Obama's Student Loan Forgiveness plan.

[Ralin]

Some of the blame for horriffic levels of student debt should be laid at the feet of the kids who borrowed the money.

I don't think that anyone disagrees, but like you said, they're kids and kids have a tendency to do stupid things. We should still do what we can to prevent them from being able to fuck themselves over, and reduce the pressures that push them towards doing so.

[Broomstick]

What about lowering the amount of humanities courses you take? I don't see why a hard science undergraduate must take 3 literature courses, three histories, multiple arts courses etc. We don't expect people shooting for literature degrees to enroll in three math courses that aren't remedial in nature, do we? If not, why not?

I had to take three math courses for my degree, why shouldn't math majors have to take some humanities? On the other hand, because mine was an actual arts college I had the option of taking math that was related to my major, the "calculus of symmetry" course, which dealt with, well, symmetry. And the mathematics of optics. Neither of them were what I'd consider particularly easy, even if they weren't on the level of what engineering students take. The great thing was that they had something to do with my major.

Thing is, with engineering, science, and the like the freshmen really do need to take more advanced math than the non-engineering/science people. They need to work on their major from the start. That's where a "specialist" university is an advantage, there's enough of those sorts of students that the school can economically offer freshmen in those areas math related to their major. And if you have those numbers of those specialities it might also be worthwhile to offer "humanities" that are related to their major whenever possible. For example, science students might have more benefit from a composition course that incorporates peer-reviewed journal styles of writing than ones that cover reviewing "classic" literature or short story writing. There would still, of necessity, be some courses that don't directly relate to their major but, you know, adults should know a basic outline of history and such.

[Broomstick]

Some of the blame for horriffic levels of student debt should be laid at the feet of the kids who borrowed the money.

Some, but not all.

We are, after all, talking about 18 and 19 year olds with little adult experience. They are already at a disadvantage in such decision making simply by being inexperienced. Then, when you top that off with adults like parents and guidance counselors and the general message of society being you MUST go to college, you MUST do it right out of high school and you MUST borrow to do it... well, when a bank offers the kid $15-20k (or more!) a year in loans to do what everyone is saying he or she MUST do right now... is it a wonder so many get into trouble? Highly experienced, highly educated full adults can have trouble resisting such pressure, we should be guarding the 18 and 19 year olds from such exploitation. Because that's really what it is, exploiting these kids/adults at a vulnerable point.

As a general rule, people do not fully mature until around 25. Until then, their ability to make decisions that impact their long term future is a bit fuzzy. All the more reason that the adults around them should NOT exploit them and should help them by making reasonable limits to the potential damage they can do to themselves. Historically, that was the reason for a lot of the restrictions that used to be imposed on university students with the school acting in loco parentis. Somehow society has forgotten that while people in their late teens and early 20's are adult in some ways they still need some limits and guidance to avoid the worst sorts of trouble. Yes, they need to get real-world experience, but they need to do it in a way that doesn't leave them crippled (physically or financially) for the rest of their lives.

[Simon_Jester]

This is a bad idea. It takes four years of fairly rigorous math and science courses to attain basic competence in disciplines like science and engineering. You can't do it in two years, unless you have "pre-science" tracks at the community college. Some already do this, because it's cheaper than four years at a university. But to make it work overall you'd need to raise the quality of community college education, because many of them just don't prepare students for what they'd need to function as physics or engineering students, to take examples I'm more familiar with.

What about lowering the amount of humanities courses you take? I don't see why a hard science undergraduate must take 3 literature courses, three histories, multiple arts courses etc. We don't expect people shooting for literature degrees to enroll in three math courses that aren't remedial in nature, do we? If not, why not?

Because a college graduate needs basic historical literacy more than they need calculus.

Even I agree with this, and I was a physics major- most jobs don't need calculus, and there aren't really non-remedial college math courses below calculus. If you paid attention in high school math up through 12th grade, you know enough math for the rest of the average person's life and then some.

Whereas I am very reluctant to call a person "educated" if they cannot speak knowledgeably about history (to understand the world), the rudiments of sociology and psychology (to understand people), and have at least dipped a toe or two into literature and the arts.

By the same token, I'm reluctant to call a person "educated" if they don't understand the theory of evolution, have at least the rudiments of how electricity works, and have dipped a toe or two into the way scientists look at data and analyze them to get results that are statistically sound, of course...

And I don't want four year institutions to lower their standards of "educated" until they are no longer producing truly educated graduates. We've relied on universities for centuries to be the source of people with enough general education to act as the brains of our society in general. I don't want to replace that with a system for educating overspecialized drones.

As to dormitories, I spent my entire college education in dorms that were built around the time you were going to college, if not before, Broomstick. I wouldn't know. You might call them 'palatial,' but if so the problem has little to do with my generation because we didn't exist at the time the facilities were created.

If there's blame, I don't think it lies with the younger generation(s) in the equation - these would be decisions made by the university planners and, to some degree parents. Sure, at that age I probably would have loved more space, my own room, my own bathroom, my own telephone, my own TV and kitchenette, etc. I don't know what sort of dorm you personally were in.

here, this is a representative sample.

If this means changing student living conditions, so be it.

Another thing that needs to be looked at. I know there are plenty of old-style dorms still around, but some of the new ones I've heard about being built in the late 90's and early 00's seem excessive to me. Students should be housed decently - clean, dry, bathroom facilities, etc. - but not lavishly.

I doubt this is a critical problem, though, because so many students are still living in twenty or thirty or forty or fifty year old dormitories, or living off campus where their cost of living is linked to housing costs of the general population.

[TimothyC]

It's very hard to do this in science and engineering, because the third and fourth years of the curriculum hinge on material that is definitely college level and which must be taught in the first and second years.

I'm curious: has a faster degree setup been tried somewhere and failed, or is this just a battle of gut feelings?

The fastest you might be able to do it is about 2.5 years (if you used Kettering University's 10+1 week semesters), but you'd risk serious burnout. Kettering mostly avoids this by doing alternating semesters of classroom with co-op, but there are sill people who can't hack it there, but can at other schools.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I actually got a pretty good maths education at the community college level. Lots of tests, very rigorous exams, no calculator, taught off the blackboard. Small class sizes, usually 20 - 32 instead of hundreds like in the two physics courses I took at a full sized university. I would say that a properly run community college, and all the ones in Washington and Oregon I've taken classes at are, can fairly rigorously teach at least mathematics and the basic fundamental engineering courses. Should save a year, maybe two with planning, off even an engineering degree and I certainly did it that way though it took me longer in practice.

[TimothyC]

I actually got a pretty good maths education at the community college level. Lots of tests, very rigorous exams, no calculator, taught off the blackboard. Small class sizes, usually 20 - 32 instead of hundreds like in the two physics courses I took at a full sized university. I would say that a properly run community college, and all the ones in Washington and Oregon I've taken classes at are, can fairly rigorously teach at least mathematics and the basic fundamental engineering courses. Should save a year, maybe two with planning, off even an engineering degree and I certainly did it that way though it took me longer in practice.

Same here. After I left Kettering, I ended up at a community college where I was able to take all of my non-engineering courses (including all of my science and math) and a few of my engineering courses (Statics, Dynamics, Engineering Ethics, and some software programs). The big thing is keeping the importance of the community college in the minds of the community. This tends to generate a feedback loop that can work both for and against the quality of the school (the one I went to is highly valued in the community and thus well supported because it is higher quality, which means it gets more support, ect.)

[Broomstick]

Community and city colleges are actually, on average, much better than most people give them credit for. It's a shame that so many for-profit private schools like University of Phoenix and DeVry/Keller and the like grab so much attention via advertising, as I think the public community colleges are actually a better deal for the money.

[Skgoa]

There is some incomplete and some outright wrong information regarding the german education system in this thread. Since I don't want to quote everything, I am going to just state the facts:

Majors are, in general, not restricted. But since universities just don't have the physical capacity to take in arbitrary numbers of students, many have to limit the number of students they take. This is practice is refered to as "Numerus Clausus". Now, the universities may choose to implement it - or even choose to stop it - any time they take in new freshmen. Common forms of deciding on who gets the slots include taking the x people with the best grades, taking the x people with the best grades in certain classes, entrence exams or mixes of those. In most states, one third of all places must be aloted via a lottery. The first two options mean that the grade average you need for assured entry changes with every new class of freshmen and can only be known afterwards. It is not true and was never true that you have to have a certain grade everage to be allowed to study the major you want. It might just take you a while to get a spot. (Often the time you spend waiting will artificially "increase" you grade average.) Due to high demand, there are a couple of majors that are alotted by a central federal agency, the ZVS. This is to ensure a modicum of fairness. But afaik still only 2/3 of open places are alotted through this agency. This means we DO train to many doctors and lawyers. The universities know it, the students know it. They still do it, since it's everyone's own choice. (We also train to many non-technical/-science majors.)

[Simon_Jester]

Community and city colleges are actually, on average, much better than most people give them credit for... I think the public community colleges are actually a better deal for the money.

Oh, I'd never knock them... hell, I might end up working for one.

That notwithstanding, you need a good "engineering prep" or "science prep" institution to do that job, which realistically means a high standard of quality and probably a fairly high tuition cost- if not an insanely steep one, granted. The savings are not necessarily going to be that impressive. And it still winds up taking about four years to get the requisite education to be a qualified engineer or physics, unless you are a really goddamn amazing student whose "working at capacity" is the average genius's "breaking strain."

Not that this is a bad idea, mind you- not at all. It's just not the Cure for Higher Education's Woes.

[Starglider]

Production of art has a quantifiable economic value; we can easily measure the direct revenue generation of the entertainment industry, and we can estimate the utility of public art by hedonic means and by the enhancement in productivity that a happier populace brings. So the position that art degrees have no social value is clearly untenable; while art is strictly speaking a luxury so is the majority of the economy, and plenty of engineering students go on to work on designing and building luxury goods.

In chosing how much and where to deploy state subsidy, we are interested in return on investment. The return on investment is clearly lower in industries that have a surplus of qualified staff vs ones that have a shortage, and for degrees is closely correlated with the improvement in taxable earnings that the graduates achieve versus what they would have without a state subsidised education. That basic analysis should be adjusted for stategic concerns such as the loss of primary and secondary sector jobs making the country vulnerable to trade wars, and the tendency for loss of R&D or manufacturing to cause attrition of the other through knock-on effects.

Duchess's basic point stands in that with the current state of the US, liberal arts courses have a lower ROI than science, engineering and trade skills. In particular these courses suffer from a large amount of mediocre, unmotivated candidates who take them because they are seen as easy options and they are told that some sort of tertiary education is mandatory to get a decent job. Tightening up standards in which candidates qualify for subsidy is absolutely a good idea, although of course this should be done in concert with convincing employers to no longer use 'has some sort of degree' as a first-pass CV filtering mechanism.

Practically that is very unlikely. I expect fat cat university administrators will hide behind screaming academics such as Alyrium to maintain tuition fee rises, Bakustra's rhetoric will be used by student demonstrators demanding that the government borrow-and-print ever more subsidy, but even with that student debt will continue to increase towards lifetime indenturement, and corporate HR departments will continue to be dysfunctional keyword-focused obstructions to commerce. The whole miserable mess will collapse somewhere around 200% debt-to-GDP mark, at which point the US will get a heavy dose of austerity that will significantly contract tertiary education in a rather messy fashion.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Thank you for making my argument more coherently than I could, Starglider.

[eyl]

It's very hard to do this in science and engineering, because the third and fourth years of the curriculum hinge on material that is definitely college level and which must be taught in the first and second years.

I'm curious: has a faster degree setup been tried somewhere and failed, or is this just a battle of gut feelings?

The fastest you might be able to do it is about 2.5 years (if you used Kettering University's 10+1 week semesters), but you'd risk serious burnout. Kettering mostly avoids this by doing alternating semesters of classroom with co-op, but there are sill people who can't hack it there, but can at other schools.

FWIW, most Israeli college/university Bachelor's degrees* take three years; my impression (absed on this thread) is that that's because we have less "off-major" course requirements.

*Engineering degrees and double degrees take four years, and some of the medical and "paramedical" degrees also take longer.

[Simon_Jester]

So in the less head-cracking majors, three years in Israel... how intensive is the courseload? Do you have problems with student burnout?

[Ace Pace]

So in the less head-cracking majors, three years in Israel... how intensive is the courseload? Do you have problems with student burnout?

I don't have hard numbers, but I think it's a combination of higher average age (a large percentage of the student body will be post military service) and a lower percentage of the population going to higher education.

[eyl]

So in the less head-cracking majors, three years in Israel... how intensive is the courseload? Do you have problems with student burnout?

As Ace says, students in Israel tend to be older on average than elsewhere, which offsets it a bit. I'm not actually sure how the percentage of students is relative to other countries.

From my experience in a physics degree, there's a certain amount of dropout - of the 60 or so people who started with me, I think only about half actually finished their BSc (and many of those needed to take an extra semester*). OTOH, most of those who didn't moved to a different degree**, rather than dropping out entirely.

*Largely because at least at BGU, 2nd- and 3rd- year physics courses are only offered one semester a year. So if you flunked one of them, you'd need to take it next year, which also pushed back any required courses which had that course as a prerequisite (this most often happened with people flunking Quantum Mechanics I, which was supposed to be on the 2nd semester of year 2, so they had to take it next year and QM II in an extra semester after that).

**It should also be noted that not all the students who started intended to finish a degree in physics. In Israel, acceptance to a degree is dependent on your matriculation diploma grades (from high school, though you can also take the tests later) and your grade on a psychometric exam. The exact required grades for acceptance at a given university are determined each year, according to the demand for a certain degree vs how many students the university can accept for that program. Once you're in university, you can transfer at the end of a year to a different degree based on your 1st-year grades instead. Since physics had a relative low demand, the psychometric test grade required was relatively low (they relied on the first year to weed out any students who weren't suited for the program). So, for example, students who wanted to study something which was in great demand and therefore had very high entrance requirements - which they didn't meet - would do one year of physics and then, based on their 1st -year grades, transfer to the degree they wanted. The main progams they transferrred to were CS and engineering, as that way the first year didn't go to waste, since there was a lot of overlap in the courses.

[eyl]

As an addendum to my previous posts:

1) regarding courseloads (again, I'm describing the degree I did - physics at BGU), typically in your first year you'll be doing 5-7 courses each semester (mostly mathematics), most of which will be 3-4 lecture hours plus 1-2 hours with a TA weekly. Depending on whether you need to do Intro Chemistry or English, you may get another course tacked on (though English, at least can be put off a semester or two - it depends). The course load eases up a bit in your second and (more so) third year, and the proportion of mathematics courses drops in favor of more physics. Most of the courses you take are set by the program you belong to, but you have a certain amount of credits you can take in other courses in the physics department, plus some credits you can take outside the department (or faculty - people often take the latter in the humanities).

Of course, the workload is different between departments; in particular, the various medical-related degrees have it much worse, at least in terms of sheer hours.

2) Regarding the dropout rate, it should be noted that physics is generally considered one of the tougher degrees.

[Thanas]

Without responding to any specific points raised in this thread: You cannot do a meaningful liberal arts education at a community college. I'll talk a bit about that, using ancient history.

a) Languages. To have a meaningful education in ancient history, you need at least one ancient language (preferably 2-4) and several modern ones. This alone is a stress on the faculty which community colleges don't really handle IMO - are there even any which offer ancient Greek, Latin programs over several years? Because you need at least four years in Latin to really understand it IMO provided you did not take it in High School.

b) Libraries. Ancient History alone requires thousands of specialized books. Let me give you a few examples:
- The University of Trier has 6924 books that deal with antiquity, with thousands more in specialized fields.
- The University of Cologne offers 10101 books, again not counting specialized search terms.
- Even one of the newest universities in Germany, the University of Potsdam, which has a comparatively small antiquity program, offers 3688 books etc.

Meanwhile, a web search at a typical American Community College offers a whopping 15 books in the library dealing with Roman civilization (source), of which maybe 10 are scholarly works. Internet libraries also cannot substitute for that. How is any community college ever going to be able to afford that on any comparable scale, considering it is only a small part of the liberal arts? And you can forget about any community college ever being able to afford a huge research library the likes we see in many universities.

c) Philosophy. Community colleges are more dedicated to teaching than to research. If you limit liberal arts to that, this will result in a decline in scholarship in favor of research only being done by rich people, scholarship students or private universities.

d) Time. Most community colleges offer two-year degrees. However, it is not that uncommon in ancient history to spend up to seven years studying for a graduate degree and up to 12 for a doctorate. How are you going to cram that into two years? The two year degree would be worthless. The four year degree presents less issues.


Those are the issues with restricting liberal arts to community colleges. If people only want to know the basics that might work out (though I wonder how with a whopping 15 books in the library) but these people will most likely never be able to read the original texts, never be able to do independent research nor will they have gathered a real understanding of the issues at hand. Again, fine if you only want to use it for dinner conversation (aka "Look Ma, I know the names of Roman Emperors") but that is about it.

[Thanas]

Books is trivially easy to solve. Many community colleges are part of a larger network. The one in my city is part of the NY state university system.

They could pool their money and buy licenses to online access to the books.

Like I said, this does not really work. I myself have used several online subscription / internet libraries, including several high-priced professional services. The selection is just not there.

And it is not as if these things come cheap.

[Thanas]

I really doubt it will, considering several very important publishers have refused to agree. They can scan a lot of old books, fine, but that does not allow you to do research. I noticed not a single publisher that is important on that list. Without them, you can just pretty much forget that idea. Fine for laypeople, but not for people doing serious research.

[Alphawolf55]

Without responding to any specific points raised in this thread: You cannot do a meaningful liberal arts education at a community college. I'll talk a bit about that, using ancient history.

a) Languages. To have a meaningful education in ancient history, you need at least one ancient language (preferably 2-4) and several modern ones. This alone is a stress on the faculty which community colleges don't really handle IMO - are there even any which offer ancient Greek, Latin programs over several years? Because you need at least four years in Latin to really understand it IMO provided you did not take it in High School.

b) Libraries. Ancient History alone requires thousands of specialized books. Let me give you a few examples:
- The University of Trier has 6924 books that deal with antiquity, with thousands more in specialized fields.
- The University of Cologne offers 10101 books, again not counting specialized search terms.
- Even one of the newest universities in Germany, the University of Potsdam, which has a comparatively small antiquity program, offers 3688 books etc.

Meanwhile, a web search at a typical American Community College offers a whopping 15 books in the library dealing with Roman civilization (source), of which maybe 10 are scholarly works. Internet libraries also cannot substitute for that. How is any community college ever going to be able to afford that on any comparable scale, considering it is only a small part of the liberal arts? And you can forget about any community college ever being able to afford a huge research library the likes we see in many universities.

c) Philosophy. Community colleges are more dedicated to teaching than to research. If you limit liberal arts to that, this will result in a decline in scholarship in favor of research only being done by rich people, scholarship students or private universities.

d) Time. Most community colleges offer two-year degrees. However, it is not that uncommon in ancient history to spend up to seven years studying for a graduate degree and up to 12 for a doctorate. How are you going to cram that into two years? The two year degree would be worthless. The four year degree presents less issues.


Those are the issues with restricting liberal arts to community colleges. If people only want to know the basics that might work out (though I wonder how with a whopping 15 books in the library) but these people will most likely never be able to read the original texts, never be able to do independent research nor will they have gathered a real understanding of the issues at hand. Again, fine if you only want to use it for dinner conversation (aka "Look Ma, I know the names of Roman Emperors") but that is about it.

D) I'm sorry but I think you managed to completely misunderstand what people have been saying. They weren't talking about replacing the entire liberal arts system with a 2 year system. We're discussing replacing the core studies with a community college work load and maybe for some liberal arts expand community colleges to four years but include the same cost control that community college have.

[Thanas]

D) I'm sorry but I think you managed to completely misunderstand what people have been saying. They weren't talking about replacing the entire liberal arts system with a 2 year system. We're discussing replacing the core studies with a community college work load and maybe for some liberal arts expand community colleges to four years but include the same cost control that community college have.

No, I got you just fine. I specifically outlined above why this will not work at all. With the libraries of community colleges I couldn't even teach a basic introduction course, especially not if I am supposed to teach some kind of basic that would form a foundation for further studies. Neither with the language courses, nor with the time allotted.

I really doubt it will, considering several very important publishers have refused to agree.

That sucks. I guess we can just hope that some day they'll change their minds; it'd pretty much be good for everybody.

Agreed...though if there was a somewhat fair compensation scheme offered I am sure most historians would at least consider switching to free publishing. The only argument the publishers have is editing and correcting staff, but they cut back on those iirc....other than that nobody is really thrilled about publishers paying a pittance and getting 90% profit margins on a release...

[Alphawolf55]

No, I got you just fine. I specifically outlined above why this will not work at all. With the libraries of community colleges I couldn't even teach a basic introduction course, especially not if I am supposed to teach some kind of basic that would form a foundation for further studies. Neither with the language courses, nor with the time allotted.

Then why did you address a problem that was in no way part of anyone's suggestion? You claim that having only 2 years is a severe problem but no one suggested giving only two years... especially for graduate studies.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Thanas, the current American university system requires about two years worth of incredibly vague introductory courses; courses where I could never attend lecture, just show up for tests, and get A's and flawless, 96 - 100% scores on every single exam, ten years ago when I was much more immature and less educated, just with the knowledge I had picked up reading books as a child. Those courses you spend two years (along with basic mathematics and natural sciences and other things like sociological survey courses) studying at an American university. Those two years result in an excess tuition outlay of around 12,000 USD for the average student. You may not be able to teach introductory courses at a community college, but that is simply because you have a higher standard of liberal arts introductory courses than the US does.

[Thanas]

No, I got you just fine. I specifically outlined above why this will not work at all. With the libraries of community colleges I couldn't even teach a basic introduction course, especially not if I am supposed to teach some kind of basic that would form a foundation for further studies. Neither with the language courses, nor with the time allotted.

Then why did you address a problem that was in no way part of anyone's suggestion? You claim that having only 2 years is a severe problem but no one suggested giving only two years... especially for graduate studies.

Because you were the one who suggested scaling liberal arts down to community-college level. I assumed you meant "actual community college" instead of whatever you want it to be, which means two years. Even if not two years, you still run into all the other problems I outlined above. Which brings me back to my point - any meaningful liberal arts education (and research) has to be done in a university setting.

Thanas, the current American university system requires about two years worth of incredibly vague introductory courses; courses where I could never attend lecture, just show up for tests, and get A's and flawless, 96 - 100% scores on every single exam, ten years ago when I was much more immature and less educated, just with the knowledge I had picked up reading books as a child. Those courses you spend two years (along with basic mathematics and natural sciences and other things like sociological survey courses) studying at an American university. Those two years result in an excess tuition outlay of around 12,000 USD for the average student. You may not be able to teach introductory courses at a community college, but that is simply because you have a higher standard of liberal arts introductory courses than the US does.

That sounds less like a problem of liberal arts but rather a lack of standards or education in the US system. If US students need such courses because its high schools suck that much then I would agree that those introductory courses may well be done at a community level. When I am talking about introductory courses I mean "this is the basic level of knowledge we require for you to seriously start studying in the second semester", aka "basic facts about history, how to research/write/review/publish papers etc" not "here are remedial math classes".

But I don't get what this has to do with the suggestion of dumping the entire liberal arts into community colleges.