What's Wrong With the American University System 828
ideonexus writes "The Atlantic has an excellent interview with Andrew Hacker — co-author with Claudia Dreifus of a book titled Higher Education? — covering everything that's wrong with the American university system. The discussion ranges from entrenched tenured professors more concerned with publishing and parking spaces than quality teaching; to 22-year-old students with unrealistic expectations that some company will put them in a management position after graduating with six-figures of debt; to football teams siphoning money away from academic programs so that student tuitions must increase to compensate. It really lays out the farce of university culture and reminds me of everything I absolutely despised about my college life. Dreifus is active in the comments section of the article as well, lending to a fantastic discussion on the subject."
That it's required for most employment these days? (Score:5, Insightful)
Fix that first.
Re:That it's required for most employment these da (Score:5, Insightful)
most employment...
...has been shipped to China.
Thanks for playing, USA.
Your decline won't end in a nice environmentally sustainable hippydom either. Alchys and neglect are your future. Detroit, writ large.
Happy Friday.
More than meets the eye (Score:4, Insightful)
You know, before I went to university, I thought the exact same thing. What's in it for me? I'm a smart guy, have a high IQ, know a lot. I'm generally smarter than many people who've graduated university. So why do employers insist on a post-secondary degree or diploma to hire for certain positions?
Then I went to university. Shortly after I got in, my world view got blown the fuck up. There are a lot of important lessons that I've learned in university.
Humility, respect, and perspective were the first to come. Most of us here were probably at the top of our graduating classes in high school in practically every subject. But once you get into a good university that requires you to take different courses (mine requires at least one full year course or equivalent in each of Social Sciences, Humanities, and Sciences), while you may excel in your own particular field of study, you'll also start to realize that people in other fields of study are equally impressive in their reasoning and knowledge. You'll also start to realize that your interests and expertise do not encompass the world, and that the world is a lot bigger than we tend to give it credit for. People are more intellectually diverse, and that diversity does not mean that they are intellectually inferior. You gain a lot of perspective.
Your social skills will also improve if you choose to engage in campus social life. Once you get past high school and into university, it seems like most people just press a social reset button. Gone are candies and nerds and other cliques, everyone's just a student. You'll quickly learn the benefits of networking, especially with those people with interests outside of your own, both as a social support mechanism as well as for professional purposes. If you're in the sciences, you'll often find yourself having to work with other people and improving your co-operation and leadership skills, two skills that are key to your professional success.
Individual work ethics and research skills will also be developed. You learn that there's a lot more to research than Wikipedia (your ass will swiftly be kicked if you try to use it as anything other than a quick overview/starting point). Your post-secondary institution will grant you unlimited access to many research portals, where you can find papers on practically any field of human knowledge. If you do well in university, your employer will know that you've had experience doing a lot of individual research and with strict deadlines approaching. Having good time management skills, self-control, and generally good work ethics are also key to being a good employee.
Then there's the actual knowledge. I can't personally speak to computer programming/science/engineering, but I do have a friend who graduated with a BSc in Software Engineering. He's told me over the years that he's really learned a lot about programming and software engineering from the school. Software engineering in particular requires you to be open minded and have different perspectives on possible solutions. He learned how to look at the problem from different angles, and different ways to attack similar problems. From my own view, there can really be no replacement for the knowledge I've gained in the past few years at this school. In fact, if I never attended this school, I wouldn't even have known that I was interested in what I'm doing right now, philosophy.
That's only a few of the many things that I can easily put into words about my experience in university. I've experienced and learned so much more, but I wouldn't have the time, nor the words in many instances, to write about them here. The catch is that you have to be willing to learn. You have to open your mind and look at university as a whole life learning experience. I know many people who just come to school in order to get that piece of paper that will get them a better chance at a job. Some of those people end up realizing the social and educational potential of the university experience at-large, but most of them learn n
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Software design, scientific computing, algorithmic analysis, etc.
A university education is very important if you want to do much more than configure routers and hack code together.
Re:That it's required for most employment these da (Score:5, Insightful)
Education is only important to things you don't like. If you are truly interested in a field you'll learn these things on your own; often better than can be taught. Otherwise you are just forcing an education due to it feeling required.
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Education is only important to things you don't like. If you are truly interested in a field you'll learn these things on your own; often better than can be taught.
Partially true. However, some topics are very hard to find sufficient materials to learn from on your own - and some of the more complicated things even the brightest people need someone to help explain it to them so that they fully understand it.
Re:That it's required for most employment these da (Score:4, Insightful)
Programming, Technical work, Networking, DBA, Whatever you want to do with computers, education doesn't really matter.
This isn't entirely true. Both outside HR and internal HR departments filter the masses of resumes they receive by education. The simple, brain-dead way to filter the vast majority of candidates, and select (on average) better ones is to require either a Masters or a PhD. I wrote quite a diatribe about the stupidity of this practice a month or so ago when this turned up on Slashdot.
So while you still can get a job without a having 4-8 years of higher education in Computer fields, you're going to have to battering-ram through stupid HR screening before you'll get noticed. The 'big' companies like Google, Apple, Microsoft and such even lean towards PhD as a minimum bar for entry. That's even more stupid, and you'll find you have trouble even getting a phone interview without a PhD even if you have, say, 10+ years experience in exactly the field they want.
The root cause? Escalation. Everyone who wants to get a programming job is getting a Masters, not even a Bachelors, because employers want that because everyone in the previous generation has a Bachelors. Now employers want a PhD because, well, everyone got a Masters because employers wanted that. What happens when everyone's spent 10 years in education just to get a job? Perhaps, I dunno, people could be recruited on a basis of their quality rather than a piece of paper saying they're as good as a few million other people.
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That sounds like an issue with employers then, not universities.
Re:That it's required for most employment these da (Score:4, Interesting)
That sounds like an issue with employers then, not universities.
If employers keep asking for ever-increasing qualifications, isn't that an indication that universities aren't providing the right education?
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You could say that, but I say they are searching in the wrong places.
If I had to choose between a mechanic who has worked on cars for 8 years or a mechanic who just got out of 8 years of schooling - I am going to pick the one I know can do it.
If you exclude people based on educational institutes and not education period - you deserve what you get. You only help the political and broken system stay exactly in place.
Your criteria in a job search should be "Can they do the job" - something that universities we
Re:That it's required for most employment these da (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's the example of the number one thing wrong with the US higher education system: misunderstanding of the purpose of the "higher education system".
Universities are supposed to be places where people get a well-rounded education in a wide array of topics. That's why the undergraduate degrees tend to have liberal arts and science and social studies components to them. The result is supposed to be people who can look at the world and have some understanding of where we are and where we are going.
If you want a technical degree, go to a community college or trade school. You should not be looking to the Universities to provide well-trained mechanics.
The fact that tenure was listed as a fault is another sign of that same misunderstanding. Universities are also intended to further the arts through research. Tenure is a means of allowing faculty to relax a bit from having to deal with the daily grind and let them explore areas that aren't necessarily the most productive now -- but may become so. "Ok, you've shown you can produce papers and teach, now be inventive."
It's no different than Google's "free friday", or whatever company it was that gave employees work-time to do personal projects.
Re:That it's required for most employment these da (Score:5, Funny)
Most of the time its a HR drone who thinks that PHP is some kind of street name for a drug
PHP is a gateway language, it's easy to start with but before you know it you're hooked on Python, C, Java, and even worse. I get the shakes now if I don't use Perl every few hours. PHP ruined my life man.
In defense of football (Score:3, Insightful)
In all fairness, most football programs MAKE money for the University. The ticket sales and merchandising are a HUGE boon for most universities, with little in the way of player salaries to cut into all that phat cash.
And, even if they didn't make money directly, popular sports programs are often a huge draw for the local donors and alumni supporters that keep most universities going. Like it or not, wealthy alumni and locals are a helluva lot more interested in how the football/basketball teams are doing than how many papers Professor Dipschitz published this year, or how much you've improved your graduation rate.
And before a bunch of you non-Americans kick in with snide "handegg" remarks, yes I'm aware that you're "football" is different from ours. But we *are* talking about American universities here.
Re:In defense of football (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:In defense of football (Score:4, Informative)
No, they don't. The ONLY thing they do is raise enrollment. The year after a team wins a championship or does well, they've seen enrollment rise.
UConn lost roughly $280,000 in football, according to the numbers. Only three BCS programs lost more — Syracuse, which lost $835,000, Wake Forest ($3.07 million) and Duke ($6.72 million). Rutgers, which spent $19.07 million on its football program, was the only other school to fail to make a profit, although the Big East school broke even. [courant.com]
Basketball doesn't make money either. [csmonitor.com]
"Let's just take a look at two schools, my own Holy Cross and big-time power North Carolina to highlight the flaws. According to the article, the Holy Cross basketball team racked up $1,549,329 in expenses while generating an identical amount in revenue and therefore exactly broke even.".
And as a whole, only 19 D1 Football schools were in the black. [sectalk.com]
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Those NE schools you are citing are just doing it wrong. There's plenty of money to be made in college sports:
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/388387-texas-longhorns-how-the-athletic-department-keeps-the-money-flowing [bleacherreport.com]
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That is one school. Who knows if that team even paid for their own stadium.
The reality is a few big names in each region make money the rest lose it. Often those that do make money get tax money for stadiums or the uni pays to build it.
Re:In defense of football (Score:5, Informative)
I'm a member of a college athletics committee, and I can tell you with all confidence that while is the common perception of college and university football programs, it simply isn't true. Even in Division I institutions football teams are, as a rule, largely funded by state dollars, student fees, and creative tax exemptions rather than by ticket sales, television contracts, etc. And this has been shown in study after study -- it's even a line that the NCAA toes.
You can check NCAA financial disclosures to verify this at http://www2.indystar.com/NCAA_financial_reports/ [indystar.com] thanks to a study completed by Mark Alesia in 2006, but a quick Google should point you to a bunch of other studies that give this position the lie. If you'd rather not click through and see the reports yourself, this is a nice summary statement:
"First off, he [Alesia] found that athletic departments at taxpayer-funded universities nationwide receive more than $1 billion in student fees and general school funds and services, and that without such outside funding, fewer than 10 percent of athletic departments would have been able to support themselves with ticket sales, television contracts and other revenue-generating sports sources. In fact, most would have lost more than $5 million."
While this is a statement about athletics programs in general rather than football programs specifically, the NCAA financial reports make it clear that even among popular sports like basketball and football, the overwhelming majority of programs are perennial money losers.
Re:In defense of football (Score:4, Interesting)
TV contract revenue, the prime source of revenue for athletic programs, has more than doubled since Alesia's report -- it's through the roof (well, for domed stadiums; I guess it's over the upper bowl for open stadiums). As of 2008, 58 of 120 D-IA athletic departments were break-even or profitable (source [go.com] -- note that "university" revenue in the source includes government funding, which is channeled through the university). Note that 2009 TV revenue was even higher than 2008. It's probable that over half of DI-A athletic departments are currently profitable.
Alesia's report is incomplete for some other reasons, notably the correlation between athletic programs and general alumni donations/endowments, and the local economic impact to businesses.
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Well... except that according to the article, you're wrong. Straight from the article:
"And then you look at the so-called big-revenue teams--football and basketball. Those are the powerhouses where there's a lot of recruiting, a lot of it underhanded. Yet if you look at all those powerhouse programs across the country, only seven or eight actually rake in money. All the rest of them lose money."
I don't know who's right here, but I'd be inclined to trust the researchers writing a book. Also, I can certainl
Re:In defense of football (Score:5, Informative)
"In all fairness, most football programs MAKE money for the University."
Not for the university, no. Football funds generally go to the athletic department, which still runs at an overall loss to the university. This is according to the NCAA.
Those funds are typically used to support the rest of a university's athletic department budget. According to the National Collegiate Athletic Association, most departments operate at a yearly multimillion-dollar deficit. [PBS Nightly Business Report: The Business of College Football, Part 1]
http://www.pbs.org/nbr/site/onair/transcripts/071112c/ [pbs.org]
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In all fairness, most football programs MAKE money for the University. The ticket sales and merchandising are a HUGE boon for most universities, with little in the way of player salaries to cut into all that phat cash.
That's a commonly made claim that's not borne out by facts. There are several books, such as The Game of Life that have examined what data is public (a lot of football programs will guard their finances jealously, even from their universities) and for the most part, football teams are a net money loss for the university.
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[citation-needed]
At my university [wm.edu], ~$1300 of undergraduate tuition/fees per year went toward (our hilariously awful) intercollegiate athletics program.
On the other hand, our intramural sports and fitness programs cost each student about $130, and had nearly a 100% participation rate.
Guess which one had its funding cut last year?
Re:In defense of football (Score:4, Funny)
Yes, because that wasn't a mistake. It was an indication that I went through 12 years of primary and secondary education, 4 years of undergraduate work, and 6 years on a Masters and a Ph.D. and was never once told the difference between "Your" and "You're." Until you came along and enlightened me just now, I was ignorant and lost. A lot of people would have just assumed that it was a mistake--but not you. You, and only you, realized that I needed the grammatical guidance of a kind scholar like yourself. You stepped forward, ignoring the citics who would dismiss you as a smug grammar Nazi, and said "No, I will not allow him to remain ignorant!"
Thank you, sir! Thank you!
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Guess "YOU'RE" college didn't require Freshman English.
Go easy on him. He was probably a football player.
Corporate (Score:5, Insightful)
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The secretaries are analogous to the administrative staff of the university. The partners are analogous to the professors. In both cases the point of the institution has been lost.
The bigger problem is the highschools (Score:3, Insightful)
The biggest problem with higher education in the USA is it is just a few ticks above what the high-school diploma used to be. IMHO that's because our high-school system is rather poor when it comes down to it. In the end experience is what gets you a job and diploma and degrees simply show that you aren't an absolute idiot. There a lot of jobs that require a degree when there is no need for it.
Orange County (Score:3, Insightful)
Shaun: I have to go to college.
Cindy: Why?
Shaun: Because it's what you do after high school.
Just remembered this quote
What is wrong with university... (Score:5, Insightful)
Fix our high school system by actually -failing- kids who can't do the work. None of this "can I please have extra credit despite me doing nothing but talking in class?" crap that keeps high-profile athletes who are dumber than rocks with "passing" grades.
Re:What is wrong with university... (Score:5, Informative)
Coming from a European high school, and having spend a decade in the US, it seems to me that the courses that everyone that graduated my high school had to take would be equivalent to what many Americans get if they take a whole lot of AP classes. My biggest gripe with the American University was that the entry level general courses had no material I had not covered in High school: Physics I and II, Chemistry I and II, Calculus I, II and III and College Algebra were all covered in HS. Everything higher level than that had better quality content than what I'd have seen in the local University back home.
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Well, except that the US highschool graduation rate peaked in 1969 at 77%, and is now below 70%. So, not only does your complaint not accurately reflect the current state of our high school system (without a ridiculously loose definition of "everyone"), it doesn't even reflect the direction of the current trend.
But don't let facts get in the way of
But put this in pespective (Score:5, Insightful)
Name one profession that is _not_ filled with petty politics, sucking up to superiors, back stabbing and arguing over parking spots?
The difference is only academics write a thick book about it.
Re:But put this in pespective (Score:4, Funny)
Sir, I defer to your greater experience in this matter.
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petty politics, sucking up to superiors, back stabbing and arguing over parking spots
I'm pretty sure fluffers have to deal with that to.
Especially the sucking up to superiors.
Almost had me... (Score:5, Insightful)
The summary started out good but:
"They blame a system that favors research over teaching and vocational training over liberal arts".
"The second reason to go to college is get a good liberal arts education."
I'm not saying get rid of liberal arts. They're great. I loved taking them when I got my BSME. I'm probably going to sneak into a few when I go back for my masters. But there is no reason every decent sized school needs to be graduating even 20 theater majors a year. Hurray, you spent 4 years and $50k to learn to do theater. Now what? Most highschools require you to have a teaching degree too. So now you're limited to off broadway and the such. Something tells me that there isn't a huge demand (at least not enough to match supply).
The most successful liberal arts major you'll ever meet was most likely one of your liberal arts professors.
We NEED to be focusing more on vocational training. The world needs ditch diggers. The world also needs mechanics, electricians, welders. We need to quit making high schools force someone who would be an excellent mechanic into going to college 'just because'. Too many parents push their kids into college thinking either "I'm successful, they have to go to be successful too." or "I want my kid to go to college because I didn't to get rich".
Personally I've liked what I read about other countries where they sort of guide you into a track early in high school. I'm sure it's not perfect and they get the track wrong, but it's a ton better than graduating 10,000 students a year from a decent sized education, 50% of which have a degree that is more or less 100% useless. WTF does an "Art Appreciation" major do?
I wish I could go back to my high school and give a swift cock punch to my guidance counselor that told me I couldn't take welding because I was college bound. There is so much stuff I'd love to make. Thankfully my dad taught me wood working and home repair and I learned to solder in an internship.
Re:Almost had me...[Almost Educated] (Score:3, Insightful)
Liberal Arts is not about Theatre, Liberal Arts at the core is about thinking. This country needs more people who can think before they do, not more doers whose educations become obsolete before the ink on their diploma is dry.
there are many good essays on exactly what Liberal Arts is, you should try reading a few of them before penning ignorant rants.
This is one of them, http://www2.fiu.edu/~hauptli/MyViewofTheNatureofALiberalArtsEducation.html
This is a page that describes the expectations of a student th
Re:Almost had me...[Almost Educated] (Score:5, Insightful)
Liberal Arts at the core is about thinking.
No, Liberal Arts is about thinking the way pre-scientific people did it.
Read CP Snow's "Two Cultures", which laments the divide between the sciences and the liberal arts, and justly so.
So long as the liberal arts fail to adapt to the scientific world-view, including accepting the importance of mathematical reasoning alongside poetry etc, they have ceased to be what they once were, which is the living voice of Western culture. Instead they are just a cozy backwater for the scientifically illiterate.
The sciences, at the same time, become a cozy backwater for the poetically illiterate.
discovery of the obvious (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:discovery of the obvious (Score:4, Insightful)
But in the end I enjoyed the German university far more. For one, tuition was free*. Dealing with the bullshit that comes with a higher education is so much easier when you know you're not digging yourself into five figure debt for the privilege. Aside from that there were lots of perks on the side. The cafeteria served a choice 6 complete meals at lunch time, all between 2 to 4 euros for students including some salad, dessert, soup and a main dish. Students were able to ride all in-state public transportation for free, and it was good public transport. Single dorms were about 250 euros a month. Student loans were provided by the government with 0% interest, 50% to be paid back with payments starting 5 years after graduation. Good marks and early payment could lower that amount even further.
Last but not least, I was able to get a part time job at the university helping with research projects in my field. I probably learned more about programming through this work with the professor and his staff than I did in any of the lectures, and I was paid for it at the same time. These sorts of jobs were available in almost every department if you cared to ask.
I still had plenty of gripes, but I'm sure it could have been far worse.
*Before I get the inevitable "But it's not free you pay for it with taxes" reply yes, you're right. The point is the cost of your education is spread over your entire working life, instead of being dropped on you all at once. And I still had to pay a 120 euro/semester "fee" for administration, student union and so on.
A holdover from the days of royalty and privilege (Score:3, Insightful)
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Tuition increases! (Score:4, Insightful)
From the article -- "Tuitions now are twice what they were 25 years ago".
Hmm, I started at the University of Texas almost 25 years ago. Tuition has gone up by a factor of *10* since then.
(Seriously -- it was about $400 per semester back then, and now it's over $4000/semester now.)
Back then, I put myself through college. No loans. Not sure that kids could do that now ...
What's wrong with this article (Score:5, Insightful)
From TFA:
One of your more controversial points is the idea that every student should major in liberal arts...
..liberal arts, properly conceived, means wrestling with issues and ideas, putting the mind to work in a way these young people will only be able to do for these four years. And we'd like this for everyone. They can always learn vocational things later, on the job. They can even get an engineering degree later--by the way, in two years rather than four.
Disagree. Engineering classes also allow people to communicate and explore new ideas, the subject matter is simply more practical and concrete (i.e. the correct answer is more narrowly defined). Also, many quality engineering programs have liberal-education requirements for this reason. People pay a lot of money for college, and forcing them to take non-practical classes won't solve any problems, it will just further burden them with debt when they go back to "engineering school", or whatever the author is suggesting.
...you even suggest that graduates should work at Old Navy for a year and ruminate on their lives.
In our economy, they're not really ready for you until you're 28 or so. They want you to have a number of years behind you. So when somebody comes out of college at 22 with a bachelor's degree, what can that person really offer Goldman Sachs or General Electric or the Department of the Interior? ... There's no rush. That's why I say they should take a year to work at Costco, at Barnes & Noble, whatever, a year away from studying, and think about what they really want to do.
ARE YOU SERIOUS!? I quit reading the article at this point. I worked my ass off in shitty IT jobs over the last 7 years, double majored in 5 years, and this guy want me to go fold shirts or flip burgers?! I didn't expect (and don't have) a fat salary, but I do well enough to be comfortably middle-class at age 24, doing work that I somewhat enjoy. Also, there is a "rush", its called interest on my student loans.
I agree that there is a lot of stuff wrong with American Universities. Rich kids have an inherent advantage because they don't have to work during college. They socialize in Greek organizations, making connections to their future rich buddies, while lower and middle class kids like me bust our asses.
Cause of skyrocketing tuition (hint: not football) (Score:5, Insightful)
Football (and athletics in general) are not causing tuition to skyrocket. As much as I wish it were so, the numbers just don't add up. For example, tuition has also skyrocketed at schools (like mine) that don't even have football teams.
I think the cause is even simpler. The problem is, no one wants to talk about it because there is no easy, feel-good solution.
Thesis: The raise in tuition rates over the last 40 years or so is largely due to the easy availability of *cheap student loans.*
I don't think this should be particularly controversial: It is a logical outcome completely consistent with classical supply/demand economics.
Let's say the government prints money and starts giving it away. Everyone is richer, right? Wrong, of course -- that money is now worth less, so prices all go up. That's inflation. This is the same scenario, except that the money can only be used for one specific purpose: education. It should logically follow that the price of that education will simply go up correspondingly.
I'm not going to propose any solutions, because I don't want to start some stupid partisan flamewar. I just want to suggest that the widely perceived *solution* to high education costs is actually the *driver* of those costs.
- AJ
EDIT: Just found this:
"The simple economics of student loan crises"
http://dmarron.com/2009/09/15/the-simple-economics-of-student-loan-crises/ [dmarron.com]
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Exactly. This isn't the only field where thats true either. There are places where the government tries to help people buy houses in similar ways. End result: house price skyrocketing (that happened pretty badly in places that started allowing people to use their retirement money to pay cashdowns on mortages. House price goes waaaay up instantly.)
The real reason (Score:3, Insightful)
My daughter yesterday received her Masters Degree from the Auckland University of Technology (NZ). Guest speaker at the event was eminent New Zealand scientist Dr Ray Avery. One of those brilliant scientists who actually did some great things and provided for underprivileged around the world.
He also has a lot of experience teaching at some of the best known schools. The one thing he underlined in his speech yesterday was the fact that New Zealand students have a big advantage to the most of the places he visited in being taught by educators who not only are of the highest professional calibre but people who, almost across the board, have retained the most important attribute of any educator at any level - their humanism.
Now, if indeed there is something wrong with the high education system in the USA, I'd suggest this would be the starting point in fixing it.
Too Many People Going to College (Score:3, Insightful)
Because so many people go to college, curricula are dumbed-down to appease the masses. Universities want to be seen as paragons of learning. However, so many kids go to college for no other reason than because they feel compelled to do so, in order to prepare them for the working world. The providers are pushing knowledge for the sake of gaining knowledge, but the consumers are looking for job training. This is a big dislocation -- the majority of students do not have any interest in the core competencies of the university system, and the university system is ill-equipped to provide what much of their market demands (how many CS or IS grads come and work in your companies and have to unlearn just about everything they've learned over the previous four years?).
The notion that white-collar training should come from college should be obsolete. Reviving and expanding vocational training would have a positive effect on higher education. Take skill set programs, such as IS (not CS though), accounting, and (especially) management, just to name a few, out of the college system, and put them into a more vocation-oriented education system. You'd end up with happier students, more appropriately-focused universities, and a workforce whose younger members are more prepared to be productive.
Re:And yet- (Score:5, Insightful)
it is likely the best university system in the world.
[citation needed]
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Harvard University Cambridge, MA, Princeton University Princeton, NJ, Yale University New Haven, CT, California Institute of Technology Pasadena, CA Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge, MA, Stanford University Stanford, CA, University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA, Columbia University New York, NY, University of Chicago Chicago, IL, Duke University Durham, Dartmouth C
Re:And yet- (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:And yet- (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:And yet- (Score:4, Informative)
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Oh and also America's K-12 system could be fixed it, like Europe, the students were free to attend ANY public school they wished instead of being stuck in a one-choice monopoly.
i.e. If a student is attending an inner-city school that is crumbling, he/she could go attend the better public suburban school located ~10 miles down the road. I will never understand current policy that forces poor people to be trapped in a shitty school, instead of allowing them the freedom of choice to attend a better public sc
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Oh and also America's K-12 system could be fixed it, like Europe, the students were free to attend ANY public school they wished instead of being stuck in a one-choice monopoly.
A lot of states already have that, it's called schools of choice, and the public schools hate it.
Re:And yet- (Score:4, Informative)
Of course, there were exceptions. I can name them, because there were only 7 out of the 1200 students who were bused in that took it upon themselves to take honors or AP-level classes. The rest were content to stay in the lowest level offered. Additionally, there was a 25% dropout rate for bused in students, compared to a 2% dropout rate for in-district students.
A police history on crimes committed at school showed a disproportionate number of serious incidents (stabbing, drug dealing, gang fights, etc.) from the bussed in students, whereas the in-district population contributed less than 5% of these crimes.
Clearly, your experience and mine differ significantly. I support allowing students who have proven interest in a better education being brought in at taxpayer cost to a better school so they can be surrounded by equally driven peers, but bringing in large numbers of underprivileged students does not improve their education. They are still surrounded by the same group of people, and nothing changes. There is sufficient data beyond my personal anecdote (and of course, now that I'm looking for it it's nowhere to be found) to back up my claims.
Don't forget that schools are rated by student performance, and there is a LOT that goes into student performance beyond teacher quality. It mostly comes from the students. You can take a 'poor person' out of an inner city school, but if they're not inclined to an education, you can put them in any school you want and they still won't get one.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Actually the EU citizen do come to the US, but for the graduate programs (or more rarely on exchange programs for one year or so during undergrad years). The big reason is price, as grad studies can be relatively cheap (your advisor will pay you and your tuition costs, usually), another one is that a bachelor's degree is not really that impressive in Europe, a Masters' degree is much better regarded for some reason.
Re:And yet- (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And yet- (Score:5, Funny)
Ah, but the difference between traveling to other countries and traveling to the US is that you have to go through American airport security. You have to really want to enter the country to voluntarily do that.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
In Soviet U.S., airport security enters you!
Re:And yet- (Score:5, Insightful)
no, what's wrong here in the US is that people EXPECT that simply throwing some money at an institution and attending some classes and doing the old pump-and-dump method of test taking is a RIGHT for all those graduating from lower education levels.
Living in a town with a major state university, it is appalling how basically stupid and ignorant of the real world most students at this university are.
The american student has basically been conned into believing that attendance of higher education is mandatory, yet at the same time is basically just a way to postpone entering the working force for a minimum of four years (and more likely 5-6 for that 4 year degree) and continue to act as a child while amassing a huge debt load for which the government is happy to keep taking their interest payments for the next 20 years.
it's pathetic actually.
Disciplined minds by Jeff Schmidt (Score:5, Insightful)
http://www.disciplined-minds.com/ [disciplined-minds.com] "The hidden root of much career dissatisfaction, argues Schmidt, is the professional's lack of control over the political component of his or her creative work. Many professionals set out to make a contribution to society and add meaning to their lives. Yet our system of professional education and employment abusively inculcates an acceptance of politically subordinate roles in which professionals typically do not make a significant difference, undermining the creative potential of individuals, organizations and even democracy."
See my other post in this thread, too:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1738326&cid=33090340 [slashdot.org]
Re:And yet- (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.4icu.org/top200/
http://www.usnews.com/articles/education/worlds-best-universities/2010/02/25/worlds-best-universities-top-400
You'll notice that the United States is disproportionately represented. (Effective troll though...)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Damn you and your logic. I'll just pretend I didn't hear that the US has ~25% of the world's best universities by turning-up Rachel Maddow extra loud.
Ahhh.
Better. Yes, yes Rachel the US is the most background nation in the world. And the colleges suck. You preach it girl!
Re:And yet- (Score:5, Interesting)
The first poll is crap. The popularity of a university's web page have no bearing on the quality of its education and research performed. Until recently most German universities added their web pages as an afterthought and they were maintained by some IT admin sitting in a basement. I know that from first hand source having a friend working as IT admin at the University of Heidelberg [uni-heidelberg.de]. Having graduated there I always found its abysmally bad web presence a constant source of embarrassment.
There are some objective polls measuring research effectiveness using solid and well defined measures. And as one would expect the top tier well funded US research universities have a strong showing [wikipedia.org].
Yet, there is no strict correlation between good research and good education. Scanning the rankings listed in the related wikipedia entry [wikipedia.org] does not show anything equivalent to the PISA effort [oecd.org] for college level education.
The US does dismal in the PISA rankings despite of course the existence of some outstanding private and public high schools. In the same vein the fact that the US hosts a good dozen of the best research universities tells us little to nothing of how the gross of the US colleges are holding up in international comparison. The only thing we can be certain off is that it costs much more than in many other places to get an advanced degree (i.e. Canada, Europe).
Re:And yet- (Score:4, Insightful)
That's funny, because somehow the people graduating with these "free" degrees are ending up with over $20,000 in debt [nytimes.com]. Perhaps phrases like "most part" and "free" don't mean what one of us thinks they mean.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:And yet- (Score:4, Insightful)
But then there's typically a good 30-40 year delay between actual achievement and Nobel prize. Add to that some 10 years worth of doing unnoticed stuff, and then 10- years worth of education, and we can conclude that American universities were awesome in the '50s-'70s.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
This "best universities" ranking is precisely what the FA authors are railing against: it's almost purely based on research output. There is no evaluation of the quality of the teaching.
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Perhaps once the American University system was world-class, but now its nothing but regurgitation in front of brain-dead professors.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I see. My opinion on that is, professors--like everybody else in the entire world--are human. Some are good, some are bad. Some were once good and now bad, some once cared and now don't, and some have worked hard every day of their careers to make the best classroom environment. Etc ad infinitum. I never understood why people would take classes with obviously bad professors or professors who they didnt get, etc. Do universities protect bad professors? Yes, to some extent. I had a class once with one of the
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
As someone who lived most of his life outside the US, and now teaches outside the US in a University, but got my B.S. in a US University, I say the following:
Pros:
- Flexibility: I LOVE the idea of choosing classes! Great concept, too bad not every system has this
- 1 per class per day: obvious? Great that in the US system you get your 5 hours of math at 1 per day.. not all together!
- Exams not the only consideration: in the US system many techniques are used to evaluate, not just exams
- Focused towards the m
Re:And yet- (Score:4, Interesting)
This one puzzled me.
Most any college team I know of (SEC ones in my experience) MAKE the universities money by the barrel full.
These teams not only support themselves, but pour money back into the general university system.
I know, and sometimes agree that there is WAY too emphasis on sports on the college level, over academics, but really...the complaint shouldn't be that it costs them any money, it is quite the opposite!
Re:And yet- (Score:5, Insightful)
Some make money, not all (Score:3, Interesting)
At the largest universities, men's football, men's basketball, and men's hockey make money. At smaller universities, some or all of those 3 lose money. All other mens' sports lose money. All womens' sports, except University of Connecticut basketball (and maybe 1 or 2 others) lose money. For all sports programs that lose money, participants should pay user fees.
Another problem, though, is that these sports teams reach semi-professional levels while shafting most of the participants. They aren't paid, a
Re:And yet- (Score:4, Insightful)
Depends on the school. Mine makes money from football, but the money then gets sucked-up by all the other less popular sports like soccer, field hockey, gymnastics, and so on.
Where sports is REALLY a waste is at the High School level. Yeah I know people need exercise, but that's what gym is for. You don't need all those extra afterschool (and expensive) sports teams.
Investments... (Score:5, Insightful)
Most any college team I know of (SEC ones in my experience) MAKE the universities money by the barrel full.
Well, you have to beware of creative accounting and bad investments/contracts.
Basically it can sometimes become a 'school pride' issue, because the sports teams 'make' the college money they press for additional benefits - more pay for the coach, more money for recruiting efforts, new stadium, etc...
Of course, all this is justified as 'payoff in X years', the problem is that you never reach X...
On the creative accounting side you end up with sports expenses not being counted as part of the sports programs, things like ticket sales being counted as income even as they count stadium expenses as 'infrastructure' like actual classrooms.
Re:And yet- (Score:5, Insightful)
"It never ceases to amaze me how smart people seem to achieve greatness in spite of the many failings of our education system."
The reason for this is quite simple: a diploma gets you in the door, but your particular qualities, if any, pave the way to greatness.
/* soapbox */ in spite of our horrible primary education system. So we have to breed high achievers, American's aren't willing to teach greatness to children any more.. Having spent many of my formative years in Asia I know first hand that the situation exactly is. The issues we have with our primary schools are our real problems. K through 12 aged children come of age in and must excel despite a primary system that frankly teaches them shit about the reality of life and learning in the modern age. Children are indoctrinated into thinking about being accepting of other cultures, "valuing" and fostering their own fragile egos and at the same time that winning isn't really the right thing to strive for and how global warming is a hideous result of modern civilization and all manner of politically correct nonsense, none of which is taught in any other country that I've ever lived in.
Japanese school children on the other hand are given the basic tools of rational and critical thought, drilled constantly to master both mathematical and lexical (language) skills, and everything is done to prepare them for secondary education. Japan has many 2ndary schools, but any Japanese person will tell you that only 3 count; Tokyo, Todai, and a third whose name escapes me. If you are a Japanese citizen of means and you can't get your child into one of those three, that's when you consider sending your child to Harvard, Yale, Oxford, etc. And fortunately for those foreign students there's plenty of room because American children are off doing anything but achieving. Foreigners send their children to western schools because they don't have enough room in their own schools.
Meanwhile we're teaching our children to hug trees which they can presumably use to ultimately flip burgers with their liberal arts degrees. Are we really casting a critical enough eye at our primary education system?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
The fascinating thing is that the result of the American system, where apparently one is taught to hug trees (according to you) is that Americans are impermeable to the reality of global warming, whereas in the rest of the world, everyone is pretty much convinced...
From which we must conclude that the system is so disastrous it can't even indoctrinate properly.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Incorrect. You're ignoring that a minority of the population (say 25-30%) is young enough to have been through the more recent decline of the American education system. I got through just early enough that by the time I was around 7th or 8th grade, it was noticeable when they started changing the textbooks to champion socialist principles and vilify white people.
The biggest problem with the US education system is that intelligence is not valued in our culture and parents (in general) do not push their kid
Re:What's wrong with it? (Score:4, Insightful)
... and being prohibitively expensive for a large part of the population?
Re:What's wrong with it? (Score:5, Insightful)
>>>I'm in Canada and I pay $900/semester + book costs
False. You are right you are paying $900/semester now, but then you will get a job and you will pay the remaining $80,000 or so in the form of weekly taxation. So in the end, you're paying the same amount as I did in the States...... just spread out over the next 60 years.
It's just the same as I got "free" K-12 education, but now I have to pay ~$6000 a year in school taxes. I am paying-off the education I received several decades ago. It was never free - just a deferred charge. Like buying a sofa at a store with deferred payment. It's free now; but I pay next year.
BTW: Were you really so naive as to not realize this? (Education is not free; it's simply paid later)
If so maybe your education was not that great after all.
Re:What's wrong with it? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What's wrong with it? (Score:5, Interesting)
It worked well for 150 years.
Did you know that George Washington, for example, taught himself geometry? Back in the days when we had actual education it was understood that any person with the capability to read and access to the correct books could teach himself any skill he was capable of learning.
Re:What's wrong with it? (Score:5, Insightful)
You know, you can buy on amazon for cheap excellent book on general relativity and quantum mechanics. My bet is that without a couple years in a good physics program you will no actually understand anything.
Because (advanced) maths are not simple. Because the level of abstraction reached is mind-boggling. Because these books build on centuries of maths and physics knowledge.
Now you can, perhaps, teach yourself to that level. It will take you probably more time than the college/university path. It is cute that you compare the level of education of Washington to today: basically, in his time, you could essentially know everything.
Now go read some articles on Riemanian manifolds on wikipedia. That's modern geometry for you. Go ahead. Teach yourself that.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
As a college instructor, I hope I know something that my students don't. Isn't that the point of having professors?
Re:What's wrong with it? (Score:4, Insightful)
they all acted like they know something we don't.
If you're literally sitting there paying them to teach you something they damn well better know something you don't, otherwise your wasting your money. Also, you've got a bit of a paradox here unless you want someone in the situation to bow down and act like they don't have anymore knowledge than the other party. Someone has to have more knowledge than the other and one would certainly hope it's the person standing at the front of the class being paid to give it out.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Every single redistributionist that excludes himself from the group having "excessive" wealth is simply a thief trying justify stealing.
If someone truly believes in the principal that one person's production should be forcibly taken and given to someone that an arbitrary authority has decided needs it more then that person should lead by example.
Re:What's wrong with it? (Score:5, Insightful)
If someone truly believes in the principal that one person's production should be forcibly taken and given to someone that an arbitrary authority has decided needs it more then that person should lead by example.
You're arguing from a faulty premise: that of the myth of one person's production.
Anything a person who dwells in civilization produces is the result of a partnership between that person and the society in which they live, without which their production (to some small or large degree) would be either impossible or less. Therefore, logically, the fruits of that production also logically belong in part to that person and in part to society.
It's not about redistributing what's yours; it's about your partner in a venture getting their cut.
Re:Sense of Entitlement (Score:5, Insightful)
While it's true that some come out of college with a nasty sense of entitlement for an awesome, high-paying job, not all do. The majority of people that I graduated with surely didn't share that sentiment (probably because they saw how much more I knew than them due to my actual real work experience, vs their school-only experience).
Re:Sense of Entitlement (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:It would be more helpful if (Score:4, Insightful)
People yearn to come here to get quality higher education. Ask any international (undergraduate/graduate) student who is studying here.
Sorry, but you are making a sweeping and entirely false generalization there. From what I have seen, most of the international students in my engineering program came here because a degree from an American university was perceived as more valuable than a degree from their own country. I saw far more cheating and far less competence among the international students, even those that spoke English fluently, than I did among the American students; they were not going to school because they were seeking a better education than what they could get back home.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I wonder which school you were talking about, and which major. I came to the US precisely because the education that I could get would beat the pants of what I'd find back home, and found plenty of other international students in the same boat: People from a bunch of countries that claimed that their home universities were all about ancient theory, with antiquated labs and no chance of applying anything that they learned in school outside of academia.
In CS, Biology, and most kinds of engineering, the differ
Re:It would be more helpful if (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Wait, are you saying we haven't rebuilt New Orleans because we *don't know how*?
That is patently false. New Orleans isn't getting rebuilt because no one wants to live there. Likewise, new home sales have crashed not because we lack a knowledgeable workforce, but because *no one is buying.*
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
despite tenure meaning they can't be fired
There are actually more ways of getting rid of a tenured professor than people realize. I know of cases such as:
Also, though I'm not aware of any cases, most universities can declare a state analogous to bankruptcy, which lets them lay off anyone they please.
I don't know whether there's a trick for get
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
entrenched tenured professors more concerned with publishing and parking spaces than quality teaching
It really doesn't take a leading researcher to teach undergraduate classes. They should hire people who are actually good at teaching for this job.
You certainly have a good point, but one of the most commonly encountered whinges about the university system is that more classes should be taught by tenured professors.
Of course, the same whinges usually complain about the mere existence of tenure. Seems to be some substantial cognitive dissonance invoved in the public attitude toward universities.