Who'd Go To University Today? (spiked-online.com) 500
Are students being short-changed by their $60,000 degree courses? And does a university education in 2018 represent good value for money? A slew of recent government and think-tank reports aim to tackle these questions. And the answers they give are not encouraging. From a report: The Public Accounts Committee announced this month that the value of the UK's student-loan system is falling. Last year, the government sold a tranche of the student-loan book at a major loss. The portfolio had a face value of $4.4 billion, but was sold for just $2.1 billion: a return of 48p in the pound, according to the public-spending watchdog. Clearly, the current method of funding higher education represents a bad deal for the taxpayer.
But do universities offer good value for students? Not when you consider the fact less than half the money that students pay in tuition fees is actually spent on teaching, according to a report by the Higher Education Policy Institute. The rest of the money from tuition fees goes into other services and parts of the administration. These include admissions procedures, marketing, vice-chancellor pay and programmes to boost access for poorer students, as well as therapeutic services like mental-health provision and exam-stress counselling.
Universities today have far too much bureaucracy, fat-cat VC's salaries are far too high, and a great deal of what administrators spend money on is a hindrance to education. University bureaucracy is often at the forefront of coddling students, encouraging them to see exams and hard work as threats to their mental health. It is troubling to see that students are not only plunging themselves into debt at such a young age, but also that much of that debt does not go towards their actual education.
But do universities offer good value for students? Not when you consider the fact less than half the money that students pay in tuition fees is actually spent on teaching, according to a report by the Higher Education Policy Institute. The rest of the money from tuition fees goes into other services and parts of the administration. These include admissions procedures, marketing, vice-chancellor pay and programmes to boost access for poorer students, as well as therapeutic services like mental-health provision and exam-stress counselling.
Universities today have far too much bureaucracy, fat-cat VC's salaries are far too high, and a great deal of what administrators spend money on is a hindrance to education. University bureaucracy is often at the forefront of coddling students, encouraging them to see exams and hard work as threats to their mental health. It is troubling to see that students are not only plunging themselves into debt at such a young age, but also that much of that debt does not go towards their actual education.
Another bubble (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Another bubble (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Another bubble (Score:4, Funny)
I prefer to serve my criminals with some fava beans and a nice chianti.
Re:Another bubble (Score:4, Insightful)
It used to be that a degree would get you good money, and many well paid jobs required one. The subject wasn't that important - my mum did Latin - it was a demonstration of your ability to learn independently and reach a high standard.
As the economy shifted from manual labour to services the demand for graduate level education rose. There are actually two problems here.
1. Employers want highly educated employees instead of offering training like they did with manual workers.
2. The economy does need a lot of highly skilled workers, but it also needs a lot more medium skilled workers. Extremely expensive degrees are geared towards the former who have a chance of earning enough to pay them off, but need the high numbers of medium skill people to make universities economically viable.
Re:Another bubble (Score:4, Insightful)
Quite a bit of teaching and homework was done in pseduo-code and tests were open-book with internet access, but not open neighbor. The teacher didn't grade your ability to code, they graded your ability to reason. I do wish they spend time on coding in the sense of writing clean code and refactoring.
My Kid's in Nursing (Score:3, Interesting)
Now, the diploma mills might be another thing. The last administration was trying to reign them in, to the point where big ones like the U of Phoenix were almost put out of business (good riddance). Bu
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Horse poop.
Look at the successful economies today, and look at the quality of their educational infrastructure. There are vocational schools and academic institutions, ranging from 2year programs to PhDs. Some are poorly rated, some overly expensive.
And some will get you through life with a sound beginning.
Mostly, the profiteers do what profiteers will-- cut out quality to meet the minimums. The VA fed ITT, UofPhoenix, and many others a boat load of students, all subsidized, and didn't audit the quality of
Sure (Score:3)
If you think she's talking about Islam or even Judaism when she says "God's Kingdom"... well, I don't know if I'd call what you have naivete....
Re:Another bubble (Score:4)
I truly think we are starting to see the edge of an education bubble. For many years, high school pushed college so hard people got worthless degrees that did nothing to prepare them for the job market.
I'm sorry to tell ya but the education system is there to maintain the class system and give the illusion that you live in a meritocratic society, the fact that you'd mouth talking points without any kind of evidence at all speaks volumes about the average american. The "job market" is just a bunch of big corporations and small businesses and they are always looking for ways to fuck people who work for them.
The reality is modern society is a big scam.
George Carlin said it best:
https://youtu.be/ILQepXUhJ98?t... [youtu.be]
Re:Another bubble (Score:4, Interesting)
In "the good old days", University was not about getting a job - it was about learning about civilisation, plus a bit of specialisation. If you wanted to "learn a trade" you got a certificate, or diploma (HNC, HND, City & Guilds) this meant you knew how to do a job. A degree at a University meant you understood the theory, and, as everyone here probably knows, in theory: theory and practice are the same, In practice: they are not.
However, one of the advantages of democracy is it give the votes to illiterates - who know neither theory nor practice, and vote for Brexit/Trump and "everybody needs a degree to get paid what people with degrees are earning".
Obviously, if the Universities select the 15% most academically minded of the population, they can teach them to a higher standard, than if they have to accept 50% - which implies accepting people with below average intelligence, since some of the more intelligent won't go to university - have dropped out to start million selling businesses, or become rock stars, or take drugs. If a degree no longer implies above average intelligence and education, why would it imply above average pay?
To the employer, a degree no longer guarantees someone with above average intelligence and education, and possibly comes from "the elite" - it implies they have a piece of paper and a lot of debt, and tells you nothing about their social background. As an employer, I would set more value on someone who appeared bright and determined on the basis of stuff on their CV, and having the determination and will-power to avoid being forced into debt (except for certain types of knowledge - eg: a maths degree from a reputable university still probably means something).
Re:Another bubble (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, I'd like to see a link on the trades with entry level $80K
He didn't say entry level, so I'm assuming he is talking high end for both jobs with or without degree. Some numbers for good paying jobs without a degree: https://careers.workopolis.com... [workopolis.com]
Re:Another bubble (Score:4, Insightful)
Friend of mine went into HVAC and was clearing 120k a year with over time only 2-3 years into the job. I know a couple of guys doing the same or similar as electricians, probably closer to the 80k mark. It all really depends on where they are and what kind of work they put in. It usually all boils down to overtime though and they spend some of that on union dues and in the case of my HVAC friend he is expected to buy all his own tools/gear. I don't think 120k a year is anything near normal but even in lower income areas I know HVAC people easily clearing 50k in just the first year.
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He could be comparing by equivalent ages, so the one who went into a trade would already have three or four years under his belt when the college grad starts.
It's not exactly clear what he means. Perhaps he should get that degree in communications?
Re:Another bubble (Score:4, Insightful)
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Of course, you have to get an 8% annual return to pull that off, which seems to be considerably above the average.
And, once you adjust for inflation, that 1.3 million is only going to be worth 366k in today's dollars. So the gains aren't nearly as dramatic as they seem
The benefits of Investment have dried up considerably, probably in large part to high frequency trading and other mechanisms by which unscrupulous actors game the system to steal profit from real investors.
It is average for right risk profile (Score:3)
Of course, you have to get an 8% annual return to pull that off, which seems to be considerably above the average.
If you are looking at the averages of all mutual funds, you are getting a number skewed very low because of the presence of a ton of funds that are for very low risk investors.
Someone very young should be putting funds into a much more volatile fund, so that over time you have a better return - if you look at this list of funds from Vanguard [vanguard.com], you'll see that returns of 8 over ten years are not u
College degrees are great... (Score:2, Insightful)
If you want to become a Socialist with a minor in Feminazism.
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People in countries where education is not $$$$ (Score:4, Informative)
Reading comprehension failure (Score:5, Insightful)
You missed at least half the story. Less than half of spending goes towards teaching. It is a huge pot of money without accountability and is getting "stolen" by administration. "Free" education just makes this problem worse.
Many degrees are not getting students jobs anywhere near what the degree costs. Again "Free" education doesn't solve this, it makes it worse.
Its almost as if you fixed these issues, the problem of if its "free" or not becomes moot. Price goes down by half, and you get something worthwhile. If you can get a STEM degree that pays $100k a year for $30k, are you going to throw a fit because you had to pay for it and it wasn't provided by the government?
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You missed at least half the story. Less than half of spending goes towards teaching. It is a huge pot of money without accountability and is getting "stolen" by administration. "Free" education just makes this problem worse.
Many degrees are not getting students jobs anywhere near what the degree costs. Again "Free" education doesn't solve this, it makes it worse.
Its almost as if you fixed these issues, the problem of if its "free" or not becomes moot. Price goes down by half, and you get something worthwhile. If you can get a STEM degree that pays $100k a year for $30k, are you going to throw a fit because you had to pay for it and it wasn't provided by the government?
That does not mean that all degrees everywhere are getting students no jobs. The US looks at students as as business opportunity, a wellspring of easy money, a group of suckers that can be bled for crappy degrees in crappy private universities at hugely overpriced rates and who then can be bled after they leave the university through extortionate student loan payments. Other countries regard universities as an investment in their future and their workforce, institutions that must be of the highest quality t
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Re:Reading comprehension failure (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, but the author's idea of 'stolen' is pretty much anything they do not like. The author (and site) single out health services as esp evil and 'destroying the youth'.
When the football team coaches are paid in the millions (the top 25 coaches' salaries are 5M+) then yes, money for supposedly class tuition is being stolen.
Re:Reading comprehension failure (Score:5, Interesting)
One interesting take on "Free" university I've seen, that *does* address the problem, is to do away with grants and loans and have the university itself eat the cost of your education, and then claim a substantial percentage of your income for 5-10 years afterwards. Gives them great incentive to both give you a useful education, AND help you find jobs that will leverage that education into as much short-to-mid-term income as possible.
Admittedly I would assume such a university would drop a whole lot of the arts, humanities, and other largely financially useless "Renaissance" education, as well as refusing students whose high school performance doesn't speak well of their potential - but that's probably for the best all around. At least so long as universities are being marketed as white-collar trade schools.
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as well as refusing students whose high school performance doesn't speak well of their potential
Well, there goes affirmative action. I don't see that happening.
But seriously, it sounds like a good idea. Getting an education for the sake of having an education is a great idea, but in today's climate that's not going to get you a job, nor is it going to get you an education since Universities are largely just indoctrination machines these days. I think we all agree the system is seriously broken, and it
Re:Reading comprehension failure (Score:4, Interesting)
Problems really start at the top. The Chancellor for 26 universities sets the budgets and target enrollments per campus. So right there you have someone who controls all the money but often never sets foot on a campus.
I know what your thinking, the Dean for each University is on top of their campus and it's needs. Well, no. See the Dean is there to raise as much cash for the University as they can, because the more they raise, the more they earn. How much you ask? At the University I attended (which was about middle of the pack for the 26) he earned about $300,000 in base pay, plus up to another $300,000 if he brought in the funds. To put this in perspective, the secretaries that worked for him earned maybe $30,000 with no chance for a bonus. So if you could just ignore the University and focus on getting funds from wealthy alumni to doubling your pay, would you?
Another problem, Calpers! A retirement program for the state of California that is usually 2.5/55 for CSU staff, which means that each year of service earns you 2.5% of your highest paid salary for life when you retire at 55. Sounds good, but people have found loop holes. For example, a Director was hired and started by earning about $80,000, not bad considering how much a secretary was paid. Then for the next couple of years their pay increased to about $90,000, still nothing wrong. Then in their fifth year, the pay jumped to about $150,000, in the sixth year about $280,000, in the seventh year their pay went down to about $120,000 and they left. Now they have 7 years at 2.5% or 17.5% of the highest pay, or about $49,000. So when they reach retirement age they will earn that amount for 7 years of service, until they die plus any other retirement they have money in (ie 4 grand a month for life for just 7 years of service). Also Calpers allows you to change jobs and add to existing years of service. So if that person goes to work anywhere else that has Calpers, they will add more years of service, still at the $280,000 amount. Ie if they take a job cleaning erasers at $5.00/hr and stick with it for a few years they add an extra $7,000 per year to their retirement pay. So the trick, get at least a year of obscene pay, then move on and retire like a king. (Compare that to someone who earns $80,000 consistently and works for 20 years would only get $40,000 at retirement, and each additional year would only add $2,000).
Next biggest problem, everything is budgeted for. Each major area of the University has Directors who guess how much they will spend on each category. A category is something small like: phone services, Internet services, heating/cooling, water, paper costs, legal costs, travel costs, yard maintenance, key cost, janitorial costs, paper towel costs, staple costs, paper clip cost, etc etc etc. Each department has about 1000 of these categories. At the start of the year each department has all these set buckets of money. Then as expenses come in they are paid out of a specific bucket. At the end of the year any funds left over in any bucket are given back. Well they would be, but departments usually go nuts in May and June to spend these down. Why, well lets say you had $5,000 for paper costs, but you only spent $3,000; you would have to give back $2,000 and next year your budget would only be $3,000 for next year automatically. So to prevent that in June you buy like crazy so you don't get your budget slashed. Why would they do this, see the first problem, the Chancellor only sees the tops of each departments budgets, not the details. So if you spend your budget wisely over the course of a year, or if you just panic spend at the end the Chancellor never sees that detail, only the final dollar amount.
The next problem, budgets themselves. You can't transfer money from one category to another without a ton of paper work and usually a year wait. So its bet
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Sure. Get your "free" education and then go elsewhere to make your money. Seems reasonable.
Re:People in countries where education is not $$$$ (Score:4, Interesting)
Sure. Get your "free" education and then go elsewhere to make your money. Seems reasonable.
That's exactly what large corporations expect me to do. It's basically the blue-print for most of their activities: Take something (subsidies, raw materials, knowledge) from somewhere for free, then move on to the next tax haven.
But maybe it's just nice to live where I am, and I'll stay.
Re:People in countries where education is not $$$$ (Score:4, Insightful)
Education costs are out of control because of the existence of the student loan program. They couldn't cost $60000 if the individual was paying for it, that is entirely and solely because people can get a loan for that much.
Wages (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Wages (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Wages (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, I reject your idea that a company only pays the value of an employee to the company. There are companies that make a million a year and there are companies that make billions a year. A company making billions pays much the same for a developer as a company making millions because that is what the market dictates. You cannot tell me that a larger company will hire an exact number of developers relative to their profit. A larger company will take advantage of economies of scale, and hire less developers relative to their profit. I guess I need to see your sources because it does not seem to be the case that employees increase linearly in line with a company's profits at all.
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But they will get free healthcare (Score:5, Insightful)
Who cares if your universities have problems when you're getting free healthcare??? U.S. sucks! Go Europe!!
But in all seriousness - I think that if universities were required to clearly and cleaning break their "fees" into components as to what they fund, it would really open some eyes. A yearly invoice might look like this:
Tuition (funds professors and classroom activities: $XXX
Student Extras (funds clubs facilities that all students can use): $XXX
Privileged Student Extra (funds clubs and facilities that only SOME students can use): $XXX
Outreach (general recruiting and student support): $XXX
Specialty Outreach (recruiting and support for only SOME types of students): $XXX
Athletic Teams (anything funding the school's athletic teams - not all students can play): $XXX
Building & Grounds Maintenance: $XXX
Utilities and Related Operational Costs: $XXX
Administration (people not doing maintenance or teaching): $XXX
When people start to see their own dollar figures going to some of this shit, maybe they will care about it.
Then again, may not.
Re:But they will get free healthcare (Score:4, Funny)
$XXX
Agreed, the only way university adds up is to make porn and sell it while you are there.
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However, the revenue side is much more complicated. For many public institutions, tuition only produces about 30% of the revenue of the institution. So from that perspective, the student is already getting a tremendous bargain even if they don't participate in athletics, attend health clinics, or benefit directly from outreach activities.
College should be training for a career or job (Score:4, Insightful)
Much of it is because students want that stuff (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Much of it is because students want that stuff (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Much of it is because students want that stuff (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Much of it is because students want that stuff (Score:5, Insightful)
All this drives up the cost, and for some reason students are willing to pay.
... you mean, they're willing to go massively into debt without realising the consequences on the rest of their life...
Re: Much of it is because students want that stuff (Score:5, Insightful)
^This is exactly what we have discussed at faculty meetings about recruitment. As for why students are willing to pay, because they aren't the ones financing it -- it's banks, scholarships, and their parents. There is some good news about the high fees, which is that partly they are there to subsidize poorer students (a campus of only wealthy students is uninteresting and makes for poor recruiting) and it's not expected that an average would actually pay them. Of course, some people (e.g. with wealthy parents who have no intent of offering financial assistance) neither have the funds nor qualify for assistance.
My recommendation is this: go to a community college for the first couple years, then transfer to a small public school. While there are great teachers out there, for the most part Calculus I is taught the same way from the same book no matter where you go, and that's true for almost all core classes. So go to community college to get that education at a tenth the cost (or probably free) and then transfer to finish a four year program. A small school will give you the most options for getting help from your pofessors, buffering your credentials with TA and research opportunities etc. and be cheaper (esp. if you don't play sports and it doesn't have sponsored sports teams).
If you stick around for grad school, then that's where you should look at bigger schools. At that level you'll have a small group that you're working with and direct mentorship anyway no matter where you go. If you're STEM you will probably earn a stipend instead of incurring more debt even at the expensive schools, and when you're doing research is when you actually care about having multimillion dollar NMR machines on campus.
They still are (Score:5, Insightful)
I've already put this link [fivethirtyeight.com] in the thread but it deserves repeating. Once again, Fancy dorms are _not_ the problem. Cutting state and federal funding so we could cut taxes on the rich is. And the rich don't care because you're expendable. They don't need you or your kids to be educated. They've got H1-Bs for that.
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I'm skeptical of the analysis done by 538.
If it was true that US colleges cost so much due to cutting of state and federal funding then I would expect annual budgets at those colleges to increase - at most - by about 3% per year to keep pace with inflation on average. However, the local (big) land-grant college here has increased its annual budget by about 10% per year for the past 11 years. Based on the tuition rates of other large land-grant institutions throughout the US my guess is that they are incre
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I would (Score:5, Funny)
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Universities are changing (Score:2)
Not quite everyone goes to University to mate. Actually, there weren't any women in the physics department that I went to.
I think physics departments have somewhat changed since you graduated. Not completely, but the all-male department is becoming somewhat of a dinosaur. Currently, about 20% of physics degrees are earned by women:
https://www.aps.org/programs/women/resources/statistics.cfm
Overall in universities, though, women outnumber men.
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These days - not all men want to go into nurses either.
But that's OK!!
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Value for money (Score:5, Insightful)
Are students being short-changed by their $60,000 degree courses?
Sometimes yes. Sometimes no. I think a better question is whether we are doing a good job directing people into schooling options appropriate for both the needs of the individual and society. For some reason we tend to look down on trade schools and anything else besides a 4+ year degree despite the fact that many jobs really don't require such education. Not everyone needs a 4 year college degree but we funnel a lot of people into college who probably don't need to be there.
And does a university education in 2018 represent good value for money?
It certainly can. The lifetime earning increase from a college degree very often substantially outweighs the cost of tuition. Not to mention that there are quite a few jobs you simple cannot get without having earned a college degree. I'm an engineer (among other things) and good luck getting a job as an engineer without a college degree. It's possible but really, really hard at most companies.
But do universities offer good value for students? Not when you consider the fact less than half the money that students pay in tuition fees is actually spent on teaching. The rest of the money from tuition fees goes into other services and parts of the administration.
That's kind of a dumb argument. Educating a large student body inherently comes with a lot of overhead. Let me use an analogy closer to the heart of many people here. Only about 10-25% of the cost of developing a piece of software is the actual engineering and code writing. The overwhelming majority of the cost to the company is in sales and administration. This isn't a good or bad thing, it's just how the numbers fall out. When you have a student body of 50,000 students, you need a lot of administrative staff to manage that. There is a lot more to teaching students than just doing a few lectures. That's not to say all schools manage their money effectively but the notion that administration isn't going to be pretty substantial at a large university is absurd.
Not to mention, teaching is only part of what universities do and arguably not even really their main purpose. They also are in many cases research institutions which has little to nothing directly to do with educating students but still carries very real costs. Part of student tuition often goes to pay for part of this even though the students may see little to no direct benefit from it.
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In many ways the high cost of college simply reflects the need of these schools to keep undesirables out. Almost every school will give kids they want to attend a full free ride. Most qualified students will get at least a partial
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There's so much interesting history behind this issue.
The thing which bugs me most is that when student loans were introduced they were index linked, which meant that in real terms the value of the loan remained constant. This made student loans significantly cheaper than most other forms of finance. Gradually the interest rates have crept up to the point where they are approaching the price of regular bank offerings. But the other terms imposed by the government can make them much more onerous than a sim
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It certainly can. The lifetime earning increase from a college degree very often substantially outweighs the cost of tuition. Not to mention that there are quite a few jobs you simple cannot get without having earned a college degree.
That "often" is the operative term. There are some degrees that do have good value. Your engineering is a good example.
But not everyone is cut out for that. I'm sure you remember spending nights in the lab or library while the cool kids were out punishing their livers.
If Universities were to eliminate all of the useless majors, they'd be a lot smaller of places. I'm not suggesting that they be eliminated, more that people choose their majors more carefully, and not expect to make a non-academic career
Lifetime increase literally history (Score:4, Insightful)
The lifetime earning increase from a college degree very often substantially outweighs the cost of tuition
That used to be true but why would you think it would be true any longer?
In fact I would argue such a thought is DANGEROUSLY wrong.
Why? Example. Say someone took a year to live near a college, take some courses in audit, and take a WHOLE bunch of online courses in any field, which you could lean on local student study groups to understand.
After that year you easily will know enough to get an entry level job in a field you have been studying. Now instead of paying tuition, you are working while studying further,
Take that four years out. Instead of debt you have three years worth of earnings (I'm assuming you only studied that first year). Such a person may well be able to have 20-40k of savings they can invest when they are around 20, and three years of solid work history to pursue more advanced work opportunities.
So how can you possibly think the person with $200-$500k of debt can ever catch up?
The thing that totally tears down the "lifetime earnings" argument is that workplaces no longer seriously consider degrees. Even Google which famously used to require graduate degrees had to chuck that requirement out the window in order to hasten the build of the Don't-Be-Evile Empire.
The other side benefit of an early work approach is that you can find out what work in your chosen field is REALLY like. There are a huge number of students that spend four years to get a degree and find that they don't want to do what they have spent four years prepping for. Madness.
On a side side note, another benefit of not being an official student of a college you are near is that you can pick any one to stay near without having to be accepted, and get the same caliber of student interaction.
Re:Value for money (Score:5, Insightful)
When you have a student body of 50,000 students, you need a lot of administrative staff to manage that.
Ah, you've hit the nail on the head there. The EFFICIENCY of management and administration has tanked over the last few decades. When I started my undergraduate degree, my university, one with a name you would certainly recognize, had 4000 undergraduates, about the same number of graduate students, and about 2000 administrators. When I left a decade later (after getting bachelors and then taking my time getting a separate masters and passing the qualifying exams for a doctorate), the student body was about the same size, but the tuition had gone up by almost double and .... wait for it ... the number of administrators had doubled.
Where, exactly, do you think that extra tuition went? I'll give you two guesses, and the first one doesn't count.
Re:Value for money (Score:5, Insightful)
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When you have a student body of 50,000 students, you need a lot of administrative staff to manage that.
You seem to be saying that the more students you have the greater the cost PER STUDENT the administration is going to be. This simply extremely non intuitive, typically you see saving in scale, and if the inverse was true you would simply see Universities fragment into smaller universities.
What we are seeing here is when you put the administrators in charge they hire more administrators, inflate administrators budgets, and continually vote to increase their own salaries. It is the same thing that happens in
Throw money at something, ... (Score:2)
... and it will absorb it. It may or may not do what you intended the money to accomplish, but the money will be absorbed. Especially when you also start imposing restrictions that must be administered as part of throwing the money.
The US has Title IX, which imposes a LOT of overhead on any educational institution that accepts federal funding. When you work for such an institution, you are required to take Title IX education each year. The only rational take-away from Title IX training is, "Don't Take Feder
Oh is this the thread... (Score:5, Insightful)
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I went to a good college. One with a world-wide reputation among the best. I learned a lot by myself before getting to college, and thought I was pretty smart. I aced the SATs. I won every STEM prize offered at my high school. I graduated from high school early. And I was rewarded in college with a course load that was an order of magnitude harder than I had previously experienced. As just one example, in the introduction to electronic hardware design class, we needed to learn six -- SIX -- different
Easy fix for university costs (Score:2, Interesting)
Eliminate student loans. Require universities to take payment in full for each year UP FRONT, or take no money up front, and a percentage of lifetime income for anyone attending - with that percentage increasing with length of attendance. Numbers shown below are just examples:
UG Year 1 (or fraction thereof): 1% of future lifetime income (until designated retirement age)
UG Year 2 (or fraction thereof): 2% of future lifetime income (until designated retirement age)
UG Year 3 (or fraction thereof): 3% of future
Re:Easy fix for university costs (Score:4, Insightful)
High school GPA is the best measure we have, and it only accounts for 10-20% of the variance in college performance. If we really want to limit college enrollment, we'd be better just setting a minimum bar (e.g., high school GPA of 2.50), and then randomly selecting from everyone who meets that minimum bar.
breakdown in society due to crippling debt (Score:3, Insightful)
i was the last year (1988) in the UK where grants were available. i still had to work thursday evenings and all day saturday at sainsbury's, cromwell road, to stay out of debt. an older friend shared an insight with me, that it is the young people who have all the vitality, energy and enthusiasm. the younger people are the ones that will be creating the wealth and (directly or indirectly) looking after the older generation. .... so what the HELL are we doing by destroying their enthusiasm and vitality by CRIPPLING THEM WITH DEBT?
the older generations should be going, as a community, "these are the people who are going to be looking after us when we're older. buy them some land, GIVE them a home to live in and get them the resources they need to build a stable future, for us *and* them, for god's sake!"
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the older generations should be going, as a community, "these are the people who are going to be looking after us when we're older. buy them some land, GIVE them a home to live in and get them the resources they need to build a stable future, for us *and* them, for god's sake!"
Only the dumb ones.
The smart ones are going, "I'm going to make, save and invest enough money so that I don't have to depend on these people to look after me when I'm older".
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The smart ones are going, "I'm going to make, save and invest enough money so that I don't have to depend on these people to look after me when I'm older".
That's a fairly dumb approach.
For a start it's very risky. Maybe you are lucky and save up enough, maybe the economy tanks just as you are reaching retirement and your savings and investments go down the drain. Maybe you are just unlucky and get laid off at 50 and can't find another job, maybe you get cancer and lose everything.
And the thing is, even if it works out you still need highly educated young people to look after you. Your body will start to need maintenance and repairs, and your mind might start
Lack of good alternatives in the US. (Score:5, Insightful)
Colleges and Universities really shouldn't be Job Prep institutions. They are academic institutions who's job is to educate people, for the most part for a job in academia, where their research findings are often published, sold, or given to the public. Or received grants to do such research.
However the problem became the mantra "If you want a good job then you need a college degree" So people got college degrees, and businesses also bought into this and made job requirements to require college degrees, even for jobs that really doesn't require them.
American Vocational training seems to be limited to mostly Blue Collar jobs, which are good paying and often rewarding jobs, but white collar work still requires a college degree, even though the work has little to do with what you have learned in college with the exception of some soft skills, such as time management, being able to stick to getting a degree, interacting and learning about other cultures. However there are a lot of jobs out there that don't need a degree. An computer programmer doesn't need a computer science degree, but it needs more than just knowing what the commands do. There are a lot of principals of computer science that needs to be taught, but not a 4 year degree, mixed with classes in liberal arts classes.
Anyone with any sense (Score:3, Insightful)
If you don't want to spend your life at Walmart or (if you're lucky) earning $15/hr doing welding/HVAC (with no raises and ever decreasing pay due to inflation) you need a degree.
If I may rant like a crazy man for a bit here: This comes off as more anti-education propaganda pushed by an increase right wing media whose corporate masters are tired of paying for schools in the form of taxes.
Oh, and those "fat cat bureaucrats" aren't real (Score:5, Informative)
Per the article I linked above tuition is going up because we slashed federal and state subsidies. I'm so tired of this lie being repeated...
Services and Bureaucrats real in Private Schools (Score:5, Insightful)
The picture is a bit different at private schools, which do not receive state funding but have nonetheless seen substantial tuition increases. At private nonprofit colleges, the spending categories described above — student services and faculty and administrative salaries — together explain most of the tuition increase over the past two decades.
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What's been happening is that more and more people are going to college and it's got to the point where a lot of them shouldn't be. Here's one university where it was reported that 14% of students were failing an inte [naplesnews.com]
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So yeah, the author and site seem to have a serious ideological axe to grind with 'liberal education' in general.
Some seeking alternatives (Score:2)
Clearly my *** (Score:5, Insightful)
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" Sending a stupid person to college doesn't make them any more useful" That is a bit of an assumption
" And if the government stopped backing education loans, those loans would only become available to smart people " That is also a big assumption.
Your points also belie and a series of even more critical, unspoken, and at best debatable assumptions.
You imply private loan companies would efficiently (assumption) target those that can pay back the loans(assumption) and that the nimbleness of smaller private
Root Cause (Score:5, Interesting)
As a result, there is no incentive to means-check people prior to giving them a loan. In point of fact, there is very little means-checking. In addition, because of the government backing of the loan there does not need to be a correlation between what a particular degree is likely to actually pay, and how much the education might cost.
For instance, an electrical engineer could go to a university on all student loans. As long as that person gets reasonable grades, they will have decent earning potential. Another student could go to the same university and get a degree in basket weaving. It will cost them about the same. But the earning potential afterwards is nil. They are unlikely to pay back the loan.
This has led to universities charging insane amounts of money for degrees that are near worthless. We can't and shouldn't protect people from getting worthless degrees. That's their problem. We SHOULD, however, remove the liability from the taxpayer for those worthless degrees. That decoupling would result in far more stringent means-testing. It would also mean that loan companies would no longer give students loans for worthless degrees.
A college degree would be worth more. Trade-schools would likely make a return. People would be naturally funneled toward degrees that are in demand. We would be better off all the way around. Keep in mind, this is very similar to what happened to the housing market. As long as loan companies could gives loans and hide the risk they will do so. In the housing bubble's case it was through the clumping together of mortgages to hide the risk. In this case it's the government hiding the risk.
Cause of high prices (Score:2)
Face Value? (Score:2)
Is this apparently low evaluation indicative or anything?
If you take a normal portfolio of CC loans. You have a total amount owed X, and an interest rate Y.
The value of those loans is going to become value X + Z, where Z is affected linearly by X and multiplicative by Y. The Loan is going to be worth more than the principal amount because it is sold to make a profit.
Student debt, unlike credit card debt, unlike mortgages, unlike every other debt is sold under the cost of supplying the debt, and there's no c
Careful with the UK/US comparison (Score:5, Informative)
As a full-time staffer at a major public research university in the US, I'd like to mention one cost that was not in the summary: building and grounds costs. Even if you don't want perfectly manicured lawns, you still need to maintain a level of safety on the grounds and make sure the buildings are collapsing on themselves. Many schools have faced year after year of reduced state and federal funding, and they have to pay these bills somehow. This isn't just an image thing either; a lot of grounds maintenance is about safety.
It is also worth noting that tuition helps pay for the costs of keeping the lights on, maintaining temperatures in rooms and labs, etc. Even as we go to smart(er) thermostats it is still not a trivial matter to provide efficient heat in the winter and cooling in the summer. Schools aren't allowed to bill these costs to grants.
Are executives overpaid at our schools? Almost without question. But the amount of the tuition revenue that goes to their pay is pretty small compared to other costs that the schools have to face.
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Why are you spending 60K? (Score:2)
My kids will cost me a whole lot less than 60K each though their BS degrees, one in mathematics and the other in Computer Science. How's this possible?
1. They attended a community college for their first two years, followed by a very good local 4 year college which is known for it's STEM programs.
2. They both are living at home while they go to school.
3. They are both working during the summer months and applying for as many scholarships as they can find.
The community college is about $2,000 a year whe
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Sounds like you DON'T understand that. WTF. I'll never understand people like you. Not everyone is in the same circumstances. And $60k isn't much more than $25k anyway when it comes to something as important as education. A STEM degree from a better university will net you much much more than the difference.
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"There is no need to spend $60K or more and certainly no need to borrow all of that..." Um, yes it can be. What if you can't live at home? Sounds like you don't understand at all. If your kids were not living at home you would be spending $60k or more, even with your numbers. What is the difference if you pay $40k vs $60k? You would be better off spending the extra $20k now if it means you can go to a better school.
I disagree with you on the last point. As long as your school is accredited, it will do nicely, forget spending $20K more, just get the degree. Unless you are talking "ivy league" schools, where just having gone there opens doors for you, why spend more? It literally WILL NOT matter after 2-4 years of employment. Nobody looks at your GPA or cares what school you went to once you have a professional work history. Sure, it might be an interview conversation starter, but it literally doesn't matter which s
Sadly, a bad value (Score:4, Insightful)
So many others might best be described as pecuniary extraction. Unless one is planning on going the whole way to a doctorate, then replacing instructor, you're getting nothing of worth.
As well, the single minded obsession with getting a degree allowed some amazing tuition inflation.
The tuition inflation allowed adding multiple layers of middle management, and as the story notes, groups that had nothing to do with education.
So there is the price gouging.
Some other things started happening as well. Universities were a place where ideas and different opinions were allowed to flourish, and tolerance of different outlooks was encouraged. But they hit a real pothole in the road by tolerating people who promoted intolerance of a far left wing variety.
So people like Anne Coulter, and Bill Maher were uninvited from some places they were to speak at after the far left kooks demanded they be excluded.
People such as Bill Maher, Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock, and Larry the Cable Guy all stopped playing college campuses because of the political correctnes demands. As Maher put it (paraphrased) "When a lily White guy, a Black guy, a Jewish guy and a Redneck agree that colleges are a bad place, they are probably on to something".
Toxic environment.
Being a male on a college campus is a rather unpleasant experience. You have to pay for "classes" where you are told just how evil a rapist you are, and that your future depends on your strict obedience. What is more, those things that can get your future destroyed are rather ambiguous. To cap it off, there is no due process. If you and a female engage in anything while both drinking, she cannot give consent. But for some reason, you can. The results are a confusing mine field for male students.
So at this time, we are seeing something like a 67 percent female enrolment in college. The males have made their decision to avoid that toxic environment. As male attendance drops, the people remaining get angrier and angrier, and the way a man sits is now worthy of outrage and hatred. You mean I'm supposed to pay for that abuse? The interesting part is that as some of these career women hit their mid to late 30's they want to settle down, find a man, and start fertilization therapy. But they find that there are no men "worthy" of them. DDG "where have all the good men gone" to see the laments of modern professional women.
They want to settle down, but unfortunately, there are no men that measure up. In true far left feminist fashion, they are trying some of the same tactics that drove men away in the first place.
Reminds me of the old saying "The floggings shall continue until morale improves"
So back to the original part of my post, outside of a few majors, college is not remotely worth it. As well, it takes advantage of many women who after its over, find themselves in possession of worthless degrees consisting of giving your opinion, and that only inflate their egos, then deprives them of normal life relationships and activities.
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Please, tell me where University still costs only $60,000...
Some countries actually pay you to go.
Even foreigners, you can can to a country and get your degree and get paid to do it.
https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]
Top 5 school, $8,000. Ferrari isn't the only car (Score:4, Informative)
You don't have to drive a Ferrari, and you don't have to go to Yale. You can choose a car and a school that's affordable.
I'm about to start my Master's degree at Georgia Tech, one of the best schools in the country for my field. It'll cost $10,000 - 20% tax credit = $8,000.
For my bachelor's I could have spent less for the same school I went to. I paid a total of $24,000 - $6,000 tax credit = $18,000.
A lot of schools have a cap on the tuition per semester so you can do 24 credits for the same price as 12. Many allow credit by examination. What I suggest to people now is to spend a 6-12 months studying before you officially enroll, then take the tests or submit the work so you get 9 credits in your first month of paying. Those kinds of strategies can bring the total cost for a bachelor's degree down to $9,000 after the tax credit.
I got my bachelor's at WGU, which is a state school. Halfway through school my income doubled partly because the final exams for some classes are industry certs like Cisco CCNA. So as a junior I had already earned several well-known certs as part of my classes.
Re:Top 5 school, $8,000. Ferrari isn't the only ca (Score:4, Informative)
I've averaged 20 credits a quarter for six quarters, finished my community college in 1 year, and am on track to finish a double major in CS and Math by the end of my third year. What allowed me to do that was already having a strong foundation in programming from years of experience, and being good at Math. I also went into it focused, and knowing what I want to do. No credits wasted on switching majors, or exploratory classes.
Similar to the GP's suggestion I spent about a month or so refreshing on mathematics and taught myself trigonometry so that I tested straight into Calculus. This has meant that every credit I have taken has gone towards my degree, no need to build up taking low level college math credits that don't count for anything but electives.
My toughest quarter was 23 credits, with 3 math courses, physics, and assembly programming and maintained a 3.97 GPA. Nothing particularly savant, and have never cheated, but I have made sacrifices and prioritized my education. Some classmates go out and get drunk on the weekends, showing up to class with hangovers, and I spend my time studying my subjects in more depth, or exploring other subjects of interest.
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I advise you to slow down and relax a bit, particularly in your last year. 20 years later, I look back at this and wish I had taken more time. I had reasons, and perhaps you do too but take time and examine them. If one of them is a hot new job paying big bucks, think harder. Either that job will still be there next year, or, and this is important, you really didn't want it anyway. This is particularly troublesome in technology.
Actually it is, low-cost on purpose (Score:3)
My program is has unsually low costs because it's designed to, and it doesn't involve a lot of new cutting-edge research. They did the OMSCS for several years and it worked, so they've expanded those approaches.
Are you by chance familiar with Eddie Woo? He's a mathematics professor, mainly calculus, who has over a million subscribers on YouTube. He's been named Teacher of the Year by several organizations and there is even a postage stamp with his face on it. In other words, he's a really good teacher.
The
SpaceX is not the federal gvt. Neither is Exxon (Score:3)
>The F&A costs are typically a percentage of the direct costs, for awards from federal agencies
Yes, with the US federal government, the way to get more money is to increase your expenses. You get more by wasting more. It's pretty much only the federal government that is that stupid. Roughly nobody else does that. Not even the Mexican government.
When SpaceX, ExxonMobil, or Mexico wanted something, we quoted them a price. If we found ways to do it more economically, such as moving from paper-based wo
Re:$60,000? (Score:4, Interesting)
Please, tell me where University still costs only $60,000...
I got a degree for $20k in the early y2k at the local state college. The cost is a bit more than double that now but worth it for a job that paid $55k starting out of college in software development, and has gone up from there. The degree also included a full year of internship that paid $15 an hour which helps a lot with costs. This doesn't include housing costs as I lived from home and commuted so YMMV.
Re:$60,000? (Score:4, Informative)
Please, tell me where University still costs only $60,000...
I got a degree for $20k in the early y2k at the local state college.
Got it.
The first hit on google: "According to the College Board, the average cost of tuition and fees for the 2017–2018 school year was... $9,970 for state residents at public colleges."
https://www.collegedata.com/cs... [collegedata.com]