College Tuition

eldergamer

eldergamer

CAGiversary!
I was just thinking the other day how College Tuition seems to be one of the few commodities where the price increases year after year and never goes back down.
There's a constant demand for it and people will pay whatever price is offered.

But there's no reason for the price jumps. Books are more expensive? Computer labs cost more? Nope. The only price increase is payroll. Salaries for teachers, staff and others increase each year no matter what the shape of the economy might be.

I graduated from college 10 years ago and there's probably nothing different or value added in any of the basic 101 classes I took 10 years ago that would require them to cost 15-20% (just a random guess) more than they did then.

Why does this happen? The only increases that seem to make the news are state/public unversities though.
 
It doesn't go up every year. But tt has to go up periodically due to inflation, energy expenses increasing, cost of living raises for faculty and staff etc.

A lot of the more frequent and larger increases than usual in recent years are due to state budgets sucking. As a result states are cutting tons of money from the higher education budget. Costs for the university don't magically go down, so they have to increase tuition and increase enrollment and class sizes etc. to make up the difference. As well as laying off staff, using furlough days etc. to cut costs.
 
[quote name='Clak']Firing good people and replacing them with adjuncts....[/QUOTE]


....firing? Not sure where you went to school, but at all the public colleges around here, all you had to do is not fuck up for a few years and get tenure, and you were basically set, it would take an act of congress to get rid of you no matter how shitty a teacher you might be.
 
Top it off with a government that gives out loans like candy to give everyone the opportunity to go to school, and then ask why would colleges lower prices?
 
If colleges and universities weren't profitable their wouldn't be a gajillion of them across the country. When was the last time you heard about a college going "bankrupt"?
 
This isn't helping:

The club of millionaire college presidents is becoming less exclusive, with 30 heads of private colleges nationwide cracking the once-exalted barrier in a new salary survey.
As recently as 2004, no college presidents received more than $1 million in annual compensation. But in 2008, the most recent data available, Ivy League and lesser-known colleges alike lavished their presidents with at least that much in salary and other compensation.
Click to expand...
http://articles.boston.com/2010-11-...ge-presidents-private-colleges-college-chiefs
 
[quote name='GBAstar']If colleges and universities weren't profitable their wouldn't be a gajillion of them across the country. When was the last time you heard about a college going "bankrupt"?[/QUOTE]

They are profitable because tens of thousands of students go there, rack up tens of thousands of dollars in debt, and the school usually gets off scot free because the government picks up the tab with student loans.

I know it is heresy, and insane but what would happen to college prices if students couldn't afford to go? Something tells me prices would lower to compensate for the loss, but thats crazy market talk. Yeah, yeah, Student loans make it so that the public can be free to get themselves educated. Not to mention education would be bankrupt without these high prices, (a pretty common theme for many things, I think).

[quote name='camoor']This isn't helping:


http://articles.boston.com/2010-11-...ge-presidents-private-colleges-college-chiefs[/QUOTE]



I highly doubt this is the reason (or even not helping) for high tuition costs. You take 30 presidents times lets say $500,000 off their salary to reduce it to normal (you weren't complaining) size, you get $15,000,000 dollars. If all 30 Presidents donated all that money to a single school such as Princeton for one year they would reduce the tuition from $53,000 to $50,000 a year. Remember that is if all 30 Presidents donated their earnings to Princeton. Divided to each of their own school it is miniscule.

Or in other words Princeton and it's 7300 attendees pay $53,000 in tuition which equals $386,900,000 but the presidents $1,000,000 or 0.25% is pushing high tuition costs. Riiiiiight.
 
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[quote name='Knoell']I highly doubt this is the reason (or even not helping) for high tuition costs. You take 30 presidents times lets say $500,000 off their salary to reduce it to normal (you weren't complaining) size, you get $15,000,000 dollars. If all 30 Presidents donated all that money to a single school such as Princeton for one year they would reduce the tuition from $53,000 to $50,000 a year. Remember that is if all 30 Presidents donated their earnings to Princeton. Divided to each of their own school it is miniscule.

Or in other words Princeton and it's 7300 attendees pay $53,000 in tuition which equals $386,900,000 but the presidents $1,000,000 or 0.25% is pushing high tuition costs. Riiiiiight.[/QUOTE]

Can there be a vs thread where you don't suck the dick of those making over 1 mil? Every time someone mentions the superrich you reach for the kneepads.
 
The real racket is in books. Back 10 years ago when you were in school books may have been expensive, but today they are insane and have no resale value. The schools purposly change the text books with ever so slight changes every year which means that you almost always have to buy new books for the class. This means that you buy a book for $100-$250 and then when you resell it because they switch text books so fast its worth like $10-$40.

It doesnt end there though! They now bundle in CDs/DVDs that are required for the class or online keys that you need to do your homework. These are bundled with brand new books, yet when you buy one used they rarely are. This means that you cant even effectively buy used books all the time! So this furthers the above killing resale value. The price you are charged for school is bad enough....that they now fuck you in this manor with books(and its such an obvious cheat)is just wrong.

Edit - O and on top of everything else my wifes school charges you for parking.....by the semester...with no discount for buying a year pass. So in addition to everything else we spend like $200 a year just for the privilege of parking at the college billing us $1,000s and ass raping us for books. Imagine any other industry handled things that way. Imagine when you went to a restaurant you had to pay $10 to park every time you ate there.
 
[quote name='camoor']Can there be a vs thread where you don't suck the dick of those making over 1 mil? Every time someone mentions the superrich you reach for the kneepads.[/QUOTE]

Can there be a thread in which you don't attack the "superrich" for all of societies problems? Sorry that I disagreed with your crappy news article that puts disproporionate blame on presidents of schools for a problem that goes far beyond their pay. But go ahead keep sitting in your corner rocking back and forth repeating the same garbage over and over again. "the superrich did it, the superrich did it."

But never fear, I am sure the rest of the vs forum will come to your rescue and tell me that I don't want to discuss the real issue with X topic.
 
Yes, lets remove financial aid so that the price of a college education might lower. Brilliant.
 
[quote name='Clak']Yes, lets remove financial aid so that the price of a college education might lower. Brilliant.[/QUOTE]

I wasn't saying remove it, I was just pointing out that when you have customers with guarenteed funding no matter the cost of college with zero risk on accounts payable, why would you lower prices?
 
Well what else could you do about it other than remove it or severely reduce it? Either way it hurts the students more than anyone.
 
[quote name='Clak']Well what else could you do about it other than remove it or severely reduce it? Either way it hurts the students more than anyone.[/QUOTE]


I am not sure, but on a smaller scale books are doing the same thing. They pretend we need them and instead of getting them to lower prices we devise ways to pay the ransom.

On a side note, I found it fairly cool that some high price schools are forgiving loans for students whose parents income equal less than $100,000.

[quote name='thrustbucket'] Quit pumping money into one of the last legalized scams and just read some books.
[/QUOTE]
The problem with this is that if you are looking to obtain a job in a business that damn piece of paper is very important to them. You can show them that you have all the knowledge and skills they require, but if they require a certain level of education then you are SOL.

Stopping the misconception that school is required to be good at anything, and is worthwhile enough to go into vast amounts of debt would be a start to fixing that.
 
[quote name='Clak']Not everyone has tenure though.[/QUOTE]

True. But there hasn't been much of a trend of firing tenured or tenure track professors even in this recession.

The one exception is encouraged/forced retirements of older profs who are eligible for retirement and still working. Those have often been replaced with adjuncts until the current hiring freezes in many states/universities are over.

The trend has more been cutting back on adjuncts and laying off staff, and just having larger classes. The sucky thing is I doubt that trend will reverse when budgets improve and they can hire back adjuncts and fill tenure track positions when hiring freezes are over.

[quote name='MSI Magus']The real racket is in books. Back 10 years ago when you were in school books may have been expensive, but today they are insane and have no resale value.[/QUOTE]

That's true, but not related to the university. That's publisher greed setting the list prices, and the greed of the bookstores (usually the campus stores are ran by major book stores like Barnes and Noble who just pays rent etc. to the university) in not marking them down. I encourage my students to buy online as the books are almost always way cheaper from Amazon and other places.
 
While financial aid shouldn't be removed it should be reformed. I received a pell grant for a year or two when I was going to school and abuse of the system is an issue. Thing is that with a pell grant you get X to spend on college per semester/year. What is not spent goes in to your pocket to help out with extra expenses relating to school. Every semester after I took care of tuition and books id still have around $500+ left over that just went in to my pocket. There were people that flat out told me that they were not interested in school and were just in it for the money. They would sign up, get the pell grant, take the most BS easy classes possible and as long as they maintained something like a D or D+ average you could do it over again.

I will even admit there was a point where I was not sure if I was done with school or not and I stayed on an extra semester for the money. I am not saying that this is most pell grant students, I bet its an incredibly small minority. Point is though that those people do exist and they at least in my area existed in high enough numbers that I talked to 2 or 3 every semester. These people need to be weeded out and equally important standards need to be raised. The minimum requirement really should be at least a C average and you should have to attend a certain number of classes(at least 80%).

Or better yet we could just socialize the school system so everyone and anyone can attend any class for free ;)
 
Most places you have to be at a C average or above (2.0 or up) to stay off of academic probation. Not sure if you can still get loans while on probation. If so, then yes that should change. Loans, and especially grants, should be going to students who are at least on track to graduate.
 
[quote name='dmaul1114']It doesn't go up every year. But tt has to go up periodically due to inflation, energy expenses increasing, cost of living raises for faculty and staff etc.

A lot of the more frequent and larger increases than usual in recent years are due to state budgets sucking. As a result states are cutting tons of money from the higher education budget. Costs for the university don't magically go down, so they have to increase tuition and increase enrollment and class sizes etc. to make up the difference. As well as laying off staff, using furlough days etc. to cut costs.[/QUOTE]

I know you're in education and there are some outliers but for most, tuition (and fees) HAVE gone up every year. When you are averaging a 7.45% increase every year 1978 to 2011, it's going up.



http://www.dailymarkets.com/economy...ver-the-last-10-years-vs-52-for-medical-care/

Of course there are reasons but there is a cost issue which is getting worse for people
 
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It varies by state though. I think my tuition only went up once during my 4 years of undergrad, and 3 times during my 7 years of grad school.

It's been more frequent the past few years as states have been slashing higher education budgets. i.e. in the state I work the higher ed budget got slashed by over $300 million a couple years ago, and I think $200 some million more the next year IIRC. Those costs have to get passed on, and they're pretty much unavoidable since it's impossible to raise taxes in a conservative state.

It's just the nature of the beast. This country sucks and doesn't place the value on education and knowledge generation that other nations do, and thus we don't have the public spending/tax revenue focused on education needed to keep up quality while also keeping tuition down.
 
[quote name='dmaul1114']Most places you have to be at a C average or above (2.0 or up) to stay off of academic probation. Not sure if you can still get loans while on probation. If so, then yes that should change. Loans, and especially grants, should be going to students who are at least on track to graduate.[/QUOTE]

Hopefully thats true and hopefully it changed nationally. When I took classes it was about 5 years ago in Michigan, so obviously things could have changed or be different elsewhere. Another thing too is that what classes people take should be monitored and as I said before their attendance. A lot of students I knew that were doing this were taking the most BS easy classes that would never get you a degree and then they showed up just enough to pass. As you put it grants and loans should be for people on track to graduate or like I said before just socialize the system that way everyone can enjoy higher education. Its not just an issue of those that want to go and get a degree, but also those who are willing to better themselves in any way. I like the idea of someone being able to just go and for free or a minimal fee take a civics class to brush up on government function, a massage class to earn money on the side or suprise a spouse, or a couple expecting children to go and attend child care classes. We would be a much better society for it even if only 5% of the populace took advantage of it.
 
Socializing it would never work--at least for research universities. You wouldn't be able to pay high enough salaries to attract top talent to move knowledge forward which is the main purposes of research universities.

You'd just never get taxes high enough to have a socialized higher education system and still be able to staff research universities with people with terminal degrees who are international leaders in research in their fields.

Taxes just need to be high enough to avoid tuition increases outpacing inflation IMO. And hell, it's not even so much needing higher taxes as it is prioritizing higher education funding. It should really be second only to public K-12 funding in state budgets IMO as education is the key to the future of the country.
 
[quote name='dmaul1114']Socializing it would never work--at least for research universities. You wouldn't be able to pay high enough salaries to attract top talent to move knowledge forward which is the main purposes of research universities.

You'd just never get taxes high enough to have a socialized higher education system and still be able to staff research universities with people with terminal degrees who are international leaders in research in their fields.

Taxes just need to be high enough to avoid tuition increases outpacing inflation IMO. And hell, it's not even so much needing higher taxes as it is prioritizing higher education funding. It should really be second only to public K-12 funding in state budgets IMO as education is the key to the future of the country.[/QUOTE]

Having a system of socialized higher education does not mean that top universities would dissapear all together. Much in the same way that K-12 schools exist along side private schools there is no reason we could not offer higher education for free and still have a private college industry. Basically you would have tons of community colleges that offer people a place to go and get a free education. Places like Harvard or Yale could still exist as private universities who set themselves apart by bringing in top level teachers as well as doing top level research. If anything it would encourage those universities to step their game up since they would receive some real competition.
 
I went to community college before transferring to a university for my final 2 years. I'd recommend it to everyone as a way to keep the budget slim. That said, in those 2 years I still took out a little more than $20k in loans.
 
[quote name='thrustbucket']Quit pumping money into one of the last legalized scams and just read some books.[/QUOTE]

[quote name='Knoell']The problem with this is that if you are looking to obtain a job in a business that damn piece of paper is very important to them. You can show them that you have all the knowledge and skills they require, but if they require a certain level of education then you are SOL.

Stopping the misconception that school is required to be good at anything, and is worthwhile enough to go into vast amounts of debt would be a start to fixing that.[/QUOTE]

It may shock you guys to know that not everyone goes to college for the sole purpose of landing a job. Is it a big factor in the decision-making process - sure. But sometimes a well-rounded education reaps other life rewards. There is more to life then earning a paycheck.

I don't expect much from Knoell (let's face it...) but TB - I remember you sunk money into a house in the hopes of scoring some easy money and lost big. I've lost a few g's in the stock market myself. And you know what I found - evaluating all of my expenditures, it turns out that investing in myself was the best investment that I made (both for monetary and quality of life reasons)
 
[quote name='camoor']It may shock you guys to know that not everyone goes to college for the sole purpose of landing a job. Is it a big factor in the decision-making process - sure. But sometimes a well-rounded education reaps other life rewards. There is more to life then earning a paycheck.

I don't expect much from Knoell (let's face it...) but TB - I remember you sunk money into a house in the hopes of scoring some easy money and lost big. I've lost a few g's in the stock market myself. And you know what I found - evaluating all of my expenditures, it turns out that investing in myself was the best investment that I made (both for monetary and quality of life reasons)[/QUOTE]

You also forgot that a college education means you wont end up a conservative 95% of the time. That alone is worth $20,000 you pay for education or as conservatives would put it, indoctrination.
 
[quote name='MSI Magus']Having a system of socialized higher education does not mean that top universities would dissapear all together. Much in the same way that K-12 schools exist along side private schools there is no reason we could not offer higher education for free and still have a private college industry. Basically you would have tons of community colleges that offer people a place to go and get a free education. Places like Harvard or Yale could still exist as private universities who set themselves apart by bringing in top level teachers as well as doing top level research. If anything it would encourage those universities to step their game up since they would receive some real competition.[/QUOTE]

I'm talking public research universities--i.e. the big state universities. The bulk of research is done at public universities as there are a lot more of them than private research universities. The bulk of private colleges are liberal arts places that aren't focused on research. Places like Harvard and Yale are leaders in research, but their not the norm when it comes to private colleges.

Having publicly funded research universities is key to moving knowledge forward as lots of areas their isn't much money to be made off a lot of the research--thus it's very hard to get private funding to do it. With public universities, while getting grants for research is important, in many fields you can get tenure and a decent salary by just publishing research and doing a good job teaching even if you're not landing grants.

Socialize the public university system, and you'd lose a lot of that as salaries would have to go down etc.

These discussions always go no where as too many view the research university system as "schools" when their main mission is to generate knowledge. The teaching exists to bring in money to achieve that goal. Which is why teaching matters very little in evaluations for tenure and promotion.


Anyway, if you just mean socialize community colleges and small teaching universities--then maybe I could get behind that if it didn't lead to shrinking budgets for the state research universities. If it can be done without that happening, it would be a way to get some of the under-qualified and unmotivated students out of research universities which should be catering to motivated young scholars rather than people who just want to party and get a piece of paper they think will get them a job.
 
[quote name='dmaul1114']I'm talking public research universities--i.e. the big state universities. The bulk of research is done at public universities as there are a lot more of them than private research universities. The bulk of private colleges are liberal arts places that aren't focused on research. Places like Harvard and Yale are leaders in research, but their not the norm when it comes to private colleges.

Having publicly funded research universities is key to moving knowledge forward as lots of areas their isn't much money to be made off a lot of the research--thus it's very hard to get private funding to do it. With public universities, while getting grants for research is important, in many fields you can get tenure and a decent salary by just publishing research and doing a good job teaching even if you're not landing grants.

Socialize the public university system, and you'd lose a lot of that as salaries would have to go down etc.

These discussions always go no where as too many view the research university system as "schools" when their main mission is to generate knowledge. The teaching exists to bring in money to achieve that goal. Which is why teaching matters very little in evaluations for tenure and promotion.


Anyway, if you just mean socialize community colleges and small teaching universities--then maybe I could get behind that if it didn't lead to shrinking budgets for the state research universities. If it can be done without that happening, it would be a way to get some of the under-qualified and unmotivated students out of research universities which should be catering to motivated young scholars rather than people who just want to party and get a piece of paper they think will get them a job.[/QUOTE]

Whats to say they cant say the exact same way they are? Whats to say we cant offer free or low cost community colleges in combination with the state universities who continue their research. I am all for increasing funding 10 fold or more on scientific and technological research. We can do both. If anything it makes more sense. Allow those focusing on scientific break through to receive federal funding for just that while letting schools focus on education. The two could also work in tandem with students from the school coming to research universities to work on their problems. Heck you yourself said that there are too many people at research universities that dont belong there as it is. This just seems like it would solve a lot of problems.
 
I think most conservatives would prefer things in the U.S. to be like they are in some asian countries, where one goes to university to solely study one subject, with no general education classes involved. Which it's not like I never felt that way, some of those gen ed classes just sucked, but there were plenty that didn't and did have a positive impact.
 
Has having a socialized university system in other countries hurt their research capabilities though?
 
[quote name='spmahn']....firing? Not sure where you went to school, but at all the public colleges around here, all you had to do is not fuck up for a few years and get tenure, and you were basically set, it would take an act of congress to get rid of you no matter how shitty a teacher you might be.[/QUOTE]

Conjecture. You said in another thread how you consider the modern political dichotomy doesn't suit you. Yet every time you post you've shown that you're nothing more than a lapdog for ultra wealthy oligarchic interests - another sheep who doesn't fuck around with silly things like "facts," they just look at the world around them, oblivious to both their wealth of biases and the nonrandomness of what they see with their eyes (ethnocentricity entirely notwithstanding) and declare things are the way they are.

You're confirmatory bias made flesh and bone. You're as outside the simplified political spectrum as I am.

But hey, in response to your rigorous "at all the public colleges around here" laboratory analysis, here's some data for you, sweetheart:

tenure.jpg


Dept. of Education date, you fucking uneducated prick.

More information: http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/comm/rep/teachertenure.htm

By 2007, almost 70 percent of faculty members were employed off the tenure track.
Click to expand...


[quote name='Knoell']I know it is heresy, and insane but what would happen to college prices if students couldn't afford to go?[/QUOTE]

They already can't afford to go. You brought up student loans. That's what keeps them enrolled when they otherwise wouldn't be.

Tuition is high, but that's the result of a number of factors. The single greatest factor is the financial crisis, which led to:
- planning revenues via investments simply not being there due to the market collapse. blame investment banks and those responsible for the mortgage crisis for that one.
- a recession, and a reduction in tax revenue at the state and federal level
- a reduction in federal aid to states
- states putting educational funding on the chopping block when those reduced revenues were realized (also: unionized employees were made into villains because of all of the above somehow)
- schools realized that they could not run deficits. so tuition went up, more adjunct faculty got hired on at dishwasher salaries, tenure lines went on a hiring freeze almost nationally, other employees were furloughed and/or let go (e.g., groundskeepers, maintenance, IT, etc.).

In short, yes, you get more for less because of the mortgage crisis. Thanks for rating those CDOs Triple-A, Standard and Poor!

Want to save money in higher education? Abolish college sports. Entirely.
 
[quote name='MSI Magus']Whats to say they cant say the exact same way they are? Whats to say we cant offer free or low cost community colleges in combination with the state universities who continue their research. I am all for increasing funding 10 fold or more on scientific and technological research. We can do both. [/quote]

The problem is in this political climate it's impossible to raise taxes and increase funding. So if you socialize community colleges/teaching colleges, that money would just get pulled from the state university budgets most likely. It sucks, but that's the reality.

If anything it makes more sense. Allow those focusing on scientific break through to receive federal funding for just that while letting schools focus on education.
Click to expand...

I do agree in part with that. As I said in another thread recently the tenure system should be reformed to have the current research/teaching positions, research only positions and teaching only positions with people evaluated accordingly. Rather than only having the research/teaching positions as currently.

The other thing that is needed is what I'd call "pure" research centers. Some other countries have publicly funded agencies that basically higher professors to just do their research. Give them a salary and let them research whatever the hell they want as long as they're productive and producing results and publications.

We really have nothing like that in the US. Any public research centers are heavily controlled by whatever agency they're housed in (research what they want, can't publish it if they don't like the findings etc.) and private research centers are limited to focusing on whatever topics they can get grant funding for.

[quote name='Clak']I think most conservatives would prefer things in the U.S. to be like they are in some asian countries, where one goes to university to solely study one subject, with no general education classes involved. Which it's not like I never felt that way, some of those gen ed classes just sucked, but there were plenty that didn't and did have a positive impact.[/QUOTE]

Yes, it's very important to be well rounded and learn a lot of different things. Do some gen ed classes suck? Sure. But so do some classes in your major. That's a class to class thing.

Colleges/universities aren't trade schools where someone goes to only learn the skills they need to do one very specific job.

Saying that, there's really the solution to this problem. We need a big rise in trade schools/community college and employer's hiring people with these 2 year degrees and certifications etc.

That will pull people not interested in being scholarly out of the university system, get people in the job market faster etc.
 
[quote name='Clak']Has having a socialized university system in other countries hurt their research capabilities though?[/QUOTE]

I'm sure the countries with socialized university systems have MUCH higher taxes (and lower waste on BS spending like defense) than what we could ever get in place in the US.

The problem isn't that socializing it would hurt research capabilities. The problem is we couldn't get taxes high enough to socialize it and keep everything the same in the US.
 
Yeah I think we talked about that once, how much college athletics (football especially) costs schools.
 
[quote name='mykevermin']other employees were furloughed and/or let go (e.g., groundskeepers, maintenance, IT, etc.).
[/QUOTE]

Not just other employees. I had 8 furlough days my first year.

Had none last year or this year. But not raises either as we're still on a raise freeze.
 
[quote name='Clak']Yeah I think we talked about that once, how much college athletics (football especially) costs schools.[/QUOTE]

Yeah, it's really absurd. Only the top few elite football and basketball schools have athletic budgets in the black as they make enough on those two sports to pay for all the non-revenue sports.

Everyone else loses millions every year on their athletics. With most even losing money on their football and basketball programs, as well as all the non-revenue sports.
 
You would just have to think there's some way to cut costs. (More online classes, PDF books, wage freezes, etc) . Like I said with such a high demand, there's no need to go.

Most of college is a scam, if I walked in and said I had $50,000 and I wanted to use it to get a 4 year degree in something say Eastern European Studies or something. Let's say the college graduates 5 people a year with that degree.

Are there really 5 jobs out there paying $50,000 a year? (Your annual salary should be equal to your loan ammount, otherwise you're wasting your money). Probably not. Let alone 5 jobs each and every year for all the new graduates?

Does the college care about your future with the degree you "earned" from them? Would they ever say "Our degree probably isn't turning out graduates for that field this year. There's no jobs to fit them into."
 
To that, if the student's primary interest is in getting a degree that will land them a job, then they need to do that research when picking out a major.

Universities have career service centers you can go talk to about those kind of things.

If there aren't jobs in an area, and the major isn't generating students, that degree will stop being offered. There are requirements on minimum number of students you can have to keep a major around etc.


As for books--again that's out of the control of the university. That's up to publishers. As for PDF books--one is offered for one of the books I use. It costs $50 more than the print version. Again--publisher greed.

As for cutting costs. Online classes mean the student learns less. Wage freezes are happening (I'm in my 3rd year now and no raises) and over the long term will drive top talent elsewhere. With hundreds of millions being slashed from higher ed budgets the past few years, pretty much all the cuts have been made that can be made without hurting the quality of education and research dramatically.
 
[quote name='eldergamer'](Your annual salary should be equal to your loan ammount, otherwise you're wasting your money)[/QUOTE]

wat.
 
[quote name='dmaul1114']The problem is in this political climate it's impossible to raise taxes and increase funding. So if you socialize community colleges/teaching colleges, that money would just get pulled from the state university budgets most likely. It sucks, but that's the reality.



I do agree in part with that. As I said in another thread recently the tenure system should be reformed to have the current research/teaching positions, research only positions and teaching only positions with people evaluated accordingly. Rather than only having the research/teaching positions as currently.

The other thing that is needed is what I'd call "pure" research centers. Some other countries have publicly funded agencies that basically higher professors to just do their research. Give them a salary and let them research whatever the hell they want as long as they're productive and producing results and publications.

We really have nothing like that in the US. Any public research centers are heavily controlled by whatever agency they're housed in (research what they want, can't publish it if they don't like the findings etc.) and private research centers are limited to focusing on whatever topics they can get grant funding for.



Yes, it's very important to be well rounded and learn a lot of different things. Do some gen ed classes suck? Sure. But so do some classes in your major. That's a class to class thing.

Colleges/universities aren't trade schools where someone goes to only learn the skills they need to do one very specific job.

Saying that, there's really the solution to this problem. We need a big rise in trade schools/community college and employer's hiring people with these 2 year degrees and certifications etc.

That will pull people not interested in being scholarly out of the university system, get people in the job market faster etc.[/QUOTE]

As I discussed in other topics the realm of possibilty and the realm of reality are two different things. We have been talking about this in ideals. As a reality though yes none of this is possible. People are too short sided and focus on the stupidest of things.

As for the concept of being well rounded vs taking classes just relating to your major, if taking classes just related to your major makes you a conservative then call me Uncle Bob. Its absolutely insane how many classes that have nothing to do with your major you are forced to take. I have no clue why when I was going for Psych or Philosophy I was forced to take so god damn many math classes. I can understand a few electives and a few extra classes to make you well rounded, but honestly I found in my case and now in my wifes that for every class that seemed like something relating to our majors there were 2 that were not.
 
[quote name='mykevermin']wat.[/QUOTE]

That's actually standard advice from financial advisers etc. Don't take out more in student loans that what you think your first year salary will be.

At least for undergrad.

I don't have a problem with that. If you're not planning on going on to grad/med/law school there's not much point taking out a bunch of money to get a degree in humanties or literature or something that's not going to help you get a job.

Plus as long as you study hard and get good grades you should be able to get scholarships and grants and cut down on your loan amount.

The problem is too many just take out loans for tuition and living expenses and go party for 4 or 5 years and get some BS degree with a low GPA and thus have 5 figure debt and not much job prospects. And since they slacked off and partied all the time they also didn't get the benefit of learning a lot and being well rounded.
 
[quote name='MSI Magus']
As for the concept of being well rounded vs taking classes just relating to your major, if taking classes just related to your major makes you a conservative then call me Uncle Bob. Its absolutely insane how many classes that have nothing to do with your major you are forced to take. I have no clue why when I was going for Psych or Philosophy I was forced to take so god damn many math classes. I can understand a few electives and a few extra classes to make you well rounded, but honestly I found in my case and now in my wifes that for every class that seemed like something relating to our majors there were 2 that were not.[/QUOTE]


It doesn't make you conservative to have that view. It just makes you less of an intellectual. :p

Universities should be for people who have an interest in being scholarly and are just in general intellectual types who want to learn as much as they can about as many things as they can.

People just interested in one area and getting a piece of paper to get a job really shouldn't be at universities.

We need to remove the stigma from community colleges and trade schools and make those the route for people who just want to get a job. No reason someone who's not scholarly or intellectual and just wants to be an accountant or whatever should have to go to a university and take a bunch of classes not related to those topics to get a job. They should be able to spend a couple years at a trade school and be all set to get an accounting job, become a CPA etc.

The system just wasting their time and money by requiring a 4 year degree to get most decent accounting jobs, and wasting profs time by having more uninterested students in the classroom.
 
[quote name='dmaul1114']It doesn't make you conservative to have that view. It just makes you less of an intellectual. :p

Universities should be for people who have an interest in being scholarly and are just in general intellectual types who want to learn as much as they can about as many things as they can.

People just interested in one area and getting a piece of paper to get a job really shouldn't be at universities.

We need to remove the stigma from community colleges and trade schools and make those the route for people who just want to get a job. No reason someone who's not scholarly or intellectual and just wants to be an accountant or whatever should have to go to a university and take a bunch of classes not related to those topics to get a job. They should be able to spend a couple years at a trade school and be all set to get an accounting job, become a CPA etc.

The system just wasting their time and money by requiring a 4 year degree to get most decent accounting jobs, and wasting profs time by having more uninterested students in the classroom.[/QUOTE]

No, it is just your view that that is what universities are for. Academia is fast becoming to you what race is to dohdoh. As I said before id love it if we invested more in schools and had federally funded institutes for nothing but research. As it stands though that is not the case and as it stands the place people go for education and to better their odds in the job market are the same place. It is not right to fill students required courses with all sorts of unneeded classes just to bring money in to the college. You told me a few posts back that what I thought was ideal was not possible. Now I am telling you the same thing. Yes ideally research and employment would be separated. As of right now they are not and thus its justifiable to say when I or most others go to a university its not for education its for a degree to get a better job. Untill that is fixed universities serve a duel role as a place that exists to better your mind and a place that exists to better your career.

Also books are not just the fault of book publishers. My wife at the University of Toledo has had to buy ever increasing number of books that are specific to her campus or that are titled "UT edition 2011" or some such nonsense. Universities also control the curriculum and they also control the used book store on campus that gouges students with tricks like selling required online keys at prices similar to the freaking price of a new book store. Universities could tell publishers they will stop using their texts if they are gouging students, Universities could create more curriculum specific to the university as my wife has encountered but then charge reasonable prices for them, Universities could make the used book store more student friendly. They have the power, just like they have the power to separate academics for knowledge sake with academics for carers sake. They chose to keep things this way because they make a lot of money and have a lot of power in this system.
 
[quote name='dmaul1114']To that, if the student's primary interest is in getting a degree that will land them a job, then they need to do that research when picking out a major.

Universities have career service centers you can go talk to about those kind of things.

If there aren't jobs in an area, and the major isn't generating students, that degree will stop being offered. There are requirements on minimum number of students you can have to keep a major around etc.
.[/QUOTE]

I'm sure the major is generating students but I dont think the major is generating jobs. There's no reason for universities to turn out 10 Comparative Literature or Medieval Studies majors every year when there can't be 10 new jobs in those fields.
The university doesn't care. The department certinally doesn't care, they'e just happy to take your money.

In short, the service the university is offering "A college degree will allow you to increase your earning potential and go places in the world." Is not equal in all areas (ie Enginering vs Medieval Studies degree) and should not be marketed as such.

Why take someone's money and give them something not of equal value in return? That's fraud.
 
[quote name='eldergamer']I'm sure the major is generating students but I dont think the major is generating jobs. There's no reason for universities to turn out 10 Comparative Literature or Medieval Studies majors every year when there can't be 10 new jobs in those fields.
The university doesn't care. The department certinally doesn't care, they'e just happy to take your money.

In short, the service the university is offering "A college degree will allow you to increase your earning potential and go places in the world." Is not equal in all areas (ie Enginering vs Medieval Studies degree) and should not be marketed as such.

Why take someone's money and give them something not of equal value in return? That's fraud.[/QUOTE]

I don't know what school you went to, but I know that all the kids in the classics dept had no illusion about their job prospects in that field. Fringe fields don't lie because there's no point - everyone knows that there is not a market run on experts in 17th century French poetry. Now if you're talking lawyers or wall street bankers, that's a little more of a grey area. But in that case the alleged fraud is perpetrated as much by news and media as the schools.
 
[quote name='eldergamer']I'm sure the major is generating students but I dont think the major is generating jobs. There's no reason for universities to turn out 10 Comparative Literature or Medieval Studies majors every year when there can't be 10 new jobs in those fields.
The university doesn't care. The department certinally doesn't care, they'e just happy to take your money.

In short, the service the university is offering "A college degree will allow you to increase your earning potential and go places in the world." Is not equal in all areas (ie Enginering vs Medieval Studies degree) and should not be marketed as such.

Why take someone's money and give them something not of equal value in return? That's fraud.[/QUOTE]


Research universities aren't trade schools. They're knowledge creation centers (to again steal dohdough's terminology). The goal of a department like "comparative literature" is to generate good scholarship in that area and to share their expertise with students interested in the field.

Research universities main purpose isn't helping students get jobs. It's producing research and sharing expertise with young scholars. If a student is interested mainly in landing a good job, then it's up to them to choose a major that's conducive to that. And there's the career services center to help them out as well.

One shouldn't choose comparative literature or something like that unless they want to go on to the terminal degree and work in academia, or maybe want to go get a masters in education and teach literature in high school etc. It's up to the students to plan accordingly.

And again, we need to remove the stigma from community colleges and trade schools and get more businesses hiring graduates from these places. They may not be as well rounded as a university grad, but they should know all they need to know for an entry level job in their field, so the stigma is silly. And just wastes students time and money, and wastes the time and energy of professors at research universities, by forcing uninterested students to go to universities and take classes they don't care about.
 
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[quote name='camoor']I don't know what school you went to, but I know that all the kids in the classics dept had no illusion about their job prospects in that field. Fringe fields don't lie because there's no point - everyone knows that there is not a market run on experts in 17th century French poetry. Now if you're talking lawyers or wall street bankers, that's a little more of a grey area. But in that case the alleged fraud is perpetrated as much by news and media as the schools.[/QUOTE]

Agreed I went in to Philosophy because it was something I loved. I had no illusions of graduating and going on to do anything with that degree. I knew that while there was a chance I found a job as a teacher that the chances were small and that outside that there was nothing you could do with the degree ;) Sometimes you just have to go after what you love no matter how small the chances are. Its no different then people who try to become professional athletes, musicians, actors or people that want to be newscasters.
 
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