figmentPez
Staff member
It shouldn't matter, but you know damn well it does matter, precisely because she's a woman, and a democrat. People will care about it, even though they don't care about Trump doing much much worse.
Dave
Staff member
I'm actually torn when it comes to the notion of free college. On the one hand, it does lead to a more intelligent and educated populace. On the other, it severely devalues the education that is received. Now, if they were saying state schools are free and you can get a two year education like an associates or even a trade school license but that to continue on would cost, I'd be all for it.
Right now in the workplace, a Master's degree gets you the jobs that a Bachelor's degree used to. And more and more entry level jobs are requiring bachelor's degrees, which is just insane.
Right now in the workplace, a Master's degree gets you the jobs that a Bachelor's degree used to. And more and more entry level jobs are requiring bachelor's degrees, which is just insane.
Is your position really "People won't value it unless they have to pay for it, so we should keep making people become slaves to debt for a chance at a livelihood"?
Because that's depressing as hell.
Dave
Staff member
No, it's more: "People should be able to see whether or not they are cut out for college without going into massive debt or learn a trade for free."
There's a reason that college grads are (normally) sought after. Giving everyone an education for free would completely devalue the education given. And you can say, "Well, we'd then have to go by GPA or something." but grade inflation is a real thing as most universities are hyper aware of the grades their students receive and use this as a marketing ploy.
There is no good answer for this. Free is bad. I would love to see an increase in grants to lower income people.
But let me put this another way. If college were free at all levels, why would you ever hire a person with an Associates degree? Or even a Bachelor's degree?
Sorry, man. but at a certain level it HAS to hold value or none of it does.
edit: By the way, I'm writing this as someone who holds MASSIVE student loan debt. Huge. I'm never going to get social security or be able to retire. I fully understand the slave to debt thing because that's me!!
College education is already devalued, because it's expected now. It is no longer a bonus on top of your qualifications, it is literally the qualification you need.
That said, I think state schools should be free, but that doesn't mean private colleges can't still exist.
As someone with a bachelor's degree with a hundred thousand in debt, I think the idea that college degrees would be devalued is asinine. They already have less value because unless you got a bachelor's in business or engineering, no company is going to care about it. They care more about work experience.
I would rather free college become an expected part of working a job then have kids continue to flounder in debt so my bachelor's looks a little nicer (and still barely gets me a job, since it's a bachelor of arts.)
I would rather free college become an expected part of working a job then have kids continue to flounder in debt so my bachelor's looks a little nicer (and still barely gets me a job, since it's a bachelor of arts.)
This is part of it; degrees that produce profit instead of value are over-valued because our system cares more about making money than outputting useful product.
Case in point: We told people that getting philosophy degrees was a ticket to the streets, and now our kids are getting their philosphy from overweight nazis and con-artists the tell them it's not their fault that no one will touch them. Maybe we shoulda spent more money on producing philosophers.
GasBandit
Staff member
Or maybe instead of creating environments specifically made to bolster (often undeserved) self esteem, we should have spent more time teaching people that they can feel good about themselves when they do something good.
Or maybe, instead of trying to toddlerproof the world into safe spaces, we should have taught people to engage with and deal with opposition and things beyond their comfort, instead of chasing everybody into hugboxes, echo chambers, and insulated circle jerks of enforced consensus.
I'll say the same thing to you as I did to another buddy who despaired about his future when he saw how many people were taking the same classes..."Do you think all of these people are actually going to make it all the way to graduation?"
People are still going to drop out long before they hit the higher levels, even when it's free. They're just not going to get ground through the debt mill afterwards.
At its worst, college (higher education in general, really) still serves as a sort of "pay to trial multiple fields for a while, see if they're things you actually like, then drop the ones you can't stand" before you exit the hallowed halls and are forced to muddle through the world of unpaid internships.
You really get out of college what you put into it. The people who learn how to take advantage of what academia offers were probably going to succeed in life anyways just because of that attitude. The dude who coasts through on daddy's money was probably going to coast through life on daddy's money anyway, college or no.
--Patrick
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Jesus fuck America... this is why everyone thinks you're dumb.
Sorry Dave, but you really drank the flavor-aid on this one.
It's not like free college education is some theoretical thing that hasn't been tried and works quite well in plenty of Eurostani member states...
Yeah, and they feel the need to market and attract more students because...
Yes, that's why i always get my surgery from the local butcher...
GasBandit
Staff member
"Apples are a scam." "Our oranges are just fine, maybe you should make your apples like our oranges."
Dave is right in that a bachelor's (4 year) degree has been devalued (this has nothing to do with doctors). A few generations of parents telling children "you gotta go to college and get a 4 year degree or you'll never make any money" has resulted in a glut of bachelors of X and all our manufacturing labor being outsourced overseas, and our domestic unskilled labor going to first gen immigrants of varying degrees of legal status. Thus we have millenials (and now, Gen Zs) going to school, graduating with a Bachelor's of $80k-in-debt, and moving back in with their parents because they can't find a job because the Boomers aren't retiring, our employment never actually recovered from the 08 crash (they just changed how they did the math so that the numbers looked good), and everybody desperate for work has a Bachelor's degree . And it's not just the joke degrees anymore (remember when we used to chuckle about colleges offering courses in underwater basket weaving?), it's everybody. Employers are still keeping all the hatches battened down from 10 years ago, and safe means keeping those tried-and-tested 60 year olds on the payroll instead of taking a risk and paying to train new college graduates to replace them, and definitely not growing the business because we took so long recovering from the last recession that we're already overdue for the next recession cycle to begin. And the risk-averse climate might actually mean that someone with no degree might actually be a more enticing hire (provided they have experience, which everybody has to have or you don't even get an interview) because they're less of a "risk" because their pay expectations are lower.
The American job market and the European job market are completely different animals, and the structure of the two Academic spheres seem similarly dissimilar. So, yes, what you just said is like telling someone holding a handsaw "I don't understand why you don't just hit the nail with your tool like I am" as you hammer nails.
figmentPez
Staff member
Does Europe have the same problem as America does with it's attitude towards education and intelligence? My experience in America is that we like the benefits of science, but we don't like actual science. The average American likes the idea of having smart, educated people, but they don't really want them around. Charisma is valued over intelligence. A large portion of the population wants to send kids off to college, and have them come back unchanged except for having a certificate that says they deserve a better paying job. I think there are a lot of college students that go through school with that goal in mind, too.
This is a systemic problem with the American education system. We just want the symbols of learning, not the actual learning itself. There's some bizarre mix of being afraid of intelligence (and fear of being wrong/stupid/etc), combined with thinking that most people can't be taught, throw in a heavy dose of "you have to cheat the system to get anywhere in life", more than a little "colleges are liberal brainwashing", some "only social outcasts care about <insert academic subject here>", and a political system that actively relies on trying to get the most predictable people (aka, the ones that think the least) to be the only ones who consistently go to the pools.
I'm struggling to come up with the ideal analogy, but it's kinda like bullshit bullet points on tech products. Just having a digital camera on a device isn't a selling feature anymore. Hell, having a 10+ megapixel digital camera doesn't mean shit anymore, because there are so many terrible cameras with high pixel counts. But it's actually worse than that, because putting digital camera on a cordless drill, just to have one more bullet point, doesn't benefit anyone. Trying to put everyone through the existing college system is like slapping a digital camera on every electronic product, and expecting that to increase profits for the entire industry.
This is a systemic problem with the American education system. We just want the symbols of learning, not the actual learning itself. There's some bizarre mix of being afraid of intelligence (and fear of being wrong/stupid/etc), combined with thinking that most people can't be taught, throw in a heavy dose of "you have to cheat the system to get anywhere in life", more than a little "colleges are liberal brainwashing", some "only social outcasts care about <insert academic subject here>", and a political system that actively relies on trying to get the most predictable people (aka, the ones that think the least) to be the only ones who consistently go to the pools.
I'm struggling to come up with the ideal analogy, but it's kinda like bullshit bullet points on tech products. Just having a digital camera on a device isn't a selling feature anymore. Hell, having a 10+ megapixel digital camera doesn't mean shit anymore, because there are so many terrible cameras with high pixel counts. But it's actually worse than that, because putting digital camera on a cordless drill, just to have one more bullet point, doesn't benefit anyone. Trying to put everyone through the existing college system is like slapping a digital camera on every electronic product, and expecting that to increase profits for the entire industry.
I saw a quote awhile back that made me think about how we view intelligence in America. It went something like "In America, intelligence is the ability to come up with an answer quickly, not thoughtfully, because to answer thoughtfully is force others to reexamine their views and that is something most Americans are unwilling to do." And thoughtful/critical thinking isn't something we really teach in America anymore, at least until the college level. We just teach to the test. We teach people that there is only one answer to a problem, that the answer is easy to grasp, and that trying to go beyond that answer is pointless because it won't get you anything. That there is no point in rocking the boat, because doing that just gets you in trouble. It doesn't help that the OTHER big institution in people's lives (Religion) demands the same kind of thinking. It's not surprising no one wants to trust the views of college grads; it's easier to believe it's brainwashing instead of critical thinking.
That kind of thinking is what gets you people thinking they don't need doctors or scientists or just experts in general; they've been taught that THEY can easily grasp everything they need to know in their lives, so anyone telling them something else must be trying to fool them. They aren't equipped to do their own research, even though there are tools available for them to do it. If someone tells them something, it has never been easier to find out if that is true! Even with every algorithm against you, it's possible to find all the academic research you want. You just have to want to FIND the truth, and no one does.
18 years ago, you mean. The business world as a whole retreated into its shell after 9/11 and, except for outliers, has refused to trust anyone (or anything) new since.
Our current system of public schooling is designed to supply labor for manufacturing. High schools are designed to turn out workers smart enough to understand what they're being told to do, but conditioned to look to people in authority for their direction. An emphasis is put on herd/team mentality and the cultivation of a desire to belong (Sports!). Anyone who is an independent thinker either drops out early or else puts up with it until they can finally make it to a self-directed education in college. But now this is coming back to bite the country in the ass because all the people born in the 50's who were trained up with us/them our team/your team are the ones in positions of power, and when they're not dutifully following the directions of someone else who did go to college, they're busy working to ensure that at least "the other team" can't win.
So yes, the world is run by the charismatic rather than the academic, because they're the ones who draw the biggest following/raise the biggest armies, and because we've been training the majority for over half a century now to follow anyone with a confident enough heading without questioning why they're going that direction.
--Patrick
TIL, IN AMERICA, doctors don't count as going to college...
And yet you guys seem to have no problem H1B1-ing people with "our orange"...
Also, look up the changes in retirement ages in Europe if you really think you're fucking special because you're making your old people work more...
Well, i couldn't be possibly telling someone with a handsaw in their hands to switch to a hammer, like non-idiots, when they want to hit a nail...
Oh right, i always forget that you worship capitalism, and yet delude yourself that it isn't the most capitalist thing ever to go where you can pay workers the least amount of money, and no amount of uneducated populous will make wages in the US be able to compete with places where you can live off 1$/day...
Hell, even within the US, how many citizens would be willing to live dozens in a house and work 12h in the sun like the illegals are so that your farms can operate as they currently are?
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You can blame the Prussians for that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_education_system#United_States
(For Gas: oh, look, clearly the american system can't be compared to the european one, since it's based on... oh, wait...)
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GasBandit
Staff member
No, it doesn't. It's like saying that getting a college degree doesn't count as going to kindergarten.
Man, it's been a while, so I'd forgotten the sheer willful ignorance you insist on bringing to bear on every conversation... for example...
I didn't say we're MAKING them work more, they WANT to work more, and employers are happy to keep them. Everybody under 40 desperately wants them to retire ASAP (in fact some even jokingly want more than that).
I think by "want" you mean "literally can't afford not to."
GasBandit
Staff member
Oh, the boomers can afford to retire, but why would they? They're raking it in, and the effort is low.
It's the mid-gen-Xers and later that probably won't be able to retire.
Ehh... it's a mix of both? On the one hand, many Boomers don't really have any real kind of retirement savings (ether because they never started, lost it to the crash, or invested in a property they can't unload now) but on the other, Boomers have a psychological fixation on their job as their primary identity. A lot of Boomers don't want to leave their jobs because their jobs are all they have, identity wise. This is a very American problem and not one that affects Gen-X or Millenials (we all grew up knowing our employers didn't give a fuck about us so we didn't get attached), but it is causing issues.
It certainly helps Boomers that they possess a lot of the management power at companies, which allows them to insulate themselves away from economic realities until it's time for them leave.
It certainly helps Boomers that they possess a lot of the management power at companies, which allows them to insulate themselves away from economic realities until it's time for them leave.
Well then, school my willfully ignorant ass... what do doctors get in the US that isn't "a ripoff and a racket, at any price." ?
Jeez, no wonder Trumpists are so good at "but he ahtually meant...", seems like that's a well practised skill over there.
The people passing retirement laws are also old... and i know plenty who work on contact after retirement age because the job is more bout influence then work... guess i could make the argument that they also want to or something like that...
But guess what, that doesn't actually change anything about the idea that old people are holding on to jobs and keeping them from young people, and them doing it on purpose or being forced to is pretty immaterial.
Then again acknowledging that would require you to rethink your argument, and we all know you don't do that in public...
figmentPez
Staff member
Arguably, they don't get anything that isn't a ripoff and a racket. The biggest problem is underpaid, overscheduled internships, which are basically a form of hazing combined with indentured servitude. A lot of people argue that the demands on medical students, and recent graduates, are unhealthy and dangerous, both for the future doctor and for patients. The medical education system in the US is broken, and needs as much of an overhaul as any other part of our malfunctioning schools. Even though doctors do end up trained, the costs they pay, both monetarily and otherwise, are unnecessarily high for the results.
Only if he's specializing.
Most new doctors are going into specialties because you can't make money as a general practitioner or pediatrician anymore. Lots of orthopedists, dentists, ENTs, and such... general practitioners still in the business are demanding people to pay monthly fees to retain services or outsourcing all their work to RNs. The biggest change is people going into nursing; you can potentially make more money as a nurse than a doctor right now due to demand and low average cost to become an RN.
Meh.. I'd say it was still on topic. These are all concerns of Democratic voters at any rate.
I almost expect Bernie and Warren to eventually go all Mondale just to make sure they get the votes of both groups of supporters.
--Patrick
Pro Tip: i was waiting for an answer from Gas "Our healthcare is great because we pay our doctors more then anyone etc" Bandit...
But if we're talking about economics alone, then having any degree makes you more money (which is easily google-able). You just need even more to pay off your debt.
So no, it's not college itself, but your tuition system that is a scam... but again, he's made it clear that he agrees with Dave that you can't go free higher education... so...