[Gothos]

Only if the course you took gets you anywhere. Because it's all honest and straightforward and there's no devious marketing involved, right? You won't trust governments to take care of us... I won't trust private companies to keep things honest and beneficient for the customer.

[Shinrei]

Gothos, on 26 November 2010 - 12:18 PM, said:

Only if the course you took gets you anywhere. Because it's all honest and straightforward and there's no devious marketing involved, right? You won't trust governments to take care of us... I won't trust private companies to keep things honest and beneficient for the customer.

Private companies have competition, are subject to regulation and don't last long if they dont serve the customer. With the government, you have to take what they give you.

For example, you know your interest rate on your student loan. It won't suddenly skyrocket by 9000 pounds...

This post has been edited by Shinrei: 26 November 2010 - 12:22 PM

[Tapper]

Shinrei, on 26 November 2010 - 11:49 AM, said:

At some point for one to become an adult, it's time to grasp the concept of taking personal responsibility for your life and leaving the government teat behind. This is why I favor free-compulsory education up to the age of 18, but after you 'come of age' you can get loans, part time jobs, scholarships etc to make your way through college. For those who cant pay out of pocket, the experience of working and going to school teaches a sense responsibility, time management and self reliance.

If anything, this just affirms my reasoning for not trusting the government to "take care of us". You create a dependent populace, and then when the government doesn't keep up with their perceived obligations (surprise surprise), you get riots in the streets.

Who should pay the teachers and top researchers in any field other than medicine, economics or engineering?

Those are the trades one might want to leave to sponsorships by 'big business', but the arts that enrich life and human comprehension (basically anything the Greeks had a muse for) and that lead to well-rounded academically schooled individuals (something government and several businesses run on), would be left out in the cold. Because there is no way in hell you can provide the full cost of education yourself as a student, especially not if there is also a research faculty attached to the uni... as the top researchers often teach only specialized stuff but require a salary, a workroom/lab, libraries et cetera. A faculty of say, 100 students would never be enough to provide a decent base to fund things on.

Also, there is a huge difference between: working for your rent, clothes and food and hobbies/booze and working to pay all that AND the full cost of your education.

[Gothos]

Shinrei, on 26 November 2010 - 12:21 PM, said:

Private companies have competition, are subject to regulation and don't last long if they dont serve the customer. With the government, you have to take what they give you.

For example, you know your interest rate on your student loan. It won't suddenly skyrocket by 9000 pounds...

Only so far as the competition is honest and regulation is thorough and solid. Companies will do everything they can to conceal how much they're screwing over their customer. It's the ones that don't that go under first. They'd have no problem with sending people on useless courses just to get their profit, and that's well within their interest. Private universities will market the shit out of their program just to get people in, they'll let them go through from year to year and juke the stats so that their students look good and the fact that they're producing well-spoken bold morons doesn't affect their reputation.

You know your interest rate on your student loan (yay 0% with just a tiny bit of fine print!). You don't know that what you're paying for is pointless.
So yeah. Work jobs you hate to pay for shit you don't need. The cornerstone of the modern economy.

[D'iversify]

Shinrei, on 26 November 2010 - 12:21 PM, said:

Private companies have competition, are subject to regulation and don't last long if they dont serve the customer. With the government, you have to take what they give you.

Private companies can also conspire to rig the market, particularly if a few interests control the majority of the market. And I don't trust the current UK government enough to think they won't let this happen, especially if there's a nice directorship waiting for retiring Cabinet ministers.

My main gripe is not so much the fee rise as its combination with massive cuts to government investment in universities, the scrapping of schemes designed to attract poorer students to university in favour of making the universities responsible for this and finally the government's failure to explain how it's going to provide workable alternatives to going to uni.

[Shinrei]

Tapper, on 26 November 2010 - 12:34 PM, said:

Shinrei, on 26 November 2010 - 11:49 AM, said:

At some point for one to become an adult, it's time to grasp the concept of taking personal responsibility for your life and leaving the government teat behind. This is why I favor free-compulsory education up to the age of 18, but after you 'come of age' you can get loans, part time jobs, scholarships etc to make your way through college. For those who cant pay out of pocket, the experience of working and going to school teaches a sense responsibility, time management and self reliance.

If anything, this just affirms my reasoning for not trusting the government to "take care of us". You create a dependent populace, and then when the government doesn't keep up with their perceived obligations (surprise surprise), you get riots in the streets.

Who should pay the teachers and top researchers in any field other than medicine, economics or engineering?

Those are the trades one might want to leave to sponsorships by 'big business', but the arts that enrich life and human comprehension (basically anything the Greeks had a muse for) and that lead to well-rounded academically schooled individuals (something government and several businesses run on), would be left out in the cold. Because there is no way in hell you can provide the full cost of education yourself as a student, especially not if there is also a research faculty attached to the uni... as the top researchers often teach only specialized stuff but require a salary, a workroom/lab, libraries et cetera. A faculty of say, 100 students would never be enough to provide a decent base to fund things on.

Also, there is a huge difference between: working for your rent, clothes and food and hobbies/booze and working to pay all that AND the full cost of your education.

?????
This is what grants, donations and alumni foundations are for. There are plenty of wonderful arts and music programs in the US that aren't dependent on tax dollars. And there are plenty of faculty and students involved in these programs. It's a fallacy to state that only programs that could successfully stand on their own will succeed.

In fact, it is the public schools where you are more likely to find the arts underfunded and being cut. Thanks government!

Oh, and btw I should make it clear, that I do support the "State Schools" system in the US where if you attend so-called 'public' schools funded by individual state taxes, you pay less if you are a resident of the state.

[Morgoth]

Shinrei, on 26 November 2010 - 11:49 AM, said:

At some point for one to become an adult, it's time to grasp the concept of taking personal responsibility for your life and leaving the government teat behind. This is why I favor free-compulsory education up to the age of 18, but after you 'come of age' you can get loans, part time jobs, scholarships etc to make your way through college. For those who cant pay out of pocket, the experience of working and going to school teaches a sense responsibility, time management and self reliance.

If anything, this just affirms my reasoning for not trusting the government to "take care of us". You create a dependent populace, and then when the government doesn't keep up with their perceived obligations (surprise surprise), you get riots in the streets.

This is just such an absurd point of view to my mind I don't even know how to respond to how far away from reality you seem to have found yourself, shin.

Loans, part time jobs, scholarships etc? Really?

Let's use me as an example to test this assertion. I have a 40 of 42 from the IB, meaning that my grades from High School are very very good, but not shockingly so. There are many people with both 41 and 42 after all.

I applied, amongst other places, to Oxford to which I was invited for an interview. The tuition fee of that university would have been about $36000 a year. Add that to living expenses and you've got a substantial number indeed. Now, how much in the way of scholarships do you think I would've gotten? Next to none is the answer you're looking for. My girlfriend got 1500 on her SATs, straight A grades out of high school and still could only scrounge up some $6000 in scholarships -and that was not for lack of trying.

Unless you're a genius, scholarships will be very limited. What kind of loans do you imagine banks will provide for you if you have no security? What do they offer now? If you'd looked into it you'll know that's hardly an option.

So then, I would have to finance the tuition and my living expenses (let's say $15000? Total of $51000) by working (on minimum salary most likely as I have no education). While at the same time being a full time student at one of the best universities in the world with all the demands of work that follow.

Now, you could say that I should just have chosen a cheaper university. However, that's basically telling me that the great universities of the world are barred from me because my parents are not wealthy. If that's what you feel is the way things should be then you should be honest enough to simply say that rather than to throw out meaningless mumblings about government teat and dependencies.

[Shinrei]

Federal (government) student loans are available in the US and it doesn't matter if your parents have bad credit or whatever else to qualify. So, you can get the money you need. But, you gotta pay it back, i.e., the education isn't "free". Graduate from Harvard, and my guess is you should be able to pay back that kind of money in a few years.

So no, Morgy, you're mistaken about my honesty.

[Mezla PigDog]

Battalion, on 26 November 2010 - 10:11 AM, said:

What will be the net result in high tution fees? You tell me?

Fewer poor kids in university. Less social mobility. Fewer people from working class backgrounds in influential jobs. A larger wealth gap. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

Not that I should be bothered, with my cheap university education I now have a well paid job in the protected Technology sector so I can tread all over people without university level education. I just hope I'm rich enough to retire before the day the sector can't find any graduates to hire who aren't nobhead little rich kids who have only ever been taught how to pass exams.

[Tapper]

Shinrei, on 26 November 2010 - 12:57 PM, said:

Tapper, on 26 November 2010 - 12:34 PM, said:

Shinrei, on 26 November 2010 - 11:49 AM, said:

At some point for one to become an adult, it's time to grasp the concept of taking personal responsibility for your life and leaving the government teat behind. This is why I favor free-compulsory education up to the age of 18, but after you 'come of age' you can get loans, part time jobs, scholarships etc to make your way through college. For those who cant pay out of pocket, the experience of working and going to school teaches a sense responsibility, time management and self reliance.

If anything, this just affirms my reasoning for not trusting the government to "take care of us". You create a dependent populace, and then when the government doesn't keep up with their perceived obligations (surprise surprise), you get riots in the streets.

Who should pay the teachers and top researchers in any field other than medicine, economics or engineering?

Those are the trades one might want to leave to sponsorships by 'big business', but the arts that enrich life and human comprehension (basically anything the Greeks had a muse for) and that lead to well-rounded academically schooled individuals (something government and several businesses run on), would be left out in the cold. Because there is no way in hell you can provide the full cost of education yourself as a student, especially not if there is also a research faculty attached to the uni... as the top researchers often teach only specialized stuff but require a salary, a workroom/lab, libraries et cetera. A faculty of say, 100 students would never be enough to provide a decent base to fund things on.

Also, there is a huge difference between: working for your rent, clothes and food and hobbies/booze and working to pay all that AND the full cost of your education.

?????
This is what grants, donations and alumni foundations are for. There are plenty of wonderful arts and music programs in the US that aren't dependent on tax dollars. And there are plenty of faculty and students involved in these programs. It's a fallacy to state that only programs that could successfully stand on their own will succeed.

In fact, it is the public schools where you are more likely to find the arts underfunded and being cut. Thanks government!

Oh, and btw I should make it clear, that I do support the "State Schools" system in the US where if you attend so-called 'public' schools funded by individual state taxes, you pay less if you are a resident of the state.

And here I was thinking the debate was NOT (just) about the US.

Alumni? The annual charge is 10 euros a head for my university/faculty, barely enough to cover the expenses for the annual meet & greet. If they raised the price, no-one would even continue their membership.

Grants and donations? Those are irregular incomes at best, and you need regular funding to keep your research and teaching around. Research projects you can fund with the occassional windfall, but nothing else.
I wasn't talking programs. I was talking full-blown studies, and if I have my figures correct, that more or less means that the majority of studies/students would be dependant on grants, donations and alumni foundations.


We might see more donations and such if taxes were lower. As it is, I prefer the certainty of the government taxing me and allocating a certain amount of dosh from that to schooling.

This post has been edited by Tapper: 26 November 2010 - 03:54 PM

[Cougar]

Battalion, on 26 November 2010 - 08:32 AM, said:

Well because if my opinion is 'so lacking in anything resembling reason and any knowledge of the situation that it's almost impossible to engage with on an intellectual level' why have there been 40 posts responding to it?

Well, if you read the posts I'm quite certain that you'll see almost every post was telling you how ludicrously knuckleheaded your original opinion was. I think your conclusion that number of posts in response is some kind of measure of the quality of the original argument doesn't stand up at all. In fact experience of these and other forums and indeed teaching in classes (of lazy dolescum, apparently) suggests to me that the amount of responses to any given statement is likely to increase in proportion to the stupidity and/or contentiousness of the statement. You nailed both down pretty hard.

[Ulrik]

Mezla PigDog, on 26 November 2010 - 03:44 PM, said:

Battalion, on 26 November 2010 - 10:11 AM, said:

What will be the net result in high tution fees? You tell me?

Fewer poor kids in university. Less social mobility. Fewer people from working class backgrounds in influential jobs. A larger wealth gap. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

Exactly. University will become a elite club for those with rich parents. Paying wont change attitude of students - lazy ones will still be lazy, only paid by parents. Only people from not only poor, but sometimes even lower middle class will have gates closed. Well, from my POV, this is evil. And I really dont use this word cheaply. Two possible counterarguments - "best will be supported by goverment". So "only" good or really good wont be? "They will pay debt after school" - oh yes. In our society, where debts ran world into crysis, we will make more of them. We will force young people, in age when they should start families, seeking their own homes and managing fully their own adult life, which is really costly by itself, to pay another debt. OK, this differs from country to country. But here, fresh doctor cant start its own job, he must run through iirc 5 year circle in hospitals to start on its own. During those five years he has salary deeply under average. I cant see haw could he - get a home, pay insurance, feed family and repay debt. Have a childe? Suicide. Worse is that this applies to many of my friends, from many specializations - lawyers, engineers, analytics, architects. They all begin with desperate search for job and if they are lucky, they got average salary = they are capable of living on their own and taking loan for flat. Debt for 15-30 years.


But you know. Without those frakin students that spent so hilarious times in university, paid by poor working class, without them would system collapse. Because someone has to do their specialized, but cheap work. But what will we earn by pushing many of them away? We will see in horizon of 10-20 years.

I completely agree with need to make universities harder, more challenging - getting there and staing there. But by demands on their skills, not their wallets. Because when rich wont need to really work and those unvilling to be indebted wont step in, instead of them...

Well, its sadly funny. Now I see SE´s Lether very real.

Edit: And sorry for my bad english...Im rather average and below in writing and translating from czech to english... But Im really good in reversed order and Im paid for it too...sadly, It wont be enough for A+ all the line...

This post has been edited by Ulrik: 26 November 2010 - 10:45 PM

[Ulrik]

Well and second thing, slightly OT. I really dislike making profitability only measure of usefullnes. It in result discriminates many arts and anthropology studies. Does archeology makes profit? No, to hell with those useless taxpayer bloodsuckers! Historians? No profit. Politic analyst? Why, we have newspapers.

I feel it very fresh in Czech republic and IMO I saw it even here. We are reducing human nature to fuckin coins. People dont asks "why it happend" but "how much will it cost?". If it cant be sold, its worthless. And it makes me not sad...rather...shocked and angry.

[Shinrei]

Tapper, on 26 November 2010 - 03:53 PM, said:

And here I was thinking the debate was NOT (just) about the US.

Alumni? The annual charge is 10 euros a head for my university/faculty, barely enough to cover the expenses for the annual meet & greet. If they raised the price, no-one would even continue their membership.

Grants and donations? Those are irregular incomes at best, and you need regular funding to keep your research and teaching around. Research projects you can fund with the occassional windfall, but nothing else.
I wasn't talking programs. I was talking full-blown studies, and if I have my figures correct, that more or less means that the majority of studies/students would be dependant on grants, donations and alumni foundations.


We might see more donations and such if taxes were lower. As it is, I prefer the certainty of the government taxing me and allocating a certain amount of dosh from that to schooling.

I wasn't trying to make this a debate about the US, I was just saying that having students pay for the education doesn't mean that the arts die.

As for alumni, I realize I dont know how it works for different countries. In the US, there isn't a fee or a membership. There are, however, massive fund raising drives where they send you pleas for dontations. It's a way of giving back to the institution that gave you your higher education, and so you can give back for the future students who would have the same (or better) opportunities. My school is well known for music,and things like the new pipe organ and remodeling of the chamber music hall came from private donors who were graduates of music programs.

A graduate from the 60's or whatever who became ridiculously rich paid several million dollars towards the creation of a new student commons.

[Mentalist]

Shinrei, on 26 November 2010 - 11:51 PM, said:

Tapper, on 26 November 2010 - 03:53 PM, said:

And here I was thinking the debate was NOT (just) about the US.

Alumni? The annual charge is 10 euros a head for my university/faculty, barely enough to cover the expenses for the annual meet & greet. If they raised the price, no-one would even continue their membership.

Grants and donations? Those are irregular incomes at best, and you need regular funding to keep your research and teaching around. Research projects you can fund with the occassional windfall, but nothing else.
I wasn't talking programs. I was talking full-blown studies, and if I have my figures correct, that more or less means that the majority of studies/students would be dependant on grants, donations and alumni foundations.


We might see more donations and such if taxes were lower. As it is, I prefer the certainty of the government taxing me and allocating a certain amount of dosh from that to schooling.

I wasn't trying to make this a debate about the US, I was just saying that having students pay for the education doesn't mean that the arts die.

As for alumni, I realize I dont know how it works for different countries. In the US, there isn't a fee or a membership. There are, however, massive fund raising drives where they send you pleas for dontations. It's a way of giving back to the institution that gave you your higher education, and so you can give back for the future students who would have the same (or better) opportunities. My school is well known for music,and things like the new pipe organ and remodeling of the chamber music hall came from private donors who were graduates of music programs.

A graduate from the 60's or whatever who became ridiculously rich paid several million dollars towards the creation of a new student commons.

that in itself is a VERY unreliable system.
I can tell you this, because I work in my uni call center, and I call up alumni asing them for donations. There are good days and bad days. We always make in profit (in the 1.5 months I've been working there, there hasn't been a single shift when we've raised less money than the grand total the Uni pays us for the effort), but given the expenses of running a University, it is a teardrop.
simple example: my Uni's operating budget is about 460 million a year.
up to date, since September, our call center raised about $240k in Alumni donations. Conversely, state funding makes up about 64% of the budget.

another fun fact: people say "loans/scholarships" part time jobs...
I applied for a needs-based bursary at my faculty. I submitted a detailed description of my assets, and best estimation of my expenses for the entire year, broken down weekly. the resulting disparity made up about 7 grand. I was awarded/given about 6 and a half thousand for my first year, to help pay off my tuition. but, here's the catch: in the meantime, I picked up a part-time job as a fundraiser that nets me maybe $300 bi-weekly--enough to cover personal expenses and put aside about three to four hundred a month aside. Having informed my faculty of a change in my financial situation, it's now questionalble if i'll even get the bursary. Not to mention that I will also have to report BOTH my working income and the bursary to the government that provided my student loan, and it may be reduced as well.
so, the question becomes: what should be my motivation to work during school, in what's considered to be one of the most intensive programs at my uni? if by trying to create a small degree of financial independence, I am threated with the loss of incentives?

And i'd like to echo Menandore's sentiment that the system is deeply flawed with respect to the whole "you must go to uni" mindset. I was a product of that myself. frankly, i don't believe that a 16 or 17 year old is mature enough to make a decision about what they want to do with the rest of their life. I dunno how this works in UK, but my experience with the Canadian school system was such, that from the age of 15 I was forced to choose which subjects to take in high school. Now, while, this practice is supposed to allow kids to take the classes that they like and that would give them higher grades, and remove the "handicap" of making humanitiies-inclined kids struggle with sciences, etc, I can't help but view the system as genuinely flawed. Flawed for the very reason that it purposely denies kids, who are far too young to decide for themselves what is actually relevant ot their life, a chance to come out a well-rounded person, with basic knowledge of everything. The fact is, the school system here is trying to begin "specializing" kids at the age of 15--when they are in no position to make a sensible decision about their futures.
Which undoubtedly contributes to the high number of "sport psychologists" and "media studies" grads out there.

and although I can advance several arguments for the proposition that any type of tertiary education is beneficial, no matter how misguided, i'll leave that topic for another time.

This post has been edited by Mentalist: 27 November 2010 - 01:02 AM

[Primateus]

One should also remember that a well educated population is a highly valuable resource well worth investing in! Sure, craftsmen, garbage collectors and the like are indeed a very important part of the infrastructure of a good society and their contributions should i no way be diminished. But they are also rarely the people who create new jobs, new companies and economic growth.

So, investing in academics is a good idea for a nation as it is a resource that is becoming increasingly more important . A nation that does not do this will soon find itself falling in the ranks of innovative countries.

That is not to say that people should just be allowed to pass any and all course without hard work. University should be hard, there is an academic standard to live up to and people that can't do that will just have to find something else to do.

I very much favour free education at all levels for ANYONE who wants to try and can live up to the requirements of the individual education in question. But if you can't, if you keep failing your exams, well, then that is a clear sign that you just can't "cut it"

This post has been edited by Primateus: 27 November 2010 - 03:59 PM

[Goaswerfraiejen]

Mentalist, on 25 November 2010 - 07:26 PM, said:

bottom line being: lowering standards for entry is moronic. This devalues the degree. I've faced this issue after I finished my undergrad. Right now, in Canada, unless you do an undergrad in somehtign highly specialized (Engineering/Commerce/Computer science/etc), your degree is valued about as much as a high school diploma. lowering admission standards is not a good thing--there are always alternatives for those who don't want to go to university after high school. not everyone should go to University, if they are not disposed towards it.

Generally, admissions standards aren't particularly low at all, except for for-profit "universities" and "colleges" like the University of Phoenix (including UofP Online).

But there's another problem: stricter admissions mean that the university loses revenue. It loses revenue not just from the fact that it gets less tuition, but also because (in Canada, at any rate), it then gets much less in government subsidies. Costs of operation are very high, and the result is that you need to charge much more in tuition to make up the difference. Look at the small liberal-arts universities we have in the Maritimes: for a bachelor's degree, there's really nowhere better to go, precisely because they're very small institutions and you get a lot of attention. The downside is that the tuition there is basically the highest in the country by a significant margin.

Battalion, on 26 November 2010 - 09:39 AM, said:

3)The point you make about degrees is my bone of contention. What can possibly be the point in studying something for four years, when you have no intentions whatsoever, in taking a career in that field? It's like a waste of time.

What's the point of spending eleven years to read seventeen books about a world that doesn't exist? Oh yeah--it's fun, stimulating, and leaves you happier and more intelligent.

The same applies to just about all undergrad degrees (including business and economics, which are equally "useless") outside of applied science. Let's say you get a BA in philosophy--there's no practical application to that, that's for sure. On the other hand, your understanding of the world around you, your place in it, and how to interact with it effectively is vastly improved. The point is to better yourself, and to do so in a holistic manner. Personally, I can't think of a greater gift to my children than giving them four years to explore the world and to learn about something that fascinates, puzzles, and challenges them. Sure, they'll have to start at the bottom of the job ladder--probably waiting tables or stocking shelves. That's OK--there's no shame in work like that. And hell, it's not like four years is a huge difference in the long run--especially when you consider that the time was well spent on personal development.

Lastly, it's the "useless" degrees that are supporting the "useful" ones. Degrees in applied science are incredibly expensive things to subsidize, because they require all manner of fancy gadgets, labs, training, and so on. These degree programs are usually run at a loss, and so require significant subsidies. Part of that comes from the government. The rest comes from surpluses in other departments, where all that's needed is some paper, some pens, and so on. Eliminating the "useless" degrees is actually a disastrous move, as Middlesex (in Britain) will no doubt discover in the coming years, because it eliminates your most stable source of income (and profit). Sometimes you can turn a short-term profit that way (as with Middlesex), but that means that you're actually just taking more from the government--effectively wasting its resources. After a few years of that shell game, the money dries up and you're knee-deep in shit.

Quote

If you say you pick up valuable expecrience during that time, then I disagree.

With respect, you don't know what you're talking about. Your knowledge of the university structure and of coursework is poor at best, and you yourself admit that you did not have the time, energy, money, or desire to attend university. That choice is perfectly acceptable, but it is your own--and it does not give you firm ground from which to judge the experiences of others. I think I've picked up some very valuable experience during my time in university--who the hell are you to say "Goaswerfraiejen, I don't know what your experience has been, but I do know that it was not valuable"? It's hyperbolic and ignorant statements like this that are earning you a beating in this thread.

Battalion, on 26 November 2010 - 08:57 AM, said:

coz I'm not a student I have been rather busy.

You do realize that a significant proportion of university students (up to sixty per cent in the US) work to fund their educations, right? And that they work during the school year? And that doing well in school entails working on schoolwork? I suspect that was a throwaway insult, but that's exactly the kind of comment that is not helpful.

I find it especially frustrating when that judgement is passed on me, as a PhD student. Yes, I'm a "student"--what you need to realize is that being a PhD "student" is a job. What's more, it's the bottom end of the job pool. I teach, I grade, and I'm expected to attend classes, do enormous amounts of reading, and make significant research contributions to the world. It is demanding, expectations are incredibly high, and it sucks up at least one hundred hours a week. I'm willing to bet that I do more "work" than the CEO of a multinational or a bank--so why doesn't it count? With all that said, I love what I do and wouldn't trade it for the world. I'd say the world is lucky to have suckers like me around.

There's an even worse perception (propagated by politicians) that being an academic (i.e. a professor) is not work. Generally, this sort of thing comes from the mouths of career politicians who, frankly, have less of a claim to "real work". In fact, let me tell you something about the life of an academic: you spend about ten years moving from province to province or state to state taking one-year contracts that pay you just enough to live (about 16k). In that time, you work insane hours (about 100 a week, give or take), and receive no benefits from your job. In order to get a slightly better job, you must contribute original research, which sucks up even more of your time. You then have to score an interview--but you're competing with about 600 other applicants for a single job because there are only ever about 40 openings in the US (the world's largest academic job market) each year, and a trickle of openings elsewhere. Each year, you must spend $1000-$2000 mailing out job applications. Most people never get into tenure-track positions (long-term contracts with a decent salary--but also a massive workload), let alone tenure. Unfortunately, as people retire, permanent positions are being replaced with one-year contracts instead.

So that's my rant on that subject. Of course, the numbers above only apply to my own discipline, but it's pretty similar for everyone else. Actually, philosophy is generally a little better off than other departments because we admit fewer grad students. English departments have perfected the grad-student-as-free-labour-and-cash-cow technique; we, by contrast, generally only accept as many students as we have stipends available. So incoming classes are of 3-7 instead of 20+, so we don't flood the other end of the market as much.

Battalion, on 25 November 2010 - 09:57 AM, said:

What is facical is thinking you can get through life without work.

Nobody thinks s/he can get through life without working (well, very few people do). From where are you getting this idea? From the fact that degrees outside the applied sciences don't have immediate and pre-defined career paths?

Gothos, on 26 November 2010 - 10:18 AM, said:

I've seen way more people in the paid uni that should never have been allowed into it than in the 'free' government one. Waaay more.

This is absolutely true, and one need only examine the for-profit universities in the US to see it (note: "for-profit" is not the same as "private"--I'm talking about places like the "University" of Phoenix). Tuition costs in these places are enormously high, but anyone who wants to pay is allowed in--and everyone who pays comes out with a degree, regardless of ability. Professors are paid less than anywhere else (about $1000 a course), and are pressured to make sure that everyone passes with flying colours. The quality of education offered is minimal, and costs are cut everywhere possible. And yet, the University of Phoenix alone is larger than the entire UC (University of California) system, which is the largest (most populous) university (i.e. excluding for-profit) network in the country.

Shinrei, on 26 November 2010 - 12:57 PM, said:

In fact, it is the public schools where you are more likely to find the arts underfunded and being cut. Thanks government!

Sadly, that's true--although in a great many cases, that's true because the people running the schools have a business background and don't see anything of value in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. Actually, the jibe about business backgrounds isn't fair, although it's true in many cases: part of the real problem is that the people currently in administration are busy lining their pockets. Their salaries skyrocket as they slash and burn curricula. And it's not like they were poor earners before--even the mid-level administrators here make around 100k. At the university where I did my MA (one of Canada's more famous universities), top-level administrators made over a million dollars a year. To put that in perspective, they were doing so at a time when they'd committed the university to buying properties around town that it couldn't afford and investing in a new sports complex that went more than seven times over budget. The solution? Cutting programs and eliminating tenure-track positions while hiring more adjunct faculty. Thankfully, my BA and PhD schools are much wiser than that (although it's not like that necessarily means much, given the above).

[Horangi]

Mentalist, on 27 November 2010 - 12:59 AM, said:

that in itself is a VERY unreliable system.
I can tell you this, because I work in my uni call center, and I call up alumni asing them for donations. There are good days and bad days. We always make in profit (in the 1.5 months I've been working there, there hasn't been a single shift when we've raised less money than the grand total the Uni pays us for the effort), but given the expenses of running a University, it is a teardrop.
simple example: my Uni's operating budget is about 460 million a year.
up to date, since September, our call center raised about $240k in Alumni donations. Conversely, state funding makes up about 64% of the budget.

Yet, shouldn't the donations be going into an endowment so that you can supplement other income sources with the interest rather than being spent directly to pay off your immediate bills? Just a quick glance shows 60+ schools in the US alone that have 1 billion dollar+ endowments. I know anecdotally that a lot of faculty at state universities want their schools to work towards going private (not for-profit mind you) so that they can cut the strings attached to state tax money that allows idiotic state legislatures to meddle with research goals, curriculum, and admissions standards.

Goaswerfraiejen, on 28 November 2010 - 06:07 AM, said:

What's the point of spending eleven years to read seventeen books about a world that doesn't exist? Oh yeah--it's fun, stimulating, and leaves you happier and more intelligent.

The same applies to just about all undergrad degrees (including business and economics, which are equally "useless") outside of applied science. Let's say you get a BA in philosophy--there's no practical application to that, that's for sure. On the other hand, your understanding of the world around you, your place in it, and how to interact with it effectively is vastly improved. The point is to better yourself, and to do so in a holistic manner. Personally, I can't think of a greater gift to my children than giving them four years to explore the world and to learn about something that fascinates, puzzles, and challenges them. Sure, they'll have to start at the bottom of the job ladder--probably waiting tables or stocking shelves. That's OK--there's no shame in work like that. And hell, it's not like four years is a huge difference in the long run--especially when you consider that the time was well spent on personal development.

OK, but do we really want to be subsidizing the fun and personal development of people to the tune 50-100k+ a pop?

Goaswerfraiejen, on 28 November 2010 - 06:07 AM, said:

Lastly, it's the "useless" degrees that are supporting the "useful" ones. Degrees in applied science are incredibly expensive things to subsidize, because they require all manner of fancy gadgets, labs, training, and so on. These degree programs are usually run at a loss, and so require significant subsidies. Part of that comes from the government. The rest comes from surpluses in other departments, where all that's needed is some paper, some pens, and so on. Eliminating the "useless" degrees is actually a disastrous move, as Middlesex (in Britain) will no doubt discover in the coming years, because it eliminates your most stable source of income (and profit). Sometimes you can turn a short-term profit that way (as with Middlesex), but that means that you're actually just taking more from the government--effectively wasting its resources. After a few years of that shell game, the money dries up and you're knee-deep in shit.

I cant speak for systems elsewhere, but I was of the impression that its just the opposite in the US- the applied sciences are bringing in the big bucks while at the other extreme the humanities run at a loss. Corporations donate pretty heavily to engineering departments and universities own the patents to technologies developed at the institution. This doesnt even take into consideration the money coming in from government related funds like the NSF/NIH and military research.

This post has been edited by Horangi: 28 November 2010 - 08:19 PM

[Goaswerfraiejen]

Horangi, on 28 November 2010 - 08:06 PM, said:

OK, but do we really want to be subsidizing the fun and personal development of people to the tune 50-100k+ a pop?

My argument was meant to address the idea that non-applied-science degrees are a waste of time, and we shouldn't bother with them. The question of subsidies is far more complex, varies from university to province to state to country, and it's not a topic on which I'm particularly qualified to speak, although I do have a fair bit of background knowledge from spending some time in academia, serving in various aspects of university life, and generally keeping up with the topic.

If you will allow me a personal answer, it would be: "yes, absolutely". In fact, I would argue that these are the people who need the subsidies most, since they're less likely to be able to pay off their debt upon graduation. For an engineer or a surgeon to pay off 50k, however, is much easier. To return to the real world, however, I feel compelled to point out that 50-100k over four years is not actually the real cost of the non-applied-science education. The reason that costs are so high is that individual departments are actually part of a larger institution, and that institution requires funds to operate. Consequently, departments usually kick back about 40-50% of the income they generate to university at large. A chunk of that lines administrator's pockets, another chunk goes to construction projects, and some of the rest gets redistributed to cover costs incurred from other departments. The end result is that we're forced either to raise tuition fees (at smaller universities), or increase the size of intro-level courses to about 500 students or so (at research-intensive universities). Unfortunately, the quality of the education that these students get is much lower--while it may make sense to teach such large intro courses in the sciences, where you can at least use a Scantron to grade, this method is fundamentally at odds with the purpose of most arts & social sciences disciplines. If our goal is to teach you to write and argue properly, and to develop critical thinking skills, multiple choice tests and fact memorization are just not going to cut it.

It is true that universities in Canada and the UK are able to keep tuition much lower than their US counterparts largely because the government is more generous with its subsidies. You should note, however, that government subsidies for programs in applied science are much larger than subsidies for the arts and social sciences--because the associated costs are much higher. Indeed, the MBA degrees here don't even get subsidized, and so their cost is astronomically high--not because that's the cost of teaching, but because they're generally run massively for-profit, and their professors demand salaries comparable to industry, which means twice or more that of a professor in any other department. But MBAs are a whole other kettle of fish.

Quote

I cant speak for systems elsewhere, but I was of the impression that its just the opposite in the US- the applied sciences are bringing in the big bucks while at the other extreme the humanities run at a loss. Corporations donate pretty heavily to engineering departments and universities own the patents to technologies developed at the institution. This doesnt even take into consideration the money coming in from government related funds like the NSF/NIH and military research.

Again, there are obvious differences between institutions, provinces, states, and countries. Nonetheless, it's a fairly widespread myth that the arts and social sciences are not profitable. You might be interested to check out UCLA's own recent numbercrunching, for example. Another good example would be the controversy surrounding the recent decision to close Middlesex's philosophy department, which was both profitable and independently assessed to be the university's strongest research contributor (ahead of even all the science programs--not that the RAE means much anyway, but yeah).

As for funding from independent bodies... I should point out that this kind of funding is allocated for specific projects. As such, it is essentially earmarked for those projects: the university cannot turn around and redistribute the money among needy programs. If I get a $1 million grant to research cancer markers, that's not money that the university gets directly. That's money that I get for my project: I use it to pay myself, to pay for materials, to pay for assistants, and so on. It saves the university a bit of cash if they were planning on funding me anyway, but that's not usually the case. Where I *can* save them money (and where I'd be required to), would in terms of funding graduate students: I would be asked to hire appropriately skilled grad students for my assistants, and the university could then cut back the amount of funding they're giving them by however much they get from me. There are a number of similar arrangements which help the university, but the point is just that the university/department doesn't really touch those funds directly.

[Mentalist]

Horangi, on 28 November 2010 - 08:06 PM, said:

Mentalist, on 27 November 2010 - 12:59 AM, said:

that in itself is a VERY unreliable system.
I can tell you this, because I work in my uni call center, and I call up alumni asing them for donations. There are good days and bad days. We always make in profit (in the 1.5 months I've been working there, there hasn't been a single shift when we've raised less money than the grand total the Uni pays us for the effort), but given the expenses of running a University, it is a teardrop.
simple example: my Uni's operating budget is about 460 million a year.
up to date, since September, our call center raised about $240k in Alumni donations. Conversely, state funding makes up about 64% of the budget.

Yet, shouldn't the donations be going into an endowment so that you can supplement other income sources with the interest rather than being spent directly to pay off your immediate bills? Just a quick glance shows 60+ schools in the US alone that have 1 billion dollar+ endowments. I know anecdotally that a lot of faculty at state universities want their schools to work towards going private (not for-profit mind you) so that they can cut the strings attached to state tax money that allows idiotic state legislatures to meddle with research goals, curriculum, and admissions standards.

Each Faculty here has their own endowment fund. The money the Alumni give is designated to that fund. There's also a "general" fund, which the alumni can contribute to, if for whatever reason they do not feel particular affinity to their faculty.
Like I said, to date, from the start of the school year, our call center has raised about 250 K in total, most of it going to the various endowment funds. just because endowment funds exist, does not mean they will be overflowing at every university.

@ Goas: That Uni you describe sounds eerily familiar.... to think, I've paid for that complex (or one similar to that) for 4 years, and by the time I've graduated, they've barely started Phase 1......

And I suppose I should correct myself: it's not the fact that teh admission standards are droppin,g but rather that Universities are taking up so many more first-years that's devaluing the University degree.