people who pay 50k a year for Ivies+ are getting their money's worth; people paying that for NYU are morons. most good students should just attend their in-state flagship, at which tuition/fees are gonna be less than 20k a year, even at the ridic UC system.
dude I don't get angry about anything on ILX! if we were talking about journal fees then maybe I'd get lit up though (cf. the big Harvard story today though)
better to focus on the lack of benefits for the non-tt caste, but that's a general problem with this silly country, not just a problem with us big bad elitist professors
― Euler, Monday, 23 April 2012 19:42 (twelve years ago) link
yeah it's crazy what's happening/potentially going to happen w/ the journals...but it's also sorta symbolic of the slack that isn't gonna be there anymore
― iatee, Monday, 23 April 2012 20:11 (twelve years ago) link
nah, it's not symbolic of anything except the lag that prestigious institutional faculty / libraries have had in supporting online publication. It was mainly the big pub houses that gained from the status quo; we write for free, referee for free, sub edit for free; & then we pay them to access our work & even to buy our copywrites back for republishing our work in collections! That's all silly in 2012: it didn't provide any scientific or educational value to do things this way.
― Euler, Monday, 23 April 2012 20:25 (twelve years ago) link
well the point is that there are plenty of other things that are 'silly in 2012' in higher ed, the question is how long they can stay silly
― iatee, Monday, 23 April 2012 20:54 (twelve years ago) link
what exactly do you have in mind as being silly?
― Euler, Monday, 23 April 2012 21:10 (twelve years ago) link
xp. that's not the point.
― s.clover, Monday, 23 April 2012 21:12 (twelve years ago) link
an 18 y/o paying tens of thousands of dollars to learn calculus or german from a grad student
― iatee, Monday, 23 April 2012 21:12 (twelve years ago) link
so your problem is just with big sections of various intros taught by non-tt faculty? that doesn't account for a big % of an individual student's credit hours in any case.
― Euler, Monday, 23 April 2012 21:24 (twelve years ago) link
& yeah, iatee, the repartee here is fun enough but on higher ed you seem simply to have an axe (go Cardinal) to grind, without a whole lot of understanding of the specifics, or even wanting to engage the specifics. like big debt is a big problem! but you move from this to "it's all a shell game" so quickly that you clearly have other agendas that obscure my understanding of where you're coming from.
― Euler, Monday, 23 April 2012 21:29 (twelve years ago) link
it's like "dead people vote in Chicago!" -> "but that's a tiny percentage of voting, yeah it sucks, but really" -> "no, it shows that we should disenfranchise young people systematically"
― Euler, Monday, 23 April 2012 21:30 (twelve years ago) link
you know I recently found a krugman article from 1996 where he's doing his best to predict the big picture structural changes in the american economy this century. the whole thing is freakishly otm:
http://www.nytimes.com/1996/09/29/magazine/white-collars-turn-blue.html
did princeton prof paul krugman have personal beef w/ the higher ed system, when, almost 20 years ago he predicted a massive downsizing this century? or is it just kinda possible that the 2030 job market won't need *the exact same feeder system* as the 1970 job market?
the worst thing about the tenure system is that it allows people like you to honestly believe that everything is hunky dory, grad students who don't get jobs 'just didn't try hard enough', 18 y/os who are loaded w/ debt 'should have just gone to a public school' etc. etc.
― iatee, Monday, 23 April 2012 22:26 (twelve years ago) link
"The worst thing about some people having decent jobs is it allows people to honestly believe that everything is hunky dory."
"The worst thing about some people having healthcare is it allows people to honestly believe that everything is hunky dory."
"The worst thing about some people eating three meals a day is it allows people to honestly believe that everything is hunky dory."
"The worst thing about some people owning multiple pairs of pants is it allows people to honestly believe that everything is hunky dory."
― s.clover, Monday, 23 April 2012 22:29 (twelve years ago) link
do you have a point
― iatee, Monday, 23 April 2012 22:30 (twelve years ago) link
"The worst thing about occasionally hilarious gags in apatow comedies is it allows people to honestly believe that everything is hunky dory."
― s.clover, Monday, 23 April 2012 22:30 (twelve years ago) link
seriously you just weasel your way into these threads, you wanna say something dude
― iatee, Monday, 23 April 2012 22:31 (twelve years ago) link
"The worst thing about relatively easy access to adorable animal pictures is it allows people to honestly believe that everything is hunky dory."
― s.clover, Monday, 23 April 2012 22:31 (twelve years ago) link
so you don't you have a specific point, iatee, besides it's bad for first years to take intro with grad students? or that it's bad that students choose to go to NYU or USC & take out stupid amounts of loans? except maybe you think they should be able to go to NYU without massive debt? I don't get your position.
― Euler, Monday, 23 April 2012 22:56 (twelve years ago) link
you want one point which encompasses everything that's wrong with our higher ed system + the likely trajectory? I mean I can give you a sentence w/ 20 semicolons.
if you want the two biggest points, the first is made in the kruman article - the us economy is probably experiencing a long-term shift away from a lot of white collar work and while there are social benefits from having a highly educated populace if there aren't personal benefits to the investment, there is likely to be a massive drop in the demand.
the second is that people w/ degrees from mit and stanford (go cardinal?) are currently v. interested in the fact that one person's intro to calculus lecture can already reach a million people. as soon as a name brand college becomes willing to not only offer entire courses online - which they already do, freely, tons of them - but offer their stamp of approval for completion? there is an inordinate amount of money to be made w/ this, and it's just a question of which brand-name school is gonna take a step in the dark.
the student loan crisis is just the backdrop that makes both of these things easier to sell. I've neve seen any profesors at tuition hike protests. sometimes they'll write an op ed or something.
― iatee, Tuesday, 24 April 2012 00:00 (twelve years ago) link
I'm not sure how two people with even normal jobs would manage much more than this if you consider that a normal bedtime for kids is like 8:30 pm.
3h with the kids per weekday doesn't sound bad. 3h/day to do ANYTHING OTHER THAN WORK 7 days a week did before there was clarification.
― EveningStar (Sund4r), Tuesday, 24 April 2012 00:08 (twelve years ago) link
sometimes they'll write an op ed or something.
Was going to post this to the Canadian Politics thread but seems like it may be relevant here too. (Yeah, it's an op-ed but it's a pretty good one imo + I'm not sure that protests accomplish more than op-eds):
http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Tuition+hikes+solve+what+ails+system/6501275/story.html
― EveningStar (Sund4r), Tuesday, 24 April 2012 00:36 (twelve years ago) link
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/04/30/120430fa_fact_auletta?currentPage=all
― iatee, Tuesday, 24 April 2012 01:15 (twelve years ago) link
but iatee, intro is just a small part of what universities provide in their teaching. It's true that the giant McClasses don't well serve students or our essentiality as faculty, but any online model will only be worse at this, since what they will lack is one-on-one attention. Indeed that's their fundamental appeal: take McClasses to another level. You keep saying, "but that's what the economic model dictates", as those we are passive victims of "processes" rather than making explicit choices to McClass-ize those courses. I wish we wouldn't! But I don't have a feeling for how dominant that is as a way of teaching (it's not been the case in any department I've taught in, all big R1s). & we could choose to teach only smaller sections (as we do in my soon-to-be-ex department). But that takes more faculty..."and that's not what the economic model dictates", you'll say again; & I say bullshit, that's a choice you seem to favor, as do other know-nothings; for what reasons I can only speculate.
― Euler, Tuesday, 24 April 2012 02:06 (twelve years ago) link
btw wasn't calling you a know-nothing there, not trying to hardbody in that post; I meant you're allied with the know-nothings in your support for dismantling the present model of American higher ed, the best system of higher education the world's ever known.
― Euler, Tuesday, 24 April 2012 02:07 (twelve years ago) link
I've never suggested an online model will be better at teaching, as a whole I would say it's clearly worse. but that itself doesn't matter.
also I dunno where you see me suggesting we dismantle anything - I just don't think it's that hard to see what's on the horizon at this point.
― iatee, Tuesday, 24 April 2012 02:30 (twelve years ago) link
yeah if you're just prognosticating then I gotta say I don't have a lot of confidence in your predictions
― Euler, Tuesday, 24 April 2012 02:53 (twelve years ago) link
which of these two don't you have confidence in?
if you want the two biggest points, the first is made in the kruman article - the us economy is probably experiencing a long-term shift away from a lot of white collar work and while there are social benefits from having a highly educated populace if there aren't personal benefits to the investment, there is likely to be a massive drop in the demand.the second is that people w/ degrees from mit and stanford (go cardinal?) are currently v. interested in the fact that one person's intro to calculus lecture can already reach a million people. as soon as a name brand college becomes willing to not only offer entire courses online - which they already do, freely, tons of them - but offer their stamp of approval for completion? there is an inordinate amount of money to be made w/ this, and it's just a question of which brand-name school is gonna take a step in the dark.
― caek, Tuesday, 24 April 2012 02:54 (twelve years ago) link
did you read the article? I mostly steal my predictions from other people, like the president of stanford xp
― iatee, Tuesday, 24 April 2012 02:54 (twelve years ago) link
or paul krugman
― iatee, Tuesday, 24 April 2012 02:55 (twelve years ago) link
on 1) long-term shift from a lot of white-collar work that *was* done by college grads of the past doesn't mean that *new* white-collar work hasn't emerged that present & future college grads will do.
of course, if I had my fascist ways I'd eliminate all departments except math, philosophy, computer science, cog sci (which would all be just a single department, actually) & I guess maybe econ, bio, maybe physics. those are all going to be part of future white collar work that there aren't presently enough Americans to do; & that work will only continue to grow in importance.
it might be that we won't need as many mediocre universities in the future, but I don't have a huge amount riding on that. I care about my grad students but I'd rather see them think about industry jobs as the primary trajectory than academic work.
on 2), I'm not convinced that outsourcing more intro teaching is going to affect universities all that dramatically. right now we (at R1s) already outsource plenty of it to community colleges. We do majors teaching, though, & afaict that teaching isn't the issue in this thread.
― Euler, Tuesday, 24 April 2012 03:05 (twelve years ago) link
of course, if I had my fascist ways I'd eliminate all departments except...
this would be a good way to respond to the drop in demand iatee is predicting.
― caek, Tuesday, 24 April 2012 03:07 (twelve years ago) link
iatee you do realize the krugman futurology article predicts a rise in blue-collar manufacturing?
Or consider the panic over ''downsizing'' that gripped America in 1996. As economists quickly pointed out, the rate at which Americans were losing jobs in the 90's was not especially high by historical standards. Downsizing suddenly became news because, for the first time, white-collar, college-educated workers were being fired in large numbers, even while skilled machinists and other blue-collar workers were in demand.
which is exactly what you said wouldn't happen upthread when you were arguing that manufacturing was on the outs and it was service all the way.
and now you're arguing that white-collar is on the outs and...
― s.clover, Tuesday, 24 April 2012 03:10 (twelve years ago) link
of course, if I had my fascist ways I'd eliminate all departments except math, philosophy, computer science, cog sci (which would all be just a single department, actually) & I guess maybe econ, bio, maybe physics
You realize that there are many people who basically agree with this except for the philosophy part? (They'd preserve engineering and medicine too.)
― EveningStar (Sund4r), Tuesday, 24 April 2012 03:18 (twelve years ago) link
yes and they are all completely out of their minds
― call all destroyer, Tuesday, 24 April 2012 03:22 (twelve years ago) link
xp
again, I wasn't arguing that manufacturing being on the outs was *a good thing* - just that it was a thing. it wasn't a good thing, for the most part.
and now you're arguing that white-collar is on the outs and....
tax mark zuckerberg and give money to poor people or mark zuckerberg gets 100000 slaves.
― iatee, Tuesday, 24 April 2012 03:26 (twelve years ago) link
Philosophy's the same thing as English imo, anything useful you can get out of it you can just figure out on your own. If you can't you're probably no good at it anyway and should stick with what comes naturally. /challops
― Spectrum, Tuesday, 24 April 2012 03:27 (twelve years ago) link
or mark zuckerberg gets 100000 slaves
...for whom he is legally required to provide nutritious food, health care, child care and decent housing. (But that would require allowing the slaves to vote.)
― Aimless, Tuesday, 24 April 2012 03:45 (twelve years ago) link
the key to the krugman thing is interpreting blue collar as 'not white collar' ie not just plumber but also food service, health care workers, personal care etc.
― iatee, Tuesday, 24 April 2012 04:00 (twelve years ago) link
Which would be a valid reading if he didn't specifically describe skilled machinists as being in demand in the exact section I quoted among others. And if he didn't in fact cite plumbers specifically in the first page.
So yes, the key to reading the krugman thing as you do is to pretend you're reading another article.
― s.clover, Tuesday, 24 April 2012 04:52 (twelve years ago) link
do you think skilled machinists are going to make up a significant % of the job market in 50 years? I mean I'm willing to say "I think that part was probably wrong"
― iatee, Tuesday, 24 April 2012 04:54 (twelve years ago) link
Is there going to be increases in machinery or pipework that needs to be taken care of in the future? Seems like a pretty weird argument. Sometimes it seems like people think jobs appear out of thin air, as opposed to being directly tied to things that exist in the world...
― Spectrum, Tuesday, 24 April 2012 04:57 (twelve years ago) link
robots, dude
― stay in school if you want to kiw (Gukbe), Tuesday, 24 April 2012 04:57 (twelve years ago) link
also w/ the blue collar stuff there's a big difference between machinists and plumbers, between nontradables and tradables - the nontradable blue collar workers - plumbers, construction workers etc. - are a very different thing than auto workers and there's no reason to think that they won't do fine when the downturn is over. .
― iatee, Tuesday, 24 April 2012 05:08 (twelve years ago) link
I'm still voting for iatee's government pays people not to work platform. Or some other way of keeping the economy moving without everyone having to have a job.
― raw feel vegan (silby), Tuesday, 24 April 2012 05:11 (twelve years ago) link
anyway a good article on skilled machinists in america:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/01/making-it-in-america/8844/
― iatee, Tuesday, 24 April 2012 05:38 (twelve years ago) link
i agree. good article.
― s.clover, Tuesday, 24 April 2012 13:03 (twelve years ago) link
then I don't even know what we disagree on w/ this cause the article is almost 100% line w/ my take on the subject. there were better ways to prepare for globalization and technological productivity gains and there are better ways to address them now, but eventually those two things ensured that the type of manufacturing jobs that built the american middle class weren't gonna be around forever. the service sector wasn't a panacea, but it was something for people to do. for how much longer, idk.
― iatee, Tuesday, 24 April 2012 14:21 (twelve years ago) link
do you think skilled machinists are going to make up a significant % of the job market in 50 years?
yes
― crüt, Tuesday, 24 April 2012 14:23 (twelve years ago) link
maybe I should have phrased that 'significant % of the american population'
― iatee, Tuesday, 24 April 2012 14:25 (twelve years ago) link
lol @ Florida cutting their CS department btw
― Euler, Wednesday, 25 April 2012 01:52 (twelve years ago) link
wait waht
― I'M THAT POSTA, AAAAAAAAAH (DJP), Wednesday, 25 April 2012 01:54 (twelve years ago) link