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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.
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.
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 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?
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?
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.
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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"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"
All this drives up the cost, and for some reason students are willing to pay.
... you mean, they're willing to go massively into debt without realising the consequences on the rest of their life...
A dirty little secret: for the vast majority of students, admissions is a total guessing game. It is pretty clear who is the top of the top (and who is the bottom of the bottom), but for 95% of students, we really don't have any good pre-college measures that indicate whether someone will be successful in college or not.
High school GPA is the best measure we have, and it only accounts for 10-20% of the variance in college performance. If we really want to limit college enrollment, we'd be better just setting a minimum bar (e.g., high school GPA of 2.50), and then randomly selecting from everyone who meets that minimum bar.
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.
^This is exactly what we have discussed at faculty meetings about recruitment. As for why students are willing to pay, because they aren't the ones financing it -- it's banks, scholarships, and their parents. There is some good news about the high fees, which is that partly they are there to subsidize poorer students (a campus of only wealthy students is uninteresting and makes for poor recruiting) and it's not expected that an average would actually pay them. Of course, some people (e.g. with wealthy parents who have no intent of offering financial assistance) neither have the funds nor qualify for assistance.
My recommendation is this: go to a community college for the first couple years, then transfer to a small public school. While there are great teachers out there, for the most part Calculus I is taught the same way from the same book no matter where you go, and that's true for almost all core classes. So go to community college to get that education at a tenth the cost (or probably free) and then transfer to finish a four year program. A small school will give you the most options for getting help from your pofessors, buffering your credentials with TA and research opportunities etc. and be cheaper (esp. if you don't play sports and it doesn't have sponsored sports teams).
If you stick around for grad school, then that's where you should look at bigger schools. At that level you'll have a small group that you're working with and direct mentorship anyway no matter where you go. If you're STEM you will probably earn a stipend instead of incurring more debt even at the expensive schools, and when you're doing research is when you actually care about having multimillion dollar NMR machines on campus.
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
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.
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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"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.
Education costs are out of control because of the existence of the student loan program. They couldn't cost $60000 if the individual was paying for it, that is entirely and solely because people can get a loan for that much.