The technology stuff is often a little dated due to bureaucracy being unable to keep up with the pace of technological change, but that’s a different thing. Most people with computer sciences degrees would agree, I’d wager.

Well speaking as someone with a CS degree actually I completely disagree with that. CS isn’t about learning the latest technology, the newest computers, the newest software or anything like that. It’s learning how to attack problems, break them down and process them. It’s generating new algorithms and being able to analyze them to determine if they’re really better or not. It’s learning general language patterns not specific language, it’s organizing data. Honestly after you get your CS degree you’re expected to be able to be decent in a new language in a couple of weeks. (Because so much of the basics translates.) I mean seriously, good portions of my studies I didn’t even touch a computer to do them. Anybody that wants to know more can just read this

And for what it’s worth yes I currently work as a software engineer

Not everyone is ready for college and too many colleges (and their degrees) are worthless, but companies require them and false demand is thus created by everyone who wants a job in America. Britain and Europe don’t have these problems because vocational schools and employment exams are still pretty widespread over there.

Not only that, you can’t walk away from a college degree like you can a mortgage. The lenders have you by the b*lls, and as such, the colleges know it and squeeze every last dime out of their “customers.”

The University of Arkansas, which is right up the road from where I live, patted itself on the back a couple of years back for raising $1 billion for its endowment fund. Yes, that’s billion with a “b.” And yet tuition still goes up every year an average of 6 percent. The school just announced a couple of weeks ago it will go up again this year, when students and their families can probably least afford it. And the U of A is already the priciest public school in the SEC (that means only Vanderbilt costs more). Now I can practically guarantee the cost of running this school doesn’t increase by an average of 6 percent every year. If it does, then maybe the chancellor and his people need to look for ways to rein in costs. Why don’t they? They don’t have to. Because they know that students will just keep borrowing more and more money, mortgaging their futures with student loans all because someone sold them on the notion that this is “good” debt. The immorality of it all is simply breathtaking.

Count me in with Ernesto on this one. My loathing of the education system and the loan situation is not restricted to the creation of faux intellectuals.

It is also for the continuous lowering of the bar that must happen in the current system. Just like in the public school system, there is a pressure to have a certain percentage of those enrolled to pass and advance. It devalues the degree that many of us have.

I also have a thorn in my side about the career students out there who never see or contribute to the world outside a university. I’m sure there are saints in there who are truly following their vocation, but there are also those who just can’t cut it anywhere else. Some of these are faux intellectuals, but many are simply parasites. They may not have much to do with the loan situation, but they do make this right-wing nut a little more resentful of the system.

connertown on February 5, 2009 at 11:58 AM

Word.

I went to a Private U, 2 major degrees, 4 years, $80K in debt. FAFSA is a joke — based on my parents’ income (around $98K/year), I didn’t qualify for any aid — which is pretty laughable, since my parents didn’t give me one red cent (”We can’t afford it”).

I worked my butt off through school, and came out with a full time job I was already working in my senior year. I make about $60K/year (with bonuses) in a sector that is very, very stable right now. Not bad for 23, eh?

But the Uni was a joke. My degrees really have nothing to do with my job or my hiring, and are very loosely related to what I do. My Uni prided themselves on being so “diverse!” and “urban!” but that meant high admission rates based on social classification, but very low graduation rates. Kids come out of there WRECKED.

For example: the graduation rates for black/latino males was abysmally low, but the admission rates were very high. They want to improve graduation rates (great for that PR!) so the academic standards are abysmally low. I worked harder in my public inner city high school AP classes. But it’s an easy way to pocket a hot $40K, then kick these non-graduates into the crushing vortex of the real world with some major debt.

I was first gen for college, and everyone just pushed me along with “Oh, STUDENT LOANS! You’ll pay those off!” “But I have $60K already and am thinking about law school!” “No, it’s okay!” Oy.
My Parents were ignorant to it as well: they figured a student loan must be easier than a mortgage, so I skipped along merrily taking out loans until I was smacked with about $800/month in repayment after graduation. I was thinking about changing my job for a while, and the career adviser was pushing NON PROFIT ORGS on me. Hell no. So I stayed with my current job.

But $800/mo out of the gate. $800/mo is more than my monthly rent. In CHICAGO. With some re-fi, I knocked it down to about $400/mo which is manageable.

But a lot of undergrad kids come out thinking they’re gonna be handed a $66K/year job on some fluffy English BA degree, with NO resume experience outside of light retail and maybe some server work.

The debts are manageable if you work hard toward a real degree, GET WORK EXPERIENCE WHILE IN COLLEGE, and work like hell for a job before graduation. But kids don’t do it. They take 5, 6 years for a fluff degree, keep lending from Sallie Mae (the Devil!), and just think a degree will give them the world.

Academia is the worst racket ever. I loathed my college experience.

he only has a 2 year degree but right now
he has NO Debt..

These people are going to get soaked..
Pay off your bills fast..

MIT Open Course Ware (OCW)

Grad and Undergrad; many courses on video.

Harvard tried for generations to take over MIT.

Good thing it failed.

For that quality of education, I’m 32 Gs in the hole.

MadisonConservative on February 5, 2009 at 12:17 PM

Geeze. Is that all?

College was a complete waste of time and other people’s money. Of course, now it’s my money I’m wasting, paying it back. I don’t use anything that I learned in my finance classes, and I work as a financial professional.

Politicians decided that all students should go to college

Should that ever happen… the value of a college degree will plummet. Somebody has to work at Denny’s. The market will not support everyone having an office job.

But as with all leftist lies, they depend on an ignorant public looking at everything in static terms.

Higher ed is also an avenue for liberal indoctrination, so Congress responds to their lobbyists with cash and more cash, and easy VISA rules. I work in higher ed, and there is nothing scarier to the admin than the demographics or more and more poor kids with poor grades who don’t want to go to college. The loans are there to entice them.

PattyJ on February 5, 2009 at 4:31 PM

Well, when you talk about visa rules, they are driven largely because of the pressure from the US Chamber of commerce – and as far as that group goes, both right and the left are as malleable as putty. Any party that tries to be business friendly is forced to play nice to the Chamber of Commerce, otherwise Bill Gates will come to the House and testify how the absence of visas is causing his little fiefdom to crumble.

For that quality of education, I’m 32 Gs in the hole.

MadisonConservative on February 5, 2009 at 12:17 PM

55Gs for me. But thank God I got in on low rates & locked it in there. Whew!

As for books-I tell all my students when you get to college, don’t buy the book!
We all know that’s true except for math & classes where you have assigned problems.
Go buy the earlier edition-it’s usually pretty identical.
Buy online!
Buy from a friend/acquaintance.

When I worked a bit in the nearby private Univ. bookstore in Laramie, I was shocked at the mark-up for used books & even more shocked by the selling of ‘donated’ books.
You know, the ones they say you can’t sell back?
They pack ‘em up & sell ‘em to another store across country!
Sell your book on Amazon!
God how I wish Amazon had been around when I was in college!

The average starting salary of engineering grads $50-72k depending on school.

What’s the point of directing people towards engineering, any supply increase will shift the price (salary)down. I tell people to avoid it at all costs.

For that quality of education, I’m 32 Gs in the hole.

MadisonConservative on February 5, 2009 at 12:17 PM

Hmmm – I will only say that the quality of education has an extremely strong correlation to the rank of the school. I did both grad and undergrad in universities considered top 10 by the engineering ranking system, and I have to say I really got my money’s worth of exposure to the latest and greatest in technology. In fact, I found later (to my shock), that a lot of processes in the industry are dated wrt the academia (old processes are stable since they have proven the test of time, etc). So, I would not make a blanket statement that all technical degrees teach outdated stuff.

It really is the end of the world.

We should be sending kids to build things, lay bricks, assemble goods, drill for oil etc.., not send them to universities to study bullsh1t so that they can go and get paid to do nothing productive for society other than be consumers using more borrowed money.

There are very few productive jobs in society that don’t require you to get your hands dirty. But every parent wants their kid to push paper behind a desk.

Someone explain to me how a tax-exempt entity engaged in a profit-making activity is allowed to keep that status and, on top of that, contribute to political campaigns? I’m going to puke.

BuckeyeSam on February 5, 2009 at 12:03 PM

That explains a lot, thanks

Here is an interesting stat…some of the most stable, cash positive companies and farms in the U.S. are owned by the Amish…how much calculus did they have?

right2bright on February 5, 2009 at 12:09 PM

That is a good arguement for what is wrong with public schools today. Amish kids in a one room school house without electricity manage to learn their three R’s by the end of eighth grade, and we have high school and a few college grads that cannot read a newspaper or add without a calculator.

We shouldn’t have to bankrupt ourselves to put kids through college. Too many kids have to get degrees to prove they are semi-literate and motivated, even though their jobs shouldn’t require a degree. Ban the NEA!

Suihei Deloi on February 5, 2009 at 2:54 PM

The question becomes, how much is the state subsidizing that cost because overall costs throughout the system are being kept in line…

…The growth in cost of tuition at public and private schools has far outpaced inflation. Don’t people have a ‘right’ to education just like they have a ‘right’ to healthcare. Isn’t the right to healthcare even more important since education is a huge determiner in how well a person does in life – whether they end up living a life of poverty or prosperity?

Perhaps we should put some price controls on college educations…if costs spiral out of control, we can import excellent scholars from the Phillipines and the Middle East to do the jobs that American professors just won’t do….

JadeNYU on February 5, 2009 at 1:48 PM

I’m not sure about other states. But this is already done in the California Community College System. Tuition price is more than fair at $20 a semester hour. What kills it is not the price of tuition here, but the price of textbooks. Professors try to keep the textbooks to a minimum at the school I attend. But for some courses you can pay $60 for tuition then turn around and have to pay $400 for books. A brisk market in used textbooks has sprung up.

I’ve taken some courses at private colleges, and a few of them roll up the books and tuition into one flat fee per unit. I wouldn’t mind this approach being implemented here, since you would only have to worry about one bill.

One of the nicer things is the Board of Governor’s Waver. Basically it waives your tuition. Vets almost automatically qualify for it in the first two years after they get discharged. Which means I don’t have to tap into the GI Bill right away, as long as I don’t mind paying for books out of pocket.