The Crisis of College Affordability

[snakela]

Re: The Crisis of College Affordability- Crisis for the University Industry

Over the next few years I think that we will see some dramatic changes in higher ed. Some universities and colleges will go under, even some very major universities. Most universities will try to increase the student to teach ratio, in some cases dramatically. But there are only so many students to draw from. Many institutions will replace tenured faculty with adjunct teachers after tenured faculty retire or are forced out. Restructuring is code for trying to fire tenured faculty without a lawsuit. (If you join departments or terminate departments you can eliminate the faculty positions, depending on the state.)

I'm hopeful the internet will allow on-line degrees to become more acceptable and widespread. Along with diploma mills, many respectable universities have some sort of distance-ed program thats internet based. I think the jury is still out on how well those stack up against full-time programs.

[Slimprofits]

Re: The Crisis of College Affordability

Specifically my liberal arts education (political science) at a public university was entirely a study of the historical and the theoretical. The major was separated from current reality. For example, at least in the undergraduate courses, the topic of influence via finance of elections was not at all covered. The revolving door, the lobbies, etc.

[Spartacus]

Re: The Crisis of College Affordability

http://www.paulgraham.com/colleges.html

There's an actual study floating around - I think it was by a Stanford prof - that showed the MBA did almost nothing to improve income 10 years out.

For some reason I can't find it.

[Slimprofits]

Re: The Crisis of College Affordability

http://www.paulgraham.com/colleges.html

There's an actual study floating around - I think it was by a Stanford prof - that showed the MBA did almost nothing to improve income 10 years out.

For some reason I can't find it.

"The End of Business Schools? Less Success Than Meets the Eye"

By Jeffrey Pfeffer and Christina T. Fong

http://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1...+Meets+the+Eye

[charliebrown]

Re: The Crisis of College Affordability

20 students are paying 16K each which is 320K. Your example has the prof costs 234K. The discrepency between prof cost and and revenue is that you have the prof only teaching 9 hrs, not 12. So another third of a prof makes up the difference in hours and rev. Is it reasonable to have a prof only teach 9 hours? I have never been a prof, but using the same rule of thumb that students use for each hour of instruction will have 1 hour of out of class work. Then the professor is working 18 hours. with lots of vacation time for a cost of 234K. Even if it takes 2 hours of prep time for each hour of class time now we are at 27 hours a week. I know that profs do other things than teach, they are supposed to do research.
But do I as joe programmer need a leading theoritician to teach me skills to get a programming job? No. Maybe this is an argument for a techinical school, junior college route or something like that. The problem is that if you want to work for a big company your degree better say, U of Ill, U of Cal, Purdue, N.U. etc. not Devry (local tech school), or College of Lake County. Maybe there are too many degreed people chasing to few good jobs. Back in the dot-com era, employers would take candites without a major university degree and pay them good money. The tech schools profs are expected to teach more classes are paid less, and do not have to do research.

[Sharky]

Re: The Crisis of College Affordability

My grandparent's view of a university was that of a place where one went to become a thinking person, a cultured person, and a leader. You went to college to become a "renaissance man" of sorts.

I agree with your grandparent's view. University should be a place where you learn how to think. That process is very different from the rote of high school. Unfortunately, that's not what most universities are any more -- they are more like an extension of high school.

While studying engineering, with the intention of never becoming an engineer btw (math came naturally, so it made sense), I found that the classes that I learned the most in -- importantly about myself, and human action -- were literature, economics, law/philosophy, and history. I found that these subjects addressed the "Whys"

Social sciences, literature, etc, are wonderful topics, and very worth while, for many reasons. They are definitely an important part of a well-rounded college education. The issue I have is with so many people getting degrees in those subjects. My perspective is that a college education should be both wide and narrow. Wide at first, to get some perspective. Then narrow in the end, as you specialize in a particular marketable area.

The bottom line on why most people go to university is because they want to be able to get a better job. Society tells us that you get paid better if you have a college degree. But the part of the message that's missing is that you're paid better because you know more about a subject that your employer needs done -- not because you're a more interesting person or because you had a good time or because you know a bunch of fascinating but arcane stuff.

If the choice of going to university was honestly made up front on the basis of "borrow $100K to learn interesting stuff, have a good time, give up four years of income, but don't increase your earning ability," many people would choose not to go. They are being misled.

[Sharky]

Re: The Crisis of College Affordability

20 students are paying 16K each which is 320K. Your example has the prof costs 234K. The discrepency between prof cost and and revenue is that you have the prof only teaching 9 hrs, not 12. So another third of a prof makes up the difference in hours and rev. Is it reasonable to have a prof only teach 9 hours? I have never been a prof, but using the same rule of thumb that students use for each hour of instruction will have 1 hour of out of class work. Then the professor is working 18 hours. with lots of vacation time for a cost of 234K. Even if it takes 2 hours of prep time for each hour of class time now we are at 27 hours a week. I know that profs do other things than teach, they are supposed to do research.

You can tweak the numbers endlessly. Actual overhead rates are probably well above 100%. Some profs teach a lot, some make heavy use of T.A.s, some have huge classes, others teach one small class and spend the rest of the time doing research -- which normally involves raising separate funds.

My point was only that the numbers aren't off by several orders of magnitude. I'm sure it costs a huge amount to run any modern university. Besides, in the end, who cares what it costs them and what the professors get paid? You either go because you believe you will get value for what they charge, or you don't go. Simple.

[mfyahya]

Re: The Crisis of College Affordability

How do you guys have time to find this shit? ;) This site rocks!

This site rocks more than you think, here's more: ;)
There's Standford Engineering Everywhere
and UC Berkeley's online courses

How I wish these were available when I was an engineering student! The only thing holding back motivated students in many Asian countries is lack of resources.

[mfyahya]

Re: The Crisis of College Affordability

One other reason for the recession you won't see mentioned around here: americans surf too much web at work

According to the Aussies, it's good for productivity! ;)

[Master Shake]

Re: The Crisis of College Affordability

Thank you for bringing this up. It seems that there has been too much liberal arts bashing in this thread. The true core of liberal arts has in fact been lost and watered down with sociology, psychology, etc. This is not to say that such fields do not have value, but they are not the liberal arts, they are social sciences. A return to the true meaning of a liberal arts education, one that trains the mind and deepens one's familiarity with 'the great conversation' would actually be of tremendous value. I do not mean a return to the trivium and the quadrivium in full, but an emphasis on training the mind to be free and helping one to contemplate the 'whys'. As it is now, we have English Lit. majors at leading universities who say 'yeah I didn't do too good on that' or such things.

If we focus upon what we consider 'practical' training for everyone, much of a higher education will lose its significance. It is true that many people many only apply 25% of what they learned in college in their professional lives, but many people also discover that they want to do something completely different with their lives. I have had several friends that completely changed course once they were exposed to another area in college and I am sure that many here could say the same.

Unfortunately, the liberal arts disciplines have been captured by the New Left of the 60's (following Antonio Gramsci's instructions), and the liberal arts are no longer about a free and independent inquiry into the human condition, but indoctrination.

[Basil]

Re: The Crisis of College Affordability

Unfortunately, the liberal arts disciplines have been captured by the New Left of the 60's (following Antonio Gramsci's instructions), and the liberal arts are no longer about a free and independent inquiry into the human condition, but indoctrination.

That is part of my lament, there is a contingent of activists who have tried redefine the meaning of 'liberal' in liberal arts and in doing so have destroyed the liberal arts all together. On the one hand, disciplines that have no business being called liberal arts, such as sociology and anthropology, these being more about the application of what you have learned in the liberal arts, are now called liberal arts. On the other hand, peace and co-existence studies, women and gender studies, queer studies, etc, are all considered to be a part of 'the liberal arts.' Area studies is also a problem.

Nonetheless, there are a few holdouts and a few rumblings of a return to the true liberal arts. Thomas Aquinas College in California is one of the few places that actually teaches the true liberal arts and I have heard that their graduates are some of the best prepared for any profession they may choose, as they actually know how to think.

I find it sad and hilarious that people with a liberal arts degree do not even know what it means to 'beg the question'.

[Basil]

Re: The Crisis of College Affordability

20 students are paying 16K each which is 320K. Your example has the prof costs 234K. The discrepency between prof cost and and revenue is that you have the prof only teaching 9 hrs, not 12. So another third of a prof makes up the difference in hours and rev. Is it reasonable to have a prof only teach 9 hours? I have never been a prof, but using the same rule of thumb that students use for each hour of instruction will have 1 hour of out of class work. Then the professor is working 18 hours. with lots of vacation time for a cost of 234K. Even if it takes 2 hours of prep time for each hour of class time now we are at 27 hours a week. I know that profs do other things than teach, they are supposed to do research.
But do I as joe programmer need a leading theoritician to teach me skills to get a programming job? No. Maybe this is an argument for a techinical school, junior college route or something like that. The problem is that if you want to work for a big company your degree better say, U of Ill, U of Cal, Purdue, N.U. etc. not Devry (local tech school), or College of Lake County. Maybe there are too many degreed people chasing to few good jobs. Back in the dot-com era, employers would take candites without a major university degree and pay them good money. The tech schools profs are expected to teach more classes are paid less, and do not have to do research.

At leading research universities, professors will usually have six teaching hours per week, a 2/2 load. At other institutions they may teach a 2/3 load, thus six hours one semester and nine hours another. The bottom rung four year institutions do 3/3. And from what I understand, community colleges have a 4/4 teaching load for full time faculty members. As you can see, the amount of attention students may receive and the amount of research a professor can perform is reduced as one goes down the line.

Administration and mentoring are also important parts of the job, not just research and teaching, and grading papers is one of the worst and most time consuming parts of the job.

It is true that a model wherein those who do not do research teach more is a good way to cut costs. But you do not want to move to a model where professors are not also understood to be performing new research. This leads to a far more dynamic classroom and a far more cutting edge educational experience. It also leads to the development of new courses that expand and refresh the curriculum. Though I must admit that many academics abuse the system once they get to be full professors, and spend their time doing god knows what. That is why many of the best academics are those who work in the private sector and come back to the academy, or who regularly rotate between the two. For example, I bet EJ would make a great visiting economics professor.

[flintlock]

http://www.paulgraham.com/colleges.html

There's an actual study floating around - I think it was by a Stanford prof - that showed the MBA did almost nothing to improve income 10 years out.

For some reason I can't find it.

MBAs have become like BBAs, similar to how people compare a college degree today to a High School degree of the past. Not as special or rare anymore. My next door neighbor has an MBA. He's unemployed, I think for quite a while now. His house just went up for sale yesterday. Just six months ago his wife was telling me how they were going to clean up in this down housing market by buying up distressed homes due to his advanced degree that gave him inside knowledge of how the markets worked, blah, blah, blah. I guess that didn't work out.

Not saying an MBA isn't valuable, just that they probably aren't what they used to be.

[Penguin]

Re: The Crisis of College Affordability

Western Europe and Japan.... I could agree with that to a large degree.

But when taken on a global scale that ain't many is it? Don't know if we will ever go back to being a nation of designers, builders, and craftsmen but it would sure be nice. For some of us anyway.

Will

[c1ue]

Re: The Crisis of College Affordability

i just cant understand this tuition increase. I am an engineer. I paid 2K per year on tuition,books fees and went to u of Ill in the early 80's.

Football (mis)kicker:

The tuition rises have been talked about before on iTulip: as a limited capacity resource, the only way colleges have to maintain/increase profitability is increasing tuition.

The rising economy helped this as did rising endowments; the former by making the value of higher education apparently more, the latter by reducing the need to keep tuition affordable for the poorer students.

We're now in a situation where both above points are reversing.

It will be interesting to see just how far back down the reaction extends.