[HN Gopher] I think US college education is nearer to collapsing...
___________________________________________________________________
I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it
appears
Author : jger15
Score : 64 points
Date : 2022-03-20 17:56 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| [deleted]
| raincom wrote:
| HYP (Harvard, Yale and Princeton), and top tier law schools
| (Harvard, Yale, Stanford), top tier b schools (Harvard and
| Stanford) still control the whole thing.
|
| Sure, if you can ace leetcode like an olympiad, you can become a
| L7 at FAANG. However, if you are a MBA from San Jose state, you
| would be working as a financial analyst. However, if you are a
| Stanford MBA, you would be a SVP.
|
| Top tier firms in PE, VC, IC, and top tier consulting companies
| still go for elite colleges. Why? That is the path to c-level
| positions (not leetcode). Same thing for big law. Same thing goes
| for Washington consensus (the cesspool of Beltway), where
| pedigree matters.
| mgh2 wrote:
| Is it pedigrees that matter or what these signal?
|
| Ethics aside, I rather have a smart person in charge rather
| than the opposite
| wpietri wrote:
| What they signal? Like generational wealth and elite
| connections? [1]
|
| I have definitely seen hiring managers lean very hard on
| pedigree so they didn't have to do the actual work of
| evaluating candidates. It was basically the same deal with a
| lot of certifications, like Scrum/Agile and Java certs.
|
| I also think that your bucketing people such that Harvard =
| smart and state school = "the opposite" is a great example of
| the problem. Personally, I'd always rather work with somebody
| who has had to work their way up, as they tend to have a more
| balanced perspective.
|
| [1] E.g.: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/07/harvards-freshman-
| class-is-m...
| mgh2 wrote:
| Nope, intelligence matters at the end if that person works
| hard too, there is no ceiling unlike the opposite.
| Intelligence or/and hard work alone can only carry you so
| far, there are so many other factors that lead to success
| (ex: luck)
|
| As a business, you bet your risks against the person who
| has been vetted vs. the unproven one.
| wpietri wrote:
| I get why on HN saying "intelligence matters" seems like
| an uncontroversial opinion. Under the right circumstances
| and ceteris paribus, it can help. But it doesn't always.
| Indeed, as a person who is officially very smart, that
| has often been a problem for me. E.g., the way smart
| people can easily learn to perform smartness rather than
| doing the long-term smart thing. Or our tendency to value
| theory over experience and book smarts over street
| smarts. Early on, being smart also helped me avoid
| learning discipline and gumption, two things without
| which smartness may not do a lot of good.
|
| And anyway, you're again, not very smartly, ignoring the
| point that a fancy degree doesn't correlate particularly
| well with smartness, so the whole intelligence thing is a
| bit of a sideshow to the actual discussion here.
| mgh2 wrote:
| Show some proof, otherwise it is just an opinion
| lokar wrote:
| One thing that would help with the standardized test issue would
| be to set a threshold (based on what data show is needed to do
| well in the program) and have a random lottery of everyone who
| meets that bar.
| ceeplusplus wrote:
| That's exactly what TJ HS (top 1 HS in the US) tried to do to
| reduce their Asian representation, because Asians were
| "overrepresented".
|
| Standardized tests are a better solution than "holistic"
| admissions, which bias heavily for students who can afford to
| go to expensive summer camps, competitions, and volunteer in
| poor countries. At least standardized tests can be studied for
| even if you're poor.
| oatmeal_croc wrote:
| Random lotteries for people meeting bars is a terrible idea.
| Look at the H1b wreck we have today where bodyshop companies
| exploit the system by gaming the lottery. Not to mention the
| stress, uncertainty and powerlessness of the actual applicants.
| lokar wrote:
| There would not really be a backlog. You pick the best school
| you get into, just like today. And it's already very
| uncertain now.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| Seems like a pretty unremarkable collection of surface level
| observations if you ask me
| [deleted]
| zdragnar wrote:
| The point about not forgiving debt without solving the
| underlying problem seems to be missing from much of the student
| debt debate.
|
| Though, the most surprising thing to me was needing to provide
| a privilege statement in order to speak at the college event.
|
| How the hell can anyone provide any sort of nuanced insight
| into the privilege and challenges they faced in a "disclosure"?
| It reeks of enacting a miniature struggle session to undermine
| the speaker before they even have a chance to talk.
| boppo1 wrote:
| > It reeks of enacting a miniature struggle session to
| undermine the speaker before they even have a chance to talk.
|
| Maybe the Long March through Institutions was real...
| mgh2 wrote:
| Try hiring someone without a degree in healthcare: someone's
| life is on the line, not some rich man's toy.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| Lots of people have jobs that put lives on the line, Pilots
| for example. They don't need a college degree to do that
| safely, competently, or legally. The idea that healthcare is
| somehow a special snowflake is nonsense.
| mgh2 wrote:
| I think you are digressing from the main point. Most people
| who devalue education are viewing it from a privileged
| position (ex: tech).
|
| Parents on 3rd world countries know that education is still
| the safest way to a higher standard of living (not
| guaranteed though).
|
| There are no shortcuts to gain knowledge (degrees,
| training, self-taught, etc.). It is hard to vet someone if
| that person has not been through accredited programs -
| professional scammers can even fool interviewers.
|
| Aside from this, there is a big difference: would you trust
| a doctor to cure you without a medical degree? There is
| your answer.
| anonporridge wrote:
| Healthcare demonstrates the other extreme of the problem in
| my experience, where entrance to the field is gatekept by the
| medical education system to ensure that there's not an over
| supply of professionals that would put downward pressure on
| existing salaries.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Healthcare demonstrates the other extreme of the problem
| in my experience, where entrance to the field is gatekept
| by the medical education system to ensure that there's not
| an over supply of professionals that would put downward
| pressure on existing salaries.
|
| That's not a bad thing (to a point) when the entry-level
| qualification takes a massive amount of time, intense
| effort, and money to get; it's very important that they
| manage it so there's no oversupply. If you don't, then
| you'll have disasters like US legal education has been.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| Entry level qualifications probably shouldn't require
| that though; especially money.
|
| Society needs a lot of doctors. It doesn't need any
| english lit PhDs. Not to say the latter isn't without
| benefit.
| redthrow wrote:
| This could be Sam Altman reacting to the recent article about
| George Hotz [1] mentioning Sam Altman as actually being a pro
| status quo figure masquerading as an anti-establishment figure:
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30738763
|
| _It 's a poetic mission statement for an endeavor which seems
| to jive with Hotz's recognition that such a school must be
| physical and beautiful. However, scratch away the veneer, Hotz
| suggests in a recent blog post, and one finds that those behind
| UATX "are either straight up supporters of Power or naive
| political children." He points to Joe Lonsdale, Sam Altman, and
| Marc Andreessen, all of whom "are very successful in the
| current system."_
|
| _"This is not a counter-elite!" Hotz continues. "This is a
| spin off of the exact same BS that's everywhere. NGO awards and
| fake status signaling markers."_
| drewcoo wrote:
| > a pro status quo figure masquerading as an anti-
| establishment figure
|
| I call those "liberals." /s
| ulrashida wrote:
| Got the same impression. The narrative presented indicates the
| writer has minimal appreciation for what degrees in fields
| other than their own actually provide.
|
| Good luck being able to practice engineering if you haven't got
| a degree! The licensing bodies for professions won't care a fig
| about your life experience.
| lordnacho wrote:
| OTOH, I actually have an engineering degree and I can't build
| a bridge, a radio, or a robot, despite having looked at all
| those things during the course.
|
| People who can actually do it have done it for a lab or a
| business, and then get accredited.
|
| My impression of the engineering degree is that it's
| basically a certificate in being able to deep dive into...
| something. Whether that's actual bridges or financial
| derivatives or trading systems, a degree basically says you
| haven't given up on some large pile of math-heavy topics, so
| an employer should bet on you being able to learn their
| thing. It's also the case that there isn't enough time to
| learn a whole business, so really it's testing that you stuck
| with the introductory parts of a wide variety of techie
| things.
| ulrashida wrote:
| Entirely fair.
|
| I've worked as an engineering manager for both professional
| engineers and non-degreed technicians / technologists. My
| observation (such as it is) is that the degreed engineers
| had a stronger framework to be able to connect ideas and
| learn new skills. On the other hand, technologists were
| able to do tasks just as well as engineers but had trouble
| generalizing the concepts.
|
| Importantly, the degree (combined with professional
| guidance) also helps you appreciate the things you don't
| know. For example, a geotechnical engineer may be perfectly
| able to assess an abutment or design a blast but they
| wouldn't certify a dam foundation and would reach out for
| help in doing so.
|
| It's probably worth sharing that I hated my undergraduate
| education with a burning passion. I've only recently begun
| to appreciate it more -- turns out those old farts who did
| the accreditation might have known a thing or two about
| what you need to know later in your career.
| ceeplusplus wrote:
| There is very little that an undergraduate degree in gender
| studies, media studies, history, etc. provides, even if these
| subjects can be considered useful in general. On the surface
| you are learning about the humanities but in practice the
| classes have such low standards that you learn neither the
| writing and argumentation skills needed to excel in academia
| nor the deep understanding of past works that is the reward
| of the humanities.
|
| I say this as someone who went to a school with highly ranked
| humanities programs. My business communication class taught
| me more about communication than any rhetoric/history/media
| studies class. My high school AP English Language class
| taught me more about persuasive writing than any writing
| class in college.
|
| If undergrad humanities programs are to be taken seriously
| they need to drastically increase their rigor and actually
| instill skills in their students.
| anotherhue wrote:
| Twitter 'threads' are bad and people should feel badly for
| creating/posting them.
| batman-farts wrote:
| Imagine how busted archived Twitter threads are going to look
| in 20 years. If linkrot in the early Web is bad now, how bad
| will "tweet-rot" be, after Twitter declines into disuse, quite
| likely fails as a corporation, and its CDN is scattered to the
| winds?
|
| I couldn't care much less about VC or crypto-bro brain farts
| like the linked post, although historians writing about this
| period probably will be, if only to write cautionary tales. But
| there's a lot of deeply interesting expertise that's been
| crammed into this godawful format, especially during fraught
| times like the pandemic and the current Ukraine invasion. I can
| only guess that the experts in question assume that Twitter
| will be the format with the widest reach, although I have to
| doubt that will always be true. If the Internet Archive comes
| up with a project specifically targeted at archiving Twitter
| threads as coherent artifacts, I for one would be happy to
| earmark a donation for that.
| shagie wrote:
| I nearly completely agree with you. The one thing that a
| twitter "threat" enables that is poorly supported in other
| formats is the ability to have comments on a particular
| sentence.
|
| The worst part of the twitter as a long form platform is when a
| single idea extends beyond the limitations of a single tweet.
| trentgreene wrote:
| I see your point about commenting on sentences, but would
| also argue that academic writing provides a better model for
| this via quotations and references
| shagie wrote:
| Yep, but there's no place that provides the combination of
| user base, potential for engagement, and commenting on
| sentences.
|
| Long form is a much better format for comprehensive ideas,
| but the "this is something I want to comment on" isn't
| there and the engagement on the comment and comments on the
| comments rarely exists in those formats.
|
| Medium's "highlight" and "respond" functionality is a
| rather poor implementation of that desired ability (the
| discoverability beyond the "top highlight" is difficult for
| other users) ... and then there's that whole "upgrade to
| read more" problem.
|
| And beyond that, there's the bit that twitter has a large
| number of users - trying to traverse Wordpress pings and
| comment moderation... ugh.
|
| Unfortunately, twitter is the best place that offers users,
| aggregation, no $ needed, comment on sentence, and the
| opportunity for engagement of followers.
| wpietri wrote:
| This is kind of a weird mix of points. Ignoring his political
| axe-grinding, I think the value of a college degree is
| increasingly in question for many fields because the price has
| risen wildly for decades without a corresponding increase in
| market value. (Except perhaps for elite-institution degrees,
| which are more about the brand and the network than what people
| actually learn.)
|
| I think we haven't seen at least a partial collapse only because
| most American companies are bad at hiring, bad at investing in
| workers, and bad at keeping them. But imagine a company where
| programmers are happy and tend to say for years. That company
| might do just as well, or perhaps better, running an in-house
| boot camp and apprenticeship program as by hiring new grads.
| zdragnar wrote:
| Price and value are decoupled for college degrees. STEM
| students are subsidized by liberal arts students, and many
| liberal arts degrees are not, by themselves, economically
| valuable (I said this as someone with just such a degree).
| itake wrote:
| > STEM students are subsidized by liberal arts students
|
| Can you provide more context for this? How is the cost of
| teaching a STEM student higher than the cost of a liberal
| arts student? The classrooms are roughly the same. STEM
| student labs might be more expensive to manage, but that
| equipment is/(can be?) funded by research grants.
| zdragnar wrote:
| It is largely anecdotal based on some inquiries made at my
| school. Different schools will vary- is it a research
| school? What types of STEM degrees are offered? Etc. Others
| likely have more concrete insight than I do.
|
| One conversation that stuck was the me:
|
| Back when I was in school, one of my mandarin teachers
| wanted to offer a "business mandarin" course outside of the
| general language program geared towards business students
| who might need basic fluency in a corporate setting. The
| school denied him because there wasn't a budget for it,
| which struck me as asinine at the time as it wasn't like
| there would be students who weren't paying tuition for the
| course anyway. The school had rooms available, and students
| have to buy all the materials the class would need anyway.
| bell-cot wrote:
| Would offering that course have spread the same n
| students across m + 1 courses? (Hence an increase in
| instructional costs, but no increase in tuition revenue.)
| shinjitsu wrote:
| This works fine for research universities, but in teaching
| universities (couldn't find the statistics, but there are a
| lot of them out there) someone has to subsidize the new
| STEM programs until the alumni start giving grants. In my
| experience, a lot more STEM alumni give large donations
| than humanities and social sciences. But that does mean a
| bigger initial outlay by someone.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| STEM professors have to be paid a lot more than liberal
| arts professors (due to competition for STEM talent).
| Equipment for teaching isn't covered under research grants,
| but might come from overhead on those grants, but more
| likely from donations (from big corps), grants, or tuition.
| itake wrote:
| The national center for labor statistics says labor costs
| are about 30% of the spend [0]. STEM programs also
| include Liberal Arts courses, so only a fraction of the
| 30% goes to STEM professors pockets. AFAIK, STEM
| professors justify their value by generating money for
| the university via patents and grants.
|
| While there are a massive number of private liberal arts
| schools, there are relatively few private STEM schools.
| Most STEM degrees come from public university that are
| significantly cheaper than private universities.
|
| [0] - https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=75
| ceeplusplus wrote:
| STEM professors bring in billions of dollars in research
| grants, of which the university takes over 50% for
| "administration". If you aren't aware labs have to pay a
| big cut of any grant income they get to the school. It
| used to be that in exchange the school would maintain
| buildings, fund build outs of equipment, etc. but
| nowadays it's wasted on DEIABCDXYZ vice chancellors of
| provosts.
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| Research grants pay for research equipment. They do not
| cover student labs in any way.
| blagie wrote:
| Yes, they do.
|
| (1) Many grants have a mentorship / training / giving-
| back component. This is one of the merit-based criteria
| NSF reviews on.
|
| (2) Research grants have overhead which feeds back into
| general budgets. At elite schools, this is about 2/3 of
| the money. A typical split might be 1/3 to the
| department, 1/3 to the school, and 1/3 to the project.
| It's kind of a financial scam. Nominally, these cover
| buildings and admin time. Practically, these feed into
| general budgets which do include labs and teaching.
| Corruptly, a lot of the money gets funnelled in creative
| ways to improve professor's lives through fancy faculty
| clubs, get-aways, and in some cases, creative (but legal)
| embezzlement with money ending in people's pockets.
| jameshart wrote:
| Question: do elite institution degrees confer any addition to
| market value commensurate with their cost, or do they simply
| select for people who already have high market value?
| okaram wrote:
| Private elite institutions (Yvies) offer excellent education,
| and networking with really rich people ;). Some people
| already had that, some will make economic use of it, and some
| not. I assume the variance within-group is very very high, so
| you can probably calculate stats to defend any point. And
| then the cost also varies, so ...
|
| 'Elite' state schools (GA Tech, Michigan State? Etc) probably
| have excellent ROI.
|
| Expensive, not really elite schools are probably not worth it
| on average, but again, cost varies highly, so ...
| gumby wrote:
| Good question. This has been studied a lot and the answer
| is...unclear.
|
| I think the kind of longitudinal studies needed combined with
| a small "treatment" group make this kind of investigation as
| hard to do as a nutritional study.
| GrumpyYoungMan wrote:
| > " _Question: do elite institution degrees confer any
| addition to market value commensurate with their cost, or do
| they simply select for people who already have high market
| value?_ "
|
| Speaking only for STEM, an elite STEM program gives the
| student access to a bigger variety of upperclassman courses;
| compare the available course list for a community college vs
| a large university and the difference is quite noticeable.
| The better programs also provide access to better equipment
| and advising; e.g., various University of California campuses
| have their own on-site chip fabrication labs. If the career
| trajectory you're planning benefits from those advanced
| courses, going to the better STEM programs is going to help
| tremendously. If not, well, they don't but that's hardly the
| institution's fault; they aren't choosing who to send your
| resume to, you are.
|
| (As an aside, I use the word "access" very intentionally;
| educational institutions don't "confer" anything. Students
| get access to resources and opportunities and they choose
| which to take. It's entirely possible to do the minimum to
| fulfill requirements; for example, I chose easy courses to do
| the minimum fulfill my humanities requirements because it
| wasn't where my interests lay.)
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| It is not the degree that is valuable, it is the network it
| allows you to access that is valuable. The classmates you
| have at certain institutions will increase the probability of
| you achieving certain goals.
| wpietri wrote:
| I'm sure it depends some on the degree. A very sharp friend
| of mine got an aeronautical engineeering degree from a good
| state school. After a few years in industry he went back for
| a brand-name MBA. He said in 2 years of school, he learned
| exactly one thing that he couldn't have just figured out via
| general knowledge and a bit of thinking. [1] He said the real
| value was in the network he built up, people who would soon
| be placed in important positions in important companies all
| over.
|
| [1] For the curious, it was the notion of comparative
| advantage, which was counterintuitive for me too:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage
| wpietri wrote:
| And I should add that in an age of increasing inequality, a
| network with a lot of elite members will increase in value
| much faster than inflation. So the value of an elite degree
| might still be a bargain even at the current prices. Which
| probably explains why there's a lot of bribery, legal and
| otherwise, by the rich trying to get students into brand-
| name schools.
| opportune wrote:
| Elite institutions could do nothing and still add market
| value simply by colocating people with high market value who
| meet each other and create lasting networks and friendships.
|
| I do think that on top of that, they add value because
| students can be given more challenging and stimulating
| coursework. The difference in Math education between a top
| college and a college with loose entry requirements is
| staggering - we're talking people doing hard proofs freshman
| year vs. undergrad seniors taking upper level math courses
| that don't even have proofs, just computation.
| okaram wrote:
| Maybe ... I think IBM, for example did, and others might.
|
| OTOH, it may be easier and cheaper to make an agreement with
| their local community college.
|
| I think what makes the discussion hard is that people say
| 'college' and mean wildly different things. The author seemed
| to mean elite colleges in some comments, overall statistics in
| others, and for-profits in others. I think there are very
| different problems in different sectors.
| abecedarius wrote:
| A degree doesn't cost the company. An in-house bootcamp and
| apprenticeship program does. Once the less-legibly-promising
| new hires are equally productive, they now have a resume making
| them legibly good to the company's competitors in the job
| market, so it can't make up its investment by underpaying.
| ("Programmers are happy and tend to stay" is something the
| competitors can do too.)
|
| I'm not saying don't do it, or that the status quo is good. But
| I don't think your suggestion really addresses the problem that
| got us here, the problem that we've subsidized an expensive
| signaling game (cf Bryan Caplan's _The case against education_
| ).
|
| > Ignoring his political axe-grinding
|
| This was gratuitous. I didn't even see any politics in the
| thread.
| wpietri wrote:
| > A degree doesn't cost the company.
|
| Degrees cost companies through increased wages. Student loans
| get paid somehow, after all.
|
| > This was gratuitous. I didn't even see any politics in the
| thread.
|
| You not seeing things is not the same as things not existing.
| I do see it, and wanted to focus this bit of discussion on
| the question of degree value, not the assorted other stuff
| there.
| gumby wrote:
| > Except perhaps for elite-institution degrees, which are more
| about the brand and the network than what people actually
| learn.
|
| Even for a place like MIT/Caltech?
| drewcoo wrote:
| Yes.
|
| Even the way you ask the question shows that you consider
| them somehow different. Probably better. Which presumably
| means that "better" people go there or teach there. So that's
| better networking.
|
| And the fact that you know them by name as better places
| shows better brand.
| option wrote:
| As a hiring manager at one of tech firms, I can confirm that I
| can't care less where you completed your deep learning courses -
| at Berkeley or on Coursera. Your GitHub profile matters so much
| more (especially so if you are fresh out of college).
| clusterhacks wrote:
| How about some numbers? Applicants with "traditional" degree
| (BS/MS/PhD) hired versus applicants with alternative
| credentials hired?
| jimbob45 wrote:
| In two years of a job search, I had two firms actually look at
| my GitHub. It's not a realistic path to getting hired, as much
| as hiring managers want you to believe otherwise.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| Ehh.
|
| College is a net good, but do it on the cheap. Unless you plan to
| attend a top law school, no one cares about your undergrad.
|
| Community College students can still transfer into UCLA or other
| top schools. Hell, community college was good for me since I was
| able to take out student loans and get the hell away from my
| family.
|
| No more evictions for me! Even if you don't finish college, it's
| a great deal. I was at 6 figures before I graduated.
| cudgy wrote:
| > I was at 6 figures before I graduated.
|
| Very few degrees offer this type of wage at graduation. Not
| everyone wants to build software. Although I agree with your
| general point to attend cheaper schools until it matters (eg
| graduate level and want to be a professor or lawyer).
| 999900000999 wrote:
| My degree has nothing to do with my career.
|
| If you have horrible family like my own college is one of the
| very few options you have. If anything the FASA process needs
| to do more to accommodate people who don't really have
| families.
|
| The calls for student loan forgiveness ignore the good these
| loans do. At 18 you can do so many stupid things, taking out
| a loan isn't the worst. If that loan gets you put of a
| volitile situation max it out
| unpopularopp wrote:
| What's the word when people with trust and experience on one
| field suddenly trusted when they talk about other topics too? Saw
| this a lot with COVID but this is a good example too.
| dorkwood wrote:
| Maybe the Halo Effect?
|
| "The halo effect (sometimes called the halo error) is the
| tendency for positive impressions of a person, company, brand
| or product in one area to positively influence one's opinion or
| feelings in other areas."
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect
| anonporridge wrote:
| Some kind of mix between appeal to authority and false
| equivalence?
| jpeloquin wrote:
| Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect? Although that's more about how news
| and social media are unreliable sources of information on all
| topics. I've heard "Engineer's Disease" or "Engineer Syndrome"
| used to describe the tendency of so-called technical people to
| think their expertise generalizes to topics in which they have
| no experience.
| ulrashida wrote:
| But.. he has a blue check mark!
| _Microft wrote:
| On Nitter:
|
| https://nitter.eu/sama/status/1505597901011005442
| mulcahey wrote:
| Few thoughts
|
| 1) The subreddit of my alma mater has been full of posts venting
| anxiety, depression, trouble with financial aid, trouble making
| friends, frustration with administration, etc for years now,
| exacerbated by COVID. While that may not be representative of the
| whole undergrad population, I can't help but be reminded of
| Thiel's line from Zero to One "Why are we doing this to
| ourselves?"
|
| 2) I'm now seeing not only friends without bachelors degrees get
| well-paying CS jobs with "engineer" titles & equity comp, but
| even some in mechanical engineering!
|
| 3) When I was in undergrad, half of my upper div classes were so
| abysmal that I figured the staff who cared enough to keep the
| enterprise going were fighting a losing battle. A complete
| rewrite would be better than an in place one. "Death is the best
| invention of life" and we should try the creative destruction of
| capitalism/evolution instead of holding the oldest institutions
| in the highest regard.
|
| I don't have much of a clue what the future will look like by the
| time I have kids of college age, but I do not think particularly
| highly of what we've got now.
| moab wrote:
| These kind of prognostications /opinions are easily falsifiable
| by talking to your coworkers that went to other universities.
| Most of the top-25 schools have upper-div CS classes that are
| nothing like what you're taking about, with both faculty and
| TAs putting in enormous effort to make sure that courses are
| accessible and intellectually stimulating.
| mulcahey wrote:
| I went to a top 25 CS school. Half my upper div lectures had
| ~5% attendance.
| moab wrote:
| Strikes me as very anomalous. 5% attendance? Anyway, bad
| idea to draw conclusions from one university...
| mach1ne wrote:
| I don't see the point of cancelling student debt. It's obvious
| it's not fixing the problem. Probably the only reason it's even
| on the table is the fact that it's not stepping on any toes.
| yucky wrote:
| It's only on the table because it's an attempt to buy votes.
| dgan wrote:
| > "I was asked to give a 'privilege disclaimer', essentially
| stating that if I didn't look like I did I wouldn't have been
| able to succeed..." What??
| Jerrrry wrote:
| The government should pull out of student grants and loans.
|
| Unfortunately, the "double pell" movement means people paying out
| of pocket are soon going to have to pay double.
|
| What a coincidence, that the average degree costs the average
| student loan package.
|
| Stop subsidizing education. Let the market forces actually allow
| for a fair price discovery, or else that college degree is as
| valuable in a sense as crypto is...its intrinsic value - use case
| - job improvement prospects, multiplied by a coefficient of
| speculation.
|
| I say this as someone who has had a massive impact on the student
| aid lifecycle, and yet didn't go to college myself, because
| ironically, wasn't able to fill out the FAFSA form.
| ThrustVectoring wrote:
| One of the underappreciated parts of student loans is that every
| debt is someone else's financial asset, and this usually nets out
| to financing the transfer of real goods and services to retirees.
| If you stop squeezing young adults, you _have_ to squeeze the
| retirees that own their assets. Inflation, asset prices going
| down, pension benefits reduced, tax increases, etc - reducing
| student loan amounts doesn 't affect the real economy, so easing
| up on material constraints means more real consumption there
| instead of elsewhere.
| blakesterz wrote:
| "But cancelling all student debt and then continuing to issue new
| debt to students that the university fails (i.e. by not putting
| them in a position to make enough money to easily pay it back)
| doesn't make sense."
|
| That's one thing that never made any sense to me. I get it. I
| really do. But I've never seen any compelling, realistic answer
| to "And then what?". This only solves the problem of the HUGE
| number of people with crushing loan debt now. I get it, I really,
| really do. But... then what? What about the next decade? It's not
| getting any better.
|
| The most important word in this is "realistic".
| okaram wrote:
| > This only solves the problem of the HUGE number of people
| with crushing loan debt now.
|
| That's a big problem solved. We can also solve other problems.
| Nothing requires us to solve all of them at the same time.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| But if solving this problem takes a huge amount of money, and
| the problem is going to keep coming, then actually _solving_
| it takes more than money. It takes changing things so that
| the problem quits showing up.
|
| You _might_ get everyone to pony up the money to bail
| everyone out who is currently mired in college debt. It 's a
| much tougher sell to get us to pony up the money forever.
| crackercrews wrote:
| Definitely agree that removing the SAT appears to be related to
| the upcoming supreme court case about affirmative action. COVID
| was a good reason to delay it for a couple years. But schools are
| pushing it out further. That makes no sense.
|
| It seems the SAT is increasingly considered "racist" because it
| reveals racial disparities in learning. What's next? Get rid of
| the driver's license test because it turns that white kids pass
| it at a higher rate than black kids?
|
| Sam mentions that schools could down-weight the SAT but should
| still consider it. Why don't schools want to do that? My guess:
| if they have mediocre scores on record for a kid, then admitting
| him means reporting those scores to USNews. They'd rather not
| know that the kid has a score that would bring down their
| average.
| sometimeshuman wrote:
| As an ancedote, I was told by my low income peer group that you
| get 600 points just for filling out your name on the SAT and
| that 800 points could get you into a great school like MIT. So
| I assumed it was a pass/fail exam in a sense and left early
| during the verbal part because I found it condescending and
| boring.
|
| Before the exam, I couldn't understand why the higher income
| kids were paying for SAT training classes. What is the point of
| scoring 1600 if 800 could get you in the "best" school. It
| would have interfered with my after school job anyway.
|
| To add further, I thought MIT was just DeVry for rich people
| but otherwise equivalent and that only black kids get
| scholarships (ironic since I am Latino). Are things different
| now ? Are most kids from lower socio-economic backgrounds still
| clueless about the college admissions process, the difference
| between colleges, and scholarships. It seems like that is the
| part that needs to be fixed and eliminating SATs is
| shortsighted.
| crackercrews wrote:
| You get 200 points per section automatically. [1] And to get
| into MIT you'd need at least 1,000 points, no matter your
| race.
|
| 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAT
| tessierashpool wrote:
| that is entirely a guess, though. there's actual documented
| evidence of colleges admitting less Asian-Americans and Jews
| than the test scores of either group would suggest, and Altman
| refers to this phenomenon in the thread.
|
| > It seems the SAT is increasingly considered "racist" because
| it reveals racial disparities in learning. What's next? Get rid
| of the driver's license test because it turns that white kids
| pass it at a higher rate than black kids?
|
| the SAT's a way of laundering discrepancies in generational
| wealth, which is indeed due to racist public policy as well as
| racist private actions. it may be intended not that way, but
| that's how it functions.
|
| so what's next would be removing other methods of laundering
| racist public policy and racist private action. probably
| drivers' licenses would not show up on that list, and your
| assertion that it might is so ridiculous that it's hard to
| believe you're examining this topic with good faith.
| gruez wrote:
| >the SAT's a way of laundering discrepancies in generational
| wealth, which is indeed due to racist public policy as well
| as racist private actions. it may be intended not that way,
| but that's how it functions.
|
| But what are SATs being replaced with? "holistic admissions"?
| A poor kid can prepare for the SAT by studying his ass off,
| with mostly free/cheap materials from the internet. How can
| you do the same with "extracurriculars" (eg. going to africa
| to dig a well) and "hobbies" (going the country club every
| week)?
| Ekaros wrote:
| From my viewpoint in Europe I never understood the whole
| extracurricular, hobby or even the essay or recommendation
| letter part of admission process. All of those felt like
| nothing to do with actual capability to study. If SAT is a
| bad idea, replace it with field specific national entrance
| exam.
|
| Other fun alternatives, just outright auction off certain
| number of admission slots. Or just award slots randomly to
| all applicants.
| crackercrews wrote:
| > the SAT's a way of laundering discrepancies in generational
| wealth, which is indeed due to racist public policy as well
| as racist private actions. it may be intended not that way,
| but that's how it functions.
|
| Wealthy students do score better than poor students on the
| SAT. Do you know who also scores well? Students who study
| very hard, including poor students. If you get rid of the SAT
| then the poor students will find it harder to stand out. The
| rich kids will have ghost-written essays and
| extracurriculars. They won't be hurt at all.
|
| > so what's next would be removing other methods of
| laundering racist public policy and racist private action.
| probably drivers' licenses would not show up on that list,
| and your assertion that it might is so ridiculous that it's
| hard to believe you're examining this topic with good faith.
|
| I have never heard someone say that disparate impacts only
| matter if there is a laundering of wealth or public policies
| or private actions. Where have you seen this distinction
| drawn?
| moltke wrote:
| The problem with modern US college education is that much of
| what it teaches is just remedial high school education ("gen
| eds" and math up to and including Calculus/Linear
| Algebra/Probability/"discrete math" etc.)
|
| We've already destroyed public primary/secondary education by
| more or less passing everyone in order to not make it "racist"
| so in order to communicate much of anything in college everyone
| has to go through the same crap a second time. When everyone
| gets allowed into college the same thing will happen there and
| the whole thing will just turn into an (expensive)
| administrative exercise rather than something that actually
| produces value.
|
| There's a lot of data suggesting some races (Asians, jews, to
| some degree Europeans) are just more academically inclined than
| others (such as Africans.) We need to accept that it's ok if
| these people are underrepresented in academia _if the
| individuals are still allowed to succeed based on merit._ There
| will always be outliers in both directions and it 's important
| to not racially discriminate against them.
|
| I'm certain that removing entrance exams like SATs will
| actually hit the disadvantaged people hardest because now they
| can't as easily show their merit and are likely to be
| discriminated against while at the same time undermining higher
| education.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > ...are just more academically inclined than others...
|
| It's not "races", it's culture. We should just remove this
| whole idea of "race" from our understanding of social
| phenomena, all it can do is mislead. There are African, Black
| subcultures like the Igbo and Ashanti that achieve to the
| highest levels academically (including in the West!) and
| Asian subcultures that don't place any focus on education,
| and struggle as a result. Culture is what matters. Forget
| race.
| acidbaseextract wrote:
| Polymatter recently had a great video on the way the college
| ranking system is a hustle for foreign student money, and just
| how heavily it distorts colleges incentives:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQWlnTyOSig
| [deleted]
| nickysielicki wrote:
| > Cancelling student debt is good if it's tied to fixing the
| problem going forward, which means not offering it, or having the
| colleges be the guarantor, or ISAs, or something.
|
| What do you tell the upper middle class families that didn't buy
| a bigger house or pad their investment accounts so that they
| could help put 3 of their kids through schools? My parents spent
| at least $200k on undergrad education between me and my siblings
| (UVA, Cornell, UW-Madison).
|
| Did they make the wrong decision? Should they have saddled us
| with debt? At 10% (ie: S&P AAR) that would net $600,000! When
| America becomes a place where you're punished for having invested
| in your children, it becomes a place where you will no longer
| want to live.
| ryanSrich wrote:
| The US is anti-children from the moment they are born. College
| is no exception. As someone with 2 kids under 2 years old, it's
| one of those things you don't think about until it happens to
| you.
|
| - daycare is on average around $2k per month per child where I
| live.
|
| - outside of tech, almost no companies pay for parental leave.
| At most, they are obligated to hold your position, but no pay
| is required. This is especially true if you or your spouse work
| in the healthcare field. It's absolutely mind blowing how
| poorly employees are treated by their employers in the
| healthcare industry.
|
| - childcare tax credits are an absolute joke. From the $32k in
| childcare I paid for last year, I got a $1,600 credit...
|
| - once you have kids, your health insurance costs will be
| astronomical unless you're lucky enough to work at a company
| that provides good insurance. In my situation, I run a small
| tech company where we don't provide HC insurance (too costly
| atm). My wife works in healthcare. Our insurance is beyond a
| joke. Thousands per month with a $20k deductible. It's hell.
|
| - once your kids are in school they're taught very little
| useful skills. It's mostly an exercise in obedience and
| conformist thinking.
|
| - once your child graduates high school they have the option to
| either take out hundreds of thousand of dollars in federally
| backed loans if they're lucky enough to have parents that don't
| make enough money. If they have middle class parents they'll
| have to rely on even worse loans from private lenders.
|
| So would I expect the US to punish middle class parents that
| foot the bill for their child's college? Yes. The US hates the
| middle class, as much as they hate children.
| disambiguation wrote:
| This is an extremely important observation and it doesn't get
| discussed enough.
|
| For whatever reason, the USA is extremely hostile to having
| kids.
| alanbernstein wrote:
| You know, I've asked this exact question before, but I've
| changed my mind. Here is what I'd tell them: "Congratulations
| on being wealthy enough to afford tuition. Try to be
| considerate of the people less fortunate than you."
| nickysielicki wrote:
| If it was $60k of opportunity cost I might be willing to
| accept it as a progressive tax and let bygones be bygones.
| But $600k likely represents half of their net worth.
| "Considerate" only goes so far.
| alanbernstein wrote:
| Yeah, $60k is closer to the amount that I was complaining
| about having already paid. But you're not wrong; I'm just
| trying to keep the greater good in mind. How about: "Try to
| consider how much you and your family will benefit from the
| improvements made possible to society and the economy by
| redirecting billions of dollars from loan payments to other
| spending."
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| Red herring. Subject of TFA is the value of school. This
| example family wasted $200k on a low-value thing that only
| seems to exist because companies are terrible at recruiting.
| It's worse for someone who has to go in a lifetime of debt, but
| ideally neither the rich nor poor family would have to waste
| their money.
| nickysielicki wrote:
| Subject of TFA is about the dwindling value of school and I
| agree with it. But I don't think it's wrong to push back on
| this aside about cancelling student debt.
|
| It's completely untenable and anyone proposing it is ignoring
| the massive opportunity cost that has been incurred by people
| that played by the rules, pursued useful degrees, and made
| the responsible decision to stretch their means to do so.
| Tretiotrr wrote:
| In Germany you study for free.
|
| There was a video (perhaps even from kurzgesagt) which describes
| how critical it is for our society to allow as many people as
| easy access to knowledge as possible and not only for obvious
| reasons but also to increase the chance for all of us that the
| hidden genius is finding a cure for cancer.
|
| You can even study for free in Germany as an non German. You know
| what happens? Those people might stay in Germany and make Germany
| a better country.
|
| Imagine a world were we compete globally with the best education
| system. Let's allow more people to shape our future.
| walkhour wrote:
| What do you think about German kids being sent to different
| kinds of highschools at age 10.
|
| Most of the people attending Hauptschule don't attend
| university [0]. In some regions 60% of the children attend it.
| Aren't you concerned that the person who could discover the
| cure for cancer is in Hauptschule right now?
|
| Imagine a Germany in which the rest of your life isn't
| determined at age ten.
|
| [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hauptschule
| boppo1 wrote:
| Cool, I got a 2.3 GPA in highschool and college but would love
| to try again. Where should I apply? I don't mind moving to
| Germany.
| Tretiotrr wrote:
| You only need to Google for it.
|
| https://www.mygermanuniversity.com/universities
|
| You are a little bit limited by what you like to study if you
| don't speak German as not every university offers a bachelor
| in English but it's doable.
| frogperson wrote:
| If they made college free in America it would be severely
| underfunded and suffer all the same problems as American high
| school.
|
| If there is no money in something, then it's assumed there is
| no value. It's the American way.
| webmaven wrote:
| _> If they made college free in America it would be severely
| underfunded and suffer all the same problems as American high
| school._
|
| You would only get those same problems if you made college
| mandatory, as well as free.
|
| A real commitment to a policy of free tertiary education
| would also expand the availability of trade schools not just
| universities.
| mind-blight wrote:
| I'm concerned that the majority of "should we fix college or
| should we circumvent college" conversations don't bring up one of
| the scariest parts of our current economy: STEM jobs are the main
| viable path for economic stability and freedom.
|
| All of the conversations I've seen implicitly assume that this is
| good, and that the solution to farmer workers (or other low paid
| workers) escaping poverty is to train them as software
| developers.
|
| We _really_ need farm workers, and most of them live in poverty.
| I love having more engineers, scientists, and doctors, but we
| desperately need non-STEM work to be a viable option
| tester756 wrote:
| That's real problem
|
| Only one person (the oldest one) from my like 20-30ppl circle
| within age range of 20-30 gets close to IT salaries, that's
| ridiculous
|
| in most cases it is around 40% (around 2 minimal wages) of my
| *nothing special* salary by IT standards (4.5 minimal wages),
| people with better cards get 7-10 minimal wages here, top
| people like 15-20+
|
| and they see no reasonably easy way to jump higher (e.g within
| one or two years)
|
| I can't honestly recommend anything but IT to anyone that can
| put a lot of effort (while mentioning all bad things ofc)
| webmaven wrote:
| Cards?
| tester756 wrote:
| >have a card up your sleeve
|
| >to have an advantage that other people do not know about:
|
| (without that last part)
| gruez wrote:
| >STEM jobs are the main viable path for economic stability and
| freedom.
|
| >We really need farm workers, and most of them live in poverty.
| I love having more engineers, scientists, and doctors, but we
| desperately need non-STEM work to be a viable option
|
| This is basically a non-problem because of the supply/demand
| mechanics of the labor market. If farm workers' job gets
| sufficiently bad from a value proposition perspective, then
| people will leave the occupation and employers would be forced
| to pay higher wages to attract workers.
| tough wrote:
| Macro-farms and thousands of automation systems can make your
| need for human labour decrease more rapidly than people can
| find other jobs...
|
| It's going to be a fuckin'mess, 4 dudes richer and everyone
| else screwed
| belltaco wrote:
| In that case, this statement would become false:
|
| >We really need farm workers
| tough wrote:
| We really need them if we want to farm in sustainable and
| moral ways, as we have done by thousands of years.
|
| But point maken
| antholeole wrote:
| Not sure about this: everyone else screwed seems kind of a
| far reach. If you consider screwed "unable to buy luxuries"
| then maybe, but I consider screwed "unable to buy food" and
| Macro farms stand to make food substantially cheaper.
|
| How will the four people get richer if the food they create
| is priced so high that no one can buy it?
|
| I get this is deeply economic and philosophical, but it's
| an interesting thought experiment.
| colpabar wrote:
| > If farm workers' job gets sufficiently bad from a value
| proposition perspective, then people will leave the
| occupation and employers would be forced to pay higher wages
| to attract workers.
|
| Serious question - have you ever been poor? Are you aware
| that sometimes people have to work at shitty jobs because
| they have no other options? And, if employers really would
| "be forced to pay higher wages" as you claim, why are all the
| restaurants in my city still short staffed?
|
| I'm not claiming to have a solution but claiming "the market
| will fix it" seems like such a cop-out, like telling someone
| god will take care of it.
| gruez wrote:
| >Serious question - have you ever been poor? Are you aware
| that sometimes people have to work at shitty jobs because
| they have no other options?
|
| OP was talking about the problem from a practical
| perspective (ie. "We really need farm workers", presumably
| worried about a future where there aren't enough farm
| workers and we starve or something), and I was addressing
| that in the same way. Your objection seems to be from a
| humanitarian perspective (ie. how can we provide a minimum
| standard of living to non-STEM workers?), which is valid
| concern, but ultimately not relevant to the original
| problem.
|
| >And, if employers really would "be forced to pay higher
| wages" as you claim, why are all the restaurants in my city
| still short staffed?
|
| combination of:
|
| 1. stubbornness/price stickiness
|
| 2. belief that it's better to hold out in the short term
| and wait for the labor supply to return, then it is to give
| out pay raises now. Wages are sticky, which mean wage hikes
| would turn into ongoing expenses into the future.
|
| 3. belief that the raising wages would raise prices, which
| would decrease demand and ultimately make the business
| worse off.
|
| >I'm not claiming to have a solution but claiming "the
| market will fix it" seems like such a cop-out, like telling
| someone god will take care of it.
|
| The market seems to be working just fine in my area. Some
| restaurants have shut down. Some have raised prices. Some
| have decreased service. Which is the right approach? I
| don't know. The restaurants that took the right approach
| will win out in the end. In the meanwhile I'm still able to
| eat out.
| mind-blight wrote:
| The labor market - especially the low paid labor market - is
| _a lot_ less liquid than it needs to be for pure supply
| /demand to work in the US (that's also taking human suffering
| caused by poverty out of the equation, which is pretty
| callous).
|
| Laissez-faire markets are also bad at taking negative
| externalities into account. Food being too expensive to
| afford in the stores while it's also rotting in the fields
| (which has happened in my state multiple times on the last
| few decades) is really bad. Children not being being
| effectively taught because teachers are quitting due to
| burnout and terrible wages is really bad. I don't think it's
| sufficient to shrug out hands and say "it'll work itself out"
| when we can actively see very these kinds of detrimental
| problems
| kistanod wrote:
| It's still important to have doctors/nurses/engineers that went
| through rigorous tenure. The problem lies with inflated tuition
| costs for a useless degree like gender studies, where after
| graduating college, your options are 1) drown in debt 2) continue
| the cycle of being in academia (masters/PhD) and justifying the
| existence of this system.
| orzig wrote:
| I didn't see any statements about what _will_ be, just what
| _should_ be.
|
| The sort-of counter-example is that "Tech jobs [..] are
| increasingly willing to hire with no degree". But strange that he
| of all people didn't add a statistic on that.
|
| Am I missing something?
| nynx wrote:
| It's really too late for me to drop out (graduating in the fall),
| but it's something I've put a lot of thought into in the past.
| Really, the main thing that's had value for me has been my senior
| thesis. Most classes, even high-level engineering classes, are a
| waste of time.
| lordnacho wrote:
| The elephant in the room is that college doesn't teach you
| anything you need to know at a job.
|
| I'm not talking about the obvious exceptions like medicine or law
| (though even that can be done as a conversion rather than an
| undergrad degree) or anything else where you literally need the
| paper that says you can do it. I'm also not talking about
| becoming a researcher, where obvious you need to know a bit of X
| to become a professor of X. I'm talking about the vast number of
| degrees that are not job specific. Business, economics, history,
| literature, and so on with humanities, but also math, chemistry,
| physics, and biology.
|
| There is no real reason an employer would care what you studied,
| because as a new graduate your job is to learn the business.
| Whether you were interested in one thing or another in college
| doesn't matter much, the main line is between math-tech stuff and
| not-math-tech stuff. Employers who reckon their work is techie
| will gravitate towards those graduates, while others will be open
| to anyone.
|
| All the degree signals is that you somehow gathered yourself and
| read a bunch of books and solved a bunch of questions. That's
| somehow supposed to be evidence that you can learn their
| business.
|
| Of course the problem is there's plenty of people who instead of
| learning Krebs cycle could just go directly into finance or
| accounting or any number of jobs without jumping through the
| hoops. The issue is that college has become a destination for so
| many smart kids, it's hard to imagine a smart kid who skips it.
| So absolutely everyone feels they need to go to college, and
| absolutely every employer thinks they need to hire just college
| grads.
|
| In terms of helping the economy, it's really not efficient.
| Everyone has to sit around for three or four years when they
| really want to be working, and everyone who can't find the
| money/time to do it is cut out from middle class aspirational
| jobs.
| gruez wrote:
| >All the degree signals is that you somehow gathered yourself
| and read a bunch of books and solved a bunch of questions.
| That's somehow supposed to be evidence that you can learn their
| business.
|
| >[...]
|
| >In terms of helping the economy, it's really not efficient.
| Everyone has to sit around for three or four years when they
| really want to be working, and everyone who can't find the
| money/time to do it is cut out from middle class aspirational
| jobs.
|
| What's the alternative? Like you said yourself, employers want
| some sort of signal that you're reasonably smart and can put
| the work in. You can't really replace that with a 6 month
| bootcamp.
| lordnacho wrote:
| Massive online learning/examination system, fewer places in
| university, reserved for people who actually are going to be
| professors.
|
| Everyone else sits at home and just learns the stuff and does
| the exams while driving an uber. It will take a lot less time
| to just jump the math hoops than to do four years of half
| holidays, eg my total university time was actually 96 weeks
| but spread over 4 years. So a couple of years of doing that
| and people can see you can learn stuff.
| ab_testing wrote:
| I don't like Twitter threads but I agree with Sam Altman in this
| case. Waiving student loan debt but not resolving the root cause
| will give a clear signal to colleges - Increase tuition as much
| as you want because the taxpayers will again pick up the tab in a
| few years .
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Creditors would be on the hook - not colleges - if students
| default.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| Taxpayers are the creditors for 92.6% student loans.
|
| https://educationdata.org/student-loan-debt-
| statistics#:~:te....
| walkhour wrote:
| Thank you for this data
| Maximus9000 wrote:
| more easily read here:
|
| https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1505597901011005442.html
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