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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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 Posted: Sun Nov 22, 2009 12:05 pm Post subject: |
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| Good. Avoid the sociology degree (and years in Korea) and head to NAIT for a plumbing ticket. |
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blade
Joined: 30 Jun 2007
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| Posted: Sun Nov 22, 2009 6:30 pm Post subject: Re: University of Alberta wants to hike tuition by 66% next |
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| Fox wrote: |
| blade wrote: |
| Fox wrote: |
| youtuber wrote: |
Proposed increases:
Pharmacy: 66% increase
Medicine, Law, Business, Engineering: 30~40% increase
Why is there even a Students' Union? It is quite obvious at this point that nobody listens to them and they are powerless to do anything. |
If people are willing to pay those higher rates, why shouldn't the colleges charge that much?
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Well because people don't think rationally when it comes to education and universities seem more than willing to take advantage of this fact. |
I'd extend that into saying people don't think rationally period when it comes to economic decisions. |
Yes, but people can usually walk away from a bad mortgage or from making bad business decisions. People with student loans cannot.
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| blade wrote: |
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The only true "vote" students get is when they decide whether or not they're willing to pay the price, and if some group of students could simply veto tuition increases, tuition would never go up again. |
How about the universities learn to live within their means rather gouging their students for every last penny. |
When they stop being run like businesses and start actually being administered for the overall good of society, perhaps this is something that can be discussed. |
If universities want to be run like businesses then they should stop accepting public funds and being allowed to accept government guaranteed student loans. |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Sun Nov 22, 2009 6:58 pm Post subject: Re: University of Alberta wants to hike tuition by 66% next |
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| blade wrote: |
| Fox wrote: |
| blade wrote: |
| Fox wrote: |
| youtuber wrote: |
Proposed increases:
Pharmacy: 66% increase
Medicine, Law, Business, Engineering: 30~40% increase
Why is there even a Students' Union? It is quite obvious at this point that nobody listens to them and they are powerless to do anything. |
If people are willing to pay those higher rates, why shouldn't the colleges charge that much?
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Well because people don't think rationally when it comes to education and universities seem more than willing to take advantage of this fact. |
I'd extend that into saying people don't think rationally period when it comes to economic decisions. |
Yes, but people can usually walk away from a bad mortgage or from making bad business decisions. People with student loans cannot. |
That's true, but that's also part of life. The only reason you can sometimes "walk away" from that bad mortgage or certain bad business decisions is that you used the money to buy something tangible that you could hypothetically resell. Unless you're talking about bankruptcy law?
| blade wrote: |
| Quote: |
| blade wrote: |
| Quote: |
The only true "vote" students get is when they decide whether or not they're willing to pay the price, and if some group of students could simply veto tuition increases, tuition would never go up again. |
How about the universities learn to live within their means rather gouging their students for every last penny. |
When they stop being run like businesses and start actually being administered for the overall good of society, perhaps this is something that can be discussed. |
If universities want to be run like businesses then they should stop accepting public funds and being allowed to accept government guaranteed student loans. |
Plenty of other private industries receive government subsidy but are still run as purely private businesses. Farms, the oil industry, the coal industry, etc. No one seems to expect these industries to give up potential profit for the public good, despite them receiving government money. |
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blade
Joined: 30 Jun 2007
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| Posted: Sun Nov 22, 2009 7:35 pm Post subject: Re: University of Alberta wants to hike tuition by 66% next |
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| Fox wrote: |
| blade wrote: |
| Fox wrote: |
| blade wrote: |
| Fox wrote: |
| youtuber wrote: |
Proposed increases:
Pharmacy: 66% increase
Medicine, Law, Business, Engineering: 30~40% increase
Why is there even a Students' Union? It is quite obvious at this point that nobody listens to them and they are powerless to do anything. |
If people are willing to pay those higher rates, why shouldn't the colleges charge that much?
|
Well because people don't think rationally when it comes to education and universities seem more than willing to take advantage of this fact. |
I'd extend that into saying people don't think rationally period when it comes to economic decisions. |
Yes, but people can usually walk away from a bad mortgage or from making bad business decisions. People with student loans cannot. |
That's true, but that's also part of life. The only reason you can sometimes "walk away" from that bad mortgage or certain bad business decisions is that you used the money to buy something tangible that you could hypothetically resell. Unless you're talking about bankruptcy law?
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Yes, I was referring to bankruptcy law.
| Fox wrote: |
| blade wrote: |
| Quote: |
| blade wrote: |
| Quote: |
The only true "vote" students get is when they decide whether or not they're willing to pay the price, and if some group of students could simply veto tuition increases, tuition would never go up again. |
How about the universities learn to live within their means rather gouging their students for every last penny. |
When they stop being run like businesses and start actually being administered for the overall good of society, perhaps this is something that can be discussed. |
If universities want to be run like businesses then they should stop accepting public funds and being allowed to accept government guaranteed student loans. |
Plenty of other private industries receive government subsidy but are still run as purely private businesses. Farms, the oil industry, the coal industry, etc. No one seems to expect these industries to give up potential profit for the public good, despite them receiving government money. |
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Food is relatively cheap isn't it? The oil industry: I'm not sure how much it gets but ya maybe government funding should be cut here too.
Coal industry: Coal is cheap and to my knowledge the price of coal hasn't been rising on year above the rate of inflation. |
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Moldy Rutabaga
Joined: 01 Jul 2003
Location: Ansan, Korea
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| Posted: Sun Nov 22, 2009 8:00 pm Post subject: |
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Peppermint, I am a native Edmontonian and went to the U of A for a year. It is a good university and very strong in engineering, medicine, and some humanities programs (although they are quite "lefty" by Alberta standards).
MUN (Newfoundland) was far, far, more fun. I had tons of friends and there was lots to do, particularly in dorm. The U of A is more of a commuter school and there isn't so much campus life, although the campus mall is excellent. They have good academics but I certainly would not go there for a social life.
Edmonton is wonderful in the summer. Parks, festivals, celebrations, nightlife are great. Edmonton is lousy in the winter. Biting cold, snow, and wind from November to April.
This isn't relevant to the thread and perhaps I should have PMed, but maybe it's useful for people to know more about the place. I don't support such giant tuition increases, but the university was not generally one to gouge people in the past, although their Soviet civil service-style customer service always left a lot to be desired.
Last edited by Moldy Rutabaga on Sun Nov 22, 2009 8:54 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Mosley
Joined: 15 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Sun Nov 22, 2009 8:54 pm Post subject: |
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Ideally, universities would compete for students by being cut off public funds & forced to cut costs to offer lower tuitions.
Although he was referring specifically to the U.S., I agree w/the late great Milton Friedman, who called taxpayers' support for universities "one of the great suppressed scandals of our day." |
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Moldy Rutabaga
Joined: 01 Jul 2003
Location: Ansan, Korea
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| Posted: Sun Nov 22, 2009 9:04 pm Post subject: |
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| Although he was referring specifically to the U.S., I agree w/the late great Milton Friedman, who called taxpayers' support for universities "one of the great suppressed scandals of our day." |
Odd that Friedman would say this. I didn't think those were his politics. It's people with privileged backgrounds who have already graduated who would say this.
Taxpayers' support for universities ought to be an economic no-brainer. In return for subsidizing universities, the country gets highly educated people in its workforce who invent things, run things, and make the country richer. Those educated people make more and pay more taxes. The alternative is a university system unattainable to only a very select number who can afford it, for without such grants North American tuition would double or triple. There is not that much fat at a public university.
We can make the argument that perhaps there are too many people in universities nowadays, but to say on principle that universities should have no public funding would be to close most of them, along with the libraries, learning, and economic benefits they provide. Most simply would just not survive another year. |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Sun Nov 22, 2009 9:24 pm Post subject: Re: University of Alberta wants to hike tuition by 66% next |
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| blade wrote: |
| Yes, I was referring to bankruptcy law. |
I agree student loans should not be exempt from bankruptcy protection.
| blade wrote: |
Food is relatively cheap isn't it? The oil industry: I'm not sure how much it gets but ya maybe government funding should be cut here too.
Coal industry: Coal is cheap and to my knowledge the price of coal hasn't been rising on year above the rate of inflation. |
With food and coal, supply vastly outweigh demand. That, more than government subsidy, keeps them cheap. This is less true with oil, and less true with education too. As a result, prices skyrocket.
If you think public schools should become truly public, and offer their services at taxpayer expense to the best students rather than selling them, I think a reasonable case could be made for that. That's not the model currently being used, though, so to expect schools to give a nod to that model doesn't really make sense to me. |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Sun Nov 22, 2009 9:29 pm Post subject: |
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| Moldy Rutabaga wrote: |
| Taxpayers' support for universities ought to be an economic no-brainer. In return for subsidizing universities, the country gets highly educated people in its workforce who invent things, run things, and make the country richer. Those educated people make more and pay more taxes. |
For things like doctors, chemists, and so forth, I think a reasonable case for this could be made; our society needs more of them, and they really do require college training, so making such degrees accessible is a good thing. For stupid nonsense like business degrees, no way. Likewise for individuals such as myself; I studied philosophy, and while I feel doing so has enriched my life quite substantially, I don't think society will benefit from my enrichment.
I mean, look at jobs that ask for things like a MASTERS DEGREE in LIBRARY SCIENCES. Come on, that's incredibly stupid, and it's symptomatic of too many people going to college for ultimately unnecessary things. |
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Mosley
Joined: 15 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Sun Nov 22, 2009 10:05 pm Post subject: |
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Moldy: Check out Friedman's TYRANNY OF THE STATUS QUO. He put paid to the myth that a better educated society "benefits us all". I'm also thinking of an essay from the '90s called "In Defense of Elitism". The author(I'll admit his name eludes me at the moment) asserts, and I agree, that justice is not served by having the tax dolllars of dishwashers go to the children of lawyers so that they, too, can become lawyers.
And, PLEASE, none of this horsehockey that it's only the formally educated that make us "better". Edison? Ford? Einstein? Truman? G. Orwell? E. Hoffer? None of them had a degree & gee, what a bunch of lunkheads they were.
On the other hand, I know a guy from an accredited Can. univ. w/an MA who will look you straight in the face and tell you that Chomsky's on a CIA payroll & that the Mossad instigated 9/11. Must it be reiterated that for much of the 20th C. it was the Western intelligentstia/literati that praised Stalin & the USSR? It certainly wasn't high school drop outs.
As for "there's not much fat at public universities", you've got to be ****ing kidding me. I can't think of any other Can. institution with more BS spending & more BS positions held by people w/BS high salaries...i.e., people that without PC/affirmative action "credentials" would be, to use my Ma's expression, "picking s*** w/the chickens". |
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blade
Joined: 30 Jun 2007
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| Posted: Sun Nov 22, 2009 10:10 pm Post subject: |
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| Fox wrote: |
| Moldy Rutabaga wrote: |
| Taxpayers' support for universities ought to be an economic no-brainer. In return for subsidizing universities, the country gets highly educated people in its workforce who invent things, run things, and make the country richer. Those educated people make more and pay more taxes. |
For things like doctors, chemists, and so forth, I think a reasonable case for this could be made; our society needs more of them, and they really do require college training, so making such degrees accessible is a good thing.
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Agreed.
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For stupid nonsense like business degrees, no way. |
Why not? It shouldn't cost huge amounts of money to study business and society does benefit eventually in the form of higher taxes. Don't forget that the cost of this education will eventually be passed on to your average consumer anyway.
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Likewise for individuals such as myself; I studied philosophy, and while I feel doing so has enriched my life quite substantially, I don't think society will benefit from my enrichment. |
I disagree with this also. Society needs people who can think for themselves and are able to weigh up and pros and cons of any given situation. Just because there are no careers for people with a philosophy outside of academia doesn't mean that those they won't gain meaningful employment elsewhere.
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I mean, look at jobs that ask for things like a MASTERS DEGREE in LIBRARY SCIENCES. Come on, that's incredibly stupid, and it's symptomatic of too many people going to college for ultimately unnecessary things. |
Maybe, but I'm not sure why you think yourself qualified to decide on it's relative worth to society. If there wasn't a demand for such qualifications then nobody would bother signing up for such courses.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_science |
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blade
Joined: 30 Jun 2007
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| Posted: Sun Nov 22, 2009 10:24 pm Post subject: |
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| Mosley wrote: |
And, PLEASE, none of this horsehockey that it's only the formally educated that make us "better". Edison? Ford? Einstein? Truman? G. Orwell? E. Hoffer? None of them had a degree & gee, what a bunch of lunkheads they were.
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Don't know about the others but didn't George Orwell go to Eton and I'm pretty sure Einstein studied physics at the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich? |
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Moldy Rutabaga
Joined: 01 Jul 2003
Location: Ansan, Korea
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| Posted: Sun Nov 22, 2009 10:57 pm Post subject: |
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And, PLEASE, none of this horsehockey that it's only the formally educated that make us "better". Edison? Ford? Einstein? Truman? G. Orwell? E. Hoffer? None of them had a degree & gee, what a bunch of lunkheads they were.
Must it be reiterated that for much of the 20th C. it was the Western intelligentstia/literati that praised Stalin & the USSR? It certainly wasn't high school drop outs.
As for "there's not much fat at public universities", you've got to be ****ing kidding me. I can't think of any other Can. institution with more BS spending & more BS positions held by people w/BS high salaries...i.e., people that without PC/affirmative action "credentials" would be, to use my Ma's expression, "picking s*** w/the chickens". |
Some of these people certainly did have degrees. But no, I'm certainly not saying that only the formally educated make a country better. I do think that well-educated people are far more likely to enter highly productive careers than those who are not, but of course there are those individuals who are self-starters and invent the television tube. I think that probability makes education worth subsidizing. By "well-educated" I'm not only talking about the Wymyn's Studies graduates but also tech and vocational school students, who would also be affected.
Yes, much of the 40s academic elite foolishly praised Stalin and Soviet Russia. There are other things that academics got right. I think the batting average over centuries of getting political or social trends right is probably better than that of a NASCAR fan, to use one stereotype over another.
I don't know much about Canadian universities anymore. I do know quite a lot about my last university, UNLV, a large public university in Las Vegas. They were shutting departments and rationing photocopy paper. The government announced a large budget cut for higher education, and several Nevada colleges warned point-blank that they would be shutting their doors. UNLV salaries are on their website and the university has pretty good disclosure of their finances.
There's of course waste and inefficiency at any university. I'm not disputing that. But to say that you could remove a subsidy of some 50-80% of tuition and just make that up with some belt tightening would result in speedy bankruptcies.
I'll check out the Friedman article. For now, just to play devil's advocate, if we argue that the state should not subsidize higher education, how do we justify subsidizing lower education? To be consistent, shouldn't all elementary and high schools also be privately funded? If we think that's an unpleasant idea, on what basis do we distinguish? |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Sun Nov 22, 2009 11:11 pm Post subject: |
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| blade wrote: |
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For stupid nonsense like business degrees, no way. |
Why not? It shouldn't cost huge amounts of money to study business and society does benefit eventually in the form of higher taxes. Don't forget that the cost of this education will eventually be passed on to your average consumer anyway. |
I don't want the cost of a useless business education passed on to the consumer. That becomes nothing more than a hand out to an overly bloated college system.
| blade wrote: |
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Likewise for individuals such as myself; I studied philosophy, and while I feel doing so has enriched my life quite substantially, I don't think society will benefit from my enrichment. |
I disagree with this also. Society needs people who can think for themselves and are able to weigh up and pros and cons of any given situation. |
I agree completely, which is why I feel basic Philosophy should be a part of our standard education system. Society does not, however, need many Philosophy specialists, so subsidizing them isn't particularly beneficial. Some people will still take Philosophy, there's no need to subsidize it.
| blade wrote: |
| Just because there are no careers for people with a philosophy outside of academia doesn't mean that those they won't gain meaningful employment elsewhere. |
They will gain meaningful employment elsewhere, but likely doing something that doesn't require a Philosophy degree to do. The tax payers of my state helped fund my Philosophy education, and here I am in Korea giving them absolutely nothing in return. Remember, removing subsidization won't remove this major from existence, it will simply drive more people towards more useful majors. People like myself with a passion for Philosophy (or whatever other field they choose) will still go after those fields.
| blade wrote: |
| Quote: |
I mean, look at jobs that ask for things like a MASTERS DEGREE in LIBRARY SCIENCES. Come on, that's incredibly stupid, and it's symptomatic of too many people going to college for ultimately unnecessary things. |
Maybe, but I'm not sure why you think yourself qualified to decide on it's relative worth to society. |
Because I understand what's involved in running a library, and none of it requires a masters level college degree to be capable of. "Who are you to say blah blah blah," is not the way you want to take this conversation.
| blade wrote: |
| If there wasn't a demand for such qualifications then nobody would bother signing up for such courses. |
I assert the opposite: over-saturation of degrees creates demand for otherwise useless qualifications, which in turn creates a cycle which is detrimental to the common person. |
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morrisonhotel
Joined: 18 Jul 2009
Location: Gyeonggi-do
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| Posted: Mon Nov 23, 2009 2:12 am Post subject: |
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| blade wrote: |
| Mosley wrote: |
And, PLEASE, none of this horsehockey that it's only the formally educated that make us "better". Edison? Ford? Einstein? Truman? G. Orwell? E. Hoffer? None of them had a degree & gee, what a bunch of lunkheads they were.
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Don't know about the others but didn't George Orwell go to Eton and I'm pretty sure Einstein studied physics at the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich? |
Truman went to university (though I don't think he graduated). |
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