English Unis Are Overpriced Trash (Financial Times, Philip Augar) \ stacker news ~econ

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English Unis Are Overpriced Trash (Financial Times, Philip Augar)www.ft.com/content/7514ea72-70f8-469c-ac06-dbc82c993b39

542 sats \ 17 comments \ @denlillaapan 10h econ

Ok, FT Opinion writer, noooow you're speaking my language... higher education broken etc (#974877).

...but then dude goes haywire.

"The financial crisis facing English universities is the result of a failed free market experiment."

Man, what?! You call a market with direct gov oversight, ownership, financing, and regulating — where gov provides funding for most facilities and the purchasing power by customer via loans — a free market?!

"The seeds of the market were sown in 1998 with the introduction of undergraduate tuition fees and student loans in England — intended to fund the Blair government’s laudable ambition of getting 50 per cent of young people into HE."

Man, ok so having customers pay for a product rather then receive it for free, is a failed free market experiment...?

"Universities are autonomous institutions but with £1.5bn in grants paid directly to institutions and an annual student loan outlay of over £20bn underwritten by the taxpayer, the public is entitled to expect Whitehall to supervise how its money is spent."

Ok, so far and so good, but wheeeere in the world is this "free market" you speak of?

...With emerging evidence that a degree was not a golden ticket for every graduate...

ha, WHAT! Inconceivable... Knock me over with a feather.

"If students pay more, universities should be upfront about course employment outcomes"

Oh, really? So they, uniquely among businesses, universities should actively tell customers the truth about what their alternatives/better options are?

"Hi, here's this overpriced course we are really proud of, but we're legally obligated to tell you that under every conceivable circumstance, you'd be better off not enrolling in it. Should I sign you up?"

Relevent self-promotion: "Ten Years Ago, I Discovered the Mises Institute. These Are the Things I Wish I Had Done Differently"

A market cuts two ways. Senior managers should be prepared to accept accountability for failure as well as the rewards of success

Finally dude said something true.

...

I don't know, man, I gotta stop reading stupid people and their stupid opinions... (#968945)

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28 sats \ 11 replies \ @Undisciplined 7h

I think there's a strong case to be made that many non-elite universities are committing fraud on behalf of their institutions.

They intentionally withhold from students what their odds of success are, even though they have that information available, while lying to them about how much they'll benefit from attending. I also know that many faculty members fudge grades to maintain financial aid eligibility for students (literally financial aid fraud).

I know these behaviors are not unique to universities, but I'd be perfectly happy to see them held accountable for knowingly scamming students.

35 sats \ 8 replies \ @Signal312 6h

Apparently there's also a HUGE amount of fraud with financial aid grants. Fake students, who are collecting Pell grants (I think that's the name of the grant), who enroll and then all drop out as of a certain day.

I know this from a friend who's teaches at a nearby university. She lost almost half of the students in her class because of ths.

22 sats \ 1 reply \ @Signal312 6h

And when I say lost, what I should have said is "they all drop out on the same date, which apparently is exactly the date for the grant to not need to be paid back".

Which is how she knew why it was happening. All fake students, fake IDs.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined 6h

That's probably the minimum attendance to qualify for an "incomplete", because those don't hurt your gpa.

0 sats \ 5 replies \ @Undisciplined 6h

Interesting. I know one unsavory practice is to enroll mentally ill homeless people and load them up with student loans, then give them whatever grades are required to maintain financial aid eligibility.

This doesn't have to involve passing grades, but selectively choosing amongst "incomplete", "failing", "did not attend", etc. can keep the gravy train rolling.

32 sats \ 3 replies \ @SimpleStacker 4h

I suspect something like this happens in my classes too, but it may only be 1 or 2 students per semester.

Basically, I have students who never show up for anything and don't turn in any assignments, but they still show up for the final exam and inevitably fail. I always wondered what they could possibly be thinking, but the thing is: I have to report a student's last day of attendance. I think if they literally don't show up at all, they may lose some kind of status or eligibility for financial aid (just a guess for now). Thus, if they show up for the final exam, it'll look like they were in attendance, even though there was never any intention to actually take the class or pass it.

31 sats \ 1 reply \ @Signal312 4h

I should ask her a little bit more about it. I do remember that she's said she's talked to the college administrators about it.

BUT I wonder if they're in any way incentivized to actually follow up. Because they benefit from increased enrollment.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined 4h

It is probably a look-the-other-way situation.

reply on another page

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined 4h

I don't remember all the ins and outs of these eligibility issues, but there are different scenarios where failing, incomplete, and n/a are all preferable to each other.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Solomonsatoshi 5h

Imposing an artificial market upon education has these precisely perverse results. Education is and will always be an investment by a community in its members. Education is not a crude commodity that can be successfully traded in a free market manner isolated from the community within which it is developed.

36 sats \ 1 reply \ @SimpleStacker 5h

I think some of the majors would be quite happy to reveal what the employment outcomes are. We can all guess which majors are stopping us from doing so.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined 4h

I'm not even thinking about specific majors. A lot of this abuse happens to students who are very unlikely to even get as far as declaring a major. They burn through all of their financial aid on low-level (often pre-college level) courses, because they're so underprepared.

19 sats \ 1 reply \ @SimpleStacker 5h

I don't know, man, I gotta stop reading stupid people and their stupid opinions...

Why do you keep doing this to yourself, man?

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @denlillaapan OP 4h

I mean, this time the headline got me. I really thought they were gonna say something edgy and worthwhile

132 sats \ 0 replies \ @Solomonsatoshi 7h

'Man, ok so having customers pay for a product rather then receive it for free, is a failed free market experiment...?'

YES! EXACTLY!

This neoliberal commodification of education using debt and imposed market model structures corrupts the entire ethos of higher education.

It puts young people into debt and changes the incentives and values that underpin the higher education system.

Instead of being a pursuit of knowledge education becomes a crude process of people investing in and providing a commodity with the aim of gaining material wealth.

This undermines the whole value system that once was what universities were about- the pursuit of knowledge.

The great and tragic irony is that the commodification process where a market model is imposed changes the incentives to primarily economic incentives, the result is that quality of teaching and learning declines and the economic and wider societal outcomes over the long term decline also.

111 sats \ 0 replies \ @Solomonsatoshi 7h

The point the article is trying to make which you seem to not quite understand is this. Education market was changed from the previous model where the underlying philosophy was that people with the ability and desire to gain tertiary education could gain higher skills largely at the expense of the taxpayer and would on average return that investment by delivering increased productivity.

For many decades this model had worked but it did not align with the neoliberal market forces dogma well and so the new model based on a fake free market was introduced.

The change to a 'free market' model while still largely overseen and funded by government created a different model where a market model is imposed but it is not a true free market but a fake one- one where the incentives for education providers are perverse and driven by parameters that do not serve the long term best interests of the economy because incentives rather favour providers who provide volume not quality.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Solomonsatoshi 7h

The west is in decline. The education system is focused on woke and entitled identity politics. In China in contrast education is focused on the engine room of the economy- engineering. Remember when the west also celebrated engineering and science? It is the hard sciences that are the basis of economic growth and strength so what happened? The west gained hegemony over the financial system and by 'engineering' the financial system discovered 'wealth' could be created- it is fake wealth. It is the fake 'wealth' that precipitated the GFC. it is parasitic rentseeking financialisation that has bled the wests economies while China has built its mercantile-productive economic growth based on hard engineering. Most of the politburo are engineers. Most of the wests leaders are bankers, lawyers property developers or bankers nominee/lobbyists. Young westerners aspire to be bankers or property developers and so become rentseeking parasites. Young Chinese aspire to be engineers and build things. It is not just the wests universities but western culture that is corrupt and in terminal decline.