Colleges at the breaking point, forcing 'hard choices' about education - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-pushes-colleges-to-the-breaking-point-forcing-hard-choices-about-education-11588256157 <comment><USER2> Disclosure: i never went to college, I went to a trade school.

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

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

<comment><USER3> > He had some massive college bills too and i didnt understand how those > worked, but you cant get rid of them like you can a car loan.

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

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

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

<comment><USER4> > All of us should be regularly lobbying our lawmakers to make student loans > dischargeable by bankruptcy, just like any other loan.

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

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

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

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

<comment><USER3> > The reason they aren't dischargeable is because what bank in their right > mind would give a loan to an 18 year old with no collateral?

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

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

<comment><USER5> _> If it's a bad bet for the bank, it must be far worse of a bet for young adults._

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

<comment><USER6> Let's make that point clearer:

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

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

<comment><USER5> The bank doesn't want the bet because "bankruptcy" means very different things to the bank and to the student. To the bank it means they lose all their money. For a just-graduated person with minimal assets it's not that bad -- sure you can't get a mortgage to buy a house for a while, but you probably couldn't have afforded that anyway with student loans. You still have the degree, they can't take that (well, [https://www.jefftk.com/p/repossessing- degrees](https://www.jefftk.com/p/repossessing-degrees)).

<comment><USER7> I would not underestimate the impact bankruptcy plays in someone's life. You would be getting a bankruptcy on your record in the prime of your life (mid- twenties), making it very very difficult to borrow for the next 10 years. You end up starting building credit in your mid to late thirties, and maybe you are able to participate in the modern economy in your forties. It sucks. I lived it.

<comment><USER8> However, in a world in which it is common for college students to declare bankruptcy immediately after graduating, financial institutions might take advantage of that information and realize that their creditworthiness is much higher than the bankruptcy would predict. Kind of like how the stock price many companies go up after they cut retirement benefits.

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

<comment><USER9> How high is the creditworthyness of someone who is on a repayment plan to service another debt? It is practically zero. Declaring bankruptcy just limits the duration of the mortgage to 7 years. You still have to pay as much back as you can unless you are literally an unemployed hobo on the street for 7 years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wish I could be more sympathetic to the college industrial complex, but they've been treat us poorly for years. Yes, I know it's our fault for demanding gold plated educational experiences and then going into crazy debt to finance it. But who wants to blame himself/herself?

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

<comment><USER11> I'm still waiting for someone to explain to me how 15K+ in tuition a year is acceptable.

No sympathy here for the college industry.

<comment><USER12> _> I'm still waiting for someone to explain to me how 15K+ in tuition a year is acceptable._

I believe people who support such things think as follows:

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

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

<comment><USER13> It's not unjust if that garbageman went to university too, or at least had the same opportunity. Society is better off with better educated citizens. It's why we have free public schooling up through the age of 18; many other countries simply carry that farther.

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

<comment><USER14> > It's why we have free public schooling up through the age of 18; many other > countries simply carry that farther.

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

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

<comment><USER13> There are scores of government services that aren't compulsory/universal though. I don't think that's a key differentiator. And there's plenty of things the government makes you do that they don't pay for, either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> A couple of points: not all colleges are created the same. Many state schools, particularly top-tier ones offer fantastic educations at an excellent price- point. They are a good value, and will remain so. Along with need-based aid and scholarships, they are amazing vehicles to reduce generational inequality (look at UCLA for example). I can only speak to the engineering (not software) side of things, but from lab work to project-based design classes, I gained skills, knowledge and experience from well-trained instructors in a way that I think would be very difficult to begin to replicate in a remote experience.

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

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

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

<comment><USER16> I would personally consider the education I received in UC Berkeley when I was there studying CS, excellent. It was very challenging (in a way, it's impossible to exaggerate this), I found tons of help from TAs, my peers, professors were experts in their fields, labs were very useful to make me experience "real life" stuff and discussions were very useful to learn "theory" side of things, both of these occurring in the same class. I had a lot of research opportunities, and "hand-on" engineering opportunities.

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

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

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

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

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

<comment><USER17> That sounds like masochism. I went to a decent public school, worked hard sometimes, partied whenever, and yet I work for the same kind of company as you. A good 25% of my class ended up the same way.

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

<comment><USER16> That's true. My point was college isn't necessarily 4 years of chilling and partying for everyone, which is weirdly how everyone I talk about seems to frame this debate. Some of my elders don't even believe college wasn't 7/24 frat parties, ideological indoctrination and protesting.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think it's time to decouple education from all of the other things tied to colleges. When I studied abroad in Australia, things like the gym or meal plans were available, but not "bundled in" to your tuition. The idea of tying competitive sports teams to a university would be laughable.

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

<comment><USER19> No, especially not football. At my college the football team is essentially a separate corporation. The college gets nothing from the arrangement. In fact they have to rent parking from the football folk.

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

<comment><USER20> Pre-1990 I read this quote from a college president: "College administration boils down to sex for the students, football for the alumni, and parking for the faculty."

<comment><USER21> The great Clark Kerr: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clark_Kerr](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clark_Kerr)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I always found the US model of colleges so outlandishly short-sighted. Problems of non-bankruptcy and wage slavery are just the very apparent outcomes that you would have a system like this.

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

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

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

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

<comment><USER23> I don't think anyone _has_ to take a 100k loan to pay for college in the US. There are many many many colleges that are cheaper than that and there's a HUGE variety in financial aid that can make college free.

<comment><USER24> The 100k is over 4 years and tends to be mostly from "room and board" costs rather than the actual cost of credits. So the courses might be 10k a year and housing is 15k, for example.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> College isn't as appealing as it once was. In order to participate in the economy, we need a well-paying job. We're told to get a well-paying job, we need a good degree. To get a good degree, many of us have to go into debt. We finish college with a good degree but are saddled with thousands of dollars of debt (sometimes tens of thousands). And this college debt doesn't go away if we go bankrupt. It will always follow us. So, while we're trying to pay back our debt for a good degree for a dream to live well in this life, we also have to pay for our housing, to live, to eat, etc. It makes it so hard to save up for a house or anything permanent. Everything always seems precarious because it is. We're precarious. What's the point of a college degree if we're going to be in debt while working after getting the degree? Might as well skip the whole college part.

<comment><USER26> You are still way better off with college than without. It's not as good a deal as it used to be but it's still the best deal available.

<comment><USER27> I'm not so sure. I would probably choose a vocational apprenticeship over a B.A. in Sociology from State U.

<comment><USER28> A B.A. in Sociology isn't a good comparison to vocational apprenticeships. A better one would be a B.E in some kind of engineering.

<comment><USER27> I agree with you, but that wasn't the claim that I was replying to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The fairly recent law that you cannot bankruptcy out of a college load caused all this.

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

\- Colleges over-inflated costs, way beyond inflation

\- It balanced out to this shit.

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

<comment><USER30> Well.. the problem is how can lenders "be careful" when loaning to an 18 year old, which we can call an adult all we want but an 18 year old on their way to college is basically a grown child with no money.

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

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

<comment><USER31> I think it is not that complicated. In any case, there should be risk management involved. If you have a parent with enough money, make them co- sign.

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Not all colleges are the same. For example, at the UW-Madison, over half the students leave with do debt at all. There is a Bucky tuition promise so that any low-income person will have college paid for in entirety.

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

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

<comment><USER33> > try telling that to a person in the middle of the state, who has never been > to Madison, has never had a kid go to Madison, and who has to pay their tax > dollars to support the University. It is a hard sell.

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

<comment><USER34> Rural regions get their fair share of wins.

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

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

<comment><USER35> A fair share of wins seems to describe the elite coastal cities as well.

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

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> This is where the continental european model of the university is so much better than the anglo-american one.

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

<comment><USER37> I disagree with you, however one aspect of the continental European model that I admire is the close integration between post-secondary education and industry. One of my cousins - who studied and now lives in Germany - did his Masters and PhD on the topic of work he was doing while working at <large car manufacturer>, where he still works today.

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

<comment><USER38> This is not as common as you might think. Some universities do closely collaborate with their regional industry, but the vast majority of master thesis have zero practical application, just like in the US.

<comment><USER39> It generally depends on where the funding comes from, at least from what I've seen. Chairs or individual projects that are funded by industry generally hand walk graduate students through partner-sponsored topics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I would like to see a reckoning for the modern college and university model. They have extremely bloated administrative costs due to the moral hazards of public funding, they have accumulated ideologically biased fields that should never have been legitimized ([https://areomagazine.com/2018/10/02/academic- grievance-studi...](https://areomagazine.com/2018/10/02/academic-grievance- studies-and-the-corruption-of-scholarship/)), they are increasingly becoming political monocultures that are hostile to any diversity of thought, and they seem archaic when their primary function these days is not to teach (especially at large, well endowed, research universities) but to certify. That is, people mostly attend college to leverage their names as a proxy for economic value on a resume. Could they largely be replaced with testing centers and more focused vocational schools?

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

</comment><comment><USER41> My kid will be making his college choice in the coming year. As such, he's getting mail from colleges pretty much every day. The mailer from Vanderbilt really struck me as to the wrongheaded thinking of university leaders. On one side was this amazing blurb:

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

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

<comment><USER42> We just went through this. The finalist schools -- a big midwest Catholic school and a large NE state university -- offered scholarships or grants between $16k and $21k per year with some caveats such as min 2.0 GPA at one and FAFSA qualifications staying roughly the same over the four year period.

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

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

<comment><USER43> > The brand-name private colleges around the Northeast US now have all-in > sticker prices of $75k-80k. Financial aid in the form of grants or > scholarships (not loans) would have to be $35k-40k to make these schools > competitive on a cost basis with the examples given above.

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

<comment><USER39> Harvard : )

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> There's this fairly well known idea in organizations that expenses will tend to rise to fill the available budget. It's not nefarious, just the natural result of a competitive market - both the market inside the organization, where people want to spend any money that is allocated to them (because why not?), and the market outside the organization, where spending (on fancy dorms, maternity wards, or rock climbing inside the office) is an arms race to attract "the best" students, patients, or tech workers (just to name a few examples).

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

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

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

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

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

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

</comment><comment><USER19> Once the role of professional college administrator became a thing, then they took over. They're paid more than the faculty now. And they run it like a body shop. To pay for their hyperinflated salaries and padded staff.

I wish I were being pessimistic about this.

<comment><USER45> Speaking as a college professor, this is true. I started noticing really quickly that there was an implicit expectation that faculty be evaluated on their suitability and/or desire to move into administrative positions. This is fine, but it got mingled with professional administrators brought in from other institutions trained in business administration etc. Our president actually had no experience in higher ed prior to their appointment, it all being in large corporate business, and it was seen as a good thing somehow.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Two accredited online ones that have interestingly sustainable models, and possible interaction with others, I think:

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

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

<comment><USER47> I know that standard BYU has the lowest tuition in Utah, lower than any state school, provided you are a tithe-paying member of the Mormon Church [1]. Otherwise they have a higher tuition, similar to the in-state/out-of-state changes for most state schools. Does BYU pathway tuition work the same way?

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

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

<comment><USER46> Good question: if you ask BYU Pathway Worldwide people or browse their site to learn about it, would be a good follow-up post here, to say. :) I am pretty sure I link to them indirectly above (i.e., to a page that has a convenient link to them).

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

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

<comment><USER46> Update: FWIW, wkp makes WGU sound good, like here: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WGU#Rankings](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WGU#Rankings) and here: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WGU#Methodology_and_Rigor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WGU#Methodology_and_Rigor) .

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Any time you make money easily available for a certain good, whether through debt or direct subsidy, the cost of that good is going to increase proportional to the amount of money made available. This is what happened in the housing market and with college tuition.

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

<comment><USER43> You would probably end up with a two tiered system of online MOOCs for most and the normal experience for the elite.

<comment><USER49> Yeah, this was Scott Galloway's take in an early Prof G podcast.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> "Things that can't continue forever will stop."

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

<comment><USER51> >living off of the work of non-tenure-track instructors who got paid a pittance

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

This is a system that needs to die.

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

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

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

<comment><USER52> IMO at least in the US college is an education themed social exercise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Tech companies should take the lead on this. Say loud and clear: we no longer ask about education, and no longer take education into account when hiring, starting today. Devalue the sheepskin.

<comment><USER54> How else do you propose companies should assess new hires, especially young ones? And while the cost of tuition these days (IMO) outstrips the value of a college education, that's not to say that value is zero.

<comment><USER53> The question is rather, how do you think degrees help assess new hires?

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

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

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

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

<comment><USER55> I think this is a very limited view of what college, and being a great employee, is all about. Yes, I agree that education should not a priori be a dealbreaker. However you're shortchanging here the value of a) accomplishing something over a number of years, which a decent number of people with all 3 of the dimensions you specified, couldn't necessarily do; and b) the Gen Ed side of technical degrees. Strong communication skills and a general intellectual background are both valuable assets in an employee, and aren't captured by programming skills|interpersonal skills|culture fit, but are hinted at by, e.g., the ability to write a 10 page research paper which is a degree requirement for the top-line university certifications.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> [https://archive.md/7H1xu](https://archive.md/7H1xu)

</comment><comment><USER57> [http://archive.is/VX8ms](http://archive.is/VX8ms)

</comment><comment><USER58> Shuttered colleges should be turned into hubs for remote knowledge workers. The worst part of remote work is that it's hard to build a community without an office; college campuses are designed around community-building, with great shared spaces, gyms, etc. They also tend to be in beautiful places that are reasonably affordable, at least compared to the expensive coastal cities where many knowledge workers live.

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

</comment><comment><USER59> My big prediction for education is that a lot of research universities are going to move large lecture halls online (think chem 101, etc) with labs, seminars, and discussions with lower number of slots to abide with moderate social distancing requirements. It provides the primary educational content of lecture, and provides in person opportunities that students desire.

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

<comment><USER60> We would like this if they made us pay a lot less. Currently we are still paying the same amount in tuition, and some classes just provide a video a week and maybe a trivial assignment. It just feels awful and I dont learn anything from that type of experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> Well, a lot of college programs are just not worth it. The ones that are (engineering) tend to be four years of sleep-deprivation.

</comment><comment><USER62> I worked at a private college called Expression right at the end of the first dot com bust.The founder wanted to turn the school into the "Julliard of the digital arts" \- and keep the tuition as low as possible. For the first few years it was a really interesting and unique place. To make a long story short, the board of directors weeded the main founder out and moved the school through the accreditation hoops so that students could get massive loans. As a result, the school raised the tuition. The place exploded with students for x number of years. When Obama came to office new laws killed off the loans (and the school). Most of the original staff left and the whole thing was sold to a company named SAE. I always wondered what would have happened if they were never able to get accredited and were forced to stay a small trade school. The aftermath is documented in the eastbay express article below (2015). From reading current reviews, the place never recovered.

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

</comment><comment><USER63> Software should be either a trade school or a masters program depending on a student's level of commitment to the academics involved just like law, medicine, or engineering.

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

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

<comment><USER23> If you go 100k in debt to get a job that pays the same as one you could have only gone 10k in debt for, it's probably because you like doing that better.

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

<comment><USER63> The same argument can be made for gambling and using cocaine. That's fine, maybe, but if financial slavery is the known output then don't cry about how expensive it is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> Colleges, like Intellectual Property, impose artificial scarcity on the acquisition and dissemination of knowledge in an age where the Internet has allowed us all to publish and discuss like never before. They come from a time when we couldn't record audio and video and disseminate it so easily. Never mind _multimedia_ , they use heavy textbooks!

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

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

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

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

</comment><comment><USER65> One of the things I was curious about was how many people are in school now compared to the 60s and 70s. I had trouble finding a graph or statistics on how many people are in school but [https://www.statista.com/statistics/184272/educational- attai...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/184272/educational-attainment- of-college-diploma-or-higher-by-gender/) shows that 14.6% of men and 10.1% of women in 1971 had completed 4 years of college.

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

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

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

</comment><comment><USER66> This situation is exposing colleges as the scam that they are. Families are getting indebted up to their eyeballs, thinking are paying for education. In reality the education can be had for free. What they are really paying for is a sorting function, something that could also be had for free with national exams.

<comment><USER43> > something that could also be had for free with national exams.

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

<comment><USER66> Some money maybe, but "the money"? Korean and Chinese families are paying 250K per kid in test prep?

<comment><USER43> It wouldn't be 250K USD due to lower incomes, but the average South Korean family spent 20% of their income on test prep and private tutoring back in 2011. Anecdotally, a friend in China is talking about his future with his girlfriend and they are looking at around that figure as well if they have kids.

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

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

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

<comment><USER66> Its a lot more than I expected. Thanks for pointing this out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> Good! These aren't hard choices - this is the type of prudent spending that happens when you're not guaranteed infinite sums of money from the federal government. Scale back on the insanely bloated administrative staff, lavish facilities, sports stadiums, etc.

</comment><comment><USER68> State schools are still a relative bargain. I attended around 30 years ago and it was about 5000/year + 4000 room and board. Tuition now is about 16Kyear and room and board is about 13K/year. If tuition is doubling every 20 years, that is about 3.6% growth in cost

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

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

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

</comment><comment><USER69> I feel like you can learn quite a bit now with just online material.

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

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

</comment><comment><USER70> I understand that colleges charge the same tuition for online students and in person students, but what's preventing the schools from lowering the cost of online, part-time degrees as a way to increase enrollment? They may have hosting costs, or costs associated with platforms like Coursera, but there's no cost for facilities which should make them able to cut the tuition. The cost of healthcare and education is far too high in the US. IMO Universal means Affordable, Accessible and Abundant (In addition hopefully high quality as well). Education and Healthcare should meet all of those points.

</comment><comment><USER71> My sense is it's a good idea to separate college as a place where you take classes and can get a degree from college as a lifestyle choice. While living at home and later with a friend, I went to a community college after high school, that my family paid a nominal amount for, and transferred to a UC from there that was entirely covered by Pell/Cal grants until graduation. No debt required.

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

</comment><comment><USER72> The higher education bubble has been building for a long time. It follows a similar trend to the housing bubble: high prices fueled by loans that are too easy to get and too hard to repay.

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

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

</comment><comment><USER73> 2 things that I feel hurt US and probably be why we lose to China.

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

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

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

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

</comment><comment><USER74> It's very interesting how the world comes rotating,

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

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

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

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

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

</comment><comment><USER75> Burn it all to the ground. This model that saddles unknowing students with debt, while locking in old and crusty professors to their cushy jobs for life, is antiquated and needs to go.

</comment><comment><USER76> Colleges have been peddling shoddy goods to unsophisticated buyers for years with little or no regulation or oversight.

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

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

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

</comment><comment><USER77> I'm currently adjunct faculty in a software engineering program. I have no expectation of future work beyond the end of this semester as my school has announced massive cutbacks across the board. I'm "lucky" in that I don't rely on this for income but it still sucks. The only good thing is, as far as I know, none of my senior students have lost a job offer as a result of the pandemic.

</comment><comment><USER78> Oh, so expensive private education is only sustainable in a hyper-inflated economy? That's sarcastically unexpected.

</comment><comment><USER79> I once interviewed for a CD role at a private, vocational certificate college. They do have some IRL locations but primarily online. The director shared that their revenue was about $500m. I didn't take the role, and I was left scarred knowing their revenue is someone elses debt and based on hope.

</comment><comment><USER80> I'm hoping the crisis will:

\- Better develop processes for remote education

\- Bring to light the idea that MOOCs are legitimate

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

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

</comment><comment><USER81> makes sense: colleges are are entering another recession, and there is already a forecasted drop in enrollment of the wealthiest students, who should have been born during the last recession, that will hit in 2026 and could be as bad as a 15% to 20% drop in enrollment.

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

<comment><USER82> Good to know it might be cheap to get a second degree in a few years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> They should outlaw hiring practices with required college degrees for all but the most regulated careers like doctors, lawyers etc.

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

</comment><comment><USER84> They won't be missed. I hope they use this as an opportunity to re-evaluate what exactly they're offering to students for the currently astronomical prices inflated by reckless borrowing.

</comment><comment><USER82> Like many institutions that are failing during this crisis; this is merely accelerating a reckoning that was probably going to happen one way or another.

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

</comment><comment><USER85> Maybe this is a controversial opinion, but why are parent's expected to foot the bill of their children's education? When did this become the expectation?

</comment><comment><USER86> It's called being spoon fed versus being responsible.

</comment><comment><USER87> Isn't the real "hard" choice to simply forget about a for-profit educational system and make education a public service instead?

<comment><USER74> It's very interesting how the world comes rotating,

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

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

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

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

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER88> One of the "hard choices" some colleges are making is removing the requirement for SAT or ACT tests for admission. While a case can be made against certain types of standardized tests, will their admission criteria be made more rigorous in other areas to compensate? Lowering the bar for incoming students could end up reducing both the educational experience at the college and eventually its reputation, making them even more desperate for unqualified students in the future, ad infinitum until it gets bailed out or goes bankrupt.

</comment><comment><USER89> Colleges are addicted to insane tuition pricing (outpacing inflation for 40 years or more), enabled by excessive student loan debt.

</comment><comment><USER90> I was often told stories from the Boomer generation of people "working their way through college", holding part time jobs through college to pay for both living expenses and tuition. That is, quite literally, impossible today.

<comment><USER91> Even GenX attending certain state schools could partially pay for school this way, especially if you had low/free rent, for example living at home.

<comment><USER90> Can you provide some sources for this? Let's assume minimum wage, calculate average living expenses, hours spent in class and doing HW vs hours working. I know I spent at least 70hrs a week doing school.

<comment><USER92> I'm GenX, went to college in the late 80's, in state tuition in TX was $2000 per semester as I recall. I knew people who worked a part time 20 hours/week job that paid $8 an hour. (graveyard shift sorting boxes at a local shipping company). I knew many others who did some program where they worked at the college and made $5 an hour IIRC). I was a grader/TA/proctor for the first year engineering course and made the princely sum of about $10/hr but there was a lower cap on weekly hours which I don't recall exactly. I want to say it worked out to 10 hours/week on average so about $100 a week. For two semesters of about 18 weeks of work (10 hours a week) I could make $3600. But you had to be a junior or senior so this job could only be done for 2 years.

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

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

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

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

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

<comment><USER90> Ah my brain did a flip flop, mixed up genX with millennials. Yes, that was a very different landscape than we have now. I recently went back to school for an EE degree, and the costs were insane, even for someone with a good job and middle class wealth. An interesting thing I noticed was the the time cost for classes. I would spend a HUGE amount of time doing homework, maybe double the time it took during my CS degree. A lot of that time was fighting against the online homework system; what I could do on paper in 10 minutes would take 20 minutes to do, and the sheer load of homework was much higher. I can't imagine trying to hold a decent job and still keep my grades up. College seems a pretty poor option modern day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER93> The culture of higher education isn't what it used to be. The advancement of knowledge is now secondary to economic growth in a university. Students begin as customers and turn into products by graduation. Universities used to be gatekeepers to better economic opportunities but those opportunities have disappeared. This is a relatively recent phenomenon in that Baby Boomers don't have the student loan obligations that generations following them do. Boomers changed the policies to suit their own financial interests, destroying the opportunities that they benefited by for future generations. Massive student loan debt constrains major life decisions and limits access to credit. It's a lot easier to navigate life when you don't carry inescapable debt burdens. Government refused to limit access to credit and that allowed universities to constantly charge more every year. You can't escape student loan debt as you can business loans by declaring bankruptcy because of a fundamentally flawed logic about what the student loan enabled. Higher education is an economic investment. Yet, when the investment fails, the lenders aren't exposed to the losses -- the borrowers are. This has been a great deal for lenders as they aren't exposed to risk.

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

<comment><USER94> I'm sorry, but how could someone not have agreed with your statement? Online learning is a major threat to college for many of those reasons.

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

<comment><USER94> True. But I still think this is changing for the better, just very slowly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER95> There are too many short-sighted idiots who don't realize that having your neighbors child is the 2nd most important thing to having your own child educated.

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

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

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

<comment><USER96> I was also lucky. Undergrad funded by my parents. Grad school funded by assistantships with most tuition waved. I got a PhD with zero debt.

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

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

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER97> I'm using Blendle, but can't find this story there.

<comment><USER98> As I understand Blendle, they only offer _some_ stories from their list of publishers. NYT, WSJ, WaPo, LA Times, etc. will pick & choose what they allow Blendle to offer. Top-tier stories will not be shared through Blendle, and will be reserved for direct subscribers.

It makes Blendle less attractive to me.

<comment><USER97> That's too bad. Guess this is almost useless to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER99> I'm a developer at a university. We're horrified.

</comment><comment><USER100> no paywall: [https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/coronavirus-pushes- college...](https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/coronavirus-pushes-colleges-to- the-breaking-point-forcing-hard-choices-about-education/ar-BB13qkTg)

</comment><comment><USER101> There's a whole long discussion to be had on the purpose of education, and it goes back a long ways

TL;DR: skills vs. reasoning.

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Yes, bowdlerized.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

</comment><comment><USER102> Universities have to do all this proxying for a good education because they are unable to demonstrate the primary value: making you valuable to society.

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

<comment><USER103> The only degree that doesn't force a "well rounded" education is aerospace engineering. They start on their major course work right away. How many of those guys are out of work? "Well rounded course work" is just a money sink and wastes two years. Most of the major course work that matter you don't get to until junior and senior years. All you really need are those last two. First two are a waste.

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


Why investing in Bitcoin is meaningless - <AUTHOR> http://experiments.themadscientistlab.com/why-investing-in-bitcoin-is-meaningless-for-me/ <comment><AUTHOR> "Most people I know who invested in bitcoin/cryptocurrencies don't care about the implications (+positive or -negative) blockchain or cryptocurrencies will bring. All they care about is how much money they can make in the shortest way/time possible. Plus you'll notice people who have invested in bitcoin/cryptocurrencies will constantly encourage or shame people into buying cryptocurrencies they have bought, because: \- That's how they justify their biased and idiotic decision in investing in bitcoin/cryptocurrencies \- That's how they increase the value of bitcoin/cryptocurrencies. The more people put faith and invest in something, the more it's worth goes up. It's also about comforting themselves when the bubble burst and it's not just them who took a hit or went bankrupt, it's their friends and family as well. That's psychologically comforting."</comment>


How a personality test designed to pick astronauts is improving customer support - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/1706766/how-a-system-designed-to-weed-out-nasa-astronauts-is-taking-the-pain-out-of-customer-support-call

<comment><USER2> Heck, if this really works, I would take a personality profile test for free to save me from the pain of annoying customer service reps and save companies the hassle of trying to figure out my personality type. Go ahead.. stereotype me..

<comment><USER3> yes I was thinking the same thing. If there was some way for my interactions with previous companies to be exported and packaged up for my future calls/emails I would be on board. I think this could dovetail with voluntary disclosure of information on my part to improve the quality of advertisements that I experience on tv and radio - or whatever it is called in a few years.

One issue is that there would be things I wouldn't want in my profile (think credit reporting for examples). Also if I have any say in it I might put in things that I wish were true but may not be (good listener / attention to detail).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I suspect there's quite a bit of overlap in the types. I am definitely not a 'workaholic' according to the usual definition of the term, but I -do- prefer to just get the facts and finish the call as quickly as possible. I'm not there to make a friend, I'm there to solve a problem.

This was actually true no matter which side of the conversation I was on. And some callers definitely appreciated that when I was solving their problems.

However, I did have enough sense to know when to just let a customer rant and deal with their emotions as the problem, instead of the actual initial problem they had.

Also, my current company used to do personality tests before hiring someone so that they could get the right attitude in the company. They stopped doing that a while back, but that initial seed of pleasant attitudes has persisted since those initial people are now doing the hiring. It has worked out really, really well for employees and clients alike.</comment>


BrowserPlus: Yahoo's web app desktop platform - <AUTHOR> http://browserplus.yahoo.com/ <comment><USER2> So are users really going to end up installing Google Gears, Prism, and BrowserPlus? Destkop/web interaction is definitely useful, but I wonder if it's going to get complicated because of all the different platforms.

<comment><USER3> You're forgetting JavaFX, Silverlight and Flex/AIR. It's going to be fun.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I see what Yahoo is trying to do here, but this could've been done by anyone with an activeX or similar plugin for the browser. The reason that this is usually not done is that people do not want to install, or won't install these extra things on their computer.

Surely the Yahoo factor will help it propogate, but I don't really see a point. These features need to become standard and built into the browser, otherwise they'll always be a novelty and definitely not key to the functioning of a core website/web application.</comment>


Making a Fast Curry: Push/Enter vs. Eval/Apply [video] - <AUTHOR> http://paperswelove.org/2015/video/jason-ganetsky-fast-curry/ <comment><USER2> I was really hoping for a quick and easy chicken tikka masala.

<comment><USER3> There's quick and easy, and there's delicious. Making curries is not that hard though, I've found the BBC's Food website to be an excellent source for recipes: [http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/chickentikkamasala_73305](http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/chickentikkamasala_73305)</comment></comment>