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113 sats \ 3 replies \ @OGD21 9h \ on: The Case for Universities (Financial Times, Simon Kuper) econ
Universities will die out without major change.
Thinking back on my time in college (graduated in 2023 from a public state school), it offered me little to no true value. I saw 3 large issues going through undergrad.
- The College's goals are misaligned with the customers (students)
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Colleges only care about making money and making their school more exclusionary to create a facade of being an "elite University".
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Students care about getting skills that translate to getting a job and making money. Most are too brainwashed to care about price... That is a whole different rabbit hole
- College doesn't teach you the skills you need for the workforce
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I majored in finance and only saw the business school, but it was a mess...
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The majority of my professors have never worked outside of academia and were hard to understand due to speaking broken English.
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Want to learn how to actually use Excel, PowerPoint, Word, etc? You're going to have to figure that one out on your own.
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Want to learn how to get a job? Going to the job fair with a resume in hand is not going to get you there. Yet again, you're on your own for that one.
- College brainwashes students into believing the slip of paper is "special"
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In school, if you do the basics, you get a slip of paper and a mindset that you deserved it and deserve a great job because of it.
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Get ready for the cruel reality of the world, but just showing up or doing the bare minimum does not guarantee success or money.
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No company worth its salt wants to deal with a whiny little brat who has never gone above and beyond. There are a million other people with that same slip of paper.
TLDR: College needs major changes made. My time in undergrad offered little true value. Here are the top 3 issues I saw going through school.
Not sure what school you went to, but I can offer some perspective as someone who teaches at a mid-tier, non-elite state university...
A big part of the problem is the students themselves. We have a high fraction of students who are woefully underprepared and also have a bad work ethic. However, because of the way the incentives are structured (we're funded based on student count and graduation rates), professors get incentivized to dumb down the class.
So if you didn't learn job skills, you can blame:
- The bad students who are coming into college.
- The administrators who admit those bad students, and who don't really allow professors to fail them like they deserve (departments get punished if they fail too many students)
- Lazy professors who take the easy way out, dumbing down their classes instead of figuring out ways to reach the students.
But I'd say the lazy professors are the minority. Most professors are just struggling to balance not failing too many students without dumbing down their material. It is really tricky balance to achieve. And it's the bad students' fault. My class is not that hard... I truly believe that someone who just tries, even if they have a 10th grade level math background, can at least get a B.
So, just try to see it from the profs perspective as well...
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I'm sure it is difficult to deal with students who are unmotivated and unprepared for a college course load. I hope you do your best to offer value to your students!
"A big part of the problem is the students themselves."
This is the equivalent of a company blaming its customers for its subpar products or services, and a viewpoint that makes no sense to me...
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Well if the customers keep coming despite the subpar services...
And another aspect of this is that the students aren't paying the full cost out of pocket, and it's the other payer, the state, that's demanding subpar services (emphasizing throughput at the expense of learning)
I'm not blaming all the students. I'm blaming the bottom 20 to 30 percent who should be kicked out but we can't kick them out
Also, think of me as an employee of the company upset at some customers, not the company itself 😅
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