patrick.net

Sad. Education is a necessity. :(
Maybe the solution is with virtual reality classes where the world's best professor can lecture a million students at once, while graduate students answer questions.

Because we have legislatures that say they are going fix things, then laugh like hell all the way to the bank. That's why!

Interest on student loans should be 0 percent, expecially if the gaurantee that you have to pay it back is greater than the gaurantee you'll pay your back taxes.
There's 0 risk in a student loan, it may be next month or deducted from your death estate sale, your college loan will be paid back.

Students loans are an effective way to create obedient workers through debt.

Education is irrelevant. Indebted obedient workers are the product of colleges.

one excellent comment:

Whoa! • a day ago
Folks who read or saw Tom Clancy's thriller "The Hunt for Red October" back in the day, may remember the "Zampolit", or "political officer". (Sean Connery dispatched him early in the movie).

The Zampolit was a sort of deputy commander in Soviet military units (including nuclear submarines) whose job was to maintain political discipline (i.e., ideological correctness) and to report on those who deviated from the Party line.

Needless to say, the Zampolit was pretty universally despised by every soldier, sailor and officer who had real training and a real job to do.

Do American colleges and universities really need a Zampolit?

I say "Nyet"!

Yes, I also particularly liked the Zampolit comment. This is simply Cultural Marxism.

"over the 33 years from 1975 to 2008, the number of full-time faculty in the California state university system had barely increased at all: up from 11,614 to 12,019. Over the same period, the number of administrators had multiplied like little mushrooms: 3,000 had become 12,183."

That pretty much says it all.

One of my favorite landmarks is the UCI housing, which is on prime real estate on the corner of Bonita Canyon (Culver) and Turtle Ridge. Housing that just goes on and on... Nice housing. Like, "I wish I could live there" kind of housing. Homeowners must work for the University and they have their own little deal where they get this special purchase price from the University.... And when they go to sell, they can only sell for cost + inflation, or something like that. So basically, a similar house right up the road in Turtle Ridge or Turtle Rock (outside the UCI housing) might sell for $1.8 or $2 Million... But inside the protected area, the house might sell for $800k. God forbid these people commute to work. So, while everyone else is paying the going rate of market taxes on their newly purchased homes, University homeowners are also getting a nice discount on the property taxes. So, they are paid more than average and they have access to relatively cheap housing, which effectively subsidizes their property taxes. On the downside, your neighbor could be the school's Diversity, Sensitivity, or Equality Administrator... which would have to be on the top ten list of most annoying neighbors a person could have.

turtledove points out "On the downside, your neighbor could be the school's Diversity, Sensitivity, or Equality Administrator... which would have to be on the top ten list of most annoying neighbors a person could have."
On the upside when one's Sons of Anarchy white supremacist biker buddies come to party . . .

DieBankOfAmericaPhukkingDie says

Simple as that.

Shoot the MBAs.

Oh shit.

A good comment from JB:

"I'm sorry but all those resentment and therapeutic courses were children of the 60's and the cultural Marxism and post modern whining drivel it engendered. They are and were designed to give the dummies something they can pass. As well more make work. Much of the curriculum moreover is made from whole cloth.
Now they have devolved into a bigger make work mill which they are finding increasingly hard to justify . The funny thing is in states like California they want to make these "studies" courses mandatory-even in high school. Why? More make work, a glut of unemployed ethnic and gender studies majors, and a lot of empty seats in their classrooms. Its a non problem looking for a solution.
I liked you post though. Thanks for the reply"

P N Dr Lo R says

Its a non problem looking for a solution.

Just like trans-gender bathrooms.

turtledove says

"over the 33 years from 1975 to 2008, the number of full-time faculty in the California state university system had barely increased at all: up from 11,614 to 12,019. Over the same period, the number of administrators had multiplied like little mushrooms: 3,000 had become 12,183."

That pretty much says it all.

Most of the growth in colleges has been handled by hiring PhDs as contractors or using Grad Students, paying them $2000-$3000 a course or simply reducing their tuition a bit if they're a grad student. Basically, you're paying 5 figures to be taught by "Temps". Meanwhile the pay AND Numbers of Admins has exploded.

Since "professionalizing" college admins, instead of a beloved, school spirited senior Professor of 20 years at the college running the show, you have these people who stick around for a year or two, write some memos, make 6 figures plus housing and car allowances, jet all over the country going to Admin Conventions where they network for their net job at a school on the other side of the country.

georgeliberte says

Why College Costs have soared

The article is wrong. College costs have increased because and only because (i.e. the following conditions are necessary and sufficient)
1. Demand is inelastic since no candidate will be considered for any decent job if he doesn't have a degree.
2. The cost of college is subsidized and deferred through grants, scholarships, and loans.
3. No price caps are in place. It's always a bad idea to subsidize without imposing price caps as doing so only profits the sellers, not the buyers. All subsidies just increase the profit margins and place upward pressures on prices.

An immediate, but mediocre, solution is to simply place price caps on college costs. The price caps should be the total cost regardless of the category of cost. Otherwise, colleges will just shift the bill from one item to another. For example, lower tuition but increase residential fees or book prices.

A better solution, but still sub-optimal, is to eliminate all profit-taking from college and to place salary caps on all positions, particularly administration positions. Profit taking is done even in non-profit colleges. Often the college president takes in the better part of a million dollars a year in compensation or even more.

The optimal solution is to create a world-wide (or national if we're being less ambitious) virtual university that has no campuses (only testing centers) and few teachers (at most one for each course) with universally standardized curriculum and that allows students to take courses asynchronously at their own pace and when convenient to them.

The closest thing we have to this World Science U., and it's a good start but there is much work to be done. Implementing a national or world-wide virtual university that does everything right would take a considerable investment in money, time, and effort. However, it would pay for itself very quickly. The cost per student-degree would plummet to dollars excluding the cost of a tablet that is used for as many courses and degrees as you like.

A virtual university would limit the cost of education to a student's time and effort. Tablets are cheap and their cost can be easily socialized. The largest cost of education, paying adminstrators, teachers, and other staff essentially goes to zero dollars per student because in a fully virtualized university, the number of humans required for labor does not increase with the number of students. It does not matter if one student or one billion students are taking Calculus IV, the cost of creating the course is fixed.

The only cost of a virtual university that scales with the number of students is the student hardware (tablets, maybe a laptop, a few other tools that are major-specific) and the cost of secure testing or hands-on labs for STEM students. The former is pretty cheap and getting cheaper every day. Mass production of tools or virtualization of labs (possible for many things) would further drive down costs. Only having to run secure testing centers to prevent cheating would require hiring humans and using land, buildings, and other resources in proportional to the number of students and the number of courses they take. And quite frankly, even that cost is minuscule compared to the status quo.

There is only one downside to a world-wide virtual university, a lot of unemployed educators and administrators. That's a price will have to pay, and those people will simply have to get new jobs, perhaps research jobs or production jobs. The purpose of an education system is to prepare the students for a career, not to provide incomes to teachers. As much as you may like teachers, they are not the reason we have schools and their needs are surpassed by the needs of students.

The bottom line is that no solution will make education cheap, and thus available to all regardless of socioeconomic status, unless the cost of human labor is decoupled from the number of students. The greatest expenses must not be proportional to the demand for education. Those expenses must be constant or near constant. In software development, we call this scalability, and education must be scalable to work for all.

#education #scitech #virtualUniversity

rando says

The Zampolit was a sort of deputy commander in Soviet military units (including nuclear submarines) whose job was to maintain political discipline (i.e., ideological correctness) and to report on those who deviated from the Party line.

In America, we call them Social Justice Warriors.

turtledove says

And when they go to sell, they can only sell for cost + inflation,

That's how Prop 13 should have worked.

DieBankOfAmericaPhukkingDie says

It worked well for 5000 years.

What university was around 5000 years ago? The University of Bedrock whose motto is "Yaba Daba Doo"?

Just as with the sales of fraudulent securities and NINJA loan home purchases, it pumps up GDP. And nobody goes back to subtract out these bogus contributions.

There's the fact that the costs are being 'paid' by children taking on debt, without knowing what they are doing. Coupled with the fact that more than half of them are females, and you have a recipe for disaster.

Dan8267 says

In America, we call them Social Justice Warriors.

Getting the "Father of DNA Banned"

We are writing to inform you that the lecture by Professor James Watson, scheduled for September 12, 2016 has been cancelled. We received the attached letter that had been written by medical and graduate students at NYU School of Medicine to express their feelings regarding the invitation of Dr. Watson for this distinguished lecture. In the letter, the students raised the point that Dr. Watson had made public claims to diminish respect for black, female and obese individuals. We agree with the students that this runs counter to our mission of diversity and inclusion at NYU Langone Medical Center and have thus elected to cancel the lecture.

We would like to take this opportunity to commend the students, deans, and faculty who have been involved in this discussion for their devotion to our shared community. At NYU, we have a strong commitment to equality as well as freedom of speech, and the right balance between these is not always easy to determine. While we may have differences of opinion, we also have tolerance. The Neuroscience Institute will be partnering with students and administration in holding an open forum on inclusion and diversity in the sciences. Please be alert to future notifications for this event as we invite all voices to be heard.

We enthusiastically join our student community in safeguarding an environment that promotes diversity and that respects all people for their capacity to contribute. We will continue to honor this moving forward in our selection of speakers, professors, and trainees and will seek to include a wide range of perspectives during the selection process.

...so long as nobody is offended.

https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2016/09/07/lecture-invitation-to-watson-rescinded-because-of-remarks-on-race-he-made-in-2007/

Idiocracy has arrived.

My theory of management (I work in government) is that they come in with a great new idea to fix all the problems (most of which result from the prior managements great new idea),put them into effect (leaving it to workers to actually make them work, and they create pretty charts, graphs, bulletins, reports, and press release by controlling the information process and statistical methods to show what an astounding success it has been, give the,selves heft bonuses and raises, and move onto a promotion elsewhere before it is unavoidably;y obvious what a mess everything has become. Then new management (recently promoted from somewhere else) comes in and repeats the cycle/

Shangyang, "higher school," China, established during the Yu period: 2257-2208 BC. Oldest advanced schooling was established almost 4500 yrs ago.

I have been thinking about the tuition increase for a while. It is definitely due to fancy dorms, proliferation of various mostly useless "supports" for students, administration bloat (school presidents earning >$1M - why should school president earn more than US president?), and increasing spending on sports' programs. Tuition is not higher due to decrease of state funding - in most states it remains constant if we count $/student. Problem is, that students want fancy dorms, rec centers, best football team, even if it means higher tuition - they vote in referendums supporting fee increases. If we do not have a competitive sports team, they will go to neighboring university. Perhaps legislating that tuition/fees can be used only for instructional purposes would help, but I am sure schools will get around it. At least some of the price increase is due to students demanding WE NEED FANCY EVERYTHING NOW!!! One can argue that adults at schools should counteract this, but they are interested in having as many students paying as high tuition as possible.

With respect to online universities - in theory, it is a good idea. In practice, not so much for most disciplines, except, perhaps, computer science. First, when I teach large undergrad classes, 80+% of students who have taken intro courses online or in community colleges miserably fail. Many 18-20 yr olds can not discipline themselves to work if they are not reminded about it several times a week. The amount of cheating in online schools is enormous. Tests that I write for my 200+ student class are free response, and never "check a, b, c, or d". This type of test can not be given online, and makes them think, but is difficult to grade. With unusual answers, for example, I have to check scientific literature to see if student might be right even with answer that is not in textbook. Thus, lately such tests are often replaced with multiple-choice. Second, many science fields, such as chemistry, physics, engineering, etc, need labs. In advanced levels of chemistry (PhD or even MS) research in lab is 90% of work. This can not be done online. No one will hire inorganic, organic, or analytical chemist, or chemical/petroleum engineer who has no lab experience.

I have been reading patrick.net for a while, but this is only my 2nd post.

thunderlips11 says

...so long as nobody is offended.

Watson should be offended. They slandered and liable him.

thunderlips11 says

https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2016/09/07/lecture-invitation-to-watson-rescinded-because-of-remarks-on-race-he-made-in-2007/

OK, I'm officially calling bullshit on the claim that James Watson made a racist remark. From the article above,

“All our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours — whereas all the testing says not really,” the newspaper quoted him as saying.

In a statement given to The Associated Press yesterday, Dr. Watson said, “I cannot understand how I could have said what I am quoted as having said. There is no scientific basis for such a belief.”

But his publicist, Kate Farquhar-Thomson, would not say whether Dr. Watson believed he had been misquoted. “You have the statement,” she said. “That’s it, I am afraid.”

Every article that mentions this incident is hearsay based on this The Times article from the U.K.

James Watson, the molecular biologist who collaborated with Francis Crick in working out the structure of DNA in 1953, made some incautious remarks about race and intelligence in an interview in The Sunday Times Magazine.

He said he was “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours – whereas all the testing says not really”. He said he hoped that everyone was equal, but countered that “people who have to deal with black employees find this not true”

So even the original source is, at best, taking sentence fragments out of context and stringing them together. Did the interviewer not bother recording the conversation in order to get exact quotes? That's some shitty ass reporting.

There is every reason to believe some no-skill journalist who sucks at his job -- I'd expect a sixth grader to do a better job at conducting an interview -- is simply making up a quote from memory and getting it completely wrong. Did Watson say something about genetics and race and intelligence? Probably. Did he say what was quoted? Almost certainly not.

But let the gerbils on the Internet and in news media repeat a falsehood enough and the world will think it's true.

Dan8267 says

But let the gerbils on the Internet and in news media repeat a falsehood enough and the world will think it's true.

Yep. Just like the Probe Guy who had to make a tearful apology because a bunch of purple haired freaks who avoided science classes in HS and College like the plague thought his shirt of Pin-up Cartoon Girls was Sexist.

Strategist says

Sad. Education is a necessity

But not necessarily in the 'traditional' way that we're teaching it. One of the best schools is the tried and true school of experience and hard knocks. Yes, you need to learn to read, write and do math in the 'traditional' school, but you learn very little about life, people and doing things there. I've believed that kids need to be prevented from going to college straight out of high school. They should do a minimum of two years in the Peace Corp, the Military, Missionary work, something outside and away from their family and away from schools. They will learn more about themselves and figure out more about life than 12 years in school directly after high school. They need to grow up (that means taking a lot of the comfort items away from them). They need to pull their heads out of the world of school and find out what real life is really all about. When YOU are responsible for you and where there are consequences to pay when you don't meet/live up to your responsibility.

Dan8267 says

An immediate, but mediocre, solution is to simply place price caps on college costs.

Bravo.

This means market solutions are dead?

Real question is.. why can't a University show that they can give better training with less cost?

That's the wrong real question.

The correct question is "Why don't we allow a Free Market Capitalist solution to solve a problem, for once. Like allowing Student Loan Debt to be subject to retirement in bankruptcy courts?"

errc says

Like allowing Student Loan Debt to be subject to retirement in bankruptcy courts?"

It used to be. Again, you can thank the Baby Boom generation and it's thumb it's nose at the establishment mentality. I can remember in the 70's seeing a story on recent college graduates--I remember specifically one long-haired type and his shack-up honey smirking at the camera and saying yep, the first thing we did after getting our degrees was declare bankruptcy:

"Prior to 1976, student loans weren’t protected from bankruptcy proceedings. But that year, amid concern over high default rates, Congress passed legislation intended to safeguard federal investments.

The first version of the law put a ban on bankruptcy discharges for the first five years after a federal student loan was originated. It did include an undue hardship allowance that could discharge the debt earlier.

Two years later, lawmakers proposed a bill that would have returned bankruptcy rights to student loan borrowers. However, that legislation failed, and discharging federal loans through bankruptcy continued to be prohibited during the first five years after loan origination.

The law changed again in 1990, when the five-year rule was extended to seven years. In 1998, the law was revised again to remove any timeframe for allowable discharges, leaving undue hardship as the only way out.

At the time, this only applied to federal student loans. That changed in 2005, when lawmakers included private student loand debt in a comprehensive bankruptcy amendment"

Great educational opportunities in the Army.

www.youtube.com/embed/TIJwQUfGIE8

ja says

This means market solutions are dead?

1. Free markets and capitalism are mutually exclusive.
2. Capitalism works only for luxuries, not necessities or infrastructure. Education is infrastructure.

ja says

Real question is.. why can't a University show that they can give better training with less cost?

With few exceptions, you don't need college to train for a career. The few exceptions are legal restrictions that prevent you from training outside of a college. For example, you can't cut open cadavers if you aren't in medical school.

Thanks for the joke Dan. It was so funny.

"1. Free markets and capitalism are mutually exclusive.
2. Capitalism works only for luxuries, not necessities or infrastructure. Education is infrastructure."

jvolstad says

Great educational opportunities in the Army.

Yeah, there's always a low-paid position for canon fodder. If army jobs are so damn good, why do high ranking politicians always keep their own sons out of the military? They should lead by example instead of being chick-hawks.

errc says

The correct question is "Why don't we allow a Free Market Capitalist solution to solve a problem, for once. Like allowing Student Loan Debt to be subject to retirement in bankruptcy courts?"

Yep. We have a special regulation that makes student debt non-dischargeable. We should also make it tougher to get a loan if the costs exceed a certain average tuition amount.

So anybody could a few thousand bucks no problem to go to Community College, but to borrow $100k for 4 years at NYU, or Laureate University, you'd have to show Sky High SAT scores to qualify.

Also the GI Bill should not be allowed to be used to access loans only for schools that have been operating for at least 30 years.

Dan8267 says

Capitalism works only for luxuries, not necessities or infrastructure. Education is infrastructure.

I missed that class in economics theory. Where between Adam Smith and Paul Krugman did they explain this?
Free markets applies for classic goods. Differentiated monoploistic goods may apply as well. Public
goods only partially (if part of it is paid for the user). Why isn't education a classic good?

thunderlips11 is deplorable says

. We have a special regulation that makes student debt non-dischargeable

That would be against the free market, because you are not allowed to choose your level of risk. Same for npn-recourse/recourse loans. Different states/countries chose one oor the other, but at the end it should be a decision of the consumer what collateral does he use. The house itself? The house of your parents? Personal wages up to a limit?

What is missing for a real free market is good information. If Joe has a SAT X , has family liabilities Y, and goes to college Z, how much money is he likely to be getting after he graduates? And what about risk? Can he insure the loan in case the job market goes down or in case he has to leave school because his parents get ill?

Buying a smartphone becomes usually a more sophisticated economic decission

Ironman says

Or, make the loan amount a percentage of what the salary of the degree attempted pays. You want a loan to get a degree in middle eastern basketweaving, a job that pays $10K a year, it should be lower. You want to be a physician that makes $100K+ a year, and you have a SAT that supports it, the loan can be larger.

A man with a plan just like dan. Just about as practical too.

ja says

Dan8267 says

Capitalism works only for luxuries, not necessities or infrastructure. Education is infrastructure.

I missed that class in economics theory. Where between Adam Smith and Paul Krugman did they explain this?

Not to worry. Dan missed all his econ classes, so he started to make things up.

georgeliberte says

You might ask: What do these administrators do?

Spend lots of money. Outrageous administration costs are a big part of the problem. But the whole system is a problem. Colleges in the US are a huge self serving, self perpetuating industry selling a product. Part of selling is marketing. A big part of marketing college degrees is school reputation. So colleges are always on the lookout for marketing advantages. This means spending lots of money. Physical campus, sports programs, superstar professors, superstar research departments, palatial living facilities, the list goes on. Colleges like to cry that government funding has been cut so they have to raise prices. Simply not true. State spending per student inflation adjusted is much higher today than the 60's or 70's when inflation adjusted tuition’s were much lower.

The whole thing is a gigantic brain washing exercise. Why parents and students go along like lemmings by the millions every year is a mystery to me. There are so many ways to beat the system. Community college, clep, college courses during high school, going overseas, etc., etc. etc..

My son and I are looking at University of St Petersburg (the alma matar of Vladimir Lenin and Vladimir Putin, not the one in florida) right now at around 6k a year. Total 6k a year, not 6k a year tuition. There are even scholarships for foreign students available that I'm looking at to lower the costs further. He wants to work in international business. Being fluent enough in russian to get his degree at a russian university and having lived 4 years in russia will be hard to top on a resume. It will certainly beat the shit out of having a degree in russian studies at our local state university costing 8 times as much.

Ironman says

bob2356 says

A man with a plan

Yep, just as good as the one you proposed...

Oh wait, you didn't propose any.... you just stopped by for your daily "Cranky Spew and Run".

I've proposed quite workable plans many times on many threads covering a range of subjects. Your advanced syphilitic dementia makes any post anyone makes a spew and run since you can't retain anything. For example, I have posted dozens of virulently anti hillary comments. Yet you think somehow I'm a hillary supporter. The best I can figure is it's because anyone who can put together a coherent sentence must be a hillary and/or bernie supporter in your mind since they obviously can't be part of your far right wing stupidity fest.