Why are US grads not awarded masters degrees after 4 years of college?

[twofish-quant]

The taxpayer funds the education (for the most part), but that doesn't mean they get to dictate choices.

It does in reality. By determining where funding goes, you can force people to make certain choices. If the taxpayers are acting idiotically and defunding education they you are making certain choices for people. Stupid choices, but choices.

There's clearly a very skewed opinion that if you don't continue in school and then go onto university then you will make nothing of your life.

We may be having a terminology issue. In the US, any sort of higher education gets classified as "university." You can get some decent positions with an associate degree from a community college, but that's something different.

Also, IMHO, it happens to be true.

People who leave school at 16 have many choices: perhaps they want to go into a vocational career (plumbing, joining, etc)

Which in the US is considered "university." I think it's a fine thing if someone wants to go to community college to be a plumber, but that's "higher education" in the US since once you get credits from a community college they can be applied to a four year bachelors degree.

something like accounting: something where you learn on the job, or through an apprenticeship.

Those sorts of jobs don't exist in the US. If you have only a high school degree, no accounting firm will hire you for anything other than sweeping the floors. Also, you'll find that to get any sort of internship in the US, you basically have to go to university. The reason accounting firms will not hire apprentices out of high school is that they get interns through the university.

Remember, the academic way of learning is not for everyone, and imposing a one size fits all education will not work.

I get suspicious of comments like this, because it's often used to justify some rather nasty social inequality. The odd thing is that the people who say that the academic way of learning is not for everyone curiously want the academic way of learning for their kids, and people that have gone through the "academic way" to run society.

Personally, I would be all for expanding vocational-technical training. I think it would be very good if physics Ph.D. programs cooperated with community colleges so that while you are getting your physics Ph.D., you are also learning auto repair or plumbing or (in my case) computer programming.

If the discussion were about increasing funding and status for community colleges, then I'd be all for that. The trouble is that it's not. The people who want to defund universities in the US are also want to defund community colleges and high schools.

Again this is country specific. Reducing the role of "university" (which may mean different things in different places) might be a fine thing in some other society, but I'm talking specifically about the United States.

Because whatever they do they will be doing it directly or indirectly with my money.

What's non-sense? What ever decision someone makes they are going to be spending either my tax money or getting loans from the money that I'm putting in the bank.

 

[twofish-quant]

Part of what *REALLY* worries me is that I struck the jackpot economically, and if I look back at all of the things that got me where I am, those are the things that are getting put under the ax.

 

[twofish-quant]

I also don't think the problem is in thinking outside the box

Part of the problem is that people have become too fixated with "thinking outside the box" that you sometimes have to face the fact that you need a lot of "in the box thinking." There is this weird idea that if you are clever enough you can magically solve all problems. We can cut education by 20%, and through magic thinking, we can keep the same standards.

This poses a big problem with new technology. People look at technology as a magic wand, but technology is expensive. The internet is this huge labor saving device, but people seem to forget about the billions of dollars in research that created it, and we are stripping out the billions that will create the next set of inventions.

it's not as if politicians everyone hates so much haven't thought about the same things being suggested here (or at least have someone feed them the thought).

I don't hate politicians in general. I dislike certain politicians because they have values and beliefs that run counter to my own, but that's something different. Also being people you sometimes find out you might have to fight someone on one issue but work with them on another.

One person who I normally dislike but who I now miss is George W. Bush. Bush has a lot of things that I disagree with, but I think he really does believe in the value of an education, and so with all of the problems with "no child left behind" I think he really did believe in leaving no one behind. The problem now is that the people in the state house are "compassionate conservatives" without the compassion, and we are now figuring out who to leave behind.

 

[Mépris]

Which in the US is considered "university." I think it's a fine thing if someone wants to go to community college to be a plumber, but that's "higher education" in the US since once you get credits from a community college they can be applied to a four year bachelors degree.

Credits can be obtained with IB or A-Level grades and these are studied at Sixth Form; would that be considered "university", then?

Ok, bottom line; the main problem is people with power don't want to spend on education and the quality of education is the least of their concerns. Ergo, they cut their expenses on education, veiling that with the excuse that they're reducing the amount of years required for a bachelors degree (for some reason) and they get more money to spend on other stuff. At the same time, certain people are led to believe that they're getting a good deal out of this; not less education. So, everybody's (seemingly) happy. Win-win situation. In the eyes of whoever's in charge, at least.

 

[twofish-quant]

Credits can be obtained with IB or A-Level grades and these are studied at Sixth Form; would that be considered "university", then?

No idea. Asking what a course that works according to the UK system would be called if you had it in the US is something of a metaphysical question.

Also different countries use the same word to main different things. I've seen the term "college" used for "high school" in some places. I've had weird looks when I asked if a shop sold "potato chips" when I should have asked if they had "crisps."

Part of the Bologna process was to make things interchangeable between EU nations. It's hard because things aren't a one to one mapping.

One reason community colleges and vo-tech schools are commonly considered part of university in the US is that it's quite common for someone that goes to a 2 year community college to transfer to a four year university and the curriculum of community colleges are set up to replicate the general education requirements of a four year university.

Ok, bottom line; the main problem is people with power don't want to spend on education and the quality of education is the least of their concerns.

It's not a blame the politicians. The people that are in the state house got power because they got elected by voters.

Ergo, they cut their expenses on education, veiling that with the excuse that they're reducing the amount of years required for a bachelors degree (for some reason) and they get more money to spend on other stuff.

Actually no. People are in this (I think self-defeating) cut spending mode. Also, one problem is that I think people involved are somewhat sincere, and have convinced themselves that there is enough "waste, fraud, and abuse" that you can cut things and have good things happen. Trouble is that I think they are wrong.

Also no one is "veiling the cuts".

At the same time, certain people are led to believe that they're getting a good deal out of this; not less education. So, everybody's (seemingly) happy.

Curiously, no one is happy. My hope is that once people realize the consequences of the cuts, they'll be some push-back.

 

[Sankaku]

In much of the world the university has turned into "young adult daycare." Maybe that's not the job of the university...

Exactly my point.

Because without that piece of paper their resume gets tossed in the trash, and then end up with the "losers of society".

Certainly in the present system this is the case. The problem is that most of those pieces of paper aren't worth the ink they are printed with. Why force people to spend money on something they don't need to impress people they don't like? Yes, cynicism says we would have to change hiring practices, but the alternative is a race to the bottom by taking people's money and giving them worthless degrees that the hiring market mistakenly thinks they need.

So yes, you can't take courses once you start getting into child-bearing/child raising age.

Speak for yourself.

Because whatever they do they will be doing it directly or indirectly with my money.

Better break out the planned economy, then. We should rigidly plan everyone's education from age 8 to age 25 so that we maximize efficiency in the system. Wait, wasn't that tried somewhere?

Don't worry - I have plenty of cynicism as well as idealism.

 

[twofish-quant]

Certainly in the present system this is the case. The problem is that most of those pieces of paper aren't worth the ink they are printed with.

They actually are. Maybe you can argue whether or not the university as currently structured is the best way of teaching people, but I don't think that its totally useless. People do learn things in college.

Why force people to spend money on something they don't need to impress people they don't like?

Because the people that you don't like give you money so that you don't starve to death.

Yes, cynicism says we would have to change hiring practices, but the alternative is a race to the bottom by taking people's money and giving them worthless degrees that the hiring market mistakenly thinks they need.

Degrees aren't worthless, and the reason that people look for people with degrees is that having a bachelor's degree or associate degree says that you have certain skills that are useful for running an office.

Better break out the planned economy, then. We should rigidly plan everyone's education from age 8 to age 25 so that we maximize efficiency in the system.

We are. We just need to figure out how to do it well. Also there is no need to "maximize efficiency." Education is fundamentally a rather inefficient process, which is why it is expensive.

Also if you want more choices, that's great. Cutting spending doesn't result in more choices. It results in fewer choices. One big trick that any politician has to learn is to create the "illusion of choice." If you show people steak and fish, and you say "YOU CANNOT CHOOSE FISH" people will be annoyed. If you just show steak, then you've made the choice for them, and no one realizes that there were other options.

Wait, wasn't that tried somewhere?

Curiously, one thing that communist societies are very good at is increasing literacy and education rates. You look at the Soviet Union, China, Vietnam, and Cuba, and they all have rather excellent educational systems. They put a lot of money in education because its hard to brainwash and indoctrinate someone that can't read, as far as the problems of the Soviet Union, a bad education system isn't one of them. Mao did a great number of evil things, but one good thing that he did was create a decent educational system in China.

I know people in East Asia, and they are mostly shocked at the debate that is happening in the US. You have societies in which people would rather go hungry than to cut money for education. Education is the last thing that you want to cut because without that, you have no future.

Also things change. In 1950, everyone wanted to copy the Soviet Union because they had excellent economic growth. In 1995, everyone wanted nothing to do with anything that smelled of socialism because of the collapse of the Soviet Union. If the world works the way that I think it does, by 2025, "socialism" will no longer be a dirty word since by 2025, people will have forgotten about the Soviet Union, and the question will be why China is putting people on Moon and the US can't.

Part of the reason I'm merely annoyed at the cuts rather than panicking is that I have faith in the American political process. People will have to see how bad things are before things change, so sometimes you just let to have things get worse. Maybe the Tea Party people are right, and massive cuts will make the US better. If so, then great, they get their way, and I'm wrong. No big deal.

 

[Pyrrhus]

Curiously, one thing that communist societies are very good at is increasing literacy and education rates. You look at the Soviet Union, China, Vietnam, and Cuba, and they all have rather excellent educational systems. They put a lot of money in education because its hard to brainwash and indoctrinate someone that can't read, as far as the problems of the Soviet Union, a bad education system isn't one of them. Mao did a great number of evil things, but one good thing that he did was create a decent educational system in China.

I can attest for Cuba. Education in Cuba increased greatly, and not only in producing graduate degrees and teaching people how to read, but also in postgraduate work. Cuba through the Soviet Union send thousands of university professors to receive PhD in STEM fields in the Soviet Union, and later these same professors educated PhDs of their own. Some of them are actually quite renowned internationally. You can do a simple check in Mathematic Genealogy, just search for Cuba.

 

[Andy Resnick]

It's worse than that. What gets cut are "useless" things like art, humanities, literature, and general education. The only things that will be taught are things that are immediately and obviously "relevant."

This is really bad because

1) if you just teach people to be bottle washers, then you'll have a too many bottle washers and too few bottle washing jobs, and the bottle washers can't do anything else

2) the big problems are those that need liberal arts thinking. While everyone is busy training to be bottle washers, people aren't asking themselves why they really want to be a bottle washer.

The reason this worries me is that I'm seeing a bad downward spiral. Cuts education -> less economic growth -> less money -> more cuts

Totally agree.

 

[Sankaku]

Cutting spending doesn't result in more choices. It results in fewer choices.

I don't know if this was actually directed at me. I have nowhere argued for cutting spending on education. If you look carefully, I am advocating for people to get a more complete and varied education (including liberal arts) BEFORE they specialize in University. Call it an 'associate degree' if that fits with the current branding. Call it sixth-form college (but structure it so people study more than 3/4 subjects) if you like British terminology. Just do it so that people are properly prepared at THAT point for a) Life and/or b) University. Don't try to do it with a one-size-fits-all (expensive) 4-Year degree for kids entering at wildly different preparation levels.

If people don't have enough general life skills at that point in their lives, another 3 years in university isn't going to help that much.

 

[twofish-quant]

I don't know if this was actually directed at me. I have nowhere argued for cutting spending on education.

One thing that you have to realize is that sometimes if you do A, it will lead to B, even if you think that B is a bad idea. That's one thing that makes politics treacherous. Sometimes B is politically unpalatable, so people focus on A, knowing that it will lead to B.

What I'm arguing is that in the current political environment, putting in "higher standards" for colleges *will lead* to cuts in general education. The people who are talking about changing the format of colleges are using cost savings as a goal.

Yes, you may get a better system if you push things into high school, but that involves more funding for high schools, and that's not on the table.

If you look carefully, I am advocating for people to get a more complete and varied education (including liberal arts) BEFORE they specialize in University.

Show me the money to do that.

In the US it happens to be more difficult to put in curriculum changes for high schools because you are dealing with several thousand school boards that are totally unconnected with each other. For colleges, it's a big easier, because even though you have a lot of different colleges, you have something of a "national community" of college teachers that doesn't exist for high schools. If you talk about changing college curriculum, it's much less of a political minefield, because money plays much less of an impact.

Also there are social equity issues. I can afford to give my kids the best teachers and send them to the best schools because I've got money. My kids teachers are pretty good because they get paid well. But that's not true for a lot of other people.

Finally, I don't really see the point. What's the point of this musical chairs. If you move people from one institutions to another, you increase the odds that people are going to be lost in the gaps.

Call it an 'associate degree' if that fits with the current branding. Call it sixth-form college (but structure it so people study more than 3/4 subjects) if you like British terminology. Just do it so that people are properly prepared at THAT point for a) Life and/or b) University. Don't try to do it with a one-size-fits-all (expensive) 4-Year degree for kids entering at wildly different preparation levels.

Show me the money to do that.

One reason why we do "one size fits all" is cost. If we had infinite money and infinite resources, then everyone would get a private tutor. We don't have infinite amounts of money and infinite resources, and part of the reason we manufacture degrees on assembly lines is for the same reason that we manufacture cars on assembly lines. It's cheaper and it for the more part works.

Also degrees are part of the factory mechanism in that they provide interchangeable parts. If you have a bachelors in accounting, people know what that means, and they can design the employment systems around that. If you have a froozbos in carflunked, no one knows what that means. This is why the EU is going through the Bolgona process. The Eurocrats want to see that someone can get an education in Poland and have it apply to a job in Spain.

Trying to fit individuals into an assembly line system is pretty messy.

If people don't have enough general life skills at that point in their lives, another 3 years in university isn't going to help that much.

I strongly disagree. People do a lot of growing up in university. People learn not to drink too much, party too hard, and sleep with the wrong people, because they try it and it turns out badly. One thing that universities do is to provide a "young adult daycare" so that people can do stupid things once and not create lasting damage.

One of the first things that I learned in college was "eat my vegetables." When I was at home, my mother always forced me to each my vegetables. One of the first things that I did when I got to college was to stop eating vegetables. One month of that, and I was totally sick.

If you drink too much and find yourself in the wrong bed with the wrong person in college, you miss a test, you and you may have to retake a course and have a long talk with someone in student health services. If you are employed and have a wife and kids, the consequences of doing something really stupid are much, much higher.

Again, you can argue that colleges shouldn't be doing this, but if colleges don't do this, then who does?

 

[Sankaku]

One thing that you have to realize is that sometimes if you do A, it will lead to B, even if you think that B is a bad idea.

To be honest, I really don't care that much about the ludicrous party politics in your country at the moment. I think (globally) we need to be thinking much more long term here. Throwing band-aids at things is not a viable strategy.

Yes, you may get a better system if you push things into high school, but that involves more funding for high schools, and that's not on the table.

Show me the money to do that.

Show me the money to do that.

One reason why we do "one size fits all" is cost.

Now who is arguing for cuts? Can't have it both ways!

Yes, I am talking blue-sky idealism here. I know the money has to come from somewhere. I also know that you have to be working toward something that is viable, not just plugging holes in a sinking boat.

People do a lot of growing up in university.

I completely agree. The question is: Where is the money for that?

Amazingly, there are millions of kids in their late teens and early twenties drinking too much and sleeping with the wrong people all while not going to university. While it is an important experimental phase in life, I don't think University has any monopoly on being the right place to do it.

I am a big believer in more education - I just want it to be education that isn't a waste of time and money. Again, idealism, but I think we should have a tradition of going back to school every 10 years to improve our knowledge or skills. Yes, the current system doesn't support it. The question is "why not?" Investing in employees is good for business. Investing in yourself is good for future job prospects. Etc.

I have heard a lot of "we can't do that." Are you suggesting the system has no room for improvement?

 

[twofish-quant]

To be honest, I really don't care that much about the ludicrous party politics in your country at the moment.

I do. You can spend all day in a coffee house talking about how to change the world, or you can get your hands dirty and actually do it. One thing that is curious is that I have a lot of faith in the American political system. People might be doing short term stupid things, but I have faith that in the end American democracy will work. One thing that the US has over China is that the US has a much better political system.

I think (globally) we need to be thinking much more long term here. Throwing band-aids at things is not a viable strategy.

Thinking about the long term is no use if you don't survive the short term. Throwing band-aids at things sometimes is a viable strategy. In a lot of situations you can't make any fundamental changes. In a lot of situations you shouldn't make any fundamental changes. In that case, you just have to go out and get stuff down.

Now who is arguing for cuts? Can't have it both ways!

I'm not talking about cuts. If you want individualized education, you need to vastly increase education spending beyond what is currently there. At that point, you need to develop a political consensus and program to justify those increases.

Yes, I am talking blue-sky idealism here. I know the money has to come from somewhere. I also know that you have to be working toward something that is viable, not just plugging holes in a sinking boat.

Except it's not a sinking boat. The US educational system for all of its faults works pretty damned well. One thing that you have to understand is that sometimes I sound negative because I tend to find fault with everything. The trouble is that this cause problems. I think we can educate people better, and you can always improve stuff.

The problem is that I'm very worried that what will happen is that people will talk about how bad the US educational system is, and this will provide justification for making ***BIG CHANGES*** and those changes will be designed to gut the system.

If we were in the situation where there was massive new funding and the discussion in the US was about how to use this money to improve education, I can find a million things to do better. If I was convinced that the people that are talking about "efficiency" and "waste" were *really* interested in "efficiency" and "waste" then there are a million suggestions that I can come up with.

But they aren't. So anything negative that I say about the educational system will just be an excuse to gut the system, and once we've destroyed the old system and it comes time to create a new system, then surprise, surprise, surprise. There is no new system.

If we were talking about getting rid of bad teachers so that we could pay good teachers more, GREAT! But that's not the discussion. The plan is to complain about bad teachers and once you've screwed them over, you then go after the good teachers.

Amazingly, there are millions of kids in their late teens and early twenties drinking too much and sleeping with the wrong people all while not going to university.

Yes, and then often end up in bad shape because there is no cushion and buffer.

I am a big believer in more education - I just want it to be education that isn't a waste of time and money.

I believe in education. I just think that education isn't necessarily in the classroom. One of the first things that I learned in college was "eat your vegetables." Getting sick by not eating my vegetables was a more effective lesson than any classroom or lecture.

Education is inherently very wasteful and very inefficient. You learn by making mistakes. I get suspicious when people start talking too much about efficiency and waste. Lifeboats are a waste. Seat belts are a waste. We got into this mess in large part because banks weren't willing to "waste" money on holding reserves, and wanted to be more "efficient" by lending every cent they had. Power tools are much more efficient than hand tools. They can saw off your hand a hundred times as fast.

Waste and inefficiency are sometimes a good thing.

Again, idealism, but I think we should have a tradition of going back to school every 10 years to improve our knowledge or skills.

I go to school every day. If I spend a day without improve my knowledge or skills, then it's a waste. If I go three months without totally retraining myself, then I'm dead in the water. The reason I've gotten as far as I have is that I had a great liberal arts education that taught me the very, very basics and it taught me to learn how to learn.

And when people come with axes, liberal arts is what gets cut first.

Yes, the current system doesn't support it. The question is "why not?" Investing in employees is good for business. Investing in yourself is good for future job prospects. Etc.

Investing in employees is bad for business. Businesses want employees that are cogs in a machine that you can throw away when they get annoying. You need to watch your back. Your boss might talk about how everyone benefits from big profits, but if you blink, you'll find your job done by someone that can do it for a lot less cost by someone in Pakistan, and you'll find yourself in the unemployment line with your boss.

Investing in yourself is sometimes a bad thing. You start asking yourself a lot of inconvenient questions. Also you can end up being "too smart." I've got a huge stack of rejection letters before I was overqualified.

But screw that. I work to live, and I don't live to work. It so happens that I've found a good situation, but all you need is a few changes, and heaven becomes hell, and I'm looking for something else. Part of the reason that I've had a good education is that I've looked at people who think that "going corporate" is something that you should avoid (Alan Ginsberg, Arthur Rimbaud) so I've had to *think* about what I'm doing.

I have heard a lot of "we can't do that." Are you suggesting the system has no room for improvement?

I'm not saying we can't do that. I'm saying that do to X, you have to do Y. Also time is important. We might be able to change the entire educational structure of the US. We won't be able to do it in two days or even two years.

Also, I *am* saying that you aren't going to have any sort of decent educational system if you institute the types of cuts that have been suggested, and you *can't* improve things without more funding.

 

[Skrew]

The argument that general education classes increase the intellectual maturity of students is in my view not well thought-out.

The general education classes in humanities and social sciences I have had took implicit(or explicit) social or political worldviews which they attempted to push on the students. I assume this is the case at other colleges as well. Their goal was never to stimulate thought but to create a specific type of individual.

There would be no loss to the intellectual development of students if these classes were removed.

 

[twofish-quant]

The argument that general education classes increase the intellectual maturity of students is in my view not well thought-out.

But I think it works.

The general education classes in humanities and social sciences I have had took implicit(or explicit) social or political worldviews which they attempted to push on the students.

But it did, didn't it? If you think that the professor is a total idiot and you spend your time thinking about counterarguments to the nonsense that they said in class, that helps doesn't it.

Also learning how to react when you are in a situation when you have to deal with an authority figure with a different world view is something *very useful* since you are going to face that situation constantly outside of the university.

Three of the most influential thinkers in my life are Ayn Rand, Dinesh D'Souza, and Alan Bloom. They were extremely influential because after reading their works, I ended up concluding that their ideas are garbage so I've spent a good chunk of my time fighting them. I have to thank Bloom and D'Souza for introducing me to the world of postmodernism. After reading D'Souza and Bloom talking about how awful Jacque Derrida was, I ended up reading Derrida, and found a lot of interesting things.

I assume this is the case at other colleges as well. Their goal was never to stimulate thought but to create a specific type of individual.

But if they get you thinking and interested in the topics involved. It worked.

There would be no loss to the intellectual development of students if these classes were removed.

Actually, I think there would be. If you have a professor that says nonsense things and by saying nonsense things, they get you to research and fight them, that's a win. The other thing is that figuring out when it is "safe" to disagree and when you just write what the professor/boss wants to you to write so that you can get the A is something that is *VERY* useful in the business world.

There are people that really want you to disagree with them, and will enjoy a good intellectual challenge. There are people that don't. If you end up in a situation where someone in a position of power doesn't want to have you disagree with them, then you just write the report the way they want you to, while thinking that this is non-sense so that you get your A or paycheck. This is a terribly useful skill in the "real world."