

It's time to study the value of college (rising costs, falling benefits) - timr
http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/04/16/frum_commentary/

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bokonist
The real culprit is credentialism.

In the 1800's, a high school drop out could architect the New York Public
library. Abe Lincoln became a lawyer by reading in his spare time and passing
the bar exam. Today, the law requires you to have 7 years of college to
practice either occupation.

Why did this happen? As far as I know it was not because buildings were
falling down left and right. The most likely answer is that people who work an
occupation want to erect barriers to entry, thus forcing up their own wages.
The policy has a ratchet effect, as a large interest group is now created of
people who are dependent on those barriers. Thus the policy is extremely
difficult to roll back.

If we really want to open career doors for the most people possible at the
lowest cost, we should eliminate legal schooling requirements for all
occupations. Then we can return to the 19th century apprenticeship system,
which was completely free and gave better career preparation.

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Alex3917
"The most likely answer is that"

There are books on the history of education you know. It's not like you have
to guess.

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bokonist
You can read in the history books ( and I have) that these laws were pushed
hard by the relevant professional associations. But the motives are a matter
of interpretation. They aren't going to come out and say, "We want to
establish legal education requirements so that we can make more money". The
argument they make is that we need to make sure everyone is "qualified."
Perhaps they were being sincere, perhaps not. But if even if they were wrong
out of ignorance, the idea could out compete the truth because it has a built
in ratchet affect.

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Alex3917
So we might not be able to determine the absolute truth, but we can still do
significantly better than taking a wild-ass guess.

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ghiotion
It's an interesting idea and one that has merit. One of the smartest
programmers I know didn't go to college. He spent his formative years building
pipe organs and having 5 kids.

However, this makes the mistaken assumption that college's only role is to
prepare you for a career. I majored in Philosophy at a Jesuit college in
Chicago. Currently, I'm a software developer. College was about getting
introduced to new ideas and read books I would have never sought out on my
own. Really... who reads Augustine or Kierkegaard anymore? I learned how to
live on my own in college; how I wanted to spend my time and my money, how to
survive in my first apartment and make rent money. I also met a great bunch of
friends I still keep in contact with.

Bottom line: college should never be treated like a trade school. It's not
designed for job training. If you consider it so, it never makes economic
sense. College, and liberal arts degrees in particular, teach you how to
think.

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AndyKelley
Also: networking.

One thing I disagree with you about college is teaching you how to think. At
mine anyway, I'm assaulted every day with worthless crap that makes me want to
shut off my ears. Mostly liberal crap like 'diversity,' 'cultural
appreciation,' and 'the bees are being killed by cell phone waves.'

On the other hand, I do learn all kinds of wonderful things from fellow
Computer Science students. It may be worth it.

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ardit33
If you don't feel challenged, then take harder clases then. I thought my first
year was really easy, and started getting agressive in choosing harder
classes. Major CS, Minor Math and Physics, and by the second semester of the
third year school was kicking my balls. Plus I was busy doing TONS of
extracurricular activities, meeting people, and of course having some fun and
going to parties once and a while.

Overrall it was an exellent experience. If I was 18 again, I'd do it again in
a heart-beat.

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justindz
The guys is arguing that because degrees are held more widely now, they are
less differentiating. That's not a reason, necessarily, to stop valuing a
degree. Perhaps it indicates that employers and resumes need to look past
"went to my classes, got As, was in fraternity F and honorary H" and look for
things like "dual major in CS and Film, part of student team who designed
university online film archive."

In other words, look for people who demonstrated non-rote talent while in
college and were ambitious enough to capitalize on their education. Otherwise,
I could say that almost everyone goes to high school so why go to high school
and fund it with taxes or private fees? That's a bit unfair, but also a bit
fair as an extension of the argument.

I don't have anything to say about the rising cost of college. I need to look
into this. I know it increased every year I was in college due to projects
like a new gymnasium with a big rock wall (to impress the alumni foundation)
and other things like that. Much of what universities do could probably be
student designed and run on the cheap, while providing practical education of
the above-mentioned kind.

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pchristensen
Exactly - just because every car has air condition now, doesn't mean that it's
no longer worth putting air conditioning in the cars you sell.

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Maven911
But it does make your car a whole lot less special since every car has one.

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yummyfajitas
Subsidies are definitely part of the problem, since they make students less
price sensitive.

Another part of the problem is that there is no incentive for cost control in
the university.

I can give a great example of this, from my current university. I'm currently
teaching a "Quantitative Reasoning" class right now. Basically, take Weeks 1-2
of Prob&Stat and expand it to fill a whole semester (half a semester, due to
poor planning and miscommunication). Some of this is my fault, some of it not
(2 syllabuses floating around, both of which I was told to ignore). Plus, my
students are all art/history/literature majors, and just don't need it.
Everyone in the room would be better off keeping their $4,000 and not sitting
through my class.

So why is this abomination required? Because the department needs money (1)
and requiring everyone to take our courses is a way to get money.

In principle, someone in the university should put their foot down and say
"this is nonsense, lets just require 1 less class and charge $4,000 less". But
there is no such person in the modern university system.

(1) I'm told some of our "beat the Soviets through mathematics" grants were
finally cancelled. But I'm not sure about this one.

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g00dn3ss
We went to a financial planner and he projected how much it would cost to send
our kids to college. He plotted out these graphs and then told us "we'll
assume that college costs continue to outpace inflation by 2%, since they have
for the past 20 years..." I appreciated what he was doing but I know there is
no way that can continue. At some point in the very near future, you can live
off the interest of the cost of 4 years of college.

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lamaw
A key to making student performance highly predictive of job performance is
customizing curriculum. As nearly as I can tell, this customization requires
the introduction/popularization of particular online markets.

Naturally, I'm working on said intro :-)

The BigCo-praised details of my analysis are online at
<http://www.loveatmadisonandwall.com>.

Best,

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dangoldin
No matter how rational it would be to not attend college or reduce the
emphasis on college educations, I doubt it's gonna happen. Too many people and
institutions are already vested in the system, and I doubt a parent who went
to college will be happy when their child does not want to go. It just seems
very self perpetuating to me.

