Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Cerberus]

what a joke:

"....Altucher notes the cost of college in the U.S. has risen 10 fold during the last 30 years, compared to a six-fold increase for health-care and three-fold for inflation overall....."


10 fold

http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/rethinking-college-as-student-loan-burdens-rise-434365.html?tickers=%5EGSPC,spy,COCO,APOL,DV,ESI,%5EDJI

[Fox]

Just proof that consumers have a notoriously poor ability to actually estimate the financial value of a product, especially when paying for it with a loan.

[Mr. Pink]

Tuition for my first year at university in Canada was $2500 back in 1992. I went back to university over 10 years later. In 2006, tuition for a full year was around $5500.

Same education. Same stuff being taught.

The salary of the staff did not double. The income of new graduates did not double.

WTF - how could the price of tuition more than double?


It is a bad investment these days. I really wish I had just done all the studying I ever wanted to do back in the days when it was CHEAP.

[Street Magic]

[Moldy Rutabaga]

Hear me out as my position is somewhat of a shade of grey.

On one side, whether I'm seen as elitist or not, it's a tech magazine and I don't have confidence that they know beans about what they're talking about. There are certainly trades such as business and possibly IT where a self-starter can get ahead with ambition and work. You do not become a nurse, botany professor, or mechanical engineer by being a self-starter. There is a whole complex of careers which involve years of disciplined study and which can't be compensated for by pluck alone. I want the person operating on my heart to have passed his or her exams, not to be some Sarah Palin - Bill Gates hybrid there because of his can-do spirit.

Second, it's somewhat true that north American universities have been too eager to raise tuition rather than operate efficiently, but by and large tuitions have rocketed not out of administrative greed but because transfer payments to universities have continually shrunk. As governments give less and less to universities, the only way to stay in operation is to look for other sources of revenue, or shut down (and some have shut down). We blame universities where we ought to blame governments for not supporting higher education. If we think that governments shouldn't support higher ed that's fine, but we should be clear on that position.

On the other hand, I do think that universities have done a fairly poor job at transitioning to a post-industrial, knowledge-based economy, and are still using a university system that's part medieval and part 19th-century Harvard. You pull in youngsters (like me) by telling them that society will respect and value their degrees in Victorian literature when they're too young to understand the fiscal realities of what they're borrowing for it. In the next decade or two we're likely going to see a sort of realignment where more people wise up and refuse to pay these sorts of tuitions, going instead to community colleges or tech & trade schools. We've recently seen proof that these statistics traditionally trotted out that graduates make more over a lifetime aren't true. I've spent two decades in and out of university half-starved, all so I can teach in Korea because there's no jobs back home. My friend who became an airplane mechanic is raking it in.

This is just my half-arsed idea, but one idea I've thought about for years is that high school should go to grade 14 or 15. This would prepare students better and would allow them to go to a wider variety of post-secondary places, or none at all. Sometimes I have to admit that maybe just too many people are going to college. Definitely too many people are going to grad school.

[CapnSamwise]

sounds like a bunch of east coast ivory tower intellectuals whining that Real Americans won't pay for their fancy-schmancy degrees in "gay stuff" and "engineering" or whatever.

psh like that'll get you a job in the factory. next your gonna tell me that an educated populace is better able to self-govern and make good decisions voting. all the learning you nerds ever need is in the Fox News!

[Moldy Rutabaga]