Our education system is propped up chiefly because of government. Most of the US goes to public schools, controlled by the government. Most university students go to public schools. Students get ridiculous loans they can't default on, courtesy of the government.
Harsh capitalism would be harsh on the universities who cling to a dying lecture/exam model that hasn't evolved for centuries. It would punish universities who don't produce results, instead of giving them students with free loans from the taxpayers. Harsh capitalism would see universities that can't evolve disappear.
I feel like blaming things on capitalism and lack of regulation is so overplayed and fashionable that people can't take a second to think that maybe regulation and government caused the problem in the first place. Everything the government does right is lauded while everything it does wrong is blamed on "corporate interests" and capitalism.
> 'cling to a dying lecture/exam model that hasn't evolved for centuries'
It dawned on me this week that Y Combinator itself is structured more like this 'dying lecture/exam model', set in a physical place where 'students' and 'instructors' can interact directly rather than being intermediated by some app, screen or paper. If there is any group in any place who would be more likely to disrupt education by the application of high tech, I'd be surprised. That they adopt a model you say is dying suggests that there may be more life in it that might be expected.
Indeed. Proximity facilitates our communication and judgement faculties in a way that is hard to replicate online (although it is a very interesting problem to contemplate). Is it possible to replicate the experience of following a professor out of a classroom and getting a summer research position from the ensuing conversation? The subtle cues and trust-building of both direct and group conversation? Video chat helps, but it's not the same. One small aspect: it seems easier to "turn off" a digital interaction.
> Our education system is propped up chiefly because of government.
Obviously not propped enough if this professor died in poverty and students need 6 figure loans to graduate.
> Most of the US goes to public schools, controlled by the government.
As opposed to what? Controlled by Coca-Cola? Starbucks? -- "Do you have a degree?" -- "I sure do, I graduated with MS in coffee arts (MsCA) from Starbucks University, Phoenix". Or just got a "PhD in applied lobbying from Lockheed".
> Students get ridiculous loans they can't default on, courtesy of the government.
The problem is not to just stop giving loans, but let people go to universities without needing loans. If Universities are public, they should admit based on merit. And instead of cycling money through govt to student to university, just subsidize the university and make sure it doesn't spend money on admin assistants, triple layers of bureaucracy, new gyms with lazy rivers and other crap that is not needed. Maybe if it is too hard, just increase % of admitted students based on merit, some that couldn't quite make it and are rich perhaps could buy their way in.
> maybe regulation and government caused the problem in the first place.
Can you point to an example of an attested and well functioning higher learning system not regulated and propped by a government?
>As opposed to what? Controlled by Coca-Cola? Starbucks? -- "Do you have a degree?" -- "I sure do, I graduated with MS in coffee arts (MsCA) from Starbucks University, Phoenix". Or just got a "PhD in applied lobbying from Lockheed".
False dichotomy. There are plenty of things that fit in between "rapacious megacorporations" and "government cronies". Like, for example, unsubsidized nonprofit educational institutes. You know, like you might have found in the 19th - first half of the 20th century.
No, 'going back to the 19th century (-first half of the 20th century)' is equivalent to imagining a higher education system without student loans. Don't see what the big deal is.
The point I was trying to make was that somehow it was easier to imagine time travelling than just looking "across the pond", oh to say Sweden. Or probably other civilised countries.
In the 19th century and the pre-social-democratic 20th century, most universities had no student loans because they charged steep fees in cold cash. If you want to eliminate student debt without eliminating students, you need to look at the social-democratic universities of the post-WW2 era.
that's not true; the pre-interest cost of universities has outstripped inflation many many fold in the last 30 years. The pre-WW2 era colleges were almost certainly less expensive in real purchasing power terms than they are now.
> Obviously not propped enough if this professor died in poverty and students need 6 figure loans to graduate.
I argue that it is precisely because of government intervention that these things happen.
> As opposed to what? Controlled by Coca-Cola? Starbucks? -- "Do you have a degree?" -- "I sure do, I graduated with MS in coffee arts (MsCA) from Starbucks University, Phoenix". Or just got a "PhD in applied lobbying from Lockheed".
Are you implying that without government, we as a society would be unable to educate people?
> The problem is not to just stop giving loans, but let people go to universities without needing loans.
That will make universities even more inefficient. Do you know what will ensure "make sure it doesn't spend money on admin assistants, triple layers of bureaucracy, new gyms with lazy rivers and other crap that is not needed?" The fear of failure that universities don't experience now. The fear that if you don't do your job, students will not willingly give you money. "Harsh capitalism" solves that problem.
> Are you implying that without government, we as a society would be unable to educate people?
Well I don't have to imply you just have to show a few example of a successful world renown university run completely outside the control of a government. There are example of successful higher education institutions controlled and sponsored by governments. Western Europe has those example.
> The fear of failure that universities don't experience now.
Again, can you show one single example of a university outside the control of government that accomplishes and is driven by this mythical fear.
> "Harsh capitalism" solves that problem
Be honest now, have you been reading some Ayn Rand? That is fiction you know that, right?
> I argue that it is precisely because of government intervention that these things happen.
It may very well be that the various 20th-century post-war G.I. Bills started the college bubble in the first place, by democratizing the expectation of higher education to the lower classes for the first time in history.
> As opposed to what? Controlled by Coca-Cola? Starbucks? -- "Do you have a degree?" -- "I sure do, I graduated with MS in coffee arts (MsCA) from Starbucks University, Phoenix". Or just got a "PhD in applied lobbying from Lockheed"
My primary issue with school vouchers is the poor state of private schools, at least here in GA (outside of the major cities like Atlanta and Savannah). The Catholic schools are decent to good, but often are only K-8. There are few private secular schools. The rest of the private schools are very conservative "Christian Academy" types whose education leaves their students complete morons in some fields (math, science, history, civics; I guess, really, everything).
I bet that if we switched to vouchers then you'd see a lot of new private schools catering to a wider audience. It also might be reasonable to exclude private schools with religious instruction from the voucher program.
I'd like to be that optimistic, and maybe it'd happen, but the politics around here would make it unlikely.
Also, wrt the exclusion of religious schools, that'd be a non-starter in the southern states at least. It'd probably make more sense to mandate some minimum curricula or require that inspectors be able to attend the school unannounced if the school is receiving public moneys via vouchers. There'd likely be a tantrum about religious oppression, but, really, man and dinosaurs, contrary to the teachings at many of the churches and Christian academies around here, really didn't live together [1].
[1] Ok, in the conventional sense of dinosaurs, not the XKCD sense of birds as living dinosaurs. http://xkcd.com/1211/
Wow, most other places in the US it is the opposite. Private schools are considered superior. They have to be, because there is otherwise no reason to both pay property taxes and also pay tution.
Around here it's largely politics and religion, not the quality of the school. There's one catholic school with a good academic reputation. The other two I know of are ok. The rest of the private schools are bad to mediocre. They may be better in some ways than the public schools, but not enough (IMO) for the tuition costs.
> "Do you have a degree?" -- "I sure do, I graduated with MS in coffee arts (MsCA) from Starbucks University, Phoenix". Or just got a "PhD in applied lobbying from Lockheed".
Not arguing against public funding of education, but you're making a nice point about the inherent BS of degrees that exist merely on paper.
Nobody actually cares about that piece of paper - employers want to know what you DID and what you're CAPABLE of.
A college degree used to be reasonable proof of peoples' abilities, but today conflating the two usually doesn't help. Thus post-college unemployment, or idiots running companies from nice positions.
Is it actually better for students that they can't default on their loans? I usually hear it the opposite way, that even after bankruptcy proceedings you still have your student loan debt following you around.
If the government did not guarantee and subsidize the loans, interest rates would be higher and/or banks would be more careful which students they lent to.
non-dischargeability was probably a 'good intention' gone horribly wrong. Because on the plus side, the student's APRs are lower because the lender can be guaranteed to own a portion of the student's labor for the specified term unless they die. And because the higher educational institutes really ought to be entitled to continue extracting their students' value.
the problem is that higher education is the only product aside from used cars in the US which can be sold without an implied warranty of merchantability.
I don't know about US grading schemes, but here in Australia, pretty much every course has some form of assignments or series thereof. The assignments can be a small or substantial part of the final mark, or even the total final mark, depending on the kind of course.
I suspect the same is true in US tertiary institutions, and that railing against exams is just a tired old trope. It's hard to believe that it would be the general standard in the US to have the entirety of the final mark attributable to exams. But, like I said, I'm not familiar with their curricula.
My experience is from SUNY Stony Brook (a university run by the state of New York). What goes into the grade, is pretty much entirely up to the professor. I have had very few classes where the whole of the grade was an exam; but there were a few. More often, the homework is some portion of the grade, but it could be minimal (e.g., 10%). For computer science classes and some humanities classes, it was more likely there would be larger projects or term papers. For things like math, the homework was usually a smaller part of the grade. The real advantage of doing the assignments was that you could practice for what would potentially be on the test, and there would be a TA to grade it and give you feedback.
or maybe capitalism isn't the only "heartless" economic system. Central planning bureaucrats have been responsible for far more suffering globally than any capitalist ever has.
fair point - how about we call bad people bad people for doing bad things, whatever their political misconceptions?
There are plenty of examples of humans being mean to each other in pretty much every setting. America's allergic reaction to public healthcare is an example of a systemic/cultural cause of significant unnecessary suffering[1]. Sure historically communists have done much worse, and indeed still are in North Korea, but that's not much of a target to beat.
Our education system is propped up chiefly because of government. Most of the US goes to public schools, controlled by the government. Most university students go to public schools. Students get ridiculous loans they can't default on, courtesy of the government.
Harsh capitalism would be harsh on the universities who cling to a dying lecture/exam model that hasn't evolved for centuries. It would punish universities who don't produce results, instead of giving them students with free loans from the taxpayers. Harsh capitalism would see universities that can't evolve disappear.
I feel like blaming things on capitalism and lack of regulation is so overplayed and fashionable that people can't take a second to think that maybe regulation and government caused the problem in the first place. Everything the government does right is lauded while everything it does wrong is blamed on "corporate interests" and capitalism.