Is College a Rip Off? - John Stossel & Physics Majors

[Shaun_W]

One of the most important things that you learn at MIT was that prestige is total nonsense.

I always thought that prestige was a large factor in certain types of jobs in determining whether the recruiter would put your CV in the "to interview" pile rather than file 13. Would go a long way in explaining why certain types of jobs in certain industries are comprised almost exclusively from graduates from a select few universities, when some of these universities can even be hundreds of miles away.

 

[twofish-quant]

I always thought that prestige was a large factor in certain types of jobs in determining whether the recruiter would put your CV in the "to interview" pile rather than file 13.

It's not (at least in most finance companies).

Once you get to the point where the recruiter *reads* your CV, you've already won half the battle. At that point prestige becomes unimportant, and once you get to the first phone screen, it's totally irrelevant.

However, its true that recruiters will focus recruitment on some schools, but that's not because of "prestige." It's like Toys R'Us or Best Buy. If you want to buy a TV set, you head over to the local Best Buy, where someone will sell it to you. It's not that Best Buy is "prestigious" but because the people at Best Buy have done their marketing, and you know what you can get decent TV's there, and having one stop to do your shopping, makes it pretty convenient for you.

You can think of universities as "Brains R' US." The career services department of a university is something of a marketing department, and they go around to companies trying to convince HR to have job fairs at their university. If you can get your resume into the stack of resumes that the recruiter looks out, he really isn't going to care that much what school you went to.

It's just that this nice career services rep from X University just handed him a big stack of great resumes from X University, and if you didn't go to X University, career services isn't going to put your resume in the stack.

Would go a long way in explaining why certain types of jobs in certain industries are comprised almost exclusively from graduates from a select few universities, when some of these universities can even be hundreds of miles away.

Except that's not the real reason. One reason universities like to talk about "prestige" is that it benefits them. Harvard wants to make you think that if you don't go to Harvard, you are dead meat. Now it turns out that once you understand the system, you can figure out how to play it even if you didn't go to Harvard, but Harvard isn't going to give you that information.

Also networking helps a lot. If company X hires a person from school Y, then that person is going to be in a position to tell everyone else from school Y how to get a job in company X.

 

[gravenewworld]

Now that depends. 10 years after you graduate, heck even after 5 years, employers don't even really care anymore where you graduate from, only your work experience. It makes absolutely no sense to take more than $15-20k total for 4 years of college in loans. Anything more, and you should just walk away, no matter who's name is on the potential degree you would be walking away from. Graduating from a "prestigious" institution matters much more with a graduate degree, but no one should ever pay for a graduate degree outside of JD or MD. Is college a rip off? It all depends on how much debt you have to walk away with.

 

[mathwonk]

College changed my life. I came out of a small high school in the south and went to harvard. It was quite a struggle but exposed me to people from all over the world and many much more sophisticated and more well educated than me. I had professors who were world experts in their fields and their lectures gave me a view of the level one could aspire to. I seldom got to know them however.

then I went to grad school at Brandeis and was taught by people who were not only experts but actually expected us to understand, not just listen to them, and it raised the bar further again. The smaller classes enabled us to interact more with these experts. I got a masters degree there.

then at Utah I found teachers who showed me how to go beyond the lectures and books to do my own original work, and I got my PhD there by finally entering the world of original research, not just solving problems books said were solvable but tackling ones that were still unknown. The key here was learning to see what should be true and have faith in ones own intuition.

After a few years as a junior faculty member I visited harvard again as a postdoc and was privileged to listen to and ask questions of some of the best researchers in the world. what a gift!

I don't feel ripped off. By the way, if you are a good student the tuition is often paid by someone else, in the form of scholarships. But weak students, or those who do not realize their own value, do tend to pay their own way, and handsomely. So wise up and ask for support, if you can make the case.

 

[Fizex]

• It's a rip-off when you have to buy a $200 brand new textbook written by professors at your own university (slightly revised Xth edition) and then only use the first 4 chapter's problem sets.
  
• It's a rip-off when you pay transportation fees for the bus, fees for the gym, fees for the tech labs, when you walk around campus, run outside for exercise, and use your own computer.
  
• It's a rip-off when your professors recite the textbook's content instead of giving you insight and different perspective.

But it's still worth the investment.

Can you think of any more rip-offs?

 

[elfboy]

You don't need college to make money, and in fact it's probably a ripoff when you consider the loans will live with you for the rest of your life. Unless you're going to an ivy league or MIT, caltech it's not worth it.
I took a 3 month break from math to make $220K with facebook and i still didn't finish college (i'm 25)and still earn $2000-4000/day with facebook

 

[zketrouble]

• 
  Can you think of any more rip-offs?

• 
  
  It's a ripoff when college doesn't end up finding you the job you wanted and you're stuck with $100K+ in loans.
  
  
  For me the only real value I have gotten thus far (2 1/2 years) from college is that this great accumulating debt makes me feel obligated to study and learn, whereas if I weren't in college I would be spending a lot more time sitting around on facebook and at the pub.
  
  It's also nice to have a degree on your belt, because it doesn't seem to matter how brilliant you are at particle physics, math, chemistry, (insert subject), employers want to see a degree. But a degree doesn't guarantee you a position at a desired job, it merely provides a CHANCE at you getting the job you seek. And you blow more money based on the credentials of the school you choose, those chances get higher; MIT masters will improve your success chances more than a community college would.
  
  Summarized, if one wanted to study a science by himself and learn a subject just as good as all the college folks, he could do it. And if he didn't care about being employed and would rather engineer a means of producing biofuel or any other valuable commodity, he could make money in his/her field without a degree.

 

[Vanadium 50]

It's a ripoff when college doesn't end up finding you the job you wanted and you're stuck with $100K+ in loans.

Why is it college's responsibility to find you a job? Trade schools, yes. But college?

But a degree doesn't guarantee you a position at a desired job, it merely provides a CHANCE at you getting the job you seek.

And isn't this as it should be?

Summarized, if one wanted to study a science by himself and learn a subject just as good as all the college folks, he could do it.

I doubt that. Take a look at the scientific journals. How much is being published by people without college degrees?

 

[elfboy]

I doubt that. Take a look at the scientific journals. How much is being published by people without college degrees?

that doesn't mean it can't be done

 

[russ_watters]

that doesn't mean it can't be done

No, it means it isn't being done. And so then one needs to ask onesself: am I really that good that I can be the first?

 

[DR13]

You don't need college to make money, and in fact it's probably a ripoff when you consider the loans will live with you for the rest of your life. Unless you're going to an ivy league or MIT, caltech it's not worth it.
I took a 3 month break from math to make $220K with facebook and i still didn't finish college (i'm 25)and still earn $2000-4000/day with facebook

If your story is true (and I'm not necessarily doubting you) then you are lucky and an outlier. I would not recommend to others to follow that path. It is much more likely to live a good life if one gets a college degree. That does not mean go 100K into debt. Why not just go to a cheaper school. That is much better than saying screw it and trying to teach yourself. In current day it is much easier to get a job with a degree.

And if you don't mind me asking, what exactly do you do with facebook?

 

[twofish-quant]

Summarized, if one wanted to study a science by himself and learn a subject just as good as all the college folks, he could do it.

I don't think it is possible to study science by yourself. You absolutely need some sort of social interaction to learn science. Now, I think it's *possible* to learn physics as well as someone with an undergraduate degree, but that's something different. You still need to interact with people.

One thing about colleges and universities is that they provide a lot more than courses. If someone wanted to study physics on his own, it helps a lot to have access to a research library and a computer cluster, and that's one thing that a college provides.

And if he didn't care about being employed and would rather engineer a means of producing biofuel or any other valuable commodity, he could make money in his/her field without a degree.

One thing that colleges provide is career services and all sorts of meetings where you can interact with people that can teach you how to market an idea.

Personally, I don't think that degrees are that important, but colleges are a lot more than degrees.

 

[twofish-quant]

Why is it college's responsibility to find you a job? Trade schools, yes. But college?

At this point, we get into issues of basic philosophy, but I do think that it is the college's responsibility to find you a job. Part of it is that when I convince an eight year old that it's wonderful to have a life based on discovering the mysteries of the universe, I also think it's my responsibility to set up a system so that this eight year old will eventually be able to find a way of eating so that they can discover the mysteries of the universe.

Also, I don't think that there really should be a distinction between trade schools and colleges.

Again, this is an issue of basic educational philosophy, and it's not obvious how to resolve this.

I doubt that. Take a look at the scientific journals. How much is being published by people without college degrees?

On the other hand, very little scientific is being published by people that speak only Armenian. It's not that Armenians aren't smart or that Armenian happens to inherently unsuited for science. It just so happens that by historical accident, English happened to be the language of science, so it really participate in the conversation, you really need to not only learn English, but a very weird form of English.

Also, it can get self-defeating. Very little is academic in finance is published by people that don't have Ph.D.'s from a big name college, but academic finance is pretty much useless because of that. Part of the reason for this is that if you can't do the math, you are unlikely to have anything useful to say about particle physics, but if you are an Armenian truck driver that speaks no English, you are likely to have some very deep insights on the finance of Armenia.

 

[zketrouble]

Why is it college's responsibility to find you a job? Trade schools, yes. But college?


And isn't this as it should be?


I doubt that. Take a look at the scientific journals. How much is being published by people without college degrees?

a) It isn't college's responsibility to find you a job. However, people are going to college for the primary purpose of getting a better job (alongside academic reasons).

b) I'd think such a great investment in schooling would be more respected by employers and boost odds of getting a job a lot more than it does in the real world. Fine, employers aren't required to hire you simply because you've finished your M.S. or PhD., but college should at least increase your career chances enough to make it worth a $100K bid on the college roulette wheel.

c) Not much is being independently these days. However, that isn't to say that it cannot be done. Anybody can learn something without the assistance of college, but they won't get research funding without a PhD on them. You could still get by quite fine if you know your subject well and tutor it for $30 an hour. I was tutoring English to nonnative speakers by this same means. There are options for work in the science field without going to college. That is not to say that college doesn't have its benefits.

 

[bobthenormal]

You really don't.
Which is really a terrible reason for going to MIT, and it's deeply ironic. One of the most important things that you learn at MIT was that prestige is total nonsense. I wouldn't pay 10 cents for MIT prestige. Now there are *other* things that you learn at MIT, which are useful.

One thing that you do learn is a little arrogance. Something that you find out when you meet Nobel prize winners and CEO's of big companies is that they are human and like all humans some of them are total jerks. Once you realize that people that you are in awe of are just human, there's a little voice inside of you that says "hey, if so-so can do X, so can I."

Something that happened to me was that I left MIT hating MIT. It turns out that that's because I had a really good education there. If I had a sub-standard education, I'd be happy about my education, but I can think of a dozen things wrong with MIT (e.g. they are being totally incompetent with what they are doing with Open Courseware), and I left tremendously dissatisfied. That's good. Because the second you are satisfied, there is nothing to improve.

I agree with the lesson you learned at MIT, I learned a similar lesson at my school. However, I'm sure you've noticed that many people see those arrogant famous/rich people and they still don't learn that those people are human too.

I went to a talk one time and the speaker was asked "How much do you have to work?" and he immediately answered "Well, to be clear, I don't have to work, I'm rich. I could spend all day lying on a beach in Hawaii if I wanted to. I work because I enjoy it.." and he went on to answer what the questioner meant to ask.
I thought that was such a realistic thing to say, and I appreciated the point he was making (that he does and you should enjoy your work), but I ran into someone a few days later else who was at the talk (and who ironically called himself an "entrepreneur" with a kind of underdog arrogance). And he brought up that response and said "Wow what an arrogant thing to say!"
He was genuinely mad and offended by the response above, that the speaker had said he was so rich he could just lie on the beach. He also tended to paint the guy as a faux success, basically trying to claim that his 'arrogance' was something that would hurt his ability to succeed. And, of course, if HE were ever to be that rich he would never be so arrogant.
My point being, not everyone learns the same things from the same experiences, so I'm not sure if I'd accredit MIT with teaching you that lesson; certainly it might be easier to draw the correct (according to you and I anyway) understanding of the world when you're exposed to the "best" all the time and see the (probably disappointing) reality, but I think if you're really looking for those answers you'll find them eventually anyway. Maybe MIT just speeds up the process a bit?

Out of curiosity, what is the incompetence with OCW you referred to?

 

[twofish-quant]

a) It isn't college's responsibility to find you a job. However, people are going to college for the primary purpose of getting a better job (alongside academic reasons).

I think it is. One big issue that is being debated right now is the "gainful employment rule." The US Department of Education is considering rules that would end federal loans to for-profit universities in which students aren't being "gainfully employed" in order to cut down on default rates, and one obvious question is why should non-profit universities get special treatment for federally-subsidized loans. I don't think they should.

Once universities start accepting loans particularly taxpayer subsidized ones, then they have a responsibility to make sure that those loans are being paid back, otherwise we have a repeat of the sub-prime housing mess.

 

[twofish-quant]

he immediately answered "Well, to be clear, I don't have to work, I'm rich. I could spend all day lying on a beach in Hawaii if I wanted to. I work because I enjoy it.." and he went on to answer what the questioner meant to ask.

What's curious is that it's not that difficult to arrange your finances so that you can spend all day lying on a bench. If you make $70K, but live like you make $30K, then you'll have enough money after a decade to move off to Costa Rica.

On the other end, it's not hard to find people that make $700K and are living paycheck to paycheck.

Out of curiosity, what is the incompetence with OCW you referred to?

I'm thinking of Xerox PARC that invented the GUI interface, did nothing with it, and then Apple came along. Personally, I'd like it if MIT was a leader in the next wave of education, but I don't think institutionally that this will happen. The problem right now is that there is no easy way of taking learning with OCW converting it into academic credit and then using that academic credit to get a degree that will let you make money. I think this would destroy MIT if they did it themselves, but they could be a but more active at trying to partner and support people that are using OCW in new ways.

I don't think that anyone *personally* is being incompetent, but one of the things that you learn is that you can have extremely competent people and they just happen to be in a system that is *institutionally* incompetent. MIT is curiously an extremely bureaucratic and slow institution. Most things work by consensus that consensus-based organizations have their limits.

 

[zketrouble]

I think it is. One big issue that is being debated right now is the "gainful employment rule." The US Department of Education is considering rules that would end federal loans to for-profit universities in which students aren't being "gainfully employed" in order to cut down on default rates, and one obvious question is why should non-profit universities get special treatment for federally-subsidized loans. I don't think they should.

Once universities start accepting loans particularly taxpayer subsidized ones, then they have a responsibility to make sure that those loans are being paid back, otherwise we have a repeat of the sub-prime housing mess.

I don't think it is college's responsibility to find you a job. One has to be dedicated and search for him/her-self, check his options, show that he/she is a confident individual who can be of use to an employer. Gainful employment rules have some good behind them though. I do think college should boost your chances of success and your salary enough to make it worth losing 6 years of income to study for a masters degree, plus all the loans you have to pay back AT LEAST. But to put the responsibility on the university to find you a job seems a little overboard. One can be a good student but not a good employee, and employers should have the right to decide who is worth paying and who is not. What if the university can't find one a job because he's an irresponsible dumbarse when it comes to the workforce?

College should boost ones chances enough to make it worth the time, money, and effort that college requires. Requiring universities to find their alumni job positions is going too far, as a PhD alumnus should be grown up enough to put that effort in himself. If employers do not respect the time/effort students spend in a particular school then that school should be discredited for selling a false hope.

 

[twofish-quant]

I don't think it is college's responsibility to find you a job. One has to be dedicated and search for him/her-self, check his options, show that he/she is a confident individual who can be of use to an employer.

So where do you learn to do that?

Also employers invariably will not tell you what they want. That's where career services comes in. Also employers rely on colleges to recruit employees. One big fallacy is the idea that employers will look at a resume from people from school X and make a decision as to whether or not to hire that person. That's not how that works. What happens is that employers will go to school X, have social events, interview sessions, and then come back to the office with a dozen resumes from school X. It's not that the employer will toss your resume if you aren't from school X, it's that if you aren't from school X, your resume just will not make it to the employers desk.

Getting a job is all about connections and networks.

Colleges and universities happen to be one of the major "job markets" which is why they get funded.

What if the university can't find one a job because he's an irresponsible dumbarse when it comes to the workforce?

Then that person shouldn't have gotten my money to attend the university. If the university is willing to pay me back my money, then I don't have a problem. If the university washes their hands of the problem, then it becomes my problem since you now have an unpaid loan that is going to come out of my bank account in some way. Also if they don't have a job, then it's also going to come out of my tax money.

Also colleges particularly at the undergraduate level to have the responsibility to teach responsibility. If someone is totally unteachable, then why did the college admit them, and how did he or she make it through? If you can get a bachelor's degree, you aren't totally unteachable.

Requiring universities to find their alumni job positions is going too far, as a PhD alumnus should be grown up enough to put that effort in himself.

[

Nonsense. Just because you can do quantum field theory doesn't mean that you can write a decent resume, and one of the jobs for Ph.D. programs that I think colleges are doing very badly at it. The problem with relying on the student is that often the student does not know what they do not know.

One thing that you quickly learn about business is that it's not about you. You can be the smartest most brilliant person, but if you don't know the right people, that's going to be useless to you. One thing about colleges is that one of their functions is so that you get to meet the right people (and the right people are often other alumni).

 

[bobthenormal]

The problem right now is that there is no easy way of taking learning with OCW converting it into academic credit and then using that academic credit to get a degree that will let you make money. I think this would destroy MIT if they did it themselves, but they could be a but more active at trying to partner and support people that are using OCW in new ways.

I have long held the belief, from when I used to do more programming, that one day the more general education classes (I would include most 2nd and 3rd year university courses in physics, math, and engineering) could be taught through a combination of interactive programs (mostly to organize and make useful knowledge-bases) and things like OCW. I've heard rumors of people doing it also, but I don't think it's really workable right now.

The main problem I see is, as you say, there is no reason any educator would want to construct such a system - it would ruin their livelihood. (Maybe that is why OCW had a huge growth spurt to start and then suddenly things just stopped? When they realized what they were doing haha. I don't really know about it though.)

I think it will have to come down to a government or state funded project. Or maybe something like the Gates foundation, after they cure everything and get us on ultra-cheap long-lasting nuclear (heh).

I don't think that anyone *personally* is being incompetent, but one of the things that you learn is that you can have extremely competent people and they just happen to be in a system that is *institutionally* incompetent. MIT is curiously an extremely bureaucratic and slow institution. Most things work by consensus that consensus-based organizations have their limits.

I see what you meant then - interestingly, I usually prefer the slow and methodical methods over rash movements, but sometimes playing it safe leaves you obsolete. It'll be interesting to see how things evolve over the years in "digital education," or whatever it might be called.

--Bob

 

[twofish-quant]

I have long held the belief, from when I used to do more programming, that one day the more general education classes (I would include most 2nd and 3rd year university courses in physics, math, and engineering) could be taught through a combination of interactive programs (mostly to organize and make useful knowledge-bases) and things like OCW. I've heard rumors of people doing it also, but I don't think it's really workable right now.

Since I like inventing the future, the question that I'm asking is "why is it not workable, and what can I do to make it workable?"

The big bottlenecks here are social and political, and if you look at those bottlenecks, I don't see them lasting very long.

One big problem is that people look at the "college experience" as a series of courses when I'd argue that the classroom is probably one of the *least* important parts of the college experience. That part of the problem is already done. One part that was missing was the career and academic advising parts, but things like this forum are fixing that part.

The only really big issue that I see is being able to monetize learning. I've taken a course, how do I convert that into cash to finance that learning?

The main problem I see is, as you say, there is no reason any educator would want to construct such a system - it would ruin their livelihood.

1) Ultimately you have to point out that the purpose of education is to educate. There is something in the teacher-student relationship that is similar to parent-child relationship. If you construct a system that messes up your life, but creates a better world for your kids, that's a good thing.

2) Something that you find in industries with massive technology changes is that your job as a company is to ruin your livelihood. If you don't construct a new system that destroys the old, you are going to be dead when that system evolves anyway.

(Maybe that is why OCW had a huge growth spurt to start and then suddenly things just stopped? When they realized what they were doing haha. I don't really know about it though.)

It's partly because MIT changed Presidents. OCW got a lot of political support from Vest and Hockfield wasn't quite as interested in it. It's not that Hockfield is a bad person, it's just that OCW is not on the two or three things that she cares most about. The other two people that are "thought leaders" at MIT are Hal Abelson and Woody Flowers. And then you have the ghosts of Margaret MacVicar and William Barton Rogers still influencing things.

MIT tends to change presidents every decade, and so one of the things that I'm interested in is the selection process for the president after Hockfield. Something that I think is going to be essential is if the corporation chooses someone that does put OCW on the list of two or three things that they care about.

I think it will have to come down to a government or state funded project.

US universities are massively subsidized by the government. There is a big difference between government-funded and government-managed. Government managed projects are political minefields. There are hundreds of interest groups, and any time you try something new, you have thousands of people that can and will say NO.

One thing that governments do is to write checks to institutions that aren't under these sorts of constraints. MIT gets massive amounts of money from the US federal government. Government gives MIT money with the only real string attached being to "do something that helps the US maintain global control." Here's money, come back with cool stuff.

If you want something done that is new and creative, you don't want more than twenty people involved. Fewer people, less political inertia. The venture capital system works this way. Instead of given a billion dollars to one company, you give 100 different loans of $10 million to different startups. 98 of the startups will blow up. 2 will change the world.

I see what you meant then - interestingly, I usually prefer the slow and methodical methods over rash movements, but sometimes playing it safe leaves you obsolete. It'll be interesting to see how things evolve over the years in "digital education," or whatever it might be called.

Except that digital education isn't a new thing. MIT is a very slow bureaucratic, consensus-based, risk adverse organization. Columbia and NYU are much less slow and bureaucratic than MIT, but they invested hundreds of millions of dollars into e-learning, and it all blew up on them (see Fathom). MIT was an extreme late comer to digital education with OCW so they avoided a lot of the mistakes.