
Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ about education - PretzelFisch
https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-pushes-colleges-to-the-breaking-point-forcing-hard-choices-about-education-11588256157
======
nimbius
Disclosure: i never went to college, I went to a trade school.

Colleges really only started scaring the heck out of me when I started
enjoying my career. After spending a day wrenching in a garage, we'd hit
miller time and head down to the Soapbox Bar and Grill. Over the span of a
month or two ordering buckets and shooting pool I learned our bartender Javon
had a masters in biology and his fiancee Cortisha who bussed the tables had a
bachelors in mining science. The both of them came in well below what I
earned, had no healthcare and no retirement. I remember having a few too many
boilermakers one night and I asked why he was serving grease monkey clowns
like us instead of working on flowers. Javon just said theres no work, and the
work he would get would pay about as well as a fry cook anyway. He had some
massive college bills too and i didnt understand how those worked, but you
cant get rid of them like you can a car loan.

That scared the hell out of me. You could waste a hundred grand on something I
always thought made people into millionaires and still wind up serving suds to
a drunk in a blue jumper covered in soot from a runaway 2 stroke who thinks
you "invent flowers." I woke up the next morning with a hangover and anxiety.

~~~
gwd
> He had some massive college bills too and i didnt understand how those
> worked, but you cant get rid of them like you can a car loan.

This is the thing that is really the most shameful and outrageous thing about
the US system. Our entire K-12 educational system and our culture is set up to
paint a college degree as a ticket to "the good life". Then an 18-year-old,
potentially with parents who aren't great at math but have great aspirations
for their child, is sat down and asked to sign a load of papers, not realizing
that this will lock them into decades of unforgiveable debt and wage slavery.

There's a reason many ancient religions forbid loaning money at interest
entirely; and it's the same reason we have bankruptcy laws. None of those
reasons somehow go away just because it's a student loan -- on the contrary,
an 18-year-old thinking they're buying a ticket to a better life is far _more_
vulnerable than the vast majority of people who will ever be seeking a loan.

All of us should be regularly lobbying our lawmakers to make student loans
dischargeable by bankruptcy, just like any other loan.

~~~
jedberg
> All of us should be regularly lobbying our lawmakers to make student loans
> dischargeable by bankruptcy, just like any other loan.

The reason they aren't dischargeable is because what bank in their right mind
would give a loan to an 18 year old with no collateral? They only guarantee
they get that it will be paid back is the fact that it can't be discharged.

Student loans would dry up overnight if they could be discharged at
bankruptcy.

That being said, I actually think that's a good thing, because it would force
colleges to charge reasonable tuition rates and also offer scholarships if
they want to get the best students.

But barring shifting to a European model of college funding, I don't see the
US allowing dischargeable loans, nor do I think they should, because the
reality of it is that colleges won't reduce their rates nor increase their
scholarships, they would just be completely out of reach of poor and middle
class students.

~~~
gwd
> The reason they aren't dischargeable is because what bank in their right
> mind would give a loan to an 18 year old with no collateral?

If it's a bad bet for the _bank_ , it must be _far_ worse of a bet for young
adults. That's the point -- right now we're essentially suckering millions of
naive young adults into a life of wage slavery by giving them a "bet" which
they are completely unequipped to evaluate; and many of them are making a bet
when they shouldn't.

What you're essentially arguing is, "We have to enslave these people or
society wouldn't function". On the contrary: we must not enslave these people;
if stop doing it, society will figure out some other way to get things done.

~~~
jefftk
_> If it's a bad bet for the bank, it must be far worse of a bet for young
adults._

That doesn't follow: you could graduate, get your degree, and declare
bankruptcy. You're fine, your loan is gone, and the bank regrets their
investment.

~~~
BurningFrog
Let's make that point clearer:

Since the bank is absolved from making that bet, it is now the young adult
making the same bet that no sane bank would take.

A lot of people are now living with having lost that bet.

~~~
jefftk
The bank doesn't want the bet because "bankruptcy" means very different things
to the bank and to the student. To the bank it means they lose all their
money. For a just-graduated person with minimal assets it's not that bad --
sure you can't get a mortgage to buy a house for a while, but you probably
couldn't have afforded that anyway with student loans. You still have the
degree, they can't take that (well, [https://www.jefftk.com/p/repossessing-
degrees](https://www.jefftk.com/p/repossessing-degrees)).

~~~
zhynn
I would not underestimate the impact bankruptcy plays in someone's life. You
would be getting a bankruptcy on your record in the prime of your life (mid-
twenties), making it very very difficult to borrow for the next 10 years. You
end up starting building credit in your mid to late thirties, and maybe you
are able to participate in the modern economy in your forties. It sucks. I
lived it.

~~~
Spivak
However, in a world in which it is common for college students to declare
bankruptcy immediately after graduating, financial institutions might take
advantage of that information and realize that their creditworthiness is much
higher than the bankruptcy would predict. Kind of like how the stock price
many companies go up after they cut retirement benefits.

This of course will be to the spiral and collapse of the college loan system.

~~~
imtringued
How high is the creditworthyness of someone who is on a repayment plan to
service another debt? It is practically zero. Declaring bankruptcy just limits
the duration of the mortgage to 7 years. You still have to pay as much back as
you can unless you are literally an unemployed hobo on the street for 7 years.

------
xhkkffbf
I wish I could be more sympathetic to the college industrial complex, but
they've been treat us poorly for years. Yes, I know it's our fault for
demanding gold plated educational experiences and then going into crazy debt
to finance it. But who wants to blame himself/herself?

The job can be done better for much less. Indeed, it used to be much cheaper
in the past when the dorms weren't so fancy and there were a bazillion deans
waltzing around trying to look essential. The adjunct professors get paid next
to nothing. Let's give them a slight raise, fire 90% of the deans and we'll
get back to something sustainable and affordable.

~~~
runawaybottle
I’m still waiting for someone to explain to me how 15K+ in tuition a year is
acceptable.

No sympathy here for the college industry.

~~~
michaelt
_> I’m still waiting for someone to explain to me how 15K+ in tuition a year
is acceptable._

I believe people who support such things think as follows:

1\. $15k a year tuition for 4 years is a great deal if it turns you into a
banker or programmer with a $150,000 a year salary and a 40-year career.
Indeed, it would be unjust for a garbage man's taxes to be paying for a
stockbroker's education.

2\. Majoring in poetry might not be such a clearly great decision, but if
you're on the left politically, banning poetry is anti-intellectual; and if
you're on the right market demand is its own justification.

~~~
CydeWeys
It's not unjust if that garbageman went to university too, or at least had the
same opportunity. Society is better off with better educated citizens. It's
why we have free public schooling up through the age of 18; many other
countries simply carry that farther.

On the poetry point specifically, I really think writing degrees in general
would be more successful if they were granted by trade schools (i.e. a focus
on doing the thing, not a focus on academic scholarship about the thing).

~~~
vonmoltke
> It's why we have free public schooling up through the age of 18; many other
> countries simply carry that farther.

To be fair, we also have _compulsory_ schooling for that period as well, and
it makes complete sense to use tax revenue to pay for something the same
government is making you do.

Note that I don't oppose the use of tax revenue to fund voluntary education,
and I personally benefited heavily from it. Its just that using the example of
the government paying for something it made mandatory is not much of an
argument in itself for having it pay for something that is voluntary.

~~~
CydeWeys
There are scores of government services that aren't compulsory/universal
though. I don't think that's a key differentiator. And there's plenty of
things the government makes you do that they don't pay for, either.

------
contemporary343
A couple of points: not all colleges are created the same. Many state schools,
particularly top-tier ones offer fantastic educations at an excellent price-
point. They are a good value, and will remain so. Along with need-based aid
and scholarships, they are amazing vehicles to reduce generational inequality
(look at UCLA for example). I can only speak to the engineering (not software)
side of things, but from lab work to project-based design classes, I gained
skills, knowledge and experience from well-trained instructors in a way that I
think would be very difficult to begin to replicate in a remote experience.

Many, if not most students, can't learn effectively by themselves through
online videos alone. Structure, assessments and regular interaction with
teaching staff have real, measurable value.

Finally, the social networks that universities provide students and alumni are
valuable. We're social beings. These networks open students to possibilities
and careers they may not have considered. Of course, there are negatives to
this as well.

Universities remain economic engines, particularly across wide swaths of semi-
rural parts of the country. They create dynamic flows of people, ideas and
capital that are undeniably important.

~~~
gnulinux
I would personally consider the education I received in UC Berkeley when I was
there studying CS, excellent. It was very challenging (in a way, it's
impossible to exaggerate this), I found tons of help from TAs, my peers,
professors were experts in their fields, labs were very useful to make me
experience "real life" stuff and discussions were very useful to learn
"theory" side of things, both of these occurring in the same class. I had a
lot of research opportunities, and "hand-on" engineering opportunities.

The only problem I can think of right now, it was occasionally hard to get the
class you want; but with a few strategies it was manageable to get all the
classes you want.

I hear a lot of people who criticize college being "4 years of fun". I don't
doubt this is the case for most people, but this cannot be further than my own
experience (and my friends in Berkeley who studied some STEM field). When you
have _endless_ stream of homeworks, projects, midterms and often-times you
need to make decisions so that you minimize the penalty you can get by
spending too little time on a HW (as opposed to maximizing your grade), there
was simply not enough time to socialize. Obviously there were many people who
socialized and partied but their GPAs were low. Also obviously, there were
people who socialized and partied also had high grades, but they were very
brilliant and were probably 0.1% of the class. Most of us mere mortal souls
spent weeks in library studying and perfecting ourselves.

We can have endless discussions about importance (or lack thereof)
universities, but given the correct setting, and correct motivation, they can
be incredibly good tools.

When I came to Berkeley my family was piss poor and I was a 1st generation
college student. Fast-forward 3 years (I graduated in 3 years as opposed to 4)
I found a 6 figure job doing what I love every day, programming. I think
that's a very good deal.

Controversial claim ahead: I think this discussion about universities'
importance is uniquely American. I think we're simply discussing the wrong
thing. Instead of questioning whether college is important for X, Y, we should
be discussing how we can make every single American go to college. Yes this
would mean having public universities where Americans can go without any cost,
European style.

~~~
goldenchrome
That sounds like masochism. I went to a decent public school, worked hard
sometimes, partied whenever, and yet I work for the same kind of company as
you. A good 25% of my class ended up the same way.

If your goal is to make money, then I don't think hard work matters nearly as
much as figuring out the social aspect of how to fit in with working
professionals.

~~~
gnulinux
That's true. My point was college isn't necessarily 4 years of chilling and
partying for everyone, which is weirdly how everyone I talk about seems to
frame this debate. Some of my elders don't even believe college wasn't 7/24
frat parties, ideological indoctrination and protesting.

EDIT: Also, to be clear, masochism was part of the problem. In college I
thought I wanted to be a professor so I was working hard for grad school so I
can get into a good PhD program. I was also doing a lot of research. Then I
realized I liked being an engineer, and I don't have money to go to PhD. I
DEFINITELY didn't need a near 4.0 GPA and taking ALL the hardest
CS/engineering/math classes to get a six figures job.

------
chadash
I think it's time to decouple education from all of the other things tied to
colleges. When I studied abroad in Australia, things like the gym or meal
plans were available, but not "bundled in" to your tuition. The idea of tying
competitive sports teams to a university would be laughable.

We need to remove all of the "excess" stuff from higher education and get back
to the core of education and research. Sure, things like football might be net
profitable (for some schools), but lacrosse, baseball, swimming, gymnastics
and all of that are not and students shouldn't be paying for that.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
No, especially not football. At my college the football team is essentially a
separate corporation. The college gets nothing from the arrangement. In fact
they have to rent parking from the football folk.

Fat deal were made to coaches over the years, until its all pork-barrel
dealing and nothing left for the school. The students can't even go to games,
the ticket prices are a semester's tuition.

~~~
a9h74j
Pre-1990 I read this quote from a college president: "College administration
boils down to sex for the students, football for the alumni, and parking for
the faculty."

~~~
blululu
The great Clark Kerr:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clark_Kerr](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clark_Kerr)

------
v4dok
I always found the US model of colleges so outlandishly short-sighted.
Problems of non-bankruptcy and wage slavery are just the very apparent
outcomes that you would have a system like this.

"Free" education is the only thing that separates us from a dystopian society
of social immobility. And hence people in US defend it.

I came from poor background and the fact that Uni education is free allowed me
to, first of all, receive it, and also take risks that I wouldn't be able to
do if I had to repay a 100k+ loan. These kinds of risks are what in essence
allow social class movement, otherwise, we are talking about more comfortable
wage-slavery.

On the other hand, belief in higher education wanes, people question if
degrees like philosophy are "useful" (whatever that means) and then question
why voters have no critical thinking to decide their own future.

I would love to see if there is historical data supporting my intuitive belief
that free access to higher education made significant differences in the
advancement of otherwise similar nations. USA is throwing its education down
the drain and the decay is already visible.

~~~
RandallBrown
I don't think anyone _has_ to take a 100k loan to pay for college in the US.
There are many many many colleges that are cheaper than that and there's a
HUGE variety in financial aid that can make college free.

~~~
battery_cowboy
The 100k is over 4 years and tends to be mostly from "room and board" costs
rather than the actual cost of credits. So the courses might be 10k a year and
housing is 15k, for example.

------
EarthIsHome
College isn't as appealing as it once was. In order to participate in the
economy, we need a well-paying job. We're told to get a well-paying job, we
need a good degree. To get a good degree, many of us have to go into debt. We
finish college with a good degree but are saddled with thousands of dollars of
debt (sometimes tens of thousands). And this college debt doesn't go away if
we go bankrupt. It will always follow us. So, while we're trying to pay back
our debt for a good degree for a dream to live well in this life, we also have
to pay for our housing, to live, to eat, etc. It makes it so hard to save up
for a house or anything permanent. Everything always seems precarious because
it is. We're precarious. What's the point of a college degree if we're going
to be in debt while working after getting the degree? Might as well skip the
whole college part.

~~~
Ididntdothis
You are still way better off with college than without. It’s not as good a
deal as it used to be but it’s still the best deal available.

~~~
kevinskii
I'm not so sure. I would probably choose a vocational apprenticeship over a
B.A. in Sociology from State U.

~~~
magicsmoke
A B.A. in Sociology isn't a good comparison to vocational apprenticeships. A
better one would be a B.E in some kind of engineering.

~~~
kevinskii
I agree with you, but that wasn't the claim that I was replying to.

------
Justsignedup
The fairly recent law that you cannot bankruptcy out of a college load caused
all this.

\- Lenders are willing to lend to anyone knowing they will HAVE to pay.

\- Colleges over-inflated costs, way beyond inflation

\- It balanced out to this shit.

In the past, colleges had to be careful, and so did lenders, because lots of
people just didn't go to college due to cost. So they had to sell their worth.

~~~
mrlala
Well.. the problem is how can lenders "be careful" when loaning to an 18 year
old, which we can call an adult all we want but an 18 year old on their way to
college is basically a grown child with no money.

So how can a lender protect themselves? Make a parent with enough money co-
sign? Then you are essentially systematically not giving loans to poor
people.. and only giving "loans" to kids with parents who have money.

Anyway I do think it's a complicated problem.. we want to be able to give
loans to basically anyone so they can go to school; but if they are loaning to
people who by definition have no assets how can a lender protect itself
without essentially discriminating against the poor?

~~~
darth_avocado
I think it is not that complicated. In any case, there should be risk
management involved. If you have a parent with enough money, make them co-
sign.

If you come from a not so wealthy background, then you only get a loan for a
program that has a higher earnings potential than what you put in. I mean come
on, Williams College, the supposedly best liberal arts school in the country
has a "median" graduating salary of 58k, and this number does not include the
possibility that you could graduate with a major no one wants to hire. 1 year
of cost of just tuition and room and boarding is 74k. This does not include
other costs like health insurance, books, and other equipment, extra living
costs. You add this up, you can easily run up the bill to 400k. You seriously
think a person should be able to get this loan to graduate in "Arabic
Studies"? I mean I am sorry that people come from a poor background (me
included), but taking out that 400k loan without any checks and balances seems
irresponsible.

------
Upvoter33
Not all colleges are the same. For example, at the UW-Madison, over half the
students leave with do debt at all. There is a Bucky tuition promise so that
any low-income person will have college paid for in entirety.

All of the negative comments on here treat "college" as if it is one unified
thing, when in fact the experiences across institutions (both educationally,
as well as financially) are quite different.

All of that said, to those who say "free college": try telling that to a
person in the middle of the state, who has never been to Madison, has never
had a kid go to Madison, and who has to pay their tax dollars to support the
University. It is a hard sell. Sure, it'd be great if people were willing to
support colleges so that they were free. But the taxpayers, by and large,
aren't.

~~~
kevindong
> try telling that to a person in the middle of the state, who has never been
> to Madison, has never had a kid go to Madison, and who has to pay their tax
> dollars to support the University. It is a hard sell.

Everyone wins some and loses some with government spending. But overall as a
collective group, the idea is that the group is better off (e.g. a more
educated population produces greater amounts of valuable work which raises the
standard of living for everyone, etc.).

~~~
throwawayjava
Rural regions get their fair share of wins.

E.g., the massive amount of money that is redirected from productive cities
into relatively unproductive rural counties, many of which subsist on jobs
that would not exist without superfluous military bases, over-incarceration,
massive farm subsidies, or, yes, branch campuses of state university systems.
This happens at the state level too. Many of our state’s rural school
districts are almost entirely funded by redistributed taxes. Because their
local populations won’t even pass no-tax-increase no-debt-load-increase bond
issues to fix roofs.

Hopefully work from home will take off and rural communities/states will find
a way to become more productive.

~~~
arkis22
A fair share of wins seems to describe the elite coastal cities as well.

Essential workers are not the people running Facebook to sell likes, it's the
people picking and moving food to you.

Up to you if you'd like to consider that food a win for them and not you.

------
geogra4
This is where the continental european model of the university is so much
better than the anglo-american one.

Universities should be about coursework and research, that's it. Dorms, dining
halls, gyms, social clubs, sports etc. are not part of the university's
mission

~~~
vzidex
I disagree with you, however one aspect of the continental European model that
I admire is the close integration between post-secondary education and
industry. One of my cousins - who studied and now lives in Germany - did his
Masters and PhD on the topic of work he was doing while working at <large car
manufacturer>, where he still works today.

On the other hand, from my understanding such close integration between
advanced degrees and industry is less common in North America - to my
disappointment.

~~~
MatthiasP
This is not as common as you might think. Some universities do closely
collaborate with their regional industry, but the vast majority of master
thesis have zero practical application, just like in the US.

~~~
zhdc1
It generally depends on where the funding comes from, at least from what I've
seen. Chairs or individual projects that are funded by industry generally hand
walk graduate students through partner-sponsored topics.

------
throwawaysea
I would like to see a reckoning for the modern college and university model.
They have extremely bloated administrative costs due to the moral hazards of
public funding, they have accumulated ideologically biased fields that should
never have been legitimized ([https://areomagazine.com/2018/10/02/academic-
grievance-studi...](https://areomagazine.com/2018/10/02/academic-grievance-
studies-and-the-corruption-of-scholarship/)), they are increasingly becoming
political monocultures that are hostile to any diversity of thought, and they
seem archaic when their primary function these days is not to teach
(especially at large, well endowed, research universities) but to certify.
That is, people mostly attend college to leverage their names as a proxy for
economic value on a resume. Could they largely be replaced with testing
centers and more focused vocational schools?

All that said, maybe what we need is simply increased competition. Rather than
a few, large colleges that absorb lots of students and funding, we need a web
of smaller universities that are given greater consideration (and support?)
than they are today. However, the current conditions might starve out the
smallest colleges or trade schools, and only amplify the hegemony of large
colleges.

------
brewdad
My kid will be making his college choice in the coming year. As such, he's
getting mail from colleges pretty much every day. The mailer from Vanderbilt
really struck me as to the wrongheaded thinking of university leaders. On one
side was this amazing blurb:

"Vanderbilt financial aid packages DO NOT INCLUDE LOANS. IT'S FREE
MONEY....65% of Vanderbilt students received some type of FINANCIAL
ASSISTANCE"

Tell me why college pricing makes shopping for a car look simple, even by pre-
internet standards.

~~~
ilamont
We just went through this. The finalist schools -- a big midwest Catholic
school and a large NE state university -- offered scholarships or grants
between $16k and $21k per year with some caveats such as min 2.0 GPA at one
and FAFSA qualifications staying roughly the same over the four year period.

These scholarships/grants brought the per-year cost close to the University of
Ottawa international rates, about $41k/year all in. If my senior had been
accepted to UMass Amherst, our in-state university, the all-in cost would
start at $33k/year (without FAFSA consideration).

The brand-name private colleges around the Northeast US now have all-in
sticker prices of $75k-80k. Financial aid in the form of grants or
scholarships (not loans) would have to be $35k-40k to make these schools
competitive on a cost basis with the examples given above.

~~~
MattGaiser
> The brand-name private colleges around the Northeast US now have all-in
> sticker prices of $75k-80k. Financial aid in the form of grants or
> scholarships (not loans) would have to be $35k-40k to make these schools
> competitive on a cost basis with the examples given above.

Harvard's financial aid is such that if your income is under $150,000, the max
you pay is 15K a year.

~~~
zhdc1
Harvard : )

------
burlesona
There’s this fairly well known idea in organizations that expenses will tend
to rise to fill the available budget. It’s not nefarious, just the natural
result of a competitive market - both the market inside the organization,
where people want to spend any money that is allocated to them (because why
not?), and the market outside the organization, where spending (on fancy
dorms, maternity wards, or rock climbing inside the office) is an arms race to
attract “the best” students, patients, or tech workers (just to name a few
examples).

Again there’s nothing inherently wrong with this. In tech, especially in the
Bay Area, it means a lot of us get to live pretty nice lives as our employers
have to invest a lot more of their budgets in attracting and retaining a
skilled work force.

The problem is when this sort of thing is fueled by subsidies and/or opaque
mechanisms. Google can afford to lavish it’s workforce from its own profits,
but the average startup these days is burning heaps of investor money on
“perks” to compete for talent that aren’t truly necessary.

But that’s private money, and if/when those companies fail, society at large
isn’t threatened.

When this same phenomenon happens in public institutions like Universities and
Hospitals, where the money is coming from individuals who need these services
to thrive, the damage is much greater. In the long run, public subsidy for
student loans doesn’t make college available to the masses, so much as it
balloons the cost and saddles students with debts. In the long run, the US’
Byzantine “insurance” system for health payments doesn’t spread the cost
around so much as it inflates and distorts the costs and changes insurance
from a “nice to have” to an increasingly expensive barrier to entry.

The global pandemic didn’t create the problems these institutions have, it’s
just exposing them and accelerating the inevitable failure of the
unsustainable. It’s going to leave a lot of damage in its wake.

Pessimistically, I expect these institutions to go beg for money from the
printer and try to sustain the unsustainable. But my optimistic side sees this
as an opportunity for all of us to question the systems around us, and try to
fix some of the underlying root causes that made these systems so fragile in
the first place.

------
JoeAltmaier
Once the role of professional college administrator became a thing, then they
took over. They're paid more than the faculty now. And they run it like a body
shop. To pay for their hyperinflated salaries and padded staff.

I wish I were being pessimistic about this.

~~~
0d9eooo
Speaking as a college professor, this is true. I started noticing really
quickly that there was an implicit expectation that faculty be evaluated on
their suitability and/or desire to move into administrative positions. This is
fine, but it got mingled with professional administrators brought in from
other institutions trained in business administration etc. Our president
actually had no experience in higher ed prior to their appointment, it all
being in large corporate business, and it was seen as a good thing somehow.

Everything has become very hierarchical, run as a corporation, focused on
profit maximization, with those profits going progressively more and more to
those higher and higher up the administrative chain.

------
lcall
Two accredited online ones that have interestingly sustainable models, and
possible interaction with others, I think:

BYU Pathway Worldwide and associated programs. It requires a Church
affiliation but not necessarily membership (I think). I think tuition is much
lower, bachelors programs (like IT, business, others) are available, programs
excellent, and is also suitable for those who need to first become qualified
for entering a university (edit: i.e., learning English which is used in
curriculum, and other basic skill), then provides that university. More info
is in Wikipedia and I have gathered a bit of info including linking to a news
article that explains it well I think, here:
[http://lukecall.net/e-9223372036854578440.html](http://lukecall.net/e-9223372036854578440.html)
.

And: [https://www.wgu.edu/](https://www.wgu.edu/) (also mentioned in
wikipedia): state aid available from multiple states it seems (per wkp).

~~~
grubb
I know that standard BYU has the lowest tuition in Utah, lower than any state
school, provided you are a tithe-paying member of the Mormon Church [1].
Otherwise they have a higher tuition, similar to the in-state/out-of-state
changes for most state schools. Does BYU pathway tuition work the same way?

I don't have a ton of experience with Western Governor's, but the fact that
unlike many online universities they are nonprofit is a good sign. Of course,
whether they have access to quality instructors is an unknown to me.

[1]: [https://finserve.byu.edu/students-parents/tuition-fees-
deadl...](https://finserve.byu.edu/students-parents/tuition-fees-deadlines)

~~~
lcall
Good question: if you ask BYU Pathway Worldwide people or browse their site to
learn about it, would be a good follow-up post here, to say. :) I am pretty
sure I link to them indirectly above (i.e., to a page that has a convenient
link to them).

(Edit: from what I have read, I don't think there are different tiers for
tuition, but it is all the same. Corrections welcome. I think it is quite low,
for any student, so the opportunity including for international students in
lower-income countries is significant.)

And for WGU, there were praises of it on this page from former students
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22719797](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22719797)
and Ctrl+F for "wgu"), and a relative of mine is planning to attend soon, but
I can't say from personal experience. I would certainly hope they do a good
job. At the _very_ least, they are accredited and one can use that credential
to earn money while continuing to learn well from many available sources (like
MIT online courses, unix system documentation, etc :).

~~~
lcall
Update: FWIW, wkp makes WGU sound good, like here:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WGU#Rankings](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WGU#Rankings)
and here:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WGU#Methodology_and_Rigor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WGU#Methodology_and_Rigor)
.

------
tharne
Any time you make money easily available for a certain good, whether through
debt or direct subsidy, the cost of that good is going to increase
proportional to the amount of money made available. This is what happened in
the housing market and with college tuition.

I'd be willing to bet that if you outlawed student loans (assuming that was
possible), you'd see colleges finding all sorts of ways to cut costs without
negatively impacting the students.

~~~
MattGaiser
You would probably end up with a two tiered system of online MOOCs for most
and the normal experience for the elite.

~~~
physicles
Yeah, this was Scott Galloway’s take in an early Prof G podcast.

------
AnimalMuppet
"Things that can't continue forever will stop."

Education wasn't on a sustainable course anyway (no pun intended). They
couldn't keep increasing costs, increasing numbers of students, living off of
the work of non-tenure-track instructors who got paid a pittance, and growing
the size and cost of the administration. I think that was getting close to the
breaking point, even without Covid.

~~~
Loughla
>living off of the work of non-tenure-track instructors who got paid a
pittance

This is, in my opinion, the number one problem in higher education right now.
Adjunct/associate/part-time faculty are good, many of them are great. But the
experience with those people is just not the same as with full-time tenured
faculty. When a faculty member is worried about whether or not they'll have a
course load next semester, their incentives are vastly different.

This is a system that needs to die.

Source: I have worked in higher education for a couple of decades now.
Adjunt/associate/part-time has exploded since 2009-10 or so. It's ridiculous.

------
non-entity
I started looking st going back to school starting around mid last year. I
picked up my research again in the past month.

All I've done is manage to make myself so much more cynical. Everything I read
and learned made it seem like college is nothing more than a pay to play game.
I'm not andti-education or anti-intellectual, but I sure as hell do not
support whatever the hell is going on in US higher education. I've been
tempted to write aboutit, but my particular circumstances are rather unique
and it would just come off as an angry rant.

~~~
swiley
IMO at least in the US college is an education themed social exercise.

------
cousin_it
Tech companies should take the lead on this. Say loud and clear: we no longer
ask about education, and no longer take education into account when hiring,
starting today. Devalue the sheepskin.

~~~
ryeights
How else do you propose companies should assess new hires, especially young
ones? And while the cost of tuition these days (IMO) outstrips the value of a
college education, that’s not to say that value is zero.

~~~
cousin_it
The question is rather, how do you think degrees help assess new hires?

1) Programming skills? These are easy to assess with programming exercises. If
someone has a degree but can't solve a programming exercise, I won't hire
them.

2) Interpersonal skills? But a tech degree doesn't certify those, you need to
assess them the hard way anyway.

3) Culture fit? But if you use degrees for that, it's simple discrimination,
"let's hire this guy because he's from MIT like us". Not sure why this should
be defended.

So in the end, degrees don't seem to help tech hiring in any way. I think tech
companies could stop looking at degrees with very little loss.

~~~
daseiner1
I think this is a very limited view of what college, and being a great
employee, is all about. Yes, I agree that education should not a priori be a
dealbreaker. However you're shortchanging here the value of a) accomplishing
something over a number of years, which a decent number of people with all 3
of the dimensions you specified, couldn't necessarily do; and b) the Gen Ed
side of technical degrees. Strong communication skills and a general
intellectual background are both valuable assets in an employee, and aren't
captured by programming skills|interpersonal skills|culture fit, but are
hinted at by, e.g., the ability to write a 10 page research paper which is a
degree requirement for the top-line university certifications.

Yes, all of these skills can be gained and evinced without the traditional
4-yr college route, but I understand why generic Big Corp middle management
uses it as a proxy for establishing a baseline in what I, and you've,
mentioned.

------
neonate
[https://archive.md/7H1xu](https://archive.md/7H1xu)

------
shawndellysse
[http://archive.is/VX8ms](http://archive.is/VX8ms)

------
realbarack
Shuttered colleges should be turned into hubs for remote knowledge workers.
The worst part of remote work is that it's hard to build a community without
an office; college campuses are designed around community-building, with great
shared spaces, gyms, etc. They also tend to be in beautiful places that are
reasonably affordable, at least compared to the expensive coastal cities where
many knowledge workers live.

The current financial precarity of colleges and the massive increase in full-
time remote workers have created a very interesting set of pre-conditions. If
these conditions persist a while past the distancing phase of the virus, the
environment could be uniquely perfect for this shift to take place.

------
skwb
My big prediction for education is that a lot of research universities are
going to move large lecture halls online (think chem 101, etc) with labs,
seminars, and discussions with lower number of slots to abide with moderate
social distancing requirements. It provides the primary educational content of
lecture, and provides in person opportunities that students desire.

Once we see students and professors like this format compared to either all in
person or all online, I think it will stick around. There's clearly a need for
both improved efficiencies as well as the desire to have real human
interaction, and I suspect this Fall we'll have the golden opportunity to
really experiment with it.

~~~
kart23
We would like this if they made us pay a lot less. Currently we are still
paying the same amount in tuition, and some classes just provide a video a
week and maybe a trivial assignment. It just feels awful and I dont learn
anything from that type of experience.

------
diebeforei485
Well, a lot of college programs are just not worth it. The ones that are
(engineering) tend to be four years of sleep-deprivation.

------
wturner
I worked at a private college called Expression right at the end of the first
dot com bust.The founder wanted to turn the school into the "Julliard of the
digital arts" \- and keep the tuition as low as possible. For the first few
years it was a really interesting and unique place. To make a long story
short, the board of directors weeded the main founder out and moved the school
through the accreditation hoops so that students could get massive loans. As a
result, the school raised the tuition. The place exploded with students for x
number of years. When Obama came to office new laws killed off the loans (and
the school). Most of the original staff left and the whole thing was sold to a
company named SAE. I always wondered what would have happened if they were
never able to get accredited and were forced to stay a small trade school. The
aftermath is documented in the eastbay express article below (2015). From
reading current reviews, the place never recovered.

[https://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/sound-arts-fading-
out...](https://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/sound-arts-fading-out-at-
expression-college/Content?oid=4443620)

------
austincheney
Software should be either a trade school or a masters program depending on a
student’s level of commitment to the academics involved just like law,
medicine, or engineering.

The primary problem with education financing is unrealistic expectations. Do
some basic math before paying for any education. If an education loan costs
you a certain amount plus interests you need to make a certain amount minus
what you would earn without the education to qualify that expenditure. If
people currently working in your field aren’t making $150k then why would a
$100k loan make any sense? Why waste that kind of money? When you could attend
a trade school for $10k that allows you to earn $60k. Blaming the system does
not excuse bad personal financial decisions.

When I was picking schools out of high school I found the third cheapest 4
year university in Texas. It was the only school I applied to more than 20
years ago. A 12 hour semester cost $1800 including dorm, tuition, and meal
plan. Books and supplies were extra. To me that price made perfect sense
because it would take becoming a CEO to justify the expense.

~~~
RandallBrown
If you go 100k in debt to get a job that pays the same as one you could have
only gone 10k in debt for, it's probably because you like doing that better.

Some people would way rather be an elementary school teacher than an
electrician and that's fine.

~~~
austincheney
The same argument can be made for gambling and using cocaine. That’s fine,
maybe, but if financial slavery is the known output then don’t cry about how
expensive it is.

------
EGreg
Colleges, like Intellectual Property, impose artificial scarcity on the
acquisition and dissemination of knowledge in an age where the Internet has
allowed us all to publish and discuss like never before. They come from a time
when we couldn’t record audio and video and disseminate it so easily. Never
mind _multimedia_ , they use heavy textbooks!

There is a concept called “flipping the classroom”, where people can watch the
classroom lectures at home at their own pace, and do the homework together in
class. And these lockdowns just go to show that people can carry on learning
online. They just need a good coach or course.

Lectures are the commodity. Individual attention from tutors and labs is the
scarcity.

When even rich Hollywood celebs feel they need to bribe colleges for their
kids to get in, we know we have artificial scarcity and an old boys network.

Flipping the classroom is not enough. Here is what we can do to fix the
educational situation:
[http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=158](http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=158)

------
jdeibele
One of the things I was curious about was how many people are in school now
compared to the 60s and 70s. I had trouble finding a graph or statistics on
how many people are in school but
[https://www.statista.com/statistics/184272/educational-
attai...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/184272/educational-attainment-
of-college-diploma-or-higher-by-gender/) shows that 14.6% of men and 10.1% of
women in 1971 had completed 4 years of college.

For 2019, that was 35.4% of women and about 34% of men.

So there are 3 times as many women and 2 times as many men as there were 50
years ago.

And that's for students who have completed 4 years. I would be surprised if
the number of students who started and didn't make it to 4 years wasn't also
2-3 times higher than it was back then.

------
zarkov99
This situation is exposing colleges as the scam that they are. Families are
getting indebted up to their eyeballs, thinking are paying for education. In
reality the education can be had for free. What they are really paying for is
a sorting function, something that could also be had for free with national
exams.

~~~
MattGaiser
> something that could also be had for free with national exams.

That just causes the money to be poured into national exam test prep like in
South Korea or China.

~~~
zarkov99
Some money maybe, but "the money"? Korean and Chinese families are paying 250K
per kid in test prep?

~~~
MattGaiser
It wouldn't be 250K USD due to lower incomes, but the average South Korean
family spent 20% of their income on test prep and private tutoring back in
2011. Anecdotally, a friend in China is talking about his future with his
girlfriend and they are looking at around that figure as well if they have
kids.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/s-korea-tries-to-
wrest-...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/s-korea-tries-to-wrest-
control-from-booming-private-tutoring-industry/2011/01/12/AFNXQfXC_story.html)

[http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2094427...](http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2094427,00.html)

[https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2176377/chin...](https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2176377/chinese-
parents-spend-us43500-year-after-school-classes-their)

~~~
zarkov99
Its a lot more than I expected. Thanks for pointing this out.

------
gnusty_gnurc
Good! These aren't hard choices - this is the type of prudent spending that
happens when you're not guaranteed infinite sums of money from the federal
government. Scale back on the insanely bloated administrative staff, lavish
facilities, sports stadiums, etc.

------
achenatx
State schools are still a relative bargain. I attended around 30 years ago and
it was about 5000/year + 4000 room and board. Tuition now is about 16Kyear and
room and board is about 13K/year. If tuition is doubling every 20 years, that
is about 3.6% growth in cost

The average public university is about 10K for tuition today. I think that is
attainable for a middle class family.

Where things are really out of whack is all the loans to attend private
schools. A student has no business going to any private school if they have to
take out 50-100K in loans per year.

There should be no govt backed loans to private schools and no student loans
should be discharged in bankruptcy.

------
tmaly
I feel like you can learn quite a bit now with just online material.

YouTube and the algorithm have really forced content creators to improve the
quality of the content.

It's going to be tougher for schools to charge 30-50K a year when there are
credible alternatives.

------
cwperkins
I understand that colleges charge the same tuition for online students and in
person students, but what's preventing the schools from lowering the cost of
online, part-time degrees as a way to increase enrollment? They may have
hosting costs, or costs associated with platforms like Coursera, but there's
no cost for facilities which should make them able to cut the tuition. The
cost of healthcare and education is far too high in the US. IMO Universal
means Affordable, Accessible and Abundant (In addition hopefully high quality
as well). Education and Healthcare should meet all of those points.

------
omgwtfbyobbq
My sense is it's a good idea to separate college as a place where you take
classes and can get a degree from college as a lifestyle choice. While living
at home and later with a friend, I went to a community college after high
school, that my family paid a nominal amount for, and transferred to a UC from
there that was entirely covered by Pell/Cal grants until graduation. No debt
required.

Had I gone straight to a 4-year from high school, lived at the school, and
made it a lifestyle as opposed to someplace I go to take classes, then I
likely would have graduated with a significant amount of debt.

------
code4tee
The higher education bubble has been building for a long time. It follows a
similar trend to the housing bubble: high prices fueled by loans that are too
easy to get and too hard to repay.

The current situation is likely going to force a hard reset for the industry.
Administrative bloat and other expenses will need to be addressed as colleges
get back to basics and focus on delivering education under a more sustainable
economic model.

A 10% decline in enrollment (much higher is realistic for many colleges) would
devastate the finances of most institutions. These will be an interesting next
few years.

------
nojvek
2 things that I feel hurt US and probably be why we lose to China.

1) Predatory college loans (which lead to overpriced education)

2) healthcare tied to employers where providers can charge after they provide
service months later. Very little transparency and insane markup.

Both are very specific to US, and absurd compared to every other wealthy
nation.

Fixing education and healthcare to be reasonable for lower and middle class
would do wonders for this country. Currently millions are in perpetual debt
due to medical bills and college loans. They won’t start companies and build
great things.

------
nilsocket
It's very interesting how the world comes rotating,

In ancient India, Education is considered as sacred and given utmost
important.

Basic Ideology is that student who have dedicated his life to studies
shouldn't suffer to learn. So education is free.

Basically university's are publicly funded and students also do other small
works as compensation.

For food, students used to go and beg (One needs to stand with a bowl infront
of someone's house, people will come and feed them).

Even though whole culture is destroyed due to colonization. Sadhus/Rishis
continue to do it even now.

------
archeantus
Burn it all to the ground. This model that saddles unknowing students with
debt, while locking in old and crusty professors to their cushy jobs for life,
is antiquated and needs to go.

------
tomohawk
Colleges have been peddling shoddy goods to unsophisticated buyers for years
with little or no regulation or oversight.

In fact, the government has propped them up with federal money, loan
guarantees, and a feeder school system that conditions their potential
customers and funnels them in the doors.

The shoddy goods are degrees that are highly unlikely to be worth what was
paid for.

You can't get more unsophisticated than an 18 year old who's been fed a dream
about how their life will be awesome if they get into the school of their
choice.

------
TomMasz
I'm currently adjunct faculty in a software engineering program. I have no
expectation of future work beyond the end of this semester as my school has
announced massive cutbacks across the board. I'm "lucky" in that I don't rely
on this for income but it still sucks. The only good thing is, as far as I
know, none of my senior students have lost a job offer as a result of the
pandemic.

------
caludio
Oh, so expensive private education is only sustainable in a hyper-inflated
economy? That's sarcastically unexpected.

------
TaylorGood
I once interviewed for a CD role at a private, vocational certificate college.
They do have some IRL locations but primarily online. The director shared that
their revenue was about $500m. I didn't take the role, and I was left scarred
knowing their revenue is someone elses debt and based on hope.

------
RickJWagner
I'm hoping the crisis will:

\- Better develop processes for remote education

\- Bring to light the idea that MOOCs are legitimate

\- Reduce the shocking amount of waste, privilege to the wealthy, and academic
cruft and butt-kissery

Wouldn't it be nice to emerge from all of this with a more level, more
accessible, and lower priced collegiate environment?

------
wespiser_2018
makes sense: colleges are are entering another recession, and there is already
a forecasted drop in enrollment of the wealthiest students, who should have
been born during the last recession, that will hit in 2026 and could be as bad
as a 15% to 20% drop in enrollment.

All in all, this might not be too bad, if you look at the growth in college
expenses over the last few decades, the rise in tuition isn't going to
instruction, it's going to administration, and hopefully this downturn will
lead to the emergence of mass market cheap credential that are feasible
solutions for everyone.

~~~
ashtonkem
Good to know it might be cheap to get a second degree in a few years.

------
nickgrosvenor
They should outlaw hiring practices with required college degrees for all but
the most regulated careers like doctors, lawyers etc.

To require a BS or BA for a sales job is insane and just creates servitude
dynamics for no reason.

------
BadassFractal
They won't be missed. I hope they use this as an opportunity to re-evaluate
what exactly they're offering to students for the currently astronomical
prices inflated by reckless borrowing.

------
ashtonkem
Like many institutions that are failing during this crisis; this is merely
accelerating a reckoning that was probably going to happen one way or another.

This doesn’t make it good or bad; it just is.

------
treyfitty
Maybe this is a controversial opinion, but why are parent's expected to foot
the bill of their children's education? When did this become the expectation?

------
pts_
It's called being spoon fed versus being responsible.

------
LaundroMat
Isn't the real "hard" choice to simply forget about a for-profit educational
system and make education a public service instead?

~~~
nilsocket
It's very interesting how the world comes rotating,

In ancient India, Education is considered as sacred and given utmost
important.

Basic Ideology is that student who have dedicated his life to studies
shouldn't suffer to learn. So education is free.

Basically university's are publicly funded and students also do other small
works as compensation.

For food, students used to go and beg (One needs to stand with a bowl infront
of someone's house, people will come and feed them).

Even though whole culture is destroyed due to colonization. Sadhus/Rishis
continue to do it even now.

------
state_throw_2
One of the "hard choices" some colleges are making is removing the requirement
for SAT or ACT tests for admission. While a case can be made against certain
types of standardized tests, will their admission criteria be made more
rigorous in other areas to compensate? Lowering the bar for incoming students
could end up reducing both the educational experience at the college and
eventually its reputation, making them even more desperate for unqualified
students in the future, ad infinitum until it gets bailed out or goes
bankrupt.

------
musicale
Colleges are addicted to insane tuition pricing (outpacing inflation for 40
years or more), enabled by excessive student loan debt.

------
craftinator
I was often told stories from the Boomer generation of people "working their
way through college", holding part time jobs through college to pay for both
living expenses and tuition. That is, quite literally, impossible today.

~~~
asah
Even GenX attending certain state schools could partially pay for school this
way, especially if you had low/free rent, for example living at home.

~~~
craftinator
Can you provide some sources for this? Let's assume minimum wage, calculate
average living expenses, hours spent in class and doing HW vs hours working. I
know I spent at least 70hrs a week doing school.

~~~
kingaillas
I'm GenX, went to college in the late 80's, in state tuition in TX was $2000
per semester as I recall. I knew people who worked a part time 20 hours/week
job that paid $8 an hour. (graveyard shift sorting boxes at a local shipping
company). I knew many others who did some program where they worked at the
college and made $5 an hour IIRC). I was a grader/TA/proctor for the first
year engineering course and made the princely sum of about $10/hr but there
was a lower cap on weekly hours which I don't recall exactly. I want to say it
worked out to 10 hours/week on average so about $100 a week. For two semesters
of about 18 weeks of work (10 hours a week) I could make $3600. But you had to
be a junior or senior so this job could only be done for 2 years.

Not sure what sources you want to see. The fact is tuition now is mind
bogglingly more than when I went. Or, tuition is outrageously jacked up now
compared to the past.

Here's a link from the Houston Chronicle showing tuition over the years for
TX:

[https://www.chron.com/news/houston-
texas/texas/article/The-c...](https://www.chron.com/news/houston-
texas/texas/article/The-cost-of-college-the-year-you-were-born-13161655.php)

For 1990 it shows average tuition, room, board was about $6500 for a YEAR, for
TX state schools.

Maybe you couldn't earn every penny you needed while also attending as a
student, but it sure was a hell of a lot easier to get 50% of the way there
than it is now. If you needed financial aid to bridge the gap you weren't
facing painful debt for decades. If you only had to borrow half of what you
needed, you could leave college with a loan of $13000 to pay off. That's a
cheap car.

~~~
craftinator
Ah my brain did a flip flop, mixed up genX with millennials. Yes, that was a
very different landscape than we have now. I recently went back to school for
an EE degree, and the costs were insane, even for someone with a good job and
middle class wealth. An interesting thing I noticed was the the time cost for
classes. I would spend a HUGE amount of time doing homework, maybe double the
time it took during my CS degree. A lot of that time was fighting against the
online homework system; what I could do on paper in 10 minutes would take 20
minutes to do, and the sheer load of homework was much higher. I can't imagine
trying to hold a decent job and still keep my grades up. College seems a
pretty poor option modern day.

------
say_it_as_it_is
The culture of higher education isn't what it used to be. The advancement of
knowledge is now secondary to economic growth in a university. Students begin
as customers and turn into products by graduation. Universities used to be
gatekeepers to better economic opportunities but those opportunities have
disappeared. This is a relatively recent phenomenon in that Baby Boomers don't
have the student loan obligations that generations following them do. Boomers
changed the policies to suit their own financial interests, destroying the
opportunities that they benefited by for future generations. Massive student
loan debt constrains major life decisions and limits access to credit. It's a
lot easier to navigate life when you don't carry inescapable debt burdens.
Government refused to limit access to credit and that allowed universities to
constantly charge more every year. You can't escape student loan debt as you
can business loans by declaring bankruptcy because of a fundamentally flawed
logic about what the student loan enabled. Higher education is an economic
investment. Yet, when the investment fails, the lenders aren't exposed to the
losses -- the borrowers are. This has been a great deal for lenders as they
aren't exposed to risk.

Unfortunately, neither a Trump nor Biden administration is going to change
anything. It's up to the free market and entrepreneurs to disrupt this
exploitative system.

~~~
ycombi3
I'm sorry, but how could someone not have agreed with your statement? Online
learning is a major threat to college for many of those reasons.

~~~
non-entity
Online learning isn't a very big threat to colleges because colleges hold a
sort of "social monopoly" on credentialling for majority of fields. No one
will care about you coursera certificates they want a bachelors degree.

~~~
ycombi3
True. But I still think this is changing for the better, just very slowly.

------
tasty_freeze
There are too many short-sighted idiots who don't realize that having your
neighbors child is the 2nd most important thing to having your own child
educated.

"But I didn't have childen! Why should I pay taxes for schools?" is not
uncommon. The answer, of course, is that we all benefit from their education,
and so it isn't unreasonable for tax money to be spent to help heavily
subsidize education.

I'm lucky; I went to college in the early 80s, at a good state school, and it
cost about $5000/year ($13K/year in today's dollars). I'm doubly lucky: my
parents paid for it, so I left college penniless but without debt. It sickens
me to read how much colleges are charging these days, and how even state
schools are modeling themselves after for profit schools. When I went to
school, most classes were taught by full time professors, many tenured, aided
by TAs. Now there are so many "associate professors", i.e., getting paid
minimal amounts per course hour taught without benefits. The system is rotten.

Back in the 70s, Texas was awash taxes from oil money. I knew someone who
attended UT Austin back then and it was a few hundred dollars per semester, as
the state picked up the rest. Conservatives were conservative back then too,
but they saw the value in an educated public. Now they feel like schools
should be self funding.

~~~
waynecochran
I was also lucky. Undergrad funded by my parents. Grad school funded by
assistantships with most tuition waved. I got a PhD with zero debt.

My father could pay for college himself back in the 50's and 60's a summer job
and with a part time job during the year. His parents were poor and
uneducated, yet He got a PhD with no debt.

Now my kids are facing college. The landscape has changed and it is not good.
I am very well paid but I make too much money for financial help, but not
really enough to pay for 4 years of college for all my kids. I have saved
money and have paid off my house, but I don't have another $600K set aside for
college. I don't want them getting out of school with debt, so I will make
sure they don't do anything stupid with large student loans. But I imagine
they will all have to take on some debt.

The sad thing, college is not better (actually worse in the liberal arts --
that is a different discussion) and the inflated costs are insane. The money
is _not_ going towards better professors -- I was a professor for 18 years and
I didn't see a proportional growth in teaching and research. Almost all of the
extra money went into the bureaucracy.

------
beams_of_light
I'm using Blendle, but can't find this story there.

~~~
GnarfGnarf
As I understand Blendle, they only offer _some_ stories from their list of
publishers. NYT, WSJ, WaPo, LA Times, etc. will pick & choose what they allow
Blendle to offer. Top-tier stories will not be shared through Blendle, and
will be reserved for direct subscribers.

It makes Blendle less attractive to me.

~~~
beams_of_light
That's too bad. Guess this is almost useless to me.

------
findyoucef
I'm a developer at a university. We're horrified.

------
Kilonzus
no paywall: [https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/coronavirus-pushes-
college...](https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/coronavirus-pushes-colleges-to-
the-breaking-point-forcing-hard-choices-about-education/ar-BB13qkTg)

------
dredmorbius
There's a whole long discussion to be had on the purpose of education, and it
goes back a long ways

TL;DR: skills vs. reasoning.

For oligarchs, especially of public education, it is a skills-manufacturing
pipeline for producing an efficient but docile wage-slave workforce.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery)

For themselves, they reserve critical thinking, un-bowdlerized. Yes, an
eponym.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Bowdler](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Bowdler)

As Brother Mouzone said in _The Wire_: "You know what the most dangerous thing
in America is, right? N-----r with a _library card_."

[https://invidio.us/watch?v=bRCyZydgqdc](https://invidio.us/watch?v=bRCyZydgqdc)

(Yes, bowdlerized.)

It's the liberal arts vs. the servile arts. "Liberal" because they are
liberating, essential to freepersons. It's the undercurrent of virtually all
education reform.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_arts_education](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_arts_education)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artes_mechanicae](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artes_mechanicae)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_reform](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_reform)

Today, higher education is virtiually entirely a credentialing, branding, and
gatekeeping mechanism. And like all gatekeepers, the higher-education-
industrial complex collects rents.

And this goes back a ways. Hardly the first, but: "On the role of Universities
and Primary Education as Social Indoctrination: John Stuart Mill via Hans
Jensen", from the 1860s:

[https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/6x7u6a/on_the_...](https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/6x7u6a/on_the_role_of_universities_and_primary_education/)

Mind, a college or university _experience_ can be a hugely transformational
thing, most especially if the student transgresses the curriculum. In the
mid-1980s I shared a campus with some incredibly capable students (several
have appeared in HN stories), granted with many who weren't. There were on-
campus events, issues, and politics. There were faculty, emeriti, and visiting
lecturers who were notable in their fields, including more than a few
recognisable names. At least some of whom were patient enough to talk to a
clueless undergrad for an hour or so. The arts & lecture series gave access to
principle minds and creators. I discovered the on-campus library with a
collection in the millions of volumes, part of a multi-campus system numbering
in the tens of millions, indexed (though not directly accessible then) via an
at-the-time groundbreaking computerised catalogue system -- a preview of
DuckDuckGo-like search engines of today. And through the campus computing
centre, free use of a shared Unix system, also with multi-campus connectivity,
and access not only to such stunning tools as csh, vi, sed, awk, and troff,
but email, ftp, and tin.

All of this (and more) has shaped who I am, how I think, and what I value
today.

None of this appears in my (mediocre) grades, transcrpts, or degrees. It was a
level of access (gatekeepers, remember) largely otherwise impossible _at the
time_. Today's Internet ... makes a significant part of this experience far
more generally possible, though there is still a tremendous element of being
in the same space with someone, or a group, or access to physical
infrastructure, equipment, and environment that online experience can still
not match.

And the system in which I'd participated evolved out of a long train of policy
decisions, backlashes, many quite political: Thatcher-Reagan conservativism,
1970s eco-awareness and peace movements, 1960s Sputnik-fuelled space-race and
nuclear techno-FOMO and -optimism, civil rights, and university expansion,
RAND-UCLA Arpanet, 1950s anticommunism, 1940s Vannevar Bush endless frontier
government-funded research, early 20th century industrial and energy monopoly
funded endowments, late-19th century majors systems, mid-19th century
engineering polytechnical schools and land-grant/agricultural policies, the
Prussian university model, Enlightenment, the Encyclopaedists, the classical
university system, liberal & mechanical arts,the Renaissance and emergence of
the university, scholasticism, mediaeval and earlier philosp[hical traditions
.... Very little of which I had any knowledge, understanding, or appreciation
of at the time.

------
renewiltord
Universities have to do all this proxying for a good education because they
are unable to demonstrate the primary value: making you valuable to society.

If they did, they could simply publish "Median income distribution for
graduating students by degree achieved". They currently sell a common lie:
that there is a roundedness or completeness to education. This is common
wisdom and false.

~~~
downrightmike
The only degree that doesn't force a "well rounded" education is aerospace
engineering. They start on their major course work right away. How many of
those guys are out of work? "Well rounded course work" is just a money sink
and wastes two years. Most of the major course work that matter you don't get
to until junior and senior years. All you really need are those last two.
First two are a waste.

~~~
non-entity
Out of curiosity does the also mean Aerospace engineering degrees are cheaper,
or are those 2 years replacwd by even more major work?

