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Arglebargle III posted:Kinda hosed up that salaries for university professors are trending down as price of a college education trends up. Where is the money going? It's going toward stuff that shows up on a campus tour or in the US News college rankings: fancy architecture and amenities, plenty of recreational activities, sports, famous professors, investment, and so on. College financial decisions are no longer directed toward giving students the best education - instead, the money is now directed toward things more likely to attract more money. It's gotten to the point where state schools now heavily market to out-of-state students (since they pay much higher tuition), and tuition increases are as much about perceived value (tricking people into thinking it must be a better school because it costs more than the competitors) as they are about actual need. Popular Thug Drink posted:public k-12 schools are typically one of if not the largest dedicated expenditures of local jurisdictions. colleges or universities do not have that same level of local support, usually funded at a minimum on the state level. it would be extremely difficult politically to decouple local control over public education expenditure, because you'd have to tackle something like 13,000 school districts across the 50 states and you'd piss off voters in every single congressperson's district Well, more importantly, it'd be difficult to decouple local control because local control is the mechanism for establishing and maintaining the systematic inequalities in public education. That said, funding alone isn't the only concern - there are a number of structural factors, too.
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Sep 26, 2016 23:36
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Paradoxish posted:The reason [the value of a four year degree] goes down as more people earn degrees is that it widens the field of potential candidates for higher paying jobs without, as you point out, changing any of the underlying economic factors that create those jobs. It's the same reason we can't just tell everyone who doesn't want to go to college to become a plumber or a welder. computer parts posted:My point as a whole is that funding for education (as a whole) is not available because certain people don't want to pay for it. This is true on many levels of education. For example, several people didn't want to give minorities money for education, so they moved to suburbs. Once you admit that funding and resources are finite relative to the number of students you would like to see go to college, the choices you are left with are: to admit as many students as possible while giving each a lower quality of education, the "diploma mill" model which is neither desirable nor sustainable, or to somehow gate access to a limited number of slots for high quality education opportunities. The most obvious and logical way to do this is to select those students who have demonstrated academic proficiency and are likely to succeed at completing their studies in the allotted time. Unfortunately, this runs counter to the desire of some to use universities as a tool for social mobility, as those with access to resources and wealth are also more likely to have developed the requisite academic skills.
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Sep 26, 2016 23:48
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Dead Reckoning posted:If we make college such that anyone with a pulse and a desire can get in the doors, then employers will just start requiring Masters degrees or certain college GPAs or not hiring candidates who don't have a degree from the "right" school. This is already the way most big companies work. Data point: The company I work for has a list of about 25 schools that it will hire from. If you don't come from one of these schools, your resume will not be read unless you have a strong recommendation from a partner. In addition to that you need a >3.5 GPA
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Sep 26, 2016 23:52
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Main Paineframe posted:It's going toward stuff that shows up on a campus tour or in the US News college rankings: fancy architecture and amenities, plenty of recreational activities, sports, famous professors, investment, and so on. College financial decisions are no longer directed toward giving students the best education - instead, the money is now directed toward things more likely to attract more money. It's gotten to the point where state schools now heavily market to out-of-state students (since they pay much higher tuition), and tuition increases are as much about perceived value (tricking people into thinking it must be a better school because it costs more than the competitors) as they are about actual need. Honestly, the real question is when they're going to figure out how to get away with having college without any professors at all. The faculty is an active impediment to the point of modern college education. They might demand that the tuition payers show that they know something!
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Sep 27, 2016 00:13
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Dead Reckoning posted:Do you think that employers are ever going to stop filtering their candidates based on educational criteria? If we make college such that anyone with a pulse and a desire can get in the doors, then employers will just start requiring Masters degrees or certain college GPAs or not hiring candidates who don't have a degree from the "right" school. Your plan won't manage to obscure the difference between those who currently have the means to get into college and those who don't, because those with the means will find another way to distinguish themselves, but will manage to depress the value and educational value of those attending a state school by driving down the dollar:student ratio. What, exactly, is my "plan?" Because like three times in this thread I've specifically said that I'm talking about further restricting access to higher education and that doing so will disproportionately affect those who already have lower levels of educational attainment. You cannot attempt to make higher education more selective without locking out minorities and the poor in greater numbers than those from higher up on the socioeconomic ladder. Do you disagree with this? What is it that you're arguing with in my post?
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Sep 27, 2016 00:21
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Paradoxish posted:I feel like you're just rephrasing my post and somehow saying that we disagree? Like, yeah, degrees only have value because employers assign value to them as a sorting mechanism for job candidates. That's trivially true, but it doesn't actually mean anything. The reason that value goes down as more people earn degrees is that it widens the field of potential candidates for higher paying jobs without, as you point out, changing any of the underlying economic factors that create those jobs. It's the same reason we can't just tell everyone who doesn't want to go to college to become a plumber or a welder.
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Sep 27, 2016 00:23
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GunnerJ posted:Honestly, the real question is when they're going to figure out how to get away with having college without any professors at all. The faculty is an active impediment to the point of modern college education. They might demand that the tuition payers show that they know something! They already have. Online lessons and pre-recorded lectures with grading done by TAs and grad students. Why do you think schools have such a huge boner for online education? Failing "no professors" you can have one professor record/stream his lecture and show it to 1,000 students then get the grading done by unpaid grad students.
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Sep 27, 2016 00:45
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twodot posted:Literally any race/wealth blind action will disproportionately harm minorities and the poor, because that's the nature of privilege, so I'm unclear on your point. Are we agreed that increasing the amount of college degrees handed out will not increase social mobility in the US? If you look at my original post, I was responding to someone who suggested that it wouldn't be so bad if we shut down the "bottom 80%" of US universities. Making higher education an even scarcer resource would, aside from being a huge negative for society in general, actively hurt the people who are already being left behind. And sure, randomly handing out more college degrees wouldn't do anything except force employers to start focusing even harder on recruiting high achievers from top schools. That doesn't mean that increasing access to higher education would have no effect on social mobility, though. There are options in between throwing up more gates on higher education and just freely handing out degrees to anyone who wants one.
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Sep 27, 2016 15:24
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Paradoxish posted:If you look at my original post, I was responding to someone who suggested that it wouldn't be so bad if we shut down the "bottom 80%" of US universities. Making higher education an even scarcer resource would, aside from being a huge negative for society in general, actively hurt the people who are already being left behind.
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Sep 27, 2016 15:39
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twodot posted:It's smart for individuals to attempt to get degrees, but I don't understand why you think the presence of degrees as a social policy drives social mobility of the population in these ways. That's because I'm not saying that. I'm saying that gating access to higher education has the effect of reducing access to better jobs for people who are already disadvantaged. The fact that the economy might not be able to support a greater number of degree holders (I happen to agree with PTD that the core problem is that there just aren't good jobs, and that there will be even less over the coming decades) isn't a good reason to prevent certain groups from competing for the jobs that do exist. As you say, it's smart for individuals to pursue degrees. Restricting access to higher education has the effect of removing that option from a huge number of people.
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Sep 27, 2016 22:18
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Paradoxish posted:That's because I'm not saying that.
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Sep 27, 2016 22:36
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twodot posted:Yes, but since we are removing that option from a huge number of people instead of an individual, I don't see a reason to think that there is any loss of competitive advantage for disadvantaged people, if anything I would predict an increase in competitive advantage for the disadvantaged since they now get to compete with less people who do have college degrees, and the very disadvantaged had no hope of attaining a college degree under either set of policies. You can't say "Well preventing John from getting a college degree harms John's chances, therefore I will just generalize that preventing large groups of people from getting degrees will reduce social mobility" it just doesn't follow directly. I feel like we're talking past each other here, because I've never once suggested that if we could just magic up a bunch of degrees it would suddenly raise some abstract social mobility value for the country. The kind of people who are disadvantaged when it comes to higher education are in that position because they're underserved by their primary or secondary education, or because they can't afford it, or because of some other systemic cause. Making higher education an incredibly scarce resource would leave those people worse off because all of the people who aren't being held back by those factors would now be competing for an even more limited resource. I have no idea why you would think that people who are already disadvantaged would suddenly be proportionally better off in that case. And just to be upfront about where I'm coming from: I view education to be inherently valuable to society. The idea of restricting it to an elite, privileged view is completely abhorrent to me, even before taking any economic factors into account. It feels absolutely absurd to even be defending the idea of maintaining our current level of access to higher education. Do you have an actual argument for why you feel that restricting access is good policy?
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Sep 27, 2016 23:14
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Paradoxish posted:And just to be upfront about where I'm coming from: I view education to be inherently valuable to society. The idea of restricting it to an elite, privileged view is completely abhorrent to me, even before taking any economic factors into account. It feels absolutely absurd to even be defending the idea of maintaining our current level of access to higher education. Do you have an actual argument for why you feel that restricting access is good policy? You can receive an MIT education for a nominal cost ( or going to the library) in your spare time. Education is not limited to an elite privileged few at all, and it's hard to imagine how it could be more democratized. The only thing expansion of third tier toilet universities will do is provide a credential. Credentials don't improve the wealth of a society.
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Sep 27, 2016 23:31
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on the left posted:You can receive an MIT education for a nominal cost ( or going to the library) in your spare time. Education is not limited to an elite privileged few at all, and it's hard to imagine how it could be more democratized. For certain jobs you need the credential and take a wild guess how many employers will accept "I watched a bunch of MIT videos" as an acceptable answer in "education."
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Sep 27, 2016 23:48
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"ugh third tier universities aren't worth attending. now let me tell you how you can pretend like you went to a top tier university by hanging around your local public library twice a week"
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Sep 27, 2016 23:51
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Could the federal government create a Federal University System out of whole cloth and fund it at that level? Putting aside the likelihood of passing something like that is it is constitutional? e: to me this would solve the accreditation issue and the access issue and funding it would be easier to achieve than trying to improve the incredibly fragmented state systems piecemeal. Ballpark numbers here what would it cost? 200 billion a year or so? Probably would be the most realistic way of doing Bernie's free college for everyone thing rscott fucked around with this message at 00:30 on Sep 28, 2016 |
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Sep 28, 2016 00:24
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rscott posted:Could the federal government create a Federal University System out of whole cloth and fund it at that level? Putting aside the likelihood of passing something like that is it is constitutional? theoretically yeah, it would just take infinite money. there's no reason why the federal government cant have their own parallel university system boner confessor fucked around with this message at 00:32 on Sep 28, 2016 |
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Sep 28, 2016 00:26
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Paradoxish posted:Making higher education an incredibly scarce resource would leave those people worse off because all of the people who aren't being held back by those factors would now be competing for an even more limited resource. I have no idea why you would think that people who are already disadvantaged would suddenly be proportionally better off in that case.
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Sep 28, 2016 00:29
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twodot posted:Because, as far as social mobility is concerned, the resource being competed over isn't college degrees, or even jobs that require college degrees, it's high quality jobs. The number of high quality jobs exists independent of whether there exists enough people with degrees to fill them, so if we reduce the number of degrees, we reduce the number of people with degrees who are in competition, and then this should be an improvement at least for people who couldn't get a degree in either system and have some weird effects for people on the margin. this doesn't account for the idea that degrees are worth having independent of their use as a qualification for employment
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Sep 28, 2016 00:34
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I don't think that the number of high quality jobs exists regardless of the number of degree holders because there are actual benefits beyond the status marker of holding a degree. Restricting access to higher education would reduce productivity and stifle innovation and that would negatively affect everyone no matter how wealthy you are.
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Sep 28, 2016 00:37
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stupid question. but did anything new update on the strike front? the latest news i could find was that the scheduled the walkout date as the 19th of october and thats it.
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Sep 28, 2016 00:47
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boner confessor posted:"ugh third tier universities aren't worth attending. now let me tell you how you can pretend like you went to a top tier university by hanging around your local public library twice a week" The inherent problem with third-tier universities is not the teaching, it's the fact that they cost just as much as worthwhile universities. ToxicSlurpee posted:For certain jobs you need the credential and take a wild guess how many employers will accept "I watched a bunch of MIT videos" as an acceptable answer in "education." I agree with you, this is why finding a way to make sure everyone has a certain credential will backfire, eliminating the value of the credential. Online education is a response to the "It's about EDUCATION, maaaaan" viewpoint.
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Sep 28, 2016 00:48
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rscott posted:I don't think that the number of high quality jobs exists regardless of the number of degree holders because there are actual benefits beyond the status marker of holding a degree. Restricting access to higher education would reduce productivity and stifle innovation and that would negatively affect everyone no matter how wealthy you are. boner confessor posted:this doesn't account for the idea that degrees are worth having independent of their use as a qualification for employment
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Sep 28, 2016 01:32
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twodot posted:Because, as far as social mobility is concerned, the resource being competed over isn't college degrees, or even jobs that require college degrees, it's high quality jobs. The number of high quality jobs exists independent of whether there exists enough people with degrees to fill them, so if we reduce the number of degrees, we reduce the number of people with degrees who are in competition, and then this should be an improvement at least for people who couldn't get a degree in either system and have some weird effects for people on the margin. People with degrees have an inherent advantage in the job market. That's going to be true so long as anything less than 100% of the workforce are degree holders, even if the relative value of having one decreases as the number of holders increases. This is true even if the number of jobs available stays completely static. If you attempt to actively reduce college enrollment, that gives a greater advantage to people who managed to get through the system before the door slammed shut and the small minority of people who can still squeeze through. It's also going to dump a lot of other people into the same boat that non-degree holders are in now, but I see absolutely no reason to believe that an even larger glut of unqualified labor would somehow lead to greater bargaining power. You also seem really insistent on implying that I'm suggesting higher education is a panacea for social mobility, when I haven't even come close to doing that. What I am saying is that access to higher education is important to make sure that people who are already at a disadvantage aren't actively made less competitive in the labor market.
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Sep 28, 2016 01:44
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twodot posted:I thought there was broad agreement that college isn't job training, and that to the extent jobs require training, we should push those costs onto employers, rather than expecting 18 year olds to spin the wheel on what job they may get 4 years later, and whether the degree they chose has any relevance to the jobs available. Is that not the case? Job training is not the same thing as being exposed to broader viewpoints and people of different backgrounds than you would otherwise, critical thinking/reasoning skills, establishing social networks that will help you in your professional career, easier access to mentors/advisers that help you with issues and stumbling blocks, etc. All of these things to one extent or another contribute to how productive, effective and innovative people are. e: college is supposed to give you a general tool set of skills that you are able to apply to many different professional situations and jobs, job training is supposed to tell you how to use those tools as they specifically pertain to your role and duties. rscott fucked around with this message at 01:59 on Sep 28, 2016 |
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Sep 28, 2016 01:56
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Paradoxish posted:People with degrees have an inherent advantage in the job market. That's going to be true so long as anything less than 100% of the workforce are degree holders, even if the relative value of having one decreases as the number of holders increases. This is true even if the number of jobs available stays completely static. If you attempt to actively reduce college enrollment, that gives a greater advantage to people who managed to get through the system before the door slammed shut and the small minority of people who can still squeeze through. It's also going to dump a lot of other people into the same boat that non-degree holders are in now, but I see absolutely no reason to believe that an even larger glut of unqualified labor would somehow lead to greater bargaining power.
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Sep 28, 2016 01:59
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twodot posted:More access to higher education is useful to disadvantaged people only if they get disproportionate access to higher education. If we merely offer more access to everyone, then the disadvantaged remain disadvantaged. This is the nature of not possessing advantage. Only if you take the most narrow view possible of what "access" means. Providing greater access to higher education can mean better funding of primary and secondary schools in poor communities, so that students from those areas are less likely to be unprepared and more likely to actually enroll in the first place. Providing greater access can mean reducing or eliminating costs so that dropping out after a few semesters isn't financially devastating. You can work at reducing the factors that lead certain groups to be disadvantaged in the first place, while also acknowledging that some factors (ie, racism) are hard to combat directly and so provide programs specifically targeted towards affected groups. I mean, is the core of your argument that we should just forcefully reduce the supply of college educated workers so that employers are forced to hire more non-degree holders? Do you really not see how that would reduce the bargaining power of everyone in the labor force without a degree? Do you really believe that a less educated workforce is a net gain for society?
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Sep 28, 2016 02:06
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If a college degree goes back to being something that only the children of the wealthy can attain you can bet your rear end that it's going to be absolutely mandatory for all the best jobs at all the best companies. It's a telltale sign that you're in the club. People not in the club don't get to play in the big leagues. Eliminating or reducing access to higher education creates a de facto caste system; the poorly educated who have no way to become educated have severe limitations on them. This is especially true as the world needs less and less manual labor done; the jobs that need done are increasingly technical and cerebral thanks to technology. Educated workers who have strong reasoning skills are increasingly a necessity to do pretty much anything at all. Perhaps more importantly you don't know where your genuises will come from. You just don't. Our next Einstein might be born to people running a tiny, grungy little mom'n'pop diner in a mining town and barely getting by. Our next Einstein might be born to homeless people living in a camp in a swamp. If our next Einstein can't get a proper education due solely to an accident of birth society has squandered something. Which brings up the other point; as it stands a whole gently caress load of a person's future potential is determined entirely by something they absolutely can't control. The child of a billionaire has far more resources afforded to him then the child of a vagrant farmer.
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Sep 28, 2016 02:13
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Perhaps more importantly you don't know where your genuises will come from. You just don't. Our next Einstein might be born to people running a tiny, grungy little mom'n'pop diner in a mining town and barely getting by. Our next Einstein might be born to homeless people living in a camp in a swamp. If our next Einstein can't get a proper education due solely to an accident of birth society has squandered something. Which brings up the other point; as it stands a whole gently caress load of a person's future potential is determined entirely by something they absolutely can't control. It's comparatively easy to create an educational system capable of recognizing the top 1% in cognitive ability and educating those students. Smart students can be identified early with standardized testing more or less reliably. If society agreed on this goal we wouldn't be having this conversation. The hard part is educating students once you get far enough down the bell curve where the costs are higher than ever and societal gains are illusory. Since we believe that an equal education is a civil right and not equal in terms of "equal dollars spent", organizing education spending to accomplish this goal in the face of millions of parents with competing objectives is impossible.
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Sep 28, 2016 03:16
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on the left posted:It's comparatively easy to create an educational system capable of recognizing the top 1% in cognitive ability and educating those students. Smart students can be identified early with standardized testing more or less reliably. Haha goddamn.
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Sep 28, 2016 03:45
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I don't think it's controversial to recognize that while obtaining a degree confers a great advantage, it is not necessarily beneficial to everyone to invest in a degree, since there's no guarantee of actually obtaining one. You have to have some level of aptitude for it to be worthwhile. In a perfect world, there would be jobs suitable for all levels of aptitude which offer living wages and some degree of upward mobility. But I don't see how reforming universities alone could help bring back the 70s.
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Sep 28, 2016 04:10
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Arglebargle III posted:Haha goddamn. Genius-level skills are truly hard to miss, and the APA agrees that: - IQ scores have high predictive validity for individual differences in school achievement. - IQ scores have predictive validity for adult occupational status, even when variables such as education and family background have been statistically controlled. - There is little evidence to show that childhood diet influences intelligence except in cases of severe malnutrition.
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Sep 28, 2016 13:23
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Paradoxish posted:Only if you take the most narrow view possible of what "access" means. Providing greater access to higher education can mean better funding of primary and secondary schools in poor communities, so that students from those areas are less likely to be unprepared and more likely to actually enroll in the first place. Providing greater access can mean reducing or eliminating costs so that dropping out after a few semesters isn't financially devastating. You can work at reducing the factors that lead certain groups to be disadvantaged in the first place, while also acknowledging that some factors (ie, racism) are hard to combat directly and so provide programs specifically targeted towards affected groups. quote:I mean, is the core of your argument that we should just forcefully reduce the supply of college educated workers so that employers are forced to hire more non-degree holders? Do you really not see how that would reduce the bargaining power of everyone in the labor force without a degree? Do you really believe that a less educated workforce is a net gain for society?
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Sep 28, 2016 13:51
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on the left posted:Genius-level skills are truly hard to miss, and the APA agrees that: Haha, goddamn.
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Sep 28, 2016 20:34
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twodot posted:Because, as far as social mobility is concerned, the resource being competed over isn't college degrees, or even jobs that require college degrees, it's high quality jobs. The number of high quality jobs exists independent of whether there exists enough people with degrees to fill them, so if we reduce the number of degrees, we reduce the number of people with degrees who are in competition, and then this should be an improvement at least for people who couldn't get a degree in either system and have some weird effects for people on the margin. High-quality jobs don't get easier to do if there are less people qualified to do them, though. Decreasing the number of people qualified to do them will just increase inequality, by raising salaries even further for the few college degree-havers as the same number of jobs compete over an increasingly-scarce set of qualifications
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Sep 28, 2016 20:52
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Main Paineframe posted:High-quality jobs don't get easier to do if there are less people qualified to do them, though. Decreasing the number of people qualified to do them will just increase inequality, by raising salaries even further for the few college degree-havers as the same number of jobs compete over an increasingly-scarce set of qualifications
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Sep 28, 2016 21:57
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twodot posted:I don't agree that college degrees qualify people to do high quality jobs. Reality called. It agreed to the divorce. You're free now.
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Sep 28, 2016 23:51
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Reality called.
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Sep 29, 2016 00:00
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twodot posted:No it is you who is wrong and I who is right. Seriously what's this supposed to accomplish beyond upping your post count? Certain degrees or certifications are 100% totally, absolutely, completely required for a ton of jobs. A whole long list of other jobs strongly prefer people with degrees. The reason is that, in theory, having a particular degree or certification is a stamp that says "I have this skill." There's a pretty strong link between having a skill and being able to do skilled labor. Somebody hiring programmers is going to prefer somebody with a degree in computer science over somebody without. I don't have a medical degree. Take a wild guess what would happen if I tried to get a job being a doctor. Your opinion is just so, so, so unbelievably far from reality I have to wonder if you're posting somehow from a mental asylum.
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Sep 29, 2016 00:06
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Certain degrees or certifications are 100% totally, absolutely, completely required for a ton of jobs. A whole long list of other jobs strongly prefer people with degrees. Edit: It's plausible to me that your average CS grad is better suited for programming than your average 22 year old. But degrees are categorically not stamps of having a particular skill. twodot fucked around with this message at 00:18 on Sep 29, 2016 |
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Sep 29, 2016 00:11
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