Just How Hard is University to Overcome
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@dashrender said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:
@scottalanmiller said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:
@dashrender said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:
So is my wife and she completely does not accept Scott's premise. It used to lead to fights but now we just don't talk about it.
But has she ever produced a reason for it, or one with any substance?
No of course not. She simply sees it as an attack on her livelihood. FYI, She teaches math. (stats/algebra/some basic math at a community college)
Right, and that's exactly what drives university value down - people seeing it as "their" livelihood and not a value to students. This is how I perceive the majority of professors, promoting taking advantage of children that didn't know better for person gain. If emotional response and entitlement to income without showing value to the students are the logic behind why college should exist, the point is made far better than I could make it. Not that math is a hard subject to justify kids learning, but if it had actual value, a math professor should have the easiest time of anyone showing how it does.
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Anyone working in education, at least in the public space (anyone going to private schools gets what is coming to them), should be doing so for the good of the students, not for themselves. That's not to say that they should not get paid, but it should be a job done with a singular goal - helping the students, not using the students for personal gain. This isn't a normal job. Students are in a position to be taken advantage of by the system and are regularly.
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@scottalanmiller said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:
@coliver said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:
@quixoticjeremy said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:
@coliver said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:
@scottalanmiller said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:
@penguinwrangler said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:
In Missouri, we have what is called the A+ program. HS kids go through a program and have to meet certain requirements. Once they do, their first two years of college at a community college is free. My kids are doing this.
SUNY (State University of NY) is all free now, except for the extremely wealthy, I'm told. It is a new program, so I know basically nothing about it. And SUNY is one of the top college names in the world.
It's free for the low end of the income bracket. There are a number of stipulation that go along with the excelsior scholarship.
Actually as someone who lives here, it's not just simply the low end, it is a large portion of the populace that seems to be receiving it. Quite a few of my friends have gone back to or are attending college purely because of this program, none of them being exceedingly poor.
I live just a few hours south of you and work in the system. It's a bit more far reaching then what I've said yes. It's a step in the right direction but it's baby step. It effects households under a combined income of $100,000. So it's generally low-mid to lower income. The nice thing for the state, and tax payers, is that it takes effect after all other grants take effect. It will only cover 6,470$ per semester... Which is really nice for us small and community schools.
That's pretty shitty that they consider combined income. So a single person making tons of money can go to school for free, but a couple with kids making really low income both working trying to make ends meet have to pay to go to school. Typical.
Pretty much yes. Income stipulations don't make a lot of sense, I know they did it to make it past the assembly. IIRC they are planning on removing that stipulation in the next 5 years.
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I'm among those who started down the "Higher Education" path at the unyielding behest of my parents (especially my dad) who demanded that either I pay rent, or go to college and I would not be charged rent. So I went to junior college, because unfortunately, while reaping the immense benefits of being home-schooled from Kindergarten all the way through completing High School, there's very minimal support for the transition into College that all public high schools and basically all private high schools have dedicated staff for.
I started off majoring in Accounting, because accountants make good money and would be a totally certain necessity for my career right? Well, Accounting bored me practically to tears, so naturally once I finished my courses in Accounting, I changed majors lol. Since I've always loved math, Accounting actually suited me well enough.. but the actual work of accounting just chilled my soul and tore all excitement from me to do it for decades as a career. So I switched to business management, because I was already managing full time at my job in the real world in the meantime, struggling to work full time and go to college full time simultaneously.
Just shy of two years into that field, I came to the frustrating realization that there will almost always be some shmuck higher on the totem pole that will cause me problems and make things difficult for me. The thought of surpassing them all was statistically improbable, I already knew that. Not that it couldn't be done, but how long would it take for me to do so, and would how much better it would be if and when I finally made it to the top be worth how much it would likely suck until I got there? I decided that going exclusively into management was going to drive me kind of crazy, but thankfully I was working in management as high-volume bench IT, doing ungodly amounts of consumer support and service... and I loved it! So my journey into IT began , switching to studying basically every IT related course I could.
About a year and a half into that, and 2/3 of the way through the CCNA courses being provided at the institution I had been attending (I would finish the courses with my CCNA), I realized that Networking wasn't really my thing either, but I loved Systems.. I loved Virtualization (this was the mid/late 2000s btw), I loved security, and I loved being able to put it all together myself. Since I couldn't afford anything to build a home lab, I actually sold people my pet projects at Circuit City for a while when the idea of a Computer-controlled Home Theater didn't exist in the mainstream yet. There was no Roku, Facebook was only just a new startup with Myspace still being the dominant social media, YouTube wasn't owned by Google, streaming was still a novel idea, and Blu-Ray was ultra-high tech and still a new, groundbreaking quality technology for home use, 40" was still considered your average big-screen, and 1080P TVs still cost no less than $1500. I was the guy who sold a couple a $40,000 home entertainment and computer solution as their retirement gift to one another. Nobody any of us had ever heard of had ever setup anything like that before.. but I created the solution and sold it, we put it together, we made it work, and we gave them what most people waited more than half a decade to get. The guy found me at my next job some years later, basically doing the same thing as I was when I sold him his solution but with less official management responsibilities, and thanked me for getting them what they got. It was still better than everything else available, and what I sold him years ago was still working pretty much exactly how we set it up.
I didn't learn to sell from College, I actually learned while working and attending college, that I could do a lot more and learn a lot more working than at college. I'm sure Scott would agree that that's probably not uncommon. I was attending a community college where ALL of the faculty teaching anything IT related were industry veterans with around 7-10 years minimum experience in IT, so they weren't career academicians. I'll never forget the Cisco instructor I had who would constantly be saying "the book says X, but this is what you actually need to know". Also, she had a surprisingly heavy piece of foam painted like a brick that she threw at inattentive students... it was awesome, but I digress, lol. I was paying out of pocket, and even with the obnoxiously cheap CC rates I was paying (think about 2K/semester), I still ended up realizing that it wasn't worthwhile. Had I realized before it was too late that my extremely desirable ACT score could have taken me to any college in America for free, things might have gone differently for me... but it didn't, and I'm frankly not upset that it didn't.
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@tirendir said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:
I'm among those who started down the "Higher Education" path at the unyielding behest of my parents (especially my dad) who demanded that either I pay rent, or go to college and I would not be charged rent. So I went to junior college, because unfortunately, while reaping the immense benefits of being home-schooled from Kindergarten all the way through completing High School, there's very minimal support for the transition into College that all public high schools and basically all private high schools have dedicated staff for.
I went to private school and in mine, there was zero assistance for that (and a zero percent college attendance rate among both students AND teachers.) I had for two years one teacher than had a Associates degree, but that was it. Other than that, no teachers had been to college and no one went to any.
Public school gave me a lot of "help" transitioning to college. Mostly telling me I couldn't make it, pushing me to really bad schools... all kinds of things that made college harder from the very people that should have known more about it.
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@tirendir Yep, and all that training in things other than tech is what would give you the knowledge you really need to excel in the tech sector.
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@travisdh1 said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:
@tirendir Yep, and all that training in things other than tech is what would give you the knowledge you really need to excel in the tech sector.
Exactly. That's what provides the context for understanding the tech and how that tech applies to the business.
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@scottalanmiller said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:
party with it. But nothing makes them do that. If the question is "University vs. throwing money away" then clearly
You're ignoring that at some schools you could pretty much drink for free if you just made friends with that rich kid who would pay for the keg (or had a few friends in a frat but managed to avoid joining). You can party and go to college without incurring the burn rate for said parting.
On a more serious note, I've found an issue with your generalization based on averages. You are taking the national average. There is a massive difference in the economic outcome for the University of Chicago vs. for profit diploma mills.
Also at Tier 1 universities cost models get more weird in that if you are smart and poor you will often pay nothing (Baylor gives free tuition to national merit scholars and aggressive scholarships based on SAT scores) while if you are dumb and rich you get to pay "list" as well as have to take remedial courses to get rid of your provisional acceptance.
If you are poor, hard working, and go to a tier 1 university, your cost model is WILDLY different than if you are rich going to a tier 1, or middle income but dumb and going to a for profit diploma mill.
I can properly assess your argument, and find it's weakness because I took rhetoric, from a place that wasn't spelled kollege
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The other thing with these stats is that they include all majors. We have data that shows WIDE discrepancies between degrees.
You are lumping in people with Church Recreation Majors (Yes this is a major, and oddly the only person I know who has it, makes over 100K, although not doing anything related to the major).
Did I know people who were religion majors with 60K in private loans? Did I know people with creative dance masters who had 120K in debt? Sure!
If you narrow to the top 100 schools, the top 5 programs for income at each, and control for people with a SAT score under 1350 (or whatever the new damn scale is, but a top 20% score) and from a family who is middle class or lower, what is the outcome of college vs. non-college. I suspect you'll see a slightly different outcome with the numbers.
Am I cherry picking? Absolutely.
But my hypothesis is that there are wildly statistically different outcomes for dumb, rich, getting non-profitable degrees, at tier 3 schools, vs. non-rich, tier 1, top degree's who are intelligent.
Even throwing out the two that are more subjective (Dumb, and rich) I still suspect you'll see statistical significance that will overcome your gap.
Do I agree with your premise that too many people are going to college who shouldn't? Sure.
Do I agree with generalizations that it should be avoided? That may be a bit too harsh.
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@storageninja said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:
@scottalanmiller said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:
party with it. But nothing makes them do that. If the question is "University vs. throwing money away" then clearly
You're ignoring that at some schools you could pretty much drink for free if you just made friends with that rich kid who would pay for the keg (or had a few friends in a frat but managed to avoid joining). You can party and go to college without incurring the burn rate for said parting.
On a more serious note, I've found an issue with your generalization based on averages. You are taking the national average. There is a massive difference in the economic outcome for the University of Chicago vs. for profit diploma mills.
Also at Tier 1 universities cost models get more weird in that if you are smart and poor you will often pay nothing (Baylor gives free tuition to national merit scholars and aggressive scholarships based on SAT scores) while if you are dumb and rich you get to pay "list" as well as have to take remedial courses to get rid of your provisional acceptance.
If you are poor, hard working, and go to a tier 1 university, your cost model is WILDLY different than if you are rich going to a tier 1, or middle income but dumb and going to a for profit diploma mill.
I can properly assess your argument, and find it's weakness because I took rhetoric, from a place that wasn't spelled kollege
But you also have to remember that average is average. Yes, you can make college work out "a little better" by getting a free ride and going to a better school, in theory. But people who are able to do that also have that much more ability to do well skipping college. The two track together. Averages still tell the average story. The average outcome for the average person with the average cost. Are there outliers? Of course, but for normal people under the main part of the bell curve, it all applies.
Your theory only tells us what we already know - smart, well connected, resourceful people have better chances of success than do other people. We already know this. Does college help them? Other things that we know about average vs. average suggests that it does not. If anything, logically, college helps those farther from the top the most.
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@storageninja said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:
The other thing with these stats is that they include all majors. We have data that shows WIDE discrepancies between degrees.
Did you see my video? I covered that specifically and how lumping all majors together dramatically improves how college appears by making doctors and lawyers (who are required to have degrees and are not in the decision pool) as well as those that can't get into or graduate from college because they just can't handle it all appear in the stats when all we are actually intending to look at or could possibly care about is the decision matrix stats that include careers that have degrees, but don't require degrees and people who are going into those fields and have college as an option. By including the highest income government mandated degree fields and the "college isn't an option" people, it makes college appear dramatically more beneficial than it actually is for fields in which college is only a choice.
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@storageninja said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:
You are lumping in people with Church Recreation Majors (Yes this is a major, and oddly the only person I know who has it, makes over 100K, although not doing anything related to the major).
Right, on the college side church rec majors are included. On the non-college side, people intending to never do anything but be a cashier at Mcdonald's are included. This "lumping" favours the college system in the stats.
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@storageninja said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:
If you narrow to the top 100 schools, the top 5 programs for income at each, and control for people with a SAT score under 1350 (or whatever the new damn scale is, but a top 20% score) and from a family who is middle class or lower, what is the outcome of college vs. non-college. I suspect you'll see a slightly different outcome with the numbers.
Right, and everything we've seen statistically and logically says that we'd see a skew that shows college as a huge failure by a margin we've never imagined. That's exactly my point. If we narrowed it to just the people in the decision matrix, it wouldn't give the appearance that college had any value like it does when we look at the whole pool. Those people, with ambition and resources, have the most to gain by skipping college. They have the least benefit from college replacing parental or societal connections.
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@storageninja said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:
Do I agree with generalizations that it should be avoided? That may be a bit too harsh.
It's not that it should be avoided. It is that it should be considered carefully because all available data says it is highly risky and very difficult to overcome. It's a huge gamble. Can it pay off? Sure, anything can. But betting on college as a career investment is a lot like betting on bonds. Could they pay off? Sure. Do people have this emotional attachment to them and think that they are conservative investment vehicles? Absolutely. Does financial math show them to be a smart investment? Hell no, they are huge risk and investing in bonds is a gamble against the market and all market history!
Yet people do both, with the same "it's just what you do" attitude. Forgetting to actually do the math and follow the logic.
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And in the same way, bonds sound smart because people compare to the alternative of shoving money in a mattress. College sounds good when the alternative is sitting in your parents' basement for four years doing nothing. But when you consider the actual reasonable alternatives that would be considered a baseline like investing in an S&P500 Index or studying at home while trying to work in your field suddenly the "cost of lost opportunity" risk becomes really clear.
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@scottalanmiller said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:
Good or bad, this is just career questions, though. And physicians are very skewing to the numbers because they stay in school for forever, then make a huge income once they are out, for a very short career. So they make the income sound great, but often don't earn that much.
I wouldn't say their careers are short, just delayed and highly variable on hours in the later years. My wife has attendings in her program in 70's and one in 80's (they work part time). Infectious disease lends itself to working as long as the mind still can remember things and spot patterns.
"Red" Duke was still in the OR in his 70's and 80's (although I don't think he was doing much more than directing residents in the later years), Guy technically lived in the memorial Herman hospital with his dogs.
Also, a lot of doctors don't break 200K (and many barely make over 100K). Pediatric Infectious disease somehow actually makes less than general pediatrics....
Doctors used to not have the higher levels of debt (My cousin had like 20K in the 90's, my wife had well over 100K and that's low by today's standards). Doctors also used to get higher reimbursements from Medicare/Medicaid. Massive fraud in the 70's and 80's have led to a wildly different situation. Those assholes burned a lot of good will....
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@storageninja said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:
I wouldn't say their careers are short, just delayed and highly variable on hours in the later years.
Delayed IS shorter, unless you get people to live or work longer. Four to seven years of school is a huge percentage of your career life no matter how you look at it. Even if you do the rare 60 year career length which almost no one ever does (I hope to) a master's degree is likely 10% of your career right there.
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We don't really have good stats yet due to the FIELD being too young to have produced full career lengths yet, but IT is likely to operate in the same way with people working in the field until they drop. IT might be more demanding than most fields, but it also requires far less physical demands and has a tendency to keep the mind sharp and moving from things like administration to planning and design can make staying in the field right up till you drop very plausible.
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@scottalanmiller said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:
@storageninja said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:
You are lumping in people with Church Recreation Majors (Yes this is a major, and oddly the only person I know who has it, makes over 100K, although not doing anything related to the major).
Right, on the college side church rec majors are included. On the non-college side, people intending to never do anything but be a cashier at Mcdonald's are included. This "lumping" favours the college system in the stats.
It wouldn't surprise me if Baylor graduates a hell of a lot more family consumer sciences degree's (home Ec) than it does pre-med (It's a top program but not a lot of graduates). The person who doesn't want to do anything but be a cashier at McDonald's is going to have a VERY small ven diagram with Economics degree seekers accepted to the University of Chicago.
I agree it should be considered more strongly, but I think some VERY simple rules could be established for people seeking college.
Have a plan for graduating with less than xxx debt, or expense.
If you are going to be out of work xxx number of years and incur xxx cost, you need to make sure the program at the university is going to generate yyy impact.Avoid Tier 3 schools, for profits, degree's in animal husbandry and philosophy.
Seek out: Tier 1 schools below xxx cost, majors [top 10] at schools that are a [top 10] for that degree. -
Unfortunately, truly meaningful stats are impossible to get. Determining who "could have" done college and how that would have gone is subjective. And which college kids "could have" taught themselves vs. those that needed college to get them by as they simply weren't good enough to do it without college but could with college is likewise, a guess. Going to college and skipping college create their own causes and effects that are so much more dramatic than purely the college attendance decision.
What we know is that attending college takes away the greatest opportunity to demonstrate motivation, critical thinking and self education that anyone is offered during their lifetimes; and that what few stats we get show that college doesn't pay off on the pure averages and that logically the way the stats are they dramatically favour the college system. Those are what we have to work with. Does college have value? yes and no. Can college have value, yes. But the value is not intrinsic to college, it's just that college doesn't remove the potential for value.
