[bpt3]

You want them to go back to being finishing schools for the wealthy, as they were before Hopkins (funnily enough) founded the first institute in the US that would be seen as a form of a modern university today?

For people who aren't financially independent, education is a means to an end. Pretending that's not the case or worse, shouldn't be the case, is absurd to ask of anyone running a school and highly damaging to society in general, and the mix of "vocational training" and "classic academia" provided by most US universities seems to work extremely well.

[fc417fc802]

You're putting words in my mouth. I merely pointed out that they have a very confused mission thus I think it is not surprising that there is dysfunction.

We have vocational trade schools. We have professional guild schools (medical, dentistry, etc). At least some subset of students attends school with the intention of becoming professional researchers (ie pursuing a PhD, then a postdoc, then finally general employment).

I think it would be reasonable to expect undergraduate institutions to set unambiguous goals for each program. Students should know what they are signing up for. It would be fine to graduate with a certain amount of time spent explicitly on general education and a certain amount spent explicitly on vocational training with a specific target.

If you claim that education is a means to an end then what of (for example) history majors? I think the bachelors diploma itself is what became a means to an end much to the detriment of "pure" academia. The CS program at my undergrad spent time teaching us how to use version control. That's fantastic for a professional programmer but how does that have anything to do with CS as an academic pursuit? You can literally do much (perhaps all) of actual CS with nothing more than a pen and paper.

[bpt3]

> You're putting words in my mouth. I merely pointed out that they have a very confused mission thus I think it is not surprising that there is dysfunction.

I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, but I don't see what other conclusion can be drawn from your statement.

> We have vocational trade schools. We have professional guild schools (medical, dentistry, etc). At least some subset of students attends school with the intention of becoming professional researchers (ie pursuing a PhD, then a postdoc, then finally general employment).

> I think it would be reasonable to expect undergraduate institutions to set unambiguous goals for each program. Students should know what they are signing up for. It would be fine to graduate with a certain amount of time spent explicitly on general education and a certain amount spent explicitly on vocational training with a specific target.

I agree that undergraduate institutions should be required to set unambiguous goals for each program, but what are done with the many, many attendees who have no goals for themselves beyond "go to college and get a job when I'm done"? I think there is value in having these multi-faceted institutions that are a combination of finishing school, classical academic study, and vocational training that can (and do) produce sufficiently educated and mature adults who can independently function in society.

That is the mission of the undergraduate portion of the Arts and Sciences school at basically every college/university. Professional schools have a slightly more specific mission.

> If you claim that education is a means to an end then what of (for example) history majors?

Excellent question, and it's one for the history department to answer. Maybe things stay as they are now and it's a home for the many people who don't have specific career goals while attending college, and that is their goal.

> I think the bachelors diploma itself is what became a means to an end much to the detriment of "pure" academia.

"Pure" academia only exists for those with a patron (which could be themselves), which is non-existent at any meaningful scale.

> The CS program at my undergrad spent time teaching us how to use version control. That's fantastic for a professional programmer but how does that have anything to do with CS as an academic pursuit? You can literally do much (perhaps all) of actual CS with nothing more than a pen and paper.

Good for them, because anyone applying their CS knowledge in any capacity needs to know that.

If you want to go major in purely theoretical CS at a place that offers only courses that are effectively a specialization of a math major, there is value in it but the department offering them has to answer the same questions as the history department.

[fc417fc802]

It seems we largely agree. For example I wasn't criticizing the CS program at my undergrad, simply observing the mismatch between the label on the tin and what was actually inside.

Observations of inconsistencies, dysfunctions, and similar are not necessarily calls for any particular course of action.

> I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, but I don't see what other conclusion can be drawn from your statement.

I merely observed that many of the issues people point out can be traced back (at least IMO) to having a set of confused and inconsistent goals. I wouldn't expect it to be a particularly controversial observation to anyone who's had significant contact with US academia within the past few decades.

> what are done with the many, many attendees who have no goals for themselves beyond "go to college and get a job when I'm done"?

They probably don't belong there. Most of them only attend because you need a diploma to land a job. Not because the education is particularly useful to the job, but rather because of what diplomas historically signaled about a candidate before everyone had them. Now it seems to just be a holdover (ie we require them because we've always required them and at this point everyone worthwhile has one). At least that's my (admittedly quite cynical) view.

I'm all for a more educated populace but if that's what we want then we should directly implement that.

I notice that you didn't address my remark about "adult daycare service". The presence of directionless "students" attending only to tick a box has serious negative impacts on the rest of the system. Add in student loans that can't be discharged and you've created an absolutely bizarre and (IMO counterproductive) set of economic incentives.

[bpt3]

It does seem like we agree for the most part.

> I notice that you didn't address my remark about "adult daycare service". The presence of directionless "students" attending only to tick a box has serious negative impacts on the rest of the system. Add in student loans that can't be discharged and you've created an absolutely bizarre and (IMO counterproductive) set of economic incentives.

I didn't, because it seemed like a cheap insult. I don't know that directionless students have serious negative impacts on the rest of the system. They can have serious negative impacts on themselves due to student loan debt and a lack of a financially viable skillset when they stop attending college (with a degree or not).

What do you propose people who are 18 - 22 or so do to figure out what they want to do with the rest of their lives? And I'm not defending the status quo, which certainly can be improved.

[fc417fc802]

Classes and more importantly practices get watered down to accommodate them. The situation gradually looks less like university of the 1950s and more like highschool.

Loans that can't be discharged removes lender hesitancy thus removes some degree of downward price pressure from the market. Institutions then have an incentive to capture this money due to the sheer quantity of it - ie not to let marginal students wash out. Hence the changes.

They even start attempting to attract based on amenities rather than prices. I won't belabor the subject. Others have written about it in incredible detail over the past several decades.

> What do you propose people who are 18 - 22 or so do to figure out what they want to do with the rest of their lives?

I don't know but bending what were once rigorous academic programs to accommodate them seems like the wrong answer to me. Do these people see any real benefit from taking on debt rather than working for that period? It seems to me the "benefit" is the diploma and that the requirement of a diploma to apply for a job is most often an arbitrary one these days.

As a thought experiment. Is there any particular reason an AA wouldn't have sufficed for the jobs that don't require specialized knowledge?

[bpt3]

> Classes and more importantly practices get watered down to accommodate them. The situation gradually looks less like university of the 1950s and more like highschool.

Fair, though the solution there is to just flunk them out.

> I don't know but bending what were once rigorous academic programs to accommodate them seems like the wrong answer to me. Do these people see any real benefit from taking on debt rather than working for that period? It seems to me the "benefit" is the diploma and that the requirement of a diploma to apply for a job is most often an arbitrary one these days.

I'm not convinced this is happening at the scale you think it is, but higher education is an arms race to some extent and you'd need to get all parties to agree to de-escalate, but only for the ones who don't get much value out of the experience (a group that is somewhat hard to identify a priori).

> As a thought experiment. Is there any particular reason an AA wouldn't have sufficed for the jobs that don't require specialized knowledge?

For the jobs, probably not. I still think a portion of the "college experience" is just maturing, which I agree could be done while working in theory but there is some personal opportunity cost there.

It's not an easy problem or one that can be solved individually IMO. Something like mandatory public service could be an answer, but I don't have high hopes of that being enacted.