http://www.alternet.org/story/152809/the_http://www.alternet.org/story/152809/the__trillion_student_loan_rip-off%3A_how_an_entire_generation_was_tricked_into_taking_on_crushing_debt_that_just_enriches_banks_trillion_student_loan_rip-off%3A_how_an_entire_generation_was_tricked_into_taking_on_crushing_debt_that_just_enriches_banks
― iatee, Friday, 21 October 2011 18:40 (twelve years ago) link
okay weird looking link but it works
lincoln, NE is actually quite nice― homosexual II, Friday, October 21, 2011 4:03 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark
― homosexual II, Friday, October 21, 2011 4:03 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark
otm!
― kate78, Friday, 21 October 2011 18:42 (twelve years ago) link
guys... we have the internet now
― dayo, Friday, 21 October 2011 20:01 (twelve years ago) link
it doesn't matter where we are... as long as we're jacked in... to the INTERNET
― dayo, Friday, 21 October 2011 20:02 (twelve years ago) link
it doesn't matter where we are... as long as we're jackin... to the INTERNET
― do not wake the dragon (DJP), Friday, 21 October 2011 20:02 (twelve years ago) link
http://images.wikia.com/puppet/images/0/0e/Trekkiemonster.jpg
― do not wake the dragon (DJP), Friday, 21 October 2011 20:03 (twelve years ago) link
my jackin' just went up 200%
― dayo, Friday, 21 October 2011 20:09 (twelve years ago) link
I wld like to read that book about the fragmentation of civil society, bowling alone or something like that. has anybody read it? any good?
― dayo, Friday, 21 October 2011 20:10 (twelve years ago) link
time was your neighbour would lend it to you
― nakhchivan, Friday, 21 October 2011 20:11 (twelve years ago) link
when I think of people living in their big houses in America I just think of wemmick from great expectations
― dayo, Friday, 21 October 2011 20:16 (twelve years ago) link
I would build a moat around my house if I could
I've taught using excerpts of Bowling Alone! I like thinking about this issue of "place", because I don't have any place I'm from, & so I'm prone to imagining or fantasizing about it. I think this is a common plight of children of immigrants, anyway.
― Euler, Friday, 21 October 2011 20:36 (twelve years ago) link
I am also a child of immigrants and yeah there's something to that. I think that's one reason why I like big cities - it offers people a sense of place without requiring any connection from the person in return
― dayo, Friday, 21 October 2011 20:38 (twelve years ago) link
I'm a child of the countryside and I like cities for exactly the same reason
― do not wake the dragon (DJP), Friday, 21 October 2011 20:40 (twelve years ago) link
yeah I can get with that; actually the place I live now, in the great plains, is pretty much a "nowhere" place & I confess that suits me also: I never feel like an outsider here, because there's nothing to be inside.
― Euler, Friday, 21 October 2011 20:40 (twelve years ago) link
xp
― Euler, Friday, 21 October 2011 20:41 (twelve years ago) link
I live out in the middle of the sticks and I hate the isolation.
― Christine Green Leafy Dragon Indigo, Friday, 21 October 2011 21:02 (twelve years ago) link
that's an interesting idea, I've never heard it phrased like that
― iatee, Friday, 21 October 2011 21:43 (twelve years ago) link
I've never felt like more of an outsider than when I've lived in small cities. The history of people is generally impenetrable; nothing worse than sitting at a social gathering listening to nothing but "remember when" conversations. In big cities I can get lost in everything going on around me.
― Ryan, Friday, 21 October 2011 22:22 (twelve years ago) link
My dream has always been to live in an apartment in a city. Sadly, I'm married to a man who is dead set against it (he actually suggested living in an RV in a city trailer park as an alternative!).
― Christine Green Leafy Dragon Indigo, Saturday, 22 October 2011 00:10 (twelve years ago) link
what's his reason? just a cultural thing?
― iatee, Saturday, 22 October 2011 00:14 (twelve years ago) link
every thread I start turns into the suburbs thread
― iatee, Saturday, 22 October 2011 00:15 (twelve years ago) link
totally euler's fault tho
It's because his dream is to live in the middle of nowhere.
― Christine Green Leafy Dragon Indigo, Saturday, 22 October 2011 00:21 (twelve years ago) link
But a city trailer park does seem like a compromise, unless you're thinking any place that would have a trailer park does not qualify as a city.
― nickn, Saturday, 22 October 2011 00:45 (twelve years ago) link
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/opinion/sunday/will-dropouts-save-america.html
all college students should just drop out and start multi-billion dollar computer companies - y/n
― iatee, Sunday, 23 October 2011 22:17 (twelve years ago) link
Well, one thing that colleges can teach is critical thinking, which might have been of some help to the author of that strange piece. I think I expect too much out of the New York Times these days.
Not a shock, the author is one of those bizarro "business gurus". http://www.powerofeyecontact.com/
http://media.linkedin.com/mpr/pub/image-GB_zBD8gFRyhjJpHA4PTB-FqwUGaioiHIOAhB7KqSkkl9Y6c/michael-ellsberg.jpg
― Spectrum, Sunday, 23 October 2011 23:04 (twelve years ago) link
Eurgh
― medium rear (silby), Sunday, 23 October 2011 23:08 (twelve years ago) link
If the availability of student loans contracts, or if students are less willing to take those loans, I would guess the non-prestige big private unis will be taking an enrollment hit, if they don't differentiate their environments from public schools. This is just a random thought I had on this topic he other day.
Also occurs to me that plenty of places likely won't even do something to lower the nominal tuition price. As long as there's still at least one student who can afford full pay, they will cheerfully extract it from them, even if the average discount rate goes up.
― medium rear (silby), Sunday, 23 October 2011 23:14 (twelve years ago) link
yeah I think non-prestige private unis are gonna be at the forefront of the crisis, cause they've always been offering a luxury product - the idea that they're offering a luxury product (rather than a 'better investment') is finally reaching the mainstream.
lowering tuition is difficult when you have fixed costs dependent on that tuition, but there are only so many rich people interested in non-prestige private unis in the country.
― iatee, Sunday, 23 October 2011 23:29 (twelve years ago) link
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/09/how-dangerous-are-college-rankings-and-the-rat-race-for-prestige/245850/
^ complicating factors for those schools. people will always secretly believe that more expensive things are better and the race for that elusive prestige signal is expensive.
― iatee, Sunday, 23 October 2011 23:35 (twelve years ago) link
schools should charge a sliding tuition based on their national rankings
― dayo, Sunday, 23 October 2011 23:45 (twelve years ago) link
"non-prestige private unis" are prob gonna take a big hit---glad I don't work for one---unless they can get kids jobs that pay better than state unis, or if the bad guys kill our public unis.
― Euler, Sunday, 23 October 2011 23:59 (twelve years ago) link
the prob is public unis are gonna have increasing enrollment regardless in the future as they're increasingly considered 'the pragmatic decision' - so they can be defunded again and again before they'll actually start losing students.
― iatee, Monday, 24 October 2011 00:02 (twelve years ago) link
that's true but there's a lower bound on how defunded they can get (we're playing with that already)
― Euler, Monday, 24 October 2011 01:52 (twelve years ago) link
http://persephonemagazine.com/2011/10/dont-even-get-me-started-mythical-bootstraps-college-student/
― turkey in the straw (x2) (remy bean), Monday, 24 October 2011 21:54 (twelve years ago) link
http://chronicle.com/article/The-US-Should-Adopt/129504/
― iatee, Tuesday, 25 October 2011 01:02 (twelve years ago) link
we were talking about migration in this thread?
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/28/us/americans-migration-patterns-shifting.html?_r=1
― dayo, Friday, 28 October 2011 01:59 (twelve years ago) link
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/01/education/cooper-union-may-charge-tuition-to-undergraduates.html
RIP cooper union ;_;
― dayo, Tuesday, 1 November 2011 10:07 (twelve years ago) link
founded in 1859 to provide free education for the working class
lol that game's been over for a while
― elan, Tuesday, 1 November 2011 14:03 (twelve years ago) link
But here's a revenue idea: contract students out for arch/engineering jobs and make them work for free. Call it an internship.
― elan, Tuesday, 1 November 2011 14:06 (twelve years ago) link
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/nov/24/our-universities-why-are-they-failing/
― iatee, Saturday, 5 November 2011 23:53 (twelve years ago) link
Despite the grabby headline, that article at least calls out the writers of the myopic Jeremiads for what they are.
I need to learn more about this bit of data:
Their results are sobering. The Collegiate Learning Assessment reveals that some 45 percent of students in the sample had made effectively no progress in critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing in their first two years. And a look at their academic experience helps to explain why. […] Half the students in the sample had not taken a course that required more than twenty pages of writing in the previous semester, while a third had not even taken a course that required as much as forty pages a week of reading. […] two points come through with striking clarity. First, traditional subjects and methods seem to retain their educational value. Nowadays the liberal arts attract a far smaller proportion of students than they did two generations ago. Still, those majoring in liberal arts fields—humanities and social sciences, natural sciences and mathematics—outperformed those studying business, communications, and other new, practical majors on the CLA..
― whoop, up the butt it goes (silby), Sunday, 6 November 2011 02:37 (twelve years ago) link
The goddamn liberal arts are still the foundation of our goddamn civic society, is what my takeaway is.
― whoop, up the butt it goes (silby), Sunday, 6 November 2011 02:38 (twelve years ago) link
My problem: I don't have a degree. In anything. I should get one so that I can go farther in society. I'd prefer to get something like General Studies or Liberal Arts, something that gives me a good background in life. I know that no one takes either one of those degrees seriously. What should I do?
Sorry to drag this off topic.
― Christine Green Leafy Dragon Indigo, Sunday, 6 November 2011 02:49 (twelve years ago) link
my honest to god advice is to put a fake BA on your resume from somewhere inconspicuous and believable
― iatee, Sunday, 6 November 2011 02:52 (twelve years ago) link
that said, I know your situation right now is kinda shitty and there are things to be said about actually learning shit for 4(+...) years. you should look into the very cheapest public university you can find (generally = 2 years at cc -> transfer). you'd qualify for pell grants and there are actually *tons* of scholarships out there in america, some of them are pretty obscure and few people apply to them.
student loans are a devil, but if you only took gov't loans and planned ahead to pay them back w/ IBR (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_Based_Repayment) you could be alright even if you didn't find yourself in a fantastic situation after your degree. IBR is new and I think some people think it won't last forever.
but 'going to college' might actually be a decent way out of your life situation, come to think of it. the process more than the career options afterwards.
― iatee, Sunday, 6 November 2011 03:13 (twelve years ago) link
― whoop, up the butt it goes (silby), Saturday, November 5, 2011 10:37 PM Bookmark
This strikes me as a bit misleading though -- since when are "natural sciences" and "mathematics" considered part of the liberal arts? And since when is communications considered a "practical" major -- I always thought that was liberal arts lite.
― pass the duchy pon the left hand side (musical duke) (Hurting 2), Sunday, 6 November 2011 18:00 (twelve years ago) link
"liberal arts" is just supposed to be "general knowledge"--science is a liberal art! "humanities" and "liberal arts" are not the same thing
― max, Sunday, 6 November 2011 18:05 (twelve years ago) link