
College, the Great Unleveler - lkrubner
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/01/college-the-great-unleveler/
======
JPKab
Not too long ago, I took advantage of my large, corporate employer's training
benefit and took a week off for hands-on Hadoop/Hive/Hbase training. My
company required I get a cert as part of the benefit, so I went and bit the
bullet to take a cert test. The location of the cert test was at a local
Westwood College campus. Westwood is a for-profit institution. This particular
campus earns extra money by acting as a testing center for certifications. The
first thing I noticed was the staff was overly-numerous and hugely,
unbelievably unprofessional. Despite an appointment made two months in
advance, the staff member in charge of administering the tests was nowhere to
be found. The staff member present simply told me "She hasn't called. She was
here but she went to get lunch." This meant that I had to wait in the
admissions office waiting room for an hour. What I saw deeply disturbed me.
Person after person was shepherded in, and guided through the entire student
loan application process. The awful part was how completely, utterly
unprepared and unequipped these folks were for any kind of academic learning.
A young man came in desperately begging the receptionist for help with his
Metro fare, telling her that he "had to jump the turnstile" because he
couldn't afford to pay for the fare. He was in his 20s and was profoundly
ignorant and juvenile in his behavior, at a level one would expect from a
middle schooler. I saw a lot of that. This institution has zero consequences
if the hundreds of students walking around that campus are unable to get jobs
with the skills taught to them. No, the burden is entirely on the student and
the US taxpayer. These for-profit institutions have no admissions
requirements. They are nothing more than a giant machine designed to pump
subsidized student loan money into their coffers. And in the grand fashion of
"iron triangle" style politics in the US, they have huge swarms of lobbyists
crawling DC (financed with government loan moeny) to ensure they keep getting
the government loan money.

~~~
yummyfajitas
There are many low quality non-profit colleges as well, with negligible
admission requirements, and no consequences when students fail. Why do we
obsessively focus on the for-profits while giving the non-profits a pass?

[http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/college_guide/feature/colle...](http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/college_guide/feature/college_dropout_factories.php?page=all&print=true)

The non-profit colleges have far more lobbyists crawling DC than the for-
profits, so it can't be that.

[http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?ind=W04](http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?ind=W04)

~~~
JPKab
Good point. I agree. I recall something being proposed in the state of Oregon:
students don't pay tuition up front. Instead, a fixed percentage of a
student's income for a designated time period after graduation is paid to the
institution. I think this would have some amusingly rapid effects on ALL
colleges. You wouldn't see schools like the University of Florida which
recently axed their CS program in favor of expanding their English and History
programs. My university is a decent one, but efforts to help graduating
students get jobs were minimal and token: job fairs? I've attended your school
for year, paying tons of money, and your best effort at job placement is a
fucking job fair? And let's not forget the out of touch, tenured professors
teaching out-dated skills. I'm looking at you, Virginia Tech, for continuing
to teach your Introduction to Computer Science class with C++, while MIT and
Harvard use Python. Students leave THEIR classes having learned to build
things. They leave your shit C++ class having learned to build nothing other
than homework solutions that have zero applicability in the real world.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
You actually believe C++ isn't used in the real world?

~~~
JPKab
Of course not. It's just that its a god-awful way to introduce a general
student population to Computer Science. Maybe its ok for CS majors, but even
then I'm not sold. I think it should be reserved for a few semesters in, once
students have an idea of what they CAN do, then focus on C++ in the sense that
its where the real deal performance and mission critical stuff is built.

------
tokenadult
I read through the whole article before asking myself, "Just who is this
author, and what is the author's background?" The article byline reports,
"Suzanne Mettler, a professor of government at Cornell University, is the
author of _Degrees of Inequality: How the Politics of Higher Education
Sabotaged the American Dream._ "

These days, when I look at suggestions for national policy for the United
States (which show up here on Hacker News with alarming frequency, even
despite the differing topic emphasis of this online community), I really like
to hear from other countries about what is already working in public policy on
the same topic. Is there some country in the world that does a better job in
setting higher education policy than the United States? If so, which one? What
improvements can United States policy gain by studying the example of other
countries? As an American who has lived abroad for years during my adult life,
I find it tedious to consider policy suggestions here in the country of my
birth without reality-checking them by the experience of other countries. In
this light, what we should consider as we ponder the suggestions in the
article kindly submitted here?

(Disclosure: I have a college degree, gained at a state university in the
United States at the time the article author identifies as a time of policy
transition. I have close relatives who have never completed college degrees,
and I wonder what factors matter most for college degrees being accessible,
and also what factors matter most for college degrees being useful to their
possessors and to the broader society.)

~~~
mjn
I'm not sure how generalizable it is, but Denmark has a fairly strong split
between the "proper" universities, which are all state-funded and tuition-
free, and private "academies", which may be for-profit or nonprofit, and don't
have degree-issuing rights. The for-profit ones typically teach vocational
programs. Some of these are reasonably well respected, but as a result of not
being able to offer degrees, they tend to compete more on the skills gained
than on the certificate. For example they will want to be able to argue that
if you spend time/money there, by the time you're done you'll be a skilled 3d
animator with a portfolio to prove it. So these are relatively unregulated
besides not being able to issue degrees (they can issue private certificates).
They also don't receive state support, and students don't receive state
financial aid.

There are a few weird in-between things. For example the National Film School
is very well respected and mostly publicly funded, but doesn't issue degrees,
because historically it grew out of the film production scene and doesn't see
itself as "academic" (nowadays they could probably gain degree-granting
rights, but it's become a point of principle that they're a "film school", not
a "university").

~~~
girvo
Australia is similar, as far as I'm aware. There are private colleges, that
are paid up front etc, but they're sort of looked down on and are usually very
industry specific (QANTM being the tech and game programming one in Brisbane,
for example).

------
rayiner
What bothers me is that we have a very nebulous idea here in the U.S. of what
it is that we hope to gain from educating people in colleges. I met someone a
number of years ago (mid 2000's, before the recession), who had done his
degree in aerospace engineering from a regional state school (not bottom of
the barrel, but not an MRU). He was working as an HVAC technician. Not a bad
living, of course, but I couldn't help but think it was overkill considering
that a 2-year degree is an entirely adequate preparation for such a job.

In my opinion, Americans are overeducated. We shuffle people through colleges,
but the jobs waiting for them at the other end hardly merit all that
preparation. We're drowning in college debt because we're spending vastly more
to educate people than is warranted by the sorts of jobs available in the
economy.

~~~
nitrogen
I don't believe in the usefulness of "overeducation" as a concept. No amount
of knowledge or learning should ever be considered too much. What I _do_
believe, however, is that vocational training should be decoupled from
education, and that everyone should be seeking both.

~~~
SamReidHughes
Are you arguing that spending more effort educating yourself on a particular
subject never becomes suboptimal? Are you just talking past the parent? Or do
you actually believe in storing information in brains for storing-information-
in-brains' sake, even if it's ten years of study of pokémon glitches?

~~~
NhanH
You're putting up a strawman. Information for the sake of information is not
knowledge, nor learning. One can spend their whole life watching reality TV
and name every single celebrities in existence - hardly anyone would call that
act "learning" or "acquiring knowledge".

Of course if one could still be learning in a suboptimal way: acquiring
useless information, or acquiring information without understanding of the
subject matter, but that's an orthogonal issue altogether: it's suboptimal
regardless of your effort/time/how much knowledge you had.

At the very least, I found it hard to believe that in this time and age, one
can acquire enough knowledge of any subject (breath or depth) that any more
effort would be suboptimal. The other choice of thinking "I know enough and
don't need to care anymore" is potentially far far more dangerous.

~~~
SamReidHughes
> Information for the sake of information is not knowledge, nor learning.

If you're going to secretly use nonstandard meanings for English words, just
stop posting.

------
Bahamut
From my time in the military, I've noticed that many who leave the military
and have the GI bill available for them for use don't end up using them at
good schools, causing it to be a waste of their time, education, and the
government's money.

I strongly agree that more regulation of the higher education industry is
needed.

------
com2kid
Ugh I'm sick and tired of this.

> but for those in the bottom half, a four-year degree is scarcely more
> attainable today than it was in the 1970s.

As someone who came from a working class background, college has enabled me to
move up multiple socio-economic classes.

I'll admit I was lucky when I attended, graduating in 2006 right before huge
price increases went into effect. Even so, I believe college offers a huge
opportunity for social and economic mobility.

> In the bottom half of the economic distribution, it’s less than one out of
> five for those in the third bracket and fewer than one out of 10 in the
> poorest.

So what I am seeing here is that college does offer opportunities at mobility.
Compared to the almost 0 opportunity so many would have had otherwise.

Let us remember here that we are talking about fifths and tenths of _hundreds
of millions of people_. Ok discount that to only college aged, and we still
have tens of millions of people we are talking about.

> Nearly three-quarters of American college students attend public
> universities and colleges, historically the nation’s primary channels to
> educational opportunity. These institutions still offer the best bargain
> around, yet even there, tuition increases have bred inequality.

Ah now, here is a real problem! The cost of in-state tuition has sky rocketed.
Let's do something about that, rather than say "college is useless".

As for private educational institutions, the problem seems to be that they
have better advertising. They sell a slick message. (Though I have had
positive encounters with a few of them that have convinced me that private
education _does_ have a role in the overall educational system, sometimes
direct skill training is exactly what is needed!)

~~~
notacoward
"Compared to the almost 0 opportunity so many would have had otherwise."

There's no such comparison to be made. Those people who expended that much
effort going to college only to flunk out could have expended that same effort
doing something else. Most of them might have failed at that too, but a few
might have succeeded. At least none of them would have been saddled with tons
of student-loan debt. "College or immediate and irrevocable failure" is the
myth that for-profit-college hucksters love to promote, and I'm sure they'd be
glad to see that it's working.

The problem is not that college exists as a possible route to prosperity for
poor people. The problem is that it's presented - including by comments like
yours - as _the only_ route. Instead of comparing college to nothing at all,
we should be comparing the real odds of achieving success via college vs. the
odds of achieving it by other means. If we're morally compelled to consider
the 1/5 or 1/10 who benefited from going to college, we are also morally
compelled to consider the 4/5 or 9/10 for whom it _failed_ and left them worse
off financially.

~~~
judk
Flunking out seems at odd with extracting maximum tuition. Which are you
accusing the schools of?

~~~
notacoward
The really bad for-profit "schools" don't concentrate on extracting maximum
tuition from each student. That would require at least minimal attention to
the quality of the service being offered, which erodes margins. They don't
care if existing students leave, so long as an at least equal number of new
ones replace them, so they spend all their money on marketing instead.

At better schools, there's a whole different set of dynamics to explain why
rich kids stay in and poor kids don't. This is hardly the forum for that
discussion, except to note that the net result is approximately the same. Lots
of kids leave college with a big pile of debt and no degree. When such a high
percentage of lower-income students end up worse off than they started, it's
quite rational to consider that a more entrepreneurial focus might actually
serve them better.

------
mindvirus
I feel like if we want to start addressing inequality in education, we have to
start with private grade schools. In particular, I think that private high
schools and grade schools should be stopped, and everyone should be forced to
use the public system.

Private schools let the wealthiest, most influential people take their
children out of the system, and so have no motivation to fix the system.
Meanwhile the people who are least able to fix the system are left stuck with
it. Take NYC as a great example of this - extremely high incomes, $45k/year
private schools, and some of the worst public schools in America.

It's not that people are bad for using private schools - it's hard to take a
moral stance when your children are the cost (I will certainly send my future
kids to private school). But by having an easy out, it lets people avoid
fixing the system.

~~~
cdoxsey
Perhaps you don't realize this, but many parents choose not to use the public
school system for religious reasons. Are you willing to trample all over their
religious liberty and lock them up in pursuit of your utopia?

You probably just didn't think about them. So thank you for posting this, as
it demonstrates a growing problem in America: ignorance of religion. I don't
care if you're religious or not, this is a country with a lot of people who
are.

People these days love words like "tolerance" and "diversity" but then they
suggest the most intolerant policies you can imagine.

~~~
catshirt
>> _but many parents choose not to use the public school system for religious
reasons._

at the risk of sounding naive how does attending a public school limit one's
ability to practice religion?

i am particularly confused because all of the private schools where i grew up
were Catholic, which i assumed were even less religiously tolerant.

~~~
cdoxsey
Deciding how to educate their children is part of their religion. If you tell
them "you must send your children to a public school" you are limiting their
ability to practice their religion.

And this isn't just an ad-hoc excuse... this has been true for a long time.
For example the puritans in this country highly valued public education. They
thought all children should know how to read so that they could read and
understand the Bible (a direct consequence of their sola scriptura reformation
roots).

So suppose you come from that background (like many Reformed and Evangelical
Christians today), and the top priority in the education of your children is
that they know the Bible: "The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom"
and all that.

Well children won't be getting that in a public school in America. And more
than that the social institutions in this country (at all levels) are dead-set
opposed to those kinds of traditional religious doctrines. (parents might
point to things like evolution, sexual education, etc..)

Now I understand that from a secular perspective this looks ridiculous. That
line of reasoning isn't even something I would necessarily agree with. All I'm
advocating here is a bit of tolerance as well as a little bit of knowledge
about your fellow citizens. The very type of people who are predisposed to
bypass the public school system for religious reasons, are also the type of
people who won't bow to government pressure. You'll have to lock them up and
take their children away from them before they'll stop. (There is abundant
historical precedent for this)

As to your point about Catholic schools... do you think that a Catholic school
ought to be a place where other religious teaching is tolerated? Do you think
such a school ought to be required to teach Islam or Protestantism for
example? Or, to take a popular topic at the moment, should a church be
required to perform same-sex marriages?

That seems like a very strange definition of tolerance to me... Catholic
schools ought to teach Catholicism, and because the government doesn't require
you to send your children to that school you have the freedom to educate your
children how you see fit.

Yes that means parents will sometimes choose badly and children will suffer
because of it. But that's the price we pay for living in a free society.

~~~
catshirt
>> _Deciding how to educate their children is part of their religion._

herein lies my naivety i suppose. :)

>> _As to your point about Catholic schools... do you think that a Catholic
school ought to be a place where other religious teaching is tolerated? Do you
think such a school ought to be required to teach Islam or Protestantism for
example? Or, to take a popular topic at the moment, should a church be
required to perform same-sex marriages?_

no, my point was simply that public and Catholic schools were my only options.
and fortunately one of them was suitable for my beliefs (whatever they may
have been).

i didn't intend to suggest that forcing public schooling was the best, or even
a good solution. but i'm wondering how we extract the logic from that argument
without alienating anyone.

------
bottled_poe
So... kids from affluent backgrounds have been given better oppotunities than
the have-nots. I'm shocked!

~~~
Nav_Panel
Here, I'll summarize the article for you, as I think you've misinterpreted it:

1\. Programs were put in place throughout the last 60 years to help provide
better opportunities for kids who did NOT come from affluent backgrounds.

2\. Over the last 20 years (and perhaps even earlier, posits the author),
these programs have been increasingly abused by for-profit universities.
Additionally, these programs have become less effective as the cost of tuition
grows.

3\. So, if we want to restore the opportunities for aspiring students from
less affluent families, we need to regulate the for-profits and we need to
bring government aid programs back in line with the current state of higher
education.

Of course the kids from affluent backgrounds have better opportunities --
that's not the point of the article. The point was that kids from less
affluent backgrounds have fewer opportunities than they did within our
parents' lifetimes, and that systemic corruption/abuse is responsible for this
change.

------
Jare
Universal demand and lack of accountability for supply create cancerous
markets and bubbles. This is true for any market, including education, health,
housing or internet portals.

------
fredgrott
a question, in Germany there are coops between gov and industry to have both
vocational and college programs result in 2 year and 4 year degrees.

An example is Siemens, if you get into a training program at Siemens you will
if you complete it end up with a 2 year tech degree or a 4 year college degree
complete with several years of on the job training paid both by the German gov
and Siemens.

IS there any movement towards such a partnership between industry and the gov
in the US towards education?

~~~
cafard
Some: the NY Times had an article about one such the other day. But they don't
run to four-year degrees.

