The Higher Education Thread

[Solon]

"College Administrators’ Priorities Not Always The Students"

http://blogs.the-american-interest.c...ways-students/

Really?

This is a ridiculous article and I regret wasting the time I spent reading it.

1. The gist of it hinges on the difference between "somewhat important" and "very important". Hardly any (<5%) are saying things like graduation rates & employment are not important at all.

2. The criticism that Administrators aren't sold on MOOCs (massive open online courses) is weak criticism. Online education is very uneven at best. At worst, it's a complete waste of tuition.

3. The Gallup survey sample "is not nationally representative of U.S. colleges and universities" and includes 4-year schools, 2-year schools, for-profit schools, and community colleges, complicating any idea of a consensus (the problems and mission of a for-profit school are different to some extent from those of a 4-year private liberal arts school)

4. Of course the article decided that this was far too encouraging: 67& somewhat or strongly agree that "The faculty at my institution continues to adopt better pedagogical strategies in their teaching."

http://www.gallup.com/strategicconsu...al-report.aspx

[LA Ute]

Georgia Tech will be offering an online master's degree in computer science:

http://www.cringely.com/2013/07/10/g...puter-science/

Georgia Tech is a major research university. In big research universities research and publishing count for everything and teaching counts for close to nothing, which is why there are so many bad teachers with endowed professorships. . . . Research grad students are slave labor while professional grad students are cash cows for their institutions and matter mostly for the money they can pay. Computer science is a research field but this new degree at Georgia Tech is specifically branded as being a professional degree. While that sounds extra-important what it really means is the students won’t matter at all to the University, which sees them strictly as cash flow — up to $18 million per year according to the business plan.

[Ma'ake]

Every generation brings behavioral & attitude peculiarities that defy their elders. We all did.

This generation is running headlong into a general shift in the employment landscape since about 2000, and some (hopefully) short term imbalances between productivity and employment. (Corporations and the wealthy are awash in money, productivity is very high, but aggregate demand is not rising enough to generate enough jobs, especially "good" jobs, which is in turn contributing to the overall sluggish demand).

A couple of MIT professors, McAfee and Brynjolfsson have tracked the impact of technology on employment, with some sobering explanations for some of the current displacement, and potentially highly disruptive trends for the future. http://www.technologyreview.com/feat...stroying-jobs/

The stagnant labor market either dampens the Millenials' sense of entitlement, or it will help fuel upheaval, among Millenials and a lot of folks who've been displaced and not fully recovered in the last 10 years.

[LA Ute]

I agree. That article is garbage.

I thought it was bad enough to be kind of funny. MOOCs are very popular among the libertarian set, but I don't think MOOCs' time has come yet.

[Applejack]

Higher ed has a host of problems: outrageous tuition, outdated classes, tenure abuses, etc., etc. But higher education is not a bubble, at least not yet. The decision to go to college is still quite rational. From the NYtimes:

college grads employment.jpg