
Is Higher Education The Next Bubble? - ivankirigin
http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2008/12/by_donald_downs_the_idea.html
======
TomOfTTB
He doesn’t mention it much but I really think the problem with Higher
Education is that people are starting to realize how useless it’s become. I'll
tell you how I became convinced of this.

(this is kind of long for a HN post but it's a funny story)

I was having a discussion with a room full of college graduates recently. The
meeting was about how managers should, when they have to order employees to do
something, go in with the mindset of convincing the employees that the
decision is wise rather than just dictate it to them. In the discussion I
jokingly said something like "Don’t go all Lenin on them". They countered by
saying they didn’t understand what I meant. After a short and very confusing
discussion I said I didn’t understand how they could equate what I was saying
to what was done in Communist Russia. They responded by asking what Russia had
to do with anything?

At that point it hit me: They were talking about John Lennon. They had no idea
who Vladimir Lenin was.

The reason this had such an impact on me (aside from the obvious) is this:
I’ve long been convinced that universities simply don’t care about practical
skills anymore. A Computer Science graduate, for instance, can often graduate
without having ever written a line of html, javascript or css. But the one
excuse Universities had was that at least they were still teaching culture.
This incident dispelled that myth for me and at that point I had lost all
faith in the current university system.

I still believe in education but I don't believe Universities are providing a
good one anymore.

~~~
sangaya
First off, I've read HN for a while and never felt the need for an account.
This post provided that need. Thank you.

"A Computer Science graduate, for instance, can often graduate without having
ever written a line of html, javascript or css."

In the interest of full disclosure I hold a BS in Computer Engineering and am
currently working on a MS in Computer Science. I myself graduated without ever
writing a single line of HTML, JavaScript, or CSS in any course and have yet
to write a single line in my MS.

We used Assembler (16 and 32-bit, Motorola and Intel), C/C++, and Java. I
never wrote HTML, but was required to write a basic web server that provided
access to HTML pages. I didn't write any JavaScript, but did write code for
embedded systems.

Point is no Computer Science student should ever write those as part of the
program. For one, any student of CS worth their weight in salt can teach
themselves such things. And the only time it's acceptable in the class room of
a quality program is when the Professor asks for the documentation of the
program to be an HTML page. In that case HTML, JavaScript, and CSS are an
afterthought, not the point of the project, and not taught in the class room.

~~~
timr
The difference is that you're seeing the value of a (good) college education,
whereas most of the people who post the anti-intellectual rants here, in
Reddit, and elsewhere want to view the sole purpose of higher education as
vocational training. If it doesn't teach you Javascript, it must be useless!

(That these same people tend to develop fetishes for math and physics is an
interesting aside; I've never met a mathematician or a physicist whose
attention is drawn to _practical_ questions.)

~~~
yters
Why is it anti-intellectual to question the value of higher education?

~~~
likpok
When someone rants against college, he or she usually includes those things
that colleges teach. He or she claims they are impractical, inapplicable, etc.

That is pretty much anti-intellectualism summed up. Now, this is not
necessary. A anti-college rant does not need to include comments as to the
value of what colleges teach. It's just that many do, and they become
conjoined in people's minds.

~~~
yters
No one really learns anything just for the sake of knowing stuff. They always
do so to derive some benefit. This is even the case for "impractical"
knowledge. Usually this kind of knowledge is of principles instead of
techniques for doing X. Principles are useful to know because A) they are what
techniques are derived from so now people can derive their own techniques and
B) there is innate satisfaction from the beauty and elegance in the principles
behind things. Since everything we do is for the sake of some kind of
happiness, knowledge qualifies as something like sex or entertainment,
activities people engage in for their own sake.

Those, like yourself, who deride people for asking about "practicality" and
"applicability" probably really do think knowledge is useful for the reasons I
outlined. What do you gain by dismissing such questions as "anti-intellectual"
instead of trying to understand and explain why you think learning is useful?

------
electromagnetic
My wife is currently going through college because she needs certification.
However when we worked it out she's paying the equivalent of $80 every time
she walks into a class, yet for an _entire_ 2 hour class they were taught how
to fold a business letter (she didn't attend, we went out the night before
because she already knew how pointless the class would be), I made the nice
point that the dollar store sells a letter folder. So they paid $80 for
something that can easily be done for $1.

This isn't to mention that her books can basically be bought only through the
college bookstore because they add some tiny unnecessary thing in and double
the price. Her Machine Transcription book (like $50 off amazon) came with a
foot pedal (we've seen ones with the same basic functions for $20) and she was
forced to pay $150 because they didn't say what make the foot pedal was or
what software it came with.

Higher Education is essentially a scam. At 16 I started working as a reviewer,
my editor said that he avoided taking anyone who'd been through college and
university because they didn't know how to speak their own voice. The most
successful journalism today (where the money is) is a form of Gonzo (IE Hunter
S. Thompson), I mean read the main articles in Wired and they're Gonzo. Yet
Journalism courses don't teach that and they can't, because there's never
going to be a course that can teach you to be unique.

I ended up reading many things from magazine and newspaper editors. I can't
remember the guys name anymore but he was editor of the Times newspaper, he
said whenever an application appeared on his desk, if it included taking
Journalism in college or university anywhere except at the bottom of the list
he'd throw it straight in the trash. So basically, if you wanted to work for
Times Newspaper when he ran it you had a better chance if you was _anyone but_
a journalism graduate! His reasoning was precisely that they _don't_ know how
to write news that sells. He said that he'd prefer someone who had good
personality in their writing and build them up from there, because all the
journalism graduates thought that going through university entitled them to a
job and most didn't even send samples of their work in, which IMHO is patently
moronic.

~~~
bokonist
I'm curious, what was the job that required this certification? Why would the
employer require her to take this useless course?

~~~
electromagnetic
Its to become a paralegal. All employers in Ontario require you to go through
the process, but from what we've asked people the first year is completely and
utterly useless (thank the ontario government!) and the second year is break-
your-back hard because you basically have to learn everything in one year.

This whole thing is caused by the government allowing all forms of office
administration (Medical, Legal, Realty, etc.) to group their first year
together. This means everyone who takes any of these courses has to pay
thousands of dollars and the colleges group multiple courses into one to save
money.

The ironic thing is that legal offices are desperate for workers, my wife
already has a job offer from one of our family friend's place. The starting
wage there for a paralegal is like $70,000 because they have such a shortage.

edit: Basically the course isn't useless, it's just the ontario government
allows colleges to rip you off in the first year. This is after the government
of Canada allowed the Teachers Union to get so much control they control
everything they even have their own credit union, plus if you work in any
college or university in ontario your children get everything (except books)
for free, kindly paid for by everyone else.

------
hs
my friend (a prof) told me that publishers approach her with new textbooks
(the 'new' stuff is really just the changing words, numbers and units on
problem sets) ... she ends up using older editions so students can buy used

i remember that in almost all of my math courses (esp the graduate courses) i
wasn't required to buy books (the prof wrote pdf notes and post in on his
site)

i find that no-bullshit courses tend to less corrupt

------
kqr2
When the Education Bubble Finally Pops:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=432743>

------
joe_the_user
Hmm,

Higher education is indeed one of the few remaining areas of "fat" in today's
economy. However, the fat is certainly not in the teaching staff but rather in
the "fixed costs" - the "bulding binge" which the article only obliquely
refers to.

One thing I'd like folks to consider, however. After all the fat is cut, who
will buy anything?

The housing boom was all fat and got the economy going for six years. But
without it, we're in a bit of trouble. Start cutting higher education too and
what happens? Does efficiency create demand? Where is the evidence?

------
tonystubblebine
I'm coming to find more and more that the most valuable part of school was
athletics. They teach you how to focus ambition into practice for self-
improvement. Since you can assume that everything you do professionally is
going to require new skills that you need to learn yourself, the improvement
skill seems critical. I learned it through sports.

------
motoko
No, because education is an important marker of social class. Where you went
to school, for how long, and what you studied defines who you are and where
you belong in the social hierarchy in the United States absent aristocratic
relations or extreme wealth.

~~~
ramchip
Actually, I think _who you know_ has a lot more weight than what you studied.
Just look at the rich and famous who barely finished high school...

~~~
motoko
Right, which is a proxy for where you went to school and my disclaimer about
wealth and aristocratic connections.

------
rguzman
I think the article doesn't really take into account that the student body
also affects the return one might get from higher ed. This is argued here:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=448588>.

It is more likely that higher ed is not going to burst like a bubble. Instead,
demand for it will scale back down gradually to a point where the return those
who get a higher education is worth the price tags. For it to be like a bubble
something like a phase-transition in the way a college education is perceived
would be necessary. However, it seems more likely that this perception is
bound to change slowly and gradually instead.

------
snowbird122
Looking at this from a strictly economic point of view, it is obvious that as
the price of higher education continues to outpace inflation, a point must
come when is negative expected value to attend college. Knowledge will be your
reward. And debt.

------
jwesley
No.

~~~
yters
The fact this got 4 upvotes suggests the article is right.

~~~
likpok
The fact that s/he got 4 upvotes suggests that few people here think he is
right. Or few people here even saw his comment. But it has little bearing on
whether he actually is.

~~~
yters
I'm assuming a) he made the comment b/c he went to college and b) 4 upvotes is
a significant amount for this thread. If college taught him to think well, he
should be able to give a better reply than "No." If those agreeing with him
agree because they also went to college, they should point this out instead of
just upvoting him.

~~~
likpok
Maybe they did somewhere else. His response does not leave much to discuss
however (perhaps a better reason for the low number of points).

------
xenophanes
Yes.

------
Ardit20
I will make this comment only because I perceive that it is mostly people who
are much older than me and left education a while ago that are commenting.

To me personally ( I have not read the article imply replying to the comments)
seems that people are generalising excessively and most importantly being very
simplistic.

Education is a very very very big thing, education almost encompasses life
itself and everything that life entails. As such it is not very easy to find
the right answer to the question of: how can we best develop the youngsters of
today for the skills of tomorrow.

For me personally I believe that the only way we can improve our educational
system is by listening to the students and their criticisms or compliment for
afterall it is them who are going through the day to day experiences of being
taught. This approach is not perfect of course, but then hey nor is life. I
simply think it is a much better aproach than allowing those who have been in
a classroom 30 years ago dictating the order of the day although the
posibilities are rather high that they have lost touch with the educational
system.

That is only one part but then academia is so uterly complex as to take into
consideration the hierarchical society that we find ourselves in and maybe
conciously or uncoinciously upper the standart for some places while lowering
it for others.Maybe against even this taking students view into consideration
can counterbalance it.

~~~
pmjordan
I (relatively recently) studied at a UK university (among the top 10 according
to league tables: a classic "oxford reject" university) so I'm not sure how
transferrable my experiences are to the US education system. The UK's isn't
quite as expensive ("only" about 1/5 to 1/6 of median gross income in
tuition), but I certainly did notice that the majority of students seemed to
be there primarily because their parents wanted them to, and/or because their
secondary school teachers had basically tuned them towards university. Not
because they were genuinely seeking the cerebral stimulation of their studies.
The open days, etc. were also geared towards that attitude: parents, your kid
will be safe here and is practically guaranteed a respectable middle class job
after graduating; kids, it won't be so bad, look at all the non-studying
activites you can do!

I'd actually have to include myself into that group: I was basically pressured
into studying physics by my parents and my physics teacher. Studying CompSci
or EE or whatever never was on the table in the first place, after all that
would've been an investment into the stuff that was causing me to go to bed
late and doze at school, not for what I was winning prizes at school and
beyond. Equally out of the question was not attending university: that's not
what upper middle class kids do.

Now halfway through my degree, I became self-aware and figured out that it was
all crazy and it was all just leading me into the rat race, so I decided to
try to make the best of the remaining time, but most students never did - they
graduated and applied for jobs at companies that were recruiting at the
university or they followed in their parents' footsteps. (FWIW I discovered I
loved maths almost as much as programming, so I ended up taking as many mathsy
modules as possible - unfortunately the university weren't flexible about this
so I mostly did them without getting credit)

I have to say I doubt asking the students is going to make much of a
difference. You might get better bars and sports facilities at the
universities, that's about it.

~~~
zandorg
I took an AI course because I wanted to learn. I learned other technologies in
the non-AI modules.

I learned Lisp (aka Scheme), SQL, Prolog, CORBA, Java (I already knew C++),
and Business (etc).

My grades aren't good enough to get a job (I got a 2:2) but it doesn't matter
- I can run my own business with what I know.

~~~
pmjordan
My point is that people like yourself are the exception.

