to the lack of supply for them).
TLDR: Stop giving loans to those who come out of college a burden to society.
But they actually know and understand the curriculum.
Who does? Most college and university students who have come to me looking for a job had no understanding of the theory, and no practical knowledge to boot. I've had much better luck with self-educated people.
need to drop the college for all idea and stop jobs from asking for a degree for jobs that don't need it / are better off with some kind of tech / trades school (and not being asking for an 2-4+ year one as well).
What will we do want jobs want masters or better and what happens when they get people loaded with theory / class room only and still having skill gaps??
What this tells me, is that there is clearly a demand that is not being met by 'traditional' colleges/universities. These schools offer people a chance at a diploma that they can put on their resume. If you don't have that piece of paper on your resume, you are not even going to get an interview regardless of how knowledgeable you are in the field (unless you have a contact inside the company already).
These schools give people, who maybe got off to a bad start, a chance to go to classes in the evenings, it is a path for those students who were not necessarily 'good' at school and would score poorly on an ACT or SAT test. When more and more of the jobs those people used to get go overseas or to mexico, they have to have some way into the 'new' economy. Either that or they find a way to game the system with welfare/disability (or get stuck forever in working poverty). They have to live, they have to feed their families. These schools offer them a way to do that. (or more likely, the false hope that they can do that)
I think the traditional colleges need to take notice and start offering programs that mimic what these for-profit schools offer. Flexible schedules for adult students, shorter paths to a certificate or diploma, etc. Side note: aren't all colleges 'for profit'? I see the million dollar salaires of university presidents, massive coffers, and multi-billion dollar sport franchises and have to think that they are all 'for-profit'; the profit just goes in different directions.
why does party or sports schools look better then then the tech schools that don't have that BS and tech real skills?
some of the sports schools are very lax on classes for people on the football team (the team is full time in season and part time off season)
why can't there be a minor league for football and basketball?
These are the sorts of aborted attempts at schools that produce "graduates" with a stack of certifications yet who somehow don't even know what the ping command is. Countless times I have encountered these individuals only to be shocked that despite the year or more they spend in these places I have literally had to instruct them on how to use the basics like ping, traceroute, ip/ifconfig, etc... and then how to use such things to perform basic troubleshooting. How someone obtain an A+, Network+, and more and not know these things is beyond me.
Around the turn of the millennium I briefly attended one such school. I ended up doing more teaching than the teachers, quickly realized it was a scam and dropped out. That particular tech-school was later sued out of existence for making promises they could not deliver on.
This is why I despise the majority of technical certifications: they either measure knowledge or they don't - you can't always tell right away. It can be a matter of learning the material and rightfully passing the exam, or merely learning how to take the exam. I sometimes contemplate teaching a class in Linux so I can teach it right, but then again I would not want to be associated with such an institution.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
minor league for football & basketball or let them take trades / tech school classes even if they need to go to a different school to take the classes.
I first heard about this problem of colleges finding hopeful simpletons, knowingly counseling them into something they couldn't afford and would likely fail at, and laughing all the way to the bank, while the student is left with undischargable debt. The problem is already being addressed. If progressives keep shutting down dishonest businessmen this fast, it'll get too hard to scam a buck from fools anymore. Then what will crooked douchbags do?
my apologies to English majors, but I do not think we need THAT many English majors in society as we're pumping out, some yes, as many as I see, no
I'm not an English major as I'll soon prove and I agree with you.
However, college has gone from furthering one's education into vocational training. Years ago I read a book (forgive, but I cannot remember the title to cite) that stated that if you do not have a Liberal Arts or Science degree, then you are not educated: you have vocational training. Engineering, Business, Law, Medicine, Plumbing, Auto Mechanics .... are all trades. I guess for us middle class people (and poorer) that's what college is about these days. The rich get the luxury of being educated because their bills are being covered by Mom and Dad.
To be educated allows for flexibility in thinking and analysis - on all aspects of life.
An engineer looks at the World from an engineer's view. A business person looks at the World from a business perspective.
We disparage the liberal arts majors here, but I think our society would be quite bleak and even more superficial than it is without the Art History, English, History, Philosophy, Sociology, Russian Lit. etc .... majors.
It's a sad World we live in that we are spiraling down to Third World thinking.
Third World countries want and need the engineers to catch up with the West and everyone else is relegated to nothing.
We are going backwards in the US.
Why do they always have to tie education and employment? University is for study of the "Arcane Arts" and advancing the pool of knowledge, it is not a place to learn a trade that will lead to employment.
Medicine, Engineering and other higher level application of knowledge degrees need to be removed from university studies and made some sort of Applied Knowledge School then Universities can go back to being what they really are, places of knowledge and not be drafted into diploma-mill-that-is-expected-to-lead-to-a-job.
This current state is all part of the "value-for-money" process where "investment" in education leads to a "return" in salary income later on. There is no quest for knowledge in that, there is only a quest for the almighty dollar.
The for profit colleges are suspicious to most people. There are so many gimmick type colleges out there that unless a degree is from a known and long standing, brick and mortar college employers probably see the degrees as nonsense. And frankly they usually are nonsense. And even if the for profit school is sort of real they are much like your local doughnut shop. They want you there a lot! In other words if you are picking a kid's pocket you simply make sure that he is happy and give him good grades no matter how dumb he is. Treat him nice and let him think he is being educated and you can pick that pocket for years to come. College should be limited to those who love academic pursuits, love studying and are somewhat willing to suffer to learn. College is not a trade school and is not designed to be a path to employment.
Expect a lot of "Tech Schools" to add a new mandatory class that is almost impossible to enroll in unless you already have a job in the field. Then they can claim such great placement rates.
The companies that run these schools will spend plenty to make sure their cash cow keeps producing, even to the detriment to the everybody else.
But they actually know and understand the curriculum. Besides which, professors at real universities aren't hired to teach, they're hired because of the research they've done. So yes, they have experience in research.
Tenured professors are hired to do research, adjunct professors are the under paid teachers.
How about forcing them to refund tuition to people they lied to in order to get them to sign up?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
1) A system of education designed to produce a graduate with a broad yet substantive grasp of human knowledge in art, literature, humanities and basic sciences?
2) A system of education designed to promote a commanding, in-depth knowledge of a specific discipline like engineering, law, medicine or physical science?
3) A vocational system designed to produce employment-ready workers with a sound working knowledge of a specific area of business or government?
4) A finishing system where young people learn the social skills and cultural knowledge necessary to aspire to the elite class of society? While it sounds free from anything like education, these things may require things we do consider education, like learning foreign languages to demonstrate worldliness, and where political history is personally embodied in the elites themselves (aristocracy and nobility), and where proper social manners may be barely distinguishable from what passes for politics and diplomacy.
I think it's mostly grown to be 3 and 4. You go to college to study an occupational field so you can get a job. It's different than 2 because you're not studying as nearly in depth. Accounting isn't mathematics. Before the 1960s you belonged to a fraternal organization to learn to participate in formal society as an adult. After the 1960s its where you go to experiment, find yourself and in practical terms learn to live on your own (pay rent, feed yourself, etc). In more expensive schools there is still a strong emphasis on the social component both from tradition and from aspirational goals of joining some of your fellow students' elite socioeconomic class.
I think for most of the past few hundred years its mainly been 1 & 4, with a strong emphasis on four. When we began indulging girls in education, college was a fine place to find a suitor of suitable class and ambition. But for all, a solid grounding in the liberal arts was socially useful, eliminated provincialism and promoted useful skills in basic mathematics and literacy.
The in-depth education of 2 probably started out ecclesiastically as the means to produce priests and preserve religious knowledge and church canon. Not until the enlightenment and the industrial revolution were most of these subjects studied with any rigor. Until mathematics was applied, engineering was just skilled trades like carpentry, stonemasons and blacksmiths.
The problem is not that jobs need it or not but HR and hiring manager use the fact that you have a degree to as an indicator of a few things:
1) You are able to stick with a project for a long period of time and see it through
2) You are able to accept and complete tasks that seem and probably are arbitrary and pointless because someone says do it.
3) You can take a set of instructions and fill in the blanks on your own and run with it, with something less than constant supervision.
There really is no better indicator of the above available. You might be able to accurately assess that stuff in an interview and you might not. A bad hire can be a costly mistake for a business. There are enough candidates for any given job with a degree right now, there exists no good reasons to gamble on someone without one.
In the current job market I would NEVER consider a candidate without a degree for anything a position above "cleaner" because there is no reason to take the chance, what you have a degree in is less of a concern though. You want to interview for an IT operations job and your degree is in "20th Century Art History" that is not necessarily a problem.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
I agree! I run a 12 week program where we use apprenticeship principles in the classroom. It's a more than full time commitment, with very small class sizes (12 max) and we are seeing a 90% job placement rate.
Where you have professors who have been in school for years and have next to no real experience.
Experience of which industry? I'm a physics prof. Our grads work in fields as diverse as finance, medicine, IT, natural resources, academic and industrial research etc. in a diverse range of positions. University is supposed to give you deep understanding of a subject and a broad range of skills that are useful for a wide variety of positions both in academia and industry it is not a training scheme for job X. Being involved in research means that I can take the latest research results and bring them into lectures so the students learn about them and perhaps find ways to apply that knowledge wherever they end up. This is not only good for the student but good for society as a whole and someone from industry is unlikely to be able to do that.
How about the UNC system of schools? Most state run schools are not "for profit" IE, they dont look to make money, only survive. Or does your definition of profit not match up with the dictionary version of profit?
When you cant win, ad hominem.
I don't think it's so much that there are more tea baggers, I think it's more that the smart people are leaving. This leaves the unemployed "self-educated and proud" types to spout their silly and hateful nonsense.
So between someone with no experience but a degree, and someone with 5+ years experience (at the same company) and no degree, you'd still opt for the degree-bearer?
I would have thought the work experience would show that they can do #1 and #2, and probably #3 as well...
Benford's Corollary to Clarke's Law: "Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced."
what about 2 year degrees?
Trades schools?
NON degree classes?
Do you pass them over?
Perhaps public high schools should be held to the same standard. Like Charter Schools.
It is too bad that HRs are filled with lazy MBA dropouts that simple put "college degree" at the start of every position description. Added onto that all of the colleges telling people that most professional jobs hold that standard as a minimum entry standard. Most of the time, I'd rather take any kid exiting the military for an entry-level position as they normally have more instilled for any job requirement(s).
Many people on slashdot are far out of date when it comes to college curriculum. There are many degree programs with detail and focus in systems design, administration, analysis, and so on. Only programmers need a degree in computer science, for IT people there are many IT degrees. Coders in server rooms are as dangerous as an auto mechanic servicing a turbojet. CS degrees are for cubicle farms, IT degrees are for everywhere else.
It's great that they accurately pinpointed a defect, or something that is undesirable, but they don't understand the underlying problem.
These schools could care less if the kids get a job or not, neither does the federal government. The loans loses have nothing to do with the school, and cannot be discharged in bankruptcy. The idea that politicians care doesn't mean the government will. At the end, you look at the proposed solutions, and it's nothing more or nothing less then Washington D.C. drawing more control of an industry centrally.
Here is the sounds from the press release:
(From http://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/obama-administration-takes-action-protect-americans-predatory-poor-performing-ca)
In the Department's proposed regulations, career programs would need to meet key requirements to establish that they sufficiently prepare students for gainful employment.
Institutions must certify that all gainful employment programs meet applicable accreditation requirements and state or federal licensure standards.
All gainful employment programs must pass metrics to continue eligibility in the student financial aid program, including: the estimated annual loan payment of typical graduates does not exceed 20 percent of their discretionary earnings or 8 percent of their total earnings and the default rate for former students does not exceed 30 percent.
Additionally, institutions must publicly disclose information about the program costs, debt, and performance of their gainful employment programs so that students can make informed decisions.
My prediction? The metrics of transparency will be rigged, good institutions will have to fork over dough and/or compromise their standards, whatever constitues inequality will not budge, and student loan debt will continue to shoot up. I would place money on it reaching two trillion within 10 years.
My fix? Allow student loan debt to be discharged in bankruptcy. That will get the banks(or govt) and schools more incentive to help increase the students job prospects.
To pass an Art History class at a decent school you need to 1) memorize a shitload of information, i.e. on the exam they show you a slide and you have to identity the artist, time period, movement, etc. 2) write effectively and quickly, as there will often be weekly papers due and a final research paper as well and 3) know something about aesthetics and design, which is going to help in any business that involves selling things to people...A degree shows the person has at least a minimum of writing skills, can find foreign countries on a map, understands something about math etc. when you hire a "selt-taught" you have clue how far the depths of that person's stupidity may go.
Fortunately for the institution of higher learning most others have the opposite experience.
Funny. The leftists in academia make me laugh. Show me a college that is not for profit. It is the free flowing financial aid that inflates the cost of education.
Apologies that someone modded you down mate. A clearer truth could not have been spoken.
As opposed to random ACs mocking these supposedly unemployed "teabaggers"?
Thank you Dave Raggett
I look for people who are interested in software development, who are willing to take the opportunity to learn on the job and can demonstrate that they can learn, that they are intelligent and that they understand that if they do not possess the skills that allow me to bill my clients for their work, they will not get paid until they acquire those skills. I train my people the way I see fit and within a few weeks they become productive members of the team, at which point they can start commanding a wage.
I have very little interest in their academic achievements, the degree does not matter to me one bit. However I do have a few examples that show that people that drop out of the school that they started are in some cases very flaky. Seriously, I wouldn't have thought that previously, but I have examples where people that were drop outs in computer science also drop off the radar at work! Even the talented can be the most flaky people apparently, it's kind of surprising.
OTOH people who are still students, even if their education has nothing to do with computing, are actually hard working and they show up, which apparently not everybody can do - SHOW UP. It's quite amazing, honestly.
You can't handle the truth.
You forgot the tried and true method of bribing the art teacher. Or fucking them.
It's Sunday you fucking jew, you know...a day of rest.
Why would anyone rightly attend such an institution? As someone who has used community colleges to supplement my knowledge, and to get prerequisites for Medical School, this seems like a fools bargain for students. I mean community colleges, here in FL, are inexpensive, offer flexible class times, have convenient locations, etc. I went to an expensive engineering undergraduate institution (RPI), and some of these places charge pretty darn close to their tuition for an associates degree. The ROI on an engineering degree is sometimes doubtful, how does one repay 100k loans on a culinary arts degree, or cosmetology license? These programs are nothing more than a get rich quick scheme that only burden the student, with lifelong debt, and the tax-payer, with holding the bag on the interest, for a number of these loans when they are deferred. If we were half smart about these programs we would not pay into these institutions. A profession gives the student a lifetime of job security, and society a lifetime of higher tax revenues (not to mention the services of said student). We should be funding public institutions and not private ones, whenever possible- not throwing good money after bad at these trade schools run by bankers.
Hire out to companies for 3 month contracts with jobs like "office boy" or something equally as talentless that doesn't require an education.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
clearer truth? Purposely ignore all non profit public universities and then maybe it is clear, but then it is just idiotic.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
Will this regulation change also apply to "non-profit" colleges and universities?
From the article:
Can a graduate of a "for-profit" school apply for a three year deferral like a student at a "non-profit" school? Odd how their default rates are calculated three years after graduation/leaving school, exactly the same amount of time a college graduate can defer their loan payments...
Ken
At my work, we've had a great experience with even freshmen from the local Uni. The Uni already does a great job filtering out the baddies. They're not all great programmers, but they've all had good potential and many just have slightly different interests, but are otherwise intelligent people.
Taking California for an example, the system has been wide open to foreign students capable of paying the extravagant fees but kids from the state have more limited options to enter the programs; necessitating cradle to college programs as their sole means of entry outside of community college programs. As a tax-paying parent, my observation displays a money-hungry group concentrated on taking my tax money and categorically denying access to the majority of California kids in favor of larger fee entrants.
In my university classes, I knew more than one student that weaseled their way through classes without really understanding the material, so I know that those people are out there. A college/university education isn't a panacea; the student has to do work on their own to end up with any level of competency at graduation time.
In my case, I saw two benefits to a college education. First, it showed me what was important to study in my time. Second, it provided me the pass to get past the HR gatekeeper-goons at most employers. A degree is no replacement for having the drive to learn.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Great. Let me see their financials because just saying something doesn't make it so.
Corruption is much more common in technical fields, people study art history out of passion, they actually WANT to learn the material, meanwhile guys studying engineering just want the degree so they can make money, they don't give a shit about electricity or whatever, plus they tend to be from corrupt third world countries in the first place.
Yet another reason to pick EE over CS.
For as long as there have been engineering schools, it has been traditional to not hire professors without significant industry experience.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Undoubtedly that's true for some jobs, but a lot of the time the degree requirement is simply to eliminate job candidates for no reason other than the number of applicants is so large as to be unmanageable.
"Endowment" is just another word for untaxed profits.
When a "non-profit" college collects hundreds of millions of dollars, and in turn lavishes silly high six-figure salaries on tenured professors, and rich pensions, the difference between "for-profit" and "non-profit" becomes nothing more than a game of semantics.
Ken
I would agree with you - except for the case of hiring "newbies". Which would you rather hire? Somebody with a degree, or somebody with a few years experience flipping burgers? The degree is probably more indicative of long-term planning and self-management skills, as well as suggesting the bearer carries a broader range of basic knowledge which may possibly be useful to your organization.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Why would you need a formal education to reset user passwords? That's 99% of helpdesk work, no?
As for the self-educated: Finding a job easily, is dependent on how good you are at it. Someone that's knowledgable will be hired on the spot, but it's really dependent on who's doing the hiring! If you know your stuff and are not offered a position, based on education, then be assured that's not the place you want to be anyway. Most employers I've seen that use that approach soon fail due to lack of talent!
Care to be more detailed about the foreign students? At NC State we have a lot of foreign students in the graduated classes, but not the undergrad, and even then most of the graduate students are paid for by the professors for research, and not the students or their family themselves. In graduate level the mentors typically pay for the education in exchange for the student doing work on their projects.
Looking up the UC system shows that they have a policy of limiting enrollment so that only 10% of the students can be foreign to the US, and currently only 7% are from another state, meaning at least 83% of the current enrollment is from the state... That is a far cry from what you are describing...
When you cant win, ad hominem.
Being a state ran school it is all online, free for you to look at any time you wish to educate yourself....
When you cant win, ad hominem.
This is why a degree is so important, mostly the track record of where you graduated from. My Uni has a 30 year track record of 100% job placement in the field of Computer Information Systems within 6 months of graduation. It took me a full a full 2 months during the recession, mostly because I was looking locally, but I was getting offers from places like Google almost immediately after graduation. The requirement to even graduate is a team project for a real company. An on going project is for a fortune 500 company that usually hires the students right after graduation. Because this is required work, the students don't get paid, so we effectively do a lot of a free project based CIS related work for many small businesses around the city, from accounting systems, to networks, to web pages.
Pretty good for $133/credit and credits are free after 12, and free book rental. Not only that, but nearly every class offered is free to the general public. You can enroll for nearly any class that is not full. You do not get a grade or homework material, but you can sit in on all classes and participate, as long as you don't "bother" the teacher, who are very nice people.
State ran schools dont use an endowment, they are typically budgeted... So wait, they can only be non-profit if no one is paid a salary, or if they make very little? It is not a matter of semantics, it is a matter of meaning..
When you cant win, ad hominem.
I guess I was considering relevant work experience, not flipping burgers. But that wouldn't be a newbie - in that case, I think I agree that the degree is certainly a more useful indicator. :)
Benford's Corollary to Clarke's Law: "Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced."
You need a formal education to get past the gate keeping programs and HR drones. Whether or not you need the degree to do the job is immaterial if nobody that can make hiring decisions sees the application.
That is because -- get this -- computer science is not about coding.
It's about math and engineering. Any coding is incidental at best and it's not their job to teach you "programming".
Judging programs on their employability is myopic. If you are smart and logical, then picking up a programming language is trivial.
Most top schools have little to no programming education -- you learn discrete math, graph theory, complexity theory, algorithms, data structures, graphics (which is physics and math), AI (lots of stats and probability), linguistics (if you do NLP) etc.
Even when you learn Operating Systems or Compiler Design, you're learning them from a design point of view. The details of implementation are something you pick up on your own.
You want to teach skills that are transferable and will survive the next programming language or platform fad. Any good CS program teaches that. Learning to code in Java or *nix sysadmin skills are things you should pick up on your own.
Sounds like someone's kid wasn't accepted into the UC system.
All mean quips aside, the fact is out-of-state and foreign students pay quite a bit more for their tuition. The higher rate is meant to offset the fact that their families have not paid state taxes. You really should check your facts before spouting off indignities.
lavishes silly high six-figure salaries on tenured professors, and rich pensions
I can't tell you how many times I've had to dodge professors driving their Ferraris on campus.
Mostly true. For UNC, and I would expect UC, the state subsidizes the cost of NC students, and the out of state tuition represents the non subsidized amount.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
Indeed. But from what I've heard, lack of a degree isn't usually much of an issue for people with substantial relevant work experience - they have references to their competence exceeding anything a recent graduate can bring to the table. It's getting the relevant experience in the first place without a degree that's the challenge. For a lot of things a university degree probably isn't actually the best route, but so long as you're competing for those unpaid apprenticeship positions against people who have a degree it's an unfortunate de-facto requirement.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Teabaggers deserve every last bit of mocking, ridicule, and contempt they get, and then some. And there's no need for quotes - they are properly called teabaggers, TEABAGGER! Maybe you bagger idiots might find the label offensive, but it was your creation, and it's far too late to change that. Baggers are just too stupid and disconnected to have ever made any prior connection with the common slang term for teabagging. Now they're all pissed off and offended at being called teabaggers. Well if the hat fits (including the stupid ass hanging swinging tea bags), then wear it!
Looks like you're a closeted teabagger. I don't know about you, but I want nothing to do with them. Have fun.
Thank you Dave Raggett
I remember one tech college, RCA Institute, that was actually pretty good. I met their graduates doing pretty good work on pretty good jobs everywhere. Bell Labs used to hire techs from RCA Institute. I met an electrical engineer from India who went to RCA Institute for 6 months to finish off his education. Then he went to work designing IC circuits for the blind. He showed me the first 8086 chip I ever saw in my life.
Then they went into decline. They were going to close down, the teachers tried to make a go of continuing on their own, and it just wasn't working out as a viable model. They changed their name several times. Last time I heard it was called TCI, Technical Careers Institute or something. They had rented a space on 8th Ave. off W. 56th St. in Manhattan, next to McDonald's.
Anybody know more about them? Are they still any good?
With facts or even reasons? Lots of stuff is done traditionally that's just awful (for the sake of not trolling I won't bother listing any of them off).
Large parts of America are struck by enough poverty to count as the third world. So much so that several charities that traditionally work in third world countries have started offering services in America. The Rust Belt had it's entire manufacturing industry off shored. Entire economies literally collapsed. Short of outside intervention there's really nothing for those people.
Now, if you're willing to abandon those people to their fate that's fine. But just come right out and say it. But the fact is there isn't enough money locally to raise those people out of poverty.
I know your concern. Why should you have to pay for it? Well, one nation under God and all that.... Plus, what ever happened to America's Can Do Attitude? When I as a lad it would have been unthinkable to abandon 1/3 of America to abject poverty. Not because of any high and might moral beliefs, but because we took it for granted that there was no problem we couldn't solve.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
During the Obama Administration great "progress" has been made in the erosion of public education, a k a the privatization of American education for the benefit of Wall Street, to the detriment of any semblance of social mobility (which the USA ranks last in on the OECD countries' chart) and meritocracy. Just as they are downsizing community colleges to greatly increase economic disadvantage (most noticeable in California) so too is this yet another way to defund education in America.
Obviously, holding colleges accountable for Wall Street is the most ludicrous and most blatant form of economic warfare conceivable!
The government wants to reform student loans, where good money is paid for nothing, but still uses consultants for its software development? Maybe they need to get the mote out of their own eye first...
I think all the education colleges is a joke and money racket! Four year all you take is bull$!t classes and two year you go for what you want to learn about. The cost of books, etc. is ridiculous. You go to a job and get trained, what is wrong with just on the job training and learning as you go! All a 2 and 4 year degree and anything else is a piece of paper, an expensive piece of paper!
I don't understand this difference between a "For Profit" school and a "Not For Profit" school.
What exactly is a "Not For Profit" school? Is that like the schools in the UC / Cal State system? Because their tuition is just as much as the "For Profit" schools.
Or is it public vs private schools? Because the private schools have their endowment and are all about making money just like the "For Profit" schools.
As a student, all I see is that all of the schools charge way to much for tuition. Again, as a student, I don't see much distinction between the costs of tuition at the UC system, Cal State system, a Private college or say, DeVry. (Well actually, the private college is probably the most expensive...) When people bandy about the terms for profit and not for profit, I wonder what they are talking about, because to me, all colleges are trying to make as much money as they can.
this should have been done a long time ago.
when the economy is tough the best investment you can ever make is yourself.
moreover, it should be less risky investment considering that many students actually borrow from the government.
i still owe 84K and i haven't paid a penny back because get by job simply don't allow you save any money. i have to pay it back and shitty jobs simply won't pay anything and believe me i am concerned about this very much
what needs to happen is that you get mandatory placement in your chosen field if you borrow from the g. and only if you don't borrow the placement is optional. what students might not like is that the place may be some shit hole town in the middle of no where rather than large metropolitan city like SF.
The tuition rate does not matter, the costs are not the same. Online for profit schools that have no campus dont spend as much money and that is where they pocket the profit. Remember that at UC they have to pay for all those buildings and teachers to teach the students.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
No, my kids received free tuition at the state universities for different reasons. Though I'm sure it gives you some solace to rationalize spending state assets on non-citizens. As for indignities, maybe you should try supporting your own nation/state and stop assuming things you can't possibly validate.
Okay, exactly where is your citation for that review, mate?
At the moment I'm unable to quote those figures, but let's say it's the 10% you're indicating. The hundreds of millions of dollars that the state and alumni have spent on the CSU infrastructure (California) are not being spent to educate some amount of the citizens of California, or America, and instead are being used to create competition for our citizens. On top of that, illegal aliens are counted as state citizens for purposes of tuition. No matter how minor you conceive the issue, the mandate of the CSU is to teach Californians whose families paid for the taxes to create and sustain those schools.
there's always been a strong libertarian presence here, but now this site is seriously infested with regressive anti-science baggers.
It's so easy to get the two mixed up. The key is that the libertarians would rather pay a toll road company every time they leave their driveway than to pay a government for anything, while the teabaggers are listening to their astroturf leaders tell them that deficits are God's punishment and if we killed all the gays and atheists and drug users, the government could spend trillions on oil campaigns around the world and we'd never run out.
On the contrary, I will rarely hire anyone without at least a BSc in comp sci. I don't need code monkeys, I need people who can think for themselves and know theory. Trade schools and college grads don't tend to show that. I don't use resume screening software or hiring firms. I do my homework in hiring, train new grads in their profession, and fire those that can't cut it or who are less than motivated.
Like many of the healthcare stats that were thrown about before the ACA (as part of an effort to push the idea that ANY so-called "reform" would be "better") these stats are pure unadultrated garbage. They lump-together all "for profit" colleges (down-to and including back-alley scams designed to hijack military vet education benefits) and then tar them ALL with the cost, drop-out, and loan default numbers - in order to push the idea that government-run schools are "better" than non-government schools. The Obama administration has been talking about limiting student loans to only government-run schools for years now and the first step of that plan was to take-over the student loan business. This ongoing drumbeat against private "for-profit" colleges is every bit as transparently political as the repetative showing of "Blackfish" on CNN ( how many hundred times have they aired THAT?)
The nation's elites are working VERY hard to make sure that only they and the people they choose will have access to places like Harvard and Yale (private schools) and to top-notch hospitals, doctors, and cancer clinics (most of which are not included in the Obamacare "exchange" policies...) It's the same leftist bull that ALWAYS is guaranteed to occur anywhere leftists get power: they get power promising to make everybody equal, but they end-up making the masses "equally-poor" and "equally-deprived" while making the leaders "more equal than everyone else". The only reason this scam keeps working is that there is always a new young-and-dumb generation that has not seen the lie play-out.
So how are they going to complete a degree if they can't survive the rigours of academia? The real point of ACT or SAT is one's ability to fit in fact-driven world, so if one fails that test, one will fail university. Which begets another question: How are students who don't have the skills actually going to pass? The answer is dumbing-down: Turning a course into a 'monkey see, monkey do' process that has limited usefulness. In the workplace, tools (especially software) change; work processes change, and even the data-set required to solve a problem changes. If one doesn't have the fundamental skills that underpin those changes, anything learnt is soon obsolete and useless. These are secretarial schools pretending their level IV certificate (or, an Associate award) is a degree.
The government and industry has been pushing vocational training for a long time. This results in training providers who don't promise a minimum level of functional knowledge but promise a job. In consequence, when an industry boom occurs, everyone gets 'qualified' for that job. Then, the industry is booming, the training centres are booming but there aren't any new jobs. It became so severe in my country that the government stopped funding enrollments at those training centres.
This, so much this. A lot of students get quite the scare when they realize that, gasp, a computer science degree is largely about doing science. While we do have introductory programming courses here, they're mostly seen as giving students the basic toolkit with which they will do their actual degree, a bit like how a physics degree has a few introductory pure math courses. Many courses I've taken don't even have programming at all in them, and some of those were very enjoyable at that!
In the end, the ones who realized that a comp sci degree isn't about learning programming tend to be those who do best at programming. I've met students who'd never used C++ and picked it up in a matter of hours. Perhaps they didn't have as much refinement as someone who's been doing it for 10+ years, but they understood that you can easily transfer high-level notions (ie. the focus of a comp sci degree) to any language.
Perhaps the pitfall of this is for the mediocre students, who don't realize this. They tend to have difficulty adjusting to another language than the one they were taught with.
The policy is not the reality: http://www.dailycal.org/2012/05/17/new-legislation-could-limit-out-of-state-enrollment-at-uc-campuses/
"Currently, the university has a policy to limit out-of-state enrollment to 10 percent systemwide and was at a total of about 8.4 percent as of fall 2011. However, at individual campuses like UC Berkeley and UCLA, the proportion exceeds 10 percent.
In fall 2011, out-of-state and international students represented 18 percent of undergraduate student enrollment at UC Berkeley and 14 percent at UCLA.
Chancellor Robert Birgeneau said at a press conference in August that the campus’s long-term goal for out-of-state enrollment was 20 percent, justifying this goal by saying that Californian enrollment has not suffered as a result of increased out-of-state enrollment."
And these are undergraduate figures. What are the figures for graduate programs?
The hundreds of millions of dollars that the state and alumni have spent on the CSU infrastructure (California) are not being spent to educate some amount of the citizens of California
Complete and utter bullshit. Out of state and foreign students pay MORE than the unsubsidized cost of their education. In other words, in addition to paying for their own full costs (receiving a grand total of $0 of state money and no alumni money unless it was given for this purpose), provide revenue that funds scholarships for California kids.
instead are being used to create competition for our citizens
Except that the citizens you're talking about aren't competitive to begin with. Admissions standards for out-of-state and foreign students are higher than those for California students. The only people keeping your kid out of a UC or CSU school are other Californians who outperformed him or her.
Seriously, the distinction between non-profit, private or public universities is lost on me. Most of these schools are about as "non-profit" as the NFL (which, OBTW is listed as a 501(c)6 non-profit). The top 10 presidents make over 1.5 million each (with the highest over 3 million). Other than not paying dividends to shareholders, they behave pretty much like a for-profit company in every other way.
This proposed rule change will mean that You will be tracked by Your college so they can prove how well You do in the workforce.
The colleges will realize that there is a strong link between a parent's success and their child's success. Colleges will no longer want kids from welfare homes; they want kids from rich homes.
There will be other unintended consequences that I can not imagine, yet.
You are confusing the words foreigners and out of staters. The OP said foreigners, that is below 10%, out of staters is another issue, but is still small, less than 7%, which I clearly delimited in my original post.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
The state does not spend your resources on the out of staters, that is why they pay pull tuition, not in state tuition, so that they are not a burden on the state.... The cheaper cost of in state represents the subsidy the state pays.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
I dont know maybe google "unc finacial records" Oh wait, here we go, http://www.unc.edu/finance/fd/... 2012 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, lets see, change the 2 to a 3 and now we have the 2013 one... That is just one school... but...Yep can do it for all of them...http://www.fis.ncsu.edu/controller/financial_reports/ Gotta hate lazy people...
When you cant win, ad hominem.
I got a job offer from DeVry recently. They wanted me to teach C to their two-year networking students as their first (and only) programming language.
Yes, that's right: C! To community college students studying "network administration".
I didn't take the job. I think I would have been doing the students a disfavor by teaching them C. Nothing to do with C, but you don't teach networking students C at all, let alone as their first programming language (second, if you could Batch/bash).
You sound like you work for a company I would choose to avoid. I say this with 12 years of professional experience under my belt and a BS. If you arbitrarily cut off people without a BS, you are missing some of the cream of the crop, particularly those students coming from a homeschool or alternative schooling background. If your company allows you to categorically screen people as you claim to, I would avoid working there.
Of course, personally I think you are full of shit. Anybody looking for programmers these days is going to take a long, hard look at anyone that seems competent, regardless of academic background. Programmers are hard to find, and nobody I know screens for college degrees over experience. That's just dumb.
The Federal government needs to be involved in education because local education was for the rich only and even then it wasn't very good.
Contrary to popular belief, the U.S. was not better (in most ways) in the past.
I hate it when people state "mine is better" but then don't state what it is. Perchance does your "Uni" not like money? I'd definitely look at it, and potentially take some classes. Ugh.
I don't need code monkeys, I need people who can think for themselves and know theory.
That's exactly why I've had better luck with self-educated people who clearly put effort into their education. It's a sign that they're more motivated, and they also understand even the theory, from what I've seen.
So, my experience has essentially been the opposite. Most (not all) people with degrees have no understanding of the theory *and* no practical knowledge.
Absolutely.
As a former "Tech School" teacher with contacts on the "Uni" side, I can state that there's little difference between the quality of a TS teacher, and the people actually *doing* the teaching at a Uni. I've seen great and horrible teachers in both places.
The real difference between a Uni and a TS is in the recruitment of students. The Uni simply has higher entry standards. While the Tech Schools aggressively recruit in the student quality range between a true Uni, and a bottom-of-the-barrel Community College.
Typically, programming is one of those skills you're expected to pick up to the extent you need to while studying computer science. If you can't learn to do it well enough, you probably don't belong in the program.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
In my university classes, I knew more than one student that weaseled their way through classes without really understanding the material, so I know that those people are out there. A college/university education isn't a panacea; the student has to do work on their own to end up with any level of competency at graduation time.
In my case, I saw two benefits to a college education. First, it showed me what was important to study in my time. Second, it provided me the pass to get past the HR gatekeeper-goons at most employers. A degree is no replacement for having the drive to learn.
Want a degree from our Quebec Canada universities? It's easy! You just have to learn to work, stay focused, study to understand your subjects, learn to analyse, learn to write and spell and learn to do appropriate math. If your memory is superb, perhaps, on a slim chance, you could write your exams (sorry, no multiple choice questions). That's what I had to do, and what did it give me? A indepth knowledge of my profession, a scolarship to grad school, and a b+ average.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
Exactly, but only because you had the drive to study and complete your assignments based on understanding, rather than rote memorization. It's easy enough to recognize a pattern in the answers that a professor is looking for and answer as expected without really understanding *why* you're expected to answer that way. Getting through a university with something more valuable than a piece of paper is work.
On the other hand, if you haven't learned hard work and writing before university, then you're less likely to succeed during it. Or, you could be a self-driven student that would learn the material even if they weren't directed by a university curriculum.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Exactly, but only because you had the drive to study and complete your assignments based on understanding, rather than rote memorization. It's easy enough to recognize a pattern in the answers that a professor is looking for and answer as expected without really understanding *why* you're expected to answer that way. Getting through a university with something more valuable than a piece of paper is work.
On the other hand, if you haven't learned hard work and writing before university, then you're less likely to succeed during it. Or, you could be a self-driven student that would learn the material even if they weren't directed by a university curriculum.
In my classes, there were many "late bloomers". These were young adults from poor families who left high school for the workforce, saved their pennies to return to university full time. They were obliged to do the first year as a evening university student, taking two winter courses, one summer courses, for 6 credits, and when completed, they could transfer to continue full time.
For the full-time student, some of his courses had to be attended in the evening, meaning that the quality of instruction was the same in the evening as what could be obtained during the day. I had to admire these individuals, and what they did for all of us was to instil in us, that desire to achieve.
Is that missing today? Sadly, my view is that with two working parents, that burning desire is now, a tepid flame. Parents are too tired to apply parental pressure on the student to be in the top ten.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
Does this mean that there would be an incentive for a college to prevent the graduation of students who statistically less likely to be employed (as qualified by DeptEd) upon graduation?
Maybe we should take the chance that none of the for-profit schools' bean-counters will ever notice...