Did you think the same thing about the iphone 4's display? I can certainly tell the difference between 320x480 and 640x960 at 3"; it's eliminated my eyestrain trying to read on the screen. I'd love 1080p at the 11" size screen on my air (still not convinced that it's worth the apple tax but time will tell) and I'm telling you that yes, at 10" you WILL be able to tell the difference between 1024x768 and 2048x1536. You are either a troll or blind if you can't see the difference with a decent PDF at normal reading distance.
Either way... what do you care who someone else buys? That's the biggest problem I have with the anti-apple crowd... you feel that everyone else should be doing what you do, which is probably the most ironic thing about bitching about "fanbois" in the first place.
I have been passively interested in trying to understand the file format for the maps for years. Every now and again I get a mild obsession about it and try to figure out a little more... the database format, compression and access methods to all that data on a such a relatively low horsepower CPU as is on most GPS units is quite a feat from my perspective.
Those of us with mortgages & kids have to keep budgets, etc... Apple maintains a 5 year cycle on supporting products. Let's put a figure on it: [$712/yr]
I agree with your numbers for the most part (I too have a mortgage, a wife and a pile of kids), although we don't have a tablet. Even without Apple, the laptops are on about a 3-6 year cycle, depending on how necessary you feel it to update. (the Toshiba U300 laptop I bought 4 years ago is still going strong, but is getting a little weak to develop on and was just replaced with an 11" Air for Christmas). Phones get updated every 2-3 years regardless of make. Actually my wife went from iPhone 3G (had it 2.5y) to Galaxy S, then went right back to i4s within 6 months of having the Android device. She *hated* it, but felt that the iphone was too expensive. I figure the hardware cost is worth the lack of aggravation that we get with Android.
Those 5 year update/support cycles and the corresponding lack of freedom they include become remarkably sharply defined after you've lived thru a few of them. My wife and I love Apple products, and they do tend to last, but we're getting ready to leave the orchard, at least for desktop/laptops. The coupling between expensive closed phones/tablets and "partially closed and getting worse rapidly" desktops/laptops is simply too expensive.
I definitely agree when it comes to laptops, and tablets, but as I mentioned above, phones are on that cycle regardless of make, and are actually the cheapest part of the cost figures that you estimated. I am *really* curious to see how long this apple laptop lasts, I have never been a huge fan of OSX, but I refuse to pay for Windows, and I'm really getting tired of linux on the desktop. I'm one of Linux's biggest fans and I make my living designing hardware and making it sing in embedded environments. There is, however, something to be said about usability when someone such as myself starts to actually *use* an OSX laptop for a daily workstation and is impressed with the way that it mostly just works, and has a full POSIX shell and development environment for nearly everything else. I was on the fence with spending so much for a laptop -- my Toshiba cost $650 on sale, and after $200 for 4G of RAM, a new HDD and a proper (US) keyboard -- but my wife made the decision and I'll give it a try. If the apple hardware lasts at least as good as that Toshiba I'll have to take a very serious look at spending another $1800 in 4-5 years. Not having to dick with everything does have a certain value to it, as does a solid (aluminum) case. Is it worth $250/yr? I'm not sure yet. Ask me in 4-5 years.:-)
I can sync my phone/pad to Windows running in a VBox VM on Linux.
That's exactly what I have been doing for the last... 4-5 years. iTunes was the only reason I had Windows XP around. I do have Lion working reliably under VirtualBox, but I haven't really been beating away on it to say it's a success.
People often ask me about my anti-Apple attitude (or anything really restrictive) and when I explain to them that they've bought something that don't actually really posses complete control over it they are usually understanding.
You must certainly feel the same way about just about every cell (not just smart) phone, tablet, set-top box or embedded system. Unless you're given the full API documentation and enough of a schematic or layout documentation to be able to reflash the system (if not also the bootloader) then you simply don't have the means to hack away at the devices you have bought and own. I specifically don't include laptops or desktops here because generally speaking, they're designed to run whatever you want to put on them.
In my experience, most people imagine that they "own" something when they purchase it. When they understand that they don't own their iPad in the same way they own their car or their house, they do understand why thats a bad thing *even if they lack of the technical knowledge to take advantage of it*.
It's been my experience that most people you will talk to about this will give you a blank stare and a "yeah, so?" kind of look after having it explained to them. Most people are not stupid, I agree with you, but it's simply not a big deal to them.
People don't want to spend hundreds of dollars to rent a thing. When you explain how all of this ties into planned obsolescence and other market strategies they can become quite offended at the idea. Owning a device you are free to operate fully means you can replace it on your own terms, not artificial ones (say, from lack of software updates).
Again, you must be running with a different crowd than I am. Even my technically-minded friends, while not incensed when discussing this subject, don't feel it's a big problem. They usually want the faster processor or better graphics in a few years anyway. I do have a couple of friends who like to make their tech buys last as long as possible, and it's that type of personality that cares about this, by and large. It's been my experience that the general population gets it, but has bigger things to worry about.
Nothing impresses non-geeks like hooking up a scope to an RS232 line and reading off the bit rate and data format...
I'm pretty sure non-techies don't have a clue what RS232 is, nor care about the bit rate and data format.:-) It does tend to impress the protogeeks and the more experienced geek squad techs, though.
As long as they're designing it to fit in that god-awful "stretched hockey-puck" case that the original openmoko was built for... no, it won't be a gem.
I was incredibly excited about the openmoko, until I saw it. Such a wasteful use of physical space.
I'm certainly not saying the pepper spraying of a pregnant woman is in any way shape or form to be condoned, but if you're knowingly pregnant what the blue fuck are you doing in a protest? This woman did not have her priorities at all straight. She claims she was trying to get out; she should not have been (peacefully) protesting in the first place.
There is an alarm tone on old Motorola phones that drives me nuts. The phone can be in my wife's purse, behind closed closet doors on another story of the house but it wakes me up instantly, even though our bedroom door is closed. I keep meaning to sample it and recreate it as an iphone alarm tone.
The alarm isn't all that loud, but the cadence and frequencies used puncture my slumber like a pin on a balloon.
Where on earth is it illegal to have small children sleeping with the parents? There are some nutcases who claim that the child's in danger from smothering, but there is zero actual evidence to support that, except in the case where the adult is severely intoxicated. My wife and I slept with our newborns fairly frequently as she was nursing, but even then she wanted the child to sleep in a bassinet next to her because it was more comfortable for her, not because of some notion of child safety.
That said, I make it a point that children do not get used to sleeping with the parents. Once in a while sure, but it's a rare exception.
I said nothing about having an IDE in front of you. Where exactly did you jump to that conclusion from?
I got it from your post (emphasis mine):
If your main goal is to weed people out by putting them in an unnatural setting for the purpose at hand then test their skills using tools totally removed from how they are actually performed, yes, you may find that one bright shining star who can do and teach, but you'll also write-off as fools legions of people who are gifted as hell but just don't function in that environment.
I took from that comment that unless they're sitting down at a computer in an environment they're comfortable with and using tools they're comfortable with, then I'm likely to be writing of as fools legions of gifted people.
I would agree that being able to do what you suggest is a valuable skill. But it is not a skill that defines a competant programmer. Lots of people can have that skill and be terrible programmers (i've seen them, they typically give great presentations on a given technology, but they can't ship a real product to save their lives).
It's the project manager's job to eventually shoot the engineer and start production. I'm not necessarily looking for people who can run the project, but who can think through problems. People who can't handle the slightest bit of stress are also usually candidates I'm not likely to hire, but for larger companies who can afford to have genius tucked away and protected from the realities of business I could see your point.
You are prizing a communication skill, and somehow thinking it translates to competancy as a developer. Certainly, communication skills are very important. But to me, I can live with a guy that can't do a whiteboard test if he delivers quality code on time.
Apparently, you would rather have sloppy developers that never make a deadline, so long as they can work through a problem on a whiteboard.
I would count myself blessed to fail one of your interviews.
That's a false dichotomy; you seem to think that these things are mutually exclusive, or at least uncommon. My experience suggests that if they can't handle the whiteboard test chances are they also can't handle the kinds of tasks I'm looking for. I will concede that perhaps I'm not looking for the same type of developer that you are, which is perhaps why we're at odds with interview methodologies.
Chances are, though, you'll get middling candidates who have just enough rote knowledge to pass your ten minute test, but would pale in comparison when the test takes weeks, months or years with all the proper tools and resources available.
If you're using a ten minute whiteboard test as your only rule of thumb, then you deserve to hire idiots.
I'm saying that being able to use a whiteboard or piece of paper or back of napkin to describe a problem set and how you'd work your way through it is a fucking valuable skill, and one I'm specifically testing for. I'm not going to wait an hour to have a candidate come in and set up the workstation exactly as they will be using it should they be hired for ANY stage of an interview. That's as ridiculous as making the candidate jump through hoops and answer stupid brain teasers or trivia about computing.
People get nervous in interviews. If you can't adjust the interview to try to accommodate them, or be personable enough to recognize their nervousness and "talk them down" until they can get their geek on (as another poster wrote)... then you're failing as an interviewer. I don't care how brilliant a person is, if they can't work out a problem on paper or talk their way through a solution, I'm not hiring them.
I think a lot of the people railing against whiteboard tests are either under the assumption that I'm judging code quality or syntax, or that that's the only test in my arsenal. It's a really quick way to get a good feel for the technical prowess and personality of the interviewee, nothing more.
This is like asking a craftsman to build a cabinet without using a square.
I think there are an awful lot of people commenting on this story who don't get why whiteboard/paper interviews are useful.
It's not like asking a craftsman to build a cabinet without using a square. You're not asking the interviewee to write something that'll compile. It is like asking the craftsman to describe how he would build a cabinet. It's like asking him to take you through the steps of creating a beautifully routed inlay and piece together the door. You're not asking him to build anything, just like you're not threatening the software interviewee that you'll type his code in and dismiss him if it doesn't compile.
Honestly, are you guys that short-sighted or insecure that you can't TALK about a problem or write some pseudocode??
Whiteboard tests do absolutely nothing to help you know if someone will be a good hire. All it does is test for good whiteboard skills.
Utter nonsense. Are you saying you can't hold a conversation about software development or some new algorithm you read about online without a fucking IDE in front of you? The test isn't measuring your ability to write flawless C on a piece of paper; the test is measuring your ability to think through a problem, come up with intelligent questions and to display your problem solving skills. Stage fright happens, of course, but any interviewer worth his salt will be able to not only recognize it but also be able to help the poor interviewee off the cliff, so to speak.
You shouldn't need code completion or man pages for the types of simple tests you should be asked in an interview. A second interview where you might have to work with a simple library you've never encountered before, sure, there should be a shell or whatever library API documentation you need, but I see nothing wrong with interviewing or being interviewed with nothing more than a piece of paper.
Having a US keyboard isn't a bad thing in my opinion. Pretty much any laptop you buy off the shelf in Canada at any of the big box stores comes with a retarded bilingual keyboard. If I absolutely have to buy one in Canada I ebay a US keyboard for the damn thing within a week.
I think there will be enough hurt to go around and, at least during the correction, nobody would be able to afford to raise prices. Afterward I think you might be right and there will be some schools raising prices, but I think overall prices will fall dramatically. Besides, there have always been the "upper echelons" -- ivy league schools -- and then the more reasonably priced ones filling in the bulk of what's available.
We're still in the middle of the housing correction. Yes, houses are still stupidly priced, but we've got a bad, bad mess right now and a growing pile of unoccupied houses. I think the banks are still waiting this one out. Housing prices will fall. I think it'll take a spike in interest rates to do anything meaningful, but I also think that the era of stupid lending is going to end soon. It's a very big economy and it's going to take a while to correct everything.
Some of that will happen, of course. There are a lot of colleges and universities that do not have any business being in the business of education. However those that survive WILL drop their prices, and the poor will continue to get their education the way they have before: working their asses off during their enrollment, taking advantage of education assistance offered through employment where available and applying for whatever bursaries and scholarships they qualify for.
There will be a hell of a lot of fewer people getting a degree, but that's what this correction is about. Righting the system. Not everyone or even most people need or should have a degree.
Regulation is necessary, but it needs to be applied judiciously and in very small doses. Right now we have way too much regulation in some areas and none in others. It's all helter-skelter and reactionary. Those who want regulation point to where it should be but isn't (any longer), and those who don't want it point to where there's too much.
Strong social programs (I count the student loan program here) and strong incentives to get off the government teat and back on their own to feet are what's needed. I'm getting a little off-topic bere but it should never be comfortable or enviable to be on social assistance. It's supposed to be a safety net, not a hammock.
I disagree. There aren't enough wealthy to keep the schools in their current enrollment levels. They'll drop prices, and FAST. They need the seats filled. It'll be a painful transition period, but it's a necessary one.
I'm not speaking as someone without a stake in all of this. I have a son about to enter post-sec in a year or two, and 4 more kids right behind him. I've always intended to steer them toward learning a trade and getting some basic business and accounting knowhow, and sending only the two who seem to have a really strong talent for a specific field to get a degree. There's damn good money in the trades and when they get too old or tired to swing a hammer or whatever, hopefully they'll have learned enough to hire a couple young guys to do the labour while they run the nice little businesses I'm encouraging them to start.
These things have to be phased out though, in the practical sense. Its not as if schools can re-price their services instantly to reflect the new lack of cheap and easy money in the hands of recent highschool grads.
Funny, the schools didn't seem to have much problem ramping the prices up. I do agree with you that this will cause some short-term pain and if you're caught in the middle of it it's going to suck, but there's nothing stopping you from dropping out for 3-5 years and coming back when the system has corrected itself. It'll suck, sure, but it's a better longterm plan for those who are in the middle of it.
The idea is that making loans so stupidly easy to get artificially drives up the price of education and drives up hiring requirements. Let's face it, you don't need a degree for a good 60% of the jobs that "require" one. Now add to that the fact that student loans are exempt from bankruptcy you get people graduating with an education that gets them nothing and huge loans to pay down with shit jobs. It's a slimy little trap that damn near every mom and dad helps push their kids in to.
This is the exact same problem with easy money being available for mortgages. We're seeing how well that's going now. Education's the next bubble.
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Did you think the same thing about the iphone 4's display? I can certainly tell the difference between 320x480 and 640x960 at 3"; it's eliminated my eyestrain trying to read on the screen. I'd love 1080p at the 11" size screen on my air (still not convinced that it's worth the apple tax but time will tell) and I'm telling you that yes, at 10" you WILL be able to tell the difference between 1024x768 and 2048x1536. You are either a troll or blind if you can't see the difference with a decent PDF at normal reading distance.
Either way... what do you care who someone else buys? That's the biggest problem I have with the anti-apple crowd... you feel that everyone else should be doing what you do, which is probably the most ironic thing about bitching about "fanbois" in the first place.
I have been passively interested in trying to understand the file format for the maps for years. Every now and again I get a mild obsession about it and try to figure out a little more... the database format, compression and access methods to all that data on a such a relatively low horsepower CPU as is on most GPS units is quite a feat from my perspective.
Those of us with mortgages & kids have to keep budgets, etc... Apple maintains a 5 year cycle on supporting products. Let's put a figure on it: [$712/yr]
I agree with your numbers for the most part (I too have a mortgage, a wife and a pile of kids), although we don't have a tablet. Even without Apple, the laptops are on about a 3-6 year cycle, depending on how necessary you feel it to update. (the Toshiba U300 laptop I bought 4 years ago is still going strong, but is getting a little weak to develop on and was just replaced with an 11" Air for Christmas). Phones get updated every 2-3 years regardless of make. Actually my wife went from iPhone 3G (had it 2.5y) to Galaxy S, then went right back to i4s within 6 months of having the Android device. She *hated* it, but felt that the iphone was too expensive. I figure the hardware cost is worth the lack of aggravation that we get with Android.
Those 5 year update/support cycles and the corresponding lack of freedom they include become remarkably sharply defined after you've lived thru a few of them. My wife and I love Apple products, and they do tend to last, but we're getting ready to leave the orchard, at least for desktop/laptops. The coupling between expensive closed phones/tablets and "partially closed and getting worse rapidly" desktops/laptops is simply too expensive.
I definitely agree when it comes to laptops, and tablets, but as I mentioned above, phones are on that cycle regardless of make, and are actually the cheapest part of the cost figures that you estimated. I am *really* curious to see how long this apple laptop lasts, I have never been a huge fan of OSX, but I refuse to pay for Windows, and I'm really getting tired of linux on the desktop. I'm one of Linux's biggest fans and I make my living designing hardware and making it sing in embedded environments. There is, however, something to be said about usability when someone such as myself starts to actually *use* an OSX laptop for a daily workstation and is impressed with the way that it mostly just works, and has a full POSIX shell and development environment for nearly everything else. I was on the fence with spending so much for a laptop -- my Toshiba cost $650 on sale, and after $200 for 4G of RAM, a new HDD and a proper (US) keyboard -- but my wife made the decision and I'll give it a try. If the apple hardware lasts at least as good as that Toshiba I'll have to take a very serious look at spending another $1800 in 4-5 years. Not having to dick with everything does have a certain value to it, as does a solid (aluminum) case. Is it worth $250/yr? I'm not sure yet. Ask me in 4-5 years. :-)
I can sync my phone/pad to Windows running in a VBox VM on Linux.
That's exactly what I have been doing for the last ... 4-5 years. iTunes was the only reason I had Windows XP around. I do have Lion working reliably under VirtualBox, but I haven't really been beating away on it to say it's a success.
People often ask me about my anti-Apple attitude (or anything really restrictive) and when I explain to them that they've bought something that don't actually really posses complete control over it they are usually understanding.
You must certainly feel the same way about just about every cell (not just smart) phone, tablet, set-top box or embedded system. Unless you're given the full API documentation and enough of a schematic or layout documentation to be able to reflash the system (if not also the bootloader) then you simply don't have the means to hack away at the devices you have bought and own. I specifically don't include laptops or desktops here because generally speaking, they're designed to run whatever you want to put on them.
In my experience, most people imagine that they "own" something when they purchase it. When they understand that they don't own their iPad in the same way they own their car or their house, they do understand why thats a bad thing *even if they lack of the technical knowledge to take advantage of it*.
It's been my experience that most people you will talk to about this will give you a blank stare and a "yeah, so?" kind of look after having it explained to them. Most people are not stupid, I agree with you, but it's simply not a big deal to them.
People don't want to spend hundreds of dollars to rent a thing. When you explain how all of this ties into planned obsolescence and other market strategies they can become quite offended at the idea. Owning a device you are free to operate fully means you can replace it on your own terms, not artificial ones (say, from lack of software updates).
Again, you must be running with a different crowd than I am. Even my technically-minded friends, while not incensed when discussing this subject, don't feel it's a big problem. They usually want the faster processor or better graphics in a few years anyway. I do have a couple of friends who like to make their tech buys last as long as possible, and it's that type of personality that cares about this, by and large. It's been my experience that the general population gets it, but has bigger things to worry about.
Nothing impresses non-geeks like hooking up a scope to an RS232 line and reading off the bit rate and data format...
I'm pretty sure non-techies don't have a clue what RS232 is, nor care about the bit rate and data format. :-) It does tend to impress the protogeeks and the more experienced geek squad techs, though.
As long as they're designing it to fit in that god-awful "stretched hockey-puck" case that the original openmoko was built for... no, it won't be a gem.
I was incredibly excited about the openmoko, until I saw it. Such a wasteful use of physical space.
I'm certainly not saying the pepper spraying of a pregnant woman is in any way shape or form to be condoned, but if you're knowingly pregnant what the blue fuck are you doing in a protest? This woman did not have her priorities at all straight. She claims she was trying to get out; she should not have been (peacefully) protesting in the first place.
There is an alarm tone on old Motorola phones that drives me nuts. The phone can be in my wife's purse, behind closed closet doors on another story of the house but it wakes me up instantly, even though our bedroom door is closed. I keep meaning to sample it and recreate it as an iphone alarm tone.
The alarm isn't all that loud, but the cadence and frequencies used puncture my slumber like a pin on a balloon.
Where on earth is it illegal to have small children sleeping with the parents? There are some nutcases who claim that the child's in danger from smothering, but there is zero actual evidence to support that, except in the case where the adult is severely intoxicated. My wife and I slept with our newborns fairly frequently as she was nursing, but even then she wanted the child to sleep in a bassinet next to her because it was more comfortable for her, not because of some notion of child safety.
That said, I make it a point that children do not get used to sleeping with the parents. Once in a while sure, but it's a rare exception.
I said nothing about having an IDE in front of you. Where exactly did you jump to that conclusion from?
I got it from your post (emphasis mine):
If your main goal is to weed people out by putting them in an unnatural setting for the purpose at hand then test their skills using tools totally removed from how they are actually performed, yes, you may find that one bright shining star who can do and teach, but you'll also write-off as fools legions of people who are gifted as hell but just don't function in that environment.
I took from that comment that unless they're sitting down at a computer in an environment they're comfortable with and using tools they're comfortable with, then I'm likely to be writing of as fools legions of gifted people.
I would agree that being able to do what you suggest is a valuable skill. But it is not a skill that defines a competant programmer. Lots of people can have that skill and be terrible programmers (i've seen them, they typically give great presentations on a given technology, but they can't ship a real product to save their lives).
It's the project manager's job to eventually shoot the engineer and start production. I'm not necessarily looking for people who can run the project, but who can think through problems. People who can't handle the slightest bit of stress are also usually candidates I'm not likely to hire, but for larger companies who can afford to have genius tucked away and protected from the realities of business I could see your point.
You are prizing a communication skill, and somehow thinking it translates to competancy as a developer. Certainly, communication skills are very important. But to me, I can live with a guy that can't do a whiteboard test if he delivers quality code on time.
Apparently, you would rather have sloppy developers that never make a deadline, so long as they can work through a problem on a whiteboard.
I would count myself blessed to fail one of your interviews.
That's a false dichotomy; you seem to think that these things are mutually exclusive, or at least uncommon. My experience suggests that if they can't handle the whiteboard test chances are they also can't handle the kinds of tasks I'm looking for. I will concede that perhaps I'm not looking for the same type of developer that you are, which is perhaps why we're at odds with interview methodologies.
Chances are, though, you'll get middling candidates who have just enough rote knowledge to pass your ten minute test, but would pale in comparison when the test takes weeks, months or years with all the proper tools and resources available.
If you're using a ten minute whiteboard test as your only rule of thumb, then you deserve to hire idiots.
I'm saying that being able to use a whiteboard or piece of paper or back of napkin to describe a problem set and how you'd work your way through it is a fucking valuable skill, and one I'm specifically testing for. I'm not going to wait an hour to have a candidate come in and set up the workstation exactly as they will be using it should they be hired for ANY stage of an interview. That's as ridiculous as making the candidate jump through hoops and answer stupid brain teasers or trivia about computing.
People get nervous in interviews. If you can't adjust the interview to try to accommodate them, or be personable enough to recognize their nervousness and "talk them down" until they can get their geek on (as another poster wrote)... then you're failing as an interviewer. I don't care how brilliant a person is, if they can't work out a problem on paper or talk their way through a solution, I'm not hiring them.
I think a lot of the people railing against whiteboard tests are either under the assumption that I'm judging code quality or syntax, or that that's the only test in my arsenal. It's a really quick way to get a good feel for the technical prowess and personality of the interviewee, nothing more.
This is like asking a craftsman to build a cabinet without using a square.
I think there are an awful lot of people commenting on this story who don't get why whiteboard/paper interviews are useful.
It's not like asking a craftsman to build a cabinet without using a square. You're not asking the interviewee to write something that'll compile. It is like asking the craftsman to describe how he would build a cabinet. It's like asking him to take you through the steps of creating a beautifully routed inlay and piece together the door. You're not asking him to build anything, just like you're not threatening the software interviewee that you'll type his code in and dismiss him if it doesn't compile.
Honestly, are you guys that short-sighted or insecure that you can't TALK about a problem or write some pseudocode??
Whiteboard tests do absolutely nothing to help you know if someone will be a good hire. All it does is test for good whiteboard skills.
Utter nonsense. Are you saying you can't hold a conversation about software development or some new algorithm you read about online without a fucking IDE in front of you? The test isn't measuring your ability to write flawless C on a piece of paper; the test is measuring your ability to think through a problem, come up with intelligent questions and to display your problem solving skills. Stage fright happens, of course, but any interviewer worth his salt will be able to not only recognize it but also be able to help the poor interviewee off the cliff, so to speak.
You shouldn't need code completion or man pages for the types of simple tests you should be asked in an interview. A second interview where you might have to work with a simple library you've never encountered before, sure, there should be a shell or whatever library API documentation you need, but I see nothing wrong with interviewing or being interviewed with nothing more than a piece of paper.
Cool troll, bro, can I have your autograph?
Seriously, have you even graduated high school yet?
Having a US keyboard isn't a bad thing in my opinion. Pretty much any laptop you buy off the shelf in Canada at any of the big box stores comes with a retarded bilingual keyboard. If I absolutely have to buy one in Canada I ebay a US keyboard for the damn thing within a week.
It's not often that I'm accused of optimism. :-)
I think there will be enough hurt to go around and, at least during the correction, nobody would be able to afford to raise prices. Afterward I think you might be right and there will be some schools raising prices, but I think overall prices will fall dramatically. Besides, there have always been the "upper echelons" -- ivy league schools -- and then the more reasonably priced ones filling in the bulk of what's available.
We're still in the middle of the housing correction. Yes, houses are still stupidly priced, but we've got a bad, bad mess right now and a growing pile of unoccupied houses. I think the banks are still waiting this one out. Housing prices will fall. I think it'll take a spike in interest rates to do anything meaningful, but I also think that the era of stupid lending is going to end soon. It's a very big economy and it's going to take a while to correct everything.
Some of that will happen, of course. There are a lot of colleges and universities that do not have any business being in the business of education. However those that survive WILL drop their prices, and the poor will continue to get their education the way they have before: working their asses off during their enrollment, taking advantage of education assistance offered through employment where available and applying for whatever bursaries and scholarships they qualify for.
There will be a hell of a lot of fewer people getting a degree, but that's what this correction is about. Righting the system. Not everyone or even most people need or should have a degree.
Regulation is necessary, but it needs to be applied judiciously and in very small doses. Right now we have way too much regulation in some areas and none in others. It's all helter-skelter and reactionary. Those who want regulation point to where it should be but isn't (any longer), and those who don't want it point to where there's too much.
Strong social programs (I count the student loan program here) and strong incentives to get off the government teat and back on their own to feet are what's needed. I'm getting a little off-topic bere but it should never be comfortable or enviable to be on social assistance. It's supposed to be a safety net, not a hammock.
I disagree. There aren't enough wealthy to keep the schools in their current enrollment levels. They'll drop prices, and FAST. They need the seats filled. It'll be a painful transition period, but it's a necessary one.
I'm not speaking as someone without a stake in all of this. I have a son about to enter post-sec in a year or two, and 4 more kids right behind him. I've always intended to steer them toward learning a trade and getting some basic business and accounting knowhow, and sending only the two who seem to have a really strong talent for a specific field to get a degree. There's damn good money in the trades and when they get too old or tired to swing a hammer or whatever, hopefully they'll have learned enough to hire a couple young guys to do the labour while they run the nice little businesses I'm encouraging them to start.
These things have to be phased out though, in the practical sense. Its not as if schools can re-price their services instantly to reflect the new lack of cheap and easy money in the hands of recent highschool grads.
Funny, the schools didn't seem to have much problem ramping the prices up. I do agree with you that this will cause some short-term pain and if you're caught in the middle of it it's going to suck, but there's nothing stopping you from dropping out for 3-5 years and coming back when the system has corrected itself. It'll suck, sure, but it's a better longterm plan for those who are in the middle of it.
The idea is that making loans so stupidly easy to get artificially drives up the price of education and drives up hiring requirements. Let's face it, you don't need a degree for a good 60% of the jobs that "require" one. Now add to that the fact that student loans are exempt from bankruptcy you get people graduating with an education that gets them nothing and huge loans to pay down with shit jobs. It's a slimy little trap that damn near every mom and dad helps push their kids in to.
This is the exact same problem with easy money being available for mortgages. We're seeing how well that's going now. Education's the next bubble.
I would never buy a book chapter by chapter. Sorry.
Metrosexual is well and truly beyond normal personal hygiene. Try looking up the term.