dagblog - Comments for "The Higher Education Hustle"

Yes these public institutions

trkingmomoe — Thu, 08 Aug 2013 03:52:06 +0000

In reply to The Higher Education Hustle

Yes these public institutions have been cut to bare bones. Also the pell grants took a hit in the sequester. My grandson and his wife moved back in with me this summer. He will be starting his third year in college. We worked it out so they would not have to borrow money. I would rather have them in school then flipping burgers part time is the crappy economy. I see education as a better use of their time right now. College also it a great experience when you are young.

Awesome post. One of the

Orion — Wed, 07 Aug 2013 11:52:08 +0000

In reply to Claremont may be a Douhat

Awesome post. One of the other posts here mentioned minority students, often trying to support their family in addition to being students, having to maneuver through commuter schools and various forms of discrimination. If anything, the current system we have is gaming such people even further - they are getting the little money they do have literally sucked out of them while they have to maneuver through hoops to pay off the various loans they borrowed.

All of that game is there because people think they will be in a better place at the end of it. I graduated with a B.A. in Political Science - I live in subsidized housing and have received alot of closed doors when I have persued jobs. I have met multiple people with graduate degrees who are not doing that well - on disability or living with their family or otherwise dependent. I even met an Amherst grad who was homeless for over a year after graduating. Only 40% of the country has either an AA or BA - when you take in to account what I have just mentioned, the whole operation seems even more shaky.

I'm aware of the nuances and

Orion — Wed, 07 Aug 2013 00:12:50 +0000

In reply to I think what you're

I'm aware of the nuances and where this article is really coming from, of course. Most of American "conservative" ideas are really rooted in racism and some form of white supremacism - I know that from first hand experience. For reasons I say in the article, though, I really do think some rethinking should occur.

Claremont may be a Douhat

NCD — Tue, 06 Aug 2013 18:41:07 +0000

In reply to The Higher Education Hustle

Claremont may be a Douhat loving tea bag outfit but there is no doubt that the 'credential-industrial' complex, universities, number one goal is the pursuit of dollars. Private lenders, text publishers, test tutoring organizations, testing organizations themselves, multi-application services and colleges all are culpable in shucking students and their families of money, there are lots of hogs at the trough.

If it means students are financially crippled, many colleges/universities by and large don't care, many lobbied against the (in the end watered down) Bill for them to take a dollar hit if students default on loans.

Even the College Board (SAT) hawks private student loans on their own website to get a place at the easy money student loan trough. The greed to shuck students is rampant and repugnant.

The recent move to allow the loan rates on government student loans to rise from the 3% level to market level was a blow to the nation's future, shackling students with even more debt, which will only harm the country and the economy.

Meanwhile, the number of tenure track professors drops, and adjunct part timers grows, in all likelihood reducing the quality of teaching.

Yeah, it was frequent enough

Verified Atheist — Tue, 06 Aug 2013 18:01:04 +0000

In reply to I'm less surprised that STEM

Yeah, it was frequent enough at Georgia Tech that we called changing one's major to Management, "taking the M-train".

Although obviously my

Doctor Cleveland — Tue, 06 Aug 2013 17:51:30 +0000

In reply to I was surprised by your claim

Although obviously my off-the-cuff "40%" is a gross exaggeration.

I'm less surprised that STEM

Doctor Cleveland — Tue, 06 Aug 2013 17:37:19 +0000

In reply to I was surprised by your claim

I'm less surprised that STEM is smaller. Part of that's about difficulty level, and about college preparation. If you aren't ready for organic chem, the odds are you wash out. (I'm sure you saw this happen to some classmates when you were an undergraduate.) So you switch, and might be actively encouraged to switch, to an easier major.

And the thing is, many of those "practical" majors aren't very rigorous. Sometimes a school's version of those majors is notoriously easy.

The thing to remember here is that the vast majority of college students are getting educated in second-tier public schools that have had their funding torn to the bone. (75% of college students go to public college.) If you're struggling with differential calculus at community college, the odds are that the school doesn't have the resources to help you turn it around, so everyone involved has an incentive for that student to switch his/her major to something easier.

That's not how it ought to work. But that's how it does.

And you know, the thought

artappraiser — Tue, 06 Aug 2013 16:56:10 +0000

In reply to The NYT has a current article

And you know, the thought occurs to me--I recall you have opined in the past that what today's world needs is more of a sense of community like you think was operational in the "good old days." Well, universities usually create large communities of people interested in quality of life, in culture and learning, arts and ideas, experimentation, as well as good food, good entertainment and safe neighborhoods, and often including a mixture of people from allover the world all living in proximity. Go to any small or medium size city in the world and it's likely the neighborhood that is most interesting and vibrant is the university neighborhood and it's often where the most interesting people in that area can be found. Can't really see where someone like you would want to advocate against their usefulness to society, even if you didn't like results of enrolling in one yourself.

Myself, I prefer a university-style tribe to those based on a single familial or genetic-based culture. Certainly prefer it to the communities back down on the farm of the "good old days," where everyone knew your name and your personal business.

I was surprised by your claim

Verified Atheist — Tue, 06 Aug 2013 16:49:31 +0000

In reply to Yes, it's a standard

I was surprised by your claim about business degrees, so I decided to double-check it. Not surprisingly (to you, at least), you were right:

Of the 1,650,000 bachelor's degrees conferred in 2009–10, the greatest numbers of degrees were conferred in the fields of business (358,000); social sciences and history (173,000); health professions and related programs (130,000); and education (101,000).

I'm really surprised that science, technology, and engineering doesn't occupy a bigger piece of that pie.

Yes, it's a standard

Doctor Cleveland — Tue, 06 Aug 2013 16:41:07 +0000

In reply to The Higher Education Hustle

Yes, it's a standard anti-affirmative action screed. The basic hustle here is to conflate affirmative action to selective colleges, which the writer wants abolished, with minority graduation rates across the board. The trick is that there are many more students in non-selective colleges (where affirmative action does not apply), and of course many more poor and minority students in those colleges. So most of the minority graduation rates have nothing to do with what happens at schools with affirmative action.

So the poor minority students who don't get sufficient support at a public commuter college (often students who are holding down one or more jobs and trying to raise a family) get used as "proof" that affirmative action at elite schools doesn't work.

As for your other point: people have been proposing rethinking college and making it more practical for well over a hundred years. And actually it's happened in a piecemeal way. By far the largest undergraduate major is some form of business degree. So that 40% of undergraduates with "practical" business degrees aren't getting jobs.