

Academic Bankruptcy - rafaelc
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/15/opinion/15taylor.html?_r=1&src=tptw

======
narkee
It seems like schools are focused more on expanding their brands, and growth
than educating.

I think there are certain industries, like health care and education that
shouldn't be treated like for-profit ventures. It probably won't sit well with
this crowd, but there are some things in life that should supercede wealth
acquisition.

~~~
lionhearted
> and education that shouldn't be treated like for-profit ventures

There's an assumption here that for-profit ventures perform worse or serve
interests worse than non-profits. In my experience with non-profits, there's
lower accountability, higher salaries with less performance, less
accomplishing of the organization's objectives, and more corruption and
politics. Nonprofits have historically done very poorly at their stated aims,
and vastly, vastly underperformed for-profit companies in building up the
world. Also, the majority of universities and schools are already set up as
non-profits, which might be part of why they're so dysfunctional.

~~~
yequalsx
Pretty much everyone who should be going to college is going to college. The
market is saturated. The for profit colleges are targeting people, largely,
who shouldn't be going to college. They use misleading statistics to dupe
unsuspecting people. People who think the college has their interests at
heart. This goes on in the non-profit college sector but is much more
pernicious and rampant in the for profit sector. Default rates for student
loans in the for profit sector are higher than for the non-profits.

Non-profit, mostly, have standards for admission. The for-profits don't. They
just want people to spend money. Faculty at for profit colleges get fired if
their standards are too high. The for profit system is all about getting
students in and making sure they never fail a course. Keep them paying. For
profit motive in education as it currently exists is a disaster.

------
applicative
The author is a fraud. How the Times let him write without making it plain
that he is a (failed) entrepreneur in an online education scheme, I don't
know.

First, writers who go on about the how high tuition, but don't investigate how
much people actually pay can never be trusted. The only figures to contemplate
are average and median tuition actually payed. The stated tuitions are simply
the maximum; it is true that Trustees have spiked the maximum in the last 20
yrs, figuring, why not make Saudi princes pay as much as possible. This is not
inflation, but a policy change that affects a vanishing minority of students.
Any writer who doesn't make this plain is either stupid or dishonest, and my
advice is, stop reading as soon as he or she pulls this stunt.

(I realized how much fraud there is in journalism on these themes, when I
looked into in-state tuition at my old school, College Park, and was startled
to see it is the same, after indexing for inflation, as it was in the late
70's. Admittedly Maryland is a fairly well-heeled state, most state schools
have been savaged by legislatures in the last 23 years.)

Presumably the Times pays him because they like what he says; clearly there is
no fact checker. In one of his earlier
[diatribes]([http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2010/7/19/what-if-
colle...](http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2010/7/19/what-if-college-
tenure-dies/why-tenure-is-unsustainable-and-indefensible)) the claim was let
pass that the average 'full professor' makes $12,198,578 / 30 = $406,619.26
per annum. He also suggests that it is typical to spend 5 years as an
associate professor, then 30 as a full professor. The data on a large state
university are before me: these are the numbers for the humanities faculty:

    
    
        62 full profs at average $99,431  --nice work if you can get it.
        69 assoc profs at avg $64,722
        51 asst profs at avg $53,687
     

His claim about full professors would suggest that there should be something
like six full professors for every associate prof; in fact, there is less than
one. (That the number of untenured assistant professors approaches the same
figure though this status lasts only ~7 years; this suggests well over half of
them will soon be in real estate at age circa 40 -- shows how savage and
efficient a market Universities constitute....)

For all I know, the Universities should all be drowned at sea, but we'll never
know if we are given out and out liars like Prof. Taylor to read.

------
mkramlich
It was interesting that the author was the chairman of the religion department
at Columbia. If ever there was a college curriculum that was not worth having
a student spending many thousands of dollars and four years or more of one's
life "studying" it would be that.

~~~
dagw
Given that religion both has been and continues to be one of the bigger
driving forces behind just about every major event in human history, I'd say
that understanding it is paramount to any serious analysis of, not only
history, but any number of current events.

~~~
mkramlich
So read some books about religion from a local public library for free. No
need to spend 4 years and $40,000.

When someone gets a college degree in Electrical Engineering I think the goal
is not really to learn electrical engineering or electronics -- again you can
learn those things faster and cheaper on your own -- the goal really is to get
a document whereby an institution declares you are fit to enter the electrical
engineering field as a working professional. If you get a degree in Religion,
what "field" are you certified to work in? The religion field? The priesthood?
Professorship of religion? Do we honestly need more of those and/or to the
extent we do could it not be done cheaper and faster, outside a university?
Perhaps done by a church-related organization?

Also, though I agree that religion is influencing some things, I don't think
religion really "drives" most of anything that's really important anymore,
like inventions and innovation, like building things, like creating new
products and services, developing new technologies. The vast majority of that
activity is totally perpendicular to religion. If anything, one of the biggest
areas where I see religion making an impact is as an anti-science, pro-
superstition, anti-education, anti-progress force, especially in areas of
medicine and biology. But you could easily never take a class or read a book
on religion and go on to become an excellent businessman, scientist, engineer,
inventor, programmer, musician, etc. And still read or talk or think about
religion, in your free time, whenever you felt like it. And again, for free.

~~~
dagw
This falls back to the discussion on what the role of a University education
is. Personally I fundamentally disagree that Universities should be relegated
to glorified career training and certification bodies. Why should universities
deal with certifying that someone is "fit to enter the electrical engineering
field as a working professional". Couldn't that be done cheaper and faster by
some sort of professional society of electrical engineers?

A degree should be seen as a certification of knowledge, not a certification
you are qualified to work in a certain field. There is nothing inherently
wrong with going to university for love of learning and knowledge without
focusing on what job it will lead to.

 _But you could easily never take a class or read a book on religion and go on
to become an excellent businessman, scientist, engineer, inventor, programmer,
musician, etc. And still read or talk or think about religion, in your free
time, whenever you felt like it. And again, for free._

You can replace "religion" in the above statement with just about any other
university subject and the statement will still be true. I'm not arguing that
religion is necessary or important for everyone to study, just that it is a
valid field of academic inquiry and study and as such very much belongs in a
university setting.

------
yurylifshits
It feels that education is next in line for disruption, right after print
media.

"College product" is overpriced and is largely sustained by "parent pressure".
Parents and society in general do not know yet any acceptable/established
alternatives.

My bet is on "open horizontal stack". Right now, every college is a small
"vertical stack": its own library, teachers, physical space, etc. I think in
the future we will have one national library (e.g. Chegg.com), one network of
educational spaces, one network of classes (e.g. SupercoolSchool.com), one
employment system for students, one office for transfer of technology, etc.

~~~
Ad_Astra
I feel that your two statements do not agree well with one another. On the one
hand, I do agree with you about the eventual future of education.

However, I feel the timeline on that is fairly long, and it doesn't seem
likely nothing else will be disrupted before that.

~~~
yurylifshits
Ad_Astra, I agree with you. There are two tracks of innovation for education.

    
    
        Track 1: Fixing existing system
        Track 2: Building new educational stack
    

First track can lead to faster traction. But the "Google of education" is
likely to be born on the second stack.

~~~
mkramlich
There's so much regulation & inertia with Track 1 that I'd lean to Track 2. In
fact, I've already started taking a whack at it.

------
tokenadult
This is a good response to an article that was on the main page just a day or
so ago.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1603795>

------
waqf
He says that universities shouldn't be expanding because their job is to
educate more people. Come again?

~~~
kd0amg
And spending too much on expansion leaves nothing to spend on teaching.

~~~
waqf
Ok, but he should more clearly separate his fiscal advice from his ethical
advice.

------
known
I think education system should ideally create _employers_ instead of
employees.

------
joe_the_user
The article seems suggest that academic institutions have over the last twenty
years engaged in a scam of massively expanding their physical plant at the
expense of students and teaching with the expectation that constantly rising
tuitions and endowment investments would pay for it. This what's driven the
other end of the "education bubble" and this is what has to stop.

Why the article veers off to combining the Columbia and NYU philosophy
departments at the end, I don't know (though I could make, dark, knowing
comments out of frustration).

I'd say that American society ought to take a complete U-turn and start
valuing and providing the highest possible quality education to the most and
the most qualified citizens, not as good sold to people but as an investment
in the _whole_ of society since an educated population is a benefit to
_everyone_ , not just the educated.

But that wouldn't fuel another massive ripoff, so it doesn't seem too
likely...

~~~
lsc
>I'd say that American society ought to take a complete U-turn and start
valuing and providing the highest possible quality education to the most and
the most qualified citizens, not as good sold to people but as an investment
in the whole of society since an educated population is a benefit to everyone,
not just the educated.

Nearly everyone I know that I would consider 'the best and brightest' got most
of the school they wanted paid for through scholarships. Many of them got
housing paid for, too. This is even more true of grad school; it's often said
that if you have to pay for your own grad school, you probably don't belong
there, but there are a whole lot of programs for qualified people in
undergrad, too.

And really, I think if we're talking about 'the good of society' we need to
look real hard at what sort of degrees we are paying for.

I'm not one of the "best and the brightest" - I'm not claiming to be some sort
of 'john galt' figure, carrying the world on my back, hell, I don't even know
if I'm a net positive. but I think I've made some small contributions. Some
people, I think, create real value services I provide, services that are quite
a lot cheaper than the competition. And the book I wrote, while it's not the
best book in the world, is the most up-to-date book on the subject. I mean, I
haven't sold that many copies, but we're most of the way through the first
printing... it's something.

If after highschool someone told me "Hey, go to school... we'll cover housing,
tuition, books, everything" I'd have gone to school and studied history. If I
did that, do you think I would have contributed back more or less? Maybe I
would have written a book then, too... sort of a "war nerd, only without the
wit" or something. I dono. Maybe I would have done something good and
important that was enabled by the degree... but my guess is that I wouldn't.

I mean, what actually happened was that my parents said they'd try to help,
but I'd have to work to cover a large part of it, and it'd be a hard slog
through community college, then through a UC. This was 1997-1998, so
obviously, there were huge opportunities available for the taking. Now, you
can argue that maybe I should have gone back to school in 2002, but while the
boom lasted, working was unquestionably the best decision.

~~~
joe_the_user
I said "to the most and the most qualified citizens"... Perhaps America is
doing great for the most qualified. But the education its providing for a wide
range of average seems seriously problematic. Also, this country need to
provide high _quality_ education - currently, it's mostly providing "high
quantity" education.

IE, yes perhaps an excess of history PhDs might not be a useful thing to
produce. But a base-line knowledge, of say, history, economics, mathematics or
etc. among a large percentage of the population is a crucial good - for
society, for _me_. I want an informed electorate, I want a population less
likely to fall for bogus scams, I want "line workers" qualified to step into
other positions, etc...

~~~
lsc
> this country need to provide high quality education - currently, it's mostly
> providing "high quantity" education.

how do you propose to raise the quality while also raising the quantity?

Right now, it seems, the major differentiators between the 'quality' schools
and the not-so-good schools is exclusivity. If you go to a top school, you can
be assured that nearly all your peers passed through a very stringent filter,
and the same with your lecturers. (though, my understanding is that you are
unlikely to actually have much two-way interaction with your lecturer.) If you
get into a top school, you know that if you screw off too much, they kick you
out.

We already have a system of 'community colleges' that will let anyone in and
are almost free. These schools are judged "not very good" not really because
of the quality of their instruction, but because of the lack of a filter.
Anyone can pay a couple bucks and show up at a community college. I've taken a
few classes myself. The thing is, most people just aren't serious. Take a math
class? most of the students will drop out before the class finishes. Community
college is full of people like me who put their career ahead of formal
education.

Yeah, you could change that a little by providing reduced-cost housing, but I
think you'd still have a whole lot of people who just aren't that serious, or
who see better opportunities elsewhere.

