
When the Education Bubble Finally Pops - babyshake
http://blog.jamtoday.org/post/70265208/when-the-education-bubble-finally-pops
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mechanical_fish
I'm being attacked by an evil widget on this page. There is a big-ass
Javascript popup, apparently perpetrated by something called "PostRank", that
obscures the page on initial load (in Safari 3/Mac). It has a list of posts
labeled "Top Posts", none of which are the one I want to read. I can't figure
out how to make this thing go away -- there is no close box, and clicking
inside it links me away to something else -- and when I scroll the damn thing
_follows me_ to make very sure that I never get a glimpse of the actual post.
I can't see around it.

Words cannot express how infuriating that widget is. It's like Snap.com _only
more evil_. Banish it back to the nether regions from whence it came and
submit this post again so I can actually read it.

UPDATE: Seriously, I can't get rid of it. Clicking inside it, clicking outside
it, the Escape key, nasty words about its mother -- nothing works. I even
tried following one of its links, and the resulting page had the _same
obscuring widget on it_. Who designs the UI for these things?

I'll try restarting Safari.

FURTHER UPDATE: Nope, it's out of excuses. That is officially the suckiest
non-musical widget I've ever seen.

~~~
lallysingh
Dude, firefox.

Also, Safari Adblock, it's not terrible.

~~~
nickb
Safari Adblock wouldn't help at all with this widget problem.

Also, Safari Adblock's crap. If you really want to block ads, use
<http://glimmerblocker.org/>

The site has pretty bad usability with About page as well. You can't even see
close/next/previous links on pages.

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dhimes
I believe universities will be back to being a haven for those who pursue
knowledge for its own sake, and most professional-related credentials will no
longer include a "degree."

One of the harbingers of this is the fact that a lot of employers started
giving exams to the folks they hire. The 4.0 gpa start not being enough to
prove to them that someone was educated enough to do the job (whoa!).

I can envision the day when passing some sort of qualifier will be accepted in
lieu of a degree for most professions. How you come by the knowledge to pass
that qualifier will be up to you.

~~~
cchooper
The use of universities as a general source of credentials is probably nothing
more than inertia from the days when only a select few could attend. There
really is no good reason why everyone should get their education from a
research institution, especially when they have no intention of going into
research.

I suspect that the system is self-destructing right now. The more degrees that
universities award, the less it will matter that it came from a university.
This will bring about the end of most university education, and hence most
universities (because they can't _all_ be doing worthwhile research).

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tjmc
What about qualifications that require specialised equipment or
infrastructure? If you need to learn about say chip fabrication or radiology
it's not enough to just read about it.

I suppose you could just pay for access to facilities and equipment on demand,
but in the case of something like a chemistry lab or x-ray machine the
institution granting access has to know your level of competance before they
give you access and the easiest way of doing that without checking each time
is a structured program.

~~~
cchooper
I think other institutions will arise to fill those gaps. They will be pure
teaching institutions rather than universisites.

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dhimes
It could even happen at the universities, if people start attending for
classes and programs but not degrees. Some college departments serve multiple
masters: a national accreditation organization, which gives the college as a
whole accreditation, and some field-specific professional associations which
bless the behavior of departments. The professors care primarily about their
field-specific status, while the deans worry about the overall stuff. That's
part of the reason why you occasionally see a headline that such-and-such
univerisity failed to retain accreditation. Often, you can't find a professor
willing to take time away from students and research in order to write a
report.

After all, they think, if I satisfy the peers in my field, why do I care if I
have an acceptable org chart?

I could easily see an employer caring more about getting through a program
blessed by a professional organization than about getting an accredited
"degree." I actually think this would be a "purification" process for
universities.

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nihilocrat
Uh, I've been spared this doom-widget.

I feel the press is a bit bubble-happy these days, but the scale of the
economic depression doesn't make that unmerited. In fact, I welcome it;
education costs have gotten more and more out of hand and no one seems to be
making a fuss about it except those having to pay. The bubble craze has
pointed out areas where things have been going wrong for a very long time,
it's sort of like draining a swamp to reveal all the bodies.

I think part of the bubble is an untested assumption, that having a degree
will always net you more income in the long run, much like it was assumed that
house prices would never, ever, ever fall. It's a core indicator of a bubble,
because it's easy for reality to break things if the assumption stops being
true. I can definitely vouch for those who have gotten degrees and lead
careers that have nothing to do with them; from a career perspective (not a
personal or educational one, mind you), a lot of people have just wasted four
years of their life.

I was raised by engineers who got degrees to go work in the very specific
fields they got degrees in, so of course this flies directly in the face of
what I thought was supposed to be the way things work.

~~~
netcan
I don't think it is right to think of this as a economic bubble. Degrees are
not a straight investment. It differs from place to place, of course. But on
the whole, demand isn't that related to real or assumed future income effects.

Even when it is, it is also related to prestige, ideas about what it's like to
be a lawyer/engineer/doctor & other things. It's not unreasonable that the
price will outweigh benefits & that people will _pay_ to be a lawyer.

>> _from a career perspective (not a personal or educational one, mind you),_

I don't think you can isolate those two in the long run.

But all that said, the education world can be turned on it's head. There are
more ways to learn things now & there are potentially much, much cheaper ways
to provide education. Students subsidising research doesn't make much sense.

I once worked out that for a year of full time study, I was only getting about
5-10 hours of dedicated lecturer/tutor time. That includes some classes with
low enrolment & some with massive enrolment & doesn't include preparation or
marking.

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neilc
_Students subsidising research doesn't make much sense._

I don't think that is very common: the vast majority of the funding for
research comes from the government (e.g. NSF, DARPA, NIH), various non-
profits, and corporate sponsorship.

~~~
netcan
A lot comes from these sources, but often a lot comes from fees. Also funding
is not necessarily research grants. It also includes keeping the physical
Universities & their bureaucracies going.

In any case, my point was that the fees charged by elite US schools are
disproportionate to the cost of providing the education. Even the costs are
probably disproportionate to the what costs would be if universities were
competing on efficiency/price.

~~~
kurtosis
my advisor is charged a significant ~50% overhead on my stipend and a
significant percentage overhead on all equipment (e.g. 100k laser systems).
This is paid out of NSF grants and it is supposed to cover costs of building
maintenance and utilities.

~~~
netcan
Again, I'm not saying that students are solely carrying the burden of
research. There are multiple income sources. But many degree programs are run
as revenue generating activities.

But there _are_ a bunch of cross subsidies going on. International/Domestic,
Across disciplines, undergraduate/postgraduate. Science students get 3X or
more the hours, equipment & materials that sociology or accounting students
get. An accounting course (8 courses = 1 year down here) might consist of 2X14
lectures (50-150 students per lecture), 1X12 tutorials(8-15 students) &
whatever preparation time is paid (I imagine anywhere from .5 to 2.5 to the
hour). Tutors are often only paid in the $20-$30 range. It would not be
unusual to average a figure that works out at a small fraction of the cost (or
potential cost) to deliver that education.

In general, that hints at a possibility of something flying under the current
system & undermining it. All these money machines (eg prestigious MBA
programs) could go outside the big institutions. You might say these programs
are worthless without the prestige of the institution. Well that's another
problem.

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blackguardx
Having taken online classes, I can say that they are no replacement for being
in a classroom and having interaction with a teacher and classmates.

It would be a shame to see all education move online for purely cost reasons.

~~~
teuobk
Indeed. Book knowledge at universities is wonderful, but the value of the
social experience cannot be understated. In some sense, one's classmates at a
university form a giant fraternity. Stephen Leacock put this quite eloquently
in "Oxford as I See It":

"If I were founding a university--and I say it with all the seriousness of
which I am capable--I would found first a smoking room; then when I had a
little more money in hand I would found a dormitory; then after that, or more
probably with it, a decent reading room and a library. After that, if I still
had money over that I couldn't use, I would hire a professor and get some text
books."

~~~
boredguy8
Yes, but Oxford is still about learning (and suffering for it!) and far less
about job training.

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patio11
The education bubble is, in large part, a credit bubble. If you have a
resource which has perceived value approaching infinite, competition for the
resource, and a government policy subsidizing consumption of the resource
(especially via loans), you're naturally going to see the price balloon.

It would be like what happened if you subsidized the speculative investment in
assets that people irrationally thought would never decline in price, like, I
don't know, homes.

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daniel-cussen
Genius. I had never thought of education this way.

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johnrob
In our capitalist society we have a pyramid shaped distribution of income. For
a good portion of history, a college education has meant a place in the top
triangle. However, there are only so many spots in that triangle. That is
precisely why the cost of a college education will no longer (necessarily) pay
for itself in future income. Wages are based on a person's relative skill, and
if the whole country has a degree, than it doesn't end up differentiating
anyone. Which is why the cost is now seemingly overpriced.

If we really need college degrees for everyone, then there is no choice but to
go the high school route and fund it publicly.

~~~
eru
You seem to assume that education has no effect on your (absolute)
productivity?

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likpok
One point: If wages are trending downwards, then wages for professors should
also trend downwards. This might make tuition trend downwards as well.

(all trends are in real dollars, costs may simply grow slower than inflation)

Other solutions may be a globalization of the educational system. Currently,
US institutions are the top. Perhaps that will change, and costs will decrease
as suppliers increase.

~~~
coliveira
Salaries for professors are _not_ the main expense in a university. In fact,
salaries have increased at a much slower pace then tuition. The whole
infrastructure of the university is what is expensive: labs, administration,
fitness centers, counseling, etc. Real education is just a small part of the
package when a student goes to a university.

Also, tuition is not going to research. Most research is payed by the
Government and a few non-profit institutions.

~~~
rw
Let us not forget the salaries of administrators. Administrative bloat is a
huge problem at many universities, and a large number of these people get
higher salaries than tenured professors. Is this personnel overhead necessary?
Why can't professors have more of a direct influence on university policy? I
suspect many of them would like to run things more collectively, with more
attention paid to the students.

The "corporate university" thing makes me sick. No thank you, Mr. CEO
President.

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Dilpil
The advantage of a college degree is not just salary: the jobs available to
college graduates carry better working conditions, hours, and prestige.
Evaluations using a net present value calculation are missing the point.

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fhars
But isn't it the characteristic of efficient markets when prices approach real
value and the characteristic of a bubble if you can realize huge arbitrage
gains by investing a bit in your education to get a top job? So the bubble the
author is bemoaning is already gone and he is just longigng for it to reappear
because he used to belong to the winners.

But then I am from the old world where education is a basic right and never
understood why people would frame it as a purely economic question...

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ninguem2
Foreign Universities (esp. in English speaking countries: Canada, UK,
Australia,...) would be the most likely to provide arbitrage and offer the
same service at lower costs. It is just fear of living overseas that is
stopping this from happening on a large scale now.

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hs
after credit card bubble bursts

