The next bubble to burst... higher education

[ShawnD1]

That doesn't leave very many real universities then...

You're exactly right.

Devry = fake
ITT Tech = fake
University of Phoenix = fake
Collin's College = fake
Westwood = fake
Everest = fake
Apollo College = fake

The above are all universities I've seen advertised on TV stations based in Spokane, Washington. They are all fake.

The real universities around Spokane are Gonzaga, Washington State, Spokane Community College, and Eastern Washington University. I may have missed a few other real universities in the area, but the important thing is that none of the real ones advertise. The real ones also use the word "accredited" on their website, which the fake ones can't legally say because fake ones are not accredited. Gonzaga's website even has it on the front page: "Gonzaga University is an accredited, non profit....."

 

[LumbergTech]

You're exactly right.

Devry = fake
ITT Tech = fake
University of Phoenix = fake
Collin's College = fake
Westwood = fake
Everest = fake
Apollo College = fake

The above are all universities I've seen advertised on TV stations based in Spokane, Washington. They are all fake.

The real universities around Spokane are Gonzaga, Washington State, Spokane Community College, and Eastern Washington University. I may have missed a few other real universities in the area, but the important thing is that none of the real ones advertise. The real ones also use the word "accredited" on their website, which the fake ones can't legally say because fake ones are not accredited. Gonzaga's website even has it on the front page: "Gonzaga University is an accredited, non profit....."

yea...in my limited experience in the CS industry I met quite a few people who were screwed over by ITT

 

[Cerb]

There is a real opportunity for someone to bankroll a new type of university - a school that gave you the concentrated courseload of a technical school, with strict grading, a mandatory internship program and a 4 year program compressed into 3 years in order to keep the cost down. Focusing on developing job skills so that people finishing the program would be better prepared than the typical uni graduate would be appealing to employers. I'd structure it so that a graduate of this program would be equivalent to someone with 2 years experience in whatever industry.

You could beat the traditional schools at their own game.

No, you would be making 'traditional' schools into vocational schools. Churning out workers is not what they have been there for.

Learning a broad range of things, for the exercise of it, and networking, are what they're there for. Even with the college = job skills lie, they're still pretty much there for that. If anything, they should focus more on that; and tell job seekers who want to influence them to STFU, and GTFO. Don't dilute universities--make vocational schools better, and stop guiding smart kids away from them.

I seem to not be disagreeing with CycloWizard. Strange days.

 

[woolfe9999]

I think a simple definition of a "bubble" is when (irrationally) high demand pushes the price for something above it's actual value.

So, I suppose it could be fairly said that higher education could be a bubble if the price of tuition (and 4 years lost wages) is unreasonably high compared to benefits the BS/BA degree bring.

If people then realized this and chose not to attend universites to such an extent that we had enrollment declines we could see that bubble burst. Overall declining enrollment would represent a decreased demand and force universities into financial problems.

I earned my degree decades ago, tutition was relatively inexpensive compared to today and my starting salary was quite high for that time even though we were in a pretty big recession. So I consider my money well spent. But I'll add that it wasn't an easy degree, probably only 25% or less that started in the program made all the way through.

Howver, the kind of of money non-degreed tradesmen and the like charge has become quite high. HVAC techs, plumbers, electricians etc in my area charge per hour as much as many professionals (lawyers and CPA's).

I have seen more non-degreed people making more money than educated professions etc for some time now. If can you manage a crew, whether in contruction or cable installation etc you can make more money than just about anybody else (excepting of course Wall Street types and senior execs at large companies).

Another 'little secret' is that those with heavy equipment make heavy $'s. Start out with cheap an old used bulldozer or backhoe and keep adding on equip and soon you'll find all kinds of contracts open to you. Most people just don't realize the kind of money these people make. There are more redneck millionaires than you can shake a stick at (I find it amusing about how people now claim there is no upward mobility etc in the USA and all the ranting about how the top 2% keep making more and more $).

If and when younger people figure this out enrollment should drop at regular universities. JUCO's have all the basic courses (biz mgmt, accounting, economics, marketing, finance etc) any tradesmen wanting to start their own business would need. Then there are trade schools to focus in on the actual work you intend to do. Spending thousands of $'s and 4 years sitting around in classes you don't care about and won't use isn't the way to make big bucks. Why would it be? Anybody can do that.

Fern

Ok you're making some sense. Sounds to me like if you're correct, the education market will basically just correct itself. Some universities will have to downsize or close. This isn't the sort of problem that will send the entire economy into a tailspin like the housing bubble.

- wolf

 

[nonlnear]

You're exactly right.

Devry = fake
ITT Tech = fake
University of Phoenix = fake
Collin's College = fake
Westwood = fake
Everest = fake
Apollo College = fake

The above are all universities I've seen advertised on TV stations based in Spokane, Washington. They are all fake.

The real universities around Spokane are Gonzaga, Washington State, Spokane Community College, and Eastern Washington University. I may have missed a few other real universities in the area, but the important thing is that none of the real ones advertise.

ORLY?

Granted the "real" universities tend to do most of their advertising on ESPN, or whoever happens to be broadcasting the game (you know, where all the strongest students look for school information) and leave the other channels to the bottomfeeders. Don't get me wrong, I think the new breed of private non-accredited or "nationally accredited" universities are detestable, but to say that they are the biggest problem with higher education in the USA is foolish to say the least.

 

[nonlnear]

No, you would be making 'traditional' schools into vocational schools. Churning out workers is not what they have been there for.

Learning a broad range of things, for the exercise of it, and networking, are what they're there for. Even with the college = job skills lie, they're still pretty much there for that. If anything, they should focus more on that; and tell job seekers who want to influence them to STFU, and GTFO. Don't dilute universities--make vocational schools better, and stop guiding smart kids away from them.

I seem to not be disagreeing with CycloWizard. Strange days.

The problem is the universities are busy diluting their mission with a glut of mediocre students who are being crammed into the classrooms by massive federal subsidies and initiatives designed to keep as many students as possible in the college pipeline.

The liberal arts tradition definitely serves as a gateway to a culture, more than job training. However colleges seem to have lost the plot when it comes to effectively delivering that experience - again due to the glut of crappy students they are gorging themselves on. When the first two years are used to milk tuition from the crappy students while they figure out they aren't going to graduate, that makes the environment in the 100 and 200 level cluster classes totally incapable of effectively delivering a rich liberal arts experience.

 

[Zorkorist]

College is for higher learning, and the professors should have the authority to throw out any that they don't see fit.

You know if it is too easy, it isn't College.

-John

 

[Carmen813]

Interesting that no one here has mentioned that many individuals select a major not due to it's earning potential, but for a variety of other reasons. Life doesn't always have to be about the almighty dollar. As for college tuition inflation, yes, it's a major problem, and one that should self-correct.

Do I think people are entitled to go to college? I think if the person works gets the grades, than financial barriers shouldn't be the reason they can't go. God knows I've seen enough rich kids squandering their trust funds while learning jack shit, so yeah, I say give the poor kids a chance. The last thing this country needs right now is a less educated citizenry. Last time I looked at unemployment statistics, those with college degrees are still at around 5% unemployment, even during a major recession.

As for the article, standardized tests are nigh fucking useless for determining intelligence or ones preparation for the workforce. All intelligence tests have serious flaws that limit their validity. I say this as a student currently enrolled in a graduate course studying psychological assessment.

 

[Zorkorist]

College Professors, on the other hand, have made their way into this profession, and what they DO is grade students.

There are far too many students (and professors, combo) that escape a University, or College, not based on their knowledge, but based on (poliitely) survivor skills.

-John

 

[manimal]

To the people in this thread critizing a well rounded education remember developing your own aesthetic and studying things outside of your major makes you a more complex and ultimately more effective at your major.

Lets not forget the age of enlightenment....

 

[Hacp]

To the people in this thread critizing a well rounded education remember developing your own aesthetic and studying things outside of your major makes you a more complex and ultimately more effective at your major.

Lets not forget the age of enlightenment....

Well worth the 40k you pay a year. Yep yep yep.

 

[manimal]

Well worth the 40k you pay a year. Yep yep yep.

Private school is not the only choice.....

500k house is useless so everyone should live in a ranch house...

I agree that 50k a year is a hefty price to pay. Glad I received scholarships and then got paid for my post graduate work...

MIT is expensive.... have you seen some of the amazing science coming out of MIT?

Now some small religious or liberal arts schools have taken the cost thing to a new level. If you cant afford duke then go to a good instate state school...

 

[Zorkorist]

Amazing science, is expensive?

You might need to educate Thomas Edison, Isaac Newton, Galileo, etal.

-John

 

[ShawnD1]

ORLY?

Granted the "real" universities tend to do most of their advertising on ESPN, or whoever happens to be broadcasting the game (you know, where all the strongest students look for school information) and leave the other channels to the bottomfeeders. Don't get me wrong, I think the new breed of private non-accredited or "nationally accredited" universities are detestable, but to say that they are the biggest problem with higher education in the USA is foolish to say the least.

I don't have ESPN. All I have is local broadcasts of ABC and Fox from Spokane, Washington. WSU and Gonzaga are mentioned in sports news, but they never run commercials on those channels. Fake schools like Devry, ITT, and Apollo run a ton of commercials on those stations. I think that annoying jingle for Apollo will haunt me until I'm dead. Someone else must have thought the same thing because there is a video on youtube where it's only the end jingle to those retarded commercials
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_TV_MsNxAw (8 second video)

Anyway, fake schools are not a problem when it comes to diluting the value of a degree because most employers don't even consider those to be real degrees. The fake schools are only a problem because people are tricked into thinking they are getting a real education. A guy with an engineering degree from Gonzaga can actually be an engineer and build things and get paid well. Someone going to Devry will have the same loans to pay, but they can't get a job in that field and it totally fucks them over for years.

Last time I looked at unemployment statistics, those with college degrees are still at around 5% unemployment, even during a major recession.

Statistics like this and the one about college grads making more money are totally misleading. They don't make more money because they went to college and learned valuable job skills at college. They make more money because people who go to college tend to be more intelligent than people who don't go to college. The people who go to college tend to know how to find jobs, they know how to write in clear English, and they are the type of people who set goals. The people who don't go to college have bad employment and bad income because they don't have those skills. The numbers say that high school grads do better than high school dropouts. Is that because high school teaches you things needed to be a good employee? No, it's because people who drop out of high school are retarded and incapable of doing a job that involves critical thinking (not always, but this is mostly true).

Private school is not the only choice.....

It might be the only choice left if the state school is full. All the smart kids are like "damn that's cheap, I want into this school" so then all the stupid kids are not accepted to the state school and must attend the 40k per year private school :awe:
(this is logically how it should work, but this isn't how it works because people love wasting money)

 

[Siddhartha]

Putting the anti-intellectualism expressed in this thread aside, lets see how there could be a higher education bubble and how it can burst. As pointed out, the requirement to have an university education to get a job is being driven by businesses. I doubt this will change.

There could be something in people not seeing a benefit in choosing a more expensive private college over a state school.

 

[ShawnD1]

Putting the anti-intellectualism expressed in this thread aside, lets see how there could be a higher education bubble and how it can burst. As pointed out, the requirement to have an university education to get a job is being driven by businesses. I doubt this will change.

Supply side economics. Back when most people did not go to college, very few people had a degree. Lots of people didn't even have a high school diploma. Companies didn't ask people to have degrees because companies knew most people did not have degrees. Everyone wants a competitive edge over everyone else, so people started getting degrees. Companies hire the guy with the degree, so this encourages more people to get a degree. Now that every asshole has a degree, every job requires a degree because companies can get away with such ridiculous demands.

It's all on the supply side. Companies only require degrees because so many people have degrees. If companies found that requiring a degree was too much to ask and jobs were not being filled, they would drop the requirements until they reach equilibrium.

The same thing happens with job experience. In a shit economy, companies will demand 5 year of experience because they can get away with this. When the economy improves and the company is not getting enough applicants with 5 years experience, they will drop it to 2 years, then 1 year, then no experience. In a good economy, companies will hire people fresh out of college to fairly high paying positions because that's the only labor available.

 

[Jadow]

Glad I graduated when I did, Dec 2001, the tuition has really jacked up since then. When I started in 1996 it was 1300/semester today it's like 3500 at my school, a fairly well regarded state school.

Agree that there is much BS in higher education, and it's ridiculous that so many fucktards who have no business going to college get convinced they should go and waste like 2 years there before they wake up.

 

[kranky]

Just one datapoint on cost. Ran into a guy yesterday at dinner and we got talking about the cost of college. He went to a local college in the mid-70's and paid $1800 for a year's tuition. Same college today is $27,500. That's an average 8% increase every year for 35 years.

If that rate of increase stays the same, in 10 years the cost will be $60,000 a year.

 

[ShawnD1]

Just one datapoint on cost. Ran into a guy yesterday at dinner and we got talking about the cost of college. He went to a local college in the mid-70's and paid $1800 for a year's tuition. Same college today is $27,500. That's an average 8% increase every year for 35 years.

If that rate of increase stays the same, in 10 years the cost will be $60,000 a year.

Oh noes. You might be forced to attend (wait for it) government schools!
Spokane Community College - $ 2,943 tuition and fees
http://www.ccs.spokane.edu/getdoc/2dfcf750-53d9-4007-b552-246698dd11fa/Tuition-and-fees.aspx

My brother took Mechanical Engineering Technology at a community college. Last year he made over $70k and he's only been in that field for about 4 years. He does intermediate piping design for one of the largest companies in Canada.

My dad took Electrical Engineering Technology at a community college and his career was pretty damn good. He did power distribution for the phone company. Over $30/h wage and that was actually considered low for someone with a 2 year certificate in EE, great benefits, stock options, 5 weeks vacation after only 10 years of service, defined benefits pension, union. He makes more money retired than I have ever made when working. Community college is easily the best investment he ever made.

edit:
obvious joke - condoms would be a better investment because then he wouldn't have kids to pay for :awe:

 

[Bateluer]

I believe Apollo College is now Carrington College.

Edit - Its detestable and sad when an employer can demand 10 years experience and a masters degree for a 30K a year job, and I saw this on postings before the economy dipped. You're not hiring a person for that, you're renting them temporarily while they pad their resume.

I'm also a firm believer in you get out of school what you put into it. There are some classes I've taken that I've coasted through and still passed, learning next to nothing. Community Colleges are a great option for individuals who want vocational training, as most of their 2 year degree programs are designed with a more specific focus for a specific career, as opposed to the more broad 4yr degree programs. CCs may not be an option for many people. Here in Phoenix, we've got several decent community colleges, smaller cities aren't so lucky. Working adults also can't always go to a University, even though they want to, costs aside, the school may just be too far away to transit to. There's also the fact that many adults don't particularly want to go hang around with 18 year old kids very much either.

 

[ShawnD1]

I believe Apollo College is no Carrington College.

SHIT Tech

Here in Phoenix, we've got several decent community colleges, smaller cities aren't so lucky. Working adults also can't always go to a University, even though they want to, costs aside, the school may just be too far away to transit to. There's also the fact that many adults don't particularly want to go hang around with 18 year old kids very much either.

Aren't vocational community colleges generally smaller than real universities? Small enough to put in smaller cities? I don't know the numbers, but it certainly seems like it. The community colleges in my city are fairly small, don't have a lot of power, and don't even have residence. The biggest community college in my city has just under 9,000 full time students. The 1 university in this city is huge, it has its own bus terminal and lots of express buses from all around the city connect to it, it has its own LRT stop, it has a huge residence that looks like an apartment building, and it also controls lots of housing in the surrounding area. Just over 3% of the entire city's population is a full time student at that university (28,000 students in an urban area of about 860,000 people)

 

[Carmen813]

...snip

Statistics like this and the one about college grads making more money are totally misleading. They don't make more money because they went to college and learned valuable job skills at college. They make more money because people who go to college tend to be more intelligent than people who don't go to college. The people who go to college tend to know how to find jobs, they know how to write in clear English, and they are the type of people who set goals. The people who don't go to college have bad employment and bad income because they don't have those skills. The numbers say that high school grads do better than high school dropouts. Is that because high school teaches you things needed to be a good employee? No, it's because people who drop out of high school are retarded and incapable of doing a job that involves critical thinking (not always, but this is mostly true).
/snip

Just a personal beef, but it's misleading to include quotations from multiple different people and only cite one author. I personally made no mention of the earnings of college students, except to say that it isn't always about making as much money as possible.

Unemployment of college graduates remains relatively low, even during economic recessions. Since the premise of many posting here is that college isn't "worth it," I find this to be an important factor to be aware of. The actual reasons for college graduates having less unemployment than other groups isn't really relevant to my main point, but you left out a major factor: college graduates have established networks for finding positions.

I'll go a step further into this discussion. Many are saying that college doesn't provide you with the job skills necessary to enter a field. I'd just point out that NO ONE is hired into a job with the assumption that they have all the skills necessary to perform it. Even those with technical diplomas or in semi-professional careers are going to receive some type of on the job training. A college diploma allows employers a way to screen out who is going to be able to use that training in a meaningful way.

As someone else said, you get into school what you put into it.

 

[Carmen813]

Well worth the 40k you pay a year. Yep yep yep.

 

[BigDH01]

Ok you're making some sense. Sounds to me like if you're correct, the education market will basically just correct itself. Some universities will have to downsize or close. This isn't the sort of problem that will send the entire economy into a tailspin like the housing bubble.

- wolf

It's already happening after the last round of state budget cuts. My university made deep cuts to those departments with low attendance (which coincided mostly with future job prospects). Engineering (my dept) was basically untouched, but departments like Sociology, History, and many foreign languages were basically cut in half if not eliminated entirely.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

Canada is like this. My friend was getting a degree in chemistry but he still had to take bullshit classes like classics and roman history.

Another friend is a drama major. That means she does acting, singing, story writing, and she designs and construct sets. Even though she is a drama major, she was taking meteorology and astronomy to get the required science credits. Like wtf? Why would someone in drama need to know about stars and weather patterns??

My wife is a biology professor and she has to hear all the bitching "Why do we have to take this". Well because it's an education not a trade school. The ignorance of highly trained people is at time shocking, and the attitude of "well I don't have to know anything to be educated" (yep someone said that to her) is laughable.

To be a fully functioning adult in a complex society involves more than being an ant in a colony. Just on these forums the amount of ignorance is remarkable. But then many don't know how little they know because they are intellectually lazy to begin with.