College enrollments drop 6.5%,lowest in 50 years.

We defiantly need to address the rising unsustainable levels of college tuition.
Personally I like no cost community college — my very red state has it and it is doing well.

An uneducated populace is an easily manipulated one.

 

Should read....."an indoctrinated populace is an easily manipulated one' CAUSE THAT IS WHAT OUR pUBLIC EDUCATION SYSTEM does!

 

The Student Loan system makes it difficult to justify going to college. It's designed to strap graduates with life time debt. Kids have figured that out and are calling bullshit on that one.

We used to invest in our youth with work-study and Pell grants, student loans were a small piece of the puzzle.

But the bankster's got greedy and lobbied to do away with those programs so students would be force into greater debt. Well they've caught on and are saying no thanks.

Our nation will pay the price for this lack of foresight. We are going unprepared into an ever more competitive world.

 

Likely something else. Many colleges didn't have in person classes during the pandemic. That makes them little more than webinars. You don't need to pay tuition for that.

People going to college that probably shouldn't have been were made aware of it. It's okay we need more truck drivers anyway.

 

It actually seems to be from the students and alumni.

There seems to be a plethora of under employed graduates and undergraduates.

 

In some cases a college degree is a detriment. I've come across a few employers that don't want employees to have BA degrees because they think they are above doing work.

 

Something needs to change. Our system of education doesn't give benefits to justify the cost. We need more practical trade school kind of things.

 

Your post is… ironic

 

Typical uninformed B$.

I teach and do research at a R1 institution. My teaching workload for the same course has increased by 50% since the start of the pandemic, all for the same pay. Why?
1)In the past, teaching was in person only. Now, everything is in person, but classes are also streamed live at the same time and later video is uploaded to the web. Why? Students who don't feel well are encouraged to not come to class, but they can't be punished for staying in their dorm, so the classroom has to come to them. Now, who is responsible for the day to day tech support questions? You guessed it, the faculty member teaching the class.
2) Because a lot of students spend more time online learning, the amount of assessment has increased, to keep the students on track and prevent them from slacking off. More tests means more work for the professor.
3) Students these days need A LOT more hand holding than before the pandemic. That means: More office hours, more performance reports, more e-mail asking "how am I doing in the class?". If you have a large class of 100+ students, all this adds up.
4) At the college level, costs have gone through the roof: Weekly covid testing for 1000s of students, increased academic services, new administrators who handle the in-person vs. online student assignments etc.

I guess, however, in your view, all these additional services should be free, because the universities rip off students for charging them tuition during the pandemic. Of course, your view is understandable when it comes from the perspective that university education is bad because it amounts to little more than left wing indoctrination. BTW: I teach chemistry.

 

typical emotional response

Well at least you teach a real thing.

 

Oh dear! Less worthless degree holders who can't pour urine out of a boot wandering around.....I shall go cry now.

 

The left thinks education ends conservativism. We don't realize working in the private sector with the college degree ends leftism.

 

Shopping for designer masks?

 

When the economy is failing, you might not be wishing to sell your freedom to a bank to be able to attend college and get dubious knowledge/certificates.

 

There would be a wider debate about what is education ? What make an educated mind ?

Both Shopenhauer and Montaigne how some people became just parrots, spitting back some formulas without knowing it. There is the notion in many cultures of "educated idiots", people who might got some degrees. Are people who go in college always more "educated". There is people who might go into a college, and never open a book anymore once they got their precious degree. They never developed curiosity, thirst for learning, not they needed just something to justificate their arrogance.
What's the role of college ? The most pragmatic one is just to prepare people for working life, at the cost of great endebtment. Selling yourself to a bank is no light decision. Because in a pragmatic manner, getting a debt is a form of servitude (I won't use the term of slavery for obvious reasons).

So yes, there might be big philosophical/political reasons, but the most pragmatic reason would just a smart choice : don't get heavy debts when you're not sure to be able to pay them.

 

I've had to do the exact same thing with my courses. I've held them live and virtual simultaneously and you are greatly exaggerating the increased workload. It's just not that big of a deal. I also have to hand grade everything (which I've always done) and don't have the luxury of scantron or giving tests online where they're automatically graded like most classes. The tech support is such a minimal thing because once students get used to it there's no issue.

Also, if your college is choosing to test students, then yea, they should foot the bill because that certainly isn't necessary.

And I'm also not buying some of your 'extra work' stuff:
1. Extra office hours: Why? Why are you not keeping in touch with your students electronically? Mine can message me like a text any time of day through an app. They gladly choose this instead of physically showing up to my office. Students largely don't do this any more even pre-covid. And no it's not what I teach, I teach Math and no subject receives more questions from students than math.
2. More performance reports: I have no idea what you could possibly be required to do that's come about because of covid. Maybe your college is insane and you need to look elsewhere for a better place to work.
3. More emails asking how they're doing: I don't buy this for a second. I don't know a college that hasn't required grades to be posted online for the last decade. Covid didn't change that. My students always know their grade at all times.

College professor is a very easy job, it's one of the reason why I chose it. I worked incredibly hard to get my degrees and this job is the payoff. Great schedule and lots of time off. Any professor telling you they work hard is either lying or they're doing tons of research which is their own choosing. Yes, some colleges put undo pressure on professors to do research and get grants, but if that's too much, they can leave. For the most part though, this just isn't a hard job.

 

Actually, it's the other way around. It's "it" has near total control over the left. Which is how it should be. Unlike the right that has decided to fight science, history and... facts.

This has been this way throughout all history. It was the conservative right that has fought (and lost) against Gravitational Theory, Evolutionary Theory, the dangers of smoking, of asbestos, against HIV, against AGW, ... Now established facts, but once heavily opposed even by serious thinkers on the right (and still opposed by not-so-serious thinkers on the extreme right)

But now it's not just established facts, that they fight. It's education itself. It has become just another area that the right has politicized. Good thing is that, every time they pick one of these fights, they have ultimately lost. So my money is on education finally overcoming the extreme-right by KO.

And it doesn't have to be this way. Facts don't have a political bias. Only right-wing denialism does.

Clearly, for technical jobs (in just about any field), experience is more valuable than a degree for most businesses. But obtaining a degree from a truly demanding university (not from those religious pseudo-universities some billionaires on the right have created, or any of those title-printing businesses) is a good indicator of how far up they will eventually go as innovators in more demanding fields.

But how the degree prepares people is not what is important here. What is important is that a GOOD university teaches students to think for themselves. Regardless of what their field of study is. And that is what the right fears most.

 

The point is if they aren't attending college and they aren't entering the workforce, what are they doing? Just sitting home loafing???

 

Our university now requests that professors put in performance reports for students into an electronic system twice a year, once before the drop deadline, and the second before the withdraw deadline. These reports are used by advisors to help students who are in trouble to get back on track. With the mental health issues that are on the rise due to the pandemic, the number of students who require these services continues to increase. For a class of 100, this is a big time sink.

Obviously, I could put a lot less time into my class, if I wanted to. I realize that there are faculty members who don't take their job seriously, abusing the tenure system. I am not one of them, and I am trying to do the best to give my students a good learning experience. The numbers of students in my lab and classes who are admitted to medical school or graduate school indicate to me that the effort is worth it.

As to research, I don't know of any place other than undergraduate institutions where the loss of grants is not met with consequences. So, no, research is not my own choosing, I am forced to do it by the administration, unless I want them to make my life miserable if I stop applying for funding.

Note in edit: The reason why I replied to the other poster was because he claimed that online courses are like webinars, and that students shouldn't pay tuition for them. Do you agree with this? Would you still expect to get paid for your lectures if everything went online and students wouldn't pay tuition anymore?

 

Yep! And education is their imaginary enemy.

 

I don't know who thinks that. But there is a definite fact: populations where there is less access to higher education are, on average, less educated.

 

I see on todays news where the U.K. is now offering a SKILLS VISA to immigrants, to try to attract talented new residents who meet their criteria.

 

The point is that, if they are educated, they are much less likely to fall for QAnon conspiracy theories, or white supremacist crap, or anti-science denialism... If they are not good enough at what they studied, the don't get a job. But at least they can make something out of their lives instead of trying to overthrow an election or going on Facebook to repeat Trump-style lies. And this terrifies extremists on the right.

 

Lots of people think that. Why do you think only college/university education is the only things mentioned in studies on education, K-12 + college? Why do you think that political polls only reference college/university education?

Tell me, why did you chop up my post? It wasn't that big. Is there a particular reason that you didn't want to include trade schools?

 

I would be curious to know if trade schools have faculty trained in the technology of EV's??