Article: Students increasingly treat college as a transaction

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here. These responses are pretty discouraging. I guess I'm an idealist and dream that college can be a place of exploration, critical thinking, lively peer discussions, debating ideas, and more.

I agree that there have always been a decent share of poor teachers at the college level and when I taught in a college setting was not a fan of the grade grubbing. And it's true that costs and competition are unreasonable. While the points in the article are valid, I think this is also a result of the stratification of our society into the haves and have-nots.

My kid wants a big school, but I'm trying to encourage them to still consider smaller ones where class sizes are better and you're more likely to know and talk to your professors and fellow students in class.

There's been a whole paradigm shift about college in the past 30 years. Your thinking is like what college was 70+ years ago when elites got a liberal arts degree and was able to get a good job with just such a degree because they didn't have competition from foreigners, minorities and women.

That ship has sailed a long time ago.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here. These responses are pretty discouraging. I guess I'm an idealist and dream that college can be a place of exploration, critical thinking, lively peer discussions, debating ideas, and more.

I agree that there have always been a decent share of poor teachers at the college level and when I taught in a college setting was not a fan of the grade grubbing. And it's true that costs and competition are unreasonable. While the points in the article are valid, I think this is also a result of the stratification of our society into the haves and have-nots.

My kid wants a big school, but I'm trying to encourage them to still consider smaller ones where class sizes are better and you're more likely to know and talk to your professors and fellow students in class.

We also have internet for exploration, critical thinking, lively peer discussions, debating ideas, and more FOR FREE not costing $200K - $300K

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. These responses are pretty discouraging. I guess I'm an idealist and dream that college can be a place of exploration, critical thinking, lively peer discussions, debating ideas, and more.

I agree that there have always been a decent share of poor teachers at the college level and when I taught in a college setting was not a fan of the grade grubbing. And it's true that costs and competition are unreasonable. While the points in the article are valid, I think this is also a result of the stratification of our society into the haves and have-nots.

My kid wants a big school, but I'm trying to encourage them to still consider smaller ones where class sizes are better and you're more likely to know and talk to your professors and fellow students in class.

We also have internet for exploration, critical thinking, lively peer discussions, debating ideas, and more FOR FREE not costing $200K - $300K

DP. Right. The internet is definitely where you can find all of this and more.

[Anonymous]

The answer is really simple: stop charging $90k for a degree. No one should take college lightly if it the 4 year costs is competing with buying a home. I would’ve never attended a liberal arts college if it wasn’t cheap for my family-otherwise I would’ve done accounting and would’ve had it a lot easier career wise

[Anonymous]

Most of these posts donot resonate at all with my kids’ experiences at two different ivies and William&Mary. The professors show up, care, are almost all good at teaching. Classes are challenging, no canned tests or homework. They invite students into their research all the time. Most classes are small, even in stem. Intro classes often push the kids way out of their comfort zone with extremely challenging psets(thats the ivy stem kid, but all have had challenging coursework). The top schools have top teaching and engaged students who are there to learn and want to learn. It is not much different at all than when I attended a different ivy. Premeds grade grubbed then too, but the vast majority of us were there to learn and loved the challenge. All 3 of mine have had a similar experience (so far—one just started)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m not surprised that more students are viewing higher education as vocational training, due to the high cost of a diploma. Kids are feeling pressured to major in lucrative fields vs ones that fit their interests or personality.

Many jobs of the future probably haven’t even been invented yet, so in my opinion, a liberal arts education at the undergraduate level is valuable in teaching students how to learn and adapt. I recognize that my view is in the minority now.

I'm with you that liberal arts is definitely the best way to educate a well-rounded and adaptable human, but I rather doubt the whole jobs of the future line. Haven't we been hearing that for decades now? And just about the only "job of the future" that's showed up is social media influencer or manager (ugh). In fact many future proof jobs are the jobs that have been around for literally millenia. Food still needs to be grown. Animals still need to be raised. Things like that.

Cybersecurity, data analytics (big data), web developers, online commerce related jobs, mobile app development, streaming media technologies, online privacy related tech/jobs.

There are a lot of new jobs

Most of those are just programming. A lot fewer desktop developers now compared to mobile and web, but still really the same thing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:colleges treat students as a transaction so .. this seems totally reasonable.

On the money. This felt like the case at my SLAC, which is mentioned from time to time here. Tons of funding going in, tuition near $90k per year, many anonymous donations, yet the dining hall food is inedible, the student housing is beyond dated, and student life is constantly monitored to protect the school from liability. Case in point: during COVID, students were locked down during big prospective student tour weeks to make sure that they could bring in a good class for the next year while paying no mind to the kids whose tuition was already paid for. It's all about money, and if they can save some, they will even at the expense of student life and campus culture. Administrators treat their roles as stepping stones to get to a cushier job somewhere more desirable.

The professors who have been around long enough were/are by and large pretty good, but the homogeneity of their ultra-progressive lean to the material wasn't the best either. Conservative (not even MAGA conservative, centrist conservative) students were often lambasted for sharing their personal views in most humanities/history/poli sci classes. Before you call me a Trumper, I voted early for Harris already and Biden in 2020, but it's just abnormal that anyone to the right of Progressive doesn't have much of a say. Hard to prepare students to have real-world conversations when you are taught that shaming others' views is a solution. My school's version of a career development program could also have been much more helpful. They did not really help make actual connections with alumni and basically just said to get on LinkedIn and join the school's group of alumni on there. I found that to be pretty pathetic.

I don't think the problem is a lack of capable faculty (in most cases). I just think that schools don't really care much about the college experience and what will become of their students once they're no longer paying tuition (other than hoping that they will donate).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:colleges treat students as a transaction so .. this seems totally reasonable.

On the money. This felt like the case at my SLAC, which is mentioned from time to time here. Tons of funding going in, tuition near $90k per year, many anonymous donations, yet the dining hall food is inedible, the student housing is beyond dated, and student life is constantly monitored to protect the school from liability. Case in point: during COVID, students were locked down during big prospective student tour weeks to make sure that they could bring in a good class for the next year while paying no mind to the kids whose tuition was already paid for. It's all about money, and if they can save some, they will even at the expense of student life and campus culture. Administrators treat their roles as stepping stones to get to a cushier job somewhere more desirable.

The professors who have been around long enough were/are by and large pretty good, but the homogeneity of their ultra-progressive lean to the material wasn't the best either. Conservative (not even MAGA conservative, centrist conservative) students were often lambasted for sharing their personal views in most humanities/history/poli sci classes. Before you call me a Trumper, I voted early for Harris already and Biden in 2020, but it's just abnormal that anyone to the right of Progressive doesn't have much of a say. Hard to prepare students to have real-world conversations when you are taught that shaming others' views is a solution. My school's version of a career development program could also have been much more helpful. They did not really help make actual connections with alumni and basically just said to get on LinkedIn and join the school's group of alumni on there. I found that to be pretty pathetic.

I don't think the problem is a lack of capable faculty (in most cases). I just think that schools don't really care much about the college experience and what will become of their students once they're no longer paying tuition (other than hoping that they will donate).

+ 1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m not surprised that more students are viewing higher education as vocational training, due to the high cost of a diploma. Kids are feeling pressured to major in lucrative fields vs ones that fit their interests or personality.

Many jobs of the future probably haven’t even been invented yet, so in my opinion, a liberal arts education at the undergraduate level is valuable in teaching students how to learn and adapt. I recognize that my view is in the minority now.

I'm with you that liberal arts is definitely the best way to educate a well-rounded and adaptable human, but I rather doubt the whole jobs of the future line. Haven't we been hearing that for decades now? And just about the only "job of the future" that's showed up is social media influencer or manager (ugh). In fact many future proof jobs are the jobs that have been around for literally millenia. Food still needs to be grown. Animals still need to be raised. Things like that.

Cybersecurity, data analytics (big data), web developers, online commerce related jobs, mobile app development, streaming media technologies, online privacy related tech/jobs.

There are a lot of new jobs

Most of those are just programming. A lot fewer desktop developers now compared to mobile and web, but still really the same thing.

You think English msjor is spelling and grammar.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here. These responses are pretty discouraging. I guess I'm an idealist and dream that college can be a place of exploration, critical thinking, lively peer discussions, debating ideas, and more.

I agree that there have always been a decent share of poor teachers at the college level and when I taught in a college setting was not a fan of the grade grubbing. And it's true that costs and competition are unreasonable. While the points in the article are valid, I think this is also a result of the stratification of our society into the haves and have-nots.

My kid wants a big school, but I'm trying to encourage them to still consider smaller ones where class sizes are better and you're more likely to know and talk to your professors and fellow students in class.

NP. I agree that the thread is discouraging. It’s not that people aren’t making great points. Yes, there’s plenty to be cynical about: The cost of higher education has far outpaced earnings. As a nation we’ve hollowed out the middle class, adding a mind-boggling pressure on everything. Schools themselves are playing marketing games, even as they’re charging too much (and part of societal stratification!). All of that.

And yet I can’t shake a nagging feeling that the ones who are most hurt by treating education as transactional are the students themselves.

Anything I could say here about the value and power of a broad education over the course of a lifetime will seem twee and idealistic to the cynics. I don’t imagine I’ll convince anyone, so I won’t try. But I do know how much my own education has meant to me, in ways that both mattered to my career and didn’t…and I also know how hard it has been to distinguish between the two. Sometimes things that seemed impractical weren’t. Often, things that seemed practical didn’t turn out to have much utility at all.

So here I am, trying to talk to my kids about both the realities of this world and the importance of letting themselves be absolutely lit on fire by what they’re learning.

[Anonymous]

Finally, the first post on DCUM I've seen where everyone agrees on something....the cost of education in this country is way too expensive!!!

[Anonymous]

When students told me that they were at college for the diploma, not the education, I realized I didn't want to be teaching anymore. Didn't read the article but the information technology revolution ruined the classroom. The first thing to happen was students expecting to be entertained in class, not educated. I just couldn't compete with social media.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Back when people read philosophy in college and the like, the assumption was that employers hired bright people and then trained them. The real issue today isn’t universities but employers who no longer provide any training. This puts us in the situation where either your university now teaches project management and data analysis or the student pays for boot camps and the like later on their own. The fault is really the employers who don’t want a broadly educated workforce. They just want serfs

NP. I actually think skills like project management and data analysis can be effectively taught alongside the philosophical ponderings and classes taken for pure intellectual pleasure. And that universities are well-placed to deliver a curriculum that integrates between clearly-identifiable skills (certifications, etc.) and less directly-provable general thinking, insight development, and communication skills.

Perhaps the way we bucket disciplines needs to change.

i agree that college has become too expensive to allow it to cling so fiercely to its medieval origins as an institution for preparing society's most literate (and rich) men for only a handful of professions.

Employers treat employees like serfs when they are a commodity...no special skills, no above-average thinking, little direct impact on innovation, productivity, or profit. It's not morally right, but the mere fact of employment is no guarantee of any higher goals on either side. I think it's more likely that universities can bend to provide more useful and intellectually-satisfying learning experiences vs. employers become more charitable about financing training than they have been lately.

Agree with all of this especially the "bucketing". Make requirements part liberal arts/critical thinking, part people & presentations, part technical SME.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Even when I went to college in the 80's professors were held to zero standards. They cared more about research than teaching. They were terrible at teaching. My tuition literally was just being used to subsidize their research which is mostly garbage and advances nothing.

I wanted to go to college and learn from a teacher. But I didn't. I taught myself or hired tutors.

I would rather learn from a teacher than a professor and I wish there were colleges with the sole purpose of teaching the students.

The current college model is trash.

90s grad and this was my experience too. Outside of a couple of gem professors (typically adjuncts at that) I essentially taught myself the material. Now that tuition is 4x the cost it was then, is it any surprise students expect more bang for their buck?

Me too and I went to a T10 that people on dcum drool over. I came out jaded. Did ok career wise but feel I really just learned how to teach myself. Perhaps that is valuable after all.

[Anonymous]

Yes we live in a capitalist society. Everything will be viewed as transactional. Name something in our society that isn’t based on a consumer model.