After Decades of Growth, Colleges Find It’s Survival of the Fittest

https://www.wsj.com/articles/after-decades-of-growth-colleges-find-its-survival-of-the-fittest-1519209001

by cs702 • 8 years ago

82 146 8 years ago

Woah, I was all ready to come back here and discuss the article when I figured, what the hell lets give the comments section on the WSJ a chance.

Maybe I'm out of touch in my little tech/business cross section of the world, but where did that overwhelming hate for higher education come from? Nearly all of those comments are...not making very logical arguments worth discussing either.

CalRobert2• 8 years ago

I have little love for an institution that profits off dreams and naivete and destroys lives with un-dischargeable debt. But hey, at least the football coach is rich and the gym is fancy! Also in retrospect I learned almost nothing useful in college. Loads on my own time, though.

Also, how the hell is college so damn expensive when the people teaching classes are paid 12 bucks an hour because they're "adjuncts"?? where tf is the money going?? (see above)

Exception: my local junior college was great, and reasonably priced. If you want to do uni, go to jc and then to europe.

Oh. Also there's a whole university cargo cult. It made some baby boomers wealthy so obviously the solution is for EVERYONE to go to college.

nickthemagicman2• 8 years ago

I feel like you have a bit of an extreme take by saying 'profiting off dreams and naivete'. Uni is excellent for people for so many reasons. The price has gotten out of hand thats for sure. College and education are wonderful things. We just have to make sure it's within reach for everyone

eurticket• 8 years ago

to the top

AznHisoka• 8 years ago

Most of the teachers are also more occupied with doing research than actual teaching.

tenpies• 8 years ago

Also, how the hell is college so damn expensive when the people teaching classes are paid 12 bucks an hour because they're "adjuncts"?? where tf is the money going?? (see above)

A non-trivial portion goes to legal expenses and risk management. It started with the concept of in loco parentis (in the place of the parent). University students stopped being adults and became children.

Obama's interpretation of Title IX was also catastrophic for expenses. All of a sudden you had to set up your own internal pseudo-court system and have an entire mechanism for handling even the most dubious of accusations. These things are not free.

This has snowballed into other pseudo-legal aspects and the social justice movement is just monumentally expensive to deal with. It's not a question of if a #metoo incident happens on your campus, it's a matter when. What steps did you take to prevent it? What staff do you have in place to react?

And the worst is that once you've hired these staff they're there forever. There will never will a point of mission accomplished, perfect equity, or an environment sufficiently free of even the smallest of nano-harassments for a university to rid itself of this burden.

Don't get me wrong, there's a country club and sports team aspect to a lot of university expenses, but the primary purpose of most universities is not education, research, or anything along those lines - it's to avoid getting sued into oblivion.

michaelt• 8 years ago

  Also, how the hell is college so damn expensive when
  the people teaching classes are paid 12 bucks an hour

Lack of effective price competition.

Imagine I'm the boss of a university, and I push through across-the-board budget cuts of 10%, and cut tuition by 10%. I drop the out-of-state annual price from $25,000 to $22,500.

Am I going to be widely praised for my radical move? Probably not, the price remains extremely high. Are sales going to skyrocket, offsetting the price drop? Probably not, most good universities fill 100% of their places.

Are loads of the colleagues I see on a daily basis going to be mad at me? Quite possibly! Did I take this job because I love slashing budgets for libraries and arts education? Probably not. Is there a risk, due to different departments' abilities to raise funds externally, that some departments will be disproportionately impacted? Absolutely.

If I'm a university boss and I want an easy life, much easier to turn a blind eye to increasing costs.

ashooner3• 8 years ago

The typical comparison of college to today to that from 20 or 30 years ago is just poorly considered. "Where does the money go?" Consider the things that didn't exist at many colleges 30 years ago:

- IT

- Any type of student welfare services.

- Title IX and any other regulatory offices.

- Diversity offices and other efforts.

- Disability services.

- Dedicated police departments.

- Advising, Counseling, and Academic support (because more and lower-qualified students than ever are going to college).

- In the case of state schools, typically significant budget cuts from the state.

I'm not saying these rationally explain the increase in cost, but it's a significant expansion in responsibility and functionality that brought with it administration and bureaucracy.

ocschwar• 8 years ago

Also, how the hell is college so damn expensive

It's a positional good, and the buyers are bidding for it using borrowed money, and bidding from a position that is underinformed and cannot be anything but underinformed.

It's the epitome of a bubble.

olympus• 8 years ago

There is self selection going on in the comments of just about every article. In general people with strong feelings are more likely to comment, and on the internet strong negative feelings seem to be more common (and especially in an article about failing institutions).

In this case, people that hated going to college (or hated the idea of going) are more likely to comment. People that were pleased with their experience probably don't care as much about the article so they either don't comment or don't read it at all.

chockZ• 8 years ago

I see you haven't read a lot of right wing media over the past 20 years.

jseliger• 8 years ago

1. College costs have been outstripping inflation for decades. This is well-known and obvious: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=rising+college+costs+decades&ia=we...

2. It's not clear that most colleges are actually teaching much most of the time: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/A/bo103...

3. Related to #2, it seems that most colleges have evolved non-educational tracks for those who want them: https://jakeseliger.com/2014/04/27/paying-for-the-party-eliz...

4. See Bryan Caplan's book The Case Against Education, which argues that most of education system is about signaling, not human capital education. If that's true, we ought to work harder to find other ways to signal.

5. It's not clear where the money for college is going. It's not going to instructors or instruction. So where is it disappearing into? Many blame administrators, sports, Title IX, bureaucracy, Baumol's Cost Disease, etc., but I'm not sure what the real answer is.

6. The logical arguments are mostly in books, not online.

Slansitartop3• 8 years ago

I don't subscribe to the WSJ or its comments, but I suspect there's also an additional reason:

7. Colleges and universities are ground zero (and a symbol) of a (newish) culture that loudly, strongly, and explicitly rejects and condemns much of the rest of America; and especially the type of American that stereotypically would read the WSJ. Conservatives, libertarians, and increasingly classical liberals are not going to have very warm feelings towards things that they perceive are openly hostile to their values.

danans• 8 years ago

1. College costs have been outstripping inflation for decades.

At least for public universities, the rise in costs can be largely attributed to the collapse of state support:

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/fancy-dorms-arent-the-m...

pjc50• 8 years ago

where did that overwhelming hate for higher education come from?

Culture war. Same place Trump came from.

purple-again2• 8 years ago

More on point with the article, I hate when information is delivered like this without any context. Less than 20% of schools are failing? Wow thats...I don't know what that is. Whats the median for failing colleges per...decade? How long does a college usually take to fail?

E765• 8 years ago

No blocker:

https://web.archive.org/web/20180221130021/https://www.wsj.c...

salmonfamine• 8 years ago

Not sure what the HN position is on commenting bots, but can we automate this process? Someone has to do it every single time a NYT/WSJ/WAPO article gets posted.

Yhippa• 8 years ago

Agreed, the web links haven't been working for me for a while.

Pigo4• 8 years ago

I've been in serious debate with myself over whether to encourage my son to go to college when it is time. I guess it depends on what field I see him become interested in. I could provide enough resources for him to learn enough to get an entry level job, if he chooses tech. But I guess I still have that romantic notion of him getting a well-rounded education in many subjects that I couldn't help him with, making friends, and meeting interesting professors. At least I could help him find a good college. I was the first person in my family to even graduate high-school, so I was flying blind.

Besides the notion that so many jobs expected it when I was starting out, I'm not really sure what good it did for me. Put it this way, I couldn't even tell you where my diploma is. But once a month I still go online and pay for it.

hashkb• 8 years ago

Your son could have that at a state school for probably free (depending on the state, and with good grades), and work in a restaurant three or four nights a week to offset some other costs.

lettergram• 8 years ago

Ugh - depends what state school. My wife and I both went to University of Illinois (we are from Illinois). I worked 10 - 20 hours per week, and got some smaller grants, my wife got larger grants..

We still both have more debt than I care to admit... It's literally 20% of our overall monthly expenses.

I found the connections personally invaluable and worth it. My wife is just starting her PhD at U of I, so we both agree it was worth it, but just barely.

epistasis• 8 years ago

I would be very interested to know which, if any, schools make this possible.

meri_dian5• 8 years ago

Not sure why you're getting downvoted. Going to one of your state schools is a good choice for a relatively low cost education.

It's naive to think a college degree isn't valuable. Among a collection of candidates with and without college degrees, those with degrees will not only get preferential treatment, but also once they are deep in their careers those who do not have formal degrees will be held back from leadership roles.

This is how the real world works much of the time, the idea that college is becoming less important is wrong. It's becoming more important.

seanmcdirmid2• 8 years ago

When I went to school in the early/mid 90s, tuition was low enough that I could basically support myself with a job and some minimal support from my dad ($1000/quarter). Those days are long gone, however.

ema2• 8 years ago

My older brother has a master in physics, I spent less than 6 years in any kind of formal education. We both work as software developers and I do think my education is as well rounded as his. So on these fronts I don't think it makes much of a difference. That said I did develop anxiety problems that I might not have had if from age 9 to 15 I had spend as much time around a diverse set of peers as he had.

dsacco2• 8 years ago

Do you mean you never graduated college, or that you literally only completed schooling up to middle school?

With respect to well-roundedness: would you say your knowledge is also covers as much depth as your brother’s?

Pigo4• 8 years ago

I recently got back in touch with a friend from highschool who's parents were really well off. They actually bought property on the East Coast just so that he could claim residency and get in-state with this really haughty college (I cannot remember which one). He now has several philosophy degrees and works at our old highschool as a librarian. He seems very unhappy with his life as well.

badpun• 8 years ago

But I guess I still have that romantic notion of him getting a well-rounded education in many subjects that I couldn't help him with, making friends, and meeting interesting professors

Interestingly, in my country (Poland) we never had such romantic concept. You always went to university to go deeply on one specific subject (which you chose when you applied to the uni) - the opposite of being well-rounded. Professors were never meant to be interesting. The one thing I see in common is the hope for making friends.

I wonder if it's similar in other European countries.

maxxxxx2• 8 years ago

In Germany higher education is also very focused on one subject.

jimhefferon2• 8 years ago

I believe that part of the difference is that when the education systems gelled in the US there was in the air the perception that the US is this historically radical experiment in democracy and that it needed a citizenry that well-rounded enough to participate.

I don't believe that there was as strong a sense for those things in other places. But it fit with the way that at least some people thought of the US, at the time.

mrguyorama2• 8 years ago

As a recent graduate of an American college, I don't see it as giving me a "well rounded" education. Thanks to advanced courses in High School, I didn't even have to take a writing class. There were maybe 4 or 5 out of over 30 classes through my entire career that weren't directly related to my CS degree

maxxxxx2• 8 years ago

Having a college degree makes finding a job much easier even if it's totally unrelated to the job. With a lot of employers without degree you are pretty much out of contention for a lot of jobs . It's kind of silly but that's the way it is.

And a degree from a famous college opens even more doors. I still remember at a startup I worked at the VCs would talk to people from MIT or Stanford and ignore everybody else.

tryitnow• 8 years ago

If you're in the US then it depends on what state you live in. If he can get into one of the good in-state schools then it may be worth it - based on the social experience alone.

Another way to look at is that if you set your son up to be a good critical thinker and emotionally mature then you can trust that he may make the best choice on his own without any encouragement one way or another.

Pigo4• 8 years ago

This does make sense. If he is anything like me, he's going to do whatever the hell he thinks is best. I was the weirdo for going to college.

uberman7• 8 years ago

You want your child to go to college because:

1) The average run of the mill degree results in twice the earnings and half the unemployment of those with just high school.

2) The average run of the mill degree results in a $900k lift in lifetime earnings (for men) over a high school diploma. The lift for women is not quite that much but that might have something to do with the types of degrees that each get.

These numbers are averages so if your child completes a stem degree from say MIT, the lift in lifetime earnings is likely quite a bit more than that.

Want more? Check out : https://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_chart_001.htm

wojt_eu• 8 years ago

This shows correlation but not causation. Hypothetically: people with certain background (social class) and traits (IQ) are more likely to go to college, and they would fare as well or better without college. I'd be very interested in stats of lifetime earnings difference that was corrected for selection bias.

nshelly• 8 years ago

If a student can get into MIT that student will likely be financially well off no matter where they go, even after an upper middle-class family spends nearly $300,000 in tuition, room and board. It's the edge cases that are much harder. Try comparing an expensive private school for four years with a state school (three if they accept AP courses).

Of course there are a lot of other non-financial reasons to attend college, such as growing a circle of friends and being exposed to new ideas in a formal setting. It's unclear how to value that properly however.

exclusiv2• 8 years ago

In this case, I don't think your data is that strong. The parent could get them an entry level job in tech, conceivably one comparable with one one would obtain fresh out of college.

Separately from this specific case, remember, to pay off 200k in debt (cost of many good public schools), you need to make about 2M! If you save 20%, then you need an EXTRA 1M over not going to college just to break even. I'm not even factoring in interest that many students are getting these days. And then you have the opportunity cost of not investing the money you did make when you didn't have debt by skipping college. So when you consider these things, a 900k bump in lifetime earnings doesn't look good.

Now if you get a scholarship or if you factor in the intangibles the parent mentions then I think it's a no brainer. But strictly from a lifetime earnings standpoint it's oversold. You have to factor in the foregone earnings, the debt, the interest and the opportunity cost of not being able to save and invest money.

Personally I think it's worth it but best for most people to go to a lower tier university that won't start them off with a mountain of debt.

JamesBarney2• 8 years ago

The average person who graduates from college is different from.the average person who doesn't in more attributes than "degree held".

Z-Widwil3• 8 years ago

When you say 'run of the mill degree' are you referring to Associates, Bachelor, or higher? Additionally, do you know how the data you shared compares to individuals with technical certificates?

avs7337• 8 years ago

Whether they should or not is a different discussion but I'll put it this way...

Employers (implicitly) use the ability to complete a college degree as a marker of basic competence and knowledge posession necessary to do entry level work. From their side it is simply a more efficient and easier way to assess candidates in bulk than any other approach.

a BS is also a strong social marker of the ability for a student to complete a body of work and manage themselves independent of their parents...basically its an 'adulting' check mark.

malvosenior• 8 years ago

Employer here. I’ve never thought like this through the hiring process. I care about what people can build and not where/if they have a degree. The Github section of a CV is 10X more meaningful to me than the education section and I regularly hire people who don’t have degrees.

Ymmv but I’m sure I’m not alone.

mrfusion• 8 years ago

Community college could provide a lot of what you seek.

bitL3• 8 years ago

Your kid will have many full online degrees on the level of conventional M.S., maybe even PhD, once he's adult. These days you have Georgia Tech's OMSCS/OMSA and Duke's MS in Health Analytics already; I am sure more will come.

adenadel2• 8 years ago

I doubt there will be online degrees equivalent to a PhD (or calling itself a PhD). The coursework of a PhD is typically very similar to a master's in the same subject (maybe with a few additional requirements) but is usually just a primer for the real work doing our research. Conducting research is an inherently social exercise and the mentorship that is given during a PhD won't be easily replicable with an online program.

I agree with the general point you're making though.

tytytytytytytyt• 8 years ago

I'm not really sure what good it did for me.

You don't feel like all the liberal arts classes made you a more well rounded person and gave you a broader perspective on life, etc., etc.?

losteverything• 8 years ago

Tell him to go.

College and dorm living is where, in our family, we meet and fall in love with our spouse. The marriages that worked passed this on for 4 generations. This is an unspoken teaching to all that grow up in all of our roofs.

For me, my kids, my siblings and our parents and (probably both gp) the best thing that happened in college was meeting our spouses.

raincom• 8 years ago

Managerial class wants people who have college degrees. So send your kid to a school that costs you less.

Z-Widwil3• 8 years ago

This is something that I struggle with personally. I'm a junior dev and a part time student. I got the development job after working desktop support at the same company. My technical experience is entirely self taught. I only started going to school because my manager felt that I should receive a formal education as most of the senior devs have.

My issues with it are the cost and the level of education I'm receiving. To give everyone an example, my first database class taught MS Excel and moved to MS Access. This is from a college that is charging me thousands of dollars a year. While at work, I've developed multiple enterprise applications and setup entire SQL Server environments. I feel like I'm receiving way more training from work than from school. This is supported by the extremely positive reviews I've received from senior devs and my manager. And when I say cost of school, it isn't just the amount that I pay out of pocket. It's the time as well. I spend about 16 hours in class each week during business hours. Another 10 to 12 hours at home is spent doing homework or studying. An entire day is spent each week dedicated to school while working 40 hours a week. This makes for a pretty stressful situation. I'm on the edge of breaking down, but I make great money so I feel like I can't complain.

And yes, I know this is very specific to my situation. I could have chosen not to get a full time job and just gone to school instead. However, that would mean giving up starting a career early, which I think is much more valuable. If I can get a job without any education, the experience I have seems to be more valuable than the education. This leads me to believe that I should spend that 20+ hours learning independently instead of going to school. I'd save money that way, time, stress, and I'd likely be at a higher technical level than school has brought me to.

I know this comment doesn't help you out very much. I just wanted to share my situation as someone in the position that your son may be in the future. If I would have known how much I would have learned from work, I would have chosen not to go back to school. The only thing keeping me from stopping is that the senior devs have degrees in higher education and, though most of them are twice my age, I feel like I should keep up with them. Each of them is extremely supportive of both my work and school and I feel like dropping out would be letting them down.

ThrowawayR2• 8 years ago

...my first database class taught MS Excel and moved to MS Access. This is from a college that is charging me thousands of dollars a year.

Which institution and major?

tlynchpin• 8 years ago

Be cool stay in school.

You have a good job and you can get another, you already have valuable skills and work experience.

Unlike many of your classmates, you do not have an urgent need to gain a means to support yourself. When you are next in class, look around and appreciate the rarity of your circumstance.

Enjoy the liberty you have to pursue knowledge solely for edification and personal expansion. You can work towards a degree in any subject that interests you. Enjoy a liberal education.

sjg007• 8 years ago

It's all about your network. Going to a good school opens many doors. So yes tech but also get the degree. And if in tech do internships. Ideally and hopefully, your son can get scholarships to offset tuition.

always_good• 8 years ago

At least half of university is the social experience. There's more to life that credentializing in the work force. And university is over in a quick blip anyways, then it gets harder to get laid.

Think of it as a way to make his mid-life crisis less probable.

polskibus• 8 years ago

I wonder how much of these circumstances stem from the fact that people do not want to have children as much as they used to, concentrating on their own needs? Perhaps it would be in the best interest of colleges to somehow show people that it is possible to have children and an interesting career?

avs7337• 8 years ago

The bottom tier called out in this article are failing, above all else, because they lack a sense of place and purpose and instead make decisions marked by insecurity.

I have a whole lot to say on this issue so I'll try and keep it briefish...context, I'm finishing up my PhD in Engineering Education at a 'top tier' university. I also have a BS and MS in an engineering discipline.

Several friends in my program, as well as myself, have been applying for faculty jobs this year. Two of us have experience as technical founders, as working engineers, have prior experience teaching engineering, and now have PhDs in how to teach engineering well.

More than one teaching focused university has specifically told us that our degrees in teaching engineering are DISQUALIFYING to teach engineering at their schools. They will only take PhDs in that field of engineering. Those students, because of the nature of modern research universities, are often explicitly discouraged from developing teaching expertise - it distracts from the research their advisers need accomplished to get tenure there. So you have schools that produce future faculty discouraging them from getting the preparation needed for the majority of faculty jobs, and the schools that do the majority of teaching not interested in educational expertise.

One department head specifically told me during a phone interview they didn't see how a degree in how to teach engineering would be relevant to what they do. That school advertises that it's focused entirely on undergraduate engineering education, does not have graduate students, and rewards tenure almost entirely based on teaching performance. I pointed out that I had two degree in their discipline, worked as an engineer in the field for years, had already been teaching engineering before I returned to graduate school, and went back to school specifically to learn how to teach better. Silence. The last person they hired (who has become a friend/mentee of mine) went straight through from their BS to MS to PhD in a single engineering discipline. No teaching experience and no industry experience - but a PhD in the field.

The trend there doesn't just apply to teaching, it applies to research and to broader visions of what a university can or should be.

Really, summarized, the issues we are seeing are issues of strategy - but that is a dirty word at universities. The schools have all, teaching as well as research focused, managed to entirely divorce Schein's three levels of culture from each other. They have artifacts they use for promotion, tenure, and measuring the school's activity. Many have ceased to try and argue those artifacts are linked to the values that they espouse. They simply state they are linked and then stigmatize anyone who points out otherwise.

At many schools, the faculty pathologically fear losing input on governance yet are unwilling to contribute to running of the university in a meaningful way. They complain about perpetually rising tenure standards, but they are the ones enforcing those standards. Trying to engage in these discussions is a dirty word because that would require them to confront things outside of their bubble. Trying to individualize isn't within the capacity of the faculty because ongoing disciplinary ossification, narrowing, and inlooking. It also isn't in the capacity of the outside managers they bring in to run the 'business' side - because they don't have the foggiest understanding of how education works, and get stuck on traditional metrics for business success and solutions that prevent any real change.

Its easy to blame sports, and they sure don't help, but the culture of the way universities are run - lacking in any reflection, self-awareness, or broader world view. It isn't complying with title IX, but thats a convenient scapegoat. It isn't building nice dorms, that's a symptom not a cause. Each school looks up the ladder of rankings and then does their damnedest to make themselves look like the school above them. In an attempt to 'compete' they all actively commodify themselves.

As an academic I find it sad. As an engineer/entrepreneur I find it frustrating. As a citizen I find it actively dangerous. In the broadest sense, these aren't just problems of education, they are problems of a society that (on the whole) seeks a black and white understanding of the world and seeks an education system that reproduces what it thinks it wants, rather than what it could be or might need later.

Cyph0n• 8 years ago

That must be incredibly frustrating. I'm actually doing a PhD myself (in ECE) but I recently decided to get my MS and take a break to work in industry. My end goal is to get a PhD however. But I hear that the transition from full-time to grad school is pretty challenging. What were the issues you faced, if any?

I think one of the biggest issues in faculty hiring is that research experience and a strong publication record outweigh any form of teaching experience.

But this doesn't make sense at all, simply because ~30-50% of a full faculty member's time is spent teaching (including prep time, office hours, etc). More importantly, the fact that you have a couple of publications in top tier conferences does not imply that you know how to teach!

avs7337• 8 years ago

>That must be incredibly frustrating. It's more disheartening for how I look at my field than personally frustrating. One of my favorite anecdotes from this whole process is that, in parallel, to hearing that line of logic from multiple schools I had two different startups express interest in hiring me for technical positions. It has continued to validate my own belief that I'm a reasonably credible person who is well prepared to do what I want to do for a career...the people doing the hiring just can't separate their own beliefs from what the needs of their organization are. It's funny because that is exactly identical to the results of a study we recently published on why engineering students struggle with design thinking - they can't separate their own subjective reality from a shared objective one.
>I hear that the transition from full-time to grad school is pretty challenging. What were the issues you faced, if any? Its...interesting. The big issue was ego. I'm sure I have one I'm not super aware of but I make a really itnentional effort not to talk out my ass. I sat in a meeting where people were describing the 'needs' of engineering employers. No one in that room besides me had ever worked as an engineer, hired an engineer, or managed an engineer. But because I was a grad student they didn't see my input as useful. That pattern, of role based power supplanting all, is commonly used. It is also a pretty strong indicator of competence - those who use it are less likely to be so.

I would add that adherence to process (but not formal process, always implicit process) is hugely valued in my experience. Even more so than when I worked in manufacturing.

urlwolf• 8 years ago

Here's a hypothesis... When you have top school's materials online, it makes no sense to go to a second tier, or n-tier school other than for the networking. And by definition a 'n-tier' school is not going to be all that great at providing networking opportunities.

Would you take a machine learning course from an unknown, likely outdated professor when you could listen to Andrew Ng for free?

What the internet has brought is a 'winner takes all' for education.

avs7337• 8 years ago

I think this is a little narrow but perfectly valid. People get all squingy in my program when I bring up the idea of what value a college or program creates. They assume I'm being arch-capitalist about it.

The schools don't create value for students because they are bad at teaching. Having all the materials online is not learning, and its not good education.

But, the fact that students can create a better learning environment themselves than can a faculty member who knows the content and works at a university teaching the conten should be shocking.

ForHackernews• 8 years ago

Counterpoint: Ng's Coursera machine learning course is outdated now, unlikely to ever be updated, and focuses on applications of old algorithms without teaching the underlying fundamentals.

mrguyorama2• 8 years ago

I DID take a machine learning course from an unknown professor. One he was just doing as a fluke! It was incredible. I went from having zero background in Statistics or Machine learning, not even really understanding what they were, to applying several different techniques to exam large, million row datasets, using tools I had zero experience with, as well as learning how to interpret the results and avoid statistical pitfalls like overfitting and misinterpreting things.

Compare this to when I tried to take an AI class online offered by stanford, and I had to drop it because it was impossible to grok.

The difference? One professor actually taught, and the other simply wrote inscrutable symbols on the board and expected you to interpret it yourself. When we informed the professor on our lack of requisite statistics background, the unknown one simply adjusted his lessons to introduce the necessary concepts, while the Massive online course simply required a thorough background in probability to watch even the first few lectures.

Independent learning can kind of scale, in half-hearted ways, but actual TEACHING does not scale. Real teaching requires one on one effort.

I went to a low tier university because I had zero chance of getting actual access to an MIT professor, and the local ones were good enough to teach me everything I needed to have a real chance in the field.

arturmakly• 8 years ago

thanks for sharing this. people need to hear this more. perhaps write up a Medium article that can make its way around to a journalist. pleas continue to fight the good fight. we need more people educators like you. god speed

avs7337• 8 years ago

It's one of those things I'm regularly 'warned off' doing stuff like that because the biggest sin in academia is making observations about the emperors clothes. A friend an I have a draft of something that we plan to submit once we both have jobs.

Schools always want to hire 'collegiality' candidates...who get along with folks. They have warped the definition of collegiality (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recuperation_(politics)) to mean doesn't buck the system rather than respectfully disagree in furtherance of a shared purpose.

brightball• 8 years ago

Did not expect to see my Tigers featured when I clicked on the link. Clemson has been exploding over the past 20 years. It’s a special place.

The former president set a goal to become a top 20 public university. At the time, Clemson was around 70. I want to say it took close to 9 years but they finally did it. That mission directed a whole host of changes around the school to improve.

Some things were university wide like the "communications across the curriculum" program, that eventually developed into the Pearce Center (http://pearce.caah.clemson.edu/programs/waccac/). That primarily came from businesses telling the school that they were getting graduates who were technically sound but had difficulty working with non-technical people.

They embraced the research focus of the university with the Creative Inquiry program (https://www.clemson.edu/centers-institutes/watt/creative-inq...). I can't remember the name of the program, but at one point part of the curriculum was to have cross-major teams assisting with different professor's research projects on campus. You might have an agriculture professor with a team consisting of students from psychology, computer engineering, accounting, architecture, etc.

They developed the Clemson ICAR facility (http://cuicar.com/) in Greenville to capitalize on the automotive presence there along with undergrad to doctoral programs on automotive engineering...where the students actually design and build a car (https://jalopnik.com/this-mini-concept-car-was-developed-by-...).

Also moved the entire MBA program to downtown Greenville to be more accessible to people working. Clemson is very rural, so that was a challenge.

Exciting times at the school. :-)

It even include going as far as an academic review committee for football recruits. It blew up around 2007 when the committee told the coaches they couldn’t recruit a top wide receiver who then turned around and went to UNC...years later we found out why.

foodislove• 8 years ago

This makes sense. With average enrollment going up at the top, with the market growth in applicants less than that, eventually the bottom will lose out. Maybe there is nostalgia for some colleges be it history, alums, or what not. At the end of the day, students vote with their feet and if a college is not good enough, then it should go out of business.

htormey• 8 years ago

“”You’re going to see, over the next five years, a real increase in the number of schools in serious trouble,” Dr. Vedder said. “A degree from a top school is a still a pretty good signaling device [to employers]. It means you’re smart and hardworking. But a degree from one of these lower schools doesn’t mean much of anything.”“

Any discussion about third level education needs to take into account price and hence ROI.

I’m really surprised that this article doesn’t talk about the high rate at which US college tuition costs increased from 2008 to present. Especially for law schools. The closest it gets is the following paragraph:

“But in the past few years, the winds have shifted. The birthrate fell, the pay advantage for college graduates over high-school graduates declined, states cut $9 billion in funding to public colleges and student debt soared.”

Tuition in the US has gone up a lot while wages for many jobs have stayed relatively flat:

“In during the 1980-81 school year, the average college tuition at private universities was $9,882. By 2014-15, that number exploded to $26,740.

For public universities, the tuition figures went from $2,196 to $8,534”

https://businessinsider.com/this-chart-shows-college-tuition...

This is the main reason why colleges are struggling in the US.

aomurphy• 8 years ago

This has been predicted in higher ed for the past ~2 decades. It's relatively easy to look at the number of students in the pipeline, and you can see there were two big peaks in the last half century: baby boomers in the 60s-70s, and their children in the 90s-2000s. They managed to keep the boom going a little longer in the late 2000s with increased international enrollment, but it's over now (peak enrollment was 2010).

the other big trend has been that colleges in the US are disproportionately concentrated in a broad arc from New England through the Midwest for historical reasons, but young people in the US are increasingly concentrated in the South and West. I suspect we'll see a die off of lots of the small colleges that really only appeal locally throughout those areas. It's going to be pretty painful, look at what happened with Sweet Briar, which just managed to stay open (and admittedly suffered from another big trend: the death of women's colleges).

The best source for all of this (as with most news about how universities are run in the USA) is the Chronicle of Higher Education.

After Decades of Growth, Colleges Find It’s Survival of the Fittest

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