
College for Grownups - ojbyrne
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/12/opinion/college-for-grown-ups.html
======
nlh
"Adult Education" has this nagging stigma associated with it (though,
thankfully, that's changing due to MOOCs and such). But still -- even when the
major universities offer it, it's seen with a skewed tilt by much of the rest
of the world.

Ask anyone who graduated from Harvard (undergrad), HBS, HLS, etc. about the
Harvard Extension School and you'll get the eye-roll I'm talking about. I
think in cases like this it's less because of the adult part but more because
of the payola part -- anyone can sign up for HES classes provided they pay.

What I think is potentially interesting, and frankly am surprised isn't
offered yet (or at least not widely), is the idea of continuing one's
education into adulthood through the same university.

My personal motivation: When I was 19 and a sophomore picking a major, I chose
what interested me at the time - business & psychology. I loved what I learned
and am grateful for my college education.

But here I am 18 years later and my brain and desires have changed. I'm
rabidly excited about programming and CS topics, and have done a pretty decent
job of teaching myself through various online resources over the past few
years.

My alma mater should capitalize on this -- they should offer a "supplemental
degree" program where I can give them money, take classes (remotely or on
campus), do the work, take the tests, and get a CS major supplement to my
previous undergrad degree. It would maintain the full authority of the
university and be a full bachelor's degree, just completed almost 2 decades
after the first bit :)

I can't imagine I'm alone in wanting this sort of thing...

~~~
mbrundle
No you're not. My background is biochemistry (UK degree), biomedical image
processing (UK PhD) and web development (self-taught). After a decade of
academic research in medical imaging, I'm now moving more towards pure tech.
I'd love to go back to uni, say full time for 6-12 months, either in the US or
UK, and rigorously study the fundamentals of Computer Science, however I
haven't found a mechanism that really works for me.

An additional undergrad degree is too long and slow - I know I can study MUCH
more efficiently than I could when I was 18, and I also want to be very
focused on CS, so most of a US undergrad course would be a waste of time to
me. On the other hand, a 1 year Masters is too advanced, since I don't have a
firm grasp of the basics.

Online courses are definitely filling the gap but I feel like I learn faster
with human interaction and mentoring. Bootcamps are okay to an extent (I'm
currently doing The Firehose Project to learn some industry web dev practices,
and they provide great mentoring and group projects), but they only advance
your skills so far, and probably not up to the level I expect you'd be at
after completing the first year of CS. It'd be great to see some different
options out there which provide the rigour and cater to a more mature
audience.

~~~
ChuckMcM
This is pretty much the target, a 2 year program that covers basics to mastery
in a particular subject. I have seen folks who have put together curriculums
for that out of MOOC lists but it hasn't gotten nearly the attention it
deserves. My theory is that if could retrain for a new discipline in 2 years
it would strongly mitigate the notion of 'structural' unemployment.
Particularly if you already had the basics down (aka an undergraduate degree).
I suggested to the Alumni group at USC that such a program, a "mini-
bachelors+masters" might make for something they could provide their alumni
(or others) that would both get them more tuition dollars and help people.

------
wyager
I dislike the condescending attitude of the author towards the young adults
(referred to in the article as "children") attending college. The author
claims that leaving home to live at college poses a "serious psychological
risk". Are we talking about 18-year-olds or 5-year-olds? Are we afraid that
these more-or-less fully fledged citizens, whom we allow to drive, smoke,
enlist, vote, marry, and have children, are going to end up crying for their
mommies and daddies because they left home too early? Ridiculous.

Where these "psychological risks" exist, it's probably more a symptom of
failing to ween teenagers from parental dependence and teach personal
responsibility than it is a symptom of college life.

To quote a younger friend of mine, who started college this year after bumming
around Europe for a while: "After spending a few months 'in the wild', living
in this relatively very supervised college environment seems absolutely
mundane."

~~~
cSoze
Fully fledged citizen and adult are two concepts that deserve a distinction:
[http://hrweb.mit.edu/worklife/youngadult/brain.html](http://hrweb.mit.edu/worklife/youngadult/brain.html)

Most 18 year olds are nowhere near mature enough to take college education as
seriously as it deserves to be taken.

~~~
wyager
>Most 18 year olds are nowhere near mature enough to take college education as
seriously as it deserves to be taken.

But they're mature enough to kill for and be killed for the national military
(sometimes against their will), contribute to governmental policy decisions,
and have children?

Just because their brains are still plastic doesn't preclude them from making
good (or at least reasonable) decisions.

~~~
cSoze
>But they're mature enough to kill for and be killed for the national military
(sometimes against their will), contribute to governmental policy decisions,
and have children?

I don't think they are mature enough for that, no. We weren't arguing that
part (at least not yet). 21 would be a much more reasonable age for that, but
25 would probably be best. There's a reason that you can't rent a car below 21
and that you have to make a significant extra payment below 25.

~~~
chrisseaton
Are you proposing preventing people from having children below 25? That seems
incredibly draconian and intrusive.

Are you also proposing preventing people from joining the military below 25?
In terms of a male physical's peak, 25 is pretty late on in the game to start
trying to train him to be a soldier.

~~~
cSoze
No, I'm not proposing that at all, however, we certainly discourage people
from having children at a young age. Military leadership could fairly easily
adjust its recruitment practices, it relies far less on physical aptitude
nowadays. Regardless, I don't really think this tangent is relevant to the
discussion of college education.

You can shift mean college attendance age in a myriad of ways. Off the top of
my head, bring public universities back under federal funding, reduce the for
profit motives. Then start preferentially admitting students with a year or
more of work experience as well as the current academic standards.

------
aruss
What this article, and many commentators in this thread, are forgetting is
that the college/university system is not designed primarily for education.
The reason why the college system is tailored toward young adults is because
we as a culture have decided that college is the place for young adults to
"find themselves." College is often the first time young adults begin living
on their own; putting them in a structured institution with their peers is how
many kids learn how to "grow up" (in particular, the children of privileged
individuals who also want their children to receive some sort of education/job
training). There are other issues with the higher education as an institution,
but the segregation between older adults ("nontraditional" students) is not
one of them, nor is the seeming lack of responsibility found at college
(though sexual assault and substance abuse are serious issues that need to be
addressed) - it's a defining part of the American "college experience."

It could be argued that you can "find yourself" without college, and while
that's absolutely true I would say that it's hard to find a better institution
to do so (other problems like rising tuition/loans notwithstanding).

~~~
cSoze
We're arguing exactly the design that you seem to be espousing. Taking into
account cost, immaturity due to biological constraints at age 18-22 and
rampant party culture, college is a particularily bad place to "find
yourself". Young adults should be exposed to a wide diversity in age and
demographics, not locked into a small area with a largely homogeneous group of
individuals to "grow up". All of this was touched upon in the article. In my
opinion, the American "college experience" is in dire need of reconsideration.

~~~
chaostheory
> rampant party culture

This greatly depends on the particular university. I really doubt there's much
of a party at places like Cal Poly, Georgia Tech, or MIT when you compare them
to FSU or a place like the University of Arizona.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
Ah. Ha. Ha.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFbDZyHxL2g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFbDZyHxL2g)

~~~
juliangregorian
That's what you chose to demonstrate that MIT is a party school?

~~~
eli_gottlieb
Well there's that, and there's the fraternities. MIT, in my experience of
having lived in Cambridge, is very much "work hard, play hard" for its
undergrads.

~~~
chaostheory
Dude, GT also has a drinking song as it's official school song; yet there are
no real parties on campus - you know regular events with tons and tons of
debauchery. I think this is what you don't get if you've never experienced a
real party school: there's mainly only playing hard and there's barely any
work for a lot of your time there (or even all of it if you so choose). There
are classes where all you have to do is show up and you'll pass...

~~~
eli_gottlieb
>I think this is what you don't get if you've never experienced a real party
school: there's mainly only playing hard and there's barely any work for a lot
of your time there (or even all of it if you so choose).

Funny thing: I did my undergrad at the famously party-focused UMass Amherst,
and it wasn't like that at all.

~~~
chaostheory
I don't feel that party schools can exist in places that have a good amount of
snow and ice but that's my opinion. It's also possible not to experience the
pitfalls of a party school even if you attend one if you hang with the right
crowd.

------
peapicker
College was originally for people who acted like grownups -- at 18 years old
-- because those who went 100(+) years ago were expected to take it seriously.

Unfortunately, as time has gone on, at least in the US, colleges are spending
more and more money on 'club-med'ing their dorms and such, giving the wrong
impression of why you are on a campus to begin with -- and colleges are
somewhat complicit in not caring nowadays about your success either, just in
taking money from as many students as they can fill the place up with each
year.

~~~
rdtsc
> 'club-med'ing their dorms and such,

No kidding. My university in the early 2000's started jacking up tuition every
year by crazy amounts. And at the same time started building boutique cafes,
little gazebos, parks, a new sports center with a large inside heated pool and
a lazy river snaking its away around its perimeter. All at the same time as
some colleges didn't have enough money for to print tests to professors would
print them double sides, with a smaller font.

And then they had the nerve to call me asking for money after I graduated.
After talking to me once, I made sure they won't call me again. And they
haven't.

~~~
pc86
So you were a jerk to a volunteer or student calling you to ask for a
donation. Kudos.

In all seriousness, I think most college administrators take their job
seriously, and on the whole are not going to raise tuition $10k/year so they
can add a gazebo or a river to campus. I think it's just an unintended
consequence of not being forced to react to market stimulus. In a free market,
a college that raised its tuition had better be able to provide more value
and/or subsist on fewer students. Unfortunately with the easy availability of
loans and grants, all a higher tuition means is more cash in the college's
coffers and a more expensive promissory note for a 17-year-old who doesn't
understand it.

~~~
Domenic_S
What are you talking about? That free market is _why_ colleges "Club-Med"
their facilities. It's what the high schoolers (and importantly, their
parents) see when they're touring the school, deciding who to sign a decade of
future earnings to.

~~~
humanrebar
Who owns the student loans of Americans? It's not the free market.

~~~
juliangregorian
It's not the idealized free market that libertarians jack off to, but it is
definitely _a_ market.

------
doctorpangloss
"First to market" applies as much to education as to business. The payoffs for
finishing education sooner rather than later are enormous.

A student may benefit from being more mature if they delay college or
graduation. But it's unlikely that benefit exceeds the compounding value of
finishing the same amount of school two years earlier.

In other words, I strongly disagree with the premise that teenagers should
delay college, for the same reason we strongly discourage people to delay
saving for retirement.

Investment compounds. So it's confounding he accuses people of making a poor
"major investment decision" while advocating a delay in investment. The answer
whether to delay or start school unprepared is a math-intensive one, and is
likely different for every student. But if you believe the majority of 18 year
olds are prepared to continue school immediately for another four years, it
seems reasonable to advise them to go to college immediately.

Does maturity compound? I don't know. Education definitely does.

> ...Greek systems that appeal to many affluent families but also incubate
> cultures of dangerous play... Rethinking the expectation that applicants to
> selective colleges be fresh out of high school would go far in reducing risk
> for young people while better protecting everyone’s college investment.

Reducing what risk? Of sexual assault and alcoholism?

I don't know if being young has anything to do with being a violently
misogynist psychopath. Maybe being a victim of one does.

But the rest of the world tracks teenagers into either conscription or
education at 18 too. There's less of a fraternity culture at Tsinghua for
sure. I don't know if there's less sexual assault or substance abuse. Even if
there were, we'd sooner indict fraternities than people being young, wouldn't
we?

~~~
sliverstorm
_But it 's unlikely that benefit exceeds the compounding value of finishing
the same amount of school two years earlier._

Best I can tell, all that compounding value gets you one thing: more money in
retirement. Therein lies my objection; letting your retirement dictate your
first 65 years of life seems like folly.

~~~
Domenic_S
It makes perfect sense to me. Choose the retirement you want based on the
early life you want. IOW, choose your desired outcome based on the type of
effort you want to put in up front.

Your retirement only "dictates" inasmuch as you've decided that your
retirement should be one way or the other.

------
Spoom
Teenagers and young adults are coveted by universities because they are old
enough for their parents to let them do their own thing, but young enough that
they are OK with taking on tens of thousands of dollars of debt for a
questionable outcome.

~~~
humanrebar
That and they would feel bad to ask the mother of a 40 year old to liquefy her
assets to pay for her son's overpriced degree.

------
Raphael
Yes, remote, asynchronous learning is just the ticket for people who won't
live close to campus and fight over seats for classes held at inconvenient
hours.

While some fraternities are unruly, I don't see how it affects people who just
go to class, study in the library, and live off campus. Is it common that
older students get stuck living in frats or dorms? Or older students just
can't resist the draw to party?

------
ivan_ah
One comment and one book plug.

Apart from the aspects of privilege, acts of drunkenness, and social
schmoozing, I think what is special about the "college years" is these are
some of the rare moments where young people have a chance to live relatively
worry free: no worries about one's mission in life, no worries about financial
subsistence (for the privileged students, not the ones holding two part-time
jobs in parallel), and relatively less social anxiety (when you're young,
everyone likes you).

IMHO, it is only within such prolonged worry-free moments that people can
learn vast amounts of science and go on to make scientific discoveries. As
adults, it is much more difficult to learn at this pace---we pick up
experience and can better plan our learning, but we rarely have vast amounts
of time to dedicate to learning.

Why don't employers let their employees go on sabbaticals? Imagine you can
work for four years receiving 80% of your pay and then you earn a year of your
free time to travel and study full-time.

Ah and the plug is about my math & physics textbook for adults, which manages
to reproduce the first-year of college experience (calculus and mechanics) in
a _very_ affordable manner. Available on lulu:
[http://www.lulu.com/shop/noBSguide/product-21899015.html](http://www.lulu.com/shop/noBSguide/product-21899015.html)
(use coupon code DGY5 for 30% off, via lulu.com/home)

------
shawndrost
This is a big driver for the success of the bootcamp phenomenon. I'm a
cofounder at one of the schools, and I can say that if college catered to
career switchers, I would not have an easy market to serve.

------
Datsundere
"At Stanford, where I teach, an idea still in the concept phase developed by a
student-led team in the university’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design calls
for the replacement of four consecutive college years in young adulthood with
multiple residencies distributed over a lifetime."

Multiple residency? Is the author out of their minds? People cannot even
afford residency for a 4 year university, now they want people to pay for high
school residency?

------
michaelochurch
Cynicism alert. The purpose of widespread college education is socioeconomic.
People simply wouldn't throw so much money and time after this game (starting,
in some places, with _preschool_ admissions, and often totaling near the half-
million mark) if it weren't. The leaders of our society don't value culture or
education that much; they do value tradition, pedigree, and position. Our
colleges actually do a pretty good job of educating people who want to learn,
but that's a tertiary purpose to the socioeconomic one that justifies tuitions
at $50,000 per year instead of, say, $5,000.

 _The so-called party pathway through college is an all-encompassing lifestyle
characterized by virtually nonstop socializing, often on the male-controlled
turf of fraternity houses. Substance abuse and sexual assault are common
consequences._

College is about protecting the young from an unforgiving society, by handling
indiscretions (e.g. substance abuse) with the kid gloves, and protecting their
early careers by giving them something close to _the best possible work
experience_ they can have at a given age.

A 30-year-old has fits and starts in his career and at least one job that took
a painful. A 22-year-old coming out of college has an almost unblemished
record. A mediocre GPA can be interpreted as evidence of being social, and
while English majors might not place as well as CS majors, literature provides
much more interesting conversation than a terminal middle-management position.
_That_ is what college achieves. It gets you 4 years into adulthood with a
very low risk of having to explain yourself.

Also, we gripe about ageism afflicting the late-career not-that-old, but
there's also a strong ageism directed at young adult men. The truth about
_most_ 17- to 23-year-old males... is that society doesn't like 'em too much.
The social hierarchy is high-status men > high-status women > low-status women
> low-status men. (That's part of why gender debates around social justice are
so complicated; women get screwed on upside and men get screwed on downside.)
Additionally, age and social status are correlated in men, generally upward
until old age. Except for wealthy heirs, young men are seen as garbage until
they prove themselves. (I'm not saying that this is right; it's clearly not.)
College isn't just about making teenage men acceptable for society, but also
protecting them during a time in which many people are predisposed to hate
them, thinking of them as horny, reckless, socially inept monsters.

Traditionally, college was to protect young men from the horrors that society
inflicts upon men of low status, the tricks and lies that throw them by the
millions into wars that benefit the rich, and general career sand traps they'd
fall into (just on account of being young and not fully formed yet) if they
had to fend for themselves... and, also, to protect young women from men below
their socioeconomic milieu. (The current clusterfuck surrounding college
rape-- it turns out that ivory-tower institutions are completely out of their
depth when dealing with a felony that is one of the worst things that one can
do to another person-- illustrates, of course, that men of high socioeconomic
status can be dangerous, too.) Socioeconomic class is about how long you can
delay adulthood and the lack of a safety net and the period of life in which
you're held accountable for your choices.

Widespread college also serves society by taking a large number of promising
but at-the-time economically useless people off the job market. It protects
the students, and it protects the market from their wage depression, and it
protects society from a deluge of unemployed people who are (based on
socioeconomic status and academic performance) presumed to be dangerous and
intelligent enough to be threatening (in a revolutionary sense, i.e. "don't
overthrow the government; party on your parent's dime for 4 years").

You're not going to see 30-year-olds in college because, in truth, they're too
economically useful (whether they're paid well is another matter) and because
they're not deemed to need protection at that age (rather, the young are
judged to need protection from them). Also, it doesn't really _work_. College
sells itself as the "get to age 22 without having to explain yourself" option,
which is great because most of us _would_ have to explain ourselves if we
called our own shots from 18-22... but if you're 30 and just completed your
BA, you'll still be asked to explain yourself, defeating much of the purpose.

 _Unrelenting demand for better-educated workers_

Man, I wish. See, if there were "unrelenting demand", then software engineers
would have no problem getting themselves sent back to school on full salary
for part-time work. You'd see software engineers doing PhDs on their
employees' dime as a common phenomenon, rather than a freak rarity. I'm not
saying that we _should_ have such a perk and we're certainly not owed or
entitled to it, but it's what we'd have if demand were actually so high.

At the upper levels of education, demand is actually pretty low, as
illustrated by the academic job market. In fact, the rarity of high-quality
work experience is often used as leverage against top talent: they're
typically specialized to such a point that few companies are doing what
they're good at, and they have to take a cut (in pay or conditions) relative
to what they're actually worth in order to protect the specialty.

~~~
cma
You over-systemize things. When congress subsidizes higher education, no one
debates it primarily as needed to prevent horny male youth from revolution,
but we are supposed to assume that is the subtext, and is the dominating
reason really driving things? Which _The Office_ episode is this from :-/?

~~~
mwhite
I don't find it completely implausible that some people with influence in the
lawmaking process (whether it be congresspeople, their advisors, or interest
groups) have the historical knowledge and analytical ability to develop a
perspective like Michael's.

Why should one assume that the actual reasons behind a policy are the same as
the stated ones?

Even more, if these facts about the effects of the policy are true and
important, then whether or not they comprise a large part of why anyone wants
or says they want the policy isn't even that relevant.

~~~
nostrademons
You shouldn't assume that the actual reasons behind a policy are the same as
the stated ones.

You also shouldn't assume that the reasons that some random guy on the
Internet gives for the policy are the real ones.

This is the big problem with believing in conspiracy theories: yes, you are
being lied to by people in power. You are _also_ being lied to by people not
in power. _They_ are being lied to by the people whose actions they use to
build the theories that they espouse to everyone else.

Eventually, you realize that the only course of action that keeps you sane is
to realize that society is built upon lies and misdirection, _and it doesn 't
matter_. We make the best inferences we can with the data we have available to
us. And if we're wrong - well, so is everybody else, so the goal is just to be
a bit less wrong than everyone else. Usually you get there by discounting
everyone else's analyses and listening to their data and personal experiences
only.

