[capote]

> that institutions like that are a societal racket and waste of time and money.

This is completely wrong. Universities are tremendously useful and do many great things for society and humanity. I'm not going to provide evidence because I think that any reasonable person will agree with me.

[wyqydsyq]

While it's clear many university institutes and projects have benefited the wider public, I think he was specifically referring to the value of university to an individual, for most people (excepting those who are studying sciences to enter a specific niche field where they wouldn't be able to pick up the necessary skills anywhere else) university is indeed a waste of time and money. I'm a 22 year old developer based in Australia, I've been working in the web industry full time since I was 18 and been earning money all along. Yet I have multiple friends who did CS etc. at uni and despite having the formal qualifications I lack, they're earning less than me and have a good 10 years of paying off their education debt before they can actually use their earnings beyond getting by.

[gradstudent]

> I'm a 22 year old developer based in Australia, I've been working in the web industry full time since I was 18 and been earning money all along.

You're conflating Comp Sci with programming. I think it's pretty clear you don't need CS to be a productive developer, especially if the kind of work you're interested in doing involves building small to medium size websites and CRUD apps using other people's libraries and frameworks. Try to go beyond that however and you will quickly find out why so many people value a formal education.

[wyqydsyq]

Well yeah, I'm certainly only doing high-level stuff, if I wanted to do low level systems programming, OS/language design or anything with hardware at a lower level than whatever APIs existing drivers provide then a CS degree would certainly come in handy.

I was more getting at the fact that for probably the majority of people who go to university, they're pretty much wasting their time and money because unless they're looking to do something that can't be self-taught or learned on-the-job, they could be gaining the same skills (and maybe even getting paid for it) without putting themselves in debt that they'll spend a decade or more paying off.

For example, all the lessons capote claims to have learned doing CS at uni, I learned on the job while getting paid for it.

I have no doubt that a uni education would benefit anyone, I'm just saying that I think for the vast majority of people going to uni, the costs they're ultimately paying don't outweigh the benefits they gain, unless they're going to uni to enter a high paying field which requires a degree to enter the industry at all such as law or medicine. Unless the career you want absolutely requires a degree, you probably don't need one.

[personjerry]

You say "niche field" but in reality we could argue that there are no niche fields as all the information necessary to "self-teach" is probably out there on the internet. What's vastly different is the experience of being taught by someone who has a deep knowledge of the subject, and is willing to share his understanding. While this carries with it the nuances of that particular professor's experiences, it will be much more structured information (and tested, to an extent), and this is a big part of why education at a university is valued so much.

But certainly, university is not the only way to learn. The issue is that there are often too many applicants to jobs already, and recruiters use a university degree as a filter. I think this may be unfair to some people, but the companies also value their time.

[capote]

Once again, you've completely missed the point. I am trying to say that the value of university has nothing to do with your ability to get a job. I'm trying to plead with people to stop trying to compare university with a job or measure the value of a university in terms of a job.

If you can't see the value in university, good for you; nobody's forcing you to go.

[personjerry]

> Once again, you've completely missed the point.

But, you didn't make an argument for your point in your last statement, and instead made a vague, mysterious assertion:

> Universities are tremendously useful and do many great things for society and humanity.

You even explicitly pointed out this fact:

> I'm not going to provide evidence because I think that any reasonable person will agree with me.

[treve]

I still think it's worth talking about this though, as so many people DO think its the only way to go and take on a tremendous financial risk thinking they do it for the job.

I wouldn't contest it's useful, but I'd definitely feel that for most it's probably not worth the price of a US university.

[white-flame]

Institutions of academia do many great things.

But what we have is an unholy chimera of academia and occupational training where _everybody_ is pushed to go through it, not just the academics. That's where this two-faced mess of inapplicability comes from.

[bogomipz]

I actually think you should provide evidence because it not so obvious. Universities are a business first and foremost. The societal benefit I can see is that of providing scholarships to people of need and that is a relatively small percentage. You might also talk about the research that comes out of universities but much of that is largely funded by the tax-payer.

[wildmusings]

Sure, but the other 90% of their budget is going to useless pet projects and bureaucratic waste.

[capote]

This is a very pessimistic and conspiracy-theorist-ish way to look at it. Yeah, most entities in the world don't operate at maximum efficiency or make perfect use of their money.

Doesn't make them worthless, or even close to it.

[white-flame]

Funding to universities in the US has increased a ton by increasing student loan amounts and availability, to try to get more people degrees.

Studies have shown that the effect on universities is that "administrative expenses" have increased to absorb around 90% of the additional tuition funds coming in from loan-bearing students.

The parent is not pessimistic nor conspiratorial. This is observed behavior on the part of the universities.

[wildmusings]

Yes, 90% is me being a little facetious. I don't know the exact number. But I saw the waste first hand. My college ran large parts of its operations for the benefit of the employees, to the active detriment of the students and everyone else. For example, dining employees were easily paid 2x market wage, probably 4x counting fringe-benefits, while students were forced to pay for a wildly overpriced meal plan that robbed all of the local restaurants (which were all within a quarter-mile of the three dining halls) and supermarkets of business.

They also ran a fancy hotel that charges many hundreds per night, right in the heart of campus. They consistently failed to make a profit for years and then totally bungled recent renovations, going 3x over budget and delivering behind schedule. Here's an interesting (and admittedly biased) blog post documenting that sorry saga: http://www.dartblog.com/data/2012/01/009957.php

Throughout the country, tuition has risen many times over in the past few decades, but the money isn't going to hiring more professors. It's going to hiring more and more college administrators and staff, and on loss-making sports programs that go well beyond recreational athletics. Every single type of minority possible had at least one administrative department dedicated to them, each with multiple staff members, and often with physical plants. Many (most?) of these were straight-up indoctrination outfits, pushing critical-theory Marxism on students, teaching them that they're the victims of the white establishment, and fanning the flames of campus protests.

Don't take my word, ask the American Association of University Professors:

>The increase in spending on administrative functions, coupled with a decline in state funding relative to institutional operating expenses, is clearly connected to the continuing increases in tuition prices on many campuses. As we have noted in this report on several occasions in recent years, faculty pay is not driving up tuition costs. In fact, the stagnant salaries paid to full-time faculty members combined with the increasing use of lower-paid part-time and non-tenure-track faculty appointments have been reflected in the lowered relative spending on instruction documented earlier in this section. But don’t just take our word for it. The most recent report from the Delta Cost Project concluded that “faculty salaries were not the leading cause of rising college tuitions during the past decade. Increased benefits costs, nonfaculty positions added elsewhere on campus, declines in state and institutional subsidies, and other factors all played a role.”

Source: https://www.aaup.org/reports-publications/2013-14salarysurve...

This guy from the New York Times agrees with me: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/05/opinion/sunday/the-real-re...

An NPR article: http://www.npr.org/2012/06/26/155766786/whats-driving-colleg...

The LA Times: http://articles.latimes.com/2010/sep/12/opinion/la-oe-dreifu...

[douche]

DDS is and was a complete fucking scam. Seriously, nobody should make $20/hr for being a lunch lady, not even Ray - and I love the guy, since he does such a great job with Pigstick. Not to mention OPAL and the various other Collis directorates - I'll be honest, I benefited from all of them, since I worked for the A/V tech staff on work-study, but the amount of money that was lit on fire to administrate all of that is sickening.

[imtringued]

And before galileo any reasonable person agreed that the earth was flat... And precisely this is the reason why you need evidence to back up your arguments and not the influencable opinion of other people.