I partly agree and partly disagree. That's all I have to say about that!

 

No really, I think that the idea that we have to retain everything in our brains is certainly no longer true, with the advent of information readily at our fingertips.

 

HOWEVER...I firmly believe that having that broad 'liberal arts', if you will, base of knowledge in our fat delicious brains does much to allow for those leaps of logic (the 'aha' moments) that are a large part of what makes our species so innovative, particularly in the last century or so.

 

Edit: I don't know if I originally saw this link on here, or if I actually read it in Wired, but this essay by Patton Oswalt does a much better job than I ever could of explaining why having immediate access to information is stymying creativity. Admittedly, he's talking about comic book fandom, but it's an allegory for life, man! The man is a Prophet!

 

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/12/ff_angrynerd_geekculture/all/1

 

^^which is why our system has lapsed into the kind of undisciplined mush it is today. you don't think they're doing rote memorization in China, Korea, etc? or that Asian families aren't doing that here? There's a reason why NY's prestigious Stuyvesant High School is over 70% Asian...

need I say more? lol

The problem with rote memorization is that kids only remember the little factoids until the test is over. They never learn how things actually work or care. That's why so many kids who test well are duds in real life and how flunkies can tear past them by their mid 20s. The flunky took the time to learn how it worked, but it took him longer than was allotted before the test since he had to learn everything about it and how it fit in the bigger picture. That's why they ask so many "dumb questions" instead of just burning it into short-term memory like the "smart kids" do.

I'm not advocating rote memorization. That's what I did, in the form of massive information intake the night before and then subsequent dump the next day. Aside from an overdeveloped frontal cortex which now acts as a very effective sun visor, it did not serve me well.

 

I'll point out that my kids, who are in grade school, are all learning in a different manner than we did. They all are learning via the 'flunky' method GCrites described

 

Personally, I went with the osmosis (go to class) and study with the kid who the best notes the night before to pull all of the pieces together.

 

 

And what EVD thinks is rote memorization going on in China and Korea is actually the more effective "flunky method" because the kids spend tons of time on each piece of material to make sure they really know it in and out. But they don't study 7-13 different subjects in one day like our kids do and have all those ups and downs with subjects they like and ones they don't throughout the day.

People sometimes seem to conflate the level of required memorization with rigor, and the two are almost completely orthogonal. I would guess that social expectations and classroom rigor explain as much of the success in South Korean schools as the teaching/testing style.  Which is why places with high levels of economic/social capital and good schools in the U.S. do pretty much just as well as exam factories overseas, regardless of the teaching style.

If American schools switched to Asian teaching styles, American parents would immediately go bonkers and would demand the old system back... yesterday. even if it lasted 10-20 years, they'd never get used to it and wouldn't let up until the old system was back.

The best advice to give any kid going to college, who folks are not paying the bill, is to keep you borrowed debt as low as possible.

Do as much research as possible related to scholarships. If you can get a 1/2 or full ride to Ball State, WKU, or Indiana State, but you

can't at a Big Ten school.........take the scholly. I also don't know why one would rack up private school debt at Centre College, Kenyon,

Denison, Wittenberg if you can go to UC, BGSU, Miami, Toledo etc. You can take liberal arts classes at State universities.

 

Work part time during school, Co op some if you can, work full time in the summer, National Guard always has programs that cover tuition.

If you are on the hook for borrowed debt don't major in something where you can't get a job.

I'd give the same advice Kyle gave, though I can admit that the lure of a big-name school is strong.

 

Also, of course, if you really do know what you intend to do professionally, investigate the actual programs of the school in that field, of course.

^On the other hand, if you're talking about really big-name schools, the picture is actually more complicated. For many working/middle class students, well-endowed schools like Harvard charge less tuition than in-state public schools.

I don't like a lot of these schools anymore located within tiny towns that don't have any jobs around. Students need to be able to work part-time, to network and to be able to find a job without moving. I think the big-city schools are becoming more important since networking is so much more critical today than in the past in many fields. Finding a part time job was really tough in Portsmouth, for example, since there were tons of 40-year-olds that needed minimum wage work there and didn't have the time constraints that the students did. And if your folks made more than $50K a year you weren't allowed to work at the university.

^On the other hand, if you're talking about really big-name schools, the picture is actually more complicated. For many working/middle class students, well-endowed schools like Harvard charge less tuition than in-state public schools.

 

Good points, might make sense to rack up some debt being an Engineering major at Purdue vs. Ball State. But if it is nursing, take the Ball State Scholly.

Harvard gives giant tuition discounts to students from families with less means or income.

Most expensive Ohio Private Univ. Estimated Gross costs, room/board, etc

http://www.collegecalc.org/lists/ohio/most-expensive-in-state-total/

 

 

I don't like a lot of these schools anymore located within tiny towns that don't have any jobs around. Students need to be able to work part-time, to network and to be able to find a job without moving. I think the big-city schools are becoming more important since networking is so much more critical today than in the past in many fields. Finding a part time job was really tough in Portsmouth, for example, since there were tons of 40-year-olds that needed minimum wage work there and didn't have the time constraints that the students did. And if your folks made more than $50K a year you weren't allowed to work at the university.

 

I agree completely.  Schools like OU that are in the middle of nowhere often force graduates to either move back in with their parents or move speculatively to a new city. 

 

Also, earning real money from a part-time job at schools in college towns is difficult.  Employers get away with paying true minimum wage.

 

^Oh, and landlords get away with charging ridiculous rates in those college towns, forcing students into semester-long leases that require up-front payment, etc. 

Was talking to someone last night who went to nursing school who fell victim to some sort of student loan scam.  She was in a program where they agreed to pay back their student loans independent of their salaries at specific hospitals in Northern Kentucky.  I'm not sure of the terms of the loan but it was something like 5-10 years for student loan forgiveness.  Anyway, right as she and her class graduated, the program was cancelled and they were all exposed to the full loan, which I have the hunch is upwards of $100,000.  I'm guessing that this happened around 2010.  I asked her if they contacted a lawyer and she said they did and they couldn't do anything. 

 

She also admitted that she defaulted on her loan which caused the interest rate to jump.  If it was a private loan maybe that's possible.  Luckily my two loans were both stafford loans and I consolidated them before the recession with a 2.1% fixed interest rate. 

^Oh, and landlords get away with charging ridiculous rates in those college towns, forcing students into semester-long leases that require up-front payment, etc. 

 

Ever seen what a pack of college kids can leave behind them when they move out?

It can be surprising how unaware even professional school students--even law students, whom you'd think would have both an aptitude for and an interest in reading contracts--can be about the terms of their student loans.

 

Interest rates can and do jump on private sector student loans after defaults.  Actually, I'm not sure that federal loans wouldn't, for that matter.

 

And, of course, the biggest tragedy is that such loans are nondischargeable in bankruptcy.

 

The federal government does offer an <a href="http://www.finaid.org/loans/icr.phtml">income contingent repayment plan</a> for federal loans over a 25-year time horizon, as well as a <a href="http://www.finaid.org/loans/publicservice.phtml">public service loan forgiveness program</a> for those who work 10 years in public service.  However, this does not cover private sector loans.  Moreover, many student borrowers don't even know at the outset where their borrowed money comes from, and fewer still understand the significance.  Many people just see their financial aid letter, which will include public and private loans, and just walk into that arrangement, believing there's no alternative.  For some, there might not be, but there are certainly many people who might have the option to reduce their private sector borrowing up front and then take advantage of a federal government loan forgiveness program for the federal loans afterward.

 

Of course, that still means you can be effectively working for the government--in multiple ways--for a very long time.

^Yes, but the problem is that it's virtually impossible for an 18 year-old or even a 22 year-old applying to graduate school to understand the implications of a cosigner, or to consider risk.  In the mind of an 18 or 22 year-old, success is assumed -- after all that's what they're being pitched by recruiters and society at large.  Many parents and grandparents are now having their social security garnished to cover student loans they cosigned for.  This dirty business that operates under the foil "higher education" is literally tearing families apart!

 

I was stupid in a few respects -- I myself didn't understand the implications of a parental cosigner, assumed that I would make $45,000 the first year out of school, that I would never be laid off, etc.  Where I lucked out was consolidating my loans in 2005 at 2.1% interest, and in violation of the Dave Ramsey method have been able to do other things with my income.  For someone coming out of school now with a 5-6% interest rate on, say, $70,000 in loans, they are so screwed they don't know how screwed they are.  That level of debt is very common amongst people coming out of the for-profit community colleges and people who went to graduate school of any kind. 

 

Somebody with that level of debt is paying $450-550/mo on their loans for 20~ years...that same payment applied to an IRA starting at age 25 would virtually guarantee retirement with several million dollars.  Instead, the ability of these people to save for retirement will be fatally hampered by these debt payments.

 

 

Coming out of UVA Law, there were people who had well over $200,000 in student loans, counting elite private undergrad tuition (with payments deferred but interest capitalized throughout their law school years) plus three years of law school at what was, even then, ~$42k/year.  Even with starting salaries in the major markets at $160k (with almost everyone getting respectable bonuses in the $10k+ range), that was a heavy debt load on top of the cost of living in the markets where people needed to move to make those salaries.  And, of course, the firm culture and expectations in such markets are grueling.

 

Granted, given that it was a pretty top-tier school and a large number of the students there were second-generation law students from families with at least upper-middle-class incomes (if not higher ... one of my classmates was the daughter of the president of the Baltimore Ravens), many of them graduated with no debt because of family support. Many, but not all.  Probably not even most, actually.

 

As for cosigners, it's the cosigner's job to appreciate risk moreso than the student's, though of course, having the student understand is pretty darn important, too.

 

As for social security getting garnished, that's the downside of federal obligations.  The interest rate is generally lower, but the federal government can go after your social security.  That's generally off-limits to collectors.

The best advice to give any kid going to college, who folks are not paying the bill, is to keep you borrowed debt as low as possible.

Do as much research as possible related to scholarships. If you can get a 1/2 or full ride to Ball State, WKU, or Indiana State, but you

can't at a Big Ten school.........take the scholly. I also don't know why one would rack up private school debt at Centre College, Kenyon,

Denison, Wittenberg if you can go to UC, BGSU, Miami, Toledo etc. You can take liberal arts classes at State universities.

 

Work part time during school, Co op some if you can, work full time in the summer, National Guard always has programs that cover tuition.

If you are on the hook for borrowed debt don't major in something where you can't get a job.

 

Second this. I was nuts to turn down a full ride to Eastern Michigan (recruited me- EMU goes after Toledo kids the way Toledo goes after Michigan kids), half tuition at Bowling Green and Toledo, and smaller scholarships at Ohio State (pretty decent one but limited my class options), Cincinnati (I think 1/3 tuition), and Michigan State (grandpa went there and I got a decent package, but I think not all of out-of-state was waived). The best school I got into was Michigan, but I would have needed to move there first to get in-state residency and less insane tuition (Michigan is ridiculously expensive for a public school). Michigan would have not given me any scholarships and it would have put me six feet under in debt. As much as I loved Ann Arbor, it just didn't make any financial sense.

 

Instead of choosing the "better" schools or schools where I got decent scholarships, I went to the world's greatest party school. In an unexpected way, that social education proved very useful, but it just doesn't make sense to leave money on the table. Then again, I graduated a while ago, back when Ohio schools were slightly more affordable. Of course, in Cali, hardly anyone knows about Midwestern schools except maybe Michigan and Northwestern, and even that isn't going to get you the networking and interviews that Stanford, Berkeley, UCLA, USC, or UCSB (the Ohio University of the West Coast) will get you.

 

*The really smart kids move to California, get state residency, avoid the flagship universities, go to second tier state schools with scholarships (basically spending nothing on tuition), become a big fish in "small" pond, and network like hell in the start-up scene. I think where you go to school matters less today than ever before unless you're Stanford or Ivy League. And Stanford is probably the only school really worth the debt...

Along with Stanford and the Ivies as you mentioned, I'd add MIT, Duke, UChicago, Johns Hopkins, CalTech, Northwestern and perhaps a few others where it may be justified in taking on some debt.  That said, a lot of those schools have big-time tuition assistance that makes attendance much more affordable (if not free) for those that are qualified academically and financially.

^Second CalTech, but I think Stanford has much lower tuition for undergrads. Excellent bang for buck in Palo Alto, and endless 100k jobs in the area straight out of college.

Again we are focussing too much on tuition.  Living expenses are often as much or more of the debt people carry, especially if they went to graduate school.  I think my undergrad loan totaled $13,000, of which only about $4,000 was tuition because I went in-state.  Many people who go to graduate school, even if they get a tuition waiver and stipend, still take out loans to cover living expenses. 

 

And that's where schools part of a major city such as UC and OSU win again because if you can get away from these controlled student-only situations and rent in the general community you don't get whacked. Of course, doing that can increase the isolation level to the quitting point for some people. The worst thing that can happen is somebody's parents demanding they live in one of those $1200/mo Supermax-level security buildings that are big today and stick their kid with the bill.

Many schools are also starting to require sophomores to live on campus (and almost all require that freshmen live on campus, absent exceptional circumstances).  At OSU, at least, dorms are often substantially more expensive than off-campus housing (and I say this as someone who lived in the dorms there all four years).  In more expensive cities, dorms may be cheaper by comparison because the off-campus housing is simply much more expensive, but not so much in Columbus.

Especially in states with much higher education subsidies than ours.

Is that freshmen on-campus residency rule new for OSU?  I remember a buddy of mine lived off campus as a freshman there about ten years ago.  My alma mater, Dayton, has had the freshmen/sophomore on-campus residency rule for quite some time.

We can talk about the dorm rip-offs compared to apartments all we want.  But really that difference is just a fraction of the overall debt people are incurring.  Living in the dorms, for whatever reason, is a right of passage that everyone seems to look back upon with a smirk.  It's hard to imagine having the really strong tie to a college without having lived in the dorms for at least one year.   

 

The bigger issue is people working for at least a year rather than heading straight to college.  If I were to do it again, I would have gotten two jobs the month after HS graduation and worked 7 days a week for the 15 months until the next-next fall.  In today's money, as an 18-yer old you could easily make $40,000 after taxes in that time period doing that.  I'd put almost all of it away and act as if I didn't have it during school, then work some during school.  Getting out of college without money to buy a suit for an interview is a sure way to start accruing massive credit card debt.     

 

I didn't have enough character at that age to work like that. And I don't now, either.

jmecklenborg: The question is how much of what you learned in high school would have faded from your memory in those additional 15 months.  Honestly, I have a problem with our existing summer vacation model (many countries that outperform us have no such holiday--Japan, China, and South Korea all have more than 220 school days per year, compared to our 180-ish), which allows knowledge time to fade from desuetude.

 

I remember thinking that when I chose to go straight through from undergrad to law school rather than working for a year or two beforehand.  Granted, plenty of people came to law school having worked for a year or two and performed just fine, but I still think coming straight through was the right decision.  If nothing else, I traded one fewer year of work before law school into one more year of work after, with a considerably higher paycheck.  (Also granted that that's nothing close to guaranteed for people graduating law school now, but that's a whole separate discussion.)

I don't believe that whatever book knowledge we lose over the summer offsets the kid and teenage stuff that happens over the summer. Unfortunately that's been diminished somewhat, I think, by TV and video games.  I remember having a conversation about summer breaks with a girl in my program from Japan, and I could see she was jealous of all the mischief that goes on here in the U.S.A. during the summer months. 

 

 

>If nothing else, I traded one fewer year of work before law school into one more year of work after, with a considerably higher paycheck.

 

You're not taking risk into account.  My former roommate graduated from law school in 2011 and has been laid off four times since, most recently from the federal courthouse in Cincinnati due to the sequester.  Luckily he worked for a year teaching English in China before law school and so has some savings to fall back on, but that I'm sure has disappeared quickly under the weight of $600/mo loan payments. 

 

Nah, I disagree about needing to lengthen the school year.  Not only is a long school year not a universal constant amongst countries that "outperform" us (cough*Finland*cough), our shorter year seems to work well with a huge chunk of students here.  The problem is that some kids completely turn their brains off during the summer (mostly because their families do no enrichment with them, nothing at all to stimulate their brains).  As one might expect, the direction-less summers most hurt students from low-income families.  I think an optional, less-intense 6-8 week summer program would be more appropriate than a mandatory lengthening of the school year across the board.

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/the-absurd-debate-about-length-of-school-year/2011/08/15/gIQAswc3HJ_blog.html

Another day, another student loan default letter appears in my house's mailbox from a previous tenant:

 

Whatever this "saltmoney" place is, it's probably a scam, taking advantage of people when they're down.  I looked at the site and it's quite obviously marketed to naive college students (unlike the actual student loan management sites  like Direct Loans, Oklahoma, Great Lakes, etc.). 

 

This site says whatever saltmoney is is not a scam:

http://www.scamadviser.com/is-saltmoney.org-safe.html

 

However, this site very well might have been set up as a decoy by saltmoney. 

 

 

 

UC in the news with interesting items of note.

 

APLU Announces Four Winners of Inaugural Economic Prosperity University Awards

Honors Recognize Northern Illinois University, The State University of New York, the University of Cincinnati, and the University of Michigan for their Economic Engagement Efforts.

The “Overall” category award, which recognizes an institution that is making connections between all of these university-engaged economic development areas, went to the University of Cincinnati

http://www.aplu.org/2013ProsperityAwards

 

The University of Cincinnati is teaming up with the state of Ohio to help fill an estimated 17,000 empty insurance jobs over the next five years.

 

UC officials joined Ohio Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor and Great American Insurance Co. co-president and co-CEO Carl Lindner III to announce the opening of the Carl H. Lindner III Center for Insurance and Risk Management.

 

The university will be offering a new major and minor in insurance and risk management through the center.

http://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2013/11/13/heres-how-uc-and-great-american-are.html?page=all

Richard Vedder and Christopher Denhart: How the College Bubble Will Pop

 

The American political class has long held that higher education is vital to individual and national success. The Obama administration has dubbed college "the ticket to the middle class," and political leaders from Education Secretary Arne Duncan to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke have hailed higher education as the best way to improve economic opportunity. Parents and high-school guidance counselors tend to agree.

 

Yet despite such exhortations, total college enrollment has fallen by 1.5% since 2012. What's causing the decline? While changing demographics—specifically, a birth dearth in the mid-1990s—accounts for some of the shift, robust foreign enrollment offsets that lack. The answer is simple: The benefits of a degree are declining while costs rise.

Tom Troy ‏@TomFTroy  38m

OH Rep. Andrew Brenner, vice-chair of House educ comm, elaborates on why he called public education socialist http://bit.ly/1iEsRD7 .

 

 

The thing with videos like this is that if they ever encounter someone who can, they'll often edit them out.  Though at least this one showed one or two getting it right.

 

 

 

That is a good one. There is a conspiracy theory guy, pretty funny, who did a video on a campus asking students if they could name any of the

Bill of Rights, it is funny.

^I would say this is shocking, but it's pretty much expected these days. If anything I suppose it should finally put to rest the credibility of the US News & World Report College Rankings :laugh: :laugh:

 

"American University's ranking in the 2014 edition of Best Colleges is National Universities, 75. Its tuition and fees are $40,649 (2013-14). Students at American University benefit from the school's location in the political hub of the nation."

^I would say this is shocking, but it's pretty much expected these days. If anything I suppose it should finally put to rest the credibility of the US News & World Report College Rankings :laugh: :laugh:

 

"American University's ranking in the 2014 edition of Best Colleges is National Universities, 75. Its tuition and fees are $40,649 (2013-14). Students at American University benefit from the school's location in the political hub of the nation."

 

When I was in grad school I took a class on 20th century Chinese history.  I was one of 2 or 3 people on the first day of class who had even heard of Mao, or knew when he rose to power. 

 

^see, if you were a little older and been in school in the 60's when Mao jackets were popular everyone in class would have known who he was. Or am I mixing them up with Nehru jackets??  :|

^I would say this is shocking, but it's pretty much expected these days. If anything I suppose it should finally put to rest the credibility of the US News & World Report College Rankings :laugh: :laugh:

 

"American University's ranking in the 2014 edition of Best Colleges is National Universities, 75. Its tuition and fees are $40,649 (2013-14). Students at American University benefit from the school's location in the political hub of the nation."

 

So memorizing government documents is the pinnacle of education? So, one I am out of school I have to take time out of my day to go over these government documents so that I don't forget them instead of increasing the information that can actually earn me a living or help my family?

Whoa.  So they're actually studying how college isn't working while in college. 

 

http://crookedtimber.org/2014/03/23/paying-for-the-party/

^I would say this is shocking, but it's pretty much expected these days. If anything I suppose it should finally put to rest the credibility of the US News & World Report College Rankings :laugh: :laugh:

 

"American University's ranking in the 2014 edition of Best Colleges is National Universities, 75. Its tuition and fees are $40,649 (2013-14). Students at American University benefit from the school's location in the political hub of the nation."

 

So memorizing government documents is the pinnacle of education? So, one I am out of school I have to take time out of my day to go over these government documents so that I don't forget them instead of increasing the information that can actually earn me a living or help my family?

are you serious? It couldn't get any more basic than knowing each state has 2 senators (who's talking about "going over government documents?") Not knowing the senators from your home state is somewhat forgivable if they're not that well-known (though not really), but inexcusable for certain ones (Dianne Feinstein, Harry Reid, Ted Cruz...) with a national profile who are constantly in the news (though frequently for the wrong reason). John McCain?? (hello...kids!! he was a Presidential nominee!!). Acquiring information like this doesn't require any formal education, and should be the basic responsibility of every citizen. These kids are total bubbleheads.

I'm not referring to that video specifically, but some of these other Republi-challenges get very old. Putting a gun to people's heads and demanding they recite the constitution or get called stupid and uneducated for example.

We live in an age where knowing how to find information is perhaps more important than memorizing it.  I think this changes the way that many disciplines such as social studies, science, and aspects of language arts should be taught/learned.