That's what they taught us at the Christian school I went to for K-1st. It was like printing but had the hooks. I think it was called D'nealian handwriting.

Come on.  It took maybe 2 weeks of English class in 3rd grade to learn cursive, perhaps less time than we spent learning to type.  What are they doing instead with the time? 

 

The hits keep coming.  Pay off student loans early or increase 401k contributions?  This article doesn't consider saving for a house/paying off house early and/or real estate investing. 

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/pay-off-student-loans-save-162100816.html

 

None of these columns seem to ever suggest that people with professional jobs should also get a part-time job and put all of that extra money to loans/401k/house.  I kept telling my youngest brother who was in sales to go get a restaurant or bartending job and he didn't do it.  Sure enough last Monday he got canned and now has zero money coming in, a too-expensive apartment, and a car with payments.  So the repo man is circling the block. 

 

Come on.  It took maybe 2 weeks of English class in 3rd grade to learn cursive, perhaps less time than we spent learning to type.  What are they doing instead with the time? 

 

 

Too much time teaching common core

This article goes into how a lot of students at private, NON-profit schools have trouble graduating or making a decent income after graduating. I can't help but think that the locations of a lot of private schools in small towns far from major employment centers is hurting their students' prospects. Back in the 19th and 20th centuries when having any college degree was a big deal these out-of-the-way schools were just as good or better a placing students in jobs than ones located in major cities. Now that's not true. I remember a lot of students starting out at more expensive, private rural schools then transferring to city schools when they became worried about their job prospects and the cost of tuition.

 

 

 

Graduation Rates: The Telltale Sign Of Success Or Indicator Of Failure?

 

For millions of students, attending college is a means to a better life: more job prospects, and higher earnings over a lifetime. While students who enroll and graduate from an institution of higher learning often reach those goals — despite graduating with thousands of dollars in loan debt – millions of others never graduate and face mounting financial obstacles.

 

The report from Third Way, a Washington, D.C. think tank – suggests that hundreds of private, non-profit universities have failed to assist students in reaching their goals of graduating and moving forward in the real world.

 

According to the report, which analyzed data from the Department of Education’s College Scorecard, nearly half of the full-time, loan-holding students aren’t graduating, while those that do graduate aren’t earning sufficient incomes even years after completion, and far too many are unable to repay their loans.

 

more: https://consumerist.com/2016/06/01/graduation-rates-the-telltale-sign-of-success-or-indicator-of-failure/

Yeah, I think a lot of these small colleges are out there limping along.  Everyone working there just needs a job. 

 

If I were hiring people and somebody came in with a degree from a school that I had to Google, I'd wonder why the hell they went to such an obscure school.  They'd seem like someone who tricks themselves into making weird life decisions and is needlessly afraid of crowds and cities. 

I'm not surprised.  It's a heresy that lots of people aren't willing to say yet (and those that do often do so anonymously on the Internet instead of on the campaign trail), but we are sending too many people to college (and, beyond that, too many people to graduate school).  But colleges have incentives to increase enrollment rather than selectivity, especially with little skin in the financial side of things post-graduation.  Competition for quantity is going to come at the expense of quality somewhere in the system, and there are just so many private nonprofit schools in the country that it's simply inevitable that some of them are going to have to relax standards to preserve or increase enrollment.  (Ohio is known for its wealth of public colleges, with 12, IIRC, but the number of private colleges in this state is just insane.)  I've kind of wondered what motivates people to go to Hiram, Defiance, Heidelberg, etc., and I'm sure that each of those schools have their analogues in other regions of the country.

The college boom is over, and is going bust fast. St. Catherine's (which recently started offering four-year degrees to boost enrollment) is now closing in Kentucky: http://www.kentucky.com/news/local/education/article81098527.html

  I've kind of wondered what motivates people to go to Hiram, Defiance, Heidelberg, etc., and I'm sure that each of those schools have their analogues in other regions of the country.

 

Heidelberg has a reputation for letting almost everyone in.

^^^I totally agree that we are sending too many to college.  We are pumping out kids with worthless degrees and a mountain of debt.  At some point that's going to have a real impact on the economy if it isn't already.

 

I've long thought that the motivations of the universities needed to be forcefully changed by completely overhauling their funding mechanism.  Instead of loading up kids and their parents with debt to pay for college up front why doesn't the government (state or federal) collect a tax on the graduate for some number of years after they graduate to fund the University?  There would obviously need to be a transition period, but once operating this would shift the incentive of the University.  They wouldn't just be looking for warm bodies to fill the seats and dorms they would be looking for students with high earning potential because the more their graduates earn the more money they will take in. 

 

The government could even adjust the tax rate and/or taxable period based on strategic national interests and demand.  If engineers are needed, for example, they could tell students that engineering graduates will pay 5% of their income for 10 years to cover the cost of their education while other graduates (philosophy for example) will pay 5% of their income for 20 years.  They could use average salary data to determine equitable payment terms for each degree.  Now your playing the incentive game on both sides, student and University, to achieve a student enrollment that aligns a little bit better with demand and you're eliminating the student loan debt problem.

 

What am I missing?

College should simply be free like how high school is, but it would be a lot easier to get kicked out than it is currently.  And people who are kicked out under certain situations would then have to pay tuition in order to come back and complete it.  Also, college tuition should be paid for out of a national inheritance tax on the wealthiest heirs. 

I don't think giving someone something (college degree in this case) for free is generally a good idea. It devalues it and is taken for granted. Perhaps a system like ROTC scholarships; They pay for your schooling, and you are guaranteed a job once you graduate and you owe a certain number of years to "pay it off".  Only instead of the Army/government paying for school, companies and businesses would pay to educate their future workers.  The shift in demand would be truly market driven and the businesses most likely would only want to pay for schools that teach and meet their required skills.  That would eliminate the obscure schools that people unthread seem to think exist.

The number of salesmanship classes would go through the roof if businesses specified coursework.

I don't think giving someone something (college degree in this case) for free is generally a good idea. It devalues it and is taken for granted. Perhaps a system like ROTC scholarships; They pay for your schooling, and you are guaranteed a job once you graduate and you owe a certain number of years to "pay it off".  Only instead of the Army/government paying for school, companies and businesses would pay to educate their future workers.  The shift in demand would be truly market driven and the businesses most likely would only want to pay for schools that teach and meet their required skills.  That would eliminate the obscure schools that people unthread seem to think exist.

 

No, in my perfect world, college would be almost 100% liberal arts, with little "training" toward any specific field.  That field won't exist 10 years after the student graduates.  But the lessons from literature, criticism, writing, cultural studies, philosophy, history, etc., are applicable for the rest of one's life. Many people earn "real" degrees in stuff like business and especially engineering but have never had to put anything out there.  They've never had their writing or other work critiqued by their peers.  They haven't been forced to fail in front of an audience -- when they turn in a lousy paper, only their teachers know. 

 

A freshman year that pulls a student in 6 different directions fall semester and 6 more spring semester means that they won't have natural strengths in each and so will truly struggle with a few of them.  And by "directions" I don't mean just formal classes.  I mean bring what we now call extracurriculars into the structured academic realm.  But those activities should be "unstructured" and peer-run.  Don't just "shadow" a professional or sit around in an office for a 4-month internship.  It's always been my observation that an intern has a privileged position that doesn't require any kind of grit -- nobody really screws with these people because they aren't real threats.  Instead the whole thing is just all cutesy. 

The number of salesmanship classes would go through the roof if businesses specified coursework.

 

I feel like dozens of required credit hours for virtually an degree could be swapped out for courses that are more in-line with daily business activities in their respective fields. Using my degree(s) in architecture as an example, I could probably find 20-30 required credit hours I would have gladly swapped out for some courses in finance, administration, contract law, marketing, sales, etc. In 6 years of college, I had one required course for 3 credit hours that tried to capture all of that.

^I agree with that.  Everyone would benefit from a cursory overview of the law...few college graduates have ever opened a law book (I didn't actually read a law until years after I left school).  Also, I would have loved to have taken a class called "History of Debt" and another called "History of Taxation". 

Yale Law School grad and #1 bestselling author mispronounces diaspora at 2:28:

Department of Education shuts down ITT Tech:

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/itt-techs-closure-one-largest-154806610.html

Department of Education shuts down ITT Tech:

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/itt-techs-closure-one-largest-154806610.html

 

More for-profit "institutions" of education (K-12 and postsecondary) need to be on the chopping block. Very few are truly doing right by students.

People don't realize not to buy things advertised during Maury

Fox News, etc., going crazy with university student protests of Trump:

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/11/17/coddling-campus-crybabies-students-take-up-toddler-therapy-after-trump-win.html

 

Unfortunately these protesters are playing directly into the GOP's hands.  The Republicans have wanted to defund state universities and bolster the for-profit colleges they own for decades -- these protests enrage baby boomers and the nursing home set, despite those entire generations having benefited from high union wages and college tuition that was practically free by today's standards. 

 

^ A lawmaker in Iowa has already put the ball in motion on this:

 

http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/11/15/iowa-lawmaker-introduces-suck-buttercup-bill-response-election-related-protests/

The left doesn't understand that moderates aren't pulled to their side by protest marches (or strikes) and the right absolutely hates them.  College protests seem to pretty much just serve as self-congratulatory photo-ops for a fraction of the student population. 

 

My grandfather hated labor unions so much that he cancelled a vacation to France when he heard a 5 second report that some segment of the French workforce was striking. 

and this is just one reason why Painesville has been proud to be the home of Lake Erie College for 161 years. But hey, at least kids are learning something :|. I guess it's only a matter of time before they will be granting degrees in this subject, like they do at Emerson College (alma mater of Jay Leno, though I'm sure back in his day there a major in comedy would have been...well, laughable). I wonder if there will the opportunity to do course work in the field. I never thought of Painesville as particularly funny, although there's certainly a lot to mock :laugh:

 

Lake Erie College unveils new minor in comedy studies

By Tawana Roberts, The News-Herald

POSTED: 02/04/17, 7:14 PM EST

 

http://www.news-herald.com/general-news/20170204/lake-erie-college-unveils-new-minor-in-comedy-studies

 

"Lake Erie College is bringing more laughter to its Painesville campus.

 

Students now have the opportunity to pursue a minor in comedy studies, a new offering within the College’s School of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences.

 

According to the news release, the comedy studies minor at Lake Erie College will help students harness their creativity across disciplines while honing their techniques and exploring the rich historical, cultural and theoretical dimensions of comedy as an art form.

 

Students will primarily learn from associate professor of theater Jerry Jaffe, who conceptualized the new minor."

The war on young men at US colleges needs to end — now

 

http://nypost.com/2017/04/23/the-war-on-young-men-at-us-colleges-needs-to-end-now/

The largely hallucinatory “war on women” has nothing on the very real war on college boys.

 

A few recent stories highlight just how unfair and unjust an environment US campuses have become for young men — and the necessity of federal intervention to fix the damage previous federal intervention has done.

 

Take Thomas Klocke, a University of Texas at Arlington student accused of making anti-gay comments to a classmate. Klocke vehemently denied the charges and said his classmate had hit on him and Klocke angered him by rebuffing his advances.

 

According to Reason magazine, “Klocke received no hearing, even though the university’s Title IX policy explicitly mandates hearings for students in danger of being expelled. He was simply charged with making physical threats against a student and engaging in harassment, in violation of Title IX.”

 

A school “academic integrity” official “conceded that there wasn’t enough evidence against Klocke.” No problem: “Administrators found him responsible for harassment anyway and placed him on disciplinary probation.”

 

Klocke killed himself a few days later.

UK students caught crawling through air ducts to steal exam:

 

http://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2017/05/05/university-kentucky-students-crawl-through-air-duct-steal-exam/101324330/

You never know, maybe they were just Deus Ex LARPing.

Let's help promote this person's blog, why don't we:

 

http://money.cnn.com/2017/08/02/pf/early-retirement/index.html

 

So somehow she "grew up really poor" but used her family's savings to pay for Harvard AND had "savings" when she graduated.  Okay, whatever.   

 

 

 

 

I guess Jake has gotten bored with this topic.

Anyways, the following seeped its way into my intermittent FB newsfeed over the weekend.

https://www.thenation.com/article/why-is-college-so-expensive-if-professors-are-paid-so-little/

Whether unionized or otherwise, I fully agree that adjunct faculty are among the biggest losers of the current educational model.  Adjunct faculty roles should really be utilized for "second job" faculty, not full-time instructors.  There were partners at my old law firm that were also adjunct faculty at the University of Akron Law School.  They weren't dependent on their university paychecks and they would legitimately have less claim to a voice in university governance, because they generally taught something like 1 course a year or even 1 course every other year.

 

That said, while unionization might bring their wages up, I'd worry about the budget coming from even-higher tuition for undergrads (who already pay far too much) rather than moving positions out of administration and back into the classroom.

Whether unionized or otherwise, I fully agree that adjunct faculty are among the biggest losers of the current educational model.  Adjunct faculty roles should really be utilized for "second job" faculty, not full-time instructors.  There were partners at my old law firm that were also adjunct faculty at the University of Akron Law School.  They weren't dependent on their university paychecks and they would legitimately have less claim to a voice in university governance, because they generally taught something like 1 course a year or even 1 course every other year.

 

That said, while unionization might bring their wages up, I'd worry about the budget coming from even-higher tuition for undergrads (who already pay far too much) rather than moving positions out of administration and back into the classroom.

 

Since it's "The Nation" I don't expect them to mention the impact of government subsidizing tuition.  Of course the colleges charge more, because they can....

 

A friend of mine is an adjunct professor at both Notre Dame and CCC while holding down a full time nursing job.  Not sure where she finds the energy.  But both of those are side jobs.

What if tuition were still subsidized, but colleges weren't allowed to blow all the money on frivolous construction and president salaries?  Those gateway poles along Euclid that say "CSU" cost over $100k apiece, just to tell people something they already know.  Hard to blame runaway costs on tuition aid when the students receiving that aid have no say in its expenditure.

The rule system you'd need to have in place to prevent those frivolous expenditures would be so complex and require so many administrators that it would cancel out the benefit of the reduced costs.  How many layers of bureaucracy do you want to put into place to oversee executive compensation and/or capital spending?  Particularly when capital spending is often heavily subsidized by restricted donations and can't be redirected to the general budget to increase adjunct salaries (or simply hire more adjuncts and expand the course catalog)?

The paradox is that state universities attract more out-of-state students when they attract more out-of-state students, which is not their core mission.  This puts state universities in unnecessary competition with public universities in other states and within their own state system. 

 

This means tons and tons of money spent in pursuit of rankings (in order to boost the careers of the school-jumping presidents and provosts).  That means tons of marketing and tons of recruiters.  These innumerable characters are paid as much or more than full-time faculty.  And 10X more than the lowly adjuncts. 

 

The career of a high-level administrator is boosted more by construction of a new building than the sensible renovation of an existing one.  The career of a high-level fund raiser is boosted more by a successful $100 million campaign for said building rather than $30 million for a renovation. 

It is good business to pull kids from out of state to their schools. South Carolina and Clemson are notorious for hitting Ohio Schools because their students vacation down in Hilton Head and other areas down there. These schools have such a poor product of students in their own states they need to reach outside the state to places like Ohio to attract talent.

 

The kids find it appealing because they are closer to the beach and the weather is warmer. It is a nice selling point for these schools. Most 17 year olds don't really care what the programs are and to be honest it does not matter too much for undergrad anyway. These schools puff their programs up to make it seem more important to the average HS kids. They also can give these out of state kids a Scholarship and still come out way ahead because they are still paying above the in state rate with the scholarship. It is a shell game.

Parents don't care that these people are just salesmen. They are treated with the same revere as the actual educators.

The rule system you'd need to have in place to prevent those frivolous expenditures would be so complex and require so many administrators that it would cancel out the benefit of the reduced costs.  How many layers of bureaucracy do you want to put into place to oversee executive compensation and/or capital spending?  Particularly when capital spending is often heavily subsidized by restricted donations and can't be redirected to the general budget to increase adjunct salaries (or simply hire more adjuncts and expand the course catalog)?

 

Sometimes.  Other times it's an Akron situation where the place nearly bankrupts itself.  Even in the first instance, the school may be better off not accepting a strings-attached donation that will end up costing it money.

Parents don't care that these people are just salesmen. They are treated with the same revere as the actual educators.

 

These people probably have a degree but rarely have the advanced degrees that the adjuncts have.  The recruiters are well-paid and enjoy full benefits.  The adjuncts are poorly paid and receive zero benefits. 

^ Depends what the Adjuncts degree is. Some adjuncts are very well paid by their real job and then just teach a class or two on the side. Other adjuncts try and cobble together piecemeal college work in low paying fields and would rather settle for a low paying part time college professor job as opposed to a real job.

Since real jobs are always super easy to get

a low paying part time college professor job as opposed to a real job.

 

Yeah, a real job, like being a college recruiter.  Or back where I taught and made $17/hr with no benefits but the unionized janitors made $24/hr starting. 

 

A few years ago I made that remark while poking a Tea Partier and he instantly turned it around on me, asking why I'm too good to clean toilets.  I countered by telling him about the time I invited all of the janitors to a party I threw and that I caught one of them smoking weed with a student's mom and her sister. 

^ I think there are 2 schools of thought on adjuncts. Personally, I have always thought of them as professionals with a day job who explore their passion by teaching a class or two at night or during the day if their schedule works. The pay sucks but it is more of a labor of love and the money is less important to them.

 

Then there are the professional adjuncts who cobble together 3-4 classes a semester, between 2-3 colleges in a city and use it to make ends meet. That is fine to if that is what makes you happy. There is no wrong way to do it. I have a few friends that do this. Their situations help them do this because they have a spouse with a job with benefits.

 

So ultimately, there is no wrong way to go about it. People find their own way to make it work for them.

that reminds me that I need to clean the toilet at my Lancaster store

^ I think there are 2 schools of thought on adjuncts. Personally, I have always thought of them as professionals with a day job who explore their passion by teaching a class or two at night or during the day if their schedule works. The pay sucks but it is more of a labor of love and the money is less important to them.

 

Then there are the professional adjuncts who cobble together 3-4 classes a semester, between 2-3 colleges in a city and use it to make ends meet. That is fine to if that is what makes you happy. There is no wrong way to do it. I have a few friends that do this. Their situations help them do this because they have a spouse with a job with benefits.

 

So ultimately, there is no wrong way to go about it. People find their own way to make it work for them.

 

I agree that for those that choose the adjunct route as a side job. But I do believe universities exploit this as well, making less full time professor positions available, meaning that even if you wanted to teach full time, there are less opportunities to get those full tenured positions. So for those seeking jobs in academia, this is their only route.

 

On the flip side, I do believe an adjunct professor brings more to the table as a teacher, because they can provide examples real world applications for the subject matter. I found in college that too much of what I learned was in the abstract. The best teachers I had were ones that gave us case studies based on actual issues they were working on or had worked on in the past.

 

There's a balance. I just don't know what that perfect balance is.

That's the difference between professors that are bogged down in research and ones that are able to do other things with their mind during downtime.

I've been a FT faculty member at a mid sized Ohio university (not "The" big one), and see many sides to this.  I work in a professional school, and the adjuncts we employ to teach often do work FT jobs, and bring that immediate practical experience and their social networks to their students. This is particularly valuable in professional schools like education, business, and law.

 

OTOH, it is clear that universities exploit adjuncts to manage the bottom line. Our university president recently went off script in a discussion about expanding enrollments, saying "we can use adjuncts...they are cheaper". We don't pay our adjuncts diddly.

 

As a FT faculty member, the reduction in tenure-line faculty means that more and more institutional work - recruiting, advising, letters of recommendation, grants, student thesis and dissertation projects, professional associations, and the never-ending committee work, falls on fewer and fewer people. I've sometimes fantasized about quitting my tenured position and taking a full-time teaching position, which would mean I would teach exactly one more course each semester, and be freed from all of that other work. It's tempting sometimes.

 

In sum, though, the loss of tenured faculty means a few things for the university:

1. concentration of authority among administrators, who more and more come into the field (NOT AN INDUSTRY) with background in educational administration (NOT LEADERSHIP), but no foundational academic background. They fundamentally do not understand what academics do; they are focused on the institution and "the students", an interest which often just means maintaining enrollment, and thus, the institution.

 

2. diminished opportunities for students - with fewer FT faculty members who are expected to be fully engaged in their field -- adjuncts rarely publish research or present at conferences - the work of introducing students to that work falls on just a few faculty members.

 

3. still more increase in mid-level administrators - the rapid decrease in tenured faculty (my department is down by 1/2 in the ten years I've been here, other departments are down 2/3rds), means more work for "support staff" that used to be taken care of by faculty. Recruiters, advisors, "college student personnel" who are essentially salespeople for the university to keep students enrolled, paying, and satisfied enough to stay.

 

Higher education has become a product like most other services used to me (ahem, health care), and universities must compete for students. The radical reduction in state funding all over the country has seen to that. It is absolute bullshit to criticize these institutions for being part of a market - including branding identities that mean $100K arches - when state governments have FORCED them into a competitive environment. Republicans think that running public services like a business leads to better outcomes. This is what you get.

 

Our university has invested almost a quarter of a billion dollars in infrastructure in the last five years, just to remain competitive with other institutions that can offer single-room housing, basic classroom technology, matching chairs and furniture (my office desk is way older than I am), and heating and cooling systems that work. We were losing students because so many have the expectation of living in their own rooms - most young people (surveying my classes) have grown up with their own space, and can't fathom having a roommate, so they go to a university that will 'meet their expectations'. This is what transitioning from a service to a business looks like.

Doing away with shared dorm rooms for single person rooms was certainly a big expense for schools that they pretty much had to do. Today's students can't fathom all those rules from the '60s about when boys and girls can see each other. They're not going to be put into a situation where they can't have their stupid boyfriend sleep over every single night.

^ it is a shame that a single dorm room is what will keep kids in college now a days. Living in the dorm and having a roommate is a fun and enriching experience. I am afraid that all this isolationism will really harm kids abilities to connect to others on a social and societal level going forward.

 

 

But to the business reason. I think it is also a combination of housing as both a control issue and profit center. As someone who has college property, the universities used to rely heavily on off campus landlords to provide housing for students. Now, they see this as a profit center and also they see it as a way to keep control on the students. They don't have control if an off campus house hangs an offensive sheet out their window or if they have a keg party on the weekend or dress in offensive costumes. Enticing and cajoling the students back on campus provides more opportunities for the school to police the student and control their behaviors, which is not necessarily good either.

A lot of parents like the idea of their sons having empty balls and all A's from being able to lock themselves in their rooms for 4 years.

One university admin aphorism that seems to hold true:

Make sure students have plenty of sex, the alumni have plenty of sports, and faculty have plenty of alcohol. [We almost never get alcohol.]

 

I've seen the control issue in relation to housing - our univ recently rebuilt the Greek housing, and made sure that all greek orgs were concentrated on campus. We don't have the same kinds of frat party issues that other campuses do. However, our housing office is essentially an independent organization, and funds itself. Dining services is all private, and I'm constantly aghast at how much students (have to) spend on food.

 

And yet...for all of these costs, university education is still a good value. The difference in lifetime earnings for a college graduate compared to a HS grad is enormous, and more than makes up for the tens of thousands of dollars it costs to attend. It's just horrifically unfair to make low income students go so deep into debt in order to earn a credential.

 

Trade schools, industrial work, etc are attractive at the moment, because there is a pent up demand for labor in those sectors,  but many of my students' parents work in those fields, and understand how cyclical work is in industry. It's not that young people don't want to work with their hands, they just understand that a job in education, health care, or government won't be subject to the whimsy of the American business cycle. More than a few of my students were houseless/homeless during the Great Recession, and they want stability and predictability.