College, Inc.: The commercialization of knowledge

Discussion in 'The Red Room' started by AlphaMan, May 6, 2010.

  1. AlphaMan

    AlphaMan The Last Dragon

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    Frontline recently airred a documentry about the online college phenomenon and the enrollment boom. The special goes on to question the quality of online degrees as well as the online college's selectivity methodology and to question the school's fee structure.... Not to mention, taking advantage of minorities. Basically, it accuses these online colleges of admitting everyone only to get the pell grants and federal student loans out of them without regards to the institution's enrollee to graduate ratio.

    Check it out here.

    I think that I have decided to take a cynic's view of our traditional education model. You give them a lot of money, they take 4-5 years of your life anfd you get a piece of paper from them that says you know this and that. You don't have the money? Tough shit, go work at a factory. We don't have enough space for you? Fuck you, better luck next semester. Someone in the private sector was bound to do a better job of it.... and in the process, charge more money for it. What's wrong with paying for the conveinence of online classes? Not having to schlep your way across a city to get to a class ontime everyday?

    Full disclosure, I've recently considered utilizing an online school to get a degree in Video Game Development and Interactive Media Design. I haven't ruled out the possibility, but the truth is that the $15k or so per year is not that bad considering the $13k or so it would cost me to do this at a traditional school. Especially when I consider that I can do this on my time... not some professor's.

    Why not call education what it is anyway? A for profit enterprise? I mean that a schools accreditation should depend on the number of people they graduate vs. the number that enrolls... To pay attention to that only means that an institution should be attentive to and address the enrollee's needs. I don't think the questions about the quality of degree offered at online schools have proven to be valid after almost a decade of graduating people.

    What do you think?
    • Agree Agree x 3
  2. Paladin

    Paladin Overjoyed Man of Liberty

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    Random thoughts:

    1. I used to see college as just a path to simply getting a job; now I see it as more: an opportunity to expand your horizons.

    2. Unstructured learning (i.e., learning on your own time, by reading course material) requires real discipline. I got an A in Chemistry for Science/Engineering when I took the "meatspace" course; when I took it again on-line, I got a B. The difference? In the regular class, I knew I had to hand homework in each week so I stayed on top of it more. In the on-line class, all the homework was due the last day...and some of it, put off, did not get done.

    3. If you choose a private school for post-secondary education, make sure they're accredited or, at least, well-respected in industry. If you go through a diploma mill, you'll spend a lot of money for a certificate that might get you a job but that will in no way indicate that you're prepared for it.

    4. Too many people go to college these days. I suppose that's good and bad. While most of them don't really want to be there (they're there because their parents want/expect them to go, they're not ready for the workforce, they're stretching their adolescence), a few probably become serious students. You shouldn't go to college for any reason other than to LEARN. Not to pass time, not to satisfy mom and dad, not to do what your friends are doing, not to get good grades, not to prepare for a job...to learn.

    5. If you want maximum bang-for-the-buck (and minimum hassles), an online school may be the way to go. But it is not the same as going to a brick and mortar college. And an education geared toward vocation is not as "broadening" as a traditional college education.
    • Agree Agree x 2
  3. Elwood

    Elwood I know what I'm about, son.

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    Random thought:

    I have a degree. The school my degree is from is not important to me in the least. The only thing that is important to me is that it's accredited by SACS.

    Auburn University is one of the top ten schools in the nation for a number of courses. Included, but not limited to, Engineering (especially Aerospace Engineering), Architecture, and Veterinary Medicine.

    Take a straw poll at any NASA complex and I'd be willing to bet that 50.01%+ of the real rocket scientists have graduate degrees from Auburn. Also, in the last 30 years, at least one of the Chief's on the Joint Chief's of Staff has had a Graduate Degree from Auburn. Last time I checked, CINCPAC has a Master's Degree from Auburn.

    I said all that to say this. Several years ago, one of the caveats of the NCAA threatening to use "Loss of Institutional Control" is the suspension of SACS accreditation. That means all those degrees are suddenly worthless even though the quality of the actual education is above reproach.
  4. frontline

    frontline Hedonistic Glutton Staff Member Moderator

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    I have no problem with treating higher education. I will be honest, I got my BS in computer science from UoP. It was probably the best place for me to go to school. I had been employed for I Be Miserable for some time. I was at the top of my game in IT for everything but programming (I hate writing code). But I needed my BS in increase my survivability in the work force. So I picked a school that was regionally accredited, would go well with my work schedule, and that wouldn't waste too much of my time. Yeah work schedule. Kinda critical to me. They were about the only decent institution of higher learning whose classes didnt interfere with my ability to feed my family. Traditional universities still havent gotten their heads out of their asses about that. UoP fit the bill.

    All but one of my classes I took at a local campus. The one class I took online was ethics. Like telecommunig / working from home the online course wasn't as easy as what you would think it to be. Back in class, sure I was bored most of the time, but all I was doing was working towards getting a sheeps skin that proved I learned what I already knew. Now what does this have to do with a for profit education?

    We had one teacher. She was a left over, burned out, bat shit crazy hippy. No big deal. You run into that, its easily dealt with. But what was worse is when you combine that with someone who hardly knows her ass from a hole in the ground about the class she was teaching. Still we managed through that class.

    We looked through her course schedule and saw she was teaching the next class. We went to the dean and provost and told them that no way in hell would we pay for one more class with this nut job teaching it and that we would walk and take our tuition with us and let all of our friends and peers know about what happened. Well we showed up to day 1 of class and she was there.

    Every last one of us walked out. Two days later we received calls from our dean begging us to come back with the promise that we would never have to deal with her again, that our course schedule would be adjusted to compensate for the missed class, and no impact to our grades.

    Try that at a "traditional" university.

    In the end, my degree from UoP counts just as well as one from some like like UoF or FSU.

    Now would I suggest this to someone who wanted to be an Aeronautical engineer or nurse or doctor? No. But for every other schlub out there, why put up with Mickey Mouse BS?

    So yeah, I think all higher education should be treated as a business arrangement. I am paying for X, you agree to provide it within certain guidelines and neither party wastes the others time, energy, or resources.
    • Agree Agree x 1
  5. Volpone

    Volpone Zombie Hunter

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    Just to play Devil's Advocate for a bit, though, there is the other end of the spectrum too. Say you're looking for a job with a Fortune 100 firm--particularly a high-visibility job. While you know the same material, the guy with the Yale degree is going to have the edge over the guy with the University of Phoenix degree (all other things being equal).
  6. frontline

    frontline Hedonistic Glutton Staff Member Moderator

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    Ivy league will always be in its own class. My point is for the 98% of the folks in the US that cant get into those schools
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  7. Dayton Kitchens

    Dayton Kitchens Banned

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    A substantial number of 18 year olds see college as a chance to drink, smoke, and get laid without hassling with parents around.

    One might argue then that online degree programs are an opportunity for a purer, less distracting education that traditional ones.
  8. Volpone

    Volpone Zombie Hunter

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    Oh, and possibly neither here nor there, but when I was trying for a CS degree and had to take a buttload of Calculus, my last calc teacher, on the last day of class, told us "If you're taking associates-level classes, you should just go to a community college. It's a lot cheaper and you aren't dealing with tenured professors, so the instructors have to actually teach or they lose their jobs. You'll cover the same material but learn it better for less money."

    I actually got pretty lucky with my calc teachers. I only had one lemon. Actually I had two, but after the first one I realized it behooved me to drop the other one after the first day and find a different class. There was the professor quoted above and there was a grad student who were both just excellent and other than the one who had no people skills and spoke with such a heavy Indian accent that you first had to understand what she was saying before you could try to understand what she was teaching, the rest were more than adequate.

    Of course after transferring to the MBA program I pretty much forgot how to do derivatives and what a graph of x^2 and x^3 look like. I don't know if the batteries are even good in my calculus calculator any more. And since I pretended I wasn't going to be a finance guy I don't know if the batteries in my MBA accounting calculator are good anymore and I really should dust those skills off.
  9. Homebrewer

    Homebrewer Broke-ass grad student

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    I don't think the problem is so much that the quality of the instruction of some of these programs, as much as the perception that they are a diploma mill. That may very well be true, but that is also an accusation that should be leveled at the "non-profit" schools as well. Every college graduate can tell you stories of people let into college with no chance of ever graduating, and we're not even talking about the "student"-athletes at any Div 1-A school.

    I do think that the differenced between the "for profit" and the "non profit" schools is very much less than we believe. The for profit schools might be lining the pockets of their stockholders, but the non profits aren't hurting for money either. Between alumni contributions, endowments, licencing fees for logoed merchandise, sports, sales of books from the university press, and money from investments, patents, inventions, and sales of property, the non profits have money coming in hand over fist. Granted much of that goes back into capital projects (that new sports stadium or science building ain't free after all), but tuition is far outpacing inflation.
    • Agree Agree x 1
  10. Chris

    Chris Cosmic Horror

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    The Ivies are more about prestige than actual instruction. At least, for undergraduate studies.

    A lot of things are true in this thread, too many people are going to college, especially for the wrong reasons. We're driving up the cost of education because employers are requiring more qualifications when they hire someone.
  11. Bulldog

    Bulldog Only Pawn in Game of Life

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    You'd do better at a community college than most 4-year schools anymore. The community college is more practical, more "real-life" and a lot cheaper.

    Ivy League? Meh. It's just a label that allows them to jack up tuition. You'd probably get just as good an education at the University of North Dakota than you would at Yale.
  12. Baba

    Baba Rep Giver

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    You should watch nbc's community bulldog its pretty funny.
  13. shootER

    shootER Insubordinate...and churlish Administrator

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    I'd DVR'd this and just got around to watching it tonight.

    I don't have anything to comment on regarding the substance of the piece that hasn't already been said, but this is further proof that Frontline does some of the best journalism in the US (and probably the best television journalism).

    They routinely take dry, visually uninteresting subjects like this one and make them not only informative, but also interesting to watch.

    While some of their editing choices aren't really my cup of tea, the photography is very inspiring to me and has greatly influenced my personal style over the years.
    • Agree Agree x 3
  14. Talkahuano

    Talkahuano Second Flame Lieutenant

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    I keep saying that we've GOT to get vocational programs back into high schools. Teach people plumbing, construction, how to be mechanics, maybe teach secretarial skills, or make the senior year equivalent to one of those "9-month job training programs" that keep airing commercials on TV. Make high school actually useful. And if a high school student has a B or higher in a general curriculum class like biology, English, or sociology, let it count for college credit nationwide. I do NOT need to be giving a college $500/class just to take English for the millionth time.
    • Agree Agree x 3
  15. polarslam

    polarslam Fresh Meat

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    A Yale Degree is useless.

    WORST SCHOOL EVER!

    However, I promise I will make you my admin assistant one day. I will buy you flowers on secretaries day too!
  16. polarslam

    polarslam Fresh Meat

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    UND is kind of amazing. Not sure about the quality of education, but the girls are great and are delivered to Winnipeg upon a silver platter to take advantage of 18 year legal drinking.