He is the champion of naming. Just as he is the champion of soothing voices and social justice. Lovelovelove.
One thing about college costs that amazes me, is the amount of money spent on students' comfort. I've noticed that my alma mater, as well as many, many other schools, has completely renovated the student dorms. These dorms are incredibly lavish -- like luxury apartments or hotels, almost, most with suites with individual rooms and bathrooms shared by only a few people, and all kinds of cable and internet connectivity in the dorms (for which I don't fault them, necessarily, since these days a good internet connection is especially important), but lots of provided electronics, and very nice surroundings. The dorms that I was in, (which was only a little over 20 years ago) have been completely demolished, and even those dorms were actually very, very nice compared to the dorms at many other schools I had seen. The dorm I lived in was, in all respects, a pretty typical, basic dorm. The walls were all concrete, as was the floor. My dorm had smaller floors than some, but it held about 30-35 people per floor, sharing two bathrooms (one M, one F) and it had a small common area with a sofa, a table and a couple chairs. I loved living in that dorm, and it was nice to interact with all those people. But somewhere along the line, it became considered too awful to live in. I had a strange experience about 6-7 years after I graduated where I met a woman who just dropped her daughter off at the college from which I graduated and she commented that the dorms were awful and she felt like she was dropping her daughter off at Cabrini Green, (which was a notorious, crime-ridden housing project in Chicago). I was a bit taken aback, because even though the dorms were pretty basic, and you couldn't really compare them to your cushy house in the nice suburbs, it was not at all reminiscent of a housing project. But I think that this woman's attitude was probably not all that uncommon, hence the subsequent bulldozing and complete re-doing of the student living quarters from basic to luxury housing community. So, when I visited my college and the student living area was completely different from the perfectly acceptable and happy dorm area where I had lived, I couldn't help but wonder what they were doing with the money I send them. I mean, sure these new dorms were very nice, and I'm sure they attract a lot of kids, but is that helping to increase the costs of college? Is that really what we need? Were these new dorms necessitated by the fact that other comparable colleges were doing the same thing, so it was a fight for the best students? Another anecdotal incident occurred a few years later with a cousin. He was in college and wanted a toaster for Christmas. His college apartment already had a toaster oven, but he and his roommates didn't like how it toasted toast. So they had agreed someone would get a toaster, so they could have that in addition to the toaster oven. His college kitchen was as well-equipped, if not better equipped than my own. Back in my college days, I was lucky to have a pot and pan and a couple cheap utensils. It made me wonder how college kids were living. So, I don't know how much of these increased costs are really education-based. I also think it indicates a problem with where our priorities and expectations have gone. Maybe this is just because I'm old, and I feel like "if it was good enough for me, it's good enough for the kids today," and you can just discount my thoughts. And to Wrey's point about college/university -- yes, in the U.S., colleges and universities are often interchangeable. A "college degree" usually refers to the 4 year undergraduate degree (a B.S. or B.A.). There are community colleges, where one can get an Associates Degree, and although that technically could be called a "college degree," usually when people refer to it, they mean the 4 year degree. Americans almost never use the phrase "university" or "going to university." They would usually say "go to college," whether it's at a college or a university. A "college" generally means the institution offers only 4 year degrees, but no advanced degrees, although sometimes they offer some master's degrees, and sometimes they have a professional school, such as a law school or business school, so the definitions can get blurred. A "university" usually means they offer doctorate level degrees. But the 4 year undergraduate degree is the same from either a "college" or a "university," and usually the university has some named college within the university that refers to the undergraduate school specifically. (Sometimes they even have two different named colleges -- one for men and one for women, from the days when they were segregated by gender, even though the distinction is meaningless, and both men and women take the exact same classes.) I know it's confusing. (As soon as anyone mentions "going to university," I immediately know they're not American.)
Higher education in the US seems crazy expensive to me. Even overseas fees in the UK are peanuts in comparison. There are countries where higher education isn't very expensive. In France, govnt unis are free, apart from a small registration fee. Of course, there are living expenses, books etc, and you need fluent French (which is why we decided against it in the end--my kids speak only about intermediate level and prefer studying in English). I would never have given up the years I spent at university doing my BA--I just loved it. The hall of residence ("dorm") was very spacious and comfortable, incidentally, and my daughter's room at the moment in London is very good. However, doing the MSc was boring, it became outdated very quickly, and is purely a qualification to show. Having said that, it has opened many doors and increased my salary, so it's paid for itself many times over. If you can go to university and open yourself to the many opportunities you will find there, please GO. But don't put yourselves in a ton of debt to do it--there are cheaper ways to learn if you have to use them, although for me personally these don't do the business so well.
This is true. Engineers and those in other specialized and technical fields like chemistry, physics, and actuarial science seem to have high job placement rates. A large part of the job placement issue is simply supply and demand; there's an excessive supply of labor in most majors but there's not a sufficient demand from employers to fill it. My generation was told both that we need to get a degree to be successful and that we should do what we love and want to do. The fact is you don't need a degree for many college majors and absolutely don't need a degree for success. Ultimately the student is to blame, I think, but it's also the parents, the schools themselves, and society. Why should students try to actually learn and develop skills when all they need to do is graduate with okay grades to earn their degree and get a job? That's the perceived and possibly actual purpose of going to college these days and I think that's at least near the root of the problem. But ya, I think it's the structure largely as well. If you look at online schools/degrees, sure, they have issues with reputation and credibility (perhaps rightfully so), but they have something right; you have more flexibility in classes and learn when you want. Classrooms taught by a teacher seems so outdated and inefficient. We need new methods and strategies and, in my opinion most importantly, hands-on learning. I'm exactly the same way. I study very well independently, when I can learn what I want, when I want, and how I want. I can teach myself anything... but put me in an inefficiently-taught classroom full of students that don't want to be there and professors who aren't advocates of hands-on learning... it's half-assed and is not an environment conductive to the pursuit of knowledge. If I could do it again and I didn't go to college, I know I'd learn at least ten times more teaching myself and applying what I learned. I mean, I teach myself as is in college, it's just not what I should be learning...
