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[Higher Education] Practical Problems and Philosophical Foundations
Hamurabi
MiamiRegistered User regular
MiamiRegistered User regular
So this thread is for two things:
Practical Problems
Discussing the practical concerns associated with higher education. Namely, the problem of financing a BA/BS, MA/MS, or (heaven forfend) PhD when tuition rates have been increasing (iirc) something like 10% per annum over the last several decades. There's also the more fundamental problem of both poor job prospects even once you get a degree... but a Bachelor's still pretty much being a prerequisite to any kind of real white-collar work with prospects for advancement*.
Basically since the latter part of the 20th century, young Americans** have been told that getting at least an undergraduate degree is obligatory for long-term economic success. The macroeconomics have largely borne out this claim, given that America has largely shifted from an industrial to a postindustrial (ie. service-based) economy like much of the rest of the developed world. What this means for the average individual is that it's no longer feasible to finish high school and walk onto a factory floor and be guaranteed a decent wage + benefits for a lifetime.
The problem we see now, though, is that unless you have unless you major in Actuarial Studies apparently (@spacekungfuman) or some other field with guaranteed immediate and long-term demand, you may have spent four years working toward a degree that only marginally increases your employment prospects.
To say nothing of the increasing costs associated with an undergraduate degree alone. Tuition rates are climbing at an absurd rate -- iirc a rate approaching ~10% a year (someone please correct me on this if I'm wrong). Here's an illustrative chart:
The other practical consideration to be made here is that if we want college to be a strictly (or mainly) practical institution whose objective is to add economic value through the increase of human capital... well, there are alternatives to four-year institutions that could arguably achieve these ends more efficiently. Community colleges and technical/vocational schools, for instance, could arguably achieve these goals much more cheaply and in a shorter space of time.
But that assumes we want education to achieve strictly practical/economic ends...
Philosophical Foundations
So what do we want out of higher education? I would argue that we don't just wanna churn out effective worker bees. I think we ought to be attempting to create a better-informed citizenry that is more capable of assessing the political (and other) decisions before them with both a wide (if not necessarily deep) body of knowledge, as well as the instruments of critical thought necessary for effective decisionmaking. This sounds very abstract and touchy-feely, so I'll put it in very concrete terms based on things that are actually happening in the Real World:
There's a macro conversation in the U.S. right now about the merits of deficit reduction both as a general matter, as well as the specific merits of deficit reduction during a time of recession. The right argues that the national deficit -- presently at over $14 trillion -- ought to be the primary economic concern of the U.S; the left argues that while the deficit is a problem, that getting us out of the recession (through increased public spending, which will worsen the deficit in the short run) is the immediate solution to the long-run deficit problem. It's obviously more complicated than that, but bear with me.
An informed citizen would have the basic intellectual tools necessary to analyze either side's argument and say compare them to historical responses to economic slowdowns (and of course to the Great Depression); to weed through logical fallacies in the arguments presented; and to understand the real-world consequences of a decision either way (ie. understand who the beneficiaries would be of lower government spending and lower taxes, who would be most hurt by that, etc).
This isn't really in line with the model of higher education that views it as a way to churn out more programmers and actuaries and business consultants. This is not to say people in those occupations are somehow incapable of thinking critically, or don't have a wide base of knowledge -- but their education would presumably not have focused on these things nearly as much as it did on making them good programmers or actuaries or consultants.
There's also the added benefit of a citizenry who's been exposed to intellectually stimulating material, but that's really a personal preference of mine -- mostly so I can steal other people's knowledge about, like, late Ottoman legal practice. >_>
So D&D, what do you think of this junk?
*I definitely don't mean to denigrate vocations that may not require a BA/BS. There is definitely good money to be made becoming an electrician, plumber, auto mechanic, or any of a number of professions that are vital to the functioning of any economy or community.
**While I really only know about the American context, this discussion obviously applies to pretty much the entire developed world, and arguably also to the developing world.
Practical Problems
Discussing the practical concerns associated with higher education. Namely, the problem of financing a BA/BS, MA/MS, or (heaven forfend) PhD when tuition rates have been increasing (iirc) something like 10% per annum over the last several decades. There's also the more fundamental problem of both poor job prospects even once you get a degree... but a Bachelor's still pretty much being a prerequisite to any kind of real white-collar work with prospects for advancement*.
Basically since the latter part of the 20th century, young Americans** have been told that getting at least an undergraduate degree is obligatory for long-term economic success. The macroeconomics have largely borne out this claim, given that America has largely shifted from an industrial to a postindustrial (ie. service-based) economy like much of the rest of the developed world. What this means for the average individual is that it's no longer feasible to finish high school and walk onto a factory floor and be guaranteed a decent wage + benefits for a lifetime.
The problem we see now, though, is that unless you have unless you major in Actuarial Studies apparently (@spacekungfuman) or some other field with guaranteed immediate and long-term demand, you may have spent four years working toward a degree that only marginally increases your employment prospects.
To say nothing of the increasing costs associated with an undergraduate degree alone. Tuition rates are climbing at an absurd rate -- iirc a rate approaching ~10% a year (someone please correct me on this if I'm wrong). Here's an illustrative chart:
The other practical consideration to be made here is that if we want college to be a strictly (or mainly) practical institution whose objective is to add economic value through the increase of human capital... well, there are alternatives to four-year institutions that could arguably achieve these ends more efficiently. Community colleges and technical/vocational schools, for instance, could arguably achieve these goals much more cheaply and in a shorter space of time.
But that assumes we want education to achieve strictly practical/economic ends...
Philosophical Foundations
So what do we want out of higher education? I would argue that we don't just wanna churn out effective worker bees. I think we ought to be attempting to create a better-informed citizenry that is more capable of assessing the political (and other) decisions before them with both a wide (if not necessarily deep) body of knowledge, as well as the instruments of critical thought necessary for effective decisionmaking. This sounds very abstract and touchy-feely, so I'll put it in very concrete terms based on things that are actually happening in the Real World:
There's a macro conversation in the U.S. right now about the merits of deficit reduction both as a general matter, as well as the specific merits of deficit reduction during a time of recession. The right argues that the national deficit -- presently at over $14 trillion -- ought to be the primary economic concern of the U.S; the left argues that while the deficit is a problem, that getting us out of the recession (through increased public spending, which will worsen the deficit in the short run) is the immediate solution to the long-run deficit problem. It's obviously more complicated than that, but bear with me.
An informed citizen would have the basic intellectual tools necessary to analyze either side's argument and say compare them to historical responses to economic slowdowns (and of course to the Great Depression); to weed through logical fallacies in the arguments presented; and to understand the real-world consequences of a decision either way (ie. understand who the beneficiaries would be of lower government spending and lower taxes, who would be most hurt by that, etc).
This isn't really in line with the model of higher education that views it as a way to churn out more programmers and actuaries and business consultants. This is not to say people in those occupations are somehow incapable of thinking critically, or don't have a wide base of knowledge -- but their education would presumably not have focused on these things nearly as much as it did on making them good programmers or actuaries or consultants.
There's also the added benefit of a citizenry who's been exposed to intellectually stimulating material, but that's really a personal preference of mine -- mostly so I can steal other people's knowledge about, like, late Ottoman legal practice. >_>
So D&D, what do you think of this junk?
*I definitely don't mean to denigrate vocations that may not require a BA/BS. There is definitely good money to be made becoming an electrician, plumber, auto mechanic, or any of a number of professions that are vital to the functioning of any economy or community.
**While I really only know about the American context, this discussion obviously applies to pretty much the entire developed world, and arguably also to the developing world.
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A lot of what I've seen college students doing in their first 2 years is basically remedial coursework in reading and math. Strictly in terms of academic achievement, I think the problems start much sooner than college.
He had failed it twice previous.
HOW THE FUCK DID HE GET ACCEPTED TO COLLEGE?
But the combination of the specialized business degree, and much broader attendance in college has made this no longer a thing.
Always one of my suggested reads on the higher education topic:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/education/edlife/edl-17business-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
This is a legit point. There were definitely a lot of people who graduated with me two weeks ago who took basically a random assortment of upper-division Political Science and International Relations electives who, near as I can tell, don't really have a discernible skillset outside of looking up answers to study guide questions. I mean, there was a guy in one of my exit courses for IR who didn't know what democratic peace theory was -- and this was a 4000-level class that represents the completion of a course of study in IR. I like to think that while my own academic trajectory has been generally more focused, if you asked me to do any remotely challenging quantitative work I'd probably just curl up into the fetal position and whimper.
I assume a lot of the same thing happens with say English or Psychology majors. My friend joked at one point that people who don't know what else to do become English and Psych majors*.
*No offense English and Psych majors!
It is normal thing for students to rack of tens of thousands of dollars in debt, land a minimum wage job, and basically never pay off their loan. This is all well and good, but if there is a reckoning on student loans like there was on mortgages around 2008 then a lot of people will be eating shit for it.
My experience with secondary education was unexceptional. Two years in sciences, dropped out for a variety of reasons, including lack of real interest, lack of utility, and high price. I've done fine since then. If I could go back and do it again, I'd rather take a technical college course.
Student loan debt exceeds credit card and auto loan debt.
If I knew how to motivate the useless sacks of puss that make up 75% of every class into motivated, interested students, I would sell that secret for so much cash. As it is, we're dealing with a conflux of poisonous issues:
(1) Immaturity of students fresh out of high school who know literally nothing but standardized testing and hand holding. Who are at an age, on average, of extreme impulsivity and poor judgment control. Who have no idea what they "want to do with their lives" or the relative value of the paper they're working towards against other degrees.
(2) Conflicting cultural expectations. Our image of college is a mish mash of Van Wilder and Super-High School. Four years of ??? that somehow turns the libertarian collar popping 19 year old into a studied thinker, while also encouraging him to "enjoy the wild life". Yet studies show most students work through college and that barely half ever graduate.
(3) Academic models of learning. Here's a book. Here's a homework. Go learn. Realistically, more like "go google". The physics class I just finished curved every test to an A, and every homework problem was on chegg.com. Why do this? Cause if you don't, students will complain like babies that they deserve an A. Administrators will worry about your semester evaluations. Grading for competence makes a teacher's (or TA's) life miserable. This is before we get into students whining. (Engineering student: Why do i need history? I just want to do calculations!)
(4) Easy available money. Don't know what you're doing with your life? Just lost your job and its August? Sign up for some classes and you can have a massive amount of free money!*
*Not actually free, but good luck explaining that to an 18 year old.
So I have to ask...what would an institution strictly devoted to learning outcomes and competence in its graduates look like? How would it choose to screen its applicants for quality and motivation? What better options do we actually have?
Then you add in other cultural value shifts like work is more important than education, college as a business (and student as a customer!), college isn't the "real world," the continued funding cuts to universities (while increasing adminstrator positions, adjunct positions, and nation-wide 'restructuring programs'[to make Univerisites more efficient 'like a business' while improving 'profits' and reducing the quality of education--the move to online lecture courses falls into this same category too], and it's not that difficult to see why University tuition is sky-rocketing: no one is supporting the system It's all smoke and mirrors.
I'm not sure someone going to get a PhD in theology has much ground to badmouth any particular field.
(Especially since we all know if you don't know what to do with your life you become a poli sci major).
The problem I see with high education, particular in America, is that we just don't give a shit about education. K-12 is baby sitting so mommy and daddy can go work low wage jobs to barely support a faux middle class lifestyle and then we ship timmy and tonya off to college so that they can do the same thing with increasingly poorer outcomes.
We don't value knowing things or thinking about things. Simply put we, as a country, do not value learning.
Unless and until we can do anything about that we're not going to lift a finger to tackle costs of college or building real technical skills.
Florida's recent answer to this problem is to start up a three track route for high school. Kids can now choose when they're freshmen whether or not they're going to go to college four years later and choose the Scholar Career or, idk, Serf, track of learning. Because kids keep failing the FCAT so we need to make sure fewer have to take it.
In a bill almost certainly set to die in committee, Senator Elizabeth Warren seeks to keep the base student loan rate from doubling on July 1st and offer student loans at the same interest rate big banks can take out loans from the fed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=P-4FhsyvJdM
While I approve of her sentiment, realistically, I think this bill would give four year public and private undergraduate institutions the sense that they have the green light to raise tuition another $25,000.
Mainly, from my perspective, it's the fact that so many schools feel like they can spend their way into the top 20 ranked schools in the US News and World Report rankings, and it's developed an arms race. Meanwhile, the sad truth is that even if George Washington University (just for example) charges the same amount that Harvard does, and rolls that money into more competitive packages to attract more and better professors, an undergraduate student still won't emerge from GW with the same prospects as a Harvard student. Harvard has a much better network already established in academia and the private sector. That's, like, just how that goes. GW would probably be better off bribing employers to hire their students.
Incidentally? When I suggested that GW charges the same amount Harvard does, that's totally a lie. GW charges $7,000 more than Harvard for every undergraduate every year. The school is now marginally better; however, the larger effect is that its student body is comprised entirely of douchebags who have a ton of money to burn but weren't smart enough to get into a better school.
Disclosure. I am not a GW grad. I was accepted to GW for law school but declined because their law school tuition rates are even worse. So yes I have a huge bone to pick with those idiots.
Ho ho ho.
It's actually an MTS (Master of Theological Studies, which involves zero actual theology as I plan to do it), with the potential to become a second MA in public policy and/or a PhD in PoliSci or Religious Studies.
So there.
And yes, people at my school who didn't know what else to do did become PoliSci and International Relations majors, because barring a few outliers who are actually demanding instructors, my school's IR/PoliSci isn't very demanding.
This is the first I'm hearing about this. Is this just in certain places?
That said, there is definitely a problem at the high school level not just of an inability to prepare students for entry into college, but also of making them aware of all their options. The Ivies are basically begging for low-income kids, but can't get them to apply because those kids are exactly the ones who will be underserved by their high school guidance counselors and other faculty charged with helping them.
Oh it absolutely does nothing to actually address the problem, it just gives kids who are going to get hosed on student loans anyway a bit of a break.
Not that this bill is going anywhere.
But let's not kid ourselves, they're gonna raise that tuition no matter what.
It's statewide, assuming Ricki Tiki Douchebag signs it into law.
10 years ago annual tuition at a UC was something like 4500, and they would let me/my parents take out a max of like 15k combined (federally anyway, I'm sure private would have given me anything in exchange for just my soul)
My cousin will probably pay that 15k this year in tuition alone as a freshman.
But actually that does remind me of a discussion I had with a good (but unfortunately libertarian) friend of mine. He is of the opinion that public universities' institutional aid, federal Pell Grants, and federally-subsidized Stafford loan moneys should not go towards what he referred to as "pointless" or "low value-added" degrees like anthropology, art history, etc. I'm paraphrasing here (and frankly don't trust myself to do his position justice), but he basically felt that you should not be getting federal money or breaks from publicly-funded institutions if you weren't a STEM major. He viewed those funds as an investment, and that the return on investment from, say, an art history major does not justify the expense to taxpayers.
I totally disagree with him, but this is not an unpopular (or wholly unreasonable, imho) position.
STEM degrees have about a decade of lording over liberal arts degrees about employability. Globalization is a bitch. When we talk lifelong earning potential philosophy majors actually have a pretty good one, and English majors are some of the most employable people in the country.
Because STEM majors can't be bothered to learn how to write anymore. Because we don't care about education anymore.
Everyone seems to want to have small classroom sizes with lots of individual attention to all the students, but they don't want to pay for it.
Everyone wants to survive, making becoming a teacher incredibly hard financially, unless you have a significant other that brings in tons of money to make up for the fact that you, as a teacher, make less than kids, who you are teaching, make at Walmart.
And you have the whole teaching to pass standardized tests, not teaching children to be functioning members of society.
So by the time they do get out of college, they go because they are told to go there, and to get into fields that probably don't interest them for the sake of making a decent, but stagnating, wage to survive.
Which means they have less money to spend, and don't want to have it spent on schools, which creates (or has created) a vicious cycle.
I know it's immensely more complex than that, but I don't want to write out a diatribe.
I think it is a position that is understandable, so long as its end goal isn't to produce a varied and intelligent public.
Education shouldn't be about maximizing earning potential and economic value. Pretty much every major problem with education in America stems from people and policies which think it should.
I am in 100% agreement with you.
But his is not an absurd wingnut position, is what I'm saying.
It's horrifying. At least he blocked the universities from raising tuition this year- it looks like he was surprised at the amount of backlash he got and now he's Mr. Teachers and Students.
Not an absurd wingnut, no.
Also no offense Hamurabi, but your friend's line of reasoning is just dumb and lacking in critical thought (which is of course a corner stone of the liberal arts fittingly enough). If the idea is maximizing economic return on investment, i/e cranking out workers, there are many many other ways to go about that in an efficient way than trying to obsess over the university - namely vocational schools and community college programs (which of course are generally shat upon by people who don't know any better). Of course higher ed in general is halfway there to becoming a glorified half-assed vocational institution. See: the existence of "human resources management" degrees.
Disclosure: I spent the entire great recession on my ass with a useless degree. So I place a very high premium on the financial value of a degree. People who aren't willing to learn philosophical concepts on their own time are generally not going to learn it in a philosophy course in any meaningful way. Money, at least, buys a house. When the system is shit, we hit a collective action problem of trying to scramble to the top of the sinking ship.
A weaker student body should have been expected regardless, when you aim to enroll a broader student populace, of course they are going to be, on average, less college-ready. Did anyone seriously believe there was a wealth of hidden geniuses all across America? Sure, there were probably lots, but comparatively few against all the intellectual 'chaff' you had to pick up to get a chance at those gems. If that so-called chaff was truly getting a good education we wouldn't be griping quite so much, most people aren't geniuses and you could argue that those people need higher education most of all (maybe), but with the cost of a degree and the dwindling ROI that education better be damn good.
I think a well educated populace is a good thing, but expecting all that good education to happen in college is stupid, stupid and harmful if we really want people to go into tech and vocational school, which is all about ignoring the fluff to get to the good stuff.
Oh and you are going to have to do a hell of a job selling people on VoTech. College being HighSchool 2.0 but with Beer, Boob and No Parents is immensely appealing to a lot of students, while Living at Home And Commuting 2 Hours to Touch Car Parts is only going to appeal to certain kinds of people.
It's trite, but the same reason our high schools no longer offer votech: funding.
We just don't give a shit about preparing for the future as a country anymore.
That's really what it all comes down to. Unless that changes, and I think it will in about ten-fifteen years, we're pretty much stuck in neutral.