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Who'd Go To University Today? (spiked-online.com)
Are students being short-changed by their $60,000 degree courses? And does a university education in 2018 represent good value for money? A slew of recent government and think-tank reports aim to tackle these questions. And the answers they give are not encouraging. From a report: The Public Accounts Committee announced this month that the value of the UK's student-loan system is falling. Last year, the government sold a tranche of the student-loan book at a major loss. The portfolio had a face value of $4.4 billion, but was sold for just $2.1 billion: a return of 48p in the pound, according to the public-spending watchdog. Clearly, the current method of funding higher education represents a bad deal for the taxpayer.
But do universities offer good value for students? Not when you consider the fact less than half the money that students pay in tuition fees is actually spent on teaching, according to a report by the Higher Education Policy Institute. The rest of the money from tuition fees goes into other services and parts of the administration. These include admissions procedures, marketing, vice-chancellor pay and programmes to boost access for poorer students, as well as therapeutic services like mental-health provision and exam-stress counselling.
Universities today have far too much bureaucracy, fat-cat VC's salaries are far too high, and a great deal of what administrators spend money on is a hindrance to education. University bureaucracy is often at the forefront of coddling students, encouraging them to see exams and hard work as threats to their mental health. It is troubling to see that students are not only plunging themselves into debt at such a young age, but also that much of that debt does not go towards their actual education.
But do universities offer good value for students? Not when you consider the fact less than half the money that students pay in tuition fees is actually spent on teaching, according to a report by the Higher Education Policy Institute. The rest of the money from tuition fees goes into other services and parts of the administration. These include admissions procedures, marketing, vice-chancellor pay and programmes to boost access for poorer students, as well as therapeutic services like mental-health provision and exam-stress counselling.
Universities today have far too much bureaucracy, fat-cat VC's salaries are far too high, and a great deal of what administrators spend money on is a hindrance to education. University bureaucracy is often at the forefront of coddling students, encouraging them to see exams and hard work as threats to their mental health. It is troubling to see that students are not only plunging themselves into debt at such a young age, but also that much of that debt does not go towards their actual education.
I truly think we are starting to see the edge of an education bubble. For many years, high school pushed college so hard people got worthless degrees that did nothing to prepare them for the job market. This devalued the mostly none stem degree. Think about it. I can get a degree in communications and come out with 60k in debt and make 40k a year. Or go into a trade and make 80k with little to ne debt. Second, when politicians say make school more affordable they just mean make it easier to get loans.
If you want to become a Socialist with a minor in Feminazism.
Please, tell me where University still costs only $60,000...
To answer the question quickly: There are still a lot of countries where education, including at universities, is free or very inexpensive. People there will continue to visit universities in large numbers.
Not to mention, you get into the workforce and you have large corporations doing everything they can to keep wages down. Free internships, H-1Bs, etc etc.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Who cares if your universities have problems when you're getting free healthcare??? U.S. sucks! Go Europe!!
But in all seriousness - I think that if universities were required to clearly and cleaning break their "fees" into components as to what they fund, it would really open some eyes. A yearly invoice might look like this:
Tuition (funds professors and classroom activities: $XXX
Student Extras (funds clubs facilities that all students can use): $XXX
Privileged Student Extra (funds clubs and facilities that only SOME students can use): $XXX
Outreach (general recruiting and student support): $XXX
Specialty Outreach (recruiting and support for only SOME types of students): $XXX
Athletic Teams (anything funding the school's athletic teams - not all students can play): $XXX
Building & Grounds Maintenance: $XXX
Utilities and Related Operational Costs: $XXX
Administration (people not doing maintenance or teaching): $XXX
When people start to see their own dollar figures going to some of this shit, maybe they will care about it.
Then again, may not.
If the job or career path can't reasonably pay back, then unless you have extra cash, a different path should be taken. Trade schools can be gateways to decent jobs and cost a fraction, and even if you do take college courses, things can be done to make them cheaper: A community college has a lot of inexpensive, transferable, General education credits. In my engineering program, one of my classmates was simultaneously taking engineering courses at my university and driving to a nearby community college for the Calculus courses.
Living at college used to be closer to living in the military. Dorms were spartan, you didn't have a choice at meal time, you ate what was served. Now, no one would go there unless they had a choice of on-campus coffee shops. Students are demanding housing that graduates couldn't even afford in the past. They want every kind of service imaginable. If the school doesn't provide it, they go elsewhere. So, schools are competing to offer great service and living conditions. If they don't, they don't attract the best students. Schools aren't investing the same way in the actual quality of teaching. Only the most dedicated students actually make their decision based on that. All this drives up the cost, and for some reason students are willing to pay.
I went to University for the same reason as everyone else: the women. There is a reason it is called "the best time of your life".
Are students being short-changed by their $60,000 degree courses?
Sometimes yes. Sometimes no. I think a better question is whether we are doing a good job directing people into schooling options appropriate for both the needs of the individual and society. For some reason we tend to look down on trade schools and anything else besides a 4+ year degree despite the fact that many jobs really don't require such education. Not everyone needs a 4 year college degree but we funnel a lot of people into college who probably don't need to be there.
And does a university education in 2018 represent good value for money?
It certainly can. The lifetime earning increase from a college degree very often substantially outweighs the cost of tuition. Not to mention that there are quite a few jobs you simple cannot get without having earned a college degree. I'm an engineer (among other things) and good luck getting a job as an engineer without a college degree. It's possible but really, really hard at most companies.
But do universities offer good value for students? Not when you consider the fact less than half the money that students pay in tuition fees is actually spent on teaching. The rest of the money from tuition fees goes into other services and parts of the administration.
That's kind of a dumb argument. Educating a large student body inherently comes with a lot of overhead. Let me use an analogy closer to the heart of many people here. Only about 10-25% of the cost of developing a piece of software is the actual engineering and code writing. The overwhelming majority of the cost to the company is in sales and administration. This isn't a good or bad thing, it's just how the numbers fall out. When you have a student body of 50,000 students, you need a lot of administrative staff to manage that. There is a lot more to teaching students than just doing a few lectures. That's not to say all schools manage their money effectively but the notion that administration isn't going to be pretty substantial at a large university is absurd.
Not to mention, teaching is only part of what universities do and arguably not even really their main purpose. They also are in many cases research institutions which has little to nothing directly to do with educating students but still carries very real costs. Part of student tuition often goes to pay for part of this even though the students may see little to no direct benefit from it.
You best chance at success is having rich parents. The Old Money makes the world go 'round.
You missed at least half the story. Less than half of spending goes towards teaching. It is a huge pot of money without accountability and is getting "stolen" by administration. "Free" education just makes this problem worse.
Many degrees are not getting students jobs anywhere near what the degree costs. Again "Free" education doesn't solve this, it makes it worse.
Its almost as if you fixed these issues, the problem of if its "free" or not becomes moot. Price goes down by half, and you get something worthwhile. If you can get a STEM degree that pays $100k a year for $30k, are you going to throw a fit because you had to pay for it and it wasn't provided by the government?
... and it will absorb it. It may or may not do what you intended the money to accomplish, but the money will be absorbed. Especially when you also start imposing restrictions that must be administered as part of throwing the money.
The US has Title IX, which imposes a LOT of overhead on any educational institution that accepts federal funding. When you work for such an institution, you are required to take Title IX education each year. The only rational take-away from Title IX training is, "Don't Take Federal Money!"
Where the rugged individualists of the Slashdot meritocracy, much smarter than their normal peers, decry the value of a college education even as their jobs are outsourced to H1B coders with multiple advanced degrees and willing to work for less, and corporate management who won't touch you without that bachelor's?
Eliminate student loans. Require universities to take payment in full for each year UP FRONT, or take no money up front, and a percentage of lifetime income for anyone attending - with that percentage increasing with length of attendance. Numbers shown below are just examples:
UG Year 1 (or fraction thereof): 1% of future lifetime income (until designated retirement age)
UG Year 2 (or fraction thereof): 2% of future lifetime income (until designated retirement age)
UG Year 3 (or fraction thereof): 3% of future lifetime income (until designated retirement age)
UG Year 4 (or faction thereof): 5% of future lifetime income (until designated retirement age)
UG Graduate: 6% of future lifetime income (until designated retirement age)
Graduate, Law, Medicine, etc. Studies: + 0.5% per year
Master's Degree, Law Degree, etc. : 8% future lifetime income (until designated retirement age)
Doctorate: 10% of future lifetime income (until designated retirement age)
This will encourage universities to be more selective with respect to admissions (they're have a stronger incentive as to student outcome and want to make the best bets they can) and to slim down all the bullshit they have going on now (get rid of expenses unrelated to improving student outcome and recruiting the best students).
In the case of students moving between schools, payments are split on a pro-rated basis.
Optionally - allow schools to compete by varying the income percentages that they take. Better schools can take more. Less quality schools can take less.
i was the last year (1988) in the UK where grants were available. i still had to work thursday evenings and all day saturday at sainsbury's, cromwell road, to stay out of debt. an older friend shared an insight with me, that it is the young people who have all the vitality, energy and enthusiasm. the younger people are the ones that will be creating the wealth and (directly or indirectly) looking after the older generation. .... so what the HELL are we doing by destroying their enthusiasm and vitality by CRIPPLING THEM WITH DEBT?
the older generations should be going, as a community, "these are the people who are going to be looking after us when we're older. buy them some land, GIVE them a home to live in and get them the resources they need to build a stable future, for us *and* them, for god's sake!"
Colleges and Universities really shouldn't be Job Prep institutions. They are academic institutions who's job is to educate people, for the most part for a job in academia, where their research findings are often published, sold, or given to the public. Or received grants to do such research.
However the problem became the mantra "If you want a good job then you need a college degree" So people got college degrees, and businesses also bought into this and made job requirements to require college degrees, even for jobs that really doesn't require them.
American Vocational training seems to be limited to mostly Blue Collar jobs, which are good paying and often rewarding jobs, but white collar work still requires a college degree, even though the work has little to do with what you have learned in college with the exception of some soft skills, such as time management, being able to stick to getting a degree, interacting and learning about other cultures. However there are a lot of jobs out there that don't need a degree. An computer programmer doesn't need a computer science degree, but it needs more than just knowing what the commands do. There are a lot of principals of computer science that needs to be taught, but not a 4 year degree, mixed with classes in liberal arts classes.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
on water by some strange COOP and COOPers from tar budgets of brexit empire of red, white and blue axis of Dr Evil. In reality there are no universities in times of CIA lemon party gestapo. All of such institutions serve all kinds of different functions starting from animal farm, greek life, fraternal fasces of fascism, etc.. You know they are in business of "teaching you a lesson" that you were not careful asking for. Notice all those uber alles shitbags don't need to study - they magically learned everything they need to know about such security clearances in the kindergarten - sorting and grading people into castes. Are you smarter than fifth grade citizen? At the same time it's very very important to realize that evil doctors had for themselves another version of dark net - so called INTERNET 2.
at least in America. Here in the States you can't even get your foot in the door if you don't have a degree. Thanks to work visa programs like H1-B companies don't have to train and they get to pick and choose exactly who they want to hire. You won't even make it past the computerized HR filter with a bachelor's.
If you don't want to spend your life at Walmart or (if you're lucky) earning $15/hr doing welding/HVAC (with no raises and ever decreasing pay due to inflation) you need a degree.
If I may rant like a crazy man for a bit here: This comes off as more anti-education propaganda pushed by an increase right wing media whose corporate masters are tired of paying for schools in the form of taxes.
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Once in a while now you see stories about youngsters choosing trade schools over traditional colleges. That is classic market action. Demand and indirect subsidies drive up the price of something to the point where it is no longer a perceived value, and consumers seek alternatives. I work in IT but my degrees are in unrelated fields, if I was looking at high university debt in today's market I would definitely be looking at alternatives.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
"Clearly, the current method of funding higher education represents a bad deal for the taxpayer. " Governments of all kinds receive a MASSIVE ROI on education. By having you know, an educated workforce the government expands its tax base probably an order of magnitude over what it would have otherwise, dramatically increasing its revenues. The quote represents nothing but a short sighted conservative hyperbole. It amounts to "OMG I CANT IMAGINE ANY BENEFIT OTHER THAN A DIRECT INSTANTATIOUS PROFIT, I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT DELAYED GRATIFICATION IS"
The root cause of current higher-education problem is government backed student loans. Why is that? Well it's fairly simple. Student loans can not be discharged by bankruptcy. In addition companies that offer student loans have little to no risk - because student loans in the US are fully backed by the government.
As a result, there is no incentive to means-check people prior to giving them a loan. In point of fact, there is very little means-checking. In addition, because of the government backing of the loan there does not need to be a correlation between what a particular degree is likely to actually pay, and how much the education might cost.
For instance, an electrical engineer could go to a university on all student loans. As long as that person gets reasonable grades, they will have decent earning potential. Another student could go to the same university and get a degree in basket weaving. It will cost them about the same. But the earning potential afterwards is nil. They are unlikely to pay back the loan.
This has led to universities charging insane amounts of money for degrees that are near worthless. We can't and shouldn't protect people from getting worthless degrees. That's their problem. We SHOULD, however, remove the liability from the taxpayer for those worthless degrees. That decoupling would result in far more stringent means-testing. It would also mean that loan companies would no longer give students loans for worthless degrees.
A college degree would be worth more. Trade-schools would likely make a return. People would be naturally funneled toward degrees that are in demand. We would be better off all the way around. Keep in mind, this is very similar to what happened to the housing market. As long as loan companies could gives loans and hide the risk they will do so. In the housing bubble's case it was through the clumping together of mortgages to hide the risk. In this case it's the government hiding the risk.
any more than fancy dorms are the cause of rising tuition.
Per the article I linked above tuition is going up because we slashed federal and state subsidies. I'm so tired of this lie being repeated...
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Easy: go to a country with respectable universities where you can afford it. The UK system is not great since you still have to pay around £10,000 per year (England, in Scotland it could even be free). They do have a proper 'educational tourism' industry given the number of foreign students around.
Other European countries have more affordable systems.
This is just another stupid article on slashdot. They won't tell you how much it would cost if the "evil gobernment" were not in it, just like single payer healthcare in America.
You don't have to drive a Ferrari, and you don't have to go to Yale. You can choose a car and a school that's affordable.
I'm about to start my Master's degree at Georgia Tech, one of the best schools in the country for my field. It'll cost $10,000 - 20% tax credit = $8,000.
For my bachelor's I could have spent less for the same school I went to. I paid a total of $24,000 - $6,000 tax credit = $18,000.
A lot of schools have a cap on the tuition per semester so you can do 24 credits for the same price as 12. Many allow credit by examination. What I suggest to people now is to spend a 6-12 months studying before you officially enroll, then take the tests or submit the work so you get 9 credits in your first month of paying. Those kinds of strategies can bring the total cost for a bachelor's degree down to $9,000 after the tax credit.
I got my bachelor's at WGU, which is a state school. Halfway through school my income doubled partly because the final exams for some classes are industry certs like Cisco CCNA. So as a junior I had already earned several well-known certs as part of my classes.
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STEM degrees are worth it. High price, but high starting salary.
Arts, not so much, high price, very low starting salary.
Hint:
The world only has a limited need for "Comparative Literature", "Women's Studies" , and other useless degrees/majors.
There are only so many jobs available at:
The Philosophy factory
The Comparative Literature Office
The Office of Womens Studies
The Fine Arts Offices
The Office Of Harry Potter Studies
Why can't they just give 50% to everyone on that tranche? Or, give them a 3 yr grace period? The loan buyers are going to collect the loan at 100% (student loans not dischargeble in bankruptcy court?) Why are we subsidize for profit business in such a harmful way?
Loans are the main cause of high prices here and in many other sectors such as real estate etc. Cost of education used to be limited to what a student could pay, now it's limited to how high a debt students can take out. And a large part of that extra cost goes where? Oh yes of course, interests. Why do people do this to themselves? If you don't have money for something, it's probably a bad idea to buy it anyway so don't effing do it.
Is this apparently low evaluation indicative or anything?
If you take a normal portfolio of CC loans. You have a total amount owed X, and an interest rate Y.
The value of those loans is going to become value X + Z, where Z is affected linearly by X and multiplicative by Y. The Loan is going to be worth more than the principal amount because it is sold to make a profit.
Student debt, unlike credit card debt, unlike mortgages, unlike every other debt is sold under the cost of supplying the debt, and there's no collateral. The value is always going to be well under the principal, that was decided on before any loans were granted.
Face value here is another term for principal amount. This amount was always well under the value of the loan. And there's no mention that this evaluation is lower than normal.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Americans love to rant about how they think money is wasted in higher ed, but this article is from the UK. Not everything compares directly as their costs are a bit different.
As a full-time staffer at a major public research university in the US, I'd like to mention one cost that was not in the summary: building and grounds costs. Even if you don't want perfectly manicured lawns, you still need to maintain a level of safety on the grounds and make sure the buildings are collapsing on themselves. Many schools have faced year after year of reduced state and federal funding, and they have to pay these bills somehow. This isn't just an image thing either; a lot of grounds maintenance is about safety.
It is also worth noting that tuition helps pay for the costs of keeping the lights on, maintaining temperatures in rooms and labs, etc. Even as we go to smart(er) thermostats it is still not a trivial matter to provide efficient heat in the winter and cooling in the summer. Schools aren't allowed to bill these costs to grants.
Are executives overpaid at our schools? Almost without question. But the amount of the tuition revenue that goes to their pay is pretty small compared to other costs that the schools have to face.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
You CAN have not enough bureaucracy.
You can also have too much.
What might be too much for one institution can also be not enough. Every institution is different.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
My kids will cost me a whole lot less than 60K each though their BS degrees, one in mathematics and the other in Computer Science. How's this possible?
1. They attended a community college for their first two years, followed by a very good local 4 year college which is known for it's STEM programs.
2. They both are living at home while they go to school.
3. They are both working during the summer months and applying for as many scholarships as they can find.
The community college is about $2,000 a year when you throw in books, and the 4 year school lists at $12,500 a year, so my full cost, no scholarships included is $30K each. After Scholarships, that dropped to about $23K each.
Now I understand that not everybody has $23K burring a hole in their pocket, and not every one has quality schools within driving distance, but I simply do not understand why anybody thinks spending $60K for a BS in a STEM subject is necessary. You CAN do it for less than you may think, and get a great education if you shop around and consider your options carefully.
Which is a FAR cry from what MY college education cost my father. I went to a state school which cost about $4K/year and had to pay for my lodging. I worked full time at home during the summer and part time during school to defray living expenses and was able to keep Dad's outlay down to under about 5K/year. His total cost was less than $36K in the late 80's. We could have done it cheaper too, had I wished to live at home and commute like my kids.
Is it worth it? Sure is.. But things are a bit different here in the USA...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
I haven't made my living doing what I studied (English). I've made it doing what I did for beer money (programming). If I hadn't been at uni, would I have needed the money badly enough to develop my skills? Hmmmm.....
Not quite everyone goes to University to mate. Actually, there weren't any women in the physics department that I went to.
I think physics departments have somewhat changed since you graduated. Not completely, but the all-male department is becoming somewhat of a dinosaur. Currently, about 20% of physics degrees are earned by women:
https://www.aps.org/programs/women/resources/statistics.cfm
Overall in universities, though, women outnumber men.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
The argument given in the UK is that a degree increases your lifetime earnings.
The figures they use for this are based on a time when 5% of the population got a degree. Now we send 50% of students to university, yet politicians are still claiming that anyone with a degree will earn significantly more than those that don’t, but that is a statistical impossibility.
The UK economy at most needs about 25% of the population to have had some form of higher education, so half the people who get a degree will likely never have a graduate job.
Its like infrastructure, it is NEVER going to be outwardly profitable, but it is important enough that the people need to pay for it anyway if they want to live in a nation that is modern and prosperous.
Much the same is also true for the US. We're victimized by colleges, both online and traditional. Victimized by internet and cellular services. There's so many more feeding on us, and we do virtually nothing to stop it.
It's long past time that the people, not rich, greedy individuals and corporations, were actually SERVED.
Make med school free, after which you devote 5, 7 years to serving in places that desperately need doctors. Make ALL colleges free, if the grads devote themselves full-time for the next 5-7 years.
After their service, they're free of debts to the country.
Of course, the rich and greedy hate it. That's a fair part of why I love it.
Eat the rich. The revolution will not be televised.
So many others might best be described as pecuniary extraction. Unless one is planning on going the whole way to a doctorate, then replacing instructor, you're getting nothing of worth.
As well, the single minded obsession with getting a degree allowed some amazing tuition inflation.
The tuition inflation allowed adding multiple layers of middle management, and as the story notes, groups that had nothing to do with education.
So there is the price gouging.
Some other things started happening as well. Universities were a place where ideas and different opinions were allowed to flourish, and tolerance of different outlooks was encouraged. But they hit a real pothole in the road by tolerating people who promoted intolerance of a far left wing variety.
So people like Anne Coulter, and Bill Maher were uninvited from some places they were to speak at after the far left kooks demanded they be excluded.
People such as Bill Maher, Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock, and Larry the Cable Guy all stopped playing college campuses because of the political correctnes demands. As Maher put it (paraphrased) "When a lily White guy, a Black guy, a Jewish guy and a Redneck agree that colleges are a bad place, they are probably on to something".
Toxic environment.
Being a male on a college campus is a rather unpleasant experience. You have to pay for "classes" where you are told just how evil a rapist you are, and that your future depends on your strict obedience. What is more, those things that can get your future destroyed are rather ambiguous. To cap it off, there is no due process. If you and a female engage in anything while both drinking, she cannot give consent. But for some reason, you can. The results are a confusing mine field for male students.
So at this time, we are seeing something like a 67 percent female enrolment in college. The males have made their decision to avoid that toxic environment. As male attendance drops, the people remaining get angrier and angrier, and the way a man sits is now worthy of outrage and hatred. You mean I'm supposed to pay for that abuse? The interesting part is that as some of these career women hit their mid to late 30's they want to settle down, find a man, and start fertilization therapy. But they find that there are no men "worthy" of them. DDG "where have all the good men gone" to see the laments of modern professional women.
They want to settle down, but unfortunately, there are no men that measure up. In true far left feminist fashion, they are trying some of the same tactics that drove men away in the first place.
Reminds me of the old saying "The floggings shall continue until morale improves"
So back to the original part of my post, outside of a few majors, college is not remotely worth it. As well, it takes advantage of many women who after its over, find themselves in possession of worthless degrees consisting of giving your opinion, and that only inflate their egos, then deprives them of normal life relationships and activities.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
About how when she went to college she had to work 2 PT jobs to pay rent & tuition.
I remember thinking "wow you could pay rent on 2 PT jobs back then!"
- Get rid of tuition fees
- Sponsor students to pay for their cost of living
- Finance it with the higher taxes that you get from these students once they get a well-paying job
and the last 2 years is basically on the job training I'm paying for. Not that I have much choice, but I can tell you that if you're in STEM the workload is nuts. You come out of college ready to hit the ground (or you don't graduate). You are most certainly prepared for the job market after that gauntlet.
Now, the diploma mills might be another thing. The last administration was trying to reign them in, to the point where big ones like the U of Phoenix were almost put out of business (good riddance). But the current admin... not so much. Hell, the current Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos is openly trying to shift public funds into religious schools (of her particular denomination, of course)
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The picture is a bit different at private schools, which do not receive state funding but have nonetheless seen substantial tuition increases. At private nonprofit colleges, the spending categories described above — student services and faculty and administrative salaries — together explain most of the tuition increase over the past two decades.
If you can successfully complete a 24 credit courseload you're either a savant or cheating.
The lifetime earning increase from a college degree very often substantially outweighs the cost of tuition
That used to be true but why would you think it would be true any longer?
In fact I would argue such a thought is DANGEROUSLY wrong.
Why? Example. Say someone took a year to live near a college, take some courses in audit, and take a WHOLE bunch of online courses in any field, which you could lean on local student study groups to understand.
After that year you easily will know enough to get an entry level job in a field you have been studying. Now instead of paying tuition, you are working while studying further,
Take that four years out. Instead of debt you have three years worth of earnings (I'm assuming you only studied that first year). Such a person may well be able to have 20-40k of savings they can invest when they are around 20, and three years of solid work history to pursue more advanced work opportunities.
So how can you possibly think the person with $200-$500k of debt can ever catch up?
The thing that totally tears down the "lifetime earnings" argument is that workplaces no longer seriously consider degrees. Even Google which famously used to require graduate degrees had to chuck that requirement out the window in order to hasten the build of the Don't-Be-Evile Empire.
The other side benefit of an early work approach is that you can find out what work in your chosen field is REALLY like. There are a huge number of students that spend four years to get a degree and find that they don't want to do what they have spent four years prepping for. Madness.
On a side side note, another benefit of not being an official student of a college you are near is that you can pick any one to stay near without having to be accepted, and get the same caliber of student interaction.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
except for the rich kid's dorms. I just put my kid through the dorms (moved her to an apartment after yr 1 because it was cheaper and nicer). Yes, there are "nice" dorms. They're crazy expensive and only for the rich kids. They're a profit center for the schools, and my kid got nowhere near them.
I've already put this link in the thread but it deserves repeating. Once again, Fancy dorms are _not_ the problem. Cutting state and federal funding so we could cut taxes on the rich is. And the rich don't care because you're expendable. They don't need you or your kids to be educated. They've got H1-Bs for that.
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Making up numbers but:
150 years ago: Used to get kids of welathy parents ready for hte business world
80 years ago: People started getting advanced degrees as the US economy takes of post WW2
20 years ago: Alot of the 80 year old mentality still persisted with a larger population
Today: People really need to rethink universities. Specifically, the costs, not the benefits.
What i know today. Smart kids going to a mediocre university (less expensive) will be better off in 20 years than the mediocre student that goes to an expensive university. As an engineer today, the paradigm shift is real. I'm 42 and when I went to school it was really the end of the days where going to a "good school" actually mattered.
You're really paying for your kids to go have a good fun time for 4 years before entering the workforce. OK, they will hopefully benefit from their degree (lawyers, engineers, etc .... art degrees though .... get real). Just saying most of the money being spent is not on education. It's basically a long term vacation.
"Degree mills" you say. No, they were only trying to stop people from making a profit. It had nothing to do with degree mills, as many state sponsored schools are degree mills. What was offensive about the for profit schools is that they were letting poor people get an education, which is an affront to the "professional educators" who see themselves as the gateway to wealth. Bigotry is alive and well in the democratic party.
And what if I told you that when you are talking about public money the issue of societal ROI is inescapable? There is no good argument for society either footing the cost directly or indirectly (via debt-enslaving the next generation) so that people can learn for "other reasons."
We have an electorate that is an order of magnitude more educated than it was in 1776 and yet falls prey to everything from #FakeNews, to IRS scams perpetrated by a dude with an Indian accent so thick you could cut it with a knife. How is that "educated electorate" appeal working these days?
I've averaged 20 credits a quarter for six quarters, finished my community college in 1 year, and am on track to finish a double major in CS and Math by the end of my third year. What allowed me to do that was already having a strong foundation in programming from years of experience, and being good at Math. I also went into it focused, and knowing what I want to do. No credits wasted on switching majors, or exploratory classes.
Similar to the GP's suggestion I spent about a month or so refreshing on mathematics and taught myself trigonometry so that I tested straight into Calculus. This has meant that every credit I have taken has gone towards my degree, no need to build up taking low level college math credits that don't count for anything but electives.
My toughest quarter was 23 credits, with 3 math courses, physics, and assembly programming and maintained a 3.97 GPA. Nothing particularly savant, and have never cheated, but I have made sacrifices and prioritized my education. Some classmates go out and get drunk on the weekends, showing up to class with hangovers, and I spend my time studying my subjects in more depth, or exploring other subjects of interest.
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." [Thomas Jefferson]
> I got my bachelor's at WGU, which is a state school. Halfway through school my income doubled partly because the final exams for some classes are industry certs like Cisco CCNA. So as a junior I had already earned several well-known certs as part of my classes.
WGU is a private non-profit but they're reasonably priced.
For countries where the university are actually budgeted by the government inscription is still cheap. Last I looked (last year) to enter my study mater - fundemental physics - untila master degreee was less than 500 euro per year. The other document I found state it is between 180 euro and 600 euro depending on various factor (matter, level) https://www.google.com/url?sa=...
There is no lodging naturally for that price. But last I studied there I paid that for the FULL year. Over 5 years (D.E.A. level - to make a PHD afterward - probably replaced by 4 years master nowadays) that would be 2.4K to 3K cost. When I read 60K cost I think people are either taking a private school, or add housing , or are getting fleeced. Or all 3.
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I'm about to start my Master's degree at Georgia Tech, one of the best schools in the country for my field. It'll cost $10,000 - 20% tax credit = $8,000.
That might be what you pay. It is unlikely what it costs.
Hopefully, they will teach you the difference.
Haahahah oh god shut up ivan.
Believe it or not it's almost free for most people in the US to go to college if they're willing to dedicate some time to planning how.
Surprise surprise you can easily convince an 18 year old to load up a lifetime of debt because they wanted to go to an NCAA school (that means they play football on tv.. not to be confused with soccer)
A lifetime of debt just to watch football and go to tailgate parties (In america that's when we booze up and cook burgers in a parking lot)
I didn't cheat, so I must be a savant. I got my MSEE in 4.5 years for less than $60k with scholarship.
I do not recommend a 24 credit courseload, I regret it now, the extra 1 year wouldn't have killed me and I've had enjoyed life more. But in 1999 the salaries for someone with my degree were unbelievable. In 2018, they are still very, very good if you are in the proper subfield (i.e. anything not exported to China, and/or anything that requires large amounts of skilled labor, such that even China/India cannot produce enough).
I'm not sure I agree with the theory that university is outmoded. I think the entire mantra when I was in HS was "get a degree in anything, and you'll be better off" is being shown to be completely false, which, if you had a brain, you probably realized back then. If you are not in a field where a high level of education is required, then it's not clear why you'd pay for one unless you simply have money to spend (and some do, care of trusts set up by relatives). Still, as long as I draw breath I'm going to encourage my kids to pursue education that support high paying careers, and if those aren't interesting or an option, pursue a reasonable trade to fall back on if their other ambition doesn't pan out (writing, art, whatever).
Trade education can make some sense, although there aren't and good schools that aren't an obvious rip-off, and the usual approach is to apprentice to some expert. Sometimes that is even written in to law in various regions. I discourage this only because that system is set up to be every bit as abusive as the usual student visa->PhD path.
Of course, you have to get an 8% annual return to pull that off, which seems to be considerably above the average.
If you are looking at the averages of all mutual funds, you are getting a number skewed very low because of the presence of a ton of funds that are for very low risk investors.
Someone very young should be putting funds into a much more volatile fund, so that over time you have a better return - if you look at this list of funds from Vanguard, you'll see that returns of 8 over ten years are not uncommon (look at Traditional and Target-Risk). You just need to keep your money in for a while.
You are also totally not factored in the opportunity cost of loss of possible investment that goes to student loans instead. You laugh at someone having 366k in "today's dollars" in retirement but that person is probably a lot happier than someone who lives in our neighborhood who is having social security garnished to pay off student loans, to the point she has to take. job for extra income (the wages of which ALSO are garnished to further service the loan). All the sudden 366k starts to look super awesome.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Many people do 12-18 credits while working full time. Both my parents did, I did etc. If you're not working full time, 24 credits is completely doable.
The suggestion I made was to do 24 credits in two or three semesters - but only pay for one semester. Study your normal first semester courses *before* you officially start school (before you start paying).
Some schools will give you credit by exam - meaning you can pass the test and get credit. You can spend a year studying for those tests before you start paying for school. Other schools don't do credit by exam, but you can certainly study the material ahead of time, even read the entire textbook, beforehand.
...propaganda, non-stop, 24 hours a day, with NO DISSENT ALLOWED.
I advise you to slow down and relax a bit, particularly in your last year. 20 years later, I look back at this and wish I had taken more time. I had reasons, and perhaps you do too but take time and examine them. If one of them is a hot new job paying big bucks, think harder. Either that job will still be there next year, or, and this is important, you really didn't want it anyway. This is particularly troublesome in technology.
You got a trade-school degree. You had many options and went with something which was aimed at employment. You chose poorly on that level, but you chose based on a job later, right?
You were at university. You should have gotten a university degree which made you a well-rounded human being. That's what universities are for.
The US has forgotten what universities are and are upset with them for not matching our misconceptions.
It's not too late. Go to a trade school now. Get an associates in just about anything which pays.
I'm in the minority in the IT world, but I'm of the opinion that a degree helps people who aren't going into the trades, or the military, to have a little bit of growing-up time after high school. I got a STEM degree a while ago, and don't use a bit of the specific technical knowledge I gained in my day to day life. What I did learn from a technical education that was transferable was the ability to write well, interact with others professionally and troubleshoot methodically. All of these skills have been critical to my (modest) success in the world of work.
That said, the days are gone where just graduating from college would guarantee you a solid job. Even when I graduated, people who partied their way through school and barely got degrees in business, psychology or communications were immediately snapped up by large corporations and put to work shuffling paper, working the trade show circuit, or some other random entry level task. New grads who really lucked out or went to the right school would get high-paying jobs at consulting firms flying around the world 300 days out of the year. Today, Lots of the paper shuffling is offshore now, the jobs don't exist anymore, and/or they don't command the same upper-middle class salary they used to. This is why people are complaining about the ROI on degrees. Even people who barely make it through CS or engineering find employment. Dotcom Bubble 2.0 is taking CS grads faster than they can be made.
In general, you should shoot for a degree that's at least tangentially related to something technical to make yourself stand out. And once you're in, you need to make the most of the opportunity, including doing internships and other activities that make companies want to pick you over Joe Random Graduate. Also, private universities are a complete rip-off UNLESS you are guaranteed to profit from the experience. Harvard, Yale, MIT...yeah, take out the loans because you'll never be allowed to fail once you make it through an Ivy League school...you'll make so many contacts and have more opportunities than I did graduating from a big public university. But, $45 or $50K for a tiny no-name college with no special affiliation? No way...save your money. I still think education is a good investment, but you need to consider the cost vs. the ROI.
I'm interested in hearing how you plan on computing societal ROI of potential discoveries that may require more than one human lifespan to recover the investment.
After all, Newton and Leibniz discovered the principles of calculus in the late 1600s, and I'm pretty sure the feudal economies of the time didn't really reap the benefits. Short-time societal ROI calculations would have eliminated Newton's and Leibniz's discoveries entirely and we'd still be driving horse-drawn carriages and farming.
IMHO, many US institutions of higher paying have students forking out too much to build expensive box seats for alumni.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
Then again, I live in Germany where college is not only free but actually in some ways cheaper. My student ID gives me free public transport and I get rebates on public events. ...
College in the US OTOH is a totally different deal.
Quite literally.
Doing that as a non-rich hetero male? Raking up large five digit sums in debt? At risk of being sued to kingdom come and have my vita destroyed because I made the wrong compliment to some prudish US chica?
Nope.
That whole package sounds like a really bad idea. If I were in the US today I'd steer clear of colleges like the plague. ... I'd probably do freelance development, build my own microhouse and go hiking, snowboarding or surfing all day or something. Not much space our freedom for all that here in Germany.
My 2 rudiments.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
If I were an undergraduate student, I wouldn't bother starting at a four-year institution unless I knew I could get a full ride. I'd go to community college for two years, where the tuition is much cheaper and I can get through the basic stuff that's usually taught by TAs at a university. I'd work my ass off and I'd finish a "transfer associates" and then transfer into a bachelor's program at the strongest school I can find. Same degree, 60% of the cost.
You might ask, what about the social life college provides? Great question, and the fact is, I almost never got along with my classmates, because I was simply too weird. I would have been better off staying in my home town for my first two years.
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State funding for higher education (i.e Pennsylvannia) has always been cut even way back to the late 70's when I was coming through. So the story hasn't changed other than if state funding has been cut so much, one would think after 30 some years the few thousand they would give should be zero by now.
So what I think you are seeing is the reduction the state is contributing based on inflation and the associated costs that universities are trying to increase the price by to make money and give better pay and benefits all the colleges employees ( even the janitors, cooks, and lawn care) than what the outside workers doing the same job would get. In other words, universities want 10% increase, but the state tax revenues only have i.e. 5% increase to give, thus the universities scream and holler that the state is reducing their portion by 5%. A few years back, the county and state of PA wanted to increase taxes so that they could compensate for the losses their pensions for both the state workers and any school system (kindergarten thru university worker). Thus, they wanted a guaranteed return in when the stock market was dropping whereas joe blow worker in the real world was being hit by stock losses in their pension and 401k plans (the company didn't compensate for the losses).
Moreover, all state universities are not-for-profit universities. Only private schools are for-profit. Hence the state universities pay no state/federal income tax and can be thought of as a form of charity. I don't know if the for-profit have to pay income taxes. Thus, a state university has to show they didn't make any profit at the end of the year. Thus, what to do this, they blow the money;otherwise, they would have to reduce tuition to show no profit.
Also, the article doesn't talk about endowments and the profits they earn from this as to how they are allocated to reduce tuition.
Just look at the salaries PA and other universities pay to the colleges sports team coaches and the president and all the various vice presidents of each dept on down. It's gotten ridiculous, since one is there for an education and not to subsidize the various sports teams etc.
I advise you to slow down and relax a bit, particularly in your last year. 20 years later, I look back at this and wish I had taken more time. I had reasons, and perhaps you do too but take time and examine them. If one of them is a hot new job paying big bucks, think harder. Either that job will still be there next year, or, and this is important, you really didn't want it anyway. This is particularly troublesome in technology.
Personally I was glad I completed a 5 year degree in 4 years as I really started learning programming the most after I left college.
The flip side of higher risk investment, is higher risk of losing money instead of gaining it.
That's only ever been true of the short term. I wouldn't even think of it in terms of higher risk but more like higher volatility - which is short term risk. That is why for something like this you would use a large fund, which has money distributed over a large number of stocks - the set as a whole is still volatile, but over time you won't see much money just vanish and some will make really good gains.
your initial statement was painting investment in a rather rosy light.
That's because for over 50 years it has been rosy if you are at all careful and just spend a little effort to understand financial options and the value of saving and investing.
I would actually argue it doesn't matter what kids learn, if they would just learn that they would be set...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
those are scams. Obama was well on his way to shutting them down but, well, we just put Betsy DeVos in charge of education and she tore all that to shreds.
The article is disingenuous at best and dishonest at worst. It uses bad practices at private for profit schools to paint all schools bad. The authors of the article have a pretty clear, anti-education agenda. It's part of a broader narrative being used to discredit education in order to save money and keep the working class from being taught to think critically.
I know, I know, I sound like a nut job. But as the saying goes, I'm not a conspiracy theorist, I'm a conspiracy analyst. If you think the ruling class of America hasn't noticed the cost and effect of education on their worker drones then you aren't paying attention.
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At US military academies, that is a standard course load for upper classmen.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
My program is has unsually low costs because it's designed to, and it doesn't involve a lot of new cutting-edge research. They did the OMSCS for several years and it worked, so they've expanded those approaches.
Are you by chance familiar with Eddie Woo? He's a mathematics professor, mainly calculus, who has over a million subscribers on YouTube. He's been named Teacher of the Year by several organizations and there is even a postage stamp with his face on it. In other words, he's a really good teacher.
There are two ways to get the lecture part of learning calculus:
A. Sit in a lecture hall and watch some random math prof's lecture.
B. Watch Eddie Woo lecture, from your house. He recorded it two years ago.
How much does each cost? Constrast the price of a lecture hall (and associated parking lot) vs YouTube. Woo is probably a significantly better teacher, and the cost for the one of the best teachers in the world is approximately zero.
You may br familiar with the Artificial Intelligence course taught by Peter Norvig (Director of Research at Google, former head of Computational Science at NASA Ames Research Center) and Sebastian Thrun, former Stanford CompSci professional and founder of Google X and Google's self-driving car project. These are the top experts in the field. Their lectures are roughly free, simply because they are recorded rather than live.
Georgia Tech also does cutting-edge research, and those are paid for by grants or other external money from the people who want the research done. If SpaceX wants Georgia Tech to develop a new nano-material for their rockets, SpaceX pays for that. The two main funding sources for Georgia Tech are tuition and sponsored projects.
Where I worked before, an agency within the Texas A&M system, sponsored projects paid for not only their own direct costs, but also the cost of the buildings where those projects were done. In other words, the things we did for companies and other governments helped pay the regular classes for in-state students (which were sometimes free). Out of state paid more tuition than they cost; out of state students produced a profit. So much so that rather than cost the taxpayer money, we generated money for the taxpayer m
My program doesn't have a lot of original research, so the primary source of revenue is tuition. Government money is a pretty small piece. I'm an out-of-state student, so Georgia Tech is probably making a profit on me - I'm paying more than the cost. They've gotten their costs low by using appropriate technologies and processes.
A generation has been sold a bill of goods and some are starting to realize this.
Eventually the universities will get back to what they once were: research institutions, places of higher learning for the academically-inclined. They are not job training and never were. They are not for everybody.
...laura
Judging by how many professional athletes that hold communications degrees getting paid a THOUSAND times or more than I, it looks like a communications degree is the way to go!
Let's face it, the markets value a communications degree more than a STEM degree.
I work for a major defense contractor, making a 6-figure salary, with no degree and not even a single certification - which they were fully aware of when they hired me about 3 years ago. Experience and ability are all that they really care about.
Here you go
If you think she's talking about Islam or even Judaism when she says "God's Kingdom"... well, I don't know if I'd call what you have naivete....
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If you can successfully complete a 24 credit courseload you're either a savant or cheating.
That isn't true at all. I would say you probably aren't getting much from your classes if you are so overloaded, but it wouldn't be that hard to do. I did 20-22 hours for 4 semesters in community college while working nearly full time, but I simply coasted with B/C grades with the intent to transfer to an average state school. I'm generally considered smart by my peers but I'm no savant.
I would bet nearly anyone capable of finishing college at all could handle 24 credit hours, but they wouldn't have much of a social life and probably would gain more from the college experience by taking it slower.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
In the old days students lived in hovels, smoked roll-ups and drank cheap pints. Now they all want modern gadgets, plus a car that's a minimum of a few years old. They've grown up in a much more consumerist society though.
It's not about what you know, but how you apply what you know. Schools have become way too focused on filling people's heads with empty words and no substance. That's why they're a waste of money. It used to be that you actually learned something in schools. You got to be somebody. Now you just memorize things and repeat them verbatim. The more you memorize, the more points you score, and the more useless you become. By the time you're done memorizing useless things, you've lost, what, 90% of your capacity for learning?
Leftie: "Everyone should go to University! It's a Human Right!"
Normie: "Er, everyone can go to university. What's the problem?"
Leftie: "NOOO! Poor Brown people can't because Poor, Brown, Misogyny, Racism, Patriarchy, NAZIS!"
Normie: "Huh? We have bursary and scholarship programs. Kids with good grades can fill out a form and get their education paid for. So what's the problem?"
Leftie: "REEEEEEEEEEEE! Everyone should go to University! It's a Human Right! REEEEEEEEEEEE!"
Normie: (sigh) "Ok, assuming you're right, how do you propose to pay for all that. University education is expensive."
Leftie: "Well tax the rich of course! Tax the evillll corporations!"
Normie: "Fuck Off"
Leftie thinks about this for a while rubbing 2 brain cells together then comes back.
Leftie: "I've got it! Why not a student loan program! We can setup yet another government bureaucracy to manage it! Big Government YAY!"
Rightie: "Hmmm, my banker friends would like that. They can profiteer from that. I think we need to ask University Administrators what they think of this."
Universities: "So what you're saying is we can take everyone in and we'll just get paid no matter what? HOLY SHIT THAT'S FANTASTIC!!!!"
Results:
Now Universities are all about asses-on-seats and not about higher learning.
It gets worse. Universities pressure professors and threaten their tenure if they fail too many students. Sorry Quantum Field Theory is hard...
It gets worse. Universities emphasize retardo courses like gender studies, intersectionality, postmodernism, Harry Potter, Star Wars, etc..
It gets worse. Kids get saddled with 50000 of debt and useless degrees living at home with mommy and daddy into their 30's.
It gets worse. Now we have a situation where universities can charge whatever they want for tuition fees. 200+% over CPI.
It gets worse. Because courses get dumbed down Industry has trouble finding good candidates and therefore look outside. > 50% PHDs are H1B visas.
Solution: Kill the student loan programs. Whoops not so easy when the Banks, Government and University Administrations all support it.
That isn't true in the slightest. I think you are confusing electorate with populace.
My first question: given #1 and #2, and #4 why doesn't the UK value education as much as the US (given the commonly held belief that the cheaper the tuition in a country is, the more that country "values" education)? My second question: why doesn't any other country in the world value higher education as as much as the US does (given the reasonable argument that spending more on something shows the value we hold in that thing).
The question isn't whether a university degree is worth it or not. The proper question is, "For which fields is it worth it?" Some fields demand it because of the expertise. Some fields don't pay enough to really cover it, though, despite this demand. Certs and apprenticeships are definitely appropriate for many fields, even highly professional and specialized fields. We need, as a society, to review what we're doing, and why we do it. This would require critical thinking, and that is something we have stopped teaching at the primary and secondary levels, which I think is a lot of why we are having many of our problems, both on this issue and so very many others.
Because it's a weed out. I call bullshit, that's a misadventure
An increase in administrative salaries does not necessarily mean universities are spending more money of administration. In fact ballooning administrative headcounts may be an attempt to spend less on administration.
Since WW2, the salaries of professors have risen faster than inflation. There was a time when admission decisions were made by a faculty committee. That would be prohibitively expensive today when a full professor makes about $160,000/yr. So you hire administrators to do most of that work at about half the salary, which increases administrative head count while reducing actual spending on administration.
Another area that's been shifted from faculty to administrators more recently is academic advising. When I went to engineering school in the 70s, this was done by professors and was a significant part of their work load. My son is in engineering school today and it's done by administrators instead. My daughter graduated from a liberal arts school and although she had an advisor on paper she didn't know his name until I nagged her into finding out. It turned out they still used faculty, and in two years my daughter was unable to secure a face to face meeting. That's a case of false economy; academic advising is critical for students who plan to apply for graduate or professional school, and studies show it has a significant positive impact on graduate rates.
Non-instructional spending is not necessarily "waste".
At state institutions, except in a handful of exceptions tuition increases are entirely accounted for by cuts in public funding (which have happened in 47/50 states since 2000) and inflation. Cost increases at private institutions are driven by professorial salaries and competition for school ranking -- a kind of tragedy in the commons in which each institution's financial welfare is pursued at the cost to higher education as a whole.
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I don't think you can rely on that generalization because it appears to ignore the difference between sticker price and what gets paid.
Yale's sticker price is just short of $70K/year. Some other facts from https://admissions.yale.edu/financial-aid-prospective-students:
More than 50% of Yale students receive need-based aid from Yale. Yale does not offer any merit-based scholarships. Yale does not expect students to take out loans. The average Yale Scholarship was approximately $52,800 for the 2018-2019 school year.
Good luck telling anyone what's going on with tuition there. Is the last $5K of the sticker price just there to ensure that people that can pay it kick in another $5K toward the education of those that can't? If the "average" need-based scholarship that the >50% of students receive is just $630 less than sticker-price tuition, where, exactly, is the tuition increase?
I have an associates and just got my bachelors and think it is the biggest scam in the US. Teachers are making 65+ an hour and are way over paid for what they do. Presentations and tests are all pre-made for them from the book publisher and they don't have to do much at all. My Bachelors was all busy work and didn't learn a thing as I hear from many others in other schools. It's a big scam probably in America and glad to see people finally waking up! All it is, is a waste of money for a piece of paper that proves you are a fool for paying so much money to get a degree. The government was attacking 2 year associate schools, I think they need to attack all of education as it's a scam.
chapter 11 and 7 is needed before we get to masters / phd needed for low level jobs.
Baloney. Tuition increases are going up because of government backed loans and easy access to cheap money. If interest rates went to 14% or the government stopped backing loans then the tuition costs would drop quickly. Universities are building infrastructure like crazy and the administration is skimming off the top. The idea that the increase in cost is due to $160k year salaries (that isn't a lot of money) and advisors is comical. Salary costs for faculty is a small portion of the budget. Building and maintaining a new $500 million business school is expensive.
Kids were told, you can't get anywhere without a four year college degree. Now, it's the supply is WAY outstripping demand, which means, anyone with an XYZ degree will see a REDUCED salary to start off, since it is a employers market. Plus, considering some of the people I've seen come out of universities, they wouldn't be able to hold a job. To busy with their phone, too many demands, no work ethic and on and on. Not to mention a lot of them are ignorant in common sense. Two year trade schools are where the money is right now, but, for a lot of kids, that means actually getting their hands dirty, something they wouldn't want to do, which means more H1B visas.
I got my degree back in the beginning of this century and even back then I'd have argued the amount of spending and waste was out of control. I was skeptical going in and confident going out that it had been money wasted. What I could have done with that money even without a degree would have been far better. I'd have seen a far greater return on my investment for sure. However it wasn't my money that paid for my education (fortunately) and so I took advantage of the situation even if it ended up being mostly a waste of my time. I was "lucky" enough to come from a family who had sufficient means to cover it. Four additional years though of working would have been to my benefit. I'm doing great today- but I certainly can't credit my education for that. I'd actually probably have given the opportunity cut my education short around 8th grade. After that it would have been better spent elsewhere. The reality is society and the laws don't foster innovation and learning particularly by young people. With restrictive laws preventing young people from getting jobs (particularly good paying jobs) to restrictions on freedom of movement (age based discriminatory laws prohibiting driving as opposed to what I'd also argue is wrong, but better laws based on ability). Schools are largely about maintaining control.
Well, of course if you cut out the money flowing into any market, prices will collapse, but that works by pricing consumers out of the market. You can't get more people educated for less money that way.
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I'm not sure you know how it works. If you cut out the free money, the tuition prices will magically go down and make it MORE affordable. Universities in the US are expensive because of all the easy access to government money. The universities are sitting on billions of dollars. They won't go out of business. You need to ask yourself why the University of Texas has $30 BILLION and still charges tuition. Ridiculous.
Low cost, accredited online degrees from top universities are going to drive vast numbers of lesser brick and mortar schools right out of business.
Kinda like if all the Mom and Pop video rental stores had skipped the part where they succumbed to big chains (Blockbuster anyone?) and died due to streaming video.
You can easily go to an English language four year degree granting school in places like Canada or China for a heck of a lot less than that.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
"Cheaper" isn't the same as "more affordable". Not for everyone. Eliminating Pell Grants would certainly make college more affordable for families in the top quintile of households by income, just as they would certainly make it less affordable for the bottom quintile.
Now as for my not "knowing how it works", I won't claim to. I've only looked at the data, I don't have the kind of a priori knowledge you seem to have. My problem with your kind of "stands to reason" knowledge is that it generally represents special cases as typical. Harvard University has a 38 billion dollar endowment, which supports your characterization. But Harvard not typical. The median college endowment is 7.9 million. At the median rate of return, this generates an annual income of about $650,000.
This pretty much mirrors the situation in US society as a whole: a small number of the very richest are extremely rich indeed; the median isn't doing nearly as well as the average.
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I'm not saying eliminate grants. I am talking about loans and easy access to loans. There is no reason the University of Texas should be $12k in tuition for residents and $40k for non-residents. They are sitting on a $30 billion endowment which is spinning out cash. Something is rotten.
People should stop giving a crap to Forbes top X schools, because it's just BS non-sense. There are lots of good colleges that are affordable. For undergrad you basically don't get shit from the top universities like Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Berkeley, etc. Good luck seeing your teachers during their office hours at those universities. Go to an affordable school and kick ass, then apply to a top research university. The only good reason to go to stanford, MIT or CMU is so google will hire you, since they are degree bigots. The only good reason to go to yale and harvard is to meet rich spoiled kids and build your social network. People who interview applicants for those schools are told answer this question "will this applicant hold up our prestige?" In other words, it's not about you, it's about them and maintaining their exclusive elite status.
At military academies you generally don't have to worry about working full or part time to eat, or have a roof over your head, or to avoid racking up enormous student debt.
At a top ranked university in STEM education which I attended, they estimated a student would need an average of 5 hours of extra-classroom study / writing etc. per credit hour, per week, to keep up. There are 168 hours in a week.
At 5 hours per credit and 24 credits, you already don't have enough time in the day to get a healthy amount of sleep, let alone enough time to choke down ramen three times daily, excrete said ramen, or observe reasonable levels of hygiene. And that's discounting the fact one still needs to attend lectures and labs, etc.
24 credit hours might be viable on a gender studies degree. I wouldn't know.
That 32 billion figure is an outlier, and it covers both UofT and Texas A&M, which is over 100,000 students. While that means those institutions surely could reduce their tuitions, accumulating massive endowments doesn't explain the sector wide problem of tuition increases.
As for the discrepancy between in and out of state tuition, this is just a way to subsidize taxpayers' kids. Given the size of their enrollment, the Texas system probably could survive if government loan guarantees, but a median sized endowment at a median sized university generates less than $100 in revenue per student.
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Government controlled education always equals government controlled thought, because those who are hired to educate will share the same biases as those doing the hiring creating a self enforcing loop. If you don't believe me , consider the nearly universal opinion Americans have on diversity and freedom of religion. Where did they learn it? Public schools. ( weather that opinion is good or bad is NOT the point, what is certainly is not is nearly as prevalent in other cultures).
That is the best case. It happens much faster if the propaganda is intentional in some place like China.
âoeTolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons.
Not sure how anyone learns advanced math without going to University.
Can't imagine anyone qualified for an Engineering job or physics without advanced math first.
For most CS or programming, advanced math isn't needed, but if you want the most interesting jobs, it is very helpful.
I suppose someone could learn this stuff online, somehow. Maybe free coureware? There's something about hearing other student's questions that helps clarify concepts better. Everyone comes at problems from a slightly different angle, which is more important than memorizing how-to solve 1 problem.
But today, smart people without education can demonstrate computer skills without any degrees or certificates, without any visit to a University.
I think I spent two years and $800 in fees on my bachelors: tech fees, online class fees, graduation fees, and, while I didn't use one, students get fee'd to death with the cards mom and dad put money on. Every time I'd get a "friend rape" email I wanted to reply and say: the real raping going on is of the students with fees!
My university also had a plethora of "free" services for students. The ones I knew about, I never used, but I probably paid for them and the ones I didn't know about wrapped up in my tuition! This is a great lesson for anyone who wants free college: someone is going to pay for all of this shit. Using the present situation as the case, the students/parents already are, but now they're wanting someone else to foot the bill.
Colleges have a lot of explaining to do to students and their parents when it comes to them implying you have to go to college for a job. You don't. Not even necessarily for a high paying job. I'd say college helps, but it can be done without by sweating your ass off a bit.
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
I say let 'em crash
Universities were originally created for religious study, then the industrial revolution created the rich leisure class. They were mostly dumb, boring and uncouth children of low class industrialists, so someone at Oxford decided the men needed to learn interesting things for dinner conversation, like Greek Mythology and history. The children of mill and factory owners of Victorian England had something to do before joining the Drone* club.
It is all brand new. It was never about work. Engineers and dentists were apprenticed,
*Drone club - fictional name of those various real clubs you hear about only for the rich. Created for the pointless sons (i.e. not the first born) of the rich to hang around all day drinking.
Make a list of university options as needed.
Read the past years of news about the university.
Do they select students only on merit?
Have to pass exams and tests to show the ability to "study" before getting accepted?
Is the published news about merit and quality? Look into that university.
Protests and a political activist campus is the only news about that university? Demands for more protests and activism? Avoid.
Keep looking for a university thats supports academic skills.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
The education system is put in place so you get a job. That's it. It does not teach anyone about being an entrepreneur and creating your own asset so you can STOP trading time for money. No job will pay you what your worth. The education system, aka University is a for-profit business.
I know this is not a popular alternative in this circle. But we cannot judge the value of a universitary degree just based on the individual: When a student devotes four to ten years of his life to pursuing an academic degree, it's not only that student that receives a change in life. The whole society wins from having a qualified professional, in whatever specialization area this person chose.
It is only logical, then, that the society as a whole absorbs all (or, at least, a good chunk) of the university's costs should be payed by the society.
Many countries work precisely like this. I live in Mexico, and have worked at a public University for 17 years. Yes, this is not a rich country - but public universities strongly help the balance. Students indebted for a couple of years of professional salary is... Absolutely unthinkable and inexcusable.
I got my BS and MS at GT... I think I was paying about $800/quarter for tuition at that time (graduated 1999 and 2001)... where they stick it to you is room and board, which I think is up to about $4-5K/semester, and is required for freshmen and sophomores. $1000/mo or so and it's not even a proper apartment. Then... there's the meal plan... *barf*
Good luck at GT though. It's a tough program (no matter what it is there) but well worth the effort, and complete absence of social life, relaxation, and calm. Hah...
Really; trying to equate: "admissions procedures, marketing, vice-chancellor pay" with "programmes to boost access for poorer students, as well as therapeutic services like mental-health provision and exam-stress counselling" is just typical class-based exaggeration intended to infantilize and belittle humanitarian affordances. Agreed, marketing and vice-chancellor pay should be addressed. But, the program(me)s intended to enable more people to attend university should be fully funded. Plus, with some degrees - STEM fields come to mind - the return on investment is significant.
> I was paying about $800/quarter for tuition at that time (graduated 1999 and 2001)... where they stick it to you is room and board, which I think is up to about $4-5K/semester, and is required for freshmen and sophomores. $1000/mo or so and it's not even a proper apartment.
They put some of their top-rated programs online. No paying them for room and board. I'll listen to the lectures on my phone Bluetooth while I drive.
Which these days is typically more than half their staff, then things might improve.
Then they might have full-time tenured teaching staff, decent research groups, and actual learning - apparently the point of Uni.
Speaking of shitty parents, someone should slap yo mamma so hard yo daddy's nuts explode. They didn't teach you the dangers of buying iProducts. Do some goddamned googling and fix your fucking broke ass phone.
Not an outlier. Most large universities have endowments in the billions.
I can't link you a copy of my Union contract, but in my shop electricians, instrumentation techs, machinists, pipefitters, boilermakers, sheetmetal workers, teamsters, and operating engineers all START at roughly $28/hr and within 3 years make $36 in Tennessee. Those same jobs at our Silicon Valley facility in Palo Alto pays double because the cost of living is higher. You ain't looking hard enough for examples. You may also already know what I just told you and are anti-Union.
>The F&A costs are typically a percentage of the direct costs, for awards from federal agencies
Yes, with the US federal government, the way to get more money is to increase your expenses. You get more by wasting more. It's pretty much only the federal government that is that stupid. Roughly nobody else does that. Not even the Mexican government.
When SpaceX, ExxonMobil, or Mexico wanted something, we quoted them a price. If we found ways to do it more economically, such as moving from paper-based workflows to computer-based, the savings went in our pocket. If we wasted money by sticking with paper, the federal government would have paid us more to be wasteful, but we had only one federal grant. 90% of our deals were with sane people. Wasting money meant we'd be out that money.
Sometimes they bought instruction - we have a thousand Mexican government employees come for two weeks per year. Sometimes they bought a result. Sometimes they rented our specialized facilities for a day or a week. I don't think they ever did 1xx% of costs contracts, paying us more the more money we wasted. That would be dumb. That would be federal.
Personally I fucked about for three years at university, got a part time job to cover the rent, learned to program, met a lot of friends I retain decades later and had a glorious time.
Curiously they also gave me a degree (which has fuck all to do with programming). I guess handing in assignments and doing well in exams was all it took.
Graduated with no debt other than the Government student loan which I cleared 2 years later.
I genuinely don't understand people thinking they have to work hard at their degree.
Weird. At the top ranked university I went to I did around 5 hours a week. Including lectures, seminars, studying and writing assignments.
Then again it was in the UK, where 'turning up to class' isn't considered relevant to whether you pass or fail, just whether you can demonstrate the ability to learn, communicate and apply the concepts they're covering.
That used to be true but why would you think it would be true any longer?
Because the evidence shows that it remains true as a general proposition. Not all cases of course. There are a lot of people going to college who probably shouldn't be there and there are courses of study where it's hard to see the return on investment being positive in a reasonable time frame. But the data clearly shows that even with the high (and rising) prices college degrees still very often represent a good investment thanks to the increased earning potential. Ironically this increased earning has less to do with the actual education received than from the piece of paper one gets at the end but that's another discussion.
So how can you possibly think the person with $200-$500k of debt can ever catch up?
Because they make a LOT more money than they would otherwise. A 4 year degree can add over a million dollars to your career earnings which more than makes up for the cost of the diploma. And let's be honest, very few students incur half a million in student debt.
The thing that totally tears down the "lifetime earnings" argument is that workplaces no longer seriously consider degrees.
Don't know where you got that idea but go talk to your local HR professionals if you continue to believe this. Having a college degree matters. A lot. For a lot of jobs. Some people manage to do well without one but the data doesn't lie. Having a college diploma makes a big difference for a lot of people.
The explosion of administration staff is both surprising and absurd.
Absurd perhaps but not terribly surprising. A lot of the administration is for stuff that doesn't have much to do with classroom work. Universities aren't just a bunch of lecture halls. They have research, they have conferences, they have semi-pro sports, they have technology transfer, and a lot more. Look at the effect of the Bayh Dole Act on university research funding. That made a HUGE impact on the business model of universities. (and yes, universities are businesses) Universities are complex entities with a lot going on that you probably don't directly interact with but that requires a lot of administration to function.
It's great that you got that opportunity, living in Georgia. I wanted to go to Georgia Tech, but out of state it was around $35,000 a year. What I'm getting at with that statement is your option to go to GT as a good school is predicated on your either living in Georgia or having lots of money, both of which adolescents have zero control over. If you're born in Idaho or North Dakota, it really hampers your options, essentially making it education by birthright.
Many countries have a federal government, including Mexico.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
I actually live in Texas.
> I wanted to go to Georgia Tech, but out of state it was around $35,000 a year.
Google OMSCS. That stands for Online Masters Computer Science.
They also have an online masters in cybersecurity, and others.
FYI what I found with online school is that I did a lot of my school via my (large) smartphone. Mostly during the times I would have otherwise been on Slashdot. So I traded Slashdot time, arguing with MdSolar, for a degree in my field.
I expect my masters with be similar. I'll spend less time calling BeauHD an idiot, and instead so my phone time getting my masters.
Because the evidence shows that it remains true as a general proposition.
You can't say that because the bulk of people still go to college and there are no good measurements of what a large number of smart people can do without college.
Because they make a LOT more money
No they do not. That's what I am telling you - that USED TO BE TRUE. It is not true any longer,
Even if you use the studies from your link, it has the average wage for college earners at ~40k, and the college grads at ~65k (from 2014). Although I would argue that is not true any more, lets pretend it is - the value of having 3-4 more years of income plus the value of not having $300k debt is already $420k to the positive for not going to college (really more because I have not added any interest to that debt that real college debt would have) - now when you considering the compounding effect of investment and the college graduate spending quite a lot of income early on servicing debt instead of investing, the value of going to college is utterly gone. Instead of a million more, it's more like the college graduate is earring a million less, and poor during the prime of physical shape when they should be more free to figure out where to live and who to date...
That all assumes that not going to college you still study a decent subject or even just get really good at writing), if you do that you can easily beat that $40k income. Thats what I am telling everyone, if you just buckle down and study something on your own you can probably exceed the average college graduate salary and start your career years earlier to boot, and have no debt.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
> Many countries have a federal government, including Mexico.
If you're Federales, where are your badges..?
But I do see you're busy attacking the credibility and methodology of the article than it's content.
The donations are evidence of her long term intentions. DeVos is both deceitful and well educated. She is also what folks call a Dominionist, meaning she wants her brand of religion to take dominion over the earth. If you're OK with that, fine. But if you're not, then by supporting her you done screwed up Mr. You done screwed up bad. Now put that in your pipe and smoke it.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
One sure way to save is stop spending money on software and use nothing but free open source.
I can't believe the way my duaghters grade school just throws money at any software when they could be saving tons.
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