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By now we've all heard about how god awful college has become in America. If you want to go chances are you end up taking on debt; frequently a mountain of it. College has become ruinous to the point that some schools are getting slapped for fraud. http://qz.com/551427/charged-with-fraud-and-deceit-one-of-the-uss-biggest-for-profit-colleges-is-paying-out-95-million/ The loans are often downright predatory but what you get for taking them out has gotten worse. Four year degrees are increasingly not completed in four years, class sizes are increasing, and schools are increasingly using grad students or underpaid and overwork part time, non-tenure, temporary professors to teach. Meanwhile administrative staff and budgets are bloating. Wages are stagnant and unless you have a STEM degree your job prospects are dreadful. Meanwhile degrees from certain schools are literally worthless. Even in lucrative fields it can be hard to find a job without a degree from a top school. In short college in America is loving broken. There's a fight going on that's been brewing for years that really seems to be indicative of the mess, even in public schools. APSCUF is, in short, the professor's labor union in the state of PA. They've voted to strike a few times but never actually have. This time, however, they've set a date. October 19th, to be exact. http://www.apscuf.org/news-center/press-releases/257-apscuf-sets-strike-date-will-not-walk-out-if-state-system-negotiates-fair-contract A few things to note here; first off the state college system refused to enter binding arbitrage. Second off Pennsylvania, despite being a swing state, can be conservative as all hell; you see this in its school spending. It's near the bottom of U.S. states when it comes to education. Something like 48th place when it comes to higher education. Our last governor (Tom Corbett) despite that proposed that the way to pull the state through the Great Recession was to cut the entire state's education budget in half. All of it. Top to bottom. The state also created Tom Ridge. It's fine if you want to never, ever forgive us for that one. So back to the vote. Professors voted 93% in favor of a strike. http://www.apscuf.org/news-center/press-releases/246-apscuf-faculty-members-vote-to-authorize-strike Let that sink in; a drat near unanimous vote. It didn't even really take all that long. Professors have gotten together and said "we're sick of this poo poo." Meanwhile colleges harp on increasing enrollment (and are suspiciously silent on actually graduating those students), push online education like crazy, and raise tuition every year. As the cost increases it becomes absolutely impossible for some people to afford. The cheapest schools cost just shy of $13,000 a year before considering room and board. That's $52,000 for four years of college, assuming they don't raise the price while you're there. Which they absolutely will. Meanwhile they also will charge each student over $2,000 per semester for a dorm room. Or, you know, more than $4,000 a semester per room, which amounts to $8,000 a year. Where I went to school you could get a pretty nice townhouse (or in some cases rent an entire house) for less than that. More expensive options are, of course, more expensive, sometimes over $4,000 per student per semester. The highest-priced unit costs $5,100 per student per semester. Oh by the way, you're required to live in campus for two years now and that also means you have to buy a meal plan. http://collegemeasures.org/4-year_colleges/state/pa/compare-colleges/cost-per-student/ That's several thousand dollars more than it was in recent history; in 2000 you could go to an in-state school for less than $5,000. Now it's almost three times that. Meanwhile the professors haven't exactly been rolling in the dough. A new professor (you know, somebody expected to be an expert in their field and have a top-tier degree) can make as little as $45,000 a year. While that's a decent living for most of us we must remember that that tends to come with a long time in school, which comes with a high cost, and is a job generally requiring an advanced degree with experience. Oh, and that's only if you can get a full time position. Part time professors are on the rise. Welp. http://www.passhe.edu/inside/hr/syshr/bargaining_agreements/apscuf_agr.pdf I don't expect people to read all of that (it's a boring rear end employment agreement) but a thing to notice is that it ended in 2015. The system and the union have been in negotiations since 2014. The state's response so far has seemed to be "we can do what we want. gently caress you." Meanwhile acceptance rates inch closer and closer to 100% (some schools are over 95%), just chucking everybody in the front door who applies. Graduation rates are often below 50%. Professors, students, and their families are understandably unhappy. So what the gently caress do you do in this situation and how does it key in with the rest of the nation? If the strike does happen what will be the ripple outside of PA? For me the most shocking moment was when I found out that my starting salary at my job was actually higher than some of the professors that prepared me to do this job. ToxicSlurpee fucked around with this message at 00:18 on Sep 24, 2016 |
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Sep 23, 2016 23:59
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Meanwhile acceptance rates inch closer and closer to 100% (some schools are over 95%), just chucking everybody in the front door who applies. Graduation rates are often below 50%. Professors, students, and their families are understandably unhappy.
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Sep 24, 2016 19:26
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I go to a state school in PA, So how likely will a walk out/strike be at this point. it sounds like the state is basicaly going to ignore them and the set the walkout date for the 19th. Some of my favorite teachers are propents of a strike, but i am worried what will happen. what if it goes on for more then a week? what happens to my semester and credits and missed classes? do i get reimbursed?
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Sep 24, 2016 19:39
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Dead Reckoning posted:I'm curious how you see this issue tying in with recent proposals to make free or low cost college education available to all, and the widely accepted notion that college is a prerequisite for a "good" job. If schools are over capacity and accepting students who are not realistically capable of completing a Bachelor's degree in four years, how should we start rationing limited educational resources?
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Sep 24, 2016 19:41
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This might be a stupid question, but where the gently caress is all that money going? Who's getting rich off all of this?
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Sep 24, 2016 19:44
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Dead Reckoning posted:I'm curious how you see this issue tying in with recent proposals to make free or low cost college education available to all, and the widely accepted notion that college is a prerequisite for a "good" job. If schools are over capacity and accepting students who are not realistically capable of completing a Bachelor's degree in four years, how should we start rationing limited educational resources? I always saw stuff like communty college as a gateway/checkpoint for state/private/regular/ivy colleges. I went to one, did pretty well got an assosiates and am going to a state college. I think Communty colleges also help you get used to the work load/time management, class difficulty(one of my best/hardest teachers was a communty college teacher) plus it helps get your generals out of the way and move up with classes out of the way if you transfer to another college.
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Sep 24, 2016 19:51
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Dead Reckoning posted:I'm curious how you see this issue tying in with recent proposals to make free or low cost college education available to all, and the widely accepted notion that college is a prerequisite for a "good" job. If schools are over capacity and accepting students who are not realistically capable of completing a Bachelor's degree in four years, how should we start rationing limited educational resources? community college. we need a better intermediate step between high school and four year institutions. this would help -people who can't afford a full on university tuition -people who have constraints on their time and can't attend school full time -people who have limited mobility or ability to move housing -people who can't cope with the workload necessary for full time study ideally it would be a way for young adults to keep one foot in higher education while also engaging with the real world post public school, because a lot of people simply don't see the merit in study vs. getting a job, having a family. plus if you decide college isn't for you after trying it for a while dropping out of community college is far less financially harmful in georgia, the largest institution is georgia state, which recently surpassed the university of georgia by merging with georgia perimeter, a group of community colleges in the atlanta suburbs. so now georgia state operates both as a four year research institution in downtown atlanta, and has a bunch of satellite campuses all over metro atlanta for two year and part time four year students. it's also much easier now to enroll at the main campus if a student decides to get more serious about study, or continue on into graduate school boner confessor fucked around with this message at 20:09 on Sep 24, 2016 |
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Sep 24, 2016 20:03
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Popular Thug Drink posted:community college. we need a better intermediate step between high school and four year institutions. this would help This. I think the goverment should try to push making Community colleges very cheap or free(at least for the first year) I honestly believe that community college helped me a ton to prepare for full regular college. this is gonna sound dickish, but if you cant cut it in CC,(grade wise/attendence/workload) your are hosed in regular college.
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Sep 24, 2016 20:26
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Dapper_Swindler posted:I go to a state school in PA, So how likely will a walk out/strike be at this point. it sounds like the state is basicaly going to ignore them and the set the walkout date for the 19th. Some of my favorite teachers are propents of a strike, but i am worried what will happen. what if it goes on for more then a week? what happens to my semester and credits and missed classes? do i get reimbursed? Pretty likely. The state looks to have no interest in negotiating and the grievances of professors are totally legit. As for how it will affect you really...who the hell knows? Some schools have been offering free application from closed schools (as in ITT Tech or DuBois business college) but those same schools are state schools. Plus what do you do if you can't move to a new school? I don't think anybody has any idea what a strike will actually cause for that sort of thing.
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Sep 24, 2016 23:23
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Dead Reckoning posted:I'm curious how you see this issue tying in with recent proposals to make free or low cost college education available to all, and the widely accepted notion that college is a prerequisite for a "good" job. If schools are over capacity and accepting students who are not realistically capable of completing a Bachelor's degree in four years, how should we start rationing limited educational resources? Personally I think people should have access to free higher education if they have the ability. The problem is that not everybody can do a college degree but schools are letting people in because every warm body gives them money regardless of if they graduate or not. Right now they'll just let anybody in without bothering to ask if they are even right for college. Granted I also believe that everybody who wants a shot can try. And should have a second or third chance but really schools making profit very obviously don't care; just get more people in the door, force grad students to teach them, and make the most! As to where the money goes like...who knows?
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Sep 24, 2016 23:30
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Pretty likely. The state looks to have no interest in negotiating and the grievances of professors are totally legit. As for how it will affect you really...who the hell knows? Some schools have been offering free application from closed schools (as in ITT Tech or DuBois business college) but those same schools are state schools. Plus what do you do if you can't move to a new school? I don't think anybody has any idea what a strike will actually cause for that sort of thing. yeah i have no quarrel with the professors. hell my cousin is a professor at the same college. Its just i have no idea how long this will last and my classes have been going pretty well this semester. I assume the school just closes? do they hire SCAB teachers? do we just get passed automatically or will it at least not count against us. and what about the 5 grand for my classes, do we at least get that back if it gets canceled because strike? EDIT. So i talked to my cousin. apparently students are still required to come to class for attendance and their will be SCAB/substitute teachers maybe. Dapper_Swindler fucked around with this message at 00:10 on Sep 25, 2016 |
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Sep 24, 2016 23:35
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Why on earth does the university care where you, an adult, lives? As an Australian this is just weird.
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Sep 25, 2016 04:53
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Do you really have to ask? It's so they can squeeze more money out of you. They're a business, they don't actually care about students.
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Sep 25, 2016 04:56
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that's one obvious motivation - but why on earth do US students put up with it? If an Australian university tried it I bet their attendance would drop like a stone.
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Sep 25, 2016 05:11
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Unkempt posted:This might be a stupid question, but where the gently caress is all that money going? Who's getting rich off all of this? Colleges funnel money into very expensive athletic programs and the turn around and cook the books on how much those programs cost The NCAA is basically a massive bubble now
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Sep 25, 2016 11:57
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i'm a little skeptical that this so-called strike, if it happens, will affect meaningful change.Unkempt posted:This might be a stupid question, but where the gently caress is all that money going? Who's getting rich off all of this? i assume you mean to ask about tuition hikes? it's a complicated answer. one theory is that states are spending less on higher education than in years prior. where previously colleges could previously rely on a steady stream of appropriations to support themselves, they are now forced to shift most of the burden onto students. another theory is that colleges and universities are exploiting student loans. because more money is available to students than ever before, colleges and universities are raising prices to benefit. a third potential theory is that colleges have changed their pricing models. today, college tuition is negotiated in much the same way that one purchases a car. admission counselors offer "scholarships" and "grants" that are available to virtually every student, but look really impressive to someone on the outside. families attending college for the first time are unable to exploit this system and may not be aware of what is available to them. those are just a few potential answers. other people have blamed a growth in administrative personnel and "prestige buildings." others have blamed shifting public norms and the expansion of for-profit colleges. NSW_greens posted:Why on earth does the university care where you, an adult, lives? As an Australian this is just weird. in the united states, public education is controlled by the several states and not the federal government. as a result, you get benefits if you attend a public school in a state that you are a resident of. NSW_greens posted:that's one obvious motivation - but why on earth do US students put up with it? If an Australian university tried it I bet their attendance would drop like a stone. this is where the normative argument comes in! college is increasingly seen as essential to one's success and livelihood, with college attendees making substantially more than their high school educated counterparts. it is also a status symbol and strongly reinforced as a necessity by high schools, entertainment, and other outlets. non-college attendees are seen as "losers" who are doomed to a life of misery. while college tuition might be difficult for many families, it's cost is still seen as worthwhile because of the lifetime benefits that it provides. QuoProQuid fucked around with this message at 13:38 on Sep 25, 2016 |
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Sep 25, 2016 13:34
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NSW_greens posted:Why on earth does the university care where you, an adult, lives? As an Australian this is just weird. Very few do and even then you can usually get a waiver. Most strongly encourage living on campus during at least the first year though, and honestly it's usually a good thing. There are also structural reasons behind such things, such as the availability of non-university housing and so on. Also, while legally adults, for all intents and purposes many people in college are still very much kids and make stupendously bad decisions on a daily basis- the university definitely has a role in guiding people to optimal outcomes and living on campus the first year is highly correlated with success. On that note I think something that needs to be done, at least in the short term, is a radical re-thinking of how we hand out money for college. The problem is we are pretty much in the worst of both worlds-- we have this high minded principle that people who can't afford college should still have a way to go (a very good thing) but completely ignore the economic realities of what this all means. In other words: are we really doing a poor person a favor by giving them a chance to go to college, and the gigantic loan to go with it, if they aren't prepared for college or are going into a major that does not lead to a good paying career? No, of course not- just the opposite we are giving them a non-dischargable albatross of debt. What we may want to think about is increasing the amount of 'signaling' young people get by severely limiting the availability of funding for programs that cannot meet placement / career goals ( something like x% of your graduates need to placed in jobs paying at least y dollars-- where you come up with a function based on supply and demand). If someone really wants to go into psychology and they are really good at it then they should be supported but what is far more the case is people going into programs like that simply because they think they just need to graduate with something. By making funding a function of these things, universities would tighten up admission standards for programs that do poorly in preparing students for careers, which is exactly what you'd like. This already basically happens with medical school in the US. It's also important to keep in mind that the real problem isn't really people who graduate with student debt- average student loan debt is 25k (and the median is lower) and while it isn't ideal, that amount of debt isn't going to crush you if you are coming out making at least 45k (which again is typical as the average salary on graduation is 50k). The real problem is for people who get lots of debt and then don't graduate, which is very common, and the outliers who take on mountains of debt for whatever reason. Unkempt posted:This might be a stupid question, but where the gently caress is all that money going? Who's getting rich off all of this? Well one thing to keep in mind is that while education and medicine have greatly outpaced inflation, some of that is actually justified by what is expected of universities and hospitals now vs. 30 years ago. Just like the latest/greatest MRI machines is massively expensive, so is maintaining massive computing resources, having cutting edge research programs, and so on. So in part college is more expensive because we demand more stuff out of it. A LOT more stuff. A university today would be utterly alien to someone who graduated 40 years ago in terms of resources students have access to. The other part is that you have an effect going on not unlike what, in part, helped the mortgage crisis along. Namely, when people have easy access to piles of cash the price of that good is going to skyrocket because there's no downward pressure on the price. This is even more amplified in school loans because payments are deferred and kids lack the maturity to make such long term decisions.
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Sep 25, 2016 15:02
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twodot posted:I don't see a conflict between thinking we should gate access to schools on the basis of ability to complete the program, and thinking we shouldn't gate access based on financial resources. The two are correlated. You're basically saying "only poor people that were lucky enough to actually get some education should have any chance at getting a college education and the wealth mobility it provides". Dead Cosmonaut posted:Colleges funnel money into very expensive athletic programs and the turn around and cook the books on how much those programs cost The most expensive schools have next to no athletics, at least the big flashy NCAA stuff. For public schools it's two things: - Reduction of state subsidies - ballooning administration costs For private schools, it's the second factor.
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Sep 25, 2016 15:05
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ToxicSlurpee posted:By now we've all heard about how god awful college has become in America. If you want to go chances are you end up taking on debt; frequently a mountain of it. College has become ruinous to the point that some schools are getting slapped for fraud. I think it's important to reiterate that it's far more complex than this and that this is largely a misleading statement. Average student debt is around 25k and average salary upon graduation is 50k. These are all workable numbers. The problems come from the tails of the distribution in part and in other part this is an effect of college being seen as a 'must do' thing, so many people go into it who have no business being there. They languish a couple years, racking up 10-20k of debt, and then drop out. computer parts posted:The two are correlated. While true it's also irrelevant because if they aren't prepared it doesn't really matter what the reason is at that point. You fix that issue early on in someones life, by the time of college it's too late to fix that problem unless you are going to intentionally dumb down programs simply to get the graduation numbers you need. Actually that does happen and it's a massive policy failure that doesn't help anyone. Employers learn real quickly if a program turns into a diploma mill. Furthermore education doesn't automatically give you wealth mobility, there's a correlation causation problem going on there too that is being ignored.
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Sep 25, 2016 15:16
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TROIKA CURES GREEK posted:
quote:Furthermore education doesn't automatically give you wealth mobility, there's a correlation causation problem going on there too that is being ignored. It's not being ignored. You are objectively more likely to become richer if you have an education. That's regardless of race, sex, or whatever. There *is* a confounding factor to those elements though - But it's usually one that supports having an education. For example, Women have a smaller wage gap between similar coworkers when college educated versus not having a degree.
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Sep 25, 2016 15:28
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Rising healthcare costs are also a significant factor as your average state school system employs tens of thousands of people who are all getting health insurance through their employer.
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Sep 25, 2016 15:29
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Dapper_Swindler posted:yeah i have no quarrel with the professors. hell my cousin is a professor at the same college. Its just i have no idea how long this will last and my classes have been going pretty well this semester. I assume the school just closes? do they hire SCAB teachers? LIU locked out its professors and had random administrators doing classes. So like the guy working the payroll database would have to teach ballet because he took one semester of dance class 20 years ago, lmao.
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Sep 25, 2016 15:32
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computer parts posted:The two are correlated. This is an important point but I'm not sure it's better for students from poor backgrounds whose underfunded schools have underserved them to go into moderate to severe debt for a college education they aren't prepared for, which the end result for them on a systemic scale is either a glut of watered-down "worthless" degrees or dropping out after paying for 1-2 years. eta: I mean yes the point of this is to also fix pre-college education, sure. GunnerJ fucked around with this message at 15:36 on Sep 25, 2016 |
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Sep 25, 2016 15:34
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GunnerJ posted:This is an important point but I'm not sure it's better for students from poor backgrounds whose underfunded schools have underserved them to go into moderate to severe debt for a college education they aren't prepared for, which the end result for them on a systemic scale is either a glut of watered-down worthless degrees or failure to graduate after paying for 1-2 years. You'd think so, except things are even worse if you don't have a degree. Especially, again, for minorities and women.
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Sep 25, 2016 15:36
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computer parts posted:You'd think so, except things are even worse if you don't have a degree. For now, sure. That may change in the future the more people who have degrees and the less of a distinction it provides. There's still the issue of people who just drop out because they realize too late it's not for them.
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Sep 25, 2016 15:38
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GunnerJ posted:For now, sure. That may change in the future the more people who have degrees and the less of a distinction it provides. It still provides a higher distinction than those without a degree. Also keep in mind only something like 30% of America has a degree. quote:There's still the issue of people who just drop out because they realize too late it's not for them. People with "Some College" actually have higher wealth expectations than people with only a high school degree.
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Sep 25, 2016 15:39
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Hm, all right then. I mean overall I'm in agreement with you, I just kinda feel dismayed at how unlikely it seems that this can be fixed as a whole, which seems necessary because piecemeal fixes leave the rest of the problem intact and compromises any solution (such as, making state college effectively free or massively more affordable but increasing standards leaves those who've been structurally under-education shut out).
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Sep 25, 2016 15:44
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"Scab" isn't an acronym btw. Public schools have been left in the dirt by starve the beast regressive policy for forty years, it's about time things started to change. I'm also actually pretty pleased to see the professors, you know, the theoretically smart ones, taking the lead on the right side of history here. We actually went to an alumni event for my wife's graduate school (we're American, but she went to school in the UK) and even they are starting to hammer on donor cultivation which is extra disturbing. Considering the British school strikes last year, brexit, etc it seems like stuff is getting hosed across the pond as well.
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Sep 25, 2016 17:27
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computer parts posted:People with "Some College" actually have higher wealth expectations than people with only a high school degree. Some companies will actually accept you as a management trainee with zero experience but two years of college. You don't have to have a complete degree or even have done all that well; "some college" can sometimes make a person start as a middle manager. Comparatively you can frequently work at that same company for decades with just a high school diploma and never even be considered as a manager. In the past you could start at the bottom and work your way up; these days college is basically mandatory. If memory serves the amount of jobs that require a specific degree from an accredited university program are also on the rise; nursing comes to mind in that the demand for nurses is pretty high but you pretty much require a nursing education to even have a prayer of going anywhere in the profession. That in and of itself isn't a bad thing (I, for one, like the idea of the nurses at any given medical facility actually knowing what the hell they're doing) but the issue is with what was said before; a ton of people will enroll in school, gather up debt, then find out they can't do it or absolutely hate being a nurse. The schools don't care if you don't graduate; they get paid either way. Which is the biggest, central problem with for-profit education. They get paid for every student enrolled regardless of how they do. Without any regulations or legal arm-twisting outcomes are largely irrelevant.
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Sep 25, 2016 21:15
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Earlier this year, the California State University faculty union planned a strike earlier this year that seems very similar to what is happening in Pennslyvania. It kind of fell through when the union and the administrators settled before the strike date. GunnerJ posted:Hm, all right then. Some of the solutions offered leave out college all together and just suggest alternative career routes, like trade jobs and apprenticeships. The rise of Mike Rowe and his gospel of blue-collar evangelialism is a symptom of the American education experience and the problems that plague it. The problem with that is that those kinds of jobs aren't secure or as plentiful as people think. My Dad works in a trade; he has his own business and has pretty much pushed college hard for my brother and me. Apparently, there is a demand for skilled trade workers, but with the demise of unions, the incestuous nature of apprenticeships and the possibility of physical injury ending your career, there really is no golden ticket for the American Worker.
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Sep 26, 2016 02:10
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It doesn't help that the work that tradespeople used to do is becoming increasingly automated. Who the hell needs carpenters and cabinet makers when you can just crank out manufactured kitchens?
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Sep 26, 2016 02:12
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ToxicSlurpee posted:It doesn't help that the work that tradespeople used to do is becoming increasingly automated. Who the hell needs carpenters and cabinet makers when you can just crank out manufactured kitchens? The thing with custom work is that by definition you can't really automate it. Even if you have a CNC machine make your cabinet, it's quite often a custom made cabinet. You still need someone to program that CNC design. This is ignoring, of course, that there's still significant levels of finishing that require people.
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Sep 26, 2016 03:50
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But that becomes a problem of price when the machine made IKEA garbage is relatively cheap and in wal-marts because they can charge the lowest with it. As good as humans can make something, regular carpenters and the like are going to go up against companies that can undercut them because their automated assembly spits out mediocre, yet functional goods quicker than regular human work can take. And this isn't even going into poo poo that uses loving prison or sweatshop slave labor.
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Sep 26, 2016 06:45
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Forceholy posted:Some of the solutions offered leave out college all together and just suggest alternative career routes, like trade jobs and apprenticeships. The rise of Mike Rowe and his gospel of blue-collar evangelialism is a symptom of the American education experience and the problems that plague it. The problem with that is that those kinds of jobs aren't secure or as plentiful as people think. My Dad works in a trade; he has his own business and has pretty much pushed college hard for my brother and me. Apparently, there is a demand for skilled trade workers, but with the demise of unions, the incestuous nature of apprenticeships and the possibility of physical injury ending your career, there really is no golden ticket for the American Worker. the biggest problem with this argument is that there simply aren't enough jobs of any type, blue, white, or pink collar, to go around. same as with another favorite talking point, just join the army i dont remember the exact numbers but last time i looked it up the armed forces recruits something like 75-100k people every year, and there are millions of high school grads every year. we need many solutions just to absorb our large working age population
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Sep 26, 2016 06:54
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Unkempt posted:This might be a stupid question, but where the gently caress is all that money going? Who's getting rich off all of this? There's a few places it's all going. Mostly, though, it's all being reinvested back into getting more money. A lot of money is being poured into stuff that doesn't have much educational value but is very attractive to potential students checking out the campus, like college sports and fancy recreational facilities. Administrative staffing and (particularly at the high level) wages are growing at a rapid pace to keep up with the influx of students, and there's more and more focus on the fundraising aspect of the college president's job, along with increasingly luxurious pay and benefits. Schools are turning more and more to investment, and several schools have come under fire for hoarding up enormous endowments and pouring all the money into the financial markets even as they raise tuition. computer parts posted:The two are correlated. Actually, making poor people pay for college remedial classes because the free public education they were entitled to was deliberately lovely and failed to educate them to the required standard is dumb and bad. It's literally a poverty tax. The onus to make sure high school graduates are actually educated to a high school level should be on the high school system, which is free and fully supported by public funding, rather than universities that charge tuition. Colleges accepting basically anyone who applies, collecting a year of tuition, and then flunking them out the door with cheap weed-out classes and mandatory remedial sessions is super predatory.
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Sep 26, 2016 12:40
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At my commencement ceremony, the University President addressed the audience and the first thing she mentioned was that the university had crushed a $1b fundraising goal by reaching it two years earlier than projected. Therefore they were going to extend the goal to $1.5b. *applause*. She then heaped praise on the funding campaign and the donors, etc, without wasting a breath on describing how this money would be spent (besides the opulent student center that had just been constructed, which contains no educational facilities). She made it pretty clear that this fundraising is the only thing she cares about. I found it strange that she was pitching this to a room full of graduating students and their families, when it felt more suitable for a room full of venture capitalists or rich alumni. Although I had a good experience, I actively caution prospective students from coming here unless they're absolutely cut out for it. If not, I encourage them to look at vocational schools or CCs. But many of them are absolutely fixated on a four year degree at a private university, at any cost. I don't think they have any concept of how much money $50k per year for tuition+room and board is. Probably about as much as I can grasp a $1.5b fundraising goal.
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Sep 26, 2016 13:23
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I know a guy who does enrollment management software for universities (think a CRM system for tracking students to enroll them), and he mentioned that about 4/5ths of universities in the US are "enrollment driven", meaning they will accept anyone and need students to stay afloat. Would it be so bad to close the bottom 80% of universities in America?
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Sep 26, 2016 13:34
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on the left posted:Would it be so bad to close the bottom 80% of universities in America? People should have the opportunity to get an education, if they want one. Making higher education super exclusive is exactly what everyone has been working against for a long time now. The situation with student debt is lovely, but making it impossible for anyone but the most advantaged students to even gain admission to a university is not the answer. If the real concern is, as people have suggested previously, that people go to four year schools that they aren't prepared for and then end up with no degree and a ton of debt, then maybe more students should be pushed to start at community colleges. At least here in MA, if you do well in community college you're guaranteed admission to a four year state university upon finishing your associate's, and you also receive a rather substantial discount on your tuition. From my own experience, gen ed classes at community colleges are thirty or less students, which I think is easier for people to adjust to than the 100+ student sections for those same classes at a big university. Community colleges often have graduation rates for first-time freshmen of ~20%, which people like to rag on them for, but the 80% who dropped out are much better off than if they had gone to a much more expensive four year school. The students who do graduate hopefully do so with a better idea of what kind of further education they want to go after, if any. Imagine being fresh out of high school without a clear idea of what you want to do and trying to select which of 90+ (UMass currently has 96 undergraduate majors listed) programs you want to enroll in. Wallet fucked around with this message at 15:00 on Sep 26, 2016 |
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Sep 26, 2016 14:51
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Main Paineframe posted:
That's an argument to improve early education, it's not an argument to restrict access to higher education.
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Sep 26, 2016 14:52
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| # ? Apr 19, 2024 09:58 |
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on the left posted:Would it be so bad to close the bottom 80% of universities in America? Outside of the color of your skin and how much money your parents make, a college education is the single greatest factor in lifetime earning potential. So, yes, it would be bad to further restrict access to one of the few avenues of class mobility available to people in the US.
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Sep 26, 2016 14:58
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