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On December 16 2012 01:35 Tal wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2012 14:56 ziggurat wrote:
The biggest problem to me seems to be that prospective students are not very good at deciding if a particular education is a good investment. So we see people spending hundreds of thousands going to an ivy league school getting a degree in Women's Studies (to take an extreme example). And then complain that they can't pay off their loans. How in the world did these people ever imagine that they would pay off their loans? Or did they just not think about it at all?
Prices for tuition have skyrocketed, but prospective students seem willing to keep paying. This I don't understand. There needs to be a real shift in they way people look at education. Many people seem to have the philosophy that they'll just go to school and figure out the purpose later. In fact I did that -- but my tuition was only $5,000 per year so it was a bit more reasonable.
People who are thinking about going to school should have a good hard look at whether the program will be worth it. Will it increase their earning potential enough to justify the cost and the time away from their current opportunities? Or, if not, will the enrichment they get make it "worth it" in a non-monetary sense? But I don't think people who can't afford to pay back their loans have any right to complain if they didn't think ahead. I agree that if someone is spending that much for that subject, that it's crazy. But once you move away from the extremes its a little more tricky. In the UK, a lot of our greatest rock bands (and those most successful commercially) took Fine Art degrees, which are the posterchild for 'degrees that sound like a waste of money'. There are a lot of people who by living in the university environment, and studying something they find fascinating, eventually do turn out to have made a good investment. But it's one that's hard to predict, and asking 18 year olds to view university in terms of earning potential, or 'true value' is something few will be able to do. It's something a lot of graduates with the benefit of hindsight still find hard to gauge. But, with the modern day fees being so high, something does need to change...maybe online learning will lead to some kind of cheaper hybrid universities, which will let people expand their mind without putting themselves into debt for the next 20 years.
Online education is interesting to me. I have no doubt that this is a great way to learn. But when you go to a university, are you really paying to learn? Or are you paying for the prestige of a degree?
I always thought it was funny that most university classes are open to the public. This is a very expensive product! People pay thousands of dollars to be able to go to these classes, right? But anyone from the public can just walk in and hear the lectures for free. So what is it that people are really paying for?
To me this seems like a challenge for online education. People can learn a lot online, but it's not a substitute for a piece of paper that you can show an employer.
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On December 16 2012 01:35 Tal wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2012 14:56 ziggurat wrote:
The biggest problem to me seems to be that prospective students are not very good at deciding if a particular education is a good investment. So we see people spending hundreds of thousands going to an ivy league school getting a degree in Women's Studies (to take an extreme example). And then complain that they can't pay off their loans. How in the world did these people ever imagine that they would pay off their loans? Or did they just not think about it at all?
Prices for tuition have skyrocketed, but prospective students seem willing to keep paying. This I don't understand. There needs to be a real shift in they way people look at education. Many people seem to have the philosophy that they'll just go to school and figure out the purpose later. In fact I did that -- but my tuition was only $5,000 per year so it was a bit more reasonable.
People who are thinking about going to school should have a good hard look at whether the program will be worth it. Will it increase their earning potential enough to justify the cost and the time away from their current opportunities? Or, if not, will the enrichment they get make it "worth it" in a non-monetary sense? But I don't think people who can't afford to pay back their loans have any right to complain if they didn't think ahead. I agree that if someone is spending that much for that subject, that it's crazy. But once you move away from the extremes its a little more tricky. In the UK, a lot of our greatest rock bands (and those most successful commercially) took Fine Art degrees, which are the posterchild for 'degrees that sound like a waste of money'. There are a lot of people who by living in the university environment, and studying something they find fascinating, eventually do turn out to have made a good investment. But it's one that's hard to predict, and asking 18 year olds to view university in terms of earning potential, or 'true value' is something few will be able to do. It's something a lot of graduates with the benefit of hindsight still find hard to gauge. But, with the modern day fees being so high, something does need to change...maybe online learning will lead to some kind of cheaper hybrid universities, which will let people expand their mind without putting themselves into debt for the next 20 years.
If it's really that bad as you say that they cannot comprehend financial responsibility at 18, they should probably hold off on going to college. It is not exactly a hard concept.
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You also have to consider that some universities are already moving towards online education, with no sign of letting up on the costs
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Partly, you guys have to understand that the University is not solely there to provide a service to students. That is part of it. But teaching is only half of an academic's job. Keep that in mind when you are talking about costs of education.
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On December 16 2012 02:00 FabledIntegral wrote:Show nested quote +On December 16 2012 01:35 Tal wrote:On December 15 2012 14:56 ziggurat wrote:
The biggest problem to me seems to be that prospective students are not very good at deciding if a particular education is a good investment. So we see people spending hundreds of thousands going to an ivy league school getting a degree in Women's Studies (to take an extreme example). And then complain that they can't pay off their loans. How in the world did these people ever imagine that they would pay off their loans? Or did they just not think about it at all?
Prices for tuition have skyrocketed, but prospective students seem willing to keep paying. This I don't understand. There needs to be a real shift in they way people look at education. Many people seem to have the philosophy that they'll just go to school and figure out the purpose later. In fact I did that -- but my tuition was only $5,000 per year so it was a bit more reasonable.
People who are thinking about going to school should have a good hard look at whether the program will be worth it. Will it increase their earning potential enough to justify the cost and the time away from their current opportunities? Or, if not, will the enrichment they get make it "worth it" in a non-monetary sense? But I don't think people who can't afford to pay back their loans have any right to complain if they didn't think ahead. I agree that if someone is spending that much for that subject, that it's crazy. But once you move away from the extremes its a little more tricky. In the UK, a lot of our greatest rock bands (and those most successful commercially) took Fine Art degrees, which are the posterchild for 'degrees that sound like a waste of money'. There are a lot of people who by living in the university environment, and studying something they find fascinating, eventually do turn out to have made a good investment. But it's one that's hard to predict, and asking 18 year olds to view university in terms of earning potential, or 'true value' is something few will be able to do. It's something a lot of graduates with the benefit of hindsight still find hard to gauge. But, with the modern day fees being so high, something does need to change...maybe online learning will lead to some kind of cheaper hybrid universities, which will let people expand their mind without putting themselves into debt for the next 20 years. If it's really that bad as you say that they cannot comprehend financial responsibility at 18, they should probably hold off on going to college. It is not exactly a hard concept.
I think you have part of a solution, not all of it. There should be, literally a course in high school where people need to be taught financial and higher educational responsibility.
Still left on the table is what to do with the exponential tuition increases, employer pressures onto higher ed degrees that will keep higher ed degree demand consistently rising, loan structuring and the existing debt itself that cannot be ignored.
As far as online uni's go, my undergrad was a leader in the state for online courses, yet when I considered enrolling in them what I found was they were actually either just as expensive or more expensive than physical courses. Interestingly, the "online" books they offered to go were only like 20 bux cheaper than the physical versions on top of it. Online courses *should* be cheaper, but at least over here they aren't, why?
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On December 16 2012 05:58 forgottendreams wrote:Show nested quote +On December 16 2012 02:00 FabledIntegral wrote:On December 16 2012 01:35 Tal wrote:On December 15 2012 14:56 ziggurat wrote:
The biggest problem to me seems to be that prospective students are not very good at deciding if a particular education is a good investment. So we see people spending hundreds of thousands going to an ivy league school getting a degree in Women's Studies (to take an extreme example). And then complain that they can't pay off their loans. How in the world did these people ever imagine that they would pay off their loans? Or did they just not think about it at all?
Prices for tuition have skyrocketed, but prospective students seem willing to keep paying. This I don't understand. There needs to be a real shift in they way people look at education. Many people seem to have the philosophy that they'll just go to school and figure out the purpose later. In fact I did that -- but my tuition was only $5,000 per year so it was a bit more reasonable.
People who are thinking about going to school should have a good hard look at whether the program will be worth it. Will it increase their earning potential enough to justify the cost and the time away from their current opportunities? Or, if not, will the enrichment they get make it "worth it" in a non-monetary sense? But I don't think people who can't afford to pay back their loans have any right to complain if they didn't think ahead. I agree that if someone is spending that much for that subject, that it's crazy. But once you move away from the extremes its a little more tricky. In the UK, a lot of our greatest rock bands (and those most successful commercially) took Fine Art degrees, which are the posterchild for 'degrees that sound like a waste of money'. There are a lot of people who by living in the university environment, and studying something they find fascinating, eventually do turn out to have made a good investment. But it's one that's hard to predict, and asking 18 year olds to view university in terms of earning potential, or 'true value' is something few will be able to do. It's something a lot of graduates with the benefit of hindsight still find hard to gauge. But, with the modern day fees being so high, something does need to change...maybe online learning will lead to some kind of cheaper hybrid universities, which will let people expand their mind without putting themselves into debt for the next 20 years. If it's really that bad as you say that they cannot comprehend financial responsibility at 18, they should probably hold off on going to college. It is not exactly a hard concept. I think you have part of a solution, not all of it. There should be, literally a course in high school where people need to be taught financial and higher educational responsibility. Still left on the table is what to do with the exponential tuition increases, employer pressures onto higher ed degrees and the loan structuring itself. As far as online uni's go, my undergrad was a leader in the state for online courses, yet when I considered enrolling in them what I found was they were actually either just as expensive or more expensive than physical courses. Interestingly, the "online" books they offered to go were only like 20 bux cheaper than the physical versions on top of it. Online courses *should* be cheaper, but at least over here they aren't, why?
I believe they're offered as more of a convenience thing than anything. I plan on getting my masters in ~2 years at Boston University, and the program is online. It's going to be ~$20k per year, with my employer only reimbursing me $6k per year, meaning by the end I'll have spent $28k (I'll continually get $6 per year until it's "paid off" although no calculations for interest or anything exist). Kinda a bummer, as you said, it's nearly the same cost as normal tuition.
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It still baffles me why pulling bullshit from a movie scene and analyzing poetry is compulsory in schools but basic economics and personal finance are not.
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On December 16 2012 09:12 yandere991 wrote:
It still baffles me why pulling bullshit from a movie scene and analyzing poetry is compulsory in schools but basic economics and personal finance are not.
Because then it would be harder to engage in predatory financial practices.
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On December 15 2012 14:56 ziggurat wrote:
The biggest problem to me seems to be that prospective students are not very good at deciding if a particular education is a good investment. So we see people spending hundreds of thousands going to an ivy league school getting a degree in Women's Studies (to take an extreme example). And then complain that they can't pay off their loans. How in the world did these people ever imagine that they would pay off their loans? Or did they just not think about it at all?
Prices for tuition have skyrocketed, but prospective students seem willing to keep paying. This I don't understand. There needs to be a real shift in they way people look at education. Many people seem to have the philosophy that they'll just go to school and figure out the purpose later. In fact I did that -- but my tuition was only $5,000 per year so it was a bit more reasonable.
People who are thinking about going to school should have a good hard look at whether the program will be worth it. Will it increase their earning potential enough to justify the cost and the time away from their current opportunities? Or, if not, will the enrichment they get make it "worth it" in a non-monetary sense? But I don't think people who can't afford to pay back their loans have any right to complain if they didn't think ahead.
If economists can't accurately predict whether or not a particular degree is going to be useful in four years time, how do you expect an 18 year old to?
I'll give you women's studies, but I don't think all the people who were starting their business undergrads in fall 2004 could have predicted that their degrees would end up to be less useful then the paper they were printed on. And I betcha that neither did the people going into computing in 1998. Neither did the people who went into education in my home province. (Despite the province not being in a recession, the government increased class sizes, shut down schools, and froze the education budget. That may or may not have been after they'd have given themselves a raise.)
Combine all this with the college town locations of many American universities (Where, due to distance, most students can't just cut living costs by staying with their parents), and you've got a recipe for spending way too much money on the gamble that four years from now your degree will be of any use.
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The might be a solution that has a potential to achieve all three goals at once:
- reduce student debt
- reduce government budget deficit and/or reduce taxes
- make higher education available for everybody
The solution is to cancel tenured positions in public colleges and universities, cancel government-supported student loan program and encourage public universities and colleges to move their auxiliary services (sports, counseling etc) to pay-per-use basis.
The result will be that universities will be able to save a lot of money by cutting all professorial salaries to $15000-$30000 per year with no benefits, cutting spending on auxiliaries (basically outsourcing them and letting students pay on individual basis) and cutting administration (which is currently bloated to manage all the auxiliary services). Additionally most courses can be tought online, and university buildings can be rented out to private companies (which would help paying utility bills and maintenance).
All these changes combined may lower the cost of degrees to $2000-$5000 per year. With such prices students will be able to afford higher education with little-to-no loans. The quality of education can also be greatly enhanced, since professors will have to put a lot of effort into teaching to remain employed if there are no tenure tracks. Additionally if professorial pay is lowered to $15000-$30000 per year for full load, profs will have no money for leisure activities and will spend more time at work and deliver better results.
The problem is solved 
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brb gonna go grab my pitchfork 
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On December 16 2012 12:24 Alex1Sun wrote:The might be a solution that has a potential to achieve all three goals at once: - reduce student debt
- reduce government budget deficit and/or reduce taxes
- make higher education available for everybody
The solution is to cancel tenured positions in public colleges and universities, cancel government-supported student loan program and encourage public universities and colleges to move their auxiliary services (sports, counseling etc) to pay-per-use basis. The result will be that universities will be able to save a lot of money by cutting all professorial salaries to $15000-$30000 per year with no benefits, cutting spending on auxiliaries (basically outsourcing them and letting students pay on individual basis) and cutting administration (which is currently bloated to manage all the auxiliary services). Additionally most courses can be tought online, and university buildings can be rented out to private companies (which would help paying utility bills and maintenance). All these changes combined may lower the cost of degrees to $2000-$5000 per year. With such prices students will be able to afford higher education with little-to-no loans. The quality of education can also be greatly enhanced, since professors will have to put a lot of effort into teaching to remain employed if there are no tenure tracks. Additionally if professorial pay is lowered to $15000-$30000 per year for full load, profs will have no money for leisure activities and will spend more time at work and deliver better results. The problem is solved
So your solution to university tuition is essentially to make being an university professor have no job security and be paid a salary which is lower than practically every salary prospect at PhD level? Who would accept these conditions? Motivating someone by slashing their salary so "they will have less money to spend time doing something else" is a red flag in any company concerning working conditions.
You also seem to be thinking that teaching is the only thing expected of a tenured professor, which isn't remotely true. University professors aren't high school teachers. Aside from the usual administrative work, he is also expected to conduct research (publish regularly in particular), most have grad students and they need to be at a level of understanding of their field which is not achieved by simply teaching. I have high doubts that the changes you propose will improve the quality of education. In fact, most professors will either seek positions in private or foreign establishments or quit the profession altogether, both of which create a situation of draining of competence.
I have no opinion on the outsourcing of sports; I was under the impression that this was already the case.
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The undergraduate degree doesn't necessarily matter all that much. You can be an English or History major, go to medical school, and make enough money to pay off your debt just fine
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On December 16 2012 13:57 scFoX wrote:Show nested quote +On December 16 2012 12:24 Alex1Sun wrote:The might be a solution that has a potential to achieve all three goals at once: - reduce student debt
- reduce government budget deficit and/or reduce taxes
- make higher education available for everybody
The solution is to cancel tenured positions in public colleges and universities, cancel government-supported student loan program and encourage public universities and colleges to move their auxiliary services (sports, counseling etc) to pay-per-use basis. The result will be that universities will be able to save a lot of money by cutting all professorial salaries to $15000-$30000 per year with no benefits, cutting spending on auxiliaries (basically outsourcing them and letting students pay on individual basis) and cutting administration (which is currently bloated to manage all the auxiliary services). Additionally most courses can be tought online, and university buildings can be rented out to private companies (which would help paying utility bills and maintenance). All these changes combined may lower the cost of degrees to $2000-$5000 per year. With such prices students will be able to afford higher education with little-to-no loans. The quality of education can also be greatly enhanced, since professors will have to put a lot of effort into teaching to remain employed if there are no tenure tracks. Additionally if professorial pay is lowered to $15000-$30000 per year for full load, profs will have no money for leisure activities and will spend more time at work and deliver better results. The problem is solved So your solution to university tuition is essentially to make being an university professor have no job security and be paid a salary which is lower than practically every salary prospect at PhD level? Who would accept these conditions? Motivating someone by slashing their salary so "they will have less money to spend time doing something else" is a red flag in any company concerning working conditions. You also seem to be thinking that teaching is the only thing expected of a tenured professor, which isn't remotely true. University professors aren't high school teachers. Aside from the usual administrative work, he is also expected to conduct research (publish regularly in particular), most have grad students and they need to be at a level of understanding of their field which is not achieved by simply teaching. I have high doubts that the changes you propose will improve the quality of education. In fact, most professors will either seek positions in private or foreign establishments or quit the profession altogether, both of which create a situation of draining of competence.
Thanks for your opinion. The fact is that many professors in US nowadays already receive such salary with no benefits, but there is still a massive oversupply of profs and those who want to become them. Some of them also get more than full-time load and work on the weekends/evenings to get a bit more money. The salaries can be made even lower, and you will still get enough highly qualified PhD holders to fill all positions. Even if you don't train that many PhDs at home, a lot of them will be coming from abroad.
These (so-called adjunct) professors that are not paid well are doing teaching only and are not involved in research or research-related administrative work, and judging by the pools they do their job much better than tenured professors who do research.
And as for continuing research and training PhDs, why do universities have to pay for it? Professors who want to do research can apply for competitive research grants. If academia and public thinks that their research proposal is the best, they will get the money to do research. Otherwise if all research in university is supported, the research quality might get worse.
Also people in science and higher education are usually very passionate about their work. Many professors will continue to teach and/or do research even if they are not paid at all and are just given some food and a place to sleep. I've seen this scheme work quite well in Soviet countries after the collapse of Soviet Union. In many universities professors were not even given enough money to buy basic food (not even speaking about rent or any such luxuries), but they continued to do excellent work and continue to do it now.
So it works, and some univerities are getting there. They stilll keep high tuition fees, but they can lower them considerably if the need arises (if student loan support discontinues).
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On December 16 2012 19:04 Alex1Sun wrote:Show nested quote +On December 16 2012 13:57 scFoX wrote:On December 16 2012 12:24 Alex1Sun wrote:The might be a solution that has a potential to achieve all three goals at once: - reduce student debt
- reduce government budget deficit and/or reduce taxes
- make higher education available for everybody
The solution is to cancel tenured positions in public colleges and universities, cancel government-supported student loan program and encourage public universities and colleges to move their auxiliary services (sports, counseling etc) to pay-per-use basis. The result will be that universities will be able to save a lot of money by cutting all professorial salaries to $15000-$30000 per year with no benefits, cutting spending on auxiliaries (basically outsourcing them and letting students pay on individual basis) and cutting administration (which is currently bloated to manage all the auxiliary services). Additionally most courses can be tought online, and university buildings can be rented out to private companies (which would help paying utility bills and maintenance). All these changes combined may lower the cost of degrees to $2000-$5000 per year. With such prices students will be able to afford higher education with little-to-no loans. The quality of education can also be greatly enhanced, since professors will have to put a lot of effort into teaching to remain employed if there are no tenure tracks. Additionally if professorial pay is lowered to $15000-$30000 per year for full load, profs will have no money for leisure activities and will spend more time at work and deliver better results. The problem is solved So your solution to university tuition is essentially to make being an university professor have no job security and be paid a salary which is lower than practically every salary prospect at PhD level? Who would accept these conditions? Motivating someone by slashing their salary so "they will have less money to spend time doing something else" is a red flag in any company concerning working conditions. You also seem to be thinking that teaching is the only thing expected of a tenured professor, which isn't remotely true. University professors aren't high school teachers. Aside from the usual administrative work, he is also expected to conduct research (publish regularly in particular), most have grad students and they need to be at a level of understanding of their field which is not achieved by simply teaching. I have high doubts that the changes you propose will improve the quality of education. In fact, most professors will either seek positions in private or foreign establishments or quit the profession altogether, both of which create a situation of draining of competence. I have no opinion on the outsourcing of sports; I was under the impression that this was already the case. Thanks for your opinion. The fact is that many professors in US nowadays already receive such salary with no benefits, but there is still a massive oversupply of profs and those who want to become them. Some of them also get more than full-time load and work on the weekends/evenings to get a bit more money. The salaries can be made even lower, and you will still get enough highly qualified PhD holders to fill all positions. Even if you don't train that many PhDs at home, horedes of them will be coming from abroad. These (so-called adjunct) professors that are not paid well are doing teaching only and are not involved in research or research-related administrative work, and judging by the pools they do their job much better than tenured professors who do research. And as for continuing research and training PhDs, why do universities have to pay for it? Professors who want to do research can apply for competitive research grants. If academia and public thinks that their research proposal is the best, they will get the money to do research. Otherwise if all research in university is supported, the research quality might get worse. Also people in science and higher education are usually very passionate about their work. Many professors will continue to teach and/or do research even if they are not paid at all and are just given some food and a place to sleep. I've seen this scheme work quite well in Soviet countries after the collapse of Soviet Union. In many universities professors were not even given enough money to buy basic food (not even speaking about rent or any such luxuries), but they continued to do excellent work and continue to do it now. This level of exploytation saddens me, but is it works it will be done.
I concede your point that the supply of academic jobs is higher than the demand. It's true that teaching and research is in no small part a matter of passion.
I don't agree however on this statement:
And as for continuing research and training PhDs, why do universities have to pay for it? Professors who want to do research can apply for competitive research grants. If academia and public thinks that their research proposal is the best, they will get the money to do research. Otherwise if all research in university is supported, the research quality might get worse.
First, all research is not supported by the universities themselves. The research grant system you suggest is already in place and in fact provides most of the funding professors have at their disposal. This is so prevalent in fact that a lot of time-consuming work is done in project management instead of actual research.
Secondly, PhDs (especially done in collaboration with corporate research) are frequently funded by research grants, or their stipends would be even worse than they currently are (in the US, I have heard they are especially bad). It makes sense though that their training is at least partly taken charge of by the universities, since they are the ones responsible for validating their diploma.
Lastly, you minimize the importance of public research in technological advancement. Their role in fundamental science in particular has been critical in the past century's breakthroughs. Just imagine where we would be today if quantum physics or relativity hadn't come about (no superconductors, no GPS, ...). There is a place for research which has no direct profit, because it can ultimately lead to further advancements. That doesn't mean that we can't be smart about evaluating what research could be useful, but universities have a clear role in this.
Of course, I am only speaking about research in science, as that is what I'm most familiar with. I find liberal arts harder to quantify, but there must be similar arguments which can be put forward too.
Anyway, things are probably going to turn out the way you say (some signs are already there), which is frankly depressing. If the pursuit of knowledge is sacrificed to the profit of circular innovation (i.e. rehashing old stuff), our society will ultimately end up stagnating.
One last statement: I also despise the concept of devaluating whole professions based on the fact that people would do it even if they weren't paid for it. Especially in science, peer review is monopolized by publishing in online journals which are expensive as hell (~$500 to publish a 10-page article, subscriptions are prohibitive). The only other way to get well-known is to participate in conferences, which implies participation and travel fees. I highly doubt that someone only given money for food or even lodging can afford that on his own right now. The world has become much more competitive since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
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Oh dear god he IS serious
Yes, let's only do academic work the market demands. That's a sure way to avoid tyranny!!
edit: because the market IS the tyrant. What you need to do is SHIELD the university from the market! Don't you understand that we are a plutocracy? And now you want to put the one institution that is supposed to be a counter-hegemonic force in society under the control of the plutocrats? good grief
edit: the idea of the university is to protect unpopular ideas without protecting stupid ones
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On December 17 2012 05:01 sam!zdat wrote:
Oh dear god he IS serious
Yes, let's only do academic work the market demands. That's a sure way to avoid tyranny!!
edit: because the market IS the tyrant. What you need to do is SHIELD the university from the market! Don't you understand that we are a plutocracy? And now you want to put the one institution that is supposed to be a counter-hegemonic force in society under the control of the plutocrats? good grief
edit: the idea of the university is to protect unpopular ideas without protecting stupid ones
Well, I was partly trolling, partly trying to picture where we might be heading now based on my own experience (I may be wrong). I don't like this direction at all, and I agree with you that unis should be shielded.
As for academic work being based on the market demand, it depends on the market. If market is represented by research and education committees, where academics distribute grants themselves, then add limited influence from public and industry, and it can be not that bad of a market for university development. If the market is general public only or polititians, then it's much worse, but that's where many universities seem to be getting.
What is also bad in the current system (and IMHO getting worse rapidly) is transparency and honesty. Some professors openly misinform PhD students promising a good career in academia (not my case, but happens all the time). The number of PhD students a university graduates is one of the main statistics that universities try to make as big as possible, while at the same time replacing tenured professors by adjuncts and knowing huge underemployment rates for PhDs. All this leads to a massive oversupply of academics.
It could be good for science (the more people the merrier lol), but then this oversupply gets combined with grant and job systems that decide who to reward depending on luck as much as skills and connections (and increasingly controlled by bureaucrats). It means that even if you are really brilliant, well connected and work hard, statistically you still have a very poor chance of building a career.
Such system is easier to exploit (including exploitation and control by external non-academic intersts), and that's where we seem to be going 
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Sure wouldn't mind at all some academic structural reform if you were clever about it
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On December 16 2012 11:43 Nightfall.589 wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2012 14:56 ziggurat wrote:
The biggest problem to me seems to be that prospective students are not very good at deciding if a particular education is a good investment. So we see people spending hundreds of thousands going to an ivy league school getting a degree in Women's Studies (to take an extreme example). And then complain that they can't pay off their loans. How in the world did these people ever imagine that they would pay off their loans? Or did they just not think about it at all?
Prices for tuition have skyrocketed, but prospective students seem willing to keep paying. This I don't understand. There needs to be a real shift in they way people look at education. Many people seem to have the philosophy that they'll just go to school and figure out the purpose later. In fact I did that -- but my tuition was only $5,000 per year so it was a bit more reasonable.
People who are thinking about going to school should have a good hard look at whether the program will be worth it. Will it increase their earning potential enough to justify the cost and the time away from their current opportunities? Or, if not, will the enrichment they get make it "worth it" in a non-monetary sense? But I don't think people who can't afford to pay back their loans have any right to complain if they didn't think ahead. If economists can't accurately predict whether or not a particular degree is going to be useful in four years time, how do you expect an 18 year old to? I'll give you women's studies, but I don't think all the people who were starting their business undergrads in fall 2004 could have predicted that their degrees would end up to be less useful then the paper they were printed on. And I betcha that neither did the people going into computing in 1998. Neither did the people who went into education in my home province. (Despite the province not being in a recession, the government increased class sizes, shut down schools, and froze the education budget. That may or may not have been after they'd have given themselves a raise.) Combine all this with the college town locations of many American universities (Where, due to distance, most students can't just cut living costs by staying with their parents), and you've got a recipe for spending way too much money on the gamble that four years from now your degree will be of any use.
It's usually not that hard to predict with degrees will be valuable. If you go to a course that teaches you how to do a particular job for which there is significant demand, that is a good start. Some good examples are going to med school, or nursing. Other obvious examples are trades like electrician, plumbing, etc. Engineering. Accounting. All these courses teach you specific skills that are necessary to work in specific fields.
Other examples like Law or Teaching are a bit different, because one could argue that the skills you need to do these jobs are largely common sense; but whether or not that's true, you normally can't work in these fields without the degree. So whether or not you learn any skills in these programs, you're required to complete them in order to enter the field.
Obviously spending a lot of time and money on any of these programs involves a calculated risk. You might say, the demand for nurses is high now, but it may not be so high by the time I graduate. True enough, and no one can guarantee this. Just like a lot of major decisions in life, you sometimes just have to get the best information you can and then go for it. As you may be aware, the demand for corporate lawyers dropped dramatically around 2009 and still hasn't really recovered, so people who went to law school and graduated in the last few years are doing a lot worse than expected. There are still jobs, just not as many and generally not as well-paying. These kind of risks are part of life, and I'm not trying to say that you can avoid them completely.
What you can avoid, however, is entering a program that doesn't have any clear path to employment. Like doing a degree in English literature, or honestly most arts degrees. The same is true of a lot of general science degrees. You just learn a bunch of information without being prepared to do any particular job. Probably also true of many business degrees, but most business schools at least have a strong focus on networking and getting you connections to prospective employers. If you are a highly energetic self-starter then you can find a job with any kind of degree (or none), but most people don't fit this category. The monetary value of degrees that don't prepare you to do a specific job is hard to gauge, and probably not that high is most cases.
Now I'm not saying that nobody should go and get a good liberal arts education. If that's what you want, then go for it. But don't expect it to be a good investment in terms of dollars and cents.
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EPT
